Thoughts on Lore and Myth

For my work this term, I’m reading quite a bit about ancient myth as it relates to heroes and heroines. I was thinking today about how odd it is myth exists in a changeable kind of limbo. There is no Bible of Greek Myth (Amazon may differ on that point) that people can go to in order to check authenticity. I can tell a story of Odysseus; you can tell a story of Odysseus; Jimbob C. can tell a story of Odysseus. They do not need to be the same. Some things will not change – he will have a wife named Penelope. He will either be in the process of a journey, homeward or not, or he will be at some point expecting or reflecting on the journey. He will be wily and skilled in rhetoric. Aside from these core traits, your Odysseus and my Odysseus could have radically different lives.

For example, Homer’s Odysseus encounters a whole troop of troubles on his way home, but eventually he gets there. Dante’s Odysseus had no desire to go home and never does. His journey ends in Hell. They are unmistakably the same character though.

Perhaps we can look back now and see the big names of H and D and think they just had special powers for using mythical characters in whatever way they please. This isn’t the case though. Achilles had conflicting stories. Dionysus had conflicting stories. Antigone had conflicting stories. Medea was told in different ways.

Is it like Nancy Drew who has 3,000 adventures all while she is 18 years old? No, because her adventures don’t contradict each other. Is it like the many different Batmans depicted on screen? The many James Bonds? If a character in the Warcraft Universe suddenly did not complete his version of the return home, fans would be in an uproar. “WHAT?!?! Arthas NEVER had brown hair. HE IS A BLONDE!!!!” I can see it now.

What is it about mythical characters that makes them different from those in fictional universes? It feels like a kind of translation. We have freedom to interpret much of it though there is a certain underlying “true-ness” to each character. I may interpret Odysseus in a way that suits my treatise of Hell but his underlying Odysseus-ness is still present. He is more than just a character. He is a multi-faceted variety of ways his character could react with his world (our world?) and still remain him.

Primary Probability Stew

As I continue to contemplate the feature of post-primary narrative, I’ve begun to wonder just what place “primary” has in it at all. Of course, there is always a primary. Something must always come first. In games with a multipathed narrative though, what comes first may be different for everyone. I will continue to use Dragon Age: Origins as an example.

There are 6 entry paths available to the narrative in DA:O. These are the “Origins”. However, although there are these finite beginnings, they are able to be colored differently by the players themselves. The dialogue trees in the game offer different perspectives and responses from various game characters. Although in the Origin, the player-character is destined to eventually end up at the same place, they can do so with varied experiences. Rather than 6 individual primary paths, there are actually 6 probability clouds of primary paths. And this is only the Origin. After that, the diagram would get much more complicated.

How then do we analyze a primary narrative experience? Rather than working with traditional methodologies of narrative, we may need to create a theory that acknowledges a model of narrative that has little to no stable text or primary foundation. It can be argued that any text will result in different initial readings depending on the reader, but in those cases, there is a stable text common to all.

In a multipathed narrative like in DA:O, what is common to all? The narrative is a stew of variables rather than a string of constants. There are certain plot points which do occur for everyone, but they still offer multiple avenues of experience through player choice. Although we may all journey to visit Arl Eamon, what actually takes place there at his castle may be quite different for each of us. There are many possible intratextualities and many possible cross-references, but many of them could only come to light in particular post-primary experiences, in which case, the reader’s particular primary experience of the narrative would be greatly influential.

Does this then mean that a single reader could never fully experience the entire narrative? If some post-primary features are dependent on one’s particular primary experience (of which there can only be one, naturally), then a single reader could only experience those which his particular primary allows.

Are his experiences intertextually related to another’s? These are not separate texts that readers experience, and yet, they are different.

Don’t worry baby, it’s just a metaphor.

For my much-beloved (*cough*) metaphor class last term, I wrote a piece on Lord of the Rings Online and its use of the metaphor of morale in place of health.

The paper itself is quite long, but I wrote up a brief summary of some of the ideas that came out of the research discussion. The summary is over at LOTRO Reporter where I am starting a column on the Lore-Master class. If you’d like to read the original discussion (and even comment – it’s still open), head over to GoogleWave. If you need a Wave invite, email me (adaplays AT gmail DOT com).

Post-Primary Narrative: The Re-Encounter

My papers are finished for the term and I know I’ve promised summaries, but I just cannot get this topic off my mind.

When working on the Dragon Age narrative paper, I became captivated by the concept of post-primary narrative or a re-encounter with an already experienced game/text. With traditional text, some nuances may appear which were missed the first time, but no new words are actually read and there are no new speeches or revelations from the characters. In games, it is quite different. A second playthrough of many games offers entirely new experiences. Although the basic plot itself does not change, the perspective from which it is told may be completely opposite from the first and choices made by the player may actually alter how the plot is progressed. Even if one plays a second time from the original perspective, in many games, there is some element of chance which will alter the way in which the player experiences the narrative. Further, there are often areas or events which were missed the first time although present and which may be noticed a second or third time.

I have also been working on The Lord of the Rings Online, as many of you know, but hadn’t yet applied the thoughts of post-primary narrative to it and its genre. Players often complain about the fact that they must do the same thing over when leveling a new character or when completing dungeons or battles. They are actually experiencing post-primary narrative, but one in which there are very few possibilities of emergent narrative (that portion of narrative which is uncovered by other actions in the game and often requires multiple playthroughs).

The new skirmish system in LotrO highlights the presence of post-primary narrative in MMOs. In a skirmish, one experiences a particular event (such as the death of Mazog) a second time. Unlike a game such as Dragon Age, MMOs typically offer a single perspective (that of the player, regardless of player-character) and often have a lower element of chance. Under these conditions, it is quite difficult to have a new experience colored by the first:  a post-primary experience. Instead, they simply have a reminder of a former experience. We see Mazog say the exact same things at the exact same time as before. The only thing that may change at the end is how many marks (rewards) we get.

If MMO developers tried to further the possibilities available in their post-primary narratives, the player experience could be made much more engaging. There would actually be incentive to play through the game again, to re-encounter it. The current pervasive desire to skip to the endgame as soon as possible could be lessened, if not eliminated. Bioware’s upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic will certainly have more obvious features of emergent narrative than other MMOs, since each class will have its own story to play through. These will surely give incentive to experience post-primary narrative, though I am not sure how much possibility for change there will be after the main plot is experienced. I’m looking forward to it though!