How does a video game tell a story without words?
This may seem like a bit of a weird question to ask within the context of the modern gaming
industry--we’re frequently bombarded with exposition, backstory, denotations, and explanations
for absolutely everything. This oftentimes goes beyond necessary story-driving dialogue
and character development and can make a game’s story feel like you’re just walking from
place to place to hear different characters monologue the plot at you.
This is an incredible underutilization of the interactive medium, not to mention boring
and often unnecessary. Why did we get the longwinded explanation for the origin of the
Reapers in the Leviathan DLC for Mass Effect 3? Was it a panic response that they thought
would fix the massive backlash against their poorly-received endings? “Well, maybe if
we throw more exposition and more explanations at everyone it will fix the problem,” as
though not understanding the convoluted backstory was the root of everyone’s problems. Modern
storytelling in games is not utilizing the medium to its fullest, or even its middlest.
Games are at their strongest when you’re experiencing, moving, and interacting, not
standing around listening to someone else NPC-splain stuff to you--what’s worse, is
this method of writing is training us to be lazy gamers who depend on the developers to
spoon feed us answers and explanations so we can have all of our canonical ducks in
a row, instead of relying on our own inquisitiveness, imagination, and exploration to fill in the
gaps for us.
Which is why Hyper Light Drifter is one of the most refreshing games I’ve played in
years.
Hyper Light Drifter is an indie title conceived of and developed by Alex Preston. It follows
the Drifter, a Neo-Futuristic, Cyberpunk Link who’s on the quest to...actually it’s
never entirely certain. In fact, not a lot is certain in Hyper Light Drifter. The game
commits to withholding details to a degree that is shocking to you if you’ve been playing
games like Fallout 4 for months like I have. There’s a short tutorial to go over the
basic mechanics and an intro movie. The only thing that’s clear is that there were giant
robots at some point, but aren’t anymore, there’s an explosion, a dog, the ruined
remains of some sort of technologically-advanced society, and The Drifter is sick. This mirrors
Alex Preston’s real life, who was born with a heart condition that’s been a constant
stress on his health for his entire life.
There’s never any direct explanations given for...anything. Why is the Drifter sick? Why
are they on their quest? What are these things you’re picking up? Where do you go? Who
are these people? Who are THOSE people? Who is this boss? What do they want? Who made
the giant robots? How did they die? What...are we doing?
These are all questions that go unanswered. What little plot explanations there are are
delivered without words in vague comic panels that give you some insight into the recent
history, but never is anything directly explained. Even figuring out what the game’s central
currency is, how doors work, and how to use skills is all done non-verbally. The wikipedia
entry for the game even seems to misstep on this, claiming the Drifter is looking for
a cure for their disease, which is never implied nor stated outright.
Preston was heavily inspired by games like Link to the Past and Diablo, but that’s
more about mechanics and pacing than narrative. Hyper Light Drifter also pulls quite heavily
from the movies of Hayao Miyazaki, and in particular Nausicaä of the Valley of the
Wind, Miyazaki’s first film. Actually “pulls quite heavily” may be a bit of an understatement.
The similarities are too many to mention here, but maybe I’ll touch on it again if I ever
do a plot theory video. It’s an important influence to bring up, however, because Miyazaki
frequently plays with storytelling conventions, and is a master of incorporating nonverbal
storytelling and body language into his tales. What’s most important to note, though, is
that his worlds are complex and unique, with their own rules and hierarchies specific from
movie to movie, with elaborate backstories and characters with longstanding relationships
with one another. And yet they feature almost no exposition dumps like we see in video games,
which also present us with fantastic worlds with absurd and complex precepts you have
to buy into in order to enjoy them--and yet video games rarely have the confidence to
let the game worlds they’ve created stand on their own merits. Why is this?
Miyazaki isn’t above giving us information when we need it, of course, just like the
tutorial for Hyper Light Drifter creates a safe space to get familiar with the controls,
and the introduction gives you a sense of the setting. It’s just that the information
Miyazaki gives you in a movie like Valley of the Wind is situationally-relevant. You
don’t need to know exactly how or why the robots were created, or how they were destroyed.
We don’t need to know what pollution created the forest, why the giant bugs are giant,
or even what country we’re in--that’s not relevant information for the story about
the warring remnants of humanity who are squabbling for what scraps of liveable space are left.
If Valley of the Wind were developed by BioWare, by the end of the movie you’d know exactly
which caterpillar evolved because of what radioactive isotope to be the size that it
is, exactly why and how Lord Yupa became a master swordsman, and the entire point of
the story would have been lost for nothing.
And this is precisely the problem with the current model of hyper-explanation by the
games industry--they get so wrapped up in their No Gamer Left Behind design philosophy
that they lose sight of what they’re even supposed to be doing. Developers are so risk-averse
that they’re afraid to leave any stone unturned, any corner undarkened, and any detail left
unexplained. It’s how we end up with technobabble nonsense like the canon explanation for how
Halo Rings work, or even more harmfully, DLC like Leviathan that foolishly removes any
dramatic, Lovecraftian impetus from their primary protagonists by showing you their
creators. In an effort of appease our perceived need to know and understand everything, they
undermined the central principle that makes things scary: the unknown.
Your time to talk in a video game is largely limited. Every time someone opens their mouth
for a dialogue, you’re cutting into the experience of gaming. That means everything
you learn and know should serve either the gameplay experience directly, or tie directly
into the story itself. If you’re writing a game story, and are dropping some sort of
information, you have to ask yourself: is this adding to the experience? Or is it merely
filling in a gap where someone’s imagination would have sufficed?
Hyper Light Drifter manages to tell a completely coherent story with stating the barest-minimum
possible. Do I think all games should be this vague and withholding? Of course not. If Hyper
Light Drifter is a Minecraftian success, do I expect to see hundreds of bad clones trying
to lean on the crutch of obscurity to carry their story like Donnie Darko? You bet. There
are definite weaknesses to this approach, too--there are times where Hyper Light Drifter
can be incredibly frustrating because you don’t know what the hell to do, and I don’t
think that’s entirely the fault of the player, but rather a failing of the developer to properly
convey their message to us. It’s not perfect, and I’m not trying to espouse any sort of
elitist “every AAA title should aspire to be an artistic indie masterpiece filled to
the brim with artistic integrity and bold choices” ideas. I don’t think every game
should drop dialogue, or even eliminate their codexes. There’s a lot of fun to be had
digging through game lore archana. But I also think the modern AAA industry can learn a
thing or two about how to maximise the interactive medium without taking the huge risks that
games like Undertale and Hyper Light Drifter did--that not relying on the same formula
over and over can pay off, that not holding our hands and letting us learn for ourselves
can actually enhance the games, not detract from them.
Video Games have an enormous potential to transport us to magical, fantastic places,
but it’s important to not forget that at the end of the day our imaginations still
do most of the heavy lifting. Let them. We can do it. And I don’t think we should accept
lazy writing as just the norm. We shouldn’t have to.