"I think that it's best when getting the resources is actually part of the story." Make obtaining meat the meat of the story, essentially. The way to deal with that, she says, is to follow the example of Delicious in Dungeon, a manga where broke adventurers turn their enemies into nutritious meals. "You can't make stories or quests or whatever that are actually too long," she says, "because then the player will be in the middle, like, 'Oh, I'm actually hungry, I need to go back.'" What keeps mankind alive? Giada Zavarise, a narrative designer, writer, and noted hater of fishing minigames (opens in new tab), believes there are simply limits to the kind of stories survival games can tell. The mechanics can become a part of the narrative if you think about how it's all tied together Giada Zavarise "Not only do we have to bulletproof our in-game narrative scenes to work regardless of what time of day, or weather, or whatever else might be going on that could interfere with your beautifully paced dialogue," van Lierop says, "but we have to write around the fact that at any point, our player might be near death for any number of reasons." One story-critical dialogue scene later I turned to leave, but by then was on the point of delirium and lost control of my movement, stumbling around like a maniac while I tried to reach the door. In The Long Dark's story mode, while near death and exhausted, I wandered into a house looking for somewhere to sleep and instead found an important NPC. It's even worse in a game like The Long Dark because your survival needs introduce their own tensions that can't be ignored." "A lot of open-world games struggle with the disconnect between narrative intensity and momentum, 'You have to go here and quickly!', against this big world full of interesting things to do," says van Lierop, "and you have to be able to do them but also feel that sense of urgency once you re-engage with the narrative. When I'm doing quests all that stuff becomes another distraction in a game that's already got plenty. Mods like Frostfall (opens in new tab) and Campfire (opens in new tab) give you reason to eat apple cabbage stew even when you don't need the hit points, as well as making blizzards as dangerous as the ones in The Long Dark.įor a while those mods were an essential part of my load order, but these days I leave them out. The rudimentary wildlife simulation of Skyrim-wolves chasing deer, foxes chasing rabbits, fur that can be crafted into leather and meat into meals-seems to beg for them. It's very easy for the player to start fixating on the optimal strategy and the optimal strategy is likely to not be super fun. As van Lierop says, "when I play a game that doesn't have survival mechanics, I feel like something is missing." The Long Dark tosses you to the wind in a Canadian wilderness where the bears and wolves compete with hunger, thirst, fatigue, and the cold to see who'll kill you first. A successful authored survival story needs different things than one where the narrative is authored purely through systems and player choice." The tension between surviving and storytelling "It was a decision originally made for development expediency," says Raphael van Lierop, The Long Dark's creator, writer, and director, "but over time it's become core to how we approach development of the game, allowing us to update each part individually, and also let each mode breathe and evolve along lines that feel most organic to its nature. The Long Dark keeps its episodic story campaign a separate mode from the sandbox. Not every survival game is a pure sandbox of player-driven chaos, of course. These pub anecdotes may not be equally thrilling, but they're ours. Everyone who plays DayZ comes out with a harrowing tale about a tense stand-off with strangers, and everyone who plays Valheim has their own Viking saga (even if it ends with a tree falling on them). It's true that survival games are fertile ground for player-led stories. He came out of it with a functioning fartbox, but more importantly, an unforgettable story-one he wouldn't have in a game that didn't simulate the need to eat and excrete. Chris set off on his quest for a crapper when Ark gained interactive toilets in update v258. I should clarify this was while he was playing Ark: Survival Evolved, he's not a mediocre plumber with a lamb chop addiction in real life. It took Chris Livingston four hours and the lives of 12 poor sheep before he got his toilet working. Short, Raphael van Lierop, and Giada Zavarise will be among the panelists discussing "Survival Story-telling" at LudoNarraCon (opens in new tab), an online festival about narrative in games that runs from May 4–8 this year.
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