At Comic Con NY, Rockstar introduced Grand Theft Auto III on iPad, celebrating the 10th year of the game. This game is history not only because it was good, a lot of good games dies alone, but because it showed us something we’ve never seen before.

For a long time, stories in videogames were told like in movies. You had an opening sequence, then you would follow a predetermined path called level, beat a boss, got a new story sequence which lead you to another level, and so on until you reach the end. Even RPGs somehow worked like that.

But, as interactive entertainement evolved, a new breed of game came to life. With it, the promess to break the linear storytelling rules. That was the birth of Sandboxed games.

In the sandbox, no one hear you scream

Sure GTA III is not the first sandbox game at all (not only by the fact that it was already the 3rd entry in the licence), but the first to be so critically acclaimed on top of being a sale success. GTA III’s path was followed by a lot of copycats, as open world was the new mandatory bulletpoint on your Powerpoint pitch to a publisher.

But what is a sandbox game ?

It’s a game with an open world you can roam freely, with no “right” way to play. The freedom allows the player to break the linearity of the story. That was what was promised on the cover of these games. As we’ll see, even though a lot of progress has been done, we are far from this so called freedom.

When GTA III was released in 2001, it was competing with another great sandboxed game, Shenmue 2. They both had extremely positive reviews, but Shenmue and Shenmue 2 failed in stores.

What is interesting about these 2 franchises, is how they built their open world games. They both took some interesting but yet different design choices. Since GTA III is going into the hands of iNewcomers soon, and with GTA V having it’s first trailer to be released in the next few days, I’ll use Grand Theft Auto IV as my source material. With Shenmue 3 on hold until SEGA makes Bazillion Dollars, and no re-release of Shenmue 1 & 2 on XBLA / iOS / PSN announced, I’ll use both games as source too.

Basics of storytelling

No matter the media for which you write your story, you’ll always have one goal: have the audience embrace your vision, while making them feel that it’s theirs. This is important in the movie industry, more important in books because you get to build you own world out of the words, and more important even in video games because you get to live the experience with a controller in your hands. Needless to say that if your audience doesn’t bond with your main character, you’ll loose them. It’s called empathy: You understand the way the character feels and behave. That’s the first point.

Now that your audience is connected with your character(s), you need to connect them with his world. This can be easy if the character lives in a facsimile of our world. If not, you have to explain clearly what can be and what can’t be done. It can get really tricky if your character lives in our world but with just some slight modification. A great exemple is Spider Man. Peter Parker lives in our world, but we accept the fact that he can be bitten by a spider and then develop super powers. But we won’t accept that a normal human being survive a fall from a 10 floor balcony in that same world. Making an audience believe in your world is not as easy as it sounds, and it can get extremely complexe in video games (more on this later).

Finaly, once your audience is hooked on your setup, you need to provide them with a good story. To build a good story, you have to make your main character behave exactly how he is supposed to, and make sure that the situations he gets involved in stays inside the limits of your world. Then it’s a question of building narrative arcs, tension, suspens, and give your audience what they came for: Emotions.

Spoiler Alert

If you have not played / completed GTA IV or Shenmue 1 & 2, beware of spoilers.

The Setup: The characters

In linear games, such as Gears of War, Alan Wake, Super Mario, and so on, the setup is the same as in a movie. You have a nice intro sequence, telling you who you are, where you are, and what you have to do. Then, you won’t have to think about your character emotional arc as it will be driven by the cut-scenes spread along your path. Sometimes you will have to make an A/B choice, to follow one of the predetermined path (A bit like in Outrun). That was nicely done in Bioshock when you had the choice of harvesting or not the Little Sisters after defeating a Big Daddy.

In games like Shenmue, and GTA IV (to a greater extent), the setup will define what the player will expect. That’s the most important part, because a wrong setup will create frustration. As you are not supposed to follow a predetermined path, you will have to create your own “version” of the story, and you will have an important role to play in your character emotional arc.

Let’s start with Shenmue. The game begins with a cut-scene of Ryo’s dad being killed by a vilain called Lan-Di. You know he is after some Mirrors. Lan-Di escapes, and you will get your revenge for your father’s death. Very early in the game, as a player, you’ll discover that you’ll have to resolve the case before the spring (before the cherry trees blossom). You’ll also have to sleep at night, and get back home before midnight. Ryo knows how to fight, but you know he won’t use it unless to defend himself.

In GTA IV you start with the arrival by boat of Nico Bellic into the land of opportunities, aka USA. While talking to some friends on the boat, you know that he has done a lot of bad things (killed peoples) and that he want to change his life, thanks to his cousin who succeeded in Liberty City. At the end of the intro sequence, you know that your cousin lied, and that life is going to be a bit more complicated.

In both games, main characters are correctly introduced. You know who they are, what they have done or will do, and you can immediately create a bond with them. One seeks revange, another seeks redemption. Both intro cutscenes are really well directed, and perfectly sets the mood of the game. With that in mind we can start to draw our expectations for their journey through the game. I’m Ryo Hazuki, as much as I’m Nico Bellic.

The Setup: The world

In GTA IV, your playground is a smaller but yet huge parody of New York City: Liberty City. It’s based on the real world, so no super powers or mystical stuff. You know from the start that you’ll be able to walk, drive cars, kill people, etc etc…

In Shenmue, your playground is much smaller than in GTA, but it’s also based on real location. To be more precise, you don’t have the irony of the parody, it’s as close as the technology could afford for the recreation of a small japanese village/district. You know you’ll be able to walk around, talk to people, etc etc…

Once again, we have a clear glimpse of what we’ll be able to do in both universe pretty soon in the game. This is on this first impression that the player (we) will build it’s (our) expectations for the degree of “freeness” the game will have to offer. And this is one of the first pitfall the sandboxed games falls into, usually promising far much more than what they can deliver. Let’s see how, Shenmue and GTA IV failed/succeeded on their setups.

Free, like a river

Both games sells freedom, but yet doesn’t offer the same freedom.

Shenmue provides a more intimist version of open world, where the actual world is not so open or vast, but filled with lots of details. For instance, you can talk to everybody. As you’re living in the village, everybody knows you and/or your father. Not everybody will tell you interesting stuff, but everybody will answer your call. You are also free to knock on every door you can reach. Sometimes people will open their door, sometimes not. If you had access to the Internet with your Dreamcast, you could even read a bio for every character you have talked to. Also, the weather played an important role, but not in the gameplay itself. It just reminded you of time flying by, and thus, the end of the game getting closer (You had snow around christmas). Because right from the start you know that if you take to much time to solve the case, you’ll eventually fail. This was emphased by the time and date displayed on every loading screen. Plus, you had to go to bed at midnight. This contributed to give a real sense of time, and you were somehow forced into a “real” like life. This setup is more story driven than gameplay driven.

All of this is not in GTA IV.

In GTA, you have the freedom to cruise on a huge open world. And by open, it means you can still get to the locked islands directly from the start, by driving on the subway rails or finding secret passages. In Shenmue you cannot leave a place before you are far enough in the story. In GTA you can’t talk to the pedestrians on the street, or so few. You cannot knock on every door either. Weather plays a role too, but only gameplay wise. It lifts up the difficulty by reducing the visibility and soaking the roads. Same for the day and night. It doesn’t play a big part on the story, and the difference between night and day life (apart from a graphical point of view) is not that big. You can go to bed whenever you want, it will only refill your life and save the game. Much like the weather, it’s more gameplay driven that story driven. Unlike Shenmue, you can’t fail in the end. You don’t have a giant timer telling you how close to the big game over you are.

And yet, both setups works, even if you can already taste the limitations.

In Shenmue, you might be able to talk to everybody, but you can’t buy flowers from your friend Nozomi, nor everything you want from the market. You can’t ride a bicycle too (unlike in the beta). You can’t even go to a further place until you have solved enough of the story plot. You walk down the road and Ryo will refuse to go further. Even if Ryo’s character is calm, this is not an excuse for not allowing him to fight anybody in the street. I’m Ryo, and if I decide that at that particular moment this particular character needs to be beaten down, I should get the opportunity. My dad was murdered in front of me, I can have a nervous breakdown ! Why should we wait until we are on a “designated” fight zone with “designated” bad guys ?

You don’t have these feelings at first in GTA. The world is so huge, and you have so much to discover that not being able to enter a shop or doing this or that is not a big deal… yet ! You can almost do anything/everything right from the start. And even if at first is seams you can’t leave the first island, at least they put some effort (Police cars & trucks on the road) to disguise this design choice.

The way you interact with the world and it inhabitants is an important part of the storytelling too: it sets the scale of the story.

GTA IV world is huge, you’re a stranger in a big city. You can’t really talk to the people (but you can beat them up) because the story is not about them, you don’t know them. They are just here to populate the street life. Your story is in another castle. In fact, you don’t even know what your story will be like, because you’ve come to change your life, to throw away what you were and what you’ve done to start from scratch.

Shenmue world is small, we deal with intimacy. You lived there for a long time, your family is well known. You know your neighbours, you can even follow them in the street, you’ll share a part of their life. They all have their schedule, a name, a bio. They don’t randomly spawn to fill the void. The story and the mood is a completly different tone. In Shenmue you already experienced some limitations, but you don’t really care, because the odds that you want to fight a grandpa in the street for fun are ridiculously small.

Your freedom ends where my plot begins

So until the main story starts to unfold, we are indeed in control of our character’s life and behavior, and up until here, we can call that a free world, despite the obvious technical, design and gameplay limitations.

It’s really when the game asks you to come back and follow the main events that all the openess falls and goes back to a traditional linear storytelling.

Shenmue does a better job at softening the fallback because it was less open and more intimate by design. Theses choices, frustrating at first from a gameplay point of view (can’t do much than walking, talking and collecting capsules) forces your mind to fit in their predetermined train of thoughts, narrowing down the odds of you doing something the “wrong” way, while still giving you the opportunity to get a game over.

GTA IV on the otherhand have taken the bet to give you almost all the freedom it technically can offer right from the start. And then, tries to force you into following their path.

Nico Bellic comes in this land of opportunity to take a new life, far from killing or dealing with illegal stuff. As soon as the main missions start, you are asked to go against his new ideal. You are asked to kill and deal with bad stuff. Sure, without a conflict, you don’t tell a story, and forcing you to go against your character ideas is a good way to start. But what if you refuse to do so ?

Let say, I don’t want to help my cousin. I could spend years stuck on the first island doing nothing. Here, GTA fails to give me the choice between going the way they want, and going the way I want. I would have felt more free if instead I had a chance to ignore his request and that after a small amount of time, something bad happened to him, giving me a natural reaction of “I need to help him now”. By allowing me to do that you actualy give me the feeling that I’m in control, while still forcing me to follow your main plot.

In a case like this, I would have known that these guys weren’t joking, and would have felt bad about this, and more importantly, I would have to deal with the responsability of my behavior. Next time I would directly help him instead of sticking with my idea.

In a linear game, not giving freedom of choice is ok by design. In an open world, you can’t give almost all freedom between two main missions, and then force back the player into your story without alternatives. And this is because during that time, we started to build our character emotional arc. What if I failed a side mission and I’m totally pissed-off. When I get to the next main mission, my character will be pissed-off. But as you have no idea what happened between the end of the last main mission and the begining of this one, you have to give me choice. Or at least the illusion of choice.

In my above exemple, not helping my cousin because my character doesn’t want to fight, will trigger a stronger event that will make him change his mind. With this, I’m under the impression that I was free to make my choice, but in the end, the triggered event will naturaly drive me back into the intended main story events. Experiencing this is rewarding for the player. And even if I wanted to help my cousin, maybe spending too much time wandering around will trigger this event too. Much like the deadline you have in Shenmue.

It’s important to keep the player in danger. For him to experience freedom, you have to have him make choices. May he learn it the hard way. If the time spent between missions is just some “free time” to get some achievements, to fill some side quests to make money, or just to wonder around, then you fail to keep the player involved into the story. Sure he can take a break from time to time, but these inbetween mission time must be a full part of your storytelling. The player must ask himself, do he have time to do this side quest or not, if I do this, then I won’t be able to do that. The player shall not be able to complete everything in one run, because it would mean that he had no choices to make at all. Some opportunities must be A/B chosen or available only a certain amount of time.

Both Shenmue and GTA IV fails at this. How many time I lost track of were I was in the main story in GTA because I was completing to much side missions ? How much time I lost in Pachinko games or at the Arcade just for the fun of playing good old games in Shenmue ? Even if in Shenmue you had a deadline, it was far enough to give you too much time to waste. They both kept very linear main stories, cutted them into small bits, filling the in between mission freedom with lot of non related content and mini games.

That special someone

There’s another important part of your character you won’t have much freedom about too: his relationships. Both Shenmue and GTA failed at it.

From the start of the game, until the bike ride scene on a jpop-rock cheesy music, you wanna date Nozomi. You feel that special bond between Ryo and her. You can even phone her from home. But the game won’t ever give you the option to. Not even a goodbye kiss when she leaves the city. Wouldn’t this climactic scene be more climactic if we had at least the opportunity to try to date her ? And I mean try to date, not date. If the game doesn’t want you to be with her, make her say no, in an emotional way instead of not giving us any way to try. I’ll ask Yu Suzuki why did he did that when I have the chance to meet him next month.

GTA is even worse than that. During the game, the main story tries to hook you up with two ladies. The first, an annoying undercover cop you don’t wanna date (but you can share an hot coffee with her), and the second a cool irish girl, sister of a business “partner” the game wants you to love but won’t let you date. Two frustrations for the price of one !

These two girls are thought to be important in the main plot. You’ll meet again the undercover cop later on in the game, where you are supposed to feel betrayed by her. You’ll discover that the police was building a file against you. Honestly may you have been spied by her or not it doesn’t change anything. You have been killing so much people at this moment of the game that it is completly logical that the police have a file on you. I tried to kill her after yet another annoying date. I shot her right in the face. She answered me: “that’s rude !”. In my head I was thinking: “yeah it is, but you should be dead”. And she should have been. Why can I shoot anybody on the street and not her ? She is annoying me, she is spying on me, I wanna get rid of her. Her come back later on is useless and could be replaced by any police officer character. Killing her should have given me a slight variation in my interaction with Malorie (she would call me to know if I had news of her recently, sounding worried). Not killing her gives me her comeback later on. You could even imagine that the negociation gets harder if I kill her because the new cop character hadn’t be getting hot coffee with me.

And now, what about the irish girl Kate ? Well, depending on a choice you make in one of the final missions, either her or your cousin will die. But how can I feel sorry for her as I wasn’t able to date her while the game tried to force me to fall in love with her ? Sure, her brother warns you that you shouldn’t date her, but you should be free to follow or not his advice. And if the scriptwriter doesn’t want you to date her, well give us the opportunity to try and have her kindly or violently reject us (or at least his brother spying on the scene and jumping to punch you right on time).

What’s most saddening is that Rockstar managed to get some of your love relationships right. In GTA IV you can connect to a date site and meet some women. You’ll be able to meet some of them. This is completly optional, and you’re free to date her or not. And what’s even more rewarding is that succeeding in dating her, and keeping in touch regularly will reward you with in game options (like reducing the number of stars during a police chase). This is exactly how the main plot relationships should have been dealt with !

Last but not least, while both game suggests you who you should like and love (but never gives you a rewarding experience about this), neither gives you the option to choose who ever you want to bond with. And why is the protagonist must fall in love with a person of the opposite sex ? Why not allow the player to choose if his character should be gay or not ? Sure some story will inherently void this assumption, but in GTA (or in Shenmue), nothing in your character background, religion or belief goes against this idea. Give us the option the try to date important NPC, this could lead to some fun things.

To sum-up, both games offer strictly linear relationships in their main story failing once again on bringing us something new.

Exemple: How could your choices should have changed GTA IV begining

I’d like to share an exemple of what could be considered sandboxed storytelling. Let’s get back on my GTA IV exemple.

In the first hours of gameplay, you arrive in LC, help your cousin, date an undercover cop, kills a big head and have your place burned. You have no other choice.

Now, let’s see what could have happened with true choice, while still getting the same result in the end.

First, I don’t want to help my cousin. He lied to me, and I don’t want to do dirty stuff again. After 2-3 days (ingame time), my cousin calls me something bad happened. Because I hadn’t helped him, the bad guys burned our appartment. So he goes on to live with Malorie, while on my side I have to find somewhere to sleep (and save). Now 2 options: maybe I want to date the cop to have access to her appartment, or maybe Rockstar placed hotels around the city where I can stay, but at a price. So maybe I could go on a date with the cop girl, kill her because she pisses me off, stole her money to be able to pay for the hotel. As I don’t want to steal money on a daily basis just to pay for that, and because my cousin is threatned again, I will eventually accept to help him. We’ll go kill the big head and move to the second island.

Whatever path I choose, I always end up in the same place, but the experience, and thus, the story, is different and better fits what I want to do with my character. I taste freedom, even if the scriptwriter will find ingenious ways to course correct my freedom and bring me back on the main storyline.

What designers and scriptwriters needs to understand, is that they don’t have to write 10 different main stories to cover every possible path, they just have to give us the choice to not do what we are asked to, and find a clever way to bring us back where we didn’t wanted to go in the first place.

The right order, freedom of choice

You might object that in GTA you are not forced to do the missions in an exact order, and that some missions gives you alternatives. Well that’s true, and it indeed gives the illusion of freedom and the illusion of choice.

Some missions, very few, offers you the opportunity to kill or spare the guy you were chasing. Your choice won’t have a huge impact. You’ll lock/unlock a special mission or a special feature. What would have been more rewarding would have to be able to fail some missions (the chases for exemple).

Right now, if you fail a mission you have to replay it until you succeed to go onward. This is mendatory for all missions. What if failing some missions didn’t make you restart it, but instead take you on a follow up mission to “fix” your failure. This would be much more interesting in a narrative / storytelling way. Maybe this failure will cost your character more than if you just had to restart it (for instance someone important could be killed) giving you more pressure to do your mission the “right” way. It’s always a game of facing the consequences of your choice, success or failures. Giving you the opportunity to fail, to pay for it / learn from it, builds a stronger impression of freedom, and a better experience in the end.

As for the order of the missions, it’s just a clever trick that works well. Every story, might it be a game (linear or sandboxed), a book or a movie is composed of a main plot, usually bonded with the main character arc, and some subplots. If well written, the subplots will enrich the main plot, and their events will cross and sometime even resolve in the same scene. GTA have built it’s story progression system, and thus, mission order, on this scheme. In fact, the mission order choice is not really an “order” it’s just the entry points to several subplots. You can choose to unfold completly a subplot, then another, and so on until you get back on the main one, or you can chose to play a little bit of each. When some plots crosses, you won’t be able to continue one or another until you have reach the crossing point for all of them.

This is just a way to cut in small pieces several part of a linear story and giving the choice on how to browse through them. In GTA IV’s case, this is really well done, with a good depth, giving in fact, a sensation of freedom. But no matter how much depth it has, it can’t compare with a true freedom of choice, even if this freedom is just a reroute to the same cue points of the main story.

Memoria

As the free play sessions between missions are not taken into account in the story, whatever you do there won’t have any impact on the game later on. As you are building your character’s arc during these gameplay sessions too, the game should remember what you do. Of course, I’m not talking of remembering what lamp you crushed with your car.

But what if, the way you play gets taken into account ? What if I spend my time driving like nuts on the island, killing people and stealing cars. Wouldn’t the Police have some reinforcements to make sure they catch me next time ? The more damage I do in a place, the more Police vehicule cruises there ? Wouldn’t it be great if all this was monitored and influenced the main story ? And what if I kill somebody in the street, eye witnessed by people. Wouldn’t it be great that after several killing / stealling, they get a good idea of my head and asks for a reward if someone finds me ? People in the street could recognize me under specified circumstances (car crash, crazy driving, killing people, etc etc) and call the Police.

And if for some other reason I’m arrested by the Police, they would identify me and it would cost me more. That way, it would feel like the story is somehow adapting itself to the way my character behave (instead of trying to force my character to behave in a way to adapt it to the story).

In the end

It looks like I’m bashing GTA IV and Shenmue. Both games are some of the best open world games available, and are definitly in my favorite games of all time.

Shenmue was released when this type of game was young, GTA IV was released a few years ago and was considered being the most advanced game in the genre.

Yet, both of them shows the same weakness when it comes to storytelling. What they are doing is dividing the story by plots, and them cutting them down to allow us to feel free to complete them in whatever order we want. And between these cuts, they allow us to interact with the game environment, without any major impact on the story itself. It’s just as linear as linear games are (story wise). With less corridors.

On the storytelling point, a lot can be done to move forward to a real sandboxed storytelling. It’s not about technology anymore, actual consoles and PC hardware allows this, it’s just rethinking how we tell stories, and how we define it’s interaction with the player.

Please make the whole experience an integrated experience, not a disconnected sequence of free roaming intercut with missions to move the story forward. Make the free roaming part of the Story. Give us choices to make, reward us (in a good or bad way) for our choices. Use them to emotionnaly shake us so we stay in the path you want us to stay in. Give us ways to lose, the kind of loosing that needs us to start over the game because we went to far from what we were expected to do (but warn us before too, like Shenmue did).

Rockstar just announced GTA V, and I can’t wait to see how they will try to redefine the genre, and I hope that some of these ideas will be there. Your move Rockstar.

And to my beloved SEGA. Please, bring us Shenmue 3.