Narrative Games that Inspire
The ability to tell a good story deeply inspires my work as a designer. I have always found that I learn the best through connection, and the ability to empathize with the people in those stories.
In The Case for Reading Fiction, Christine Seifert notes:
“When it comes to reading, we may be assuming that reading for knowledge is the best reason to pick up a book. Research, however, suggests that reading fiction may provide far more important benefits than nonfiction. For example, reading fiction predicts increased social acuity and a sharper ability to comprehend other people’s motivations.”
What remains of Edith Finch is the story of a family and its untimely demise. The Finch house entombs the family history, as you explore the rooms of each family member, sealed upon their deaths. Edith is the only person alive in the Finch family, and she returns to her home to better understand her family’s story, which her mother kept hidden from her most of her life. Each story of a family members death is told in a different style, and they each resonate differently. Yet all share what it means to be connected to something bigger than ourselves, with mystery and history alike. This game also highlights the power of slowly revealing details, and not immediately jumping to the moral of the story, you don’t really understand what’s going on until the last moments of the game. It’s a beautiful and memorable gaming experience.
Disco Elysium was a central inspiration behind the role-playing game I developed in Games, Design, and Education, in both its visual style and alignment structure. In this game, you play a detective who has no memory of who he is, or what he’s investigating. While you slowly learn more about the detective through his interactions with others, your decisions and conversations are what truly shape the character. Is the detective a communist or fascist? Self-centered or giving? Empathetic or emotionally empty? Your actions tell the real story.
This game also shows how a story can be reflected through the eyes of someone else, and the importance of feedback and dialogue. The detective’s relationship with his partner, Kim Kitsuragi, serves as a mirror that the user can choose to look in or completely ignore.
The first installment in this story was one of the biggest story twists I’ve never saw coming. When the user gets to the end of the story, and realizes how they got there, it is a complete shock that the hints were visible all along. This game is also a great example of how a difficult topic (a Rand-ian, dystopic future) can be covered with levity and humor (the physics engine and character design are simultaneously creepy and humorous). This game has extensive lore and entire universe of stories that have been developed outside of these games. It has pushed me to think about how to develop realistic worlds that help tell our stories.