Skyrim

This is my first (and perhaps only ever) game review. I think I'm moved to write something because of an ongoing discussion with a couple of friends over why we play games - so this may be more about games and narrative than Skyrim really.

I maintain that I play games because I enjoy narrative, challenge and discovery. I don't play sports games as I'm not a sports fan in general (except for cricket) and I've never been into online games in any real way (I've dabbled, got bored and left). Why not?

There is an undoubted rush in playing Call of Duty multiplayer, in the same way as there is in playing Assassin's Creed multiplayer. They're fabulously well executed, incredibly crafted EXCITING experiences. But I tire of them rapidly. My normal life is, while not full of steel, assassins and terrorists, quite stimulating enough.

However. I am also a story lover. I believe quite firmly that everything is about story. Whether it's how we go about constructing prices for 3 year senior unsecured fixed rate bonds on rated institutions or how we convinced ourselves we love someone - it's all story. Human's are narrative beings. Sure, this might not be rocket science to you. You are probably sitting there thinking one of two things, hopefully "D'uh, glad to have you join the rest of us", or maybe, "I've no clue what you're talking about".

I think there's a strong argument that all meaning that humans come up with is understood via narrative. And if you want a hint as to how I've gotten good at getting my way in business, then watch me tell a story of why something makes sense. Being convincing isn't about having a loud voice (although that can help), it's about constructing a version of the world that seems more plausible than the next person's.

Anyway, back to Skyrim...and story in games. Games are bad at telling story. Some games are worse at it than others. Some are better than films and perhaps, the very best are as good as good books. If you're old enough you probably remember the first Half Life and how that changed your world. Or maybe you remember the stories told in Legend of Zelda or Citadel...they changed the way we saw the world, they changed what we thought could be done. They reconstructed what we saw when we used our eyes and in that sense they hit the very core of what stories do.

Having said that, those games are legendary for exactly the reason that they were landmarks...oft imitated but never matched. Games are bad at stories. Why? Well because both commercial but artistic reasons mean that good games aren't necessarily interested in telling stories in the way that humans are probably best at taking them in. Repeating challenges isn't a part of narrative. Convoluted plot twists to allow another level aren't part of stories, nor is killing everything that moves and rushing police cars of the road at every opportunity. Bizarrely, many games allow us to create our own stories via the experience of playing them. The cheers of beating a friend on Fifa, the cheer of winning a map on Call of Duty. The beer drunk, the tragedies of nearly achieving victory against the odds. It's all there, but it isn't story. That's life. Ha.

Skyrim is awesome because the world is crafted with care. People appear to really live in it and they have their stories. Those individual stories may not be deep or layered but they're legion and those hundreds of stories sit on top of one another, creating a world that is long slow and deep. It's was a pleasure to experience it and more amazingly, to discover just how endless it seemed to be.

Yet here's the rub. Skyrim shows, in its comprehensiveness, exactly the problem with games. The world doesn't change in response to you. Even in epic stories like Beowulf, or Haiwatha, where the world revolves around the central character, the rest of the cosmos responds and changes along with the central character. It's called development. Skyrim, and most games actually, achieve a sort of sit-com level of character development where one might engage for the limit of specific event and then, just as at the end of a TV episode, by the next time you see these characters, everything they've ever done has been forgotten and you start with them with a clean sheet. They are static and once the one liners dry up they become stale. Skyrim is wonderful as an episodic experience but no one changes. If you steal from them they don't respond, if you are some sort of mass murderer or sexual deviant they don't change. If you are a hero, they don't change. The world exists as your foil and not in its own right.

Compare this to Heavy Rain or The Witcher (the two games which I think have told story whilst remaining true games the best in the last 5 years). These games cut out entire parts of the story if you choose to behave in certain ways. Characters, indeed the whole world, will respond to as if you are an ass if you behave like one. They change their mind (or at least demonstrate the convincing illusion of having done so) and may not even speak to you again. It feels like you're a journeyman amongst a world of peers - not a god amongst a world there for your convenience.

Can games ever deliver proper stories? Possibly, they're getting better, but ambition and execution are often far apart and not simply because of a failure of skill but because telling a novel in which I star is not something that necessarily works...Who actually wants to live out the life of Kevin's mother from We Need To Talk About Kevin? Nor does a strong story make a sure fire game. I felt the story from the first Assassin's Creed was wonderfully grey and subtle but the mechanics were hugely repetitive. They lost that depth of story for later sequels even if the games themselves improved dramatically and were more engaging to actually play. And truth be told, does Fifa really need a drama? No, I don't think so either.

So I play narrative driven games and I long for games for adults where not everyone has to die, where the world is responsive and where if you're a good guy they respond to you, where if you're a sociopath the people there will make life difficult for you (if not downright impossible).

This is already a long post, so I won't go on about persistence, the need to be commercially successful or any of the hundreds of elements of this that interest me...perhaps when I review Mass Effect 3...

In the meantime Fus Ro Dah.