Every story, be it a movie game or book, that is worth taking in will diverge through a series of situations leading up to the end result. A good writer can probably outline an entire book simply in situations and then connect the dots with drama lines, action sequences, an array of emotions, or some history. Take for example Star Wars where Luke first fights Vader. A situation arose which lead up to a vengeance action sequence and then on to one of the most memorable movie situations I can think of. The action scene before really built up the suspense and drama and lead beautifully into Luke’s frightening reality.

Now back and take another look at this. What if Vader simply entered the room, put Luke into a choke hold and let him have it with the “who’s your daddy” line. It would have OK, it would have been a little more difficult on the escape, and it wouldn’t probably wouldn’t have been as quotable. The struggle built the drama, Luke was loosing and you could feel, and when you were finally on the edge of your seat the perfect situation had been generated.

Now lets swing over to one of my favorite series that every now and then gets on my nerves. I love X-Files. Great show, I am a bit of a conspiracy theorist myself so I easily bond with the looming plot lines and back story. So as a fan I think I can fairly criticize this one a bit. In the latest movie toward the end there was a moment where Mulder was pushed off the road and crashed. So here he was, someone attempted to kill him, he survived, and rather than calling for some back knowing that this probably wasn’t over, he conveniently never realized his cell phone missing and went after the truth with my mind screaming from the moment he got out of the car to get his cell phone. By the time the bad situation come about I really didn’t care that he just might get killed. For me, that ended the movie, I watched the rest of it, but I couldn’t get that out of my mind.

Now lets plug this into game development. When generating situations for your heroes it is important to remember that the events leading up to the situation are just as important as the situation. If the situation completely dependent upon someone doing something that is going to have the human player throwing the controller at the screen, it is best to do it through an NPC or a temporary party member. Unless you are a truly remarkable story teller, using the main character to do something stupid for anything other than a light hearted humorous moment is likely to make the gamer feel that their role in the story has been eroded.