Four games that tell great stories – and how they do it

Narrative designer Cara Ellison looks at Brothers, Full Throttle, Journey and Half-Life and asks, how exactly do they do this games writing thing so well?

Video game writing is still something of a misunderstood art form. Can't you just pluck someone out of whatever breeding pool Michael Bay incubates his screen writers in? Surely telling a story is the same in any medium - you just call up some scruffy, caffeine-crazed underfed, and watch them work their dark art on your sprawling epic, right?

Hold your dismissive rhetorical tone, I'd say to me. It's not quite that simple.