From superheroes to soap operas: five ways video game stories are changing forever

The narrative designers behind Witcher 3, Alien Isolation and Destiny chat about bodies, comics and the future of video game story-telling

Ten years ago, there was a revolution in the way video games told stories. Games such as Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed and Yakuza began to combine freely explorable open-world environments with story missions and side quests, allowing players to drop in and out of the main plotlines as they wished - or abandon them altogether. The experience of playing narrative video games changed forever.

So where can we expect narrative games to go next? At the Celsius 232 festival, we sat down with five experienced narrative designers: Witcher 3 writer Jakub SzamaAek, comic book and games writers Dan and Nik Abnett, Bungie narrative designer Margaret Stohl and Tom Jubert, writer of Faster Than Light and The Talos Principle.