作者：Leigh Alexander

许多玩家渴望在游戏中引入更多的原创故事情节——直到他们遇到一个不甚满意的结果。这对关注优秀叙事情节的开发者来说是一大挑战，这同时引发了一个重要问题：精彩的故事情节同玩家解决问题及获胜的渴望存在矛盾吗？

虽然这类游戏被视为小众市场，但人们对传统指向点击冒险游戏的需求仍然存在。这类群体可以选择独立工作室Wadjet Eye Games（游戏邦注：代表作包括《Emerald City Confidential》和《Blackwell》等故事导向型解谜游戏）的作品，这家公司以解谜题材著称，尤其注重叙事与配音方面的内容。

最近，Wadjet Eye Games与XII Games合作开发了《Resonance》，这款游戏讲述的是在神秘的技术灾难后，一位逝去的物理学家留下了大笔的遗产，而一家影子公司步步紧逼威胁着这笔财产。游戏以四个不同的主人公展开——科学家、护士、警察和记者。玩家可以任意变换四种角色，解决团队中的谜题。

resonance(from gamasutra)

多角色玩法也是游戏故事中一大重要工具，因为玩家常常不了解每个角色的真正动机。随着故事发展到高潮，玩家常会怀疑谁才是正义的一方——这时他们就要开始猜测到底什么才是正义。

保持平衡

首先，指向点击故事游戏的一大挑战在于让谜题与故事情节相平衡很困难。这些游戏时常出现一些极令人受挫的进程（例如含有高度困难的障碍或不直观的解决方案）仍是人们对其挥之不去的印象，尽管有些情况已经是十多年前的事情了。

与此同时，玩家并不希望感觉自己像是被开发者使唤着在各个情节点之间做一些显而易见的任务。但是，《Resonance》却以丰富而且迷人的谜题解保持了这种平衡——这让玩家乐于投入精力在快速进展的游戏活动中找出真相。

已故的医生实际上在调查什么？那个似乎消失在三扇以罗马数字编号的大门背后的神秘人物是谁？如何欺骗精心设计的安全系统，打开万恶的数据库呢？《Resonance》中穿插着真实的感觉以及紧迫的节奏感，这些元素恰好吸引了玩家的注意力。

游戏以四个角色中的每一者都知道其他人所不知道的某些事情这个前提，支撑着角色使用自己长期记忆中的事件引发讨论的游戏机制；同时，他们也能通过储存短时记忆，周围环境中物体的图像，过后对其它玩家进行询问。

这款游戏部分强调了信息处理能力以及回忆过去的重要性，这是一种有趣的融合。

游戏根据玩家对更大的风险以及敌人动机的了解情况，可能会出现两种结局。但这里不便剧透具体结局，只能透露这两种结局都不美满。其一为“两个烂苹果中择其轻者”的结局，但这两种结局均为我们喜爱并支持的角色为了胜利而付出了惨痛的代价。

而且，游戏为玩家提供了许多工具（游戏邦注：甚至允许他们根据自己的安排顺序阅读游戏的说明内容），这为完成《Resonance》降低了难度。那么现在我们已获得所有信息，我们能够重新开始关卡，阻止那些我们在第一次面对时无法阻止的灾难。如果现在你拒绝遵循将引向邪恶境地的指示会发生什么情况？或是你会作出不同的选择？如果你让不同的角色在重要时刻担负领导责任，或者尝试更早进行一次关键对话，那么结果会发生变化吗？

对于经历过游戏中所有必要问题的玩家而言，这些都是自然而然的问题（但仍有人被告知还有些问题尚未解决）。当然，如果我们的兴趣点在于复杂的故事情节，这显然意味着并不总会遇到美好的结局。这可能会是一个发人深省的结局，或以悲剧收尾的结局，但拒绝让玩家完成所有可能的英雄式任务则是一个有效的叙事选择。

情感的影响

在过去，游戏对于无法通关的玩家，无法照顾其它角色的玩家，躲避重要故事情节的玩家，总会报以他们“糟糕”、不幸或者令人不满的结局。上一代游戏——尤其是日本的恐怖游戏，通常会根据微妙的元素（游戏邦注：比如玩家承受了多少伤害，或者他们消耗了多少物资）来决定不同的结局。

开发者常常通过矛盾的结局悄悄告知玩家需重新进行尝试。由于玩家想在所有可行的挑战中取胜，他们渴望协调混乱，解决问题，所以，他们总会不断尝试，直到找出如何达到他们理想中最佳情境的方法。

打击玩家的希望会产生情感影响。日本RPG粉丝会永远记住没有办法拯救Aeris，虽然今天互联网上仍在流传某些可解救Aeris的秘密攻略。如果没有悲剧情节，《Shadow of the Colossus》也就不会这样令世人难忘。

寂静岭(from yumestate.com)

当《寂静岭2》主人公最后到达旅馆，准备与他那据称已故的妻子Mary重逢时，游戏开发者知道玩家将会冲到3楼，那是Mary答应等他的地方——但游戏却故意阻挡了这条最便捷的通道。玩家会听到从上锁的大门内发出的喋喋不休的声音，而Mary的呼唤声从大厅深处传来，整个游戏中几乎没有比这更令人印象深刻的一幕了。

知道如何以及何时否定玩家能力的游戏会让人永久难忘，悲伤的故事与美好的结局在游戏中同处重要地位。然而，当结局让我们觉得不可能取胜时，我们这些口口声声说着重视故事情节的玩家会感到非常郁闷。

关于让粉丝生气的最明显例子当数《质量效应3》引发的争议，当BioWare同意发行不同结局的版本时，粉丝的怒气才得以稍稍平息。优秀的故事情节会促使玩家关注此角色——并且也会让他们产生不愿接受你为他们安排的命运之感。

那是否意味着对精彩故事感兴趣的开发者应该确保玩家掌握拯救世界的方法，即使这存在难度？完全没有必要，但是这不禁让我们思考，结局是否会影响玩家对整个游戏体验的满意度。

也就是几年前，商业趋势逐渐减少对结局的关注。许多更大型的工作室研究指出，极少有玩家会真正完成游戏，因此，游戏的过程比结局更重要。但我仍然相信，以故事为主的游戏会重新问世，因为玩家喜欢全新的经典形式的回归。

明智的游戏设计师和作家会继续努力，解决制作优秀悲剧或复杂结局存在的问题，同时又不会让玩家觉得自己是被迫输掉游戏。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Sad ending: Is good storytelling at odds with ‘winning’?

By Leigh Alexander

Many players crave more authorship and storytelling in games — until they get an ending they don’t like. That’s a challenge for developers focused on strong narratives, and it raises an important question: Is a well-spun tale at odds with the player’s natural desire to solve problems and win?

Though it’s considered niche, the market for traditional point-and-click adventure games remains vocal and patient. For those folks, there’s Wadjet Eye Games, indie label for story-driven puzzlers like Emerald City Confidential and the Blackwell games, among others. The company’s known to carry a torch for the genre, and focuses particular effort on writing and voice acting.

Most recently, the company teamed with XII Games on Resonance, an adventure about a mysterious technology disaster, the legacy of a dead physicist and the looming threat of a shadowy corporation.

The game unfolds through the perspective of four protagonists — a scientist, a nurse, a police officer and a journalist — and the player is eventually free to switch among them (think Day of the Tentacle) to solve puzzles in teams.

The multiple-character gameplay is also an important tool for the game’s storytelling, as the player’s information about each character’s true motives is often intentionally obscured. As the story builds to its climax, it’s often easy to wonder who’s really on the right side — and that’s when one can guess at what the “right” side really is.

A careful balance

One challenge for point-and-click stories is that the difficulty of the puzzles needs to be carefully balanced against the story. The times when these games have needlessly frustrated progress with a disproportionately-complicated obstacle or unintuitive solutions remain legendary tales, perennially-ripe, even though in some cases it’s been a decade or more since.

Meanwhile, neither do players like to be made to feel like they’re being sent on obvious errands just because the developer wants them to have something to do between one plot point and the next.

But Resonance generally manages this balance well with puzzles that are meaty, engaging and feel worth persisting at — and this is largely because players are invested in finding out the true story within the game’s fast-paced events.

What was the late doctor’s research really about? Who is the intriguing man seen disappearing behind one of three Roman-numbered doors? How to fool elaborate security systems and unravel sinister databases? There’s a sense of genuine and well-paced urgency throughout Resonance that admirably commands the player’s attention.

And the promise that each of the four characters knows something the others don’t buoys the game mechanic whereby characters use events in their long-term memories to trigger discussions; they can also store short-term memories, images of objects in their environment, to ask other characters about later. In a game that’s partially about the terrible power of information and the importance of memories past, this is a fun twist.

Based on what players learn about the larger stakes and the motivations of the enemy, there are two possible endings, a degree of agency that feels appropriate for the story. Without spoiling specifics, though, neither ending is particularly happy. One, called the “lesser of two evils” ending, has the glimmer of a silver lining, but in both cases the characters we’ve come to like and root for experience Pyrrhic victories.

And the game affords players so much agency (even allowing them to experience the game’s expository chapters in any order they like), that it’s easy to finish Resonance, and conclude that now that we’ve got all the information, we should be able to go back and prevent some of the disasters we didn’t have the clarity to prevent when we first encountered them. What would have happened if you declined to follow a certain instruction now revealed to have been sinister, or had you made a different choice? Would the outcome have been different if you’d let a different character take the lead at a crucial juncture, or tried to trigger a key conversation earlier?

These are natural questions for a player who’s done all a game’s requisite problem-solving — but who is still told there are some problems that just aren’t solvable. Of course, that’s the way of the world, and if our interest is in sophisticated storytelling, that clearly means there isn’t always a happy ending. There may be a thought-provoking ending, or a tragic one, but to refuse to allow the player to complete all possible tidy heroics is a valid narrative choice.

Emotional impact

In the history of games, a “bad,” unhappy or unsatisfying ending has been the player’s penalty for failing to be thorough enough, to take enough care of other characters, for avoiding avenues to key story arcs. Past-gen games — particularly horror titles from Japan — would often provide different endings based on subtle elements like how much damage the player sustained or how many supplies they consumed.

Receiving an ambivalent ending has often been a way for the developer to gently let the player know they should go back and give it another try. And because players want to succeed at all the available challenges and scratch that itch for sorting chaos and solving problems, they almost always would, learning their way through the guts of a game until they had figured out how to attain the conditions they felt were optimal.

Frustrating the player’s wishes can be a way to create emotional impact. JRPG fans will always remember there was no way to save Aeris, although cult stories about secret methods to do so persist in some internet corners even today. Shadow of the Colossus wouldn’t be as indelible if there were ways to dodge the sad bits.

When Silent Hill 2′s protagonist at last arrives at the hotel where he’s to rejoin his supposedly-late wife Mary, the game knows the player will charge up to the third floor where she’s said to be waiting — and intentionally blocks off this easiest of avenues. The player will hear the rattle of a locked gate and the sound of her calling from down the hall, and there is hardly a more incredible device in the entire franchise.

Games that know how and when to deny the player power are permanently memorable, and sad stories have as much a place in gaming’s lexicon as happy ones. But when endings make us feel like we can’t win, suddenly those of us that said we cared the most about storytelling are upset.

The clearest example of this kind of fan ire is the Mass Effect 3 controversy, only to be salved by BioWare’s agreeing to release a different conclusion to the expansive trilogy. Good storytelling means your fans get invested in the characters you’ve made — and it also makes them less willing to accept the fate you’ve decided for them and their world.

Does that mean developers interested in good stories have to make sure players have a way to save the world, even if it’s hard? Not necessarily, but it raises important questions about the role an ending plays in one’s overall satisfaction with a game experience.

Just a few years ago, the commercial trend seemed to favor less effort and investment in a game’s ending. Many bigger studios were pointing to studies about how few players actually finish games as evidence of the idea that the journey matters much more than the destination. But I continue to believe we’re in a renaissance for story-driven games, with audience interest in new and classic forms alike quickly ramping up.

Clever game designers and writers will continue seeking smart ways to tackle the problem of creating strong tragedies or complex outcomes without making players feel like they’re being forced to fail.(source:gamasutra)