Intrinsic Stories in Video Games

I consider intrinsic story to be the least understood (and therefore the most neglected) element of game design. In fact, there's so little understanding of it that I had to invent the term myself, as I've tried over and over to articulate this concept that can make the difference between a great game and a bland one. This is probably my tenth try writing this from scratch, but I think I finally got it, so here goes:

What is Intrinsic Story?

When we talk about video game stories, we usually talk about where the game tries to tell the story as if it were a book or a movie. Specifically, the way they progress the story is to stop being a game and either give you text (temporarily becoming a book) or cutscenes (temporarily becoming a movie). Occasionally they have meaningful dialog options (temporarily becoming a choose-your-own-adventure book).

But there's another story being told that can be more important to the quality of the game than text-and-cutscene story, but it's much harder to describe. It's the story you experience as a player. Triumph, frustration, wonder, terror, and most importantly, that sliver of the feeling you would get by doing in real life what your game character is doing on screen.

Unlike the text-and-cutscene story (which I will refer to hereafter as the "extrinsic story"), the intrinsic story is affected by every element of the game, including the extrinsic story. For example, if you make a tactical shooter game so easy that it doesn't actually require tactical play, the extrinsic story hasn't changed at all, but the new intrinsic story has little resemblance to the old one. Even somebody who tries to strategize as if the game was still hard will lack the same tension and emotional response that they would have if there was an actual threat.

Why Is the Intrinsic Story So Important?

Unlike the extrinsic story, the intrinsic story is so perfectly suited to the medium that it's automatically present in most games even when the creators don't think about it. I also believe that when people talk about games having great stories, that the intrinsic story often has more to do with that than the extrinsic, even though they may not realize it.

Consider any post-NES Zelda game. These games are highly praised for their story, but imagine all the events of the game as if they were in a book. There could be some cool moments, but a lot of it would be tedious or silly (I'm going to throw a bunch of random objects into this fountain in hopes that this fairy who plays fetch will occasionally bring me back something better).

What I believe is happening is that the Zelda series does an excellent job of creating an intrinsic story with exploration, fighting, experimenting, problem solving, character growth, and so many other elements of a good story. The extrinsic story will tell you that you're saving the world from Ganondorf, but it's the intrinsic one that makes you feel like you actually did it.

Time to Get Concrete: Good and Bad Intrinsic Stories

World of Warcraft makes a perfect case study on this because it has been both good and bad at intrinsic story in different time periods, so there aren't as many other variables as would be present when comparing two completely different games. Further, the recent launch of WoW Classic and the extreme interest in it is something that, in my view, is primarily explained by the earlier versions having a much better intrinsic story.

Quick disclaimer: I am not claiming that one version of WoW is "better" than the other overall. Instead, I'm showing how when making trade-offs in game design, intrinsic story has consistently been sacrificed in order to get other benefits. Which of those sacrifices were worth it is a matter of personal taste.

Anyway, If you look at the ways in which WoW has changed, it's pretty consistent that every expansion adds player convenience and extrinsic story at the cost of intrinsic story. Consider just a few examples:

1. Quest Tracker: UI elements telling you exactly where to go to quickly complete the mountain of quests you go through diminish the sense of exploration and figuring things out that was present in early versions. It's incredibly convenient, but taking effort away from the player also takes away any intrinsic story that is told by that effort.
2.  Dungeon Finder: Dungeons in early WoW had a presence to them that is missing from the later ones. There was a sense of fear and a thrill of anticipation as you prepared to take on a challenge that you likely wouldn't succeed at. Even approaching a dungeon alone was often a quick path to dying because there would be elites on the way there.
   Pugging a dungeon usually meant finding a mismatched group ("can we tank this with a hunter pet and a ret paladin?"), dying repeatedly until you could negotiate/argue/strategize enough to actually succeed at something, and then clearing some portion of it. A full clear of one of the mega dungeons like Maraudon or Blackrock Depths under these circumstances was a true rarity.
   Everything I described here is powerful intrinsic story that is difficult to experience in later WoW. You won't fail in a leveling dungeon unless you deliberately try. Dungeons tend to be similar lengths, and dungeon finder make sure that your group is optimally constructed (one tank, one healer, three DPS) and well leveled for the content. Communication that was mandatory in the past is totally unnecessary, and planning with your fellow party members is definitely intrinsic story.
3. Scaled Levels: This was the nuclear bomb dropped on intrinsic story. Don't get me wrong, there are tons of benefits to level scaling, but it virtually eliminates some fundamental pieces of intrinsic story. Prior to max level, the idea of a character growing in power is now only true in an abstract mathematical sense and not in any way that affects your game experience. If you level twice while killing murlocs in Westfall, it still takes the same number of attacks to kill a murloc oracle as it did before. In fact, if you don't get new gear shortly after leveling, it will actually take more hits than before, meaning that leveling up actually makes you weaker (quite a stab in the heart for intrinsic story).
   Likewise, the intrinsic story in pushing your limits is mostly gone (other than doing so through reckless play). The troggs and the ogres in Loch Modan will be the exact same difficulty. You will never look at a quest and say "This is difficult. Do I need to come back when I've leveled up (which from an intrinsic story perspective represents your character becoming more skilled), or can I pull it off now?

I could make this MUCH longer, but I figure you get the idea, so I'll just name off a few of the other intrinsic story killers and you can think about the details yourself: Heirlooms, removing raid attunements, the Resilience stat, automatically enabled flight locations, ability culling, all dungeon quests being right inside the dungeon entrance, multispeccing, and probably many others I'm not thinking of.

So what makes a good intrinsic story?

This seems to be a mostly unexplored area of game design, so most of this is just my personal theorycrafting, but these are some of the things I have come up with.

1. Visuals Match Gameplay: Do your enemies look as threatening as they actually are? Can you navigate terrain that looks navigable? If the giant slavering monster and the little generic wolf near him are equally difficult to defeat, then you have visuals that actually miscommunicate gameplay, and your game is now less of a story and more of a spreadsheet.
2. The Player Experiences the Setting: This ties closely to #1 and can be a difficult balancing act, as it tends to work in direct opposition to player convenience. Does a player have to walk everywhere they go? Do you give them options to get through terrain more quickly (ex: mounts, vehicles, etc)? Or can they teleport where they want to go? How much is each of these things part of navigating the world?
   A world that must be traveled gives a solid sense of setting to the intrinsic story. And players traveling too easily will diminish that.
3. Actual Challenge: Game difficulty is an incredibly complicated topic with valid points being made for a variety of views. It needs to be noted, however, that easy games will usually have weaker intrinsic stories. In a book or movie, watching characters suffer or die can be an intensely unpleasant experience. And yet, I can't think of a single great story in those mediums that doesn't contain a lot of suffering. Things that are challenging and frustrating in video games fill a similar purpose. A survival horror game with no consequences for poor choices will not create the same emotions of terror as one where the player knows they have to tread lightly and save ammunition.
4. Varied Challenge Levels: Any story that tries to maintain the same tone and tension level for too long becomes either tedious or exhausting. The same is true with a game's difficulty level. Don't keep it flat for too long.
   Another note on this is varying difficulty based on location. If Mordor was no more dangerous than the forests in the Shire, it wouldn't feel like much of a setting for a fantasy epic.
5. Focus More on Setting Than Plot: Unless your game is running on highly restrictive rails, it's hard to tell a specific sequence of events in an intrinsic story, which is why games rely so much on extrinsic stories when they want to do this. Setting, on the other hand, can be presented simply by letting the player play--at least as long as you make it interesting. The better your setting, the better the intrinsic stories the player will create in their mind.

Who Has Done It Best?

If I wanted to point to the game that absolutely nailed intrinsic story, I would say it's Shadow of the Colossus. Every game mechanic, the art, the landscape design, and of course, the immense terrifying enemies all work together to create an incredible sense of wonder.

Frankly, I find the game hard to analyze because even though they may not be using the term, it was created by a team that understands intrinsic story far better than I do. I give it this praise because I remember how I felt when I played it. The terror as I was flung around hanging on for dear life, the near-helplessness I felt trying to slay something so immense, and even the design of the traveling sections of the game all work together brilliantly.

In short, that sliver of the feeling that you're actually there, doing what your game character is doing was stronger in this game than in anything else I've played.

Final Thoughts

My intention with this piece is to create understanding of a concept that I think we all have some intuitive grasp of but can't quite define. When game designers make trade-offs, it's hard to make the case to choose something vague ("There's something somehow satisfying about taking long journeys on foot") when it's weighed against something concrete ("Let's make the game convenient for the players"). By making intrinsic story into a more concrete concept, game designers will be better able to make these trade-offs.