Like reflections in the glass!
I'd point out Freedom Planet 2 has a decent amount of story for a 2d platformer. But to answer your questions
- I'd say take a page from a different genre and focus on environmental storytelling, flavor text, character dialogue where possible and other lore bits. With some cutscenes at key moments to ensure clarity.
- Alternately have a journal function that serves to summarize what the player is doing and record plot bits. That has the drawback of players forgetting to read them though.
- Speaking of character dialogue, some games do have NPCs players can interact with, particularly in Medtroivania games such as Terraria, RabiRibi and Castlevania itself IIRC.
- I'd say keep the cutscene and gameplay ratio even at most. Long winded scenes might work in JRPGs and visual novels, but if what you say about peoples perceptions are true, than having too much cutscenes and too few levels per hour played will cause issues.
Discarded and Feeling Blue
Drawn to Life is a 2-D platformer, and it's pretty story driven — especially the sequel which introduces a ton of new characters and ends on a huge twist. It works because the platforming segments come after scenes in the village where you draw items and help out the villagers.
Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 1st 2023 at 12:23:29 PM
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I mean...yes, OF COURSE it can.
...I can't believe anyone would actually ask this kind of question not in 2003, but in 2023.
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
I suspect that if there is indeed a trend of 2D platformers containing less story than 3D platformers, then it's due to genre-inertia: 2D platformers have historically had little story, and so developers have a tendency to follow in those footsteps and likewise have little story.
The history from which this draws may in turn be due to the fact that the 2D platformer is, I daresay, older than the 3D platformer. It may thus have roots in a time in which it was more common for games to have little-to-no-story.
That said, as others have pointed out, a 2D platformer can absolutely have plenty of story, I daresay!
One approach that seems to me to be relatively common is to take the "Dark Souls" approach to story: the world is littered with Story Breadcrumbs and laconic NPCs.
This allows the player to pick up the story to what degree and at what pace they prefer.
And having NPCs be laconic means that they don't keep the player from the gameplay overlong.
See: Hollow Knight, or Iji.
It's an approach that also works well, I feel, with the sort of story that the original poster describes: one with lots of backstory.
After all, story-breadcrumbs can take forms that make sense as recordings of history: letters, books, archival footage—whatever suits the setting and the breadcrumb in question, more or less.
As for what I'd do, hmm, I don't know. It would, I think, depend on what sort of game I were making, and on the place of story in the experience that I were designing.
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Aug 2nd 2023 at 9:39:20 PM
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They can just like any type of game, it’s just that 2D platformers are games that are almost always overwhelmingly gameplay focused. Freedom Planet 1 had a heavier emphasis on story and it resulted in several minute long cutscenes that greatly clashed with the fast paced gameplay (on top of the writing not being great and having massive tone clashes). Kid Icarus Uprising had most of its story occur during gameplay and I’m surprised people haven’t tried to do the same more. Though it may have only worked in Kid Icarus Uprising because the game had an excellent script.
Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Aug 4th 2023 at 10:24:19 AM
Why waste time when you can see the last sunset last?
It seems like it's more commonly acceptable for 3D platformer video games to have a lot of story than it is for 2D platformers. 2D platformers, in general, tend to focus a lot on gameplay, aside from intro and ending cutscenes, and maybe a short cutscene in between worlds. Even then, the stories are usually pretty simple. The Super Mario Bros. games are a well-known example of this.
It seems like 3D platformers, in general, get away with having more cutscenes and more complex stories. The closest games I can think of to 2D platformers with lots of story are Klonoa: Door to Phantomile and Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil, and they're both 2.5D platformers.
Do you agree with these observations? If so, why is it that 2D platformers usually have less story than 3D ones?
How would you go about telling a story in a 2D platformer game? Particularly if there was a lot of backstory, and the plot was a little more complex than "save the princess from Bowser."
Even though it's not a platformer, and as much as it is a great game, Undertale has one of my least favorite exposition dumps in all of fiction: The scene near the end where it tells Asriel's backstory. The game only lets you walk a few steps at a time before repeatedly stopping you to pull up the "battle" screen to deliver one piece of the exposition at a time. This might be better than a Wall of Text, but I still find it incredibly frustrating, and quite possibly the worst part of the game. The story that is told here is great, but the way they executed it is just not good.
I think that's a great example of what not to do. But how do you do it?
Edited by DrNoPuma on Aug 1st 2023 at 10:40:17 AM
He may be a giant, nightmarish brute, but like all villains in this series,he sure can sing.