Story becoming too complex?

[Lord Vectra 414]

This topic, like the others, is for my game, World of Chaos.

 

Can a story be too complex?

 

I'm specifically asking for World of Chaos 8 and up.

 

After the 8th game, the story, sort of, "stacks."

 

Vectra, what do you mean by "stacks"?

As some of you know, my game is separated by generations.

Every 6 game is a generation. The first 5 being about each individual hero, and the 6th being all against the main evil.

 

The afterlife of the 1st generation heroes are apart of the 2nd generation.

 

So what?

Basically, if you didn't play any of the World of Chaos I - VI, then you're learning 10 heroes in 6 games who play a great role in the 2nd generation. Can a story, in a way, have too much depth and information for one to remember? This only happens in Gen 1 and Gen 2 except, in Gen 3, the depth of the story dramatically increases as new stuff is added to the story constantly. Technically, I could've said overlap for a better term but you know what I mean.

 

Like I said, this is mostly a story-driven series but what about a series whose depth keeps dramatically increasing? Would it be good, bad, or does it solely depend on the player?

 

What do you think?

[SEJordan 17]

I don't believe a story can be too complex, but only as long as the story is delivered correctly. I mean, look at all the Horror Games like Fnaf, they have so many theories, and people love it because it's complex and the messages are subtle.

Another example is Until Dawn, you can pick up a shot glass, and lay it in a different spot and BOOM entire storyline changed for better or worse. People also love it because it is subtle and secretive, giving the player a confused yet curious form of gameplay.

 

Now, I'm not saying a non-horror game can't be over-complex either, there are tons! Although I can't name them, why? Well I haven't played any, but if you watched the movie series "Lord of The Rings"I can relate with that. The story is a adventure, it's story is very complex, but it's not horror. So why is it good? It's delivery is spot on that's why.

 

That's all I got to say, anyways point is, Complexity is good, but you have to deliver it correctly.

[Point08 219]

The answer, I think, is determined by the answers to a series of other questions. For example, do you want people to be able to pick up WoC 8 and jump in, even if they haven't played any of the other games? If no, then there is the answer to the original question. If yes, then that leads to some other questions. Do you plan to include an intro that kind of gives a rehash of the story up to that point? Will it be in depth enough to let new players enjoy the game or will they still be pretty lost? Do you plan on having a webpage for your game? If yes, will provide synopsis of the stories for a previous game when the next is released? For example, when WoC 5 comes out, would you consider having a synopsis for each WoC 4 posted somewhere on your site, so for those players who maybe missed a game (or 4) could be filled in if they so desired? You could be just general enough to give people an idea of what's going on, or be really in depth and give profiles on various characters and what not. A large part of that option depends on how much you enjoy doing that sort of thing. You can also count on the community. If your games are played by even a reasonable amount of people, someone will put up a synopsis or something similar on YouTube.

 

I'm sure there are other solutions to a complex story, that I haven't mentioned. Likely, none of them are perfect, but then neither is gutting your story simply to make it easy for people who only experience a small piece of it to easily understand. Think of movies, say the Terminator series, which you really could watch any of them, in any order, and still have a pretty good understanding of what's going on, even though they are in fact a continuation of essentially a single story-line. Now think Lord of the Rings. There were certainly people who watched the movies who didn't know the story from the books, or online, or the old animated film. If you watched the third film without watching the first two, you'd be pretty confused about a lot of what was going on. LOTR is a complex story though, and simplifying it so that people could watch just the third movie, would do it an incredible injustice.

 

Note: SEJordan also mentions LOTR. I typed this out before he had responded, but my laptop battery got low and it saved and shutdown on me before I could post. Not saying that as a "I said it first" comment, more as an explanation for why I mention the exact movie series he did.

[lonequeso 1,921]

I think you're games short enough in length to where that won't really be an issue. You can always throw little references back to past events her and there, too.

If a lot of time passed since one hero  group of heroes existed, later NPCs can mention or retell stories of their achievements. It would also make it feel as if the entire world is progressing with the story. You could also add some some of history book that details the heroes accomplishments. Something like a codex that the player can read at any time.

[+ Chaosian 617]

I'll throw another chip into the pile and say that a story can be extremely complex and still work if the narrative can handle it - but up to a certain point it's complexity can become too much for any reasonable narrative. Metal Gear Solid and The Lord of the Rings are two different series, both with a lot of story, but very different narrative.

The Lord of the Rings, just so happens to have a prequel that we all know, but also some several thousand years of backstory which is populated by endless names that look like they come from a Online Fantasy Name Generator and pages upon pages of backstory for the most useless, insignificant people. And pretty much none of it makes sense. You remember that Shelob the spider from the third movie? Turns out she's pretty much the oldest character in that series (save for the Balrog) - older than Sauron, and at one point in time her progenitor and Sauron's progenitor were looking to drink light from two trees. I didn't make that shit up. So how much of that is in the movies? None. The narrative of the lord of the rings completely excludes some 75% of the story, to tell a cohesive tale. Sure some people, when they see Shelob might get a kick and say "Aw here, there's the spawn of Ungoliant!" but the odds are, it'd go right over your head.

Metal Gear, on the other hand, does the complete opposite. The entries of that series have something of a reputation for an extremely long drawn out and cutscene heavy narrative filled to the brim with intricate detail, nuance, and fluff. By playing all the Metal Gear games, you can get about 95% of the overall story - but if you play Solid 4 without playing 1 and 2 before it, you're going to be pretty confused.

 

Maybe a little bit more to the point though, I have to ask why you want to tell a story in 8 parts? I can maybe think of four or five instances in which planned sequels worked out to the end benefit of the story (Harry Potter, and potentially the Marvel Cinematic Universe come to mind). It simply does not work out that way. Developers and audiences can lose interest very rapidly, stories change as the creators work on them, and really, a long winded story in 7 or 8 parts doesn't really gain a whole lot that three or even a single entry has. Not to mention, that some stories are simply made worse via expansion.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Chaosian

[Kayzee 4,032]

Given some of the things I enjoy, I would say not really. However there is a huge difference between complexity and Continuity Lock-Out (Warning: TV Tropes). It's reasonable to expect that people jumping in to the middle of an in-progress story to not know what is going on, but less so with separate games with separate casts of characters. I kinda like the Lord of the Rings example above. The Lord of the Rings universe is written with insanely dense lore backing it up, but at least a vast majority of it isn't really important for the story at hand and isn't really dwelled upon.

 

A better example for what you want to do may be the Ultima series. Again it has a lot of lore, even (supposedly) has the same main character in each game. But you can still pretty much jump in at any point because I think it does a pretty good job making sure to reintroduce you to anything that is relevant to the story of each game you may have forgotten. It probably helps that each game is set just far enough apart in time that a lot of stuff changes and events happen between games that you always need to still explore and talk to people to figure out what is going on.
 

You remember that Shelob the spider from the third movie? Turns out she's pretty much the oldest character in that series (save for the Balrog) - older than Sauron...

*nerd glasses* I am pretty sure Sauron was around since the beginning of the world, although he was called Mairon and wasn't evil until later.