Journal 3-Week 2

Narrative has always existed in games, whether the characters or objects were intended to be a narrative or not. In the case of early games that had primitive graphics and no text, a primitive story has always existed. In Pong or the sports games featured by Atari there is the intrinsic story of players trying to score in their respective games. That's how sports works in the real world as well. Narrative can also be told through the environment, with specific details about the game world or level appearing subtly or directly. This can be through portraits hanging on a wall or the particular decoration of objects.

Outside techniques are my favorite for telling narrative in games. There's the way information is portrayed, like the cinematic cutscenes of the Metal Gear game series, to interactive real-time events like games from TellTale. Characters can even be used to tell narrative, whether a game uses characters for exposition or tells a story about a world through a character. In the second The Walking Dead Game by TellTale players learn about the world and returning character Clementine through a new character called Javier.