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S2 Ep170: VGBD - Worldbuilding
75 Plays4 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about worldbuilding, immersion, telling a story without using words, and more than a little bit about Dark Souls in this episode of Video Game Break Down!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Casual Start and Fruit Metaphors
00:00:03
Speaker
Bye!
00:01:00
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm talking about my co-host is always Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? Uh, okay. I think. Okay. Yeah. Was that an okay with here's some positive stuff. Here's some negative stuff. I'm good to talk about either. Or is that an okay? Like let's keep going. Uh, I guess more of the latter because it's not stuff I want to share. That's fair. That's fair. My life is peachy.
00:01:30
Speaker
Mm hmm. Well, if you want to cover it in bruises and decaying, well, if you guys want to reach out and talk to Dave one on one and more personal context, you can do so at now we'll get to that at the end. Hopefully things shape up. Peach up. Peach is a shape, right?
Dark Souls 2 Gaming Confessions
00:01:54
Speaker
Based on some rap lyrics, I would say yes. Peach is definitely a shape. I was thinking a pear. I was like, there is a fruit that's also just, you're like, oh yeah, things are going pear shaped. Well, from which side of the pear to which other side of the pear? I wonder what that means, actually. I've never looked up, all right, pear things are. This is what happens when you use phrases you don't know. Gotta look at the meanings.
00:02:23
Speaker
What does that mean? It means to go wrong, fail miserably. Possibly originated with Royal Air Force to describe pilots' poor execution of loops in the air. So instead of it being like, if you consider like an orange, like a perfectly round fruit, instead of their loops that went all pear-shaped. So it's a walking comparison for a flight path.
00:02:47
Speaker
I'm trying to think about that because depending on when you started the loop, if you're like on one side of the bottom, going across to the other side, you're still doing all right. Yes. And then you pull straight up into a stall, presumably, and then fall and have to recover out of a stall. Yeah, that would be bad. It's definitely less circle, more penis shaped that you're trying to go for. Right. But you're only doing one ball.
00:03:12
Speaker
Right. That would be dedicate. That would actually kind of be sort of impressive to pull that off out of a stall. Right. You're like, and back into another loop. Nope. Stop another loop. And here we go again. Johnny, look to the skies. He's doing a one
Dark Souls 2 DLC and Combat Mechanics
00:03:26
Speaker
-nut. Oh, wow. Yeah. Anyways, I'm doing all right.
00:03:36
Speaker
It's been a week, you know, a little busy catching up on things. Still a little confession. If I can confess something, you know, a little bit for a moment, just you and I, no one else, obviously. I played a little bit more Dark Souls 2 in New Game Plus. I'm freaking out. Get ready for the next episode, guys. We're doing the DLC.
00:03:58
Speaker
I actually I completed all the DLC completed the game first time I actually beat all the DLC and There's some cool areas in the DLC. I was very bored any of them. It's unfortunate They really do put them on the tail end of the game and they're hard gated behind Getting the king's ring which is only available at two million souls or if you collect all of the Lord souls
00:04:24
Speaker
And then you're like, do I finish the game or do I do the DLC? And it's like right there, right? Yeah. You know, and the DLC are also the easiest things to find. One of them is like behind one of the primal bonfires. And the other one is, um, an offshoot from the, uh, shaded forest bonfire. Anyways, I feel like in general, they should give you like an indicator. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Like.
00:04:54
Speaker
I think with Dark Souls DLC, when you do the Painted World, you're going through just normal stuff and you're like, oh, hey, that's an option. And it shows up. That's kind of like put right in front of you. Yeah. I don't remember. For Dark Souls 3? Yes. Yeah. I don't remember how Ringed City is accessed.
00:05:12
Speaker
Uh, ring city. There's actually, it's literally at the end of the DLC. If you have the other one, there's an item you can interact with like a snake skin or snake statue or something like that. That takes you straight into the other DLC, I believe. And they both have bonfires and due to already having warping, you're just like, Hey, all right, I unlocked it. I'm pretty sure they chained it together. Okay.
00:05:35
Speaker
It would be the definition of what you're describing, which is like lead into it. Yeah, it shouldn't be like, I'm at the DLC. And it's like, now go find it. Go, go. Yeah, I think it's literally once you've beaten Ashes of Ariandel, final boss, it's literally an interactable behind the boss you can use to enter the next DLC area.
00:06:02
Speaker
Which is convenient. But I mean, I'll take it, you know? Yeah. But has it been a good experience doing The Dark Souls 2? Yeah. Some of it more than others. You showed me... So you showed me the Zero Lenny video where he's ripping it apart mechanically, and I don't want to get too far into this, but one of the things he mentioned that stuck with me through the entirety of the remainder of my playthrough was it's turn-based.
00:06:32
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, but like all Dark Souls are kind of turn based to a certain extent. You attack when it's safe. You play defensively, you play aggressively. It's really emphasized in two. Like he did this thing where he's like, Oh, I attacked one too many times. Sorry, that was your turn. And then he gets hit. And I found myself like thinking that like literally every time.
00:06:53
Speaker
I was overly aggressive. I was like, oh, sorry, it's your turn.
World-Building in Games: Dark Souls vs. Divinity
00:06:56
Speaker
My bad. And it's very, very, very true. So what makes do you think makes more pronounced in two versus one or three? Because like I somehow got one to not shit the bed. So I went up to the gargoyle fight and. Like I hit once that was safe, but like an animation started, so I shouldn't be hitting. I should be getting ready to evade a reposition. Yeah.
00:07:23
Speaker
I mean, the gargoyle fights kind of difficult to compare or like differentiate between games. Cause it's present in actually one and two there's a gargoyle fight, right? Um, I think it's optional and two it's belfry Luna, I believe, uh, the bonfire at least associated with that fight. Um, but for other bosses, like take, um, high Lord Wolnir from TDS three. Yeah, I think. Yeah.
00:07:55
Speaker
Freaking awesome boss by the way, I realized this is turning to Dark Souls episode recounted, but that's okay
00:08:02
Speaker
That fight is like he has long periods of time between his large attacks and it could be like run for your life or it could be like a swing or he's going to summon skeletons. But he's like doing this macro sort of fight where he periodically does something and you have ample opportunity to attack in the safe spaces like in the safe time to hit those bracelets.
00:08:30
Speaker
And Dark Souls 2 has very few fights that are like that where it's just like go to town, go to town, go to town, go to town. All right, hold back for a bit, evaluate the room, check it all out. It's a lot more like hit, dodge, hit, dodge, hit, dodge, right?
00:08:50
Speaker
That does not feel too great. Yeah. I mean, it still can be good. Um, but it does. Once you learn the fight, if you know the moves, this applies to all Dark Souls, I suppose. Um, then it feels like Dark Souls 2 specifically doesn't want you to overcommit where you might be able to a little bit more in some of the other fights. I'm trying to think of.
00:09:18
Speaker
early fights in one, um, that would really emphasize this. What are some of the bosses from one? Um, the first one is Toro's demon because I don't count the tutorial boss before you even get to Lordran. Yeah. And I think, yeah, for the most part, some of the bosses are slow, even like grave Lord Nido.
00:09:43
Speaker
I'll be his name up there on the wall. He is very vulnerable kind of in melee until he's going to, you know, do one of these other attacks. So it's not... Dark Souls 1 just takes different time scales. It's not like, do something defensive, do something defensive. You can kind of like circle around an attack or like avoid some attacks and keep fighting.
00:10:09
Speaker
Yeah, it feels more fluid from what you're describing for the RuneScape battle mechanic. Yeah. And yeah, I just noted that. Otherwise, like some of the DLC areas are quite pretty. And there's an area that I hadn't seen actually because I haven't caught up on Vaati, I guess, from the last 10 years.
00:10:33
Speaker
And it looks really, really pretty, and it's got the best intro sequence, I think, in just Dark Souls. It's just freaking great. Maybe the end of the DLC for Dark Souls 3 would be competitive, but I'll have to show you the old chaos from Crown of the Ivory King. It's really freaking cool. Yeah, because I'm not going to go play it.
00:11:02
Speaker
But yeah, I think that the world building gets a lot better in three for the DLC and some of those areas are a lot better.
00:11:16
Speaker
That was me. I dropped the thing. I dropped the title of the video at the mandatory 10 minute mark, which is the longest we can go talking about miscellaneous stuff. I mean, it's for a lot of things, as this was initially Dark Souls based, it's hard not to keep making comparisons back to it. Also because of how prolific it is, blah, blah, blah. You fucking know the deal already, but
00:11:42
Speaker
With this thing of world building specifically, I'm like, oh, well, Dark Souls. But then I had to look up, like, what specifically is world building? So I'm not talking out my ass for like, I just enjoy this game.
00:11:57
Speaker
And I close the actual, please. I closed it out. Yeah. I mean, so world building is a little tough to define, I think. Oh, god damn it, Jake. Well, I'm just saying it would help to set some criteria. So like world building for me is the story and the setting. It's the immersion. It's like in particular, it's the narrative that's being set up and the supportive narrative around whatever the main themes are.
00:12:26
Speaker
Um, I realized that that's still really open, but like to me, uh, the world building for a game is better if it pulls you in and it's not just because it's like, Oh, it's Call of Duty and I got shot and I feel really upset now, or I shot that guy and I feel really good. It's like you find yourself immersed in the world, um, or interested in the plot lines and the outcome of what's going on. Um,
00:12:55
Speaker
I mean, I don't disagree. I'm going to read Wikipedia's definition that we can just compare the two. I'm curious how far off I am. World building is the process of constructing an imaginary world that's sometimes associated with a whole fictional universe, developing an imaginary setting with coherent qualities such as history, geography, ecology, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Okay. So it's basically making fictional natural sciences for your world. Well, it's not just, so like when I was,
00:13:26
Speaker
kind of looking at my own definition of like, what is it? What should it be? I do think it is like establishing the world, but it's how you do it. There's different approaches. But the one that I am probably most familiar with is broad strokes into like pixel brush, which is interesting. So I went back to play some Dark Souls one in the beginning. They give you this very
00:13:52
Speaker
cool cutscene and it kind of explains the lore before your character arrives in the scene, right? So it's establishing like, hey, here's some events that happen in the world. Here's some stuff that's going on. And these
Narrative Delivery in RPGs
00:14:05
Speaker
are the broad strokes, some of the overarching things you care about. And then as you play through the game, you get some of those details filled in, some other things that kind of flesh it out.
00:14:17
Speaker
But it's very much the, here's initially like the overall thing to get you interested. And then as you go, more things are filled in. Right. And I feel this is kind of a generic follow up to that. It's not particularly pertaining to a specific game, but a lot of older games or I honestly, I'm going to rag on JRPGs for a second. Please. That's what we're here for.
00:14:43
Speaker
Um, they front load information. It's like, think about the opening scroll, right? These, these old RPGs are literally known for it. It's like there was a kingdom and a King and an invader and the princess was captured and it's like all of this stuff. And it was just text and text and text. Um,
00:15:01
Speaker
to turn it around a little bit. One of the games I know we both enjoyed was freaking the camera, the name of it, though, old RPG. You have as battle maps.
00:15:18
Speaker
Crap. We've talked about it. SEGA. SEGA. Oh, Shining Force. Shining Force. Yes. Thank you. I can't. I couldn't think of Shining Force. I was like, what is a battle? Right. Well, it's open world maps, I guess. But Shining Force has an opening scroll like that. It's like the Kingdom of Blah. And you're like, OK, sure.
00:15:37
Speaker
I think everybody has a certain amount of tolerance for that, but I don't believe I would ever accept that as the best way to convey information to the player. No, it's shit. Hard to take, but let's go with it. I hate it and it should die.
00:15:58
Speaker
But my thought there is if you are like force feeding me all of this information, I don't get to appreciate something like where I discover something on my own or kind of like connect the dots or infer anything. Yeah.
00:16:16
Speaker
Like, again, going back to Dark Souls, a lot of the things that people like about it is you kind of discover some things as you go. And part of the immersion is you have this whole grand landscape. As soon as you enter Lordran, you're like, I see shit for really far. And then later you move around, you're like, oh, that's connected. So part of it is connecting the dots and going, oh.
00:16:38
Speaker
But the other part of it is you're such a small insignificant thing compared to everything else around you. And it's a very lonely experience. So you're just kind of going off of exploration and then you like really cherish the interactions you do have with NPCs or vendors. So I do want to ask a question. You mentioned Dark Souls here. We haven't talked about Dark Souls in a while, obviously. It does.
00:17:06
Speaker
have an opening that is basically like a bit of monologue, right? The explanation of the founding of the Lord souls and the fear to pick me, finding the dark soul. Um, and that's all established in like that opening shot. There are cut scenes. I think good cut scenes. They hold up even today to accompany them. Um,
00:17:27
Speaker
But none of that information actually applies to the game. Really? As far as gameplay is considered? Like at all. The opening moments of gameplay aren't you as Gwyn or you as the pygmy. It's you in a cell and somebody kicks a corpse in. Alright, start playing the game.
00:17:46
Speaker
You're like Okay, right. There's not a whole bunch of opening scroll or Star Wars thing How do you feel about that sort of open to the world? of the cinematic, I mean So in general if I'm doing like a single-player game I was like sitting down and like alright I've blocked at this time to just check it out and go through the experience Like you said, I'm definitely willing to put up with more
00:18:11
Speaker
time invested in something. But I like that it's, hey, here's your hook. It's a three minute cutscene tops. But now- I was actually looking it up. I was looking at the time. It's setting the tone as an initial thing. Like, oh, okay. And then you're like, I want to learn more about this and explore. Like that's your initial drive.
00:18:38
Speaker
Versus like you spawn in and somebody's like, hey, you got to go find the Lord souls. And you're like, right. Thanks, NPC. I think what's interesting sort of, I say the word interesting too much. Um, what's engaging about this kind of open is the Dark Souls one opening doesn't tell you anything about your character at all. It doesn't mention your character. Right. Because you're literally insignificant.
00:19:03
Speaker
Yeah, you're nobody in a cell somewhere. But it gives you vague underpinnings about the forces behind the world. And it does, it inspires questions, I think, which is, it can be difficult to do unless you have a particularly engaging story and world that you've built. But if you do have one and you can get people to ask those questions,
00:19:31
Speaker
That's a really engaging open, right? Like I want to find out whatever is a perfectly good, acceptable, and ideal motivation to keep playing a game, right? And they just present you with all of that information briefly upfront, the overarching powers of Lordran. I can't believe you would agree with me so blatantly. About Dark Souls, no less, right? Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:01
Speaker
Yeah, like you need the initial hook, but to go back to the other point I made a couple minutes ago, it's the connecting the dots. They're not telling you stuff that's just random fucking information that you're like, Oh, cool. Um, they used alchemy to make something and then it's never relevant, right? Right. Like everything they tell you is in universe and connects to something else. Hmm.
00:20:25
Speaker
And that's another point to it, which again, Divinity Original Sin 2 does this as well. Everything that's going on, even like the history that comes up, you're like, oh, that's still very much present in the game. It's not just there for like, oh, it's established. We're definitely a series type thing.
00:20:45
Speaker
I would say coming off of Dark Souls on two divinity though, they have very different methods of world building. The world building is passive in Dark Souls. It seems almost a coincidence that the bosses you fight, the Lord Souls,
00:21:02
Speaker
that you acquire are from ultimately the people in the opening cutscene. In Divinity, they throw a lot of information at you and they just trust like, hey, we've done our job making you invested in the world enough that you're going to care about this mouse that's named Roger or whatever. How do you feel about that divergence? Because I know you like both games.
00:21:32
Speaker
I would agree with that. Hot take. Specifically with Dark Souls, again, going back to some of the loneliness, they very much give you everything on a drip feed. It's a very lonely experience. You're always looking out to not get fucked by something around a corner, right?
00:21:50
Speaker
So when you have those interactions with an NPC or you find an item and you get to read its description, those moments are savored much more. That's the only way you're getting information. Right. So even if you're not looking out for it, you do get it slowly.
00:22:07
Speaker
Whereas Divinity Original Sin 2 is much more rich as far as how much content is in it and it's very fleshed out. Like all of the NPCs seem to have some insight on things that are going on or their own personal stories. Or even like you were talking about Roger the rat, not an actual character.
Text-Heavy Storytelling Critique
00:22:32
Speaker
But it fucking could be because there are so many
00:22:35
Speaker
Like if you have animal speaking, like everybody's a fucking side quest and they put so much into it to get you invested. But it makes you feel very much like magic is present throughout the world and it's feared by a lot of people because it causes issues. But you.
00:22:54
Speaker
Even as I'm just talking about it, I'm like, oh, I'm into it already. You're thinking about it. How about playthrough? Do you have a preference between the two as far as approach for how they get you in? I think it's tough. It is really tough because Dark Souls, I think legitimately, it's possible to play that game, not understand anything that happens, and be like, that's a fun game. I feel like a lot of people probably beat the game like that, and I can't hold it against them because the game doesn't tell you a whole lot.
00:23:23
Speaker
You're like, final boss, dead, cut scene, credits? All right, I guess that's good. Whereas divinity is like, we expect you to some degree to care about how these characters are interacting in the world, the factions they come from, what their motivations are, and we're going to make those persistent.
00:23:43
Speaker
I think as far as representing world building, I do like divinity structure, I would say. But part of that just becomes comes from the fact that like Dark Souls is really vague. And you kind of need to have Vadi either explain some things to you or like infer some structure and be like, I think this is how it is. And then the whole community is just like, sounds good. Vadi says it's that way. Let's go, you know.
00:24:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's I think it's just because it's intriguing and kind of vague that people want to
00:24:22
Speaker
look into it more and research it and find the meaning or determine their own meaning from it. Whereas divinity is much more, this is what it is. And it's not given to you all up at once. As you have playable characters who are story characters, you learn a lot about them throughout the campaign because the campaign is long as fuck and you have time.
00:24:49
Speaker
And they all have some grounding in the world. I think that's something that Divinity does that pertains to world building in a good way. The characters are regional. They have groups they come from. They have factions they come from. They have a home. They have their own goals. And all of them derive some of their identity from where they're placed in the world.
00:25:16
Speaker
like where they came from, what do they do? And it does help build, I feel, a believable structure that's essential when you're like information dumping so much on people. Like if you took all of the information that divinity has about the world and you're like, and we're just going to slap this on top of the world that we don't care about,
00:25:40
Speaker
then I wouldn't play that game because that's way too much text. You know, like it's it's because they're tying questions in to what all of these people are doing and getting you invested. That the tolerance for sheer text textual dialogue is there, right? Yeah, it's.
00:26:05
Speaker
It's spaced out in a way where if you're looking for it, it will be there. But if you're just doing a playthrough, I just want to go through and beat the game. It doesn't feel like too much at all. Yeah. And also the progression of events, I would argue in pretty much all these games in the list seem to scale adequately.
00:26:25
Speaker
It's not like it goes from zero to 60, like cyberpunk. Let's say, for example, I'm going to steal this car. Whoa. And then it goes like crazy hijinks. And then it's just wildly in this other direction. It's like, go. Yeah. The action game. Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:44
Speaker
I'd say most of these games that are on our list follow some format of the hero's journey, like a task set forth, goal accomplished, heroic accomplishment. Divinity just adds some nice twists and flavor on it that you're like, I'm on someone's hero's journey and I'm not sure who's yet, you know?
00:27:10
Speaker
And maybe the hero's bad guy, who knows? We'll find out together. But I do appreciate when that level of detail is presented as it is in Divinity. Like you get the impression, and this is useful I think from a world building perspective, that reality didn't start
00:27:35
Speaker
when the player started the game. Right. It's not like. And now the world is moving forward now that you've arrived. Hello, hero, you know. Yeah. Going back to Shining Force, that would be a counter example where that is very much it's an old RPG. They're like, here's the plot of the game. Go have fun, kids. Yeah. But that's very much where everything is. The background doesn't fucking matter. It's high into anything. It's just to give you a reason to go from one side of the screen to the other.
00:28:05
Speaker
Yeah. It's not necessarily a terrible trope, but it is something you can kind of like watch out for. I might be ruining some people's perception of playing certain games with this, but like if the super impactful thing happens the moment that your character shows up, then it's a world. It's a universe that's spinning around you. Yes. You know,
00:28:29
Speaker
It's the universe spinning around you, which can be fun. Everybody loves the power trip. But from a world building perspective, it's a better accomplishment to be able to place you at a point in the world and let you make it matter.
00:28:46
Speaker
or give you the illusion that you're making. If you ever have to stop yourself and ask, wait a second, what happened? What were the events before my specific part in the story? Right. That's a good job. Exactly. Divinity is really good at that, actually. It's like, here you go. Elder Scrolls is also, to some degree, they at least have the same sort of structure.
00:29:11
Speaker
You start as a prisoner, something's happened. Unknown background, make something of yourself to some degree. Yeah, I, I do like some of what they do with that. But like taking Skyrim as the only recent example I played because yeah,
00:29:30
Speaker
I mean, what other comparisons can we make? Who else is going to talk about three? 15 years, you know, or whatever. I know, right? It's 15 years ago. That came out 10 years ago. 15 editions of Skyrim? Yeah, Skyrim came out 10 years ago. So Oblivion release date, 2006. Nobody knows what Oblivion is. Exactly. Do the gates or something? Gates for Oblivion? Yeah, there's gates. Kvatch was basically. My what now? It was kicked to the Kvatch.
00:30:00
Speaker
But with Skyrim and other Elder Scrolls, they very much have a, hey, we're going to have books strewn around. You can read them, but I don't think they matter for shit. That's my experience, at least. They seem very much- I agree. Like extra metadata. She's saying you didn't read Blessed Aragonian Maid. I'm sure I did online or something because I heard it referenced enough times. Yeah.
00:30:27
Speaker
I think that most people would be hard pressed to name any book that's not literally like Agma Infinitum, which is a Daedric artifact, Lusty Argonian made, or the Freakin' Things from Oblivion, the main plot item, the books you had to accomplish, like Mysterium's Arxis. Okay, maybe people wouldn't, maybe a lot of people wouldn't mention that one off the top of the hood either.
00:30:53
Speaker
This is coming from a Dark Souls 2 apologist, Jake. So I think you're on your own boat here. Yeah, I'm sorry. But yeah, it's like, who wants to sit down? Like open world RPG, you can do whatever you want. I'm going to read in game in an extended period of time. Yeah. Like, is that good? I don't think that's good, personally. No.
00:31:21
Speaker
I think it's fine to have text in games that you can go and read. I'm very much more grateful that that exists versus just saying like, hey, Jim, on your way to your next mission, let me tell you about such and such, like, ah, Jesus fuck. And it's just kind of Justin and I are playing Borderlands 3 right now. And well, granted, like, I still enjoy a lot of the writing, though it still feels like a little bit invaders into me at this time and point.
00:31:48
Speaker
where I feel like I've grown a little bit past it as far as the full appreciation. It's just, it's a lot of information coming at you. And I like when you can find things and I'm actually interested to check it out, but not a lot of games hit that market. Just, as I said, feels like superfluous metadata. It's like, we need 15 camps in this open world game and 30 textbooks. Johnny, this is your job. And he's like, okay. And he just Googles some shit.
00:32:17
Speaker
Like I think it came up before we were talking about it. We're not a film critiquing podcast, but like the term show don't tell. It matters for video games too. Like anytime that you can convey information to the player in a non-literal manner where it's just them reading, hey, this is how you do the puzzle. Hey, this is what you need to know in the form of text.
00:32:44
Speaker
and there's some more engagement going on with the world, that's gonna be more meaningful than sitting down and like reading a book. Bioware is actually old Bioware. I don't know what new Bioware is like anymore. They were really bad for this too. Like classic RPGs had this, like you are continuing to grab journal entries on all of this stuff. And if you care about the world, read those entries.
00:33:12
Speaker
Um, and we kind of hope you do, but we don't want to slow down the people who are just here to be in cool RPG fights. Um, and that's not interesting world building. It's, I mean, they had so much cool stuff that you could read about, but who cares? Like you're reading about it. You're not playing it.
00:33:33
Speaker
Yeah, it has to be interwoven in such a way that first off, like you need the person's audience, the audience's attention for them to give a shit. Assuming they give a shit, you can definitely get away with more, but you need certain things told to them as a part of gameplay versus like you're talking about, like that stop of gameplay to be like,
00:33:58
Speaker
Time to catch up on my email. Also, a lot of games, they're like, hey, there's an email on this computer. And you've unlocked it. I'm like, eh. Deus Ex, yeah. Now, with Deus Ex, I did enjoy it enough to where I did do that. But if I ever go back, I'm not going to.
00:34:18
Speaker
So, so my question to you though, cause like all of the Deus Ex games have this, the old one human revolution mankind divided, they all have terminals where it's like, you could get some information here.
Effective Storytelling in Games: Examples
00:34:31
Speaker
And the issue for the most part is the information is either literally gameplay impacting, like it's a password, right? Um, whichever it's an emails, as we know.
00:34:42
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's reality, you know, just leave it there. Or it's nothing. It's like a corporate fluff. It's something like that. And I found myself more. Maybe I'm a lazy gamer. I don't know. I found myself skimming a bit and being like, is this a password email or is this like why Electacorp hired a new janitor?
00:35:05
Speaker
uh, in the fourth quarter of like, and nobody again, nobody cares. Right. Um, and I, I think like I balance on that edge of just starting to skip reading a bit. If none of it seems to matter for what I'm doing in the game.
00:35:22
Speaker
I feel like part of it is, you specifically in this case, but I'm going to include myself as well, is being a little bit gamer jaded. Like we've played a lot of games throughout our gaming career. Might as well be at this point.
00:35:38
Speaker
Like you immediately identified as, oh, this is just something so that there is something. And like you can immediately identify it as this isn't a part of gameplay. This is just, oh, it's like an office computer. There's going to be a couple office emails. Right. And while they might be like well written and somebody spent the time to work on them, I'm sure as much as I threw that other guy under the bus, sometimes you can just tune it out really quick. Yeah.
00:36:08
Speaker
So it's like, does this, it's hard to balance that line. I feel, I guess the question when you're conveying information regarding world building to the player, um, you got to ask yourself questions and those questions are, does the information that I'm telling the player, uh, matter for what they're doing?
00:36:31
Speaker
That's a very important question to answer. And having yes to either of these might actually justify it being included in the game. And the other question is, does the player want to know this? And if it doesn't matter, and they don't want to know it,
00:36:51
Speaker
Why are you telling them, right? That's the difference, I think. So if I'm going through terminals and I'm answering no to both of those questions, you failed. Like to not sugar coat it. Um, because I've lost interest in whatever you're trying to tell me, and I don't believe it's going to impact my gameplay at all. Yeah. That's definitely, there's a difference of mindset between you and possibly somebody else. True. But I mean, I'm on your side for that because I'm the same way.
00:37:23
Speaker
Also, to jump back to the show and tell thing, because I forgot, do you remember that one episode of Breaking Bad? I haven't actually seen all of Breaking Bad. I've seen clips. If it's a clip, I probably see it. It's been out for like 30 years, so I'm going to spoil one episode.
00:37:41
Speaker
This is early doors, so they're not necessarily bad people, but they do capture one of the other drug dealers. She's trying to kill them, and they put them in the basement. They don't know what to do with them. They're kind of panicking. They're like, maybe we should let them go. We're not murderers. What are we going to do?
00:38:01
Speaker
So he's handcuffed down to something in the basement and they give him a sandwich on a ceramic plate and then the plate breaks and then they're like, oh, and they clean it up. And as they're talking upstairs and they're reassembling the plate, they realize that there's a giant piece missing, something that can be used as a shiv. Now, it's never stated
00:38:27
Speaker
But just that immediate moment and the look between the two characters that you know that they know and also you know what's going on. So they realize it's become a more dangerous situation and they can't trust this guy to just let him go and things will be fine.
00:38:44
Speaker
But again, that's a show not tell. It doesn't need to be spelled out at that point because you can use your brain a little bit. Right. Like how how useless would it be if the characters in the show at that moment were like there's a large piece of the plate missing. He could be using it as an improvised weapon or perhaps escaping at this very moment. Like worthless.
00:39:08
Speaker
worthless information that would disarm any sort of aha moment that the audience is experiencing by figuring it out themselves. They're not geniuses for doing so, but you don't have to be. If you are presenting information in a way that the audience is figuring things out, connecting those dots, like you mentioned a while ago, that is what keeps people engaged as opposed to just reading or hearing literally the transcription of what's going on, right?
00:39:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's the aha moments that also help with investment for world building. Yeah. And some of the games I've been ragging on a little bit, they still do that. Dragon Age has those moments where it's like you're learning about this sleep plane and the attributes about it. And you're putting things together. And if you figure it all out, you're like,
00:40:02
Speaker
I think that that person right there is not who they look like they are. And it's not who they say they are because I've been paying attention to what's going on. But that's not because you read it in a journal entry somewhere, right? It's because you're figuring it out and growing more interested in the world while you do so. Like I love, I can't think of a concrete example at the moment.
00:40:29
Speaker
Um, but like, let's say you notice a character in a game being like slightly off or you just notice something like something a little bit quirky, right? Tingle. Yeah. Yeah. Tingle from legends. He's the main villain. Um, but like when you notice that and then later on, like you see something coming up with them and you're like, Oh, this actually connects back to what I saw earlier that tracks. Mm-hmm.
00:40:56
Speaker
And maybe at that point they explain it to the in-game character of, I was doing this even way back then or something, but you as a player did that on your own and you called it.
00:41:12
Speaker
I think one of my favorite examples, I don't want to pick a specific game for the purpose of avoiding spoilers, but it actually comes up a little bit. But there's the cannibalism event where it's like you've come across a community and things are slightly wrong. Like they don't seem to have a food supply and they're a bit twitchy.
00:41:35
Speaker
and they don't have any neighbors and they're overly friendly. All of these traits feed into building a feeling that something is wrong. And obviously, if you played a lot of the games where this isn't of unveiling or seeing media with it, it's like, I think we should leave. You get that sense of unease.
00:41:59
Speaker
that can eventually build to a conclusion where it is more or less spelled out to you, even if they don't say it. And that's good world building. That's an example of getting people invested in what is wrong about the situation. Yes.
00:42:18
Speaker
I should have, I should have just named one of the games. I mean, I knew what it was immediately. I'm sure other people do as well, if they've played that. So as a DM, somebody who's in the dungeon mastering stuff. Yeah. How do you like to build the world for a campaign?
00:42:40
Speaker
Let's actually say a session because a campaign obviously is much more overarching across multiple sessions. I could probably have an episode on this. I'm going to try to be relatively concise. I'm just going to disconnect my microphone. Yeah, just head set off. It just loads up Smash right now. Play some online games. It's different, I think, than a video game because you want to have
00:43:05
Speaker
the world really really actively react to what the players are doing in the moment. So usually what I try to set up are people that have motivations and circumstances and then don't overthink it. You're just like you come across a traveler on the road
00:43:24
Speaker
What does that traveler want? What are they trying to do? What's their personality? That's it. There you go. And if the party is in the way of that goal, that could lead to a conflict. If they want to help with that goal, that could lead to a plot hook, you know? Um, but the idea is think about how the impact, how can the players be impactful in this overarching world, um, and draw them into it. So would you say it's more instance based?
00:43:55
Speaker
I think it's like instance interactions, not necessarily tie ins from. Like the macro world of outside reaching out a little bit more than outside reaching in is the common way to do it. Now, there are exceptions. We're running cyberpunk red right now and there's there are things going on outside the world.
00:44:19
Speaker
or outside the sphere of influence of what the players are doing. But for the most part, it's more satisfying if the players do have some impact on those events. But it's nice for them to set things in motion and then for that to impact things down the line. It comes back around. That's something that also is shared with video games, I think. You know, consequence. So consequence is always a good tool for
00:44:48
Speaker
player investment. If your actions actually cause something else to happen, it will make you reevaluate things in the future. Yeah.
00:44:59
Speaker
Cause I think we talked about like how having a very player centric world in a video game can be a little hollow. Like if it's all based around the hero, but that doesn't mean the hero shouldn't have like impact in the world. You absolutely need that to some degree. Elder Scrolls usually starts here as nobody and you end up having the most impact. Like you're the chosen one or whatever, Dragonborn or what have you. But it's actually a better,
00:45:28
Speaker
I think sign of good storytelling if those consequences ripple out and affect the world. It's a sign that your world's really shallow if you're like, I killed the big bad evil guy and then everybody else in the world's like, I don't care. I got a family to feed.
00:45:53
Speaker
Weirdly enough, I'm actually thinking of Final Fantasy X. Okay. All right. So you as Tidus, everyone's favorite main character. Hahaha. Things obviously do revolve around you, but when you get to the other world of Spira, or whatever different time dimension it is,
00:46:17
Speaker
Things have already been going on with sin for like millennia. Right. They're like, oh, this has been like an ongoing thing. We have temples we pray at. We have rituals we follow. This is our fucking world. And he's like, well, that sucks. Can we change it? And they're like, no. And he's like, but what if we blah, blah, blah? Yeah, I'm an impetuous child, though. I don't know if that's enough. But it feels very established, like the world that is there and you learn about it as you go through and visit the other temples.
00:46:48
Speaker
Even though you disagree with somebody's beliefs, why they have them so strongly and what they're fighting for. And it makes it feel more real and alive. It's not just you doing stuff. Nobody else fucking matters. It's you're in a world.
00:47:04
Speaker
We live in a world. More than a society, sometimes a world. I think like what you're describing is like a paradigm shift at some point, right? Even if it's temporarily, even if it's not like strictly you're controlling a different character, like the game encourages you to see
00:47:25
Speaker
reality, perceive it from someone else's point of view, which just like having multiple lights pointed at an object, casts a 3D shadow, it's like the same way with a game, right? It lends depth to it. If you can look at it in different ways and understand different perspectives on what's going on. Japanese games are usually pretty good at that.
JRPG World-Building: Final Fantasy X
00:47:53
Speaker
at least the ones that I play, but things like, you know, Dark Souls, they're super ambiguous about like, which ending's the good one? They're all bad. It's all just your fighting time and maybe you're actively causing chaos or you're just avoiding it for a time. You know, it's, it's all it is, but, um,
00:48:17
Speaker
I think that's another good sign that your world has some depth. If you can kind of walk to the side of it and look at it, and you're like, this isn't made of cardboard, right? So 2D games are basically half? Yeah, they're out entirely. Paper Mario is still pretty good, though. From world building's perspective? No, not really. Not too great there. How about Undertale from a world building perspective? I do like Undertales.
00:48:48
Speaker
world building, I believe you are very clearly a hero whose actions impact everything that happens. But you're also finding out that you're not, you're not like first and only character down this road, so to speak.
00:49:07
Speaker
Your journey is like in the shadow of another's and those discoveries about the others, uh, helps push, push the, uh, the gameplay along, I think in the plot. Yeah. And it, and it ties back as far as foreshadowing for as gourd dreamer. Yeah.
00:49:28
Speaker
The world's not as interconnected as some other stuff. I know Dark Souls has always been the prime example of like, look over there, I was there earlier. And the second row does that too. I'm sure some other FromSoft titles have taken from that idea because it's cool.
00:49:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think like I wouldn't discount the way that Undertale runs it though, like Undertale has a focused world where you're like developing relationships with characters, you know, you're learning about what they're doing. And it's it's kind of like.
00:50:04
Speaker
a small, it's like a flashlight, right? You're walking through the game with a flashlight and everything immediately on the screen matters, at least for the time. But they're not trying to spend a lot of time trying to tell you like somewhere else. And on the opposite side of the city, a cat is in a tree and they need to be rescued. Like they don't bother you with any of that. It's still a pretty linear experience.
00:50:29
Speaker
And they just, they fill in the world building and the interactions you do have. Yeah, it's, it's entirely character based. Like that whole stuff in the beginning. I mean, personally, I fell in love with the character of Toriel. I felt bad to leave and bad when I killed her. Cause I feel like everybody's not expecting that damage spike, but yeah.
00:50:54
Speaker
Like I carried that on for. It is pretty cold. Yeah. Intentionally done by the way. Yeah, yeah. Toby Fox. But like each other character interaction you have, main characters, not like a shop NPC or something.
00:51:10
Speaker
You have these sections of the game with them. So you get to see like different sides of personality. And usually then you won't interact with them for a bit. Yeah. But like even after the Papyrus fight, you still have Papyrus interactions, right? Right. He's like saying stuff about Undyne, which kind of builds suspense for Undyne. Right.
00:51:34
Speaker
And yet you care about all of these things as you go. So then at the end of the game, you're like, I'm doing this for me. I'm doing this for my friends. Or maybe you killed everybody on the way. I don't know. But you monster.
00:51:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely that's how they get you hooked. Yeah, because they do. Sorry, I'm so good. Finish my rant and all stuff. You're good. You're good. They do have like these little interactions like side adventures, which kind of almost distracts you from like, hey, I'm going to try and kill the king to leave. It's the king or pretty much what it comes down to because he wants your fucking soul. He doesn't want to do it, but.
00:52:17
Speaker
But just taking all those emotions and investment into that last section of the game. I'm done.
00:52:24
Speaker
No, that's fair. The only I was agreeing and you're touching on things I was going to follow up with. So I was like, yeah, no, let him finish. Let him finish. Yeah, it's the world building Undertale does is community building is the way I would put it. Like you're dropped into a community of individuals that have relationships with each other. They have with each other. They have friends. They have rivals, you know,
00:52:50
Speaker
And it's that atmosphere, discovering those connections, finding out your place in that, that makes it so emotionally impactful. But it's also
00:53:03
Speaker
an abstract form of world building. It's, you know, very character centric, like you said, but it's, it makes it believable because, uh, the world, even though you're the hero in this, it's not all about you, unless you're a genocide playthrough, then it kind of is.
Creating Immersive Worlds in Tabletop Games
00:53:23
Speaker
Um, it's, you know, finding how you fit into everything that's out there in these, in these people's lives. So.
00:53:31
Speaker
That's probably giving Undertale maybe a little bit more credit in saying how you fit into these people's lives. That's a little bit games journalist perhaps. It's time. It's strength was never, hey, we have crazy UI. It's very minimalist.
00:53:50
Speaker
it focuses on those interactions like you were saying and then like the music's great and they still do a fuck ton with just 2d things dear god and even when they branch outside of that you appreciate it all the more because you weren't fucking expecting it
00:54:07
Speaker
Yeah, it has a decided absence of some of the other things you mentioned, like locales, connected places. None of that really stands out as mattering that much under tail. There are different locales. They could be replaced with any other locale and the core of the game would have been the same. Um, it focuses on other things and it does those things well. So.
00:54:32
Speaker
I'm trying to think of an example that does the opposite of a broad strokes first pixel brush. Something where you'd get the very much you or more nuanced details up front. And then after the factor just later in the game, you kind of learn how the world works. Hmm.
00:54:55
Speaker
cue Bill Burnham reference here. Right. That one's a, hmm. I'm trying to think of what the hypothetical would be that I could find a game for that. So you're saying something where you have, I guess it's too abstract for me to think particularly of an example. Um, cause what you're describing is something where you have a lot of detail upfront, but you find out how that detail fits into the world later.
00:55:26
Speaker
Yeah. So I guess kind of just the opposite of the Dark Souls where you have the cut scene up front kind of explaining the overarching events of the world before you showed up. So I guess getting that stuff. So like the cold open, they drop you straight into it. They give you almost nothing. And then you have to figure all of it out.
00:55:49
Speaker
I feel like that's still somewhat close to Dark Souls. One I would consider, I don't know if this is a direct match, but according to your Google search results that have been auto corrected, top result is Breath of the Wild. That's a game that is like that, where it's almost entirely about discovery of the world.
00:56:13
Speaker
and there's almost no lead up. It's literally just, you wake up, here's an iPhone, go out and have fun. Like, I don't even remember if there's an opening cut scene that tells you, actually, no, there is, there is. I think the game tells you like, hey, Ganon's in the castle, go take care of that. Goodbye. Which is similar to the Dark Souls Open. True.
00:56:44
Speaker
I think it is useful to have some direction at the start. Game starts. Do I have a menu button? Can I move? Yeah.
00:57:00
Speaker
You got to you got to you got to like show them the carrot before you like pull it behind the side of this stage and then be like, man, I do like carrots. They're kind of like rubbing their hands together. Oh, did you want the carrot? The carrot is mine. This is kind of a vague topic, actually.
00:57:26
Speaker
I feel like if we had a guest who had written a novel or something in like science fiction space, they could provide a little more insight. But it's definitely like how you color the world to make somebody give a shit which things are relevant and how you're sharing that.
00:57:48
Speaker
So like Game of Thrones, George RR Martin will tell things for like different people's perspectives and it will switch. But granted, that's it's done slowly, but there's like a wealth of things. It's well done as well. So you care about all the billion characters before they die off.
00:58:08
Speaker
Right. Yeah, it's very much like it's like shooting. It's a bunch of flashlights alternating, turning on, giving perspective at different points and sometimes of the three flashlight references Jake has described.
00:58:23
Speaker
Yeah, the flashlights. I think you're a good one. I'm sticking with the analogy because it's like maybe it's pointed toward a wall and revealing something. Another like flashlights pointing somewhere else. Maybe there's a statue, but you only see it from one side. Another flashlight comes on. You see it from the other side. Um, it's there's, there's a lot you can do with an alternating perspective.
00:58:48
Speaker
I will, I do want to give one honorable mention to world building. And this, this is a very small scope until large scope expansion in the literal sense, but, um, uh, incremental games. There's one I'm thinking of in particular, um, free game online, uh, called a dark room. And it literally just opens with like a line of text. That's just like, you are cold. And then like a few seconds past and it's like, you're in a room.
00:59:19
Speaker
And then like you get the op a few seconds past, it's like, get the option to like search for firewood. And it just develops from this, you know, people eventually show up, they continue to expand, you build a village, then you can go out and like explore the world. But it starts with the most myopic, like perspective, um, and relies on you asking questions about like, what's the next thing to expand? Um,
00:59:49
Speaker
If I remember, it's kind of crazy by the end, but that's, you know, it's a web game. What are you going to do? Let's go off for a walk at the end. We killed God. No, that we're back to JRPGs full circle. Right. I mean, I think that kind of fits the example of the question I was asking for something that's very, very small scale on detail. And then.
01:00:14
Speaker
You're kind of like at the very core of the picture and then slowly working your way outside, like a very shitty traveling salesman. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's difficult to sometimes think of concrete examples for abstract concepts. It's much easier to sort of work in the opposite direction. Um, but it's a fun exercise nonetheless.
01:00:39
Speaker
I think for the one time that I planned, and I say planned very loosely, do you remember that game chat we had like five years ago? Yeah, I was thinking about it actually. So as a part of the exercise for that, I guess busy worker coming up with stuff.
01:00:56
Speaker
randomly generated a map sectioned off different areas for like this area will be for these types of people and they'll worship this god and then I was like designing different gods and like how's this gonna flesh out but it was cool just to kind of think of that and design around that main theme of like oh it's a swamp what are swamp related things I can throw in here what's the twist on it how would this
01:01:24
Speaker
impact other characters in the thing. I think that that's actually at its core like the essential of world building. You say like given this foundation, how does that impact the world? And you don't have to tell the players all of that.
01:01:46
Speaker
It's better if you don't, if people can just decipher some of it. But if it's like you have a vengeful God who thirsts for blood, it's like you're in the Warhammer 40k universe, there's going to be some problems if that's your boss, right? It's not going to be the cleanest situation.
01:02:06
Speaker
And having those seeds of intent, this actually goes all the way back to the DM conversation we were having. As long as there's intent to move in a direction, and then at some point, something comes across that intent. It blocks it. It interferes with it. It wants the same goal. Those are where meaningful interactions come into play in the world and characters.
01:02:33
Speaker
What do people want? And how does the player character interact with that? Can all come from simple things like, this village has an oil field behind it, or anything else like that. There's one, I realize I'm changing off my own thing here. So if there's anything you wanted to say right there, let me know.
01:02:58
Speaker
But there's one example I was thinking of a game I have not played called Tyranny, where it's just like a classic RPG style.
Building Engaging Worlds: Advice and Insights
01:03:08
Speaker
The overarching thing is there's an overlord. He's already won everything. He's the evil bad guy. And if you don't subjugate this rebellion in this amount of time, he's going to kill every single person on the continent that you're trying to subjugate.
01:03:27
Speaker
all of them. He just has like a magical spell precast that's just like, if you don't plant a flag here or whatever, by the end, everyone dies. So go get them, champ. And that's a great seed of intent to build a world around, you know? Yeah, I like. I like cool overarching behind the scenes things.
01:03:55
Speaker
It just it's really cool because later on there's that payoff, right? Mm hmm.
01:04:01
Speaker
like not going too much into Divinity Original Sin 2. But there's some stuff that's mentioned throughout the entire fucking game. And you're like, that's old history. And then the game's like, what's up, motherfucker? You're like, oh, shit. Did you study for the lesson or for the quiz? Yeah. So it was really cool to have that tie in, where initially you think it's like, oh, they're just coloring the world, so to speak. Yeah. But having all those things tie back.
01:04:31
Speaker
Yeah. Also when you have an overarching evil like that to face against it as your shitty heroes party, that's now level 72, like it feels cool. Like, Oh, we've ready to accomplish the goal. Yeah.
01:04:50
Speaker
It is worth noting for tyranny. Like I said, I haven't played it. Can't recommend it necessarily or just recommend it. Whatever the opposite, not recommend it. That's probably the more sane way to say it. Um, but you don't play as the heroes in that one. You do play as the people working for him to subjugate the area. Um, so it's a different sort of experience, but that can be fun too. Got to be the bad guys. So if you're a sociopath, check it out. Yeah.
01:05:17
Speaker
But only if you really like classic style RPGs, they're not that big right now. Any advice for listeners at home? How can they build better worlds? What's the one takeaway?
01:05:33
Speaker
I would say if you want to design a nice world or build a nice world, give a shit about it yourself first. If you don't even care about the thing that you want to sell to other people, why the fuck would they care? That's sales 101. You got to believe what you're selling, make it interesting for you, and then share that love and passion with other people.
01:05:58
Speaker
If you think a detail is going to be superfluous or erroneous, fucking remove it. If you want to share some of them and not shove it down somebody's throat, find a way to pass them that information in a discreet fashion. Maybe a character NPC will tell them something.
01:06:16
Speaker
If it's a video game context and you have visual media, maybe you show a giant mountain in the background and you talk about its lore and you're like, it's spooky. We don't go over there. Why don't they go over there? Death Mountain, right? Exactly.
01:06:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's the way to do it. That is my concise advice. Thank you for this segment. My advice for this episode is if you do have ideas for world building as you think it was implemented well in other games, you could send those in to us if you think that it's worth talking about the game, I guess.
01:06:49
Speaker
It's your soapstone podcast at gmail.com or you could join the discussion on Facebook Which is dedicated to talking about world building this week I actually don't know whether it's the most active page like on the internet at this point or not I assume it is at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast and As always we'll see you in the next one if Jake doesn't tell me about you first