You Should Play Super Giant Games

For the past few weeks, I've been engrossed in Super Giant's new game Hades, an isometric hack and slash rouge-like wherein you play as Hade's son Zagreus as he tries to escape his father's domain. Now, usually, I'm not big into games like Hades, I don't hate them, don't get me wrong, but they never keep me around long enough. However, Hades doesn't have that problem, thanks to Super Giant's mastery of video game storytelling. So I thought this was as good of an excuse as any to talk about Super Giant and get across what makes an engaging narrative in a video game.

For starters, we need to touch on the balance between gameplay and story. In a good game narrative, both gameplay and story should be given equal billing. If that balance is upturned, you risk having either uninteresting gameplay hampered by too much story time; or interesting gameplay let down by a subpar story that might turn people away.

For example: In Hades, the story is kept to rooms in-between and after Zagreus, and the player clears a room or finishes a run. Not only that but the story is tied into gameplay; as you have conversations with other characters, you move closer to understanding more about them and the world. You also unlock permanent items Zagreus can take on his runs through the Underworld. This way, players who want to start another run are free to do so, while players who want to learn more about characters have the option to, while also providing a gameplay bonus making it worth their time.

However, another way to uphold this balance is to not interrupt gameplay, like in Super Giants' first game, Bastion.

In Bastion, the story is less about characters but the world they inhabit, so as the player moves through the game, they learn more about the world and the few remaining people in it through an omnipresent voice that narrates the events of the game as they happen. This way, both players are satisfied because neither part of the game is being skimped on. Here the gameplay is fun and exciting and drives the events of the story being told without slowing down the pace. In Bastion, everything is told through gameplay and narration, tying both parts of the game together and making them co-dependent.

In short, when creating a game narrative, the best way to get said narrative to the player is to either make the story elements of your game tied to a meaningful side activity; or have it side-by-side gameplay without interrupting it.

Second, we need to talk about length. In the Hooks entry, I noted that video games have around one-third of the world's standard TV and movies due to the nature of the media. However, some people (cough David Cage cough) ignore that they are making games and drop page after page of text. I don't know about you, but when I engage with a visual medium, I like there to be as little reading as possible, none if I'm living in a perfect world. Dreams aside, the problem with this is that you're no longer making a video game; you're writing a book.

The narrative has to be brought to the player in quick and snappy bits not to kill the player's investment in the story and the gameplay. Again, Super Giant provides fantastic examples; In both Hades and Bastion, dialogue takes up very little time, less them a minute in most cases. This, again, is to preserve the interactive part of the game; by making these periods of rest a bit short, the player hasn't been ripped out of the gameplay grove they've been building up for the last half hour. The last thing you want to do is take your player out of this grove; if you do, it removes their involvement with the game and its story. Players should be the driving force in your game, it's their actions and choices that they care about, so those decisions should move things forward. So to have the whole thing come to a screaming halt so some secondary and tertiary characters can prattle on for ages with the player sitting on the side watching this verbal version of pong makes players feel unimportant in the game's setting.

However, to bring this rambling train wreck back on topic for a moment, let us return to the thesis of this section, shall we? Games should be, first and foremost, games, not books with button prompts, not virtual amusement parks with elaborate stage productions, and not shooting galleries with celebrity voiceovers. Therefore if you want to include some meaningful story, brevity and information density are the name of the game.

And if you're still wondering how any of this can be done correctly, then play Bastion and Hades or any other Super Giant game; those two are just my favorite. They are masters at this, and while not all of their games grabbed me, they're all shining examples, as shown by how much I've drooled over them in the last few paragraphs.

Hope you found something useful

Peace.