Warren Spector is scared. Scared of freedom. Specifically the amount of freedom that game developers these days are giving to the player in determining how a game plays out. In a GDC session yesterday entitled "The Future of Storytelling in Next-Generation Game Development", Spector voiced his misgivings about giving too much control to the end-user.

It terrifies me how much freedom they want to give players.

I suppose from the point of view of one of the most respected storytellers in the industry, the shift from putting the player into your adventure to giving the player a chance to make their own is a disturbing trend indeed.

When I say that Warren Spector is well-respected I mean it. Of all the events I've been to at GDC so far, none were as well attended as this one. Every chair was taken 15 minutes before he was set to speak. I ended up sitting on the floor in the back of the room, surrounded by dozens of press and developers eager to hear what Mr. Spector had to say.

The talk itself was a follow up to a similar talk he have in 2004, where he outlined what aspects of storytelling needed to be improved upon, including better actors, better conversations, shorter, deeeper games, and...more scripted actions?

I think I was smoking crack that day.

He went on to grade the improvements made over the last few years. While both story structures and character graphics were given a B+ for improvement, character interaction received only a C+. The problem? Not only are next-generation graphics taking some of the focus away from story as a whole, the more lifelike the graphics before the more subtle the interactions between characters have to be in order to keep up. Back when Final Fantasy VII came out, a ball fist scratching a spiky polygon head was enough to convey confusion. Now you have to worry about eye movement, how the arm raises, the expression of relief on the character's face, etc. I'd never actually considered that when looking at a next-generation game...how much harder the graphics make creating a game, and not only from a technical standpoint.

While I remain on the fence on the freedom versus form aspects of storytelling, Warren Spector managed to change the way I look at storytelling in gaming in the span of an hour. It's almost enough to make me give Deus Ex: The Invisible War another chance. Almost. Michael Fahey