Using Low Level Stories includes the major events of the game and those plot devices which are designed to create a powerful experience. The second and arguably more important form of storytelling is the low level story which is created entirely by the player. A Low level story happens when a player goes off the beat and track to discover their own personal story. For example a player attempts to hunt and kill an npc character without the character spotting him. Developers can help immerse the player by having the npc jump at shadows and sounds or have a news report on the radio discussing the npc being killed by an unidentified suspect after the event.
At the moment developers are too tied up in big world changing story-lines but it's the smaller stories that sell a game world, such as listening to a pair of npc's talking about their day or watching a guard becomeincreasingly bored with his guarding duties just before the player pounces down and murders him. Little things like this help create a more cohesive world than branching story-lines or endgame scenarios. One the more interesting games I player recently was Prince of Persia which had a terribly cliched main storyline about a dark god wanting to destroy the known for no reason in particular. Yet the game redeems itself by adding a feature where at a flick of a button the two main characters would turn around and interact with each other. These interactions fleshed out the main characters to such lengths that it came to a point where I was completing objectives just so I could see how they responded to the event and listen to their banter. By the end I didn't care if the dark god won or lost all I was concerned about is what was going to happen to the main characters. And isn't that the point of interactive storytelling, not to be concerned about the fate of the world but invested in the characters and their eventual fate.
My Monopoly character is Remington R. Racecar, a quick-witted, impulsive drag-racer who made his fortune betting on his own races. When his career was killed by a mysterious engine fire, he thought the world of high finances would be a safer game. He was dead wrong...
- Internet Random
At the moment developers are too tied up in big world changing story-lines but it's the smaller stories that sell a game world, such as listening to a pair of npc's talking about their day or watching a guard becomeincreasingly bored with his guarding duties just before the player pounces down and murders him. Little things like this help create a more cohesive world than branching story-lines or endgame scenarios. One the more interesting games I player recently was Prince of Persia which had a terribly cliched main storyline about a dark god wanting to destroy the known for no reason in particular. Yet the game redeems itself by adding a feature where at a flick of a button the two main characters would turn around and interact with each other. These interactions fleshed out the main characters to such lengths that it came to a point where I was completing objectives just so I could see how they responded to the event and listen to their banter. By the end I didn't care if the dark god won or lost all I was concerned about is what was going to happen to the main characters. And isn't that the point of interactive storytelling, not to be concerned about the fate of the world but invested in the characters and their eventual fate.
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