When I was doing similar curmudgeoning about Bioshock: Infinite a few months back, I expressed a belief that Ken Levine and company were just barely able to pull the core relationship at the heart of their game’s story out from the maelstrom of virtuoso ideas surrounding it. For all its ambition, the byzantine plot threatened to swallow Infinite’s story whole in pursuit of the twist to end all twists, or cause the game to shove its head so far up its own ass with meta-commentary, it could have collapsed into a singularity. Like the oeuvre of Christopher Nolan, Infinite is a carefully engineered think piece in the guise of a rollercoaster, which can be great if done with skill that Nolan and Levine show, but in light of The Last of Us, there’s a clear distinction between how 2013’s triple-AAA story games approach storytelling.
Bioshock: Infinite bases its story on an idea, and a reaction; it’s a magic act led by a master of the craft, who’s got a lovely assistant distracting you from the massive machinery upholding the illusion. It uses the central character relationship as smoke and mirror to keep you from anticipating the big “A-ha!” moment, even though the illusion itself, rather than being revealed as a simple trick, is complicated to a point that earning the prestige meant cutting corners elsewhere. The Last of Us, on the other hand, is a story built on emotion, and on the belief that the mechanics of the plot aren’t half so important as the people trapped within it. It’s a two-hander stage play where the goal isn’t to surprise the audience with the fates of the characters, but instead to familiarize the audience with those characters well enough that the story’s path is a direct result of the choices made by those characters. Where Bioshock’s plot twists, TLoU’s arcs, following the evolving relationship between two people forced together by impossible circumstances, and letting the player share in that relationship through gameplay and cutscenes.
On the surface, most could argue Infinite is the more daring title, and from a plot perspective, this is absolutely true. However, considering these are video games we’re talking about, The Last of Us trying to make an emotionally resonant and memorable story out of a third-person zombie apocalypse game is, for numerous reasons, the much taller order. Just calling it a “third-person zombie apocalypse game” automatically lumps it in with a crowded genre, bare few examples of which give deference to story when zombie-dispatching methods and monsters are the main attraction. Even the original films that the subgenre is based on aren’t exactly replete with successful examples of what The Last of Us is trying to achieve (to be clear: zombie films are great for social commentary, but usually try to sink into your brain, not tug your heartstrings).
As it turns out, being clever and intricate the way Bioshock: Infinite is isn’t all that special anymore. As superlative film analyst (and patron saint of caps lock) Film Crit Hulk wrote recently about Star Trek into Darkness and the increasingly convoluted nature of blockbusters, big budget storytelling is becoming more and more of a con man’s game, where directness and simplicity are seen as a weakness, and audiences must be kept on their toes, and in the dark for as long as possible. A similar fad has been going on in television ever since Lost made fishhooks out of question marks, and dragged millions on a winding journey for answers to ridiculous gimmicks that couldn’t possibly be explained in a satisfying fashion. As the youngest medium with the most still to prove, it’s not surprising gaming has followed the example of its elders.
But complication does not equal complexity, to borrow a phrase from TV critic Maureen Ryan, and it’s an axiom that more ambitious games have been ignoring in pursuit of adding “Actually as a Story!” to the back-of-the-box bullet points. Metal Gear Solid is hailed as a watershed example of narrative growth for the medium, but the franchise has since become better known for having the “most” story, not necessarily the best, delivering an overwhelming blend of political commentary, soap opera drama, anime action, and a universe backstory that makes Game of Thrones look patchy. The franchise has maintained some strong characters over its run, but they’ve become increasingly lost in Metal Gear’s ever expanding whirligig of crazy, the latter feature being what imitators have tried to copy.
Many less grandiose game stories are infested with ancient orders, secret societies, and just general conspiracies, because audiences will follow a story for answers, even if the questions of “what’s the truth,” and “who’s responsible,” are being teased down a very long rabbit hole. When well-written, empathetic characters don’t exist, serpentine plotting becomes the only way to keep the viewer’s attention. Padded-out plotting becomes a storytelling crutch built upon the often empty shocks of last-second double-crosses, and improbable twists, which have become routine to the point of being laughable cliches.
Every religion in an RPG is inherently evil; the militia group fighting to overthrow a tyrannical force will inevitably just replace the oppressors; one of the characters you play as in a first-person shooter will die. Without a firm grasp on fundamentals like character development and audience identification, the actual story just becomes a bunch of stuff that happens. All the plot misdirection and narrative gymnastics in the world won’t save a story if the viewer’s only question after seeing the big reveal laid out it is “why should I care?”
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