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[StripeyWhale]

Hey guys!

I was just wondering, what do people mean when they talk about "non-linear storytelling" in a game?  How does it work?

If story events can happen in any order, it seems to me that would make character development nigh impossible.  I can see how mysteries could work quite well, i.e. the events have already happened and the player can just access bits of info in any order, but I can't think of any other type of story that would work well.  Even mysteries would have a hard time developing any character arcs in the present (the events taking place as the player plays, which can happen in any order, rather than what took place in the backstory, which has a set linear order and is only accessed in non-linearly).

Is "non-linear storytelling" capable of telling character focused stories in the present with satisfying and coherent arcs?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

my latest game uses non-linear storytelling. the way it works is that there are about 800 short "scenes", each maybe 3-4 line of dialogue long on average. they can be read in any order, or not read at all (within reason, of course. there are scenes that are always at the start or always at the end. and there are small 'sequences' where sets of scenes have to be told in an order before or after one another (but there can be other scenes between them of course), a bit like shadow's dreams in ff6. but the vast majority of them are non-linear and optional.)

there are other methods of doing this, there's a large variety of ways i've seen it done. chris crawford goes into it a lot in his books if you're curious

no, i don't think it makes character development impossible. think of real life. in real life, you are not told a "story" about a person in a linear order. take, for instance, your mother. you don't see her all the time. of all of the "scenes" of her life, you see a small number of them. so in effect, her story is told to you non-linearly, because seeing any given part of it is optional. you also don't hear about the events in her life in any particular order. you may not have known about something that she did when she was 10 years old until she told you about it when she was 50 or 60 years old. but there's still a sense of character development in you getting to know her, since over time, the information accumulates, and you form a clearer and clearer picture of her the more information you know about her

similarly, in non-linear games, as you explore the game's story in no particular order, you form a clearer and clearer picture of the game's characters the more you learn about them. you don't have to learn things about them in any particular order

here's an experiment you can try. i've actually done this. take a novel you have not read. read it in a random order; use a random number generator, and read all of the pages in that novel in a random order. make sure you read *most* (but not all) of the pages in the novel, and that you read no two pages in numerical order. after you read a page, even if it's in the middle of a sentence, stop, and then roll another random number, and read another page. sometimes the same number may come up twice: read that page twice if that occurs. after you have done this, you may be surprised to find out that you have a *very good idea* of the story of the novel. you know about as much about it as if you had read it linearly. perhaps even more! you might even enjoy the book more this way than you would otherwise. i'd suggest everyone try this out at least once, it points out how optional linearly can be. if you want to make it less "challenging" just read the chapters in any order instead of the pages

i do definitely think non-linear stories, or reading linear stories non-linearly, take more "work" to understand. they aren't as passive, they require more thought and keeping track of more things, there's more figuring out involved. but i enjoy them, in many cases even moreso than linear stories. i like the feeling of jumping into a story at random points; i think everyone has experienced this at least once in a while. ever start watching a movie halfway in? and then watch the first half of the movie later, the next time it's on? or perhaps you watched a tv show or anime with a linear story arc across episodes, like the x-files, but you watched the episodes in no particular order, just happening to catch them when they're on occasionally, and missing some of the episodes, and over the years, watching the majority of the episodes but not in any particular order; i think most of us have had experiences like that. and the story still makes sense, it's still enjoyable, even if we don't watch those movies/shows in the intended order

[moi]

I wouldn't call that non-linear-storytelling, eres.
More like procedural storytelling, or sthg

anyway, yes OP it probably requires a lot of work and being clever,it can probably work in a limited fashion

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

procedural storytelling is a subtype of non-linear storytelling

non-linear storytelling can be procedural, but doesn't have to be. it can also just be a "choose your own adventure" format, or something simple like that. it can be complex or simple, but the basic idea is that each time you play the game, the story is told in a different order, depending on your choices

even fallout has non-linear storytelling (the first two games, i mean. the third one is more linear)

[StripeyWhale]

Interesting!

It still seems like most of this applies to things that have already occurred in the backstory.  I can discover things that have already happened in any order, such as stories about my mother.  But can the same work for the player character in present time?

Reading a book in random sequence makes sense, but I still know that those events did happen in a specific order and I can piece that order together.  This stuff all still happened in the past.  Can the same work for present events?

For instance, if I am a reader perusing a book at random, I understand that those events took place in a specific order, even if it's a different order that what's presented to me.  However, if I am a character in that book, I must experience those events in a specific order.  I cannot (unless time travel is involved) die before I am born, achieve redemption before I have fallen, act before I have motivation, etc.  I must experience my character arc as an arc.

Let's say I'm making a game featuring two investigators trying to solve a series of grizzly murders.  In accordance with the universal laws of buddy cop stories, these two characters must start out hating each other and then over the course of the story grow to be best friends forever.  For gameplay purposes, the game always starts at the same point: investigating Murder #1, with the detectives hating each other.  The end has the detectives confronting the killer as best buddies.  In between are 10 murders that can be investigated in any order.  Each event has plot specific dialogue tied to it.  The backstory of the murders can be revealed in any order - it has already happened.  I can discover something from the end of the murders before I discover something from the middle. But current story is that of the two detectives slowly becoming friends.  In a linear game, each event would show the two detectives slowly becoming friendlier to each other, so event 1 shows them at a "friend level" of zero, while event 2 goes up to 1, etc. all the way up to the end.  If they can be experienced in any order, wouldn't it be impossible to convey any logical transition from love to hate?

The only way I can see to avoid this would be to completely separate plot development and character development, so you'd have plot scenes, that can be played in any order and then character scenes, that must play in a specific order.  So the process would go something like: Player Selected Plot Scene, reveal plot information in any order, +1 to friendship, play corresponding friendship scene.  Det. Briggs and Det. Cardigan investigate murder # whatever the player chooses.  Afterwards, they argue with each other.  After the next investigation, they go out for a beer, etc.  The big problem is that (unless you can write a bajillion scenes for every possible combination) plot scenes and characterization scenes would act out in complete ignorance of each other.  Plot scenes, since they must be able to be played in any order, cannot reflect the current friendship level of the detectives.  Characterization scenes can't reflect any plot points, because the player could be anywhere in the investigation.  So the detectives would have to behave in a completely monotone manner in plot scenes, and then never mention work in characterization scenes.

Is there a more sophisticated way to do this?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i think the distinction between "backstory" and "current time period" is less clear in non-linear stories; they blend together. so it isn't at all that non-linear stories only deal with backstory, it's that the two methods of telling stories have two different systems

in linear stories, you have the backstory (flashbacks, background information, history) and the current story (scenes told in the present moment). but both of those are just two ways of dealing with time. the same events could be portrayed either as a flashback or as a part of the present moment. but if you think of it on a timeline, all the events in a story are on *one* timeline, not two. it's more a matter of how they are told that makes the difference

in non-linear stories, you don't actually have either of those (either backstory or current story); instead you have a continuous "timeline" of the story, parts of which are told in bits and pieces and in no specified order. so in that sense, there's no such thing (in non-linear stories) as "backstory" or "current story" -- there's just story. it's still arranged on a timeline

so both linear and non-linear stories have a series of events, arranged in a timeline. it's just that in linear stories, you see the events on the timeline in order for the "current story", and out of order for the "backstory". in non-linear stories, you see the events on the timeline out of order for the entire timeline. but it's not technically speaking "backstory", since that's something that only applies to linear stories. or another way to put it is, the "backstory" is the *non-linear* part of a linear story; it's the part of the timeline of a linear story that is told non-linearly

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

also, branching stories complicates this a bit if you have it, because instead of a single timeline, you have several alternate timelines, and the player's decisions decide which of those possible timelines is the real one. but you still have to write the story for all the possibilities of course. if you do try this, i'd suggest limiting the branches to as few as possible, but keep the branches as interesting as possible, since it can get complicated fast, because it works exponentially. and the more branches there are, the more work has to be done for the same amount of play time. telling a story non-linearly can be done with or without story branches.

of course you can also have linear stories that branch, as in games like starfox, vanguard bandits, tactics ogre, persona 1, and so on, where there are 2, 3, 4, or 5 major branches of the story, and your choices determine which of those paths you move through, but each one is still a linear story, told in the linear fashion

[Panurge]

The only way I can see to avoid this would be to completely separate plot development and character development, so you'd have plot scenes, that can be played in any order and then character scenes, that must play in a specific order.  So the process would go something like: Player Selected Plot Scene, reveal plot information in any order, +1 to friendship, play corresponding friendship scene.  Det. Briggs and Det. Cardigan investigate murder # whatever the player chooses.  Afterwards, they argue with each other.  After the next investigation, they go out for a beer, etc.  The big problem is that (unless you can write a bajillion scenes for every possible combination) plot scenes and characterization scenes would act out in complete ignorance of each other.  Plot scenes, since they must be able to be played in any order, cannot reflect the current friendship level of the detectives.  Characterization scenes can't reflect any plot points, because the player could be anywhere in the investigation.  So the detectives would have to behave in a completely monotone manner in plot scenes, and then never mention work in characterization scenes.

I'm having a very similar problem at the moment and I'm afraid I haven't turned up any easy solutions either...

One thing which might help a little is to interweave the plot and character sections more closely. In other words, you could thread snippets of character-based dialogue into convenient openings in the plot sections. Again, you'd have to be careful that ALL possible conversations would work in these openings (you probably don't want, for example, a breezy bit of banter about pop music in the middle of a shootout).

You could even go a step further and play with the structure of individual sentences to give some sense of a developing relationship. Imagine a snippet of dialogue like this:

"Hey [X], come over here and look at this corpse I've found!"

If you had a 'buddy scale' from 1 to 5, [X] could vary as follows:

1 - moron
2 - dimwit
3 - kid
4 - pal
5 - darling

The variable [X] could crop up in as many sentences as you wanted. Perhaps a second variable would use a slightly different list in the same sort of situations to give variety. A third variable might add the word 'thanks' to certain sentences at buddy level 3 or above. And so on. Again, you'd have to check carefully that all possibilities would make sense in the context.

Anyway, good luck! If you come across any particularly effective solutions please let me know!

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

hmm -- i think it'd feel better to write separate sentences or even scenes depending on closeness level rather than to change individual words, because that may come off feeling stilted

e.g. imagine sentence said

'get out of my way, dimwit, you're blocking the sun!'

just changing dimwit to sugarplum won't make the sentence entirely positive

and you could work around that and write sentences which would work at all levels of that word, but that limitation would tend to make your writing feel weird, and limit how you could express things

there's disagreement about at what "level" it's best to non-linearize a story, though. chris crawford maintains that the level of the individual word is what you have to do, you have to make the game construct sentences out of words, and scenes out of sentences, using rules of narration and highly complicated systems of inverse parsing. but usually what comes out of that is something that barely resembles english, a simplified semantic language that you have to teach the player to understand. so that's why i think non-linearizing story at the level of the individual scene (keeping such scenes short) works better than at the level of the word or sentence

[Panurge]

Yes, I admit the approach would be far from perfect. Only certain sentences could be altered by using variables and all others would have to be kept neutral. But then, I suppose they would have to be neutral anyway if the technique of interspersing character and plot-based sections were to be used, so the variables might give at least a slight artficial sense of camaraderie, a painted smile.

It's going to be a tricky balancing act however it's done - you run the risk of flattening the mood entirely by ensuring that the dialogue is always neutral enough to support multiple interpretations. I agree that non-linearity at the level of the word is never going to work unless the game is about robots or aliens (Hey! There's an idea...) so it's always going to be a case of giving the player the impression of non-linearity as artfully and subtly as possible.

[StripeyWhale]

in non-linear stories, you don't actually have either of those (either backstory or current story); instead you have a continuous "timeline" of the story, parts of which are told in bits and pieces and in no specified order. so in that sense, there's no such thing (in non-linear stories) as "backstory" or "current story" -- there's just story. it's still arranged on a timeline

so both linear and non-linear stories have a series of events, arranged in a timeline. it's just that in linear stories, you see the events on the timeline in order for the "current story", and out of order for the "backstory". in non-linear stories, you see the events on the timeline out of order for the entire timeline. but it's not technically speaking "backstory", since that's something that only applies to linear stories. or another way to put it is, the "backstory" is the *non-linear* part of a linear story; it's the part of the timeline of a linear story that is told non-linearly

So, for a game that functions like this, am I, the player, still experiencing things sequentially, or are events literally unstuck in time?

I.e. Is the sequence of events I chose my "timeline"?  First my character came into this land.  He completed objective 1, then 5, then 3, then 2, then 4.  Then he beat the end game.  So his story is Start, 1, 5, 3, 2, 4, End.  That is how I as the player experienced them.  For me, event 5 (and all its associated character development) happened before event 2 (and all its associated character development).  So in a non-linear game, did my character live through Start, 1, 5, 3, 2, 4, End in that order, or is he not experiencing time the same way I do?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i think that depends on if the events are necessarily logically connected or not. let's say you're playing zelda1. the timeline of the game is:

-link begins game
-link collects 8 triforces pieces
-link goes to final dungeon and saves zelda

the 8 parts in the middle can happen in any order, either for the player or in the story. so it doesn't actually matter which of them follows the other, just as long as they all happen. so the answer is really something like 'whichever way the player wants to see it' or 'it doesn't usually matter', because when the player looks back on the game and reflects on the story later on, they tend to mentally re-arrange the events of the game anyway, and to forget the specific order they occurred

in novels for instance, if you read a novel and describe it to someone else a year or so after reading it, you probably wouldn't remember the specific order of the events in it; you'd remember the general trust of the story, but will tend to get a lot of the minor events out of order, because the order usually doesn't really matter for those minor events (they may as well have happened in any order)

so if the events do not have to happen in a particular order to you, the particular order they actually do happen in for the player doesn't matter. if they do have to logically happen in a particular order, then they're going to happen in that order in the game anyway

[StripeyWhale]

Hmm...to me the problem is that while plot points can often happen in any order, characterization absolutely must follow a specific trajectory.  Link in the Legend of Zelda is pretty much devoid of character development (or much characterization at all) - he's exactly the same (internally) at the end as he was at the beginning.  Since there is no character development tied to them, the dungeons can happen in any order whatsoever, story wise.

I think when I misremember the order of plot events in a narrative I've read, I'm usually separating plot and character development in my mind.  I may not perfectly remember which battle happened when in Seven Samurai, but I remember the character arc for Kikuchiyo and know generally the order his developments went in.  In the film, plot developments and character developments are given hand in hand.  So while certain fights could happen in any order, the accompanying character development could not.

So for a game, we are giving the player both plot development and character development.  Without completely separating plot and characterization, how can events be presented in any order and still allow for character growth?

I can see how non-linear can work for a static character, i.e. each event shows another facet of who he is.  However, this character isn't changing at all.  Can a non-linear game effectively show a character changing over the course of a story?

[StripeyWhale]

One thing which might help a little is to interweave the plot and character sections more closely. In other words, you could thread snippets of character-based dialogue into convenient openings in the plot sections. Again, you'd have to be careful that ALL possible conversations would work in these openings (you probably don't want, for example, a breezy bit of banter about pop music in the middle of a shootout).

You could even go a step further and play with the structure of individual sentences to give some sense of a developing relationship. Imagine a snippet of dialogue like this:

"Hey [X], come over here and look at this corpse I've found!"

If you had a 'buddy scale' from 1 to 5, [X] could vary as follows:

1 - moron
2 - dimwit
3 - kid
4 - pal
5 - darling

The variable [X] could crop up in as many sentences as you wanted. Perhaps a second variable would use a slightly different list in the same sort of situations to give variety. A third variable might add the word 'thanks' to certain sentences at buddy level 3 or above. And so on. Again, you'd have to check carefully that all possibilities would make sense in the context.

The cooperative campaign in Splinter Cell: Conviction actually did something kind of like this.  (The two operatives start out resenting being forced to work together and over the course of their missions slowly become friends.)  The developers had this reflected in the contextual dialogue.  So if your character got downed and your partner revived you, early in the game he would say something like "Back on your feet, princess," while later in the game he would genuinely ask if you were alright.  Of course, this is super rudimentary compared to what you're talking about, and the game was completely linear, so the parallels are limited.  Also, it didn't really reflect plot developments at all.  So maybe this wasn't as similar as I was thinking...

[pluckyporcupine]

Okay, I think I'm a little late to the discussion, but ummm...what?

You can't read a book out of order. That doesn't make sense. If you read the middle before the beginning, the impact of the middle won't be as great because you have no idea what happened before then. If you read the end before the middle, the end won't make any sense, or you'll be completely detached, so even if you read the middle later, then it still won't have such a great impact.

Books are written to be read in the order they're laid out in. There's no reading back to front, or middle to front to back. You have to read it in order. It's linear. There is no alternative.

If you make a non-linear game, you have to make sure that everything is time-independent of the rest of the story. It's absolutely crucial that any elements that must be played out in a specific order are played out in that order. A lot of the impact of an event can be shot just from the player/reader/what-have-you having any sort of detachment from the story.

For example, say there are these events (excuse the lameness of it):

1. Your village gets attacked, your father is badly injured.
2. Your father dies and passes on the job of protectorate to you.
3. There's a drought.
4. A stampede of wildebeests charges through your village.

Let's say that the drought is triggered by dishonoring one of your village's gods, and the stampede is from pissing off some nearby wildlife. You could do it in any of the following orders:

1,2,3,4
1,2,4,3
3,4,1,2
4,1,2,3

It doesn't matter. The drought and the stampede are totally time independent because they don't have any other events linked to them that require attention. The player could trigger them at any time that they're not currently involved in a major event. HOWEVER, since your father dies in one of the other events, and is injured in another, you can't put those out of order.

This may seem a bit obvious, but I felt a need to reiterate after that ridiculous book analogy.

Then again, reading back over in the topic summary, it seems like I'm saying a lot of what you've said yourself, just differently.

In the end, though, non-linear simply means that there is a bank of events, and based on how the player plays the game, it can be played out in any logical order. Making sure that the logical order actually makes sense in relation to the plot/characters is up to the game designer.

Also keep in mind that, like said above, you'll often see a mix of linear and non-linear segments, depending on what is the best approach.

[StripeyWhale]

In the end, though, non-linear simply means that there is a bank of events, and based on how the player plays the game, it can be played out in any logical order. Making sure that the logical order actually makes sense in relation to the plot/characters is up to the game designer.

Also keep in mind that, like said above, you'll often see a mix of linear and non-linear segments, depending on what is the best approach.

The problem I see isn't with plot but with characterization.

It is conceivable to create plot events that can take place in any order and still further the plot (investigate X murders, find X dungeons, etc).  However, I don't see any way to keep coherent character growth while doing it.

For instance, the way a character is going to react to a Wildebeest stampede is going to be different depending on where he is as a person.  It may not matter to the plot whether or not his father is dead, or whether or not the character has made peace with it, but it will radically effect his characterization.  In order for events to be played out in any order, they'd have to ignore where the character is in his own internal journey.

Let's say the character starts out as a selfish, immature jerk and ends having matured into a self-sacrificing penitent because of his father's death.  There's going to be a lot of stages to that.  First he's a jackass, then he's filled with guilt, he's angry with himself but takes it out on others, he externalizes conflict rather than confront himself and becomes consumed with revenge, he realizes that petty vengeance can accomplish nothing because the one he really hates is himself, he becomes increasingly self destructive in a misguided attempt to punish himself, he realizes that he cannot escape or destroy guilt but will carry it his entire life, finally he recognizes that all of his actions have been self-centered and for the first time acts for someone outside of himself.

Depending on what stage he's in as a character, he would react to the Wildebeest stampede completely differently.  I'm not talking about plot decisions - he could make the same plot decision every time. Let's say for story reasons you have to kill all the Wildebeests before they destroy the village.  Outcome is always the same, but the stage the character is in dramatically effects how he acts.  Is he still a selfish jerk unchastened by tragedy?  Is he consumed with guilt?  Is he filled with vengeance?  Is he seeking self destruction?  His progression as a human being effects every line of dialogue, every gesture, every mannerism.

An event may be able to happen in any order without effecting the plot, but it will always be affected by the state of the character.  I can't think of any elegant solution.  In a story that wants to have both non-linear events and character development, plot events would either have to be completely devoid of characterization or the writer would have to create new dialogue for each event in every single possible stage of the character's arc.  Is there some other, more feasible way out of this?

[pluckyporcupine]

That is entirely true. And it's a problem that may not be easy to solve. One thing you'll notice is that nearly all games with non-linear storytelling either are light on story (the original Zelda game which was mentioned earlier) or are RPGs with characters the players create, as to let the player decide what kind of person he's going to be.

Yet another problem to look out for, especially in the case of the latter, is the poorly designed game where you spend your entire time being a good guy only to find an event where it's nearly impossible to come out being the good guy.

EDIT: Creating dialogue for each and every situation would require creating a new way for the event to play out in each situation. Depending on how many branches you have, by the end of it, you could be recreating each event upwards of 20 times, meaning for each event you'd actually be creating 20-ish separate events. And in a non-linear game where each event is completely time-independent, this could mean EVERY event being turned into 20 events, which is not elegant in the slightest.

[StripeyWhale]

Yeah, it would be pretty much unfeasible unless you have an insanely ambitious writer.  I just can't see an elegant way to have both non-linearity and serious character growth.  Any body else have any ideas?

[Lynx]

You might find this interesting:

Storytron

TL;DR: Chris Crawford has been laboring on his personal hobby-horse, developing software that is capable of 'interactive storytelling', for a long time.  While he calls his efforts a failure, you might find some interesting notions in his papers on the subject.

Instead of rendering plots as scripted events, you have NPCs with goals and verbs they can use to achieve these goals.  You still need to setup the world and various stages where interesting things can happen, but now you don't have to worry that the player might do something you didn't think of; you can view the game plot as just another kind of physics.

Another tack you might try is to throw the natural language processing problem overboard.  Instead of trying to write the same scene 20 times, depending on the player's character progression, you could have characters speak with each other through icons in speech bubbles a la the Sims.

The problem is that you'd now be trying to write a limited form of AI, so you'd better be prepared for that...

[pluckyporcupine]

Storytron

I totally forgot about that! I tried the system in its previous form. To quote Chris himself, "We built a rocket ship with so many buttons and dials that everybody who tried to fly it crashed."

I had just learned about it and was starting to learn the interface when news of the changes came. It was complicated, but not impossible by any means...and there's a whole wiki dedicated to it which does a damn good job of explaining it.

Anyways, they're developing a new version that'll be much simpler, which was supposed to start crunch-time this past spring.

I do hope the previous incarnation gets to at least live on unsupported, though. It was complicated, but man, it bled untapped potential, waiting for the right people to take a stab at it.