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| Thread: Protagonism and controll; an inquiry. | |
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War-overlord
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Presidente of Isla del Tropico
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posted February 14, 2012 10:32 PM |
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Protagonism and controll; an inquiry.
Now this is a subject not inherant to Heroes VI, but to the entire series and perhaps even gaming in general. But VI being the current chapter in the series and not yet a done and closed book, it is still significant. And if it should be moved to another board, I am certain a mod will be friendly enough to move it, or lock it, and inform me of it.
I have been thinking of late and few will be surprised that is was mainly about story and storytelling. And I came across something I have never considered.
How important is it to be in controll of the protagonist of a story?
"Very important!" you say? "How else would we feel involved with the story and the character."
And if we enjoy and like the character in question, I am fairly certain that would be a way to have us feel more for him. (For simplicity's sake I am assuming the protagonist is male.)
Yet would we feel the same way if we disliked the character in question? Being forced to play through a section of game with a character we do not like, doing things we would do otherwise, being forced his choices we would like to have made differently. What would then be the case?
Now, for sake of argument, let us say that not playing the story/campaign is not an option. This section is played with a faction you enjoy; you want to progress the story; without finishing this, you don't get to the good parts. The reasons for playing through such a section are many and I am certain you can think of a few more yourself.
And why is this an issue, you ask? I think it is in the nature of stories that we are bound to come across characters we do not like as much as characters we do enjoy. And due to every person being an individual, the characters I like are bound to different to the characters you like, or the characters any other member of this forum will like. And while we not everyone will like a given story, could there be a method of making story we enjoy less more bearable?
Entertain a thought with me, if you can still bear me. I will set it in a given Heroes scenario.
Imagine this setting. You are playing the Haven campaign. You have chosen a hero. In this campaign, the protagonist is a prince of a realm. The hero you play is not this prince, your hero is his vassal, his adviser his castellan, the commander of his princely army. Your hero is the one who stands next to the princely throne, whispers advice into the princely ears, makes sure his princedom follows produces and builds, commands the army in his stead so the prince can remain safe.
Throughout this campaign, the prince is followed in his exploits, the cutscenes, the dialog, the text as far as there is any, it all revolves around this prince. Yet the hero is never far away, standing at a respectfull distance, keeping a low profile, whispering to the prince that was is only to be heard by his ears. (The actual things the hero says are never explicit and very ambiguous.)
What would you think about that?
For when we like this prince, the hero(you) was the one who gave this likeable prince the valueable advice that made him decide the right way, the one who brought his lord the glory he rightfully deserved and your hero recieves a just reward for this in the end.
Yet when we do not like this prince, the hero is the one who gave advice that was ignored, yet he was still the honorable vassal who did right by his Lord. Who engaged in a war he did agree upon, but who stood by his duties none the less and is, in the end, rewarded for this.
Yet this is not without flaws, as it places a player in somewhat less controll. And the character that is played is in less controll of his destiny and the progression of the story.
What do you all think? Is this a price worth paying? A venture we might want to risk?
P.S.
Let us try to keep things constructive, shall we. I wish to talk about methods of and storytelling in general. Voicing your dislike of campaigns, does not help this inquiry or the (philosophical/theoretical) debate this might spark.
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Cepheus
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Far-flung Keeper
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posted February 14, 2012 11:31 PM |
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You might not realise it, but your imaginary scenario with the prince and the hero is an exact description of the campaigns and storyline of Heroes II.
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"Those who forget their history are inevitably doomed to repeat it." —Proverb, Might and Magic VIII
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yasmiel
Supreme Hero
Former Chessmaster
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posted February 15, 2012 12:07 AM |
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That is pretty much how it worked from Heroes 1 up to Heroes 3 vanilla.
Starting with Armageddon's Blade expansion - stories (and more importantly the game-play tied to them) was focused on specific characters.
While both approaches have it's advantages I do wish they mix it up a bit, and give us some old school campaign without hero carry overs but with a story that ties the scenarios.
It felt more like raw strategy in the past, while stuff after Armageddon's blade was mostly about trying to roleplay and min-max the characters. Not a bad thing in its own, but little twist in approach from time to time could freshen the things up.
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War-overlord
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Presidente of Isla del Tropico
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posted February 15, 2012 10:54 AM |
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@ Cepheus: I am aware of that, which is more or less why I chose that example. To make it more accessible, because it is so much like the original campaign of Heroes II. And yes it was very much implied that the heroes were regional commanders, who played a part in a bigger strugle.
But such scenarios are easily constructed for other factions.
@ all:
Cepheus and Yasmiel bring up good points. This is very reminiscent of the way campaigns were done in ye olden days. Let us take a brief look at that.
What did the campaign/story encompass in those days? Mostly it was a voice-over of key plotlines over a generic and semi-arbitrary animation, if there was an animation at all. It told you how the plot progressed and why the hero was set to conquer the next map. A briefing, if you will. Then we got, something Yasmiel I think correctly states as, a raw strategy map. Basic, normal gameplay; at best at times interupted with a lenght of text. When the map was won, you got a debirefing or you simply moved on to the next map and the next briefing. Sometimes heroes carried over to the next scenario, sometimes they did not.
No doubt, much of this structure was used because technology was not there to show us bigger and better cutscenes, interupt gameplay for other things, etc.
Yet since that time, storytelling has evolved as has the tech available to the developers as wel as the consumers. We have new ways of telling stories. Some might even say better ways. And I am not at all certain that (many) people would settle for a "briefing, raw strategy, debriefing"-structure of campaign. Especially taking into account that there are more involving manners of telling story.
And what I wish to explore is, if a step down in percieved controll in destiny and direction of the story would have effect on our perception of said story.
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Vote El Presidente! Or Else!
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B0rsuk
Promising
Famous Hero
DooM prophet
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posted February 15, 2012 01:44 PM |
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To me it is not important at all in a turn-based strategy game. I enjoyed Heroes I, Heroes II, Heroes III without any protagonists. I enjoy the challenge, the variety, map design etc.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo RSA Animate - Smile or die
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Raelag84
Famous Hero
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posted February 15, 2012 07:19 PM |
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Edited by Raelag84 at 19:19, 15 Feb 2012.
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In my mind the protaganist is the charicter I play as, it is simply a feeling I cannot shake.
The two exceptions that come to mind are the command and conquer series and the first Starcraft game.
In the C&C series your not realy a charicter your simply, "the commander". This creates the feeling that your experincing a story by taking part in it, and yet you still have the feeling that your role is small.
In the first Starcraft game it was funner because you felt like you were buds with the charicters. Imagine there is a story with charicters you like and then you get a chance to hang out with them; That is what the first starcraft game felt like.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted February 15, 2012 08:22 PM |
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First: very nice topic. I suggest this thread be generalized to allow discussion for all HoMM games and moved to the mapmaking forum.
Well, writing a story for a game has some difficulties associated with it that a writer of a novel doesn't have to worry about. This is because, as you pointed out, the player has a direct interaction with the story - in fact, the player IS one (or sometimes more) of the characters.
Successful role playing games often allow a story to grow as a response to player choices. Total freedom is never obtained (for one thing, the beginning and, to a lesser degree, endpoints are often pre-defined and there are typically boundaries, many of them physical, to what a player can or cannot do), but there's enough that a player can feel like events are responding to him rather than just being a slave to where the writer wants to go.
Prior to WoG, HoMM games didn't really afford this luxury. I'd venture to say that HoMM games never really were meant to be story-based role playing games. Without advanced either/or scripting capabilities, mapmakers simply didn't have elegant tools to create divergent story lines in maps. (Using one-way portals it is possible to have divergent story-lines, but it's a pretty brute force method.)
WoG changed that, and it's possible now to write stories that unfold in response to player decisions. Most HoMM stories (both the professional ones AND those in user scenarios) are overwhelmingly superficial though, providing little more than a framework for the strategic elements, and I've yet to see any custom maps, mine included, that really push the game into true "choose your own adventure" type role playing. (To be fair, few actual RPGs do this either).
In my case, this is simply an issue of complexity. Using my own maps as an example, some of my stories take literally hundreds of hours to write, and that's ONE story-line. Offering players numerous choices and intersection, let alone anticipating the consequences of those choices long term AND writing all the events is an unbelievable amount of work. Possibly a team could do it, but one person - virtually impossible. I did toy with the idea of offering this kind of branched structure in Last Hope, but have pretty much abandoned it. Just not feasible with the available man-hours.
All that said, I don't have a problem being led around by the nose, so to speak, provided the story is compelling. Hell, I do this every time I read a novel, although the feeling isn't so personal (given that most HoMM stories are presented second-person). In the end, I look at HoMM as a vehicle to tell a story, not play a game. Maybe I'm unique in that, which I why I don't have a problem with this.
Let me put your question in another way. When playing a HoMM, would you feel different/better/worse if the text was written in 3rd person rather than 2nd person?* Which point of view would you feel is the most comfortable for an HoMM story to be told in? This is an important question to me, and I'm interested in gauging the community's thoughts here.
*[In case terminology isn't clear: 3rd person point of view is when the text is written like: John (or He) fired the arrow. 2nd person is when the text is written like: You fired the arrow. 1st person is when the text is written like: I fired the arrow. 2nd person POV is rarely used in published fiction for the very reason's you've highlighted.]
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted February 15, 2012 08:39 PM |
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We still have serious issues in WoG about friendly reading long messages. It could probably be improved by some patch, but atm the guys being able to do this don't give a penny about stories, they are irrelevant to them. The optimal solution would be to create a custom dialog which could be browsed like a book, turn page back and forward. Scrolling constantly a 15 visible lines dialog while the screen would allow 80 at once it tedious.
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Era II mods and utilities
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted February 15, 2012 08:43 PM |
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Well yes, there's that as well. HoMM obviously was never designed with large amounts of text in mind. Heck, in RoE, events were limited to an obscenely small amount of characters. It was so bad I had to resort to using signposts in at least one of my maps for story events. 
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Cepheus
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Far-flung Keeper
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posted February 15, 2012 09:21 PM |
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Edited by Cepheus at 21:22, 15 Feb 2012.
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Now I feel terrible about my crappy one-liner.
I think HoMM has naturally evolved a bit in this regard as better storytelling tools emerged. H1's plot was superficial (probably by design though, since the manual had some excellent writing), event boxes were unavailable, and it was next-to-impossible to flesh out a plot focused on a hero. H2's campaign provided the ability to choose your faction in many missions, and hence focusing on a single hero would've compromised the purer strategy (but campaign heroes like Roland and Corlagon did start to appear nonetheless). Then fan mapmakers started capitalising on those little event boxes and creating this amazing story-based stuff like Gates of Hell, Last Hope, Wizard's Land, Ghost Planet, The Road Home, so on and so on, with journals in external text files. H3 vanilla tried to stick to the classic style (and you can tell many of its campaign maps were probably transplanted from H2 designs), but Price of Loyalty - developed in parallel - really got going with the carryover protagonist characters. Then H3 completely splashed out with AB, SoD and Chronicles fully loaded with carryover characters, turning it into an established HoMM convention. Now, in H6, the convention can't even be avoided. You're not allowed to play the game without a main carryover hero, let alone campaigns.
Heroes VI is a bit of a letdown as far as pure strategy goes due to its game design and AI issues, but if it improves in the future, I would love to see some campaign missions without a set protagonist, which simply explore the game's core mechanics with less of the fluff. I certainly don't think it's a necessity to play with a set lead hero, or to have your protagonist be the playable character (I still believe H2 has the best structure of any HoMM campaign), although character development can suffer badly when you have to pander to every eventuality - if you ask could Gauldoth's campaign have taken place without players controlling the Gauldoth character, the answer is no. H2-3's text events only consisted of these extremely vague reports like "General, we've heard Nighon has taken over Mirham". That was probably part of the most glaring flaw in H3's vanilla campaign: the big twist is that Lord Haart betrays Erathia and we never quite understand why, because Lord Haart was just a face with next to no established motives or personality. If Lord Haart had been given scenarios or text events revolving around him and showing us how he thinks and acts in his day-to-day life as a character, it may have made some sense and come with more of an impact.
I think the best compromise is having a set protagonist through your campaign, but also some optional missions on the campaign map where you control the same faction but whichever hero for fun and profit, sort of like the Battle for Middle Earth. Unfortunately, the big "but" is that H6's maps are so complex and time-consuming to build that I doubt anything of the sort could be achieved officially... plus, the avatar concept completely prevents it.
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"Those who forget their history are inevitably doomed to repeat it." —Proverb, Might and Magic VIII
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War-overlord
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Presidente of Isla del Tropico
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posted February 15, 2012 11:09 PM |
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@ Corribus:
I very much agree that HoMM is a vehicle to tell a story, but I also feel that this is something that is inherant to all video-games and all media in general.
Also let it be known, that I sincerely regret the fall from grace of text in video games as a main means of storytelling. Though the minor role of ingame encyclopedia text is still used, that may fall from grace as wel.
But this is less of a question in what perspective the text or story is written, but more of one what role the player plays in the story/campaign. In a very roundabout way, videogames tell stories by amalgamating the 1st, 2nd & 3rd perspective. Sometimes more obviously in one perspective, rather than another, but even in things like FPS's it is never entirely in the 1st perspective.
I will try to clarify something more in the @ All section about what I mean.
@ Cepheus:
Don't feel bad about it. I also was trying not to be all in your face about it. I was hoping to incentivise a revalatory spark, having the reader come to the conclusion that something they know and may have enjoyed has been done before in a comparable way. You simply force-spark, but in the end it serves the same purpose.
Also, whereas I do not disagree with your effective summary of the evolution of HoMM-campaign storytelling, I'm not sure that I get the gist of what you are implying with avatar concept. Could you elaborate?
@ All:
Though the above statements are directed at the people stated, in response to what they have said. But I try to touch upon broader subjects within. Don't ignore them because they are not directed at you.
I think I may not have been clear enough to what I am driving at. And I have to say, that in having to clarify it better, I get a better understanding of my own ideas as wel.
Certainly a part of why the story/campaign in HoMM is generated by the fact that we are more or less forced to play with characters we do not like. It is a problem many games face, in part because storytelling in an interactive medium is not perfected as it is with books or film. (The guys at Extra Credits have a few things to say about that and other things, I highly recommend them, if you did not know them already) But the perfection of this medium is something we may have to wait longer for than the next itteration of HoMM. So I set to thinking, is there a way around having to face and play protagonists we do not like.
And the brainchild I birthed, if you pardon my symbolism, is the concept of being presented a story in which the second fiddle part is still blank. The main story is already written out and more importantly, more or less beyond (y)our controll even though you clearly contribute to it. Most, if not all cutscenes and dialog play out the main story, even text, if we get any, play out the story of the protagonist in a Commentarii de Bello Gallico way, yet most of the gameplay is revolves around the Hero enabling this story. For an example of this, let us return to the Prince and the vassal Hero I used in my first post. A scenario set somewhere in the middle of the campaign.
Imagine this setting(story wise, we are less talking if something like this is possible in gameplay, though I would think it would):
In a previous scenario, the Prince has unleashed a war with a Warlock(a Warlock who may or may not be the protagonist in another faction's campaign, though this matters little now).
In the opening cutscene, we see the Prince defeat an assault on his capitol from this Warlock. The Hero standing beside the Prince, defending him during the fight, but little else. The Warlock vows he will return. The Prince comes to the conclusion that alone, the armies of his capitol may be enough to fend off the Warlock now, perhaps the next time and the one after that, but to defeat the Warlock, the Prince will need a major advantage over the Warlock.
The Prince sets the Hero to get him that advantage and the Hero simply acquiesces.
In the scenario, the Hero has several options to achieve the goal of getting the Prince his advantage. (Getting a plot-artifact, forging a alliance of convenience; I'm certain you can come up with some more yourself) Each of the options has a certain progression, but all end the same, the Prince will use the advantage to defeat the Warlock, but loses the advantage in the process.
During the scenario, you start with two towns of your color, one you controll and one very near in the corner of the map, controlled by the Prince. You cannot reach the Prince untill you have the advantage. During the game play, you will see the Prince's town grow paralel to yours, though his starts higher(The Prince's does not take a away from your rescources). At set points, an attack by the Warlock will trigger, one you will see via a cutscene and afterwards, a messenger will track the Hero and will unavoidably take away a percentage of the Hero's troops for reinforcments for the Prince.
And in the End, it is you who helps the Prince in achieving his goal.
So in this scenario, the Hero you play is a more-or-less blank slate with a minimal backstory. The Hero is the second fiddle in the overarching plot of the Prince. Would something like this create an involving story and one you could enjoy?
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted February 16, 2012 10:20 AM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 10:28, 16 Feb 2012.
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My opinion can be summarized in "the protagonist(s) AND the antagonist(s) have to make balanced appearances but not necessarily be controlled". The story can be told very well even if you control a nameless bloke with little to no personality, given that there is a good background.
Imagine for example what would be to play with Gavin Magnus against Emilia Nighthaven and her allies - he basically uses mindless slaves to achieve his goals but even if you are in control of one of these mindless slaves, the thoughts and the very philosophy of Gavin Magnus can be presented on the background as "the story of the puppeteer".
Or, using a less harsh example, you can split the story of the controlled character from the story of the "narrating" or "commanding" character (the one who's "talking" all the time, for example Roland and Archibald in the inter-mission animations in Heroes II) by positioning them properly in different parts of the story-telling itself. The games offer more dimensions than the standard book in this regard and they are mostly unexploited so far. Here are a few possible situations:
- A situation with one "ruling" and one "ruled" character (named this way only to emphasize their social positions, not their importantce for the plot) - say, a king and one of his vassals who's entrusted with the leadership of a part of the king's army or the entire army. A king-type of character without distinct personality is usually a major flaw because it stimulates cliched perceptions, which in turn makes the story at least partially cliched (not that it can't be cliched even if the personality of such a character is on the spotlight); So the remedy here could be a sequence of "reserved spots" for the king only which are not part of the game itself. Cutscenes or animations between the missions is one option, another is the old school text wall before the mission itself, etc. - these are all the king's stage for expression of his thoughts, reasons and plans for the current mission or the campaign itself, his doubts, scruples, emotions and final decisions. If well-used, these "spots" can also be used to present the king's personality without a direct connection to the current story - for example and important past event in his life or the lives of other people which are close to him and which has indirect influence on the things that are currently happening; On the other hand, the mission itself is reserved for the army commander. He's the figure that acts on behalf of the king and the missions are the action itself (as a motion), however, if used properly, the inter-mission events could show well who is really acting and who's moved by other people's actions, voluntarily or not. Being an "executor", the army commander could have weak or strong character, i.e. he could be just an obedient servant (which is not a bad thing if the author can use plot twists well) or someone with more complex reasons to serve, including long-term ambitions, selfish plans or even a strategic masquårade (i.e. he's not really serving this ruler or serving at all). Whatever the case is, the mission is an excellent field to show how the ruler and the ruled characters are positioned in the plot AND to show the story from the perspective of the latter. The available tools are many.
- A situation with one main story-teller who however is not necessarily the main story-driving character. There is a similar situation in the Heroes IV Haven campaign where Lord Lysander is the person around who the story revolves but it's his squire who tells it. It could be made a bit more complicated of course, say, the story-teller is an active participant in the events that he/she's talking about, for some time looks like the main character but in the end it turns out that he/she is actually not. An examplary scenario - a wizard is sent, along with dozens of others, on a mission by his Supreme Council (or something just as pompous to say that there's a gathering of old dustbags who are no longer mobile enough to do what needs to be done themselves) to find a child of special powers in a distant province. The mission itself originates from the ruler of the lands where the Council itself resides or at least so it seems initially. So the wizard departs on his mission and of course the story from this point on is told from his perspective and at the same time the Council communicates with him via messages (telepathy, visions, long-distance teleprojections, etc. supernatural stuff). After some time though, some strange things begin to happen - the child is much more difficult to find than initially expected and looks like someone is actively trying to keep it hidden, the Council starts to give orders which are suspicious at best (like "burn the whole village if they refuse the help, we have resons to suspect that the minds of the villagers are corrupted by an evil force" stuff), the wizard himself encounters other characters who tell him things that plant some doubts in his mind, etc. After a certain key event, it turns out that the whole hunt is staged by an outwordly demon who has possessed the ruler of the lands, brainwashed the Council and sent all the wizards to find the child who turns to be a living gateway to the demon's world and thus must be possessed to open it. The "protagonist" wizard finds this out along with the actual location of the child and is immediately possessed himself. From this point on the demon speaks for himself, gives a full explanation for all events so far and his motivation to stage the whole thing - for example, there's an infernal war in his realm and his faction is losing badly so it needs to escape into a different world to save itself. In short - he takes the place of the "protagonist" until the end of the story. As it also turns out, some people, loyal to the remainder of the kingdom's government which is not corrupted, are aware of the real situation all the time and it was they who placed obstacles before the wizard prior to his possession (and now it is they who the demon must defeat in person). Some of the could as well be promoted to a character with more influence over the story than the wizard who is the initial "main character". And so on.
- A situation with no "protagonist" where the player controls all possible factions in certain pre-defined or random sequence. Some could argue that this is what Heroes VI (and partially the previous Heroes) is about but it isn't. Apart from Heroes IV (and not completely), the authors so far always take side in the story, usually cheering the good guys behind the scenes where the good guys are those who correspond to certain moral stereotype. The approach that I'm talking about takes no sides but rather presents the conflict in a balanced manner, showing all points of view. This is exceptionally hard because most of the authors usually sympathize with some of the characters (could be more than one) and - intentially or not - promote him to their champion in the story. Moreover, in order to achieve good results, this approach requires well-developed characters on either side of the barricade(s), i.e. it's impossible to achieve something like that with the Heroes V bunch of morrons with personalities as deep as a street puddle. The control changes between the different characters only to show their place in the plot and to tell the whole story, not to judge them or depict them as superior or inferior to the others (which is what usually happens). It is the story itself that matters and not so much the characters themselves. I suppose the easiest way to achieve this result is set most of the thing in the past, but part of the story-telling to be placed in the future, i.e. like a scientific historical study on a major past event - the "historian" tells the story, but is not participating, so when you have to switch to action, you move back to the times when the things actually happened (and by the way this way you can show things which differ from the "historian"'s own interpretation to balance the things out in case of some superficial bias).
Other things can be said as well but I don't have the time now. Later.
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avalon00x
Bad-mannered
Known Hero
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posted February 16, 2012 11:38 AM |
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To me the protagonist becomes the character you play and that may not always be the protagonist of the story. But the random bloke you play becomes the protagonist of the "sub-story".
But it is in no way neccecairy to play as the protagonist of the story. If that makes any sence.
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