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Episode 06:
“Narrative & Storytelling in Games”
with special guests Joab Gilroy and Jessica Citizen
After an unforseen hiatus due to a computer being in for a service and an extended period of being busy with my web series project, we’re back for another episode.
This time, after playing through the relatively-recent possibly-overhyped PS3-exclusive Heavy Rain, we decided it was worth focusing an entire discussion on narrative and storytelling in games. As it seemed like a natural continuation of our inaugural episode on Gaming as a Unique Medium, we brought back Joab Gilroy from GameArena. To provide a different perspective, we also invited along Jessica Citizen of Gamepron (and some other sites).
Due to the nature of this discussion, please be warned that we spoil the ending of a fairly large number of games including Heavy Rain, System Shock 2, Bioshock, Shadow of the Colossus and Planescape: Torment.
Our meandering discussions took us to subjects such as:
- D&D Gold Box games
- Space Quest, Quest for Glory and other adventure games
- Interactive Fiction
- Half-life 2 (Because Jeremy can’t go 5 minutes without discussing it)
- 101st Airborne in Normandy
- The Mass Effect series and character death
- Continuing on after character death
- Delivering multiple choice options in games
- Meta-story in the game world (such as in Assassin’s Creed and the new Prince of Persia series)
- The passage of time in game stories (such as in Metal Gear Solid)
- Dialogue trees
- Cut scenes as a method of delivering plot
- Plot twists in games
- A huge discussion of the merits of Heavy Rain
- The limitations of game stories – having to be based around action or conflict for the most part
- Flower & Flow – narrative without dialogue or even characters
- Metro 2033 and Book-to-video game adaptations
Tags: half-life 2, heavy rain, jeremy, jessica citizen, joab gilroy, mass effect, metro 2033, narrative, rohan, storytelling