Monday, April 22, 2013

Narrative in Gaming

I don't particularly know where I want to take this discussion; as such, and in line with most of my other posts this will turn out to be somewhat of a mess.

Most games have a story; story being a sequence of events. Every game I play has a story, even Minecraft has a story. As for the games that I play or have played most if not all of them are not story driven, they were not made to be narrative based experiences. The Warcraft universe has a huge overarching story and tons of other stories that are told throughout the various Warcraft games and in the  novels; even when the latest expansion pack for World of Warcraft is trying to have a more narrative experience it still can't compare to games that do because it dones't need to. Compared to books or cinema that's one thing that makes games special is that the story isn't as important. Certainly it's important if you want the game world to have depth, but a game can get by being superficial if it's still fun to play.

Some games have narrative, assuming I know the difference between narrative and story. Game like Dear Esther, Journey, The Walking Dead, or anything else on the list of games I haven't played. However, just maybe, I've played a game that was a little heavier on the narrative compared to Minecraft? Let me think... Amnesia the Dark Descent is kind of narrative based, right? You might say, "Shawn, what about Dragon Age: Origins, or the Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic Games? Those are narrative based and you've played them". Yes, but I didn't play them for the narrative, which is why I brought up Amnesia. 

What does Amnesia offer for gameplay? Walking, puzzels, reading letter, soiling your drawers. Compared to other games I've played, this game lets me use a greater percentage of my brain putting the story together since I don't have to worry about shooting anything. That might be my point. Although I never finished playing Amnesia so my perspective could be skewed.

No comments:

Post a Comment