“How should you effectively tell a story in an FPS game? Cutscenes? Dialogue? Discovery? Environmental details? Share your thoughts and examples! #FPS #gamedevelopment #storytelling
Traditional vs. Modern Storytelling Techniques
– Should a story in an FPS game rely on cutscenes and dialogue?
– Or should it be more about player discovery and environmental details?
Examples of Effective Storytelling in FPS Games
1. Half-Life series – use of environmental storytelling to immerse players in the narrative.
2. Bioshock Infinite – blending of cutscenes and dialogue to engage players emotionally.
Let’s discuss the best ways to craft compelling narratives in FPS games! How do you think developers should approach storytelling in this genre?”
Any time a game does something non-interactively that it could have done interactively, a fairy dies.
I think there’s a whole lot of right ways to tell a story in FPS games, and I’ve encountered very few wrong ones.
But at least we stopped doing that thing where at the end of a cutscene, the camera needs to fly around the scene and crash into the back of the protagonists head. That was dumb.
I haven’t played an fps game in a long time but I always thought the original modern warfare series was amazing story wise. So I guess however they did it lol.
I haven’t played any of the new ones except for warzone a couple years ago
Different approaches for different games. I love that *Half-Life* is entirely through Gordon’s eyes and there aren’t any bespoke cutscenes. Same with *Doom* 2016.
Here is where I was going to talk about FPSs with cutscenes that I really enjoy and I came up empty. The new *Wolfenstein* games have some pretty decent cutscenes but, again, the coolest bits happen when you’re looking through BJ’s eyes.
I’m too old, Doom only had a post episodic slide of dialogue and whatever was in the manual. Then we had load screen dialogue that couldn’t be skipped so you couldn’t start a mission until it finished.
The shining example of Portal makes me think discovery, environmental details, and a cohesive vibe are overall best. Player’s imaginations will fill in the blanks better than more dialogue or cutscenes will be able to.
Cutscenes are pain. Stop taking me out of the moment. Leave me in control and tell it through the environment and npc interaction between me or other npc’s around. It makes the game feel alive when these things are just happening around you. Half Life 1 and 2, Portal 1 and 2 had zero cutscenes and had better story telling than any fps I’ve played in the last 15 years. Put an unskippable cutscene in and take control away from me im just going to check my phone.
It’s all about execution.
The original COD Modern Warfare trilogy was essentially..
-Exposition dump
-Shooting gallery
-Exposition dump
-Shooting gallery
-Repeat
But it’s so good!
Alternatively in a game like Titanfall 2 the story is told almost entirely through gameplay, and it’s one of my favourite FPS games ever.
Like in half life. So basically without weird transitions between “f*cking their shit up” and “why you’re here”
[Like so.](https://i.imgur.com/R8Irss6.png) The KISS approach.
Either way. Half-Life pioneered first person and limited free movement in expositional sections with talking and it worked beautifully, Spec Ops went with cinematic cutscenes and it’s also gripping and emotional. I’m sure you could tell a good story predominantly through environmental design as well.
From experience I can tell you one option that absolutely does not work in FPS games, and that’s item pickups that add journal entries. FPS players will not open a journal to read blocks of text. They just won’t.
Hell, even audio logs are a gamble because you’re usually too distracted by your own actions to listen to the log in the background, so if you do any storytelling through those make sure the pickups are right before calm, linear movement sections.
Some things work best when you can control a character, I remember in Modern Warfare when death just fucking rained down from the sky in front of you “THAT’S BLOODY OUTRAGEOUS MATE”, it could’ve just been a cutscene, but it worked amazingly like this.
Start at the beginning, then the middle, then the end. Any other way is confusing.
Fallout is %90 a FPS. %100 if your me.
Probably one of my favorites is though an intro video and then between missions you discover more of the story through short videos. Similar to cod
I would use Bioshock as a baseline for good story telling.
A mixture of environmental storytelling, dialogue, minimal cutscenes.
Specs ops: the line is a good example of this
I think a combination of first and third person views. First person should only be used to talk or interact with other characters while 3rd should be used for action scenes. I find first person action scenes disorienting.
Dialogue usually. Like in Fallout New Vegas.