Quest to Nowhere

While I was at GDC this past year I went to a lecture called “Get Your Game out of my Movie! Interactive Storytelling in Mass Effect 2,” which was being given by Armando Troisi of BioWare. The one thing he said that has been stuck in my head since then was this idea of objective and subjective storytelling.

Basically subjective storytelling is a game story where the player is the character, which is what you see in games like Dragon Age: Origins. In these games the players get to create the character, and they are in control of the actions and decisions of the character during the game.

While objective storytelling in a game is when the player is not the character. This is something like the Uncharted games, where the player is in control of Nathan Drake, but the player can’t really affect what Nathan does in terms of the story.

Now this whole objective versus subjective storytelling thing came up in the lecture, because (to paraphrase Mr. Troisi,) the reason why in Mass Effect you get only snippets of text to describe what Shepard is going to do/say, as opposed to the complete text of what the character is going to say like what you find in their other games like Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic or Jade Empire is that the Mass Effect games are objective games. While their past games have been subjective games.

Hearing that certainly helped clear up a lot of the design choices that they made in regards to the dialogue system works, how Shepard progresses as a character, as well as why the Paragon/Renegade system is the way it is. It basically comes down to them saying that the player isn’t Commander Shepard, but rather the player’s control over Shepard and her actions is more akin to like someone steering a raft in a quick moving river. While you might have some control over where your raft goes in the river, to dodge rocks and other obstacles in the path, the river is really more or less in control of where you are going.

Shepard is always going to try and save the galaxy from the Reapers, regardless of what the player wants. What the player gets to do is decide if she’s a “renegade” or a “paragon” while she does it.

So while I can see why they say it’s objective, I think that most people (based on people I’ve talked to about this and my own experience,) would probably say that Mass Effect 1 and 2 are subjective. This is because as the player we get to create Shepard. We choose what he or she looks like, if Shepard is male or female, what class they are, and we are given some options to choose a backstory for them as well. This along with the dialogue options in the game in essence give the illusion of a subjective storytelling experience.

This is why I think that player’s are able to get so immersed in the Mass Effect games, but is also why when we read one of the snippet dialogue options, and what it says isn’t actually what Shepard does it breaks the immersion big time for the player. Anthony Burch called this the “suspension of agency,” where as they player you are willing to give up some of the control you want in order to be given better immersion in the game world. Which the Mass Effect games do really really well.

I have to assume that the Mass Effect designers know what they are doing, and that they are walking this fine line between subjective and objective with player’s identifying/seeing themselves as Shepard, but not being in as much control over her as they would be with their Dragon Age character. Which kind of makes me both in awe of what they’ve done for two games, and also makes me really look forward to seeing what they do for Mass Effect 3.

Regardless I think that’s it something that some game designers and writers can learn from, that it’s possible to have both subjective and objective storytelling in a game (sort of.) And that a good mix of the two could produce a cocktail that manages to be more immersive then either alone.