Week 6

Lecture Notes

• Non-linear stories originally involved giving the player agency over decisions in the narrative.

• What makes a good non-linear story is giving enough evidence for the player to make an informed decision.

• Different types of linear narratives include:

  • Series - A series of episodes that connect directly to an overarching story with no interruption.

  • Serial - A series of episodes that experiences breaks in flow in the narrative, featuring different plots (A plot, B plot) throughout, with an example being sub-arcs underneath an overarching story, such as A Series of Unfortunate Events and various anime.

  • Episodes - A series of episodes that are not connected together in the narrative, such as Black Mirror.

• Rearranged linearity:

  • Parallel narratives - Such as switching focus between protagonists throughout the story, such as in Final Fantasy switching between protagonists whose stories run parallel to each other.

  • Flashback and flashforwards are when the game jumps back and forth in the story's timeline, with an example of why being to provide context that happened earlier in the timeline for a plot that exists in the current point of the timeline. An example of a game that uses flashbacks and flashforwards is Call of Duty: Black Ops II, which switches between the Cold War period and the future.

    • A risk of this is portraying a defeat in agency, where it is revealed in flashforwards that choices made by the player don't affect the future of the story.

• Types of narrative in games:

  • Evoked narrative - What the world and the player actions tell about the narrative, e.g. Space Invaders communicating via the world and actions that you're defending against waves of aliens.

  • FILL IN THE REST

Games of Note

• Her Story - https://store.steampowered.com/app/368370/Her_Story/ 

• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor - https://store.steampowered.com/app/241930/Middleearth_Shadow_of_Mordor/