pubs
A story is what is being told. A narrative is how what’s being told is being told.
There are only so many stories in the world. There are limitless narrative possibilities, however. Videogames present a bunch which don’t exist elsewhere. Every game has a narrative; even a round of Dance Dance Revolution has a certain arc. There is a certain amount of conflict and drama, according to the structure of the song and the difficulty of the steps involved. I’m not sure what kind of message it really contains. I guess it’s up for interpretation.
The question is, how can the elements implicit to a videogame be used to narrate more effectively, on both a human level and one distinct to videogames? Whereas most videogames, at the moment, just take their nature for granted, one wonders how that very nature might be used in the way brush and canvas, film and lens are already used to explore our own nature.
Silent Hill 2, Shenmue, Ico achieve this, to varying extents and in various ways. They use the framework and grammar of a videogame as an opportunity to explore something more interesting. In these cases specifically, something more human. They’ve almost gotten over their existence as videogames (though not entirely yet).
Ikaruga is kind of a haiku about the nature of sacrifice in its most abstract form, using the most basic, abstracted form of videogame available as a template. As with Rez, it is intentionally just about as simple as can be, such that it might present to the player an orchestrated sequence of events, in an orchestrated order, with as much clarity as possible, without interfering with the basic gameplay.
Although simple, the game is informed by the last decade and a half or so of game design; it understands how shooters work, what players’ expectations are based on every other shooter which has existed; it anticipates them, and it plays with them. It does this through stripping down the existing template, while rebuilding it subtly with different ingredients, to comment on the game’s very nature as a videogame (much as Kojima does, though more subtly).
The game, for instance, puts a focus on not shooting; on the concept that every negative action you choose has a reaction that just makes life all the harder, all the more complex, even if at first it seems the easiest, or the only path. This is all implicit. It all ties into the game’s themes. And yet you never think about it openly, because the idea is communicated through the game’s mechanics.
Where Silent Hill is a short story, Ikaruga is a poem.
Mister Toups said:
The point of all this is that storytelling in and of itself was not always linear or static, and in fact, when we relied more on oral storytelling than on printed texts, it was to a degree interactive.
The model is as with performed music, versus recorded music (two different, though related, forms), or theater, versus film (similar relationship).
Theater and performed music, of course, are both offshoots of bardic storytelling. So are folk tales and children’s stories. (See how many versions of “Red Riding Hood” you can count.)
Even the modern frozen forms tend to contain some hint of that ephemeral potential. This is how we get “cover songs”, and novels which retell the same familiar story from a slightly different angle, and films which get remade, and the legend of Zelda told and retold, with a slightly different set of embellishments each time around.
Videogames sit in some weird nether-region, where they are both frozen and active. If anything, they are probably closest to theater — out of the other existing forms I can think of, at the moment. That is, theater, if you happen to be one of the players. And if you happen to be playing with a slightly improvisational troupe, and with material which lends itself to interpretation while still providing strong guidelines.
If you think of it, the term “player” has its particular roots…
This here might explain in part why I have such a fondness for the B-game, as it were; the small game, without the budget of your Mario or your Final Fantasy, made to fill in a crack in the catalogue or to try out a few random ideas, without the pressure to sell big numbers.
In the NES era, you had Nintendo R&D#4 (now EAD) with its golden Zelda and Mario and whatnot; then you had R&D#1 with its silver Kid Icarus and Metroid; then you had the filler material: Ice Climber, Clu-Clu Land, Wrecking Crew, Balloon Fight.
You don’t see as many B-games these days, from major publishers. I mean, it happens. Early on, I was kind of excited about the Gamecube because it seemed like Nintendo was reverting to the old strategy with the likes of Luigi’s Mansion and Pikmin and Doshin and Cubivore.
Even so, it remains the smaller games — the ones that are developed out of the spotlight, away from the microscope — which tend to attract my attention. Yes, things like Katamari Damashii. Or like a lot of Treasure’s original concepts (successful or not). Simple concept; simple execution; simple message, conveyed mostly through gameplay. They often seem to get more to the point of what videogames are about, from what I can see, compared to the headliner games which are intended to please everyone. There is a sense of fun, of life, of freedom to play with different approaches. Different kinds of narrative. I feel more involved because the game does not take my attention for granted. It actively tries to engage me, even if it must stand on its head to do so.
* * *
I would enjoy seeing a remake of Castlevana and Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, as a single game. The structure would be unusual, of course: a maddeningly hard action-oriented buildup, and then a free-roaming Zelda-like middle and end. This could be something. Consider that the two games are, functionally two halves of the same story. The different kinds of gameplay, then, reflect the different forms of tension going on at each given point in the story. Such a remake will also make more clear what’s going on: that the almost-too-direct quest in the original Castlevania was really just a trap for Simon.
You could call it “Castlevania: Song of Simon”. And also include key material from the various existing remakes, where it would fit: Super Castlevania, Castlevania Chronicles, Haunted Castle. Maybe redo the ending to Simon’s Quest, using some of this material, to make it more interesting.
Similarly: consider a remake, from the ground up, of the two Dracula Denetsu games for the Gameboy (The Castlevania Adventure and Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge) — again, assembled into a single narrative. Hell, Christopher LETS DRACULA GET AWAY at the end of the first game, allowing Dracula to later kidnap his son. Suddenly, Christopher seems a lot more prepared the second time around. In a way, the second half of the story is an extended payment for Chrisopher being such a doofus at the outset. It forces him to take his heritage, and his lot in life, seriously.
Again, the structure is unusual: a linear slog for the first portion, then a multiple-choice, multi-path section, to dramatize through the game structure Chrisopher’s search for his son.
This could be: “Castlevania: Cantata of Chrisopher”
Lots can be done there.
