Brief observations about interactive fiction

Lately I have spent a lot of time thinking about interactive narration. Both as a consequence of beginning my studies in Film and Media, where I have already read quite a bit (although not as much as I should) about narratives among other means of expression. Chiefly, these studies in the art or craft of storytelling have concerned themselves with linear stories in films, which is something that mostly interests me as a foundation for the much more fascinating concept of interactive fiction (in particular, games).

An especially interesting activity is to compare the ways in which different game developers have gone about the task of creating a story in their games. Of course I realize far from all games even HAVE a story, but as narration has beem the object of my passion since the games I played with my friends when I was a kid, casual games such as Tetris and Bejewelled are not something I wish to spend any intellectual energy on. They are fine for passing time, but in most cases I wouldn’t consider them art. Not to say art needs narration but… let’s save that discussion for another time.

Examining how interactive storytelling within computer- and video games has been approached previously, I find that a good set of examples to bring forth are Space Rangers 2: Dominators (Elemental Games 2004) , The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda Softworks 2006) , Planescape: Torment (Black Isle Studios 1999) , and Half-Life (Valve Software 1998) .

Each of these implement interactivity in rather different ways. I hope to get the opportunity to write a whole paper about this in the Fiction Theory and Analysis course next semester, but for now I shall briefly go over each of them for my own amusement.

Space Rangers 2: Dominators (SR2)
Already I undermine the academic credibility of my own analysis, as I include a game on which I have spent a total of about 30 minutes (namely playing the demo until I ran out of turns). SR2 is a turn-based role-playing game set in space. Creators Elemental has clearly set out to craft as open-ended a world as possible, with the result that there is almost no narrative at all. The plot is defined only by the actions you take and the results presented by the game. The fact that there ARE consequences to many of your actions within the game world seperates SR2 from games such as Tetris where no other choices are provided beyond “succeed” or “fail”. However, the lack of a well-defined narrative structure calls into question whether one could even categorize this as a story rather than a fanciful simulation of sorts.

Certainly it wouldn’t be possible to apply traditional analysing tools for narration to SR2 because the structure of the story depends so heavily on the participation of the player. In most cases, there will be no real structure to the story, merely a loose system of causality created by the simulation and a series of random variables. At one moment, the game may arbitrarily decide that your main foe, the titular Dominators, will move to occupy a sector of game space that you have regularly been moving through, which will inconvenience you and provide motivation for you to strike against them. But you may choose not to do so, which will render the Dominators’ actions irrelevant to the “plot” of the game. As the game throws a large amount of information at its player, of which only a portion is or becomes relevant to the progression of the game, the plot of the game is unlikely to be perceived as particularly “tight” in the sense that every part of the game serves a function in the plot. However, it can be argued that this abundance of information is an important part of the artistic mission of the game: To present its player with as many options as possible and let him choose between them to create his own plot.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Oblivion is the result of a rather different approach to nonlinear storytelling. Rather than creating a complex simulation and leaving it completely up to the player to compose his own narration within the simulation, Oblivion has set up a large and open world similar to SR2, but which includes a large number of more or less linear narratives to choose between. The effect is somewhat similar to walking down a library isle. The choice of which story to read is up to you, but once you open one of the books, the story in it will unfold in a largely predetermined fashion. Thoughtfully, Bethesda have provided a so-called “main storyline” which has a clear and compulsory beginning and eventually ends if you choose to pursue it. This story has been built a lot like what you might find in a classic Hollywood film, with a primary problem that is presented early on and several smaller problems that require solving along the way in order for the initial problem to culminate in a climax in the end. It has major characters and minor characters each of whom has motivations and acts according to them.

Not much can be done to alter the course of the main story, but the interactivity comes from the fact that you may choose not to follow the main storyline at all or to break off from it at any time during its progression. Furthermore, several long storylines like it are provided in the form of “guild quests” where you join a certain guild and work your way up in their hierarchy, completing one assignment at a time. Sometimes these assignments may be solved in several different ways, but their outcome will always be the same: When you complete them, you will gain a rewards and be given the next quest, until you’ve reached the top of the guild’s hierarchy, at which point that storyline will be considered completed. Many independent quests have also been added to provide variation from the longer storylines, and each of these quests functions as a small linear storyline often complete with a plot-twist half-way through.

In other words, whereas SR2 creates a large world without any real plot, Oblivion gives you a score of long and smaller traditional plots to choose freely between.

Planescape: Torment
Torment is a third take on the role-playing genre and on interactive narration. It takes place in a somewhat esoteric fantasy world where much care has been taken to avoid many traditional elements of Tolkien’s works (in turn taken from folk lore) that have evolved to clichés of the genre (the utter lack of elves, orcs, and even swords for example). Torment also takes a drastic turn away from the stables of the genre of the computer role-playing game in that it supplies the player with a far less costumizable character than is typical. This is not merely done to set the game apart from its immediate peers, but serves to make it easier for the authors to anchor the story in the main character in a way that would be near impossible if the player had been able to determine as many of his avatar’s traits as eg. Oblivion allows.

Indeed the story of Torment depends heavily on its protagonist and his so-called “companions”, additional characters under the player’s control which are encountered throughout the game. In the concept of Torment’s main character, the game finds an explanation that allows the player to choose the personality of his avatar without disrupting the internal logic of the story. As such, the player has been provided with an impressive amount of options in the dialogue, where the main character may be made out to appear very cruel and unsympathetic or quite the contrary depending on the whims of the player. These options in turn call forth different reactions from the characters with which the protagonist interacts, and thus a sort of limited but powerful interactivity is created. Limited because the game will progress through the same plot space regardless of your actions (with the exception of plot-uncritical locations that may be visited or avoided along the way, especially in the first half of the game), and yet powerful because the reactions and motivations of the characters – and thus the causality upon which much of the narration depends – changes quite a bit depending on certain important choices: Who do you bring along on your quest? How do you treat them? And how do you deal with problems that arise? Whether you choose to slay an important antagonist or persuade him to back down by his own free will does not considerably affect how the rest of the story unfolds, but it changes a cause to which an effect later in the game must adapt (if you spare his life, he may appear later to help you).

Thus a mostly linear plot appears quite interactive by presenting you with many choices along the way, a large amount of which will change your experience of the story.

Half-Life (HL)
Half-Life differs from the previous three examples in that it belongs to the first-person shooter genre. It has been pointed out that Half-Life borrows many of its narrative techniques from the adventure game Myst (it fails to explain a lot of what is going on around you, choosing instead to show you fragmented clues prompting you to piece it all together yourself as you move through the game, and your avatar – though named in HL as opposed to Myst – is never shown or heard, creating a very strong immersion in the game world), but its structure, its interface, and not least its action-based gameplay puts it squarely in the FPS genre.

There is no doubt that Half-Life’s story is extremely linear, bordering the cinematic. And yet it is interactive in that YOU determine the pace of (most of – there are the railway sequences) the plot and the placement of the camera. The experience in Half-Life can be equated to visiting a movie set: The plot will unfold around you regardless of your actions, but the choice of where to place yourself and where to look is yours, and when the story moves to another location, you may choose not to follow, instead staying behind to admire the current set. You may of course interact with the world, but only in ways inconsequential to the plot or during sequences that contain little to no actual plot exposition: Interactive action scenes serve to keep you entertained and tie the cutscenes together. The plot in HL exists to be observed and discovered, not affected.