Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Environmental Storytelling
Conveying narrative backstory and exposition by embedding it in the en-
vironment itself—without using a cutscene, character dialogue, or even UI
text—is a highly efficient method of storytelling, and one of the best ways
to create a player-pleasing amalgam of gameplay and narrative.
Of course, using the environment to silently, visually communicate nar-
rative information is not exclusive to games—cinema got there many dec-
ades before, and stage plays hundreds if not thousands of years prior to
that. But environmental storytelling may be something games can do
more effectively than any other medium. Interactivity is the key. A game
player feels more involved than, say, a moviegoer when given the oppor-
tunity to actively discover and examine these environmental clues, in her
chosen order and at her own pace.
As
BioShock
senior designer Dean Tate put it during a PAX East 2011
panel entitled “Setting as Character in Narrative Games”:
Good visual storytelling is almost like telling a good joke. By the
end of the joke, there comes that moment where the person has
to piece together everything that was said throughout the joke
and there comes that “aha” moment when they realize what the
punch line is. Good visual storytelling is like that. You stare at a
scene, you try to piece elements of it together in your head, and
then you reach that point where you go, “Oh, these things are
kind of related, and now I understand what happened here”… and
that's a really cool moment.
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It is also the demonstrable triumph of the “show, don't tell” axiom.
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Implying a Bigger World
Environmental storytelling can prompt players to infer the existence of
events, people, and places which you don't actually have to create or de-
