Videogames as Narrative Medium
© 2003 Nich Maragos

  1. Chapter I - Are Games Art?
    1. The Case Against
    2. The Case For
  2. Chapter II - Narrative Components of Games
    1. Imagery
    2. Sound
    3. Movies
  3. Chapter III - Conventional Narrative in Games
    1. Plot
    2. Character
    3. Point of View
    4. Setting
    5. Theme
    6. Sidequests
    7. Metanarrative
  4. Chapter IV - Interactive Narrative in Games
    1. The Arbitrary Choice
    2. The Burdensome Choice
    3. The Interpretive Choice
    4. The Behavioral Choice
    5. Rewards
  5. Chapter V - Conclusion
  6. Works Cited

Final Fantasy X is, in every sense, a proper narrative in videogame form, however silly it may inadvertently seem when presented in such truncated summary form. We need not only go by this example; hundreds of other games could be brought to bear and analyzed in a similar manner, each showing the viability of storytelling within the gaming medium.

It is notable as an example only insofar as it shows the failure of games to live up to their potential as a narrative medium. None of the narrative is advanced through gameplay sequences; Final Fantasy X relies entirely on cutscenes to tell its story, in exactly the manner that Ninja Gaiden did. The effect is somewhat like shooting footage of successive pages of a novel and showing the result in theaters. It tells a story, and technically uses the medium of film, but rightly comes across as a poor cinematic technique.

Fortunately, creators are slowly developing their own game-specific stylistic devices and a few games have already begun to employ them. One such device is what’s referred to in Japanese as a gaiden, or "side quest." These side quests can be small or large, but the important point is that they allow the creators to include pieces of information not directly related to the story, as added texture to the setting or foreshadowing for the careful player. Players can access them within the main game with varying degrees of difficulty, but they are never required to advance the main storyline.

One game that relies heavily on this sort of structure is Sega’s Phantasy Star Online. The main game, designed to be played online with potentially impatient teammates, has a story that plays out with about as much text as a silent film. Played this way, you only see the bare bones of what happened to the colony ship Pioneer 1. The game also has an offline mode, however, featuring many bounty hunter-style assignments. When completed, these add detail to the ins and outs of life on Pioneer 2, an organized crime group involved with Pioneer 1’s mission, a group of biologists studying life and conditions on the planet below, and other plot threads never so much as touched upon in the main game.

This is an extreme use of side quests, although they can get even more extreme to the point of misuse: Final Fantasy VII buries key character motivation and backstory necessary to understand the main plot behind difficult-to-find side quests, rendering parts of the "real" narrative incomprehensible to players who fail to stumble across the hidden story segments. More often, side quests are like the various hoverboarding-related missions in Ratchet & Clank: inessential to the story but worthy of completion both for gameplay reasons (new abilities bestowed) and for story reason (to provide further detail in the game’s setting, as well as to flesh out Ratchet’s character by giving him interests and hobbies besides saving the world).

What makes side quests work in games where they cannot in other media is gaming’s nonlinear possibilities. Many books or films have nonlinear structures, but they are still meant to be read straight through from page 1 to page N. Writers and directors are aware of this and generally shape their "nonlinear" stories in such a way that to actually experience them in a nonlinear fashion—to read individual pages at random, for instance, or to skip capriciously around a DVD’s chapter stops—is to render the story senseless. In a nonlinear game, on the other hand, certain portions may be completed in any order and will build as effectively on the main storyline no matter what sequence they are completed in. One outstanding example of this technique is Suikoden III: the game’s narrative concerns the factors and circumstances that build up to a war between feudal nations, from the perspective of representatives of each nation and a mercenary faction with no allegiance to either side. The game often pauses and allows the player to either continue the current narrative thread, or to backtrack from a different character’s point of view. Thus, what may seem like an act of villainy in one thread may be mere pragmatism as the player’s viewpoint character switches; the audience’s experience of the story comes as much from the way they choose to experience the plot as it does from what actually happens.

Another gaming-specific storytelling device is the greater degree of subtlety the medium can afford. Consider the problem of foreshadowing. Authors and directors tread a fine line between revealing too little beforehand, so that events seem to happen for no reason, and revealing too much, so that audiences prematurely figure out the story. A detail that sticks out noticeably instantly flags itself as a hint, with reasonably clever audience members able to discern its importance—or, alternatively, the author may have meant it as a red herring, enough of which can make the story seem arbitrary and digressive. Finding the right balance is difficult, but the interactive and nonlinear potential in games allows creators in the medium to sidestep the problem altogether.

For instance, Konami’s Silent Hill 2 is a horror story about James Sunderland, whose wife’s death of a terminal illness has not prevented her from writing him a letter three years after the event. This letter, beckoning James to the resort town of Silent Hill where they spent their happiest days, is a key "prop" in Silent Hill 2: James reads the letter to himself at the beginning of the game in order to establish the premise, and it remains in the player’s inventory of items so that players are free to have James read it at any time.

After a certain point, an interesting thing happens to this letter: the text vanishes, and some time later, the now-blank piece of paper itself disappears completely. It’s a strong indication that James might not be as reliable a narrator as he initially seemed. In a book, writing some form of the phrase "But the words were no longer there" would be unavoidable. It would be such a stark indication of James’ mental state, in fact, that the author would have little choice but to use it as a climax and not a subtle piece of foreshadowing.

The creators of a game, however, are able to enact this small change without drawing any attention to it whatsoever. Only the extremely alert who has been checking and rechecking everything in James’ inventory will notice what has happened. The later revelations in the game’s true climax are thus foreshadowed with the greatest possible degree of subtlety. For the attentive gamer, the climax stands at the point where everything previously hinted at comes together perfectly—as the letter hints, James’ version of events is open to question—but for the casual player, the truth comes just as much of a surprise as it does for poor James. The moment is a triumph in its own small way for interactive fiction, as the player’s behavior genuinely influences the flow of the narrative.

Another example of a very similar phenomenon comes in Metal Gear Solid, a game set in an Alaskan military base. There are conventional bits of foreshadowing in place here; for example, when doubling back through a hangar, one of the M1A1 Abrams previously parked there is missing, which is a sign that the player will see that tank in action in the not-too-distant future. However, the game has its share of "invisible" foreshadowing as well. A short distance after winning a tense battle against one of the terrorists leaders who pilots a helicopter, players have the opportunity to look over a wall using binoculars and see a parachute draped over a tree. Like the disappearing letter, the parachute provides a hint for the attentive players but can just as easily be completely overlooked with no ill consequence for the narrative.

To Metanarrative ->