Unearthing the Subtext in Game Narrative

I wrote recently of techniques and ways of thinking about subtext in screenplays - using Secrets and Lies between characters and with the audience as a way to build scenes and stories with rich complexity. As i followed this line of thinking through i came to video game narrative and found myself wondering about how this approach applies to narrative games?

I have long argued that it is inherently problematic to perceive of game narrative as outside or beyond traditional narrative parameters. Storytelling in Games is not such a radical departure that the baby should go out with the bath water. Inciting actions, dramatic questions, catharsis, inversions, turning points, archetypes, act and episodic structures, threshold guardians - these are all terms with a deep and rich history in storytelling from ancient greece onward and yet each and everyone of these idea-terms is just as prevalent and at home in game narrative as it is at the movies. What are boss-battles but the game equivalent, and serving the same purpose, as Joseph Campbell’s Threshold Guardians - antagonists that block the way for the hero to progress to the next stage of their narrative journey? What good story-based game is lacking an inversion point for the player character? Witness Bioshock and the revelation that he is in fact Andrew Ryan s off spring (of sorts) and your arrival in Rapture is no accident. Or Crysis when a standard operation against the Korean army becomes a sci-fi alien encounter? Or Halo 2 when Master Chief Is forced into cooperation with his enemies against a bigger threat. These examples and countless more represent the same dramatic principles of inversion of circumstance that classic hero’s-journey narrative is built on.

Now, This is not say that all video games have to be story-based, just as not all cinema is story-based. But a great proportion of games and cinema are, and their popularity is unquestionable - the effect and resonance of dramatic narrative is deeply entwined with who we are as human beings.

But, whilst i may celebrate the great engagement that game narrative can generate i can also, all too easily, point to its short comings and this brings me back to Subtext secrets and lies. This is the crucial element that game narrative so often lacks which holds it back from higher levels of sophistication and subtly. My previously outlined ideas of Secrets, Lies and their respective quotients of Value and Damage are potentially a way to both see and address the failings of game storytelling. A game narrative may well have inciting incidents, inversions and threshold guardians but without subtext the dramatic tension a game may generate is limited to simple plot progressions and events, chase scenes and explosions.

The problem is that to generate tangible subtext a game story must construct Secrets and Lies held between characters and with the viewer. In my previous post i defined 4 types of diegetic character secrets and lies:

Character A knows something Character B doesn t.

Character A doesn t know something Character B does.

Character A knows something Character B doesn t and lies about it.

Character A saids something Character B knows to be a lie

And 2 types of non-diegetic secrets and lies:

The Character knows something the Viewer does not.

The Viewer knows something the Character does not

The problem with games is that since the player IS (more often than not) one of the characters and also simultaneously the viewer, the variants above are greatly reduced, converged and restricted.

The first - that Character A knows something Character B doesn’t - is decidedly problematic if we consider that the player is one of these characters. The player being aware of something another Non-Player Character is not aware of seems simple but if the game’s point-of-view is locked to the character (i.e. first or third-person shooter; e.g. Bioshock or Mass Effect) then its very difficult to give the player/character a privileged position to know anything outside of what is immediate. Here we can see the great impetus for the cinematic and passive cut-scene in game narrative; it is a chance to provide the player with knowledge beyond their immediate player pov and therefore potentially sow a secret that both their character and NPCs do not. A prime example would be the cut scenes that lead in Mass Effect 2 where the viewer, separate from their pov as player of Shepard, is shown interactions between the leaders of Cerberus. The information contained in these scenes then becomes the subtext that the PC carries with them once they commence playing as Shepard. The Player effectively knows more than the character they are playing does (i.e.. i know more than Shepard does) and this secret is the subtext that sows the subsequent scenes and conversations (with NPC s like Miranda) with doubt and suspicion.

The inverse of this first kind is not so hard - a state where the NPC knows something the Player-Character (PC) does not - and this device is the simple setup to creating plot revelations to the PC. The aforementioned example from Bioshock of Andrew Ryan s revelation to you, as player, the truth of your origns and your subsequent uncontrollable action to kill him on command, is a key example of this. Andrew Ryan the NPC knows the truth as a secret withheld from you as the player. This is certainly effective as a character revelation and a narrative turning point, and it works as a kind of retrospective subtext by prompting you as PC to reflect upon the events leading up to that point in a new light. But as a vehicle for subtext in the present moment it has limited impact. It is the type of secret and lie gaming does easily and well but it is also a bit of a one trick pony with a limited life-span.

The third form above, whereby Character A knows the truth and lies about it to an ignorant Character B is a mode often under exploited in game narrative but which, non-the less, has great game potential. Games that utilise variable dialogue trees provide the most direct opportunity for the PC to know the truth and lie about it to an NPC effecting their behaviour and the narrative direction. Dragon Age has numerous examples where the PC can choose to answer in such a way as to hide what they really know or lie about their motivations to NPC s. This creates deliberate subtext between the PC and the NPC s which is potentially a great means to create deeper character engagement on the part of the player. However what remains for game developers and game writers is to orchestrate ways for such Lies and Secrets perpetuated by the PC to have real Value and Damage. For a Secret to be worth keeping or disclosing it must have Value, it must be worth something - not just to the character holding the secret but to those who want to know what the secret is. The more valuable the secret the more dramatically engaging it is, the stronger the subtext it generates. Likewise for a Lie to be dramatically powerful it must be capable of damage - the idea that that if the lie is told or spread there will be high stakes ramifications and fallout. This is where games are often let down. Even though a sophisticated dialogue tree system may allow for the PC to perpetuate and hold secrets and lies, the subtext these generate will be negligible if the lies have no value to NPC s and the Lies deliver no high-stakes damage and fallout when they are told. This is not of itself a new idea, game writers and critics have long argued for PC choices to have real in-game effects on story, but too often these are focused on plot outcomes - changing the ending such as in Bioshock or which NPC s will or wont help you in Dragon Age.

If game narratives are to develop to a deeper level of complexity it may help to think of PC actions and choices through the prism of how Secrets and Lies effect the story-world and the players perception of themselves in that world, rather than simply altering plot outcomes. Subtext in gaming is not easy but it s arguably the key ingredient in making a story more than just a series of events. Conceiving of subtext as secrets and lies with direct Values and Damages potentially gives game developers and game writers a more tangible toolkit to work with. What remains is to design game mechanics that make the secrets and lies count and provide flexible and variable ways in which players can choose (or are compelled) to perpetuate and hold secrets and lies in the game story world.