Narrative in gaming!

Narrative in gaming

I found the argument between games and narratives to be quite a strange one. Games are perhaps the most diverse form of media around, because of their interactive nature. There will be games without narrative, but there will also be games with narrative and the way the narrative progresses, and the quality of the narrative will vary from game to game. I especially liked the line about Tetris having no storyline, because it seems to assume that if there is an example of one game without a storyline, then there can be no other games with narratives. Perhaps the reason for this debate is that narrative in games happens a lot differently to books and movies.

Some of the earliest games I played were adventure games like the Space Quest series and the quality of narrative was fantastic. The series followed the often-hilarious acts of a space janitor, who awkwardly progresses through each game and somehow manages to achieve some heroic act at the end, like killing a notorious space villain. What is interesting about these games is that they were actually narrated as you played through them. In earlier versions text was used for narration. It described the setting and what was going on, dialogue and more. Later versions of the game actually had a verbal narrator that replaced the text and narrated the plot in third person. The characters themselves had actual voices. The narrator made many amusing comments and added to the flavour of the game as well helping to tell the story.

While the narration was effective for the space quest series it would seem very out of place in most other games, thus games have been continuing to develop better and better ways of telling stories in other ways. The first person shooter genre has made leaps and bounds towards better story telling. Even, just the advancement in graphics quality has had a huge impact on narrative, because the detailed environments of today act as much better settings than the grey corridors of Wolfenstein 3D. But obviously there’s more to narrative than just graphics. Characterisation has become very important in many games. Half-life 2 is a good example of this. The characters are made to feel very real, and the dialogue they contribute to the game aids the narrative process. There are also many other clever ways that narrative can be aided. For example games like Bioshock, Doom 3, and Dead Space use audio logs to give a back-story to the game, and help you to understand what is going on. This is effective because you get different characters perspectives about what was happening in the game area before you arrived, often in the form of gloomy recounts about strange occurrences.

Role playing games are also known for having advanced story lines, fuelled by large amounts of dialogue, and different options for the character to choose. Role playing games often have different story paths that depend on the actions of the person playing the game. This is a feature that really separates the narrative of games with the narrative of novels and movies, because it gives the player agency.

There are endless possibilities for narrative in games, and the applications are constantly evolving and becoming more diverse. I think it will be a very interesting topic to continue observing as games become more advanced and complex.