Hello!
I'm raising this topic again because it's quite a few months until Odyssey, and the subject of storytelling in Elite Dangerous keeps popping up when I chat to players.
Title says it all really. After Kai Zen’s heartfelt plea a few months ago to reintroduce narrative to Elite Dangerous, I’ve been thinking about what that might actually mean. We’ve seen several flavours of narrative in Elite over the years, some of which have pleased certain types of player over others. Now of course we have zero narrative - FD have totally withdrawn any kind of narrative drive from the game at all, whether it be CGs, Galnet, Interstellar Initiatives, Engineers’ one-off missions, or major narrative updates. In the absence of any sort of narrative it’s easy to cry “we need narrative! The game needs story!” But what would we actually want that to look like?
There are several different ways that FD have told stories in and about the game over the years. One of which is official novels; two of the official novel authors have indicated in the last few months that their vision for better narrative in Elite is to grant more licenses for third-parties again. While these are great reads, they’re not actually the same as narrative within the game (though they can undeniably play an important role in giving a setting heft).
Another suggestion I’ve seen several times is for Frontier to either incorporate player-made narrative into the game, either through ‘officialising’ player-run news sources like Sagittarius Eye or developing something like an in-cockpit browser window through which players can navigate to those third-party sites.
As a longtime lead editor for Sagittarius Eye, I actually don’t think this is desirable. For one, our team are all grown-ups with busy lives and jobs. While undoubtedly ultranerds, we actually wouldn’t want to do Frontier’s job for them. The content we create is designed to complement the in-game narrative, not replace it.
Furthermore, I actually don’t think this option would satisfy players. How different would it be, really, to access Inara or Sag Eye through an awkward in-cockpit browser versus just pulling it up on your iPad or second monitor? Also, narrative has to be developed closely with game design in order to be satisfying, and farming it out to players will never accomplish that.
Elite Dangerous occupies a funny, ill-defined niche amongst video games. Eve Online’s ‘story’ is nearly totally driven by player action, barely umpired by CCP, as that game is a PvP sandbox. No Man’s Sky, by contrast, is a single-player journey with opt-in multiplayer elements. It’s a single-player experience you can share, and the narrative is therefore mostly developer-led, and does include some elements of princess-rescuing (to borrow David Braben’s memorable analogy). Elite is something different, and arguably in-between.
One type of storytelling we’ve seen in Elite is the ‘fluff’ pieces in Galnet: story arcs that fleshed out the universe, but didn’t impact on the player experience in any other way. It is common to lament the loss of these (and it’s easy to do when all narrative has been scrapped) but I actually agree with the devs that these were a poor use of FD’s time. I enjoyed reading them, but they were no substitute for stories which could actually impact me as a player.
For me, there are two styles of storytelling which Elite Dangerous has done well. The first is a deft handling of player agency, which saw FD recognise what players were doing in their sandbox and put narrative beats around it. We saw this with the Lugh conflict, Colonia, and Emperor’s Dawn; all were cracking examples of Frontier seeing what players were actually doing in their game and plotting the story accordingly.
This type of storytelling is a bit like the role of a gamesmaster in a tabletop roleplaying game: not simply telling a story, but accommodating, recognising, and encouraging what your players do, and providing the next narrative steps for that. I think of this as ‘reactive’ storytelling. The players are in charge (or at least feel as though they are) and Frontier’s role is to facilitate. The Premonition event of 3303 is perhaps an example of this, but to my mind that event (fatally) relied a bit too heavily on the actions of a few individual players.
The second type of storytelling I’ve really enjoyed in Elite was the Interstellar Initiatives. While these got off to a rocky start (and I disagreed with the decision to signpost each stage of all of them here on the Forum) by the end of 2019 they were leading into each other pleasingly, gave players a bit of choice from time to time, and gave the impression that this was a living, breathing galaxy that was going somewhere. Every time I logged in I could read the latest developments about events I knew I would have a stake in.
So, over to you I guess. What kind of narrative do you actually want? More third-party novels? More fluff pieces? For Frontier to act as dungeonmaster? For fan-made stuff to be available in game? Scripted campaigns? Carefully-planned arcs with individual, choreographed moments of player choice? Don’t just say “all of them” - resources are finite, and Frontier might find it useful to see what type of narrative their players prioritise.
Thank you!
I'm raising this topic again because it's quite a few months until Odyssey, and the subject of storytelling in Elite Dangerous keeps popping up when I chat to players.
Title says it all really. After Kai Zen’s heartfelt plea a few months ago to reintroduce narrative to Elite Dangerous, I’ve been thinking about what that might actually mean. We’ve seen several flavours of narrative in Elite over the years, some of which have pleased certain types of player over others. Now of course we have zero narrative - FD have totally withdrawn any kind of narrative drive from the game at all, whether it be CGs, Galnet, Interstellar Initiatives, Engineers’ one-off missions, or major narrative updates. In the absence of any sort of narrative it’s easy to cry “we need narrative! The game needs story!” But what would we actually want that to look like?
There are several different ways that FD have told stories in and about the game over the years. One of which is official novels; two of the official novel authors have indicated in the last few months that their vision for better narrative in Elite is to grant more licenses for third-parties again. While these are great reads, they’re not actually the same as narrative within the game (though they can undeniably play an important role in giving a setting heft).
Another suggestion I’ve seen several times is for Frontier to either incorporate player-made narrative into the game, either through ‘officialising’ player-run news sources like Sagittarius Eye or developing something like an in-cockpit browser window through which players can navigate to those third-party sites.
As a longtime lead editor for Sagittarius Eye, I actually don’t think this is desirable. For one, our team are all grown-ups with busy lives and jobs. While undoubtedly ultranerds, we actually wouldn’t want to do Frontier’s job for them. The content we create is designed to complement the in-game narrative, not replace it.
Furthermore, I actually don’t think this option would satisfy players. How different would it be, really, to access Inara or Sag Eye through an awkward in-cockpit browser versus just pulling it up on your iPad or second monitor? Also, narrative has to be developed closely with game design in order to be satisfying, and farming it out to players will never accomplish that.
Elite Dangerous occupies a funny, ill-defined niche amongst video games. Eve Online’s ‘story’ is nearly totally driven by player action, barely umpired by CCP, as that game is a PvP sandbox. No Man’s Sky, by contrast, is a single-player journey with opt-in multiplayer elements. It’s a single-player experience you can share, and the narrative is therefore mostly developer-led, and does include some elements of princess-rescuing (to borrow David Braben’s memorable analogy). Elite is something different, and arguably in-between.
One type of storytelling we’ve seen in Elite is the ‘fluff’ pieces in Galnet: story arcs that fleshed out the universe, but didn’t impact on the player experience in any other way. It is common to lament the loss of these (and it’s easy to do when all narrative has been scrapped) but I actually agree with the devs that these were a poor use of FD’s time. I enjoyed reading them, but they were no substitute for stories which could actually impact me as a player.
For me, there are two styles of storytelling which Elite Dangerous has done well. The first is a deft handling of player agency, which saw FD recognise what players were doing in their sandbox and put narrative beats around it. We saw this with the Lugh conflict, Colonia, and Emperor’s Dawn; all were cracking examples of Frontier seeing what players were actually doing in their game and plotting the story accordingly.
This type of storytelling is a bit like the role of a gamesmaster in a tabletop roleplaying game: not simply telling a story, but accommodating, recognising, and encouraging what your players do, and providing the next narrative steps for that. I think of this as ‘reactive’ storytelling. The players are in charge (or at least feel as though they are) and Frontier’s role is to facilitate. The Premonition event of 3303 is perhaps an example of this, but to my mind that event (fatally) relied a bit too heavily on the actions of a few individual players.
The second type of storytelling I’ve really enjoyed in Elite was the Interstellar Initiatives. While these got off to a rocky start (and I disagreed with the decision to signpost each stage of all of them here on the Forum) by the end of 2019 they were leading into each other pleasingly, gave players a bit of choice from time to time, and gave the impression that this was a living, breathing galaxy that was going somewhere. Every time I logged in I could read the latest developments about events I knew I would have a stake in.
So, over to you I guess. What kind of narrative do you actually want? More third-party novels? More fluff pieces? For Frontier to act as dungeonmaster? For fan-made stuff to be available in game? Scripted campaigns? Carefully-planned arcs with individual, choreographed moments of player choice? Don’t just say “all of them” - resources are finite, and Frontier might find it useful to see what type of narrative their players prioritise.
Thank you!
