Files As A Storytelling Technique

Could also be called "the Resident Evil approach to developing the plot."

This is a feature I found in, as I said, RE games, but also other games by Capcom such as the RE-inspired Dino Crisis and Onimusha. Now, regardless of...dubious writing quality in the cutscenes of these games, the files tend to be the most lamented element of the game's stories on on places like SomethingAwful. Having a document that explains backstory or other important things tends to be looked down upon as a very lazy and bad way of developing your narrative.

I guess I can see this but I never had a problem with it and was baffled to find so many people think this is so terrible. It got me thinking though about FinaL Fantasy XIII's Datalog or Xenosaga's Database or Star Ocean's Dictionary.

And so:

1. Do you think files in the RE style are poor ways of telling a story?

2. What is your opinion of in-game encyclopedias that contain critical plot info that you might not know of if you did not read them?

I haven't played more than five minutes of Resident Evil so I can't comment on that.

FFXIII isn't an example of this done well. I liked the emails in the first Assassin's Creed and the letters and images in the glyph puzzles in the Assassin's Creed titles that came after.

Context is the main thing here. If done right finding bits and pieces of text is a great way of letting the player puzzle a story together. Just giving it straight up in a menu is definitely lame as it sparks little interest for the player.

"Finding" is key here. If you find a piece of paper next to a bloodstain on the wall, on a corpse, or something else relevant to the content of the paper, yes that is awesome. Bioshock comes to mind.

Dark Souls does the same thing but even more minimalistic. Finding certain armor sets on corpses or in treasure chests in specific locations makes you link the environment to the character in question and lets you figure out what happened exactly. I LOVE IT

I think all of this comes down to context. In RE you are generally very alone and in the dark so finding the torn pages of a diary makes sense. On top of that the key plot details are never in there and it is about flavor text or expanding on the story. They are nice but you don't need to read them to understand what is going on. To write characters that explain these things would feel more contrived than the setting would lend itself to.

FFXIII on the other hand is just bad writing. So much stuff is tucked away instead of having one of the many characters explain what is going on. This is suppose to be an epic RPG quest and instead of towns with NPCs that you interact with a mysterious data log gets filled up with information that you don't ever gather on your own. You never run across a library and gain entries for the History of Cocoon. The game just up and decides, this is now kind of maybe relevant.

Xenosaga III on the other hand is a bit dicey. The datalog is nice because this is the 3rd entry in a series that has a building story so being able to get filled in on character motivations that have been previous established is nice without having the bog down the narrative and revisit/redo all of what took two games to accomplish. On the other hand there is plenty of stuff in there that isn't just backstory and the game thus far. In a perfect world, they would have been able to tell the story through more locations and characters and everything that is established but they were clearly running out of money.

I think this is more along the right track for a datalog. Backstory/Character stuff from previous entries and entries for books and notes that you find. Those books and notes could be a diary or explaining how to dismantle and assemble a Glock 17...but you should have to find these.

I originally read this as 'flies as a storytelling technique'.

I thought Resident Evil did this very well. I enjoyed finding files and people journals to read through as I explored the mansion. Haven't seen it done much outside of RE and Dino Crisis. If the journal in the pause menu of Mass Effect can count I don't really care for those if it's not something you find while playing through the game.

As others have said, FFXIII does this terribly. However I like how in games like The Last of Us, you can find extra plot elements in letters or notes you find. As long as the main plot is understandable without the extra notes, it should be ok, but the plot should never rely on them. :tied:

Unless you do this effectively, hidden notes and files are best saved for extra material. Don't have your main plot only understandable through copious amounts of reading. People play video games instead of reading a book because they want some level of interactivity. But I love the added experience of finding out WHY and HOW and what else has gone on. And like Pete says, Dark Souls is great in a really minimalist kind of way, but that doesn't work for every person or every game, so you've gotta be careful.

Yeah, Xenosaga was both handled their datalog setup wonderfully and horribly.

It was great for keeping track of the previous games plots, since it's an ongoing story, and detailing all the terminology.

It was kind of bad cause there was some important plot stuffs, like this not being the universes first recurrence, can only be found there. Mind you, the story makes sense not knowing that, but there is definately something missing with that tidbit not being brought up. That was kind of the big thing with that, is while the story is pretty complete, there was a bit too much that added to it that could have been included in the writing itself.

I will, however, add in I like KH's Ansem Reports. :p