Last week the big announcement from Blizzard was that Starcraft 2 will be split up into three different games, one for each side with the terrans coming first. A lot of different thoughts rushed through my mind. The main one being that after this Blizzard is going to be effing rich. The main reason according to them for this decision is that they wanted to tell a deep well thought out story which couldn’t be done with the standard 10 missions per side for most RTS titles. However my main concern is how they are going to develop a great story for a genre that isn’t known for its storytelling.
In the past Blizzard’s RTS titles have had great stories compared to other RTS games; however that isn’t saying much for stories in general. The main problem in my opinion about story telling in RTS titles is that it’s very hard to personify the player into the game world. There are two ways the player is place into the world, first being through the main character. In the Warcraft series the player takes on the role as the main character (or hero unit) and sees the story through their eyes. The problem is that then the player is more or less a tourist in the world with no interaction. The other way which is more popular is the nameless faceless commander of the army. There are too many examples to go into detail with, I’ll go with the Command and Conquer series as it was great having Billy Dee Williams ordering me to fight aliens. The problems with this are that once again the player has little or no interaction with the plot. For being a commander you can’t dictate where the next battle is going to take place. More importantly, one lost even if it’s in a supposedly impossible fight means that you lose the war. Haven’t these game designers heard the phrase “you might have won the battle, but not the war”? So what can we do to get around these two issues?
First we need more open ended RTS titles, similar to Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War and its various expansions, hopefully we’ve reached a point technology wise to allow us to create random maps which have all the detail and such of a premade map. Most missions in a RTS campaign are either more puzzle like (complete the map with a limited amount of units) or a skirmish against the AI, both dealing with a conflict with the AI. Either way failing one mission should not mean game over, perhaps going the way of territories and capitals. The enemy is not considered “defeated” until you take out their capital, and this works both ways for you and the AI. The other idea which is going to piss off a lot of strategy fans is to have a RTS title with no multi player component.
Before the Starcraft fans come after me, hear me out. The concept of “balance” is different when we’re talking about a single player experience vs a multi player one. In a multi player game sides must be either equal in the way that everyone has access to the same units and abilities. Or that they are asymmetrical (for ex: look at Starcraft). The problem with these two concepts for balance is that it makes it very hard to create interesting sides. Imagine playing as a side that does not need any resources; units are created over time, in a multi player setting that would be hard to balance, but in a single player not so much. If we remove multi player balance from the design, then we could create true “rebel vs empire” fights between two different forces. In my story based RTS idea, each conflict deals with completely different sides, which would never be possible if we were balancing sides for a multi player experience.
Some of the best story telling in games takes place in a single player experience, whether it’s a story from a designer or a well thought out AAR. I believe to have a developed story line a RTS title we’ll need to have a title that is single player only.
Josh
