Why I'm Tired of Origin Stories

Stories and characters all have to have an origin. There's so many good origin stories out there in all media. But as I've been playing Assassin's Creed Shadows I've realized how absolutely tired I am of them. This is also an article about origin stories in games, I could write a much longer article if I included Movies, but obviously those aren’t what I write about on a weekly basis.

I want to go over 2 good and 2 bad origin stories in videogames. I want to examine what makes the good ones good and the bad ones bad. Then, I'm going to examine how games that don't have origins stories are often just damn better. This is not to say that Origin stories are not a good way to start a story, simply that I'm just fucking tired of them.

Mass Effect

Mass Effect is a game that gets the origin story right and is generally one of my favorite examples of a game that knows how to give you the information you need. Shepard is already an established character. You decide the background of Shepard in the character creator directly. You don't have to see Shepard become the person who would go on to be the first ever Human Spectre, you just know that they are the person right for the job and that's what matters.

Origin stories make sense for many games, but in RPGs what makes the most sense is doing them quick so you can move on into the main game. When you linger too long you risk losing your players, but getting it over in the menu is such a good way of doing it that Bioware and many other RPGs have done it the exact same way in the years since. Because it works well and allows the players to not have to go through the rigamarole of story that isn't actually that relevant besides just being a jumping off point for the character.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk is an origin story for the first 20 minutes. You have 3 versions: Streetkid, Nomad, and Corpo. All three have unique characters and all that but the best part is that it's over in that 20 minutes. You get this small intro to who V is, to what the character has been through up until that point. Then, once you meet Jackie, you get a fantastic quick montage with great music where you get to see V become the Merc who they were always meant to be.

Then you get to the real fucking story. The meat of the situation. And all in a very short period of time. It's something that many people criticized, wanting the Origin to take longer. To get to play the stuff that takes place in the montage, but I think that's stupid. See, the great thing about Cyberpunk 2077 is that it doesn't fuck around. You get to meet the characters quickly, get to see V become a wonderful character and grow the be family with Jackie and co. Then you get to actually deal with the story of the game. It's a wonderful experience.

The V origin story is so well structured because it needed to be. CD Projekt wanted people to be able to play the game without dealing with the BS. Origin stories shouldn't be slow. They shouldn't drag on and on in order to make you "care" about the characters in the game. A great origin story is capable of doing that in half an hour. Basically the length of a short TV show. That's the time you, as a developer, have to work with when you're thinking about how to rope people into a story. If you go past that, you're pushing into territory where you will very possibly lose a large number of players who are bored and not enjoying the characters because it takes hours for the character to get interesting.

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One

The original Sherlock Holmes game didn't bother with an origin story, cause why the fuck would you? It's Sherlock Holmes, no one needs an origin story for him. But then Frogwares thought "What if we made a completely unnecessary and annoying origin story for Sherlock in a sort of soft reboot of the series?"

Needless to say, it was not well done. I'm not gonna go into all the issues because, well, this isn't a review meant to trash the game. This is about the origin of it all. Chapter One goes over how Sherlock is actually schizophrenic and he has a hallucinatory best friend named Jon who helps him solve mysteries and shit. It's a contrived thing trying to provide this feeling of a mentally ill genius who just so happens to be able to do good with his illness.

The game falls apart when instead of making the entire game about the origin story of Sherlock, as you'd expect, you have to go solve unrelated (or mildly related) cases to unlock new memories that provide the actual backstory for Sherlock. It's boring and the story for Sherlock’s history isn't even very well done. It feels very much like they wanted you to feel more for Sherlock as a person instead of him just being a flat character. The sequel does this much better without trying to force an origin story into the mix.

Origin stories that fail are the ones that drag on and on, the ones that make you feel like you're dealing with unrelated shit to get to the origin. Its not interesting and just makes you bored and want to get done with it.

Kingdom Hearts

I reviewed Kingdom Hearts 2 last year and I fucking hated it. But the issues with Kingdom Hearts 2 pale in comparison to the awfulness of the original Kingdom Hearts. This has nothing to do with the terrible combat, with the frustrating platform sections, this is all about Sora.

The original Kingdom Hearts is the origin story for Sora. Sora is an annoying Chosen One like character who had the all powerful keyblade pick him to be a person who can save the Disney worlds that were broken into by the bad guys of the games. Yet, Sora is the most boring and poorly done character I have seen take up that kind of mantle. The game gets distracted with the core concept of exploring different Disney worlds which just leads Sora to being boring and flat. He doesn't grow, he doesn't change, he's the exact same annoying, poorly acted, and boring character he was at the start as he was at the beginning. The character wouldn't have to change if he was just an interesting character from the start as opposed to just being empty.

Sora has one thing driving him, to find and save his friends. A good jumping off point that the writers just absolutely flub. I think the story would have been much better if Sora was just a couple years older but that's not that important.

What is important is how this is an example of how an origin story has to be based on having a character who is, before and after the origin, actually interesting. Sora never gets better. Even in the sequel the most interesting characters in the game are everyone but Sora.

Bad origin stories get distracted, they feel drawn out. They might have a good start, but fall apart because of many possible reasons. But if you're going to make an origin story, at least make the character interesting and not one dimensional, at least make them not like Sora.

You don't need an Origin story

This, I think, is one of the key parts of stories. You don't need to have an origin story, or even much known background of the main character. For instance, in Half Life, we don't have an origin story for what kind of person Gordon is, we don't find out what inspired him to be the person he is, we just know that he's a scientist and is damn good at what he does. And that he doesn't talk.

Or in Bayonetta, we skip seeing most of her origin, she's just already a badass witch with friends and contacts. We don't need to see where she came from initially to know how amazing she is at what she does.

Or in Metal Gear Solid, we don't see what the origin of Snake is. We don't see why he became the soldier he is, we just know that he's the guy you call in when you need shit done now and done well. Even though we learn some things about his origins over the course of the game, the game doesn't start with it. It lets you get used to your character and who he is, then introduces more and more about him.

Or in Dead Space we don't see how Issac became the engineer he is. We don't see why he decides to go into this work, whether his family died and it just made him want to be an engineer. We just know he's damn good at shooting and fixing shit and that's all we need to know.

Or in Uncharted: Drakes Fortune, we come into Drakes world when he is an already developed, charming, and intelligent person who knows what he's doing. The game doesn't worry about providing the answer to the question "how did Drake become Drake?". It just says "hey this guy is an Indiana Jones type adventurer, he's kickass and funny and charming and good at what he does". It's not until the third and fourth games that we find out more about Drake's backstory, we grew to love and care for Drake enough that the devs finally thought it was time to go over the past. It's a great game that isn't held back by questions about who the characters are and just tossed you into the action.

Or even in an earlier Assassin's Creed, made by the same team that made Shadows, Assassins Creed Syndicate. The game takes place in the most modern setting for an Assassins Creed, the 1880s, and I loved it. You follow Jacob and Evie Frye, fledgling assassins as they take back London from the Templar’s. And you don't even learn how or when they became Assassins. They don't have to learn how to be them, we don't have to have that stupid introduction to the creed for them. They just already are assassins. they've had their basic assassin origin story taken care of even if the story does allow them to make a name for themselves in London, they're still basically the same charming, interesting characters at the end as they were at the beginning. Not because they haven't grown but because they were already so established personality wise and didn't need to have too much development. It's a wonderful experience.

The Conclusion

There are good origin stories, as I've covered, and all of them have several similar qualities. Primarily, the origin is told over the course of the game or is very abbreviated and you get to the full game and story very quickly. Similarly, the bad ones all have their own qualities that are similar. They all take forever to get done, they all try too hard, and they're often all front loaded.

Origin stories can be fantastic, but they can also be exhausting. And I'm just so damn tired of them. If you're gonna do an origin story in a game, do it fast or over the course of the game. The games that are best yada yada some of the origin story before we get to a certain point because we don't need to know literally everything. I'm so done with Origin stories, if you're gonna make a game with a new character as the main character, just make them who they are at the start immediately. It's more fun, it's more interesting, and it makes the beginning of the game less of a fucking slog.

Meow,

Cat

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