Using Narrative as Context - Balancing Gameplay and Story Elements - Extra Credits 

Sometimes a light sprinkling of narrative is all a game needs!

Portal is a great example of this in general. They started off with the main mechanic, and developed the world and the characters around it. They needed an explanation for solving puzzles with a futuristic device, so they created a sci-fi testing course. They needed a drive to complete it - so they created an AI that trapped you in there. Then they expanded these ideas and ended up with one of the best narratives in videogames ever.

5:15 Made me say "Aww, Thomas." Which just proves how important narrative is. Somehow the developers made me care about a red rectangle because of narrative.

Technically the Source engine _can_ allow players to bring stuff between levels. Portal just used fizzlers so you couldn't break future puzzles by having an extra cube. In this case, the story explanation of "it's so you can't smuggle things" is a actually pretty accurate.

Thanks for keeping your portrayal of Ash Ketchum accurate by ensuring he came tantalisingly close to a trophy but ended up with nothing

I absolutely LOVE when games successfully integrate mechanical rules or system limitations into the cannon lore of a game. It is a wonderful way to convert an artificial shortcoming into a welcomed point of interest for me

Ever since you mentioned turning Super Mario into a monochromatic series of blocks I was thinking about "Thomas was Alone." It's such a great example of giving context to mechanics with simple narrative. So happy to see Thomas at the end there.

5:14 I'm glad you mentioned Thomas Was Alone, because if you didn't, I was definitely going to.

Factorio would still be fun even without a story, but being stranded on an alien planet surrounded by hostile aliens and with the goal to launch a spaceship to help take you home definitely adds to the games fun.

so who's ready for the Baba is You Cinematic Universe

3:43 *> ASH KETCHUM will remember that.* - from Pokemon: The Telltale Series

I like that Sonic was added contemplating why he’s running. It’s a big point of discussion in the fanbase of how narrative should be used in the games.

1:53 - "Let's take the whole Mushroom Kingdom aesthetic out and leave only a progression of monochrome, disconnected obstacles built from geometric solids." As a Geometry Dash player, I would be complete fine with that :P

I play mario for the PLOT and the mushrooms of course

That description you gave for a naked Mario (mono-chrome, no story) game is the gameboy Tetris. Yet everyone loves tetris. It is a game of pure mechanics.

I appreciate you bringing up Pokemon as an example. It's a series that suffers from excessive cutscenes, and shines brightest when the world is allowed to just be, as you head for the champion.

3:02 My sister is a huge fan of the Disgaea series. Let me tell you, we have had some long and involved conversations about stat increases and completion percentages.

I totally played Tetris for that rocket launch. That really gave a deep meaning to the gameplay.

The Zoe drum roll is the best use of the animation budget so far!

1:43 holy crap a reference to Baba is You. Love that game. Highly recommended

I mean Thomas Was Alone was a bunch of shapes jumping around but the story just makes it amazing.

while I agree with this video entirely that you don't need to go heavy on the story to make it compelling, the problem with Shiggy's ban on the narrative for Paper Mario is that Paper Mario is an JRPG, A GENRE KNOWN FOR BEING STORY BASED!

"Engaging story crashes Paper Mario" Next Strder7x vid

Once I made a small boss fight that was mechanically a copy of cuphead. But it's context was that you were a Laser-shooting android being put through a simulated scenario in order to see if you were ready to go out into the world. So stuff like having the name of the avatar be highlighted and easily distinguished from the rest of the test helped with that. Gave the impression that a lot of other androids were going through the same test.

You know what game at least benefits me by context? For Honor. Even if you don’t the story mode, the basic setup explains WHY these factions are fighting each other. The world experienced a truly apocalyptic tectonic disaster and that understandably made the Knights, Vikings, and Samurai desperate to survive so they fought each other in a three way conflict. Even now that the world has recovered, the years of mistrust and misdeeds keep them at each other’s throats. So if a player ever bothers to ask why the faction war is even a thing in-universe, the answer is right there in the game’s opening. “Desperation and trust are seldom allies.”

i still feel like Minecraft had lost a bit of its narrative by removing the mechanic where the player always appeared on a beach upon creating a new world. versions Beta 1.7.4 and older had that mechanic.

2:59 Matt, are you doing your demo reel for being the next "Super Smash Bros." announcer here? Because it totally works! lol

No one gonna mention "Phil Clawlins" on the drum set?

Sticker Star might have been okay with removing most of the story and dialogue if it actually delivered on gameplay. You don’t remove story and dialogue in a role-playing game. Especially not to put in a gimmicky mechanic that limits what the player can do. Use a sticker, do a thing. Run out of stickers, you can’t do a thing. And now there’s no witty dialogue to help distract from that. It just dull grinding. SPOILER AHEAD: “Oh no, Bowser needs to be scary, he can’t be funny.” Said with complete sincerity AFTER Bowser’s Inside Story came out on the DS. In which Bowser is shown to be both funny but also terrifyingly competent. The next Mario RPG after Sticker Star was Dream Team, which again has Bowser be funny but also smart enough to usurp the other antagonist for final boss status. You can’t look at Bowser in Sticker Star and honestly say he’s the least bit intimidating.

5:16 nice reference to Thomas Was Alone. I was thinking of that game while watching this video.

Thanks for the Thomas Was Alone reference at the end. It was the first thing that came to mind when talking about "removing all context, and leaving only boxes". Great example of a little bit of story context giving meaning to the simplest of visuals.

Pokémon is a sports anime!

2:23 The big bad turtle ox dragon thing! :D

This episode was really a step into the right direction, thanks! The cat was visible but it was not referenced, I liked that! Keep pushing for that direction!

Sticker Star is the reason Miyamoto should not be allowed to touch RPGs with a 10-foot pole.

Did anyone else do a double-take at comparing Bowser to an ox or was that just me? Can't say I've heard that one before...

This was great. An example of what you're describing that I immediately thought of, Mortal Kombat 2 back in the day. Kano, Sonya Blade, etc aren't playable characters. There's a level where you see them as prisoners in Shao Khan's arena. Even in an Arcade game like MK, they were able to infer through context both why those characters weren't available, while also indirectly establishing story lore.

The witing of paper mario is one its stronger points. Well, it was. Thank you Miyamoto.

well done you guys I love a sweeping narratives in all my games so this is especially hard for me to hear but it is a necessary lesson that needs to be imparted

I especially love it when games almost instill the soul of something into your controller or in some physical object you own. Think of things like people who save a mercy run of Undertale on their USB so everyone can stay in that final good state or (my personal favorite) having to press the Naia button at THAT moment in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. If anyone here like the idea of your very button presses becoming a narrative expression that takes on a whole new meaning, play Brothers.

Thank you for making these videos guys they are very interesting

Loved the animation on Zoe doing a drumroll. Love to see that used in future videos (sorry to the regular art that’s made).

5:00 I think Super Mario Odyssey is a great example of this.

Right on the day when I am questioning myself about discarding some mechanical gameplay in my game to focus on narrative and visual aesthetic. Thanks very much EC.

Why is nobody talking about how Zoey's drum kit had "Phil Clawllins" on it? XD

To rehash a point from another episode, Papers Please is an amazing example of this! The game is inspired both mechanically and narratively by the existence of customs agents as a profession. A: how tedious the work is, and B: How being a customs agent would potentially come with moral complexity.

Nicely written like always!!!

That Baba is you thing was gold

2:59 im impressed

When I played doomii as a kid I was scared of the demons. The context of 'save the world', and the crushing sense of loneliness in the game made me feel like I'd be letting people down if I didn't clear the next room. Doom II was an exercise in bravery for me. Now doom 2016 is just a adrenaline outlet. Rip and Terror!

Sticker Star not needing a story was a really bad idea because it was an RPG, which RPGs basically only exist to tell stories. Glad you guys actually pointed out that it was a bad idea right after the opening.

Tetris has a great storyline.

Neat Baba is you reference at 1:43 :)

The narrative explaining tech limits: the fog in Silent Hill was there to mask the limits of the PS1. And it added amazing setting and story elements in turn.

I think what's also hard when adding the narrative elements is the vision the developer has versus the player. For example Cappy is a character for the player, but to the developer it might be more of a way to convey a function. This language was also used (poorly) in Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite when it was asked where are the X-men characters, and the PR representative said something along the lines of there are other characters that play similar, characters that fulfill that function.

*Tries to watch video* *Old meme* *Pauses, stands up, walks away to take a deep breath before trying to continue*

'Let's take the whole mushroom kingdom asthetic out and leave a progression of monochrome disconnected obstacles " you mean Thomas Was Alone? Great game!! :)

Thomas was Alone was geometric shapes and i yet loved it

it think its also neat that people can become connected to a mechanic in a game. the best example i can think of is rocket jumping in team fortress 2. the amount of hours that people put into practicing this mechanic and the huge community that got built around it

And here I am... still waiting for the Winged Hussars to arrive.

Thomas was alone is a great example.

Even Doom 2016 did that. The devs were up front about it too.

That drumroll cat animation is so fluid

I think Infinifactory is a great example of a mechanics-driven game that's elevated by having just a little bit of story, for context and for a goal.

Try thinking like this about life. *insert "I dont even know what's real anymore" meme*

Thank you for video! I have thought about meaning of narrative and context earlier, and I have the same ideas

Smooth cat animation brings tears to my eyes

1:30 I love how you left a note for particularly pedantic commenters.

5:17 one of my favorite games

Bowser is a turtle dragon. There was a culture shock episode about it if you haven't watch it. Might be a good video to talk about, foreign culture in video games.

1:54 I loved Thomas was alone

EC: "stat increases and completion percentages" OSRS players: "That's cute"

The Impossible Game. You are describing The Impossible Game. It has color but it is literally a cube jumping over other shapes just to do it.

Love the cat drumroll

I loved vaporizing as many turrets as possible in Portal!

I know you said often not always, but I immediately thought of Brothers, A Tale of Two Sons as a game where the mechanic is what drew me in and then I discovered a really powerful narrative that would have been difficult to convey as a way to attract players.

1:53 but I like Thomas was alone! 5:15 and apparently so do you. ^^

Regarding narrative or theme inspired mechanics, I think that taps in two more complex topics that deserves their own episodes. Firat, some restrictions often lead to more creativity. It's like freezing water, it requires at least one condensation nucleus, its actually a starting point. Second, abstraction. The ability to see ideas normally applied to one thing, generalize it further, and transport it to a completely different context, like match 3 abilities from figthers or what were them.

I think a good example for this is something like Hollow Knight (I hears the Souls games are similar) where you get drips of story and lore in very minimal ways, but on the face of it there's very little story. Makes you inquisitive and feel clever when you figure things out.

I mean, that monochrome geometric Mario game is basically the game Thomas Was Alone, but then again that had it's own story

At first I thought "you're going to talk about a platformer built out of monochrome shapes where you play as a rectangle and not mention Thomas Was Alone?" Nice callback at the end.

Imagine Age of Empires 2 without civilizations and the clever ways their history informed their mechanics.

5:07 Insert "I need healing" joke here

The mention of Skyrim stories reminded me of how, in the current game, there are three dragon skeletons just lying around in one of the towns. Because it just keeps getting attacked.

2:58 - you haven't one particular friend of mine. He's an achievement hunter in every sense of the word. Even when playing things like D&D, Magic The Gathering or other such games, his thought patterns are: loot, kill, level up, loot... he takes every challenge in gaming in the same way. He cares less for the 'fun' of it and more for the winning aspect. To him, winning is the ONLY fun in a game. I wish story and narrative could come across more appealing to people like that, because - in my experience - when it doesn't, it just ruins the fun... it took us a while to figure a way in which to keep his looting down. Creating obstacles/enemies which makes his looting a hindrance rather than a perk, but if repeated too often he just spits his dummy out saying we're playing against him. It's frustrating because he's a good friend and we don't want to exclude him from proceedings, but he can be too much of a struggle to deal with at times like when the rest of the squad is getting hammered and he's off elsewhere hoarding weapons which we could be using to stomp the enemy. Then again, I think most of my D&D group are similar in a way. None of them try democracy, meaning I almost always have to be the Jean Luc Picard of the group out of necessity. It's never a case of approaching someone and saying "oh hey, that thing could be useful to us - can we do a thing so you'll give us the thing?", it's always "you distract him while I steal the thing" which inevitably ends up in us getting our asses handed to us because they're 10 times as strong. I may be ranting, but I think for some people it's ALL gameplay and no story. I'm the opposite; I'm all story and with a preference for simpler/minimalistic gameplay elements.

As stated in previous episodes...it's all about that BALANCE. When you put something in to focus upon...you're often times leaving something out. If you give an extra 15% to story...that 15% has to come from SOMEWHERE! So it's making an INTELLIGENT and THOUGHTFUL choice on whether that PARTICULAR game needs more story. Also...one must be careful when REMOVING story elements, otherwise you can remove a LOT of the charm with WHY players loved those games so much. EX: Filling a game with Identitical Toads, rather than a cast of lovable and unique characters.

5:03 Battle Chess comes to my mind.

1:40 you are describing "Thomas was Alone"

Celeste is a good example too. It's actually just a casual platformer game but they added that "reaching the top of the mountain defeats crippling depressions and anxiety" thing to it which made the game experience feel like a deep fullfilling adventure.

I'm Brazilian and in the era of SNES I played Mario Bros like crazy. The game came to Brazil not translated and I obviously did not understand any English but that did not stop me from enjoying the game. In fact, I discovered that there was a princess to be saved only in the last level of the game. The same was repeated even with RPGs like Tibia and WOW. Games with good mechanics do not need much history. But if you have weak and uninteresting mechanics and dynamics it is best to put an exciting story and cool graphics to cover the flaws.

I can distinctly remember two games that I first picked up solely because the mechanics sounded interesting: Undertale, and The World Ends With You. Both awesome games, both with a strong emphasis on narrative, and both branching out with some really creative combat mechanics.

I think No Man's Sky did this well, there's barely a story but it's a super deep game.

A simple goal? I WANT TO BE THE VERY BEST, LIKE NO ONE EVER WAS!

2:02 That's the reason why I never returned to Rayman Origins and Legends, because I never found a reason to play them again, even when I play them, I asked myself "what's the goal of all this?", because in terms of story, it feels like I had to know why all that madness happened in first place. 4:46 Or makes you hate a character who ALWAYS LOST ALL THE REMAINING ITEMS AT THE END OF THE STAGE, THANKS PERCY! (princess tomato in the salad kingdom) I'LL DO A SALAD WITH YOU.

I like to think of fighting games for this subject. In a game like Street Fighter, there is very little incentive to look at a wider story. And whenever the developers have tried to craft a larger cinematic narrative, it's been sub-par at best. Even still, it's incredibly important to many players (myself included) that the characters have distinct visual designs and personalities that set them apart. Designing a character is its own form of storytelling after all.

0:22 Book-bae lookin’ lit.

1:08 hey, it's mumbo jumbo!

Wait, I liked that monochrome minimalist platformer at 1:50. Although maybe that owes some of its nostalgia to other platformers.

the point about that geometric thing being boring is not that its boring theres games that look super simple like that and have a fun gameplay, but the story that don't interrupt the gameplay just make it better.

I have this running gag with my kids, where we will be talking about a game and I say 'story, story', which means something like 'the story is irrelevant, and, frankly, the less I know about it, the more I'll probably enjoy the game'. For example, I don't want to know anything about the lore of Overwatch. I can interpret the characters I like to be whatever I want them to be. The more I know about the real 'story', the less I am able to do that. I am playing The Surge ATM, and I really like the way they do Narrative. It is all around you. You can pay as much or as little attention to it as you like. You can just grind through the game for arcade fighting lols, or you can uncover a world and it's characters... your choice.