The Daily Grind: Is narrative important?

by Akela Talamasca on Apr 30th 2008 8:00AM

Game mechanics, Lore, Crafting, Quests, Opinion, The Daily Grind

A lot of industry people talk about the importance of narrative in games, and how it's going to be a driving force in revolutionizing the state of games in the near future. Certainly, MMOs with rich histories and lore can benefit from well-written quest descriptions, but there is a cookie-cutter feel to many of them that is slightly off-putting; they're written broadly enough so that any player, any class can fulfill the requirement.

Regardless, even if the quest can be boiled down to 'Go kill 10 things', it can make a world of difference to read an engaging lead up, explaining who's involved, and how it affects the world -- but is this the type of narrative people are talking about? Is it possible to craft a true storyline, with a beginning, middle, and end, in an MMO, which for all intents and purposes, is meant to run forever? Do you feel like your favorite MMO could use more active lore? Is narrative as important as gameplay?

Tags: history, kill-10-things, lore, narrative, quest-description, tdg, the-daily-grind

Reader Comments (2)

Just my 2 cents...

There either needs to be more or less "narrative."
In the case of more there needs to be an overwhelming desire to complete the quest regardless of reward given, once thats achieved, there is enough narrative.

Less narrative comes down to making things what they are, the corp that I'm in realizes that we are doing a complex or mission to make money, and its nice to have a little bit of background going through, but the narrative is the one we are making, by spending that money to build and defend our little area. An NPC BS story is insignificant to the one we are writing with our actions, and that IS the kind of story that can go on forever.

A friend of mine said just the other day that he only reads the first sentence of the quest text, so that he knows where he needs to go and what he needs to do.

I think that after 60+ levels of reading quest panels, they tend to blur together. People know the panel format and only read what is necessary to get the job done. I doubt a lot of people care about the actual TEXT, because it gets in the way of being productive.

I totally agree that the broad strokes used to accommodate all classes CAN be an issue, but really, does there need to be class specific quests for killing 10 rats? Besides, these games are so broad based anyway, so that all players can experience all content, which is not just an issue with the narrative.

I'm a fan of narrative, but I don't know if MMOs are the proper vehicle for them. Quests are treated more like Powerpoint slides and less like chapters in a book. I like the way DDO has their instance narratives, complete with voiceover. In those cases, you can't get away from the narrative, and it seems more engaging that way.