Story progression in multiple arcs

[cekobico]

Looking at story of most RPG, they tend to pan out, like in the movies. Ten minutes into the game or less, you're introduced to the main plot where you have to do a specific big mission (kill evil guy, stop evil king resurrection, save the world, etc); and throughout the game from start to finish, it would be your main objectives and any kind of plot progression will stay true to that objective. 


Meanwhile, I'm a big fan of Anime and Manga culture and their way of storytelling. They are often divided into multiple arcs and more often than not; what happened in arc 1 is revisited/referenced/influenced arc 2 or even later arcs.


As an example, I will talk about quite a popular franchise, Fairy Tail. Spoilers alert of course.

Spoiler

In the first arc, they introduced the main characters Lucy into the story and she joined the wizard guild, Fairy Tail. Then we have her going on her first mission to rescue the guildmate, Macao. 


In the second arc, she took another mission, gaining a new Summon for her magic, and introducing more characters. 


In the third arc, the 4th protagonist is introduced (Erza Scarlet), with another mission unrelated to the first and second arc. 


In the 4th arc, one of the main character introduced previously, Grey, had his past revealed. The whole arc is about him meeting his fellow pupil from the same mentor who's attempting to resurrect a demon who was sealed by their teacher (which cost her life in the process), aided by his friends of course. 


What happened in the previous arc are again reintroduced to build plot points for later arcs. 


For example, the antagonist of the 3rd arc is reintroduced again in 10th and 15th arc as one of the arc's antagonist group member. Two of the antagonists in 4th arc later become permanent member of FT throughout the rest of the later arc, even as ally members (with prominent screentime too).


The ultimate evil of it all was referenced previously in lore background explanations, but never fully introduced until 13th arc. Not to mention, the history of Natsu (semi-love interest of Lucy, the protagonist who appeared in the first episode, and then further become the "Luffy" of the franchise), is only revealed at the 19th arc, and then further fully explained in the 21st arc. Before that, all we know about him was "he lost his father-dragon when he was a kid" character. 


Even more,...



 





He's related to the ultimate evil of it all. That was one hell of a twist and it took 20 arcs before it is actually revealed. 

I'd stop here to not bore you guys non-FT fans. 



Now, I'm wondering what are your thoughts on this kind of storytelling in an RPG gameplay; where you technically never exactly have one sole purpose in a game, but experience storytelling and character development throughout arcs with different objectives. Do you think this kind of storytelling can fit in an RPG game and still be something you'd be interested to play?


From a developer point of view, this is surely a different take in storytelling than most RPG.
It also eases the burden of development time, imho: 

• Release shorter games. One can conclude 5 arcs, and leave open-ended for future development. More arcs can be developed through DLC or a separate game should major overhaul of the system takes place. 
  
• A more flexible and versatile way of character developments. No longer are you bonded by the cliche of "we are fighting the same evil, thus I joined you", but having party members join you for different reason throughout arcs can allow a more focused character introduction/development. The story could be more character-oriented than plot-oriented. In most cases, you only get to know more about your party members through means of sidequest. Prominent example would be Persona 4 where you get to know half of the character background in the main story progression, but what happens to their developments are resolved through sidequest (known as Social Links). 
  
• One database for all! (or not). You save up your development time because you can reuse the database without breaking immersion for future arcs in sequels. I know this can be seen as developer's laziness, but when you're doing a one-man-show game development and you are more of a storyteller than game developer, this can definitely ease your burden. 
  

So what are your thoughts on this? 

 

[watermark]

Story arcs aren't necessarily limited to manga and anime. It's really more of a TV episode mentality. 


Still you bring up an interesting point in what if people designed rpgs more like TV episodes. Sure I think this can be done. The game series can be designed with several 1 hour playtime episodes bound together into a "season" of a game. Each game season can cover a major storyarc with future seasons referring to plot in previous seasons. This model doesn't necessarily make a story more character driven or less cliche. It's simply another way to tell the story. One company that employs such a model is TellTale Games.


The technical issue here is how to successfully port game saves into the next episode. Which might be a problem depending on the plug-ins and code used.

 

[Niten Ichi Ryu]

you seem to have a very stereotypical view of RPGs. Maybe you didnt play good ones. Imho, all bound together to defeat evil is very anime trope too.


If you take the classic final fantasy recipe, you notice that it can be decomposed in small arcs too. RPG usually needs to be long and immersive, so the story must be defined rather clearly as the game is released in one go.


Anime and Manga follow an episodic release scheme, and often adapts their stories as they go along. In an RPG, you cannot retcon, or develop characters that become more popular than you expected. That leads to incoherences too often. Take Naruto, which has a lot of arcs to say the least. First Arc, Naruto is a little guy left to grow up for himself.


Later after lots if arcs, we learn that he is the son of the Fourth, which despite having the kyubi makes him kinda konoha royalty, so his treatment as a child makes kinda no sense.


I'm sorry but I must disagree, following an arc structure is not new or unseen in rpgs or will prevent your game to have cliche, not even will it guarantee better character development.


if you really are a story teller more than a dev, you don't need such artifices to make a compelling story.


every story actually follow a development by arcs, since end of times. Anime hasn't invented anything.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth

 

[cekobico]

@watermark AH yeah; I don't watch a lot of TV-series so it didn't came across my mind to reference that but my point is still the same. I noticed TellTale titles are also derivations from TV-series so I'm not surprised that they have taken this approach. 


@Niten Ichi Ryu Perhaps! lol 


I haven't really played any games where the 'the final goal of the game is developed from the beginning of the game' aspect didn't exist. 


For example,...

Spoiler

• In FFX, it was made clear from the beginning, that your objective in the finale is to defeat Sin. 
  
• In FFX-2, it was made clear from the beginning, that your objective is to find the 'Tidus/Shuyin' in the first sphere Rikku found. 
  
• In Lunar: Silver Star Story, it was made clear from the beginning, that your objective is to be Dragonmaster and find all the 4 dragons. 
  
• In Star Ocean 3, it was made clear from the beginning, that your objective is to uncover what was your parents were researching (about the Time Gate, revealed mid-game). 
  

Maybe yes, my knowledge in popular RPG is somewhat limited. Therefore, please educate me in some games that deviate from this approach
Regarding to your article about monomyth, yes it seems that most games that I've ever played follow this route of storytelling. 


I really haven't seen a lot of games that divide ONE title, into multiple arcs within it, and I wonder how it might affect the game experience from storytelling point-of-view. 

 

[Niten Ichi Ryu]

Telltales follows this because they release episodic games. If you want to release short episodic games, why not but that will not be a novelty.


Seems you misunderstood what I meant by linking the Monomyth.


It's not that every game follows it, but every story follows it. when I read your resume Of Fairy tail, I could see that every arc follows in some way the Monomyth: Status quo> events that change the status quo> heroic journey> meeting characters that follows the archetypes on the journey > resolution of the conflict that broke the status quo> evolution of the involved Characters.


Regarding FFX, yes we may think that the end goal is defeat Sin, but In truth, the main goal is to save Yuna, which we didnt heard about in the first 10 minutes. If the goal was simply to defeat Sin, we would let Yuna sacrifice.


Now you ask me to educate you...(sounded sarcastic, no?) but it's not a matter of educating about game, it's about simply thinking in terms of story structure.


Each Arc you described of Fairy Tale could be a different game, so in what way does it differs from the FFXII series, or the Suikoden Series, where each game would be a different Arc of the same story.


And even big immersive games follows an Arc structure, for example I will roughly detail FF7 (Spoilers inside for those who never played it)

Spoiler

FF7 Arc 1:


Cloud strife, a mercenary joins the terrorist group avalanche and meets Barret and Tifa. We realize that Tifa is a childhood friend of Cloud (but it is not developed further until later).


He also meets Aerith Gainsborough, a mysterious Young woman that seems to interest Shinra group.


The Big Bad of this arc is the Shinra group, as their operations endanger the planet and they destroy sector 7 without remorse.


At the end of the Arc, Avalanche Infiltrate Shinra Tower, discover hints about an alien specimen called Jenova,  free Red XII (new Character, that will have his development later on) and learns that Aerith is the last member of the Cetra, yet they get captured.


The End of the Arc sees everyone strangely freed from jail, people murdered in Shinra tower and the Jenova specimen disappeared. They are rumors regarding the reappearance of Legendary SOLDIER Sephiroth (did you really got that he was the bad guy in the first 10 minutes? You impress me as he wasn’t even mentioned in the first 10 minutes)


Arc 2:


Rufus Shinra is introduced and takes over Shinra Company, and the party of heroes leaves Midgard to pursue Sephiroth.


We are introduced to new characters Caith Sith, Cid, Vincent and Yufie, who all have their backstory developed trough side quests and side elements. The story develop around characters until they reach the Cetra Templ, where what we all know happens to Aerith , and we learn more about Sephiroth origins as well as what really happened to Nibelheim years before.


This arc end with the confrontation at Northern crater, the apparition of the Weapons, summoning of Meteor, capture of the heroes, and disappearance of Cloud


Arc 3:


This arc begins with the escape of the team with the Airship, the rediscovery of Cloud in the hospital, the truth about his memories and Zack, and the party finally being able to go through all the optional endgame content before being able to go and finally clash against Sephirothto end the Arc and the game.

 

[cekobico]

Ah, I see your point now. Yeah, when you put it like that, it's easier for me to see that they too follow the same 'arc' pattern that I was going on about in my first post. 


I guess the transition in-between arc in Anime, felt more 'separated', than how games did it with almost seamless transition. 

 

[Frogboy]

The old Goldbox D&D games from the 80's were episodic. You could start each game fresh and create new characters but the coolest feature was that you could create a party, play through the game and then start the next game with your same party.


In order to pull this off, you'd need to plan each episode around a certain level range. Maybe each story arc is designed to take you through 5-10 levels. The big trick would be transferring save game data from one game to another.


I like this format and the advantages that it presents. One of the reasons that RPGs often fall into the "save the world" trope is because they are telling an epic story from start to finish. Small games can have smaller, more focus goals but options can get more limited as the scope of the story and the power of the characters increase. Eventually, it always seems to lead to the fate of the world under threat.

 

[Niten Ichi Ryu]

I guess the transition in-between arc in Anime, felt more 'separated', than how games did it with almost seamless transition. 

That's also because Anime follows also a distribution by season, usually having one big story Arc per season, like for TV entertainment. You may have some continuity, even Cliffhangers, but they also need to bring a sense of closure.

 

[ShadowHawkDragon]

Some games do use this narrative style (usually JRPGs), generally they follow a number of short scenarios which heavily focus on characterisation, often not even introducing the main villain until late game.


I'm actually in the middle of playing legend of heroes: trails of cold steel and it is very 'episodic'. The game is about a group of military-academy students and is told in several chapters.


The first half/third of each chapter shows a brief glimpse of their school life/activities while the second part takes place at a new location as they venture 'out to the real world' for their field studies. These field studies each focus a different party-member(s) and their background, climaxing with a major event.


Overall the chapters have mostly been seperate arcs (one in a town being pressured into increased taxes, another involving a false arrest and breakout) and have only been shown hints at underlying issues and of strings being pulled from behind the scenes.



Disgaea, Atelier (name), Mana Khemia, Resonance of Fate, these are all episodic games told in chapters which involve unrelated events that expand on the characters/world and only the later chapters draw in on the over-arcing finale.