More Like Helgone I wrote in the previous entry that Skyrim's Main Quest does have moments of good writing. Those who have played the game over and over again may surprised to hear I think the introduction is one of them. The player starts the game as a prisoner of the Empire on their way to a public execution in the town of Helgen. They learn a little about the rebellion tearing Skyrim apart, as well as the religious conflict that started this whole mess. The Imperials are so callous and exhausted that one of their captains dispenses with due process and sentences the player to death. Then a dragon shows up and sets Helgen on fire. You flee into the caverns beneath the city with one of two companions before you escape and get your first taste of the open world. We're keeping the intro as is--the cart ride, the dragon showing up, spelunking with your friend of choice, etc. Perhaps we should start the game with a prettier vista that better showcases Skyrim's fantastic world design, but we're keeping everything else. Even the player's choice to escape with Hadvar, an Imperial officer, makes some sense. He's decent toward you despite your status as a convict and drops his grudges toward the rebels once the dragon shows up. Hadvar even considers teaming up with a group of Stormcloaks to escape the city. I know many people find the introduction boring, but I think it manages to deliver a lot of necessary exposition and set up a number of interesting questions without being ham-handed. The introduction provides some good characterization for both the Imperials and the Stormcloaks. It even introduces Alduin in a cinematic cutscene that looks natural in the Gamebryo Engine (which doesn't last, but we'll get there.) Part of the reason I think the introduction gets a lot of criticism is because of everything that comes after it. Once you've done a few quests and start to realize the main plot is going nowhere, it becomes much harder to enjoy. You know many of the various aspects of the world the game is introducing will have no interesting payoffs. Once the player loses trust that the story will be worthwhile, the otherwise forgivable limitations of the game's storytelling--the awkward voice acting, the limited number of NPCS, the stiff facial animation--become more irritating than they usually are. Defining the Dragonborn The player eventually meets up with their chosen companion in the small town of Riverwood. They meet one of the townsfolk (either Alvor or Gerdur, based on your choice in the intro) and explain what happened at Helgen. Before we go on, we need to talk about self-inserts. From this point I will be referring to the player themselves as separate from the player character, who I will call the Dragonborn. I've heard the assertion that blank slate protagonists in games are outdated and that main characters entirely separate from the player are inherently better at conveying characterization. While this may be true for some games, its not a universal rule. Having a main character who is their own person allows for a more complex protagonist, but that complexity is not always necessary for a functional story. Both Gordon Freeman and Chell (from the Half Life and Portal games respectively) have received critical acclaim despite having no real character traits separate from those of the player. If Fallout 4's botched attempt at a voiced protagonist is anything to go by, its that simple characterization is much better than inconsistent characterization. So what's the difference between a compelling blank-slate protagonist and a bland one? What separates Gordon Freeman from the Dragonborn? Gordon is one of the most active characters in Half-Life's story. The player's drive to survive and escape--and by extension Gordon's--is what pushes the plot forward. Gordon never has his long-term goals set by an NPC, and so the story never imposes itself on the player. While other characters inform Gordon's actions, he is never defined by them. And so we come to one of the biggest problems with Skyrim's story: the Dragonborn is a very passive character. Upon encountering the Dragonborn, most of the questgivers in the main plot either already have a plan to deal with the dragon threat or develop one on the spot. They then dump the specifics on the Dragonborn. This is entirely backwards. Writing questgivers this way manages to create two problems that seem contradictory on the surface, but are actually related. It both prevents the Dragonborn from expressing any defined personality and destroys any pretense of player agency. We need to bring the motivations of the Dragonborn and the player closer together. The Dragonborn needs to be the most active main character in stopping the dragons, making plans and pushing the major players of the world to action, rather than act as a cipher the other characters can conveniently assign their chores to. This will be the Dragonborn's defining personality trait, one which should ideally bring their motivation more in line with the player. This leads to our first major dialogue change. When Alvor/Gerdur says the town may be in danger from a dragon attack, the player will be given a dialogue option, asking if there is anything they can do to help. Only then does Alvor/Gerdur mention that the Jarl of Whiterun may be willing to assist in defending the town. They player also has the option to dismiss their concern and excuse themselves from the conversation. This seems like a small change, but its sets an important precedent: When the player reaches a new major questgiver in the narrative, they receive the choice to either press the plot forward or wait until they're ready to come back to it. There will be exceptions for certain moments in the story, but this principle will apply to most of the characters in the main quest. This is how we can give the Dragonborn their own motivation while having them remain a blank slate. The player is the one choosing to become more invested in the narrative as they see fit. We've laid the groundwork for our more extensive changes, which we'll examine in my next post. Next Up: Whiterun, Jarl Balgruuf, and the Civil War Everyone Forgot
Skyrim sits in a weird place for me. It's both one of the best RPGs ever made and a criminally wasted opportunity. The contradiction creates this itch in my brain that flares up whenever I see anything related to the game. There's so much I love about Skyrim, with its expertly crafted exploration and loot cycle, that it's frustrating to see how Bethesda constantly shoots itself in the foot with its main quest design. The game's story forces a ton of characters and worldbuilding down the player's throat, much of it hard to care about. It feels drawn out and often undermines the player's illusion of agency. The narrative is even written in such a way that it clashes with Skyrim's core gameplay loop. I would bet that most fans of the game keep coming back in spite of how the main quest is written, not because of it. I like the main quest on paper. Stories structured around a central mystery fit my tastes perfectly (in this case the return of Alduin and his dragons after a multi-millennia nap). Unfortunately, the answers the game gives are often delivered in the most inept or obnoxious way possible. Most of the major players in it have goals that are a confusing mess, which makes the errands they send the player on feel pointless and arbitrary. This shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with Bethesda's development history--they've shown for a while now that they no longer know how to write narratives for their games. What makes it worse is that there are moments of good writing sprinkled throughout that feel like they belong in a better story, sometimes in unexpected places. I'm going to be writing a couple of blog posts considering ways to improve the main quest. My goal here isn't to dunk on Bethesda--plenty of others have beaten that horse to a moist pulp--or scold the writers for telling the story they did. There are scenes in Skyrim's questline that are effective, and I do have some small hope that the writers at the company will find a consistent narrative voice. This is more of a thought exercise. This rewrite is going to change as little about the story as possible. My goal here is to show what Skyrim's story was trying to be rather than imagine a completely different version of the game. As such, I will stay away from any massive changes to the central story beats, factions, mechanics, and assets. I also won't attempt to force Elder Scrolls lore onto the story to make it more "faithful" to the other games. I also won't touch the Civil War questline, the DLCs, or the Guild quests for now. I may bring them up at certain points, but only so far as they relate to the main quest. My next post will begin the rewrite proper. Up Next: Helgen, Riverwood, and Whiterun
I enjoy some of Overly Sarcastic Production's content, eve if I feel they draw from a very limited pool of fiction from which they cite their tropes--anime, cartoons, Marvel movies, etc. However, I feel their weaknesses cause them to take a simplistic view of fiction, as exemplified by the incredibly naive, shallow view they take of villains in this video: As any experienced writer can tell you, forcing your antagonist into a binary system and making them either a sad, misunderstood anti-hero (ugh) and cartoonishly evil sadists is a great way to encourage innovation in writing and not recycle the same tropes over and over again. In this video, Red fails to account for one of the most basic tenets of human nature--that people always take actions for mixed motivations. Where good intentions end and personal pride or desires for validation begin is often a fine line. Let's take an example of an excellent villain with a complex backstory but a "Pure Evil" mindset--Pagan Min from Far Cry 4. [Spoilers for FC4 below] Spoiler Pagan Min is the dictator of the fictional nation of Kyrat, located somewhere near Nepal. The country has been caught in a bloody civil war between a group of revolutionaries known as the Golden Path and Pagan Min's Loyalist faction. Long story short, Pagan's daughter Lakshmana is murdered by the Loyalists. In his rage and grief, Pagan begins a brutal crackdown on anyone with ties to the Golden Path. Pagan is a absolute monster. During the events of the game years later, he stabs his own soldier to death with a letter opener, tortures the player's guide after inviting him to dinner, and has his body double slaughter a family suspected of harboring Golden Path revolutionaries on a whim. Throughout most of his dialogues with the player, he doesn't mention Lakshmana at all--he talks and jokes with the player casually about his material excesses, such as melting down culturally significant artifacts so he can build a 50-foot gold statue of himself and wondering if he should invite Kanye West to his palace to improve "his image on the world stage. He even laughs about how he forced a humanitarian worker to violate her deepest principles of her profession by taking her family hostage and forcing her to manage a gladiatorial arena where enemies of the state are slaughtered for the people's amusement. The player's character leads the revolutionaries on a final push against the Loyalist forces. The player breaks into the royal palace, with Pagan quietly waiting for them. If the player chooses to spare them. Pagan reflects on Lakshmana and her death, but then says shows a rare moment of self-reflection that speaks volumes about his character and on villains in general: "I killed so many people for [Lakshmana and her mother.] But then I realized--I was only using Lakshmana's death as an excuse to do whatever I wanted to do...G-----n if it isn't fun." (Source) Pagan Min is a callous, irredeemable monster whose proclaimed motives--justice for his daughter--fed into his desire for power and security over others. Where one began and the other ended isn't clear, and somewhere along the way he stopped caring which was which. The game doesn't try to use his backstory as an excuse for his behavior, but to explain how he became a "Pure Evil" villain. I could speak further about Red completely misunderstands Thanos as a villain and how the mindset she propagates leads to the awful trend of "moral ambiguity" in fiction writing, but my main point is this: this video should not be used as the source of advice it was designed to be. Take these videos with a grain of salt.