Methods of conveying story in video games

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

Hi all,
I’m looking for ways to convey story in a video game from a low budget perspective. Any opinion will be accepted.
My game is a FPS in the vain of Bioshock in terms of player abilities with a few extras, like teleportation and some vampire powers.

In that respect, I think written dialog is out since it slows gameplay. I’m thinking of using the Half-Life 2 method which I thought was cool.
I even think of using it during boss monologues, where the player can shoot the baddy to skip the cutscene.
You can just interrupt the speech or get a free hit for extra damage, but it will **** off the baddy to a furious state!!

I can try to find some voice actors, but maybe a “show, don’t tell” method would benefit my game.

I’m open to suggestions and brainstorming.

Thank you.

2

If the game is reliant on story use spoken dialogue.

The “show, don’t tell” method is good for a small, quick game.

For a full-fledged release that has the player performing actions, spoken dialogue is better.

~ Jason

3

Cutscenes are a good way to tell a story -> but many players dont like them + they are pretty difficult to create

  • spoken dialogue, because it feels more alive (when you just write the text, the player just reads and cant hear any emotions) :slight_smile:
4

MGS4

~ Jason