Objective: Examine the relationship between story, immersion, and player agency in narrative-driven games.
Use material from Chapter 7: Engaging Players Over Time
Quest: Choose a game where narrative plays a critical role in the player experience. Play through 2-5 hours of the game while paying attention to specific narrative design prompts around character design, gameplay choices, and player agency (as in, the effect the player’s choices have on the story).
As you play through the first few hours of your experience, pay attention to the following dimensions:
How are the characters depicted?
What information is shared about the characters? Are you playing a character, or are you defining your own character? If there are no characters, what is there you’re being asked to care about?
How many choices do you have for dialog?
Does if feel like a good amount, too much, or too little? What about the why – do you know why the options are there, or do they feel random?
Do your dialog choices seem to matter?
Does the game or do the characters react strongly one way or the other to your dialog choices, or does it seem like you’d get the same outcome no matter what you choose? Do you find yourself wanting to redo a choice or learn about what would have happened if you chose differently? Does the game tell you?
Are there any unique interactions that take place during story moments?
What are they and how do they affect your enjoyment of the experience? Some games offer a form of narrative minigame to break up long periods of dialogue – this was a hallmark of Telltale Games products. Are you asked to suddenly press buttons or react on a timer? How does this make you feel?
Bonus Tool: Exploring Narrative Games
If you have not explored narrative-driven games as a genre, consider some of these options. Note that many narrative-driven games may feature mature themes at some point as it is a common way of driving emotional engagement, and readers 13 and under should not download or purchase any games without parental consent and supervision.
Most-Ages Narrative Games
There aren’t terribly many narrative-driven games truly safe for all ages, but a few more broadly applicable examples:
The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
The Urbz: Sims in the City (GBA/DS)
Unpacking
Iconic Narrative Games
These are genre-defining games that pushed the art form in new directions.
The Walking Dead
Stray Gods: A Roleplaying Musical
Dating Simulators
Note that dating simulators are highly likely to contain mature themes.
Hatoful Boyfriend
ValiDate: Struggling Singles in Your Area
Triple-A Narrative Games
Some larger games feature complex narrative, with cause and effect or faction systems that yield different experiences for different players, or rich backstory meted out over time. Some notable examples:
Mass Effect Series (Mass Effect 2)
Fallout Series (Fallout 4)
