« Social Recursion | Home | NotM: Lost Girls-Alan Moore »
A Brainy Gamer Forever Voyaging
By Corvus | December 19, 2007
I’m not usually one to simply steer you away from my blog when you’ve only just arrived, but Michael Abbot, the Brainy Gamer, has been talking about games and storytelling recently. That, of course, has gotten my attention. In response to comments about the “good story games of yesteryear” he decided to replay a classic game or two and post his thoughts.
He started with A Mind Forever Voyaging, one of the best Infocom games in my opinion and played through it in a couple of days. He started, much to my delight, with the Presentational Components of the narrative, namely the packaging and game manual. Infocom really knew how to package their games and started drawing you into the story the minute you opened the box. You really ought to read his full series of post, starting here: Gamer’s log: A Mind Forever Voyaging - Day 1.
This morning he posted his initial thoughts on Planescape: Torment and mentioned how the graphics, once considered state of the art*, suck on an LCD. Michael may have considered that a sidebar, but (surprise!) I consider that a discussion of the Visual Component of the narrative.
Anyway, I know Planescape: Torment is widely considered to be the pinnacle of storytelling in games. This is an opinion I don’t much agree with, as I think other games have better used the medium of gameplay to convey their story. I’m seriously considering picking up Michael’s baton and running with it for the next few Narrative of the Moment series (only two short posts to go on
*Was it really considered state of the art? It seems to me that other games were setting that particular bar with it came out. Not, of course, that there’s anything wrong with that.
Tagged:infocom games, michael abbot, narrative, planescape torment, storytelling. |
December 19th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Hilariously enough, I’m playing through X-COM: UFO Defense presently and I’d be glad to read what you have to say on the game.
December 19th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Hi Corvus. I want to thank you for linking to my little mini-series on narrative in games. Looking through your site, it appears we have many interests in common. I’m glad you found what I’m doing useful.
Best of luck with Man Bytes Blog. I’ll be back to follow your Narrative of the Moment posts. Great idea, by the way. I especially admire the way you take the time to examine elements like the presentational components, which most game writers routinely ignore.
Best,
Michael
December 19th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Linking was the easy part, thanks for writing it. I’m slowly working on retro tagging old posts, but if you’re interested in my theories on games as narrative, entering “storytelling” and/or “narrative” in the search box in the left sidebar will be sure to yield several posts going back over the years.
Anyway, I’ve enjoyed your blog and I’m glad you’ve found me too!
December 19th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
As you well know, I tend to dabble more than dunk in the storytelling aspects of video gaming, but I can’t help but be a little interested in what you’d come up with from playing Dark Forces.
If you decide to cruise through some oldies, that game definitely gets my vote
December 19th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
[...] to Corvus Elrod’s excellent cool-stuff-spotting skillz (yes, with a z), I ran across The Brainy Gamer’s series of posts about searching for [...]