Hi all,
I think I’m with Barry on this one.
Films being passive, Games being active.
Films have 2 hours to build story, endear the audience, develop characters, express the world, three acts, etc.
Games tend to have 50+ hours (just finished Majora’s Mask for the N64 a few hours ago – that took about 4 weeks on and off!) to endear the player to the same material.
As for the technical side of run-time story development, I see it as a "holy grail." Dynamic story trees/graphs as good as they are, still boil down to a "CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN-ADVENTURE" style delivery, with some smart heuristics.
Cause and effect, still boil down to some form of hard-coded value. SPORE is a bit of a ground-breaker in this sense, where the story is manufactured or interpreted by the player, as opposed to being spoken. But applying fuzzy logic / set theory to storyline is going to be tough.
Its not like blending animations, its way way harder. Context, semantics, humour can all too easily get lost in translation.
Best of luck to all those involved in cracking this one…
On a side note, for anyone researching this area, check out a documentary called "Visions of Light." It discusses early Hollywood, the transition from stage to film, silent to spoke, and black and white to colour.
Some great parallels to where the games industry…
EDIT:
Thought the Darkness did a good job, with its camera, of drawing the player into the story. Better, more expressive cameras may be a sign of things to come…
B.