Welcome to Article Two of a Five-part series in which I will chronicle and analyze the use, abuse, and effect of narrative across a variety of genres and games. In Article One I covered some narrative choices in the Shooter arena that I found interesting. Article Two will cover some games of the RTS and RTT genre. Article Three will cover some games of the western RPG and JRPG genres. Article Four will cover a few Action/Adventure games. Article Five will be a summary, and an in-depth look at some of my favorite game stories of all time. If you enjoy this, remember to check back every Thursday for the next installment.

Warning: Spoilers will likely be present in every article. Read at your own risk.

Today we dive headfirst into the rich narrative realm of Real Time Strategy and Real Time Tactical games.

I have always had a love for the RTS/RTT genre, sparked by my time with WarCraft II, which must have accumulated into years at this point. Building maps, scenarios, and simply enjoying the sight of my Troll Axethrowers hurling their hand-made hatchets into the faces of human peasants. Greedy little bastards, chop down my trees will you!

…ahem. Sorry. Lost my train of thought for a moment.

Some would say that the RTS/RTT genre is not exactly the best playground for storytelling. I must say, I agree in certain respects. It is difficult to produce a named protagonist, character development, a successful direction, and a narrative which connects with the player when the nature of the game’s mechanics is so detached and academic. However, there are certain elements of narrative and storytelling that RTS/RTT games excel at. One of the major advantages of RTS/RTT design is that it allows the developer to provide the player with a deeper, more thorough view of a world.

Everything in an RTS/RTT game can add to its atmosphere. Designers are able to produce a myriad of different designs ranging from infantry, armored vehicles, and more colorful and infinitely more strange units. Everything from the terrain to the building architecture to the audio responses of the units can give the player a window into a brand new world with all sorts of individuality and personality. RTS games snare us so often because of the depth and complexity available here is not so easy to accomplish in other mediums. In the RTS/RTT genre, the entire world becomes the primary entity that the player meets and interacts with rather than individual characters.

However, there are some instances in which the characters of even an RTS/RTT game can reach out and touch the player.

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident snared me with the promise of intense real-time space combat. It delivered on that promise, and more. In all honesty, I hadn’t expected it to offer all that much. In my experience, RTS/RTT games taking place in a space setting tend not to have the same kind of depth and accessibility as their ground-based counterparts, particularly in terms of things like character development. Perhaps this can be linked again to the detached nature of strategy games, reinforced by the fact that there isn’t even a face to associate with any of the units you command. For all intents and purposes, the characters you interact with are essentially a bucket of well-assembled bolts.

With that in mind, the last thing I expected was to actually enjoy the story of Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. I knew I would enjoy commanding a small fleet of ships and watching as the enemy craft within my reach dropped like flies. I didn’t know that I would enjoy the calm, even-handed delivery of lines by every character, and a galaxy-spanning storyline that probably congealed itself into something cohesive by feeding on the dregs of the best science fiction writing has to offer. The ideas weren’t new (artificial intelligence, greedy humans, enigmatic aliens, vicious aliens), but they were presented in a manner that I found compelling enough to thoroughly enjoy.

The thing that really took Nexus: The Jupiter Incident to another level for me was the way that it made me actually care about the ships under my command by allowing me to gain a personal stake in them. You see, Nexus: The Jupiter Incident allowed for complete customization of the armament and capabilities of every ship under the command of the player. Through this system, the player can assign “roles” to specific ships by modifying or expanding their loadouts, or the player can try to make their ships into relatively successful multitaskers. After spending so much time customizing the craft I would send into battle, they had become personal to me. Every loss was a personal blow, every victory a celebration.

I realize that the narrative of the game itself was not responsible for this sensation, but the mechanics of the game allowed me to become personally involved with the success or defeat of my fleet. The creation of a personal connection with anything in the RTS/RTT genre is a stunning feat, and one that I think deserves at least an honorable mention here.

StarCraft. One of, if not the best RTS games ever created. It is still being talked about as one of the greatest games of all time. The best part is, all that praise is very well deserved. But any game can be well designed. Any game can play well. Not every game can do all of that and have personality to boot. And let’s face it, StarCraft just oozes personality.

It doesn’t matter how high or low on the food chain a unit is, they’ve all got loads of character and personality. It doesn’t matter if it’s the battle-hardened cocky Marine, the maybe-too-enthusiastic Firebat, the calm and confident Ghost, or the all-too-compliant SCV worker, or any other fully fleshed-out personality wrapped up in a few pixels on the screen, they all provide you with a real feel for the world they live in. The grim parts, the funny parts, and the brutal parts are all a piece of the narrative portrait StarCraft paints of itself.

The narrative greatness doesn’t stop there, though. The world of StarCraft is a rich one, with unique characters that really stand out, even now. Perhaps especially now, with the newer waves of RTS/RTT games hitting the shelves. I have searched the RTS/RTT genre and my own personal library, the Dawn of War series, the Company of Heroes games, and lesser-known titles like Nexus: The Jupiter Incident and slightly older titles like Ground Control II, but there was no such thing as Jim Raynor to be found.

Perhaps it is just the nature of StarCraft that makes characters like Jim Raynor and Kerrigan so easy to like. By the end of their stories, they’re less characters in a story and more like living, breathing people. Weighed down by their own thoughts, dreams, and responsibilities. It is such a simple thing to write a character out on paper. To select dialogue, to create interactions between other characters. What is not simple, and will always fascinate me, is when a character completely transcends that medium of pen and paper and becomes as real as the person sitting next to you. To make a character live, truly live, is a magical thing.

To be able to kill them after that is also a special thing, and yet it‘s made so much more wrong by nurturing a character into being only to snatch them away. I won’t go through the entire moment with you, because it’s been recorded already here at Destructoid, and frankly I don’t think I can say it any better than it has been already.

I only wish every RTS/RTT was able to conjure as much personality and personal relevance as StarCraft.

That’s all for this week. In further installments of Loving the Narrative, I will continue to explore some of the most beloved games in their respective genres, and more of my personal experiences with game stories. Tune in next Thursday for Article Three, where I will be discussing the Western RPG and JRPG genres. (Bring your reading glasses, folks, because that’ll be a long one.)