A STORY WITHOUT WORDS

Play Shadow of the Colossus.

I agree completely with what you said, especially the whole tutorial cliche bit in RPGs. With SotC and Super Metroid, the no words thing works well because they aren't forcing you to feel something. It's kind of hard to explain. With most RPGs, they try to force emotions on to you by showing tons of text that is telling you "hey, this guy is angry. Look at that text, he's angry!" But with no words, it's a lot easier to show certain emotions because as humans we relate to body movement, etc much more than text.

But using it for certain aspects is the best approach for people like us. If you look at the intro to Final Fantasy 6, it does a fantastic job at this. The part where the world gets torn apart is also another example from the game. Almost no text is going on during these scenes. In the latter, it is literally just showing you destruction. FF6 is the best.

Also the scene in Mother 3 where...things happen...and people die. And Flint goes crazy. Another good example.

I think words can be used to a similar effect though. Basically I think you could make a text-adventure that would essentially be a "story without words". I think Valve's games do stories without words expertly (while still obviously having some words thrown around). Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead and Portal are great examples.

It's the age-old thing of "Show, don't tell".

It's probably also easier to do these wordless games in action games (Super Mario Bros. didn't exactly have a lot of words. And I guess Super Mario Bros. 2 had even less).

Actually one wordless game I just thought of that is sort of narrative-based but also very wordless. The LEGO games (Lego Star Wars, Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Batman etc) It's still an action game of course. And it's probably not a "game without words". But it does explicitly tell a story without using words :)

Ok I really like this topic. I can relate to all of you guys when it comes to show not tell philosophy. At one point I thought of making some kind of minimalistic RPG where there were no words (not even in the battle commands, they'd be replaced with icons) but uh, you can't put icons in the commands in VX, I'm sure there is a scipt somewhere that will allow that specifically without making the command box weird. Anyway, I wanted to make an RPG with self explanatory rules and mechanics and with small cutscenes without words to weave a story.

Right now I think the best anyone can do with a preexisting project that has wordswordswords, is to just be really subtractive and omit needless words (this advice is pretty much given to any writer). It's hard to go that path if you're not careful though, some things need exposition, and if the player doesn't quite fully understand the first time, you'll need to write or even show in a minimal method to remind him of what his goal is and what he's doing.

One thing I highly recommend for cutscenes is to actually edit the charactersets, giving them more movements and facial reactions (yes actually editing their 5x4 faces). Because one thing I realized from playing FF5 way back when: While the story was very basic save the world formula, the individual characters as 16x16 chibi sprites, packed a ton of emotion. The heroes can laugh, they can cheer, they can blush, they can exclaim, etc. All without having to write *smiles* or GRRRRRR. And that added a lot to the characters however 1 dimensional people see them as. FF6 really continues that tradition with each character having their own version of emotions.


edit: in regards to facesets, fuck them. Even if you have different emotions for them, they are very disconnected from the game world unlike these graphics above.

I think Valve's games do stories without words expertly (while still obviously having some words thrown around). Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead and Portal are great examples.

Yes, I think Half Life 2 does a great job of making you feel like being in a movie, without having a 'cut'scene to interrupt the flow. I thought after this game you'd see a ton of games trying to intimidate this style of story telling, but nope, we're still stuck in that cutscenes galore rut when it comes to "cinematic games."

One really interesting game was ICO, the game had various cutscenes with subtitles and all that, but the cutscenes didn't really explain much, they just showed who the bad guy was and the major plot points, that was it. However most of the character development comes from the puzzle solving, you actually have this weird bond with the girl you're trying to help through this castle. Not only that, but the two characrers (ico and the girl) speak in different languages, so they can only communicate with hand signals. There are times in the game where you even get frustrated with her and actually start yelling at the screen "NO! GO UP THE DAMN LADDER" or "NO GO THE OTHER WAY" or maybe that's just me. SPOILER: The cutscene where you are seperated from Yorda actually leaves a big impact, because as you keep playing without her, the game becomes very very lonely //ENDSPOILER Anyway the point is this game manages to perform a character based narrative with its own gameplay, something that the game industry isn't quite there yet except for the handful of 'artistic' indie games you see nowadays. And man I still need to get SOTC. Fuck.

I somewhat agree with the fact words are overused, and it seems to substitute making more sprite art. It annoys me more when someone uses action text. In example:
*Skippy handed Edwardo the key*
*Skippy falls down then gets back up*
*Barf*
Okay, maybe I'd prefer a text version of that last one. Bu I think my point is clear. :[ I like to see a dandy little sprite that shows actual emotion. Darken has a point about face sets as well.
When I see someone use a faceset it looks disconnected from the actual game and makes me think of dating sims in a way. The emotions are there but it's plain. It just doesn't give that little jump you get when you see your favorite character's sprite dancing for joy or hiding it's face in it's hands when it's ashamed or sad. It strikes me as somewhat lazy.

Out of This World changed my life.

But I get this more like "a story could be told with no words" than "a story should be told with less words".

I mean... are we complaining about reading now?

Of course we all hate overtexting, and it's definitely an issue I have with the latest FFs (I've heard that there are 40 minute cutscenes in FFXIII... is that true???).

post=143831
Of course we all hate overtexting, and it's definitely an issue I have with the latest FFs (I've heard that there are 40 minute cutscenes in FFXIII... is that true???).

...FFX-2 and FFXII have short exchanges. The longest clip in FFXII I can remember besides the ending was at the top of the final dungeon, and maybe lasted five minutes?

Willian Shakesman
Brevity is the soul of wit.

More like WILL SHATNER

I am totally guilty of this in my game, because I like writing words. I know people don't really like reading them, so I try to limit them as much as possible, but I do have a weakness for drawn-out one-off explanations that slow down the game every once in a blue moon- sometimes I just like to get it all out of the way so the next area is usually very light on text.

My problem is that I like to make the text I have believable, so there is not a lot of "Hey let's go this way" and everyone else in the group mindlessly agreeing, since even when the characters get along they wouldn't just do... whatever.

That being said, in any game that focuses more on the character (any game that has a single character or one who is obviously identified as the voice of the party) I have a much easily time avoiding dialogue or long, drawn out scenes. There is a lot more visual storytelling.

It's just hard to show how devious a political plot is without using words, you know?

I don't mind words. When I'm concentrating and feeling patient, I like having conversations and finding out as much information as possible. Visual effects should augment words, not replace them. You couldn't have long, animated cutscenes back in the days of D&D.

Interactivity is pretty important, though. 15 minute dialogue sucks if you don't get to participate at all.