Level Up! - Mechanics of Storytelling

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Hey guys, and welcome back!
Today we are going to be talking about leveling in games, and how it can impact our story. As a medium, games have an awesome opportunity to allow both the developer and the player to engage in their own part of the story. Leveling is one way in which games tell the story of characters becoming more powerful, learning new things, and becoming better.
The first game on our list to talk about today is Ori and the Blind Forest. There are some minor spoilers ahead, but nothing that will ruin the game.
In Ori and the Blind Forest, Ori gains more abilities and movement tech when she encounters various trees, the gravesites for her kind. She absorbs their light to become more powerful, gaining new abilities which they once held. What caught my eye about this was the delivery of these abilities.
In my playthrough I had a moment which made me pause. When I set foot in a new area, the music shifted. I realized that I was in a spot I had previously pegged for the entrance to a boss room, and was suspicious. I actually turned up the music a bit so I could make sure I was hearing it right. Normally, music leading up to a bossfight is tense, but the music here was light and happy. I stubbornly couldn’t trust the audio cue that they had given me, and was shocked for a moment when I realized that it wasn’t a boss fight, but rather was an ability tree.
The way that they delivered this ability told so much more of a story than just if I had killed enough enemies to spend a token to get the ability. Because I had to go to what was portrayed almost as holy ground, I had an experience with the game far richer and more complex than I would have otherwise.
The second game on our list today is Bastion. Minor gameplay spoilers ahead.
Bastion is a very different game. There are a lot of elements to making the character more powerful, and a lot of player choices. First and foremost is the vast array of weapons to choose from. From the beginning the player is presented with a few different weapons to pick from, allowing them to change the combat style to suit them. This ties in well with the theme of moving on through the delivery of these weapons. Kid stumbles across them along his journey, and scavenges them without a second thought.
Here, like in Ori, the theme of the game is made richer by the leveling system. They tie together and complement one another. However, unlike Ori, the progression in Bastion is not linear. Upgrades found and challenges complete may power up specific weapons, but none of them are required to beat the game. This can be compared to Ori and the Blind Forest, where each ability is given to you in precisely the moment you will start using it.
Our third game is a MOBA, Smite.
In Smite, everyone starts at level 1. In this round I ended up getting a lot of kills early on, which boosted me ahead of everyone else. Because my stats increased a little higher than everyone elses, it started a snowball effect that made me able to later on completely destroy everything with no concern for my own life.
Leveling in competitive games is very different, as balance has to come into play or else the game is unfair for one side. However, most of the time the game self regulates, as the other team will gang up on the player who gets ahead, pulling the game back into balance.
MOBAs are a very complex and intellectual game type, and without a leveling system these games wouldn’t be able to tell those awesome impromptu stories where a normally ignored character completely demolishes everything because things just worked for them, or when a well-coordinated team demolishes an uncoordinated one.
A simple leveling mechanic gives a huge amount of variety and options to a game, helping give that sense of progress which we all crave, and also gives us a chance to ease into the game. These are just three of the ways games use to level up the character, and millions of others exist. Don’t hesitate to be creative when thinking of new and amazing ways to do this.
A way I had thought would make a game interesting is if the player actually grew weaker over the course of the game. If you know of any games that do this, leave them in the comments below.
If you have had any experiences with a leveling system making the game interesting, post those below as well. I hope you enjoyed this video, and if you did don’t forget to hit like and be sure to subscribe for more content like this!
Have fun!