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!

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Dragon Age: When Narrative and Gameplay make Fun

I think I fell in love with Alistair the moment I came out of Flemeth’s hut and he was so happy to see me alive. I knew it was just because he was relieved to not be alone in the world, but I was still head over heels.

Narrative in a game has the power to be so much more than just a framework of a universe or a generic plot to satisfy the genre. Game narratives can help create emotional experiences.

In Dragon Age:Origins, superb voice acting, fabulously animated facial features, developed histories, and consistent moralities somehow combine into a magical, sparkling, non-vampire known as Character. Alistair is sarcastic, playful, good, strong, sometimes conflicted, always gorgeous, loyal, and … interesting. I gave him some kind of runic symbol and he looooved it.

Why? Why does he like runes? Maybe I just hadn’t spoken to him enough to find out, but I knew there must be a reason and I was going to dig it out of him – I was going to get to know him.

Alistair is just one example of great character design in DA:O. But, is that enough to make a great game? Couldn’t I just go read Tolkien or Jordan or Martin if I wanted a good fantasy character? (Shhh, let’s only think of the first few Jordan books – let him rest in peace.)

I could. I don’t need to play a game for good narrative and if that’s all I wanted, I’d probably read a book. But we play games because we also want to have fun. We want to act. We want to play and I firmly believe that no amount of even superb narrative will, on its own, make a good game. A good game also needs good gameplay.

What is about DA:O’s gameplay that’s good? How does it interact with the narrative to create a seamless “game-goodness”?

One of the ways is I think the game’s focus on moral choices. Not only do they influence how the story plays out, they also influence whether your party members stay and fight beside you. Some class specializations are only unlocked by certain moral choices. NPC interactions vary dependent on choices you’ve made that have influenced them. Some preferable choices simply can’t be made because you haven’t worked on your character’s cunning and Coercion skills. The entire game can simply not be completed 100% on one playthrough, not just because there are different class/race beginnings, but because you will experience different parts of the game dependent on the choices you make.

It's not what it looks like...

All right, moral choices, but how does that influence the buttons I push and my heartrate in combat? Well, it may not influence the buttons you push for your main character, but it does influence what buttons you can push for your other party members. As I mentioned, some may leave you if they don’t agree with you, but also, their own abilities directly match their character as developed through the narrative. Of course, Alistair is a tank. Of course, Oghren fights with a two-hander. Of course, Wynne is a healer. Etc., etc.

Sometimes, narrative may even help make up for less-than-superb gameplay. The dwarven main questline is too long by most players’ estimation, but we know Branka must be out there so we keep searching, and the longer we search, the greater the suspense builds. Had I been a real adventurer, I would have assumed the darkspawn ate her and went back much earlier than I actually did. It dragged on and was the only area I left partially unexplored. At the end, though, I was rewarded with great narrative and a good battle. It wasn’t just a dungeon crawl – it was an epic search for lost Paragons and legendary technology.

The game is fun for more than just Alistair (and his very dreamy…mm). It’s fun to fight in this game. It’s fun to find class specializations and new recipes. It’s fun to get new spells and discover spell combos. It’s fun to give gifts. It’s fun to hear my characters talk to each other. It’s fun to open chests and find love letters. It’s sad to see characters leave or die. It’s exciting to recruit someone new. It’s scary to fight the Broodmother.

I could go on and on. The important thing to see is that it is almost impossible to separate the threads of narrative and gameplay in this game. Either they are so fine, I just cannot discern the boundary, or else they are so finely done, they merge.

Game-Soul for $400

One of the Massively writers gave a refreshingly honest review of Aion today. His main argument against the game was that it “has no soul”.

So Alex, Game-Soul for $400. “The substance, essence, and/or feature of a game that provides soul.” After 3 pages of comments, a few answers to that question have surfaced. (Questions to that answer?) The two biggest winners were lore and immersion.

What is … lore and immersion?

Players were pretty unanimous in the fact that there was simply no context for the game. Without a franchise history (like Warcraft, Warhammer and Lord of the Rings have), there is simply no inherent knowledge of the world in the minds of gamers before they step into the game. Quests could potentially be a great opportunity to spread lore in a game, but about 95% of Aion’s quests are kill x number of y quests. Here are a couple player comments:

“How then, can we feel we are in a living, breathing world, when we barely understand it?”

“I consider the “Soul” to be the immersion ability in to a world’s lore. Playing through Aion’s tutorial (1-10) does not really give you enough time to attune to the Lore.”

Lore certainly can be effectual in creating immersion, but it’s not the only thing. Despite the one player who stated they’d never felt more immersed in a world before, most complained about how the world did not feel alive. It didn’t have depth according to one player: “…beautiful at the surface, but extremely shallow. It’s linear. Leveling seems to be this long journey through a narrow path that introduces the world. But once you’ve seen it once, you’ve seen it all.” There were also numerous complaints about the nonsensical ecology. The fields are full of mindless creatures who are simply there, with no point or even logic to their existence.

Alternatively, a couple players surprisingly (to me) stated that the characters were too customizable and they weren’t able to relate to them. In one’s words, “The characters look a little too defined I think, I cant project my own self onto my avatar so I feel like im controlling someone else with strings like a puppet. I never realized it but its the same thing that I didnt like about tabula, the characters look too real so I cant toss my own imagined ID on top of them. Weird huh?.”

So far, we’ve learned that games need a) either a history of lore or lore that is well-developed from the beginning, b) not just a pretty surface, but a deep world with multiple possibilities of experience, and c) a perfect balance in customization that gives enough options to individualize, but not too many. A nice start but it’s just the beginning.

Many people play these MMOs for the people who inhabit the worlds along with them. The community. Usually, this extends beyond the game into forums, fansites, fan fiction, blogspace, etc. For Aion, there may be community, but somehow the players aren’t feeling it yet. One said, “more PVP oriented games tend to suffer from this [lack of soul]. Once you joined a corp [in EVE] and there was a sense of structure and organization, it started to gain its unique soul.” So, cooperative play. I find it interesting he didn’t feel much community from the numerous grinding groups that get together as early as level 15. Maybe one needs interesting content to play with those people…

Then, there’s the big one we all secretly hope will one day actually be there.

What is… originality?

Oh, the secret ingredient. Everyone tries. Everyone fails. (at least these days) So does Aion according to these folks:

“It’s a generic and derivative MMO in every way.”

“I so desperately want an MMO that exceeds the experience and fun that WoW delivers.”

“The basic game (play) is quite traditional and doesn’t push into any new directions (except the pretty direction).”

Are we really that banal and uncreative? Have we run out of designer berry juice? Where’s the inspiration, the zing, the lightning-bolt idea at 2am that moves this genre somewhere that’s more than just glistening and beautiful? Perhaps we don’t have to find it, since another states:

“And personally, I don’t want a new-new-super-unique game. I want something that’s familiar and fun. And a lot of other people seem to want that as well.”

Or hey, who needs immersion? “I don’t want to simply live in a world, I play games to get away from living.”

Well, that might make us all feel better for a little while, but we’re still left wondering whether our game has soul and if not, why not? Do we not have enough of our own love into it? Aion didn’t seem to communicate that love to some people like this one, for example:

“When I play Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings, and even WoW (at least the vanilla WoW) you can almost FEEL the affection the developers have for the game. It is hard to describe, but it is almost as if they themselves wanted to live in the world and make you want to as well.”

For me, one of the players summed it all up. “It sounds odd, I guess, but in MMOs as in a good novel, I have to care about my character, my actions, the world, the overarching story, and the quests to some degree or else it just seems mechanical and pointless, however, polished it may be.”

You can have pretty, you can have story quests, you can have a vibrant world where wolves eat squirrels, but without the guiding presence of a visual narrative that your character (who doesn’t look too real) can experience, the game will have no soul. What is….Narrative?