This just in, video games often attempt storytelling. It could be argued that this has become the all-consuming focus for AAA games, as even games that probably shouldn’t have a story often get a cliché tacked on at some point between developing multiplayer maps (looking at you CoD and LoL). While not positing that AAA can’t tell a worthy story, they are certainly underserving what is currently a niche market. The unscripted story. Before discussing it, let me quickly explain what I mean with an example.

I was playing UFO: Enemy Unknown about five years ago, invading an alien base for the first time. To build a frame of reference for those who haven’t played it, UFO is the game upon which Xenonauts and Firaxis’ XCOM were based. At the time, roughly 20 hours into that playthrough, I had all my best men fully equip with all my best gear. It was a gamble to bring that much capital on one mission, a poor one in hindsight, but history makes fools of us all. Anyway, after a few turns, some particularly strong enemies had chewed through the weak links of my squad, as well as a few low ranking officers. I was corralled as enemies had spawned in between my squad and their escape. The rest of that mission became about minimizing casualties and escaping tail tucked. I could go on to describe how I commanded one of the squaddies I brought along to run from corpse to corpse salvaging the more expensive weapons and throwing them towards the exit, or how I formed a vanguard to protect the commander, my most experienced soldier.

Years after playing hundreds of hours of this game and many like it, I still remember everything about that mission, from my emotions at the time to the layout of the alien base. All of this was created by a establishing the game’s core mechanics, and randomly generating the rest. I played the entirety of Crysis and Crysis Warhead, and I couldn’t describe much of the actual plot of the game. Alien invasion, PMC might be evil, alien invasion? That is the impact left from playing those games. My most prominent memory from playing Crysis was one moment where I strayed off the beaten path, accidentally pulled an enemy patrol while I was out of ammo and spent the next half hour sneaking through the jungle with nothing but my melee attack. This isn’t to say that story-heavy games aren’t great, Bastion immediately springs to mind, but when my most impactful memory made is in spite of the game’s narrative, it’s priorities might need to be reassessed.

On one side of the coin lies the Witcher 3 , a stellar accomplishment in terms of video game narrative. Many sandbox games tend to leave the main plot in an airlock that is scotch taped onto the main sandbox. The Witcher 3 embraces it’s sandbox nature and designed it’s plot around playing in the sand, going so far as to put equal polish into it’s least important side quests to allow the player to perceive the world as alive, as opposed to an entertainment park. I’m not lying when I say that I cannot play The Witcher 3 for extended periods of time because of this. The game is simply too engrossing, it is impossible to JUST play for a while when the next merchant might sell a gwent card you need, or when the sidequest you are about to finish leads you to discover an outlaw encampment that might have some loot you could use. The Witcher 3 exemplifies how to tell a story, in that the majority of game has naught to do with the main quest directly, however it all builds towards the atmosphere of the world.

The Witcher 3 is, however, the exception. It took CD Projekt Red an ungodly pile of doubloons to fund the polish required for that game to succeed. Getting back to topic, on the other side of the coin lies a lovely little gem in Tales of Maj’Eyal. ToME has a story. That is the most I am willing to state after playing over fifty hours. ToME is a roguelike of the highest fidelity, while not afraid to rework the formula where it didn’t work. It has probably generated more organic stories from my imagination than any other game including any XCOM, plus it’s an indie game to boot. For whatever reason Diablo and it’s golden cows are some of the only big budget games to embrace procedural generation as a core mechanic (let’s pretend release D3 never existed, thanks). If the environment is static, the possible scenarios wherein the player can find themselves are finite. Equilibrium must however be struck, as pure procedural generation can result in the experience homogenizing. Certain parts of XCOM maps are set, but how they fit together or where you spawn are left dynamic. Some of the encounters in ToME are static, but the randomized dungeons that must be adventured through to arrive there result in different conditions for the player upon arrival.

On top of pseudo randomly generated experiences, a sense of investment in the player must exist. If there is no fear of the failure state there is no reason to care about each character the player controls. Many games use permadeath; I play ToME in roguelike mode and the new XCOM on classic ironman to achieve this, however permadeath is not the only outlet. Any Dark Souls veteran knows the stress of fog gates that may or may not represent a substantial threat increase. As long as the player fears the failure state, they will begin to feel invested in their current life/game/character/whathaveyou.

Games lately have either focused too much on completely random sandboxes in the hopes to ape Minecraft or too much on story where the player might as well watch a movie or watch the cutscenes human centipeded together on YouTube. Maybe most devs just don’t believe that a game with such harsh failure states will turn a profit, in which case pull your fucking heads out of the sand. Demon’s Souls spawned a soon to be five game franchise in SoulsBorne and Firaxis obviously raked in sufficient cash with XCOM as they have funded DLC and an upcoming sequel. ToME has a fairly large cult following to the point where I have discussed the best racial passives to synergize with the archmage class on an Arkham Knight stream. One day a dev will wake up and realize that this niche is severely underserved and a AAA budget behind one such game could potentially corner a previously virgin client base.