The Narrative Experience in RPG by Alexander Jacobs, BA C3113260
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The Player's Story: The Narrative Experience in RPG by Alexander Jacobs, BA c3113260 Bachelor of Arts (Honours) October, 2013 School of English & Writing University of Newcastle Statement of Originality The thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. I give consent to this copy of my thesis, when deposited in the School of Humanities and Social Science Thesis Library being made available for loan and photocopying subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. Alexander Jacobs, BA c3113260 Signed: Date: Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Jesper Gulddal Sorensen for his supervision, and express gratitude to Satoshi Tajiri for creating Pokémon, the first game-story that captured my imagination. Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................ 2 Terminology ................................................................................................................ 3 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 4 A Brief Overview of the Games ....................................................................... 12 Narrative Rules & Narrative Fictions ........................................................................ 14 Narrative Context of Gameplay in Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3 ............................. 16 The Use of Fiction to Explain Game Rules in Final Fantasy VI ...................... 22 Immersion in the RPG Genre .................................................................................... 27 Transhumanism in the Story and the HUD in Deus Ex ................................... 30 Character Interactions, Inconsistencies and Immersion in Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3 ........................................................................................................................ 37 The Player's Agency .................................................................................................. 45 Ultimate Agency and the Destruction of the Video game ............................... 50 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 53 Images ........................................................................................................................ 55 Games Cited ............................................................................................................... 69 Works Cited ............................................................................................................... 70 1 | P a g e Abstract This thesis is an examination of the presentation of narrative in role playing video games (RPGs) to discern the amount of control a player has over a video game story. In order to fully understand the player's participation in a RPG's story, the thesis is divided into three sections. "Narrative Rules VS Narrative Fiction" looks at established theories in game studies, establishing the basic relationship between a RPG's narrative and its game rules. "Immersion in the RPG Genre" builds upon the basic relationship by exploring the immersive techniques used in RPGs, like multi-linear narrative structures and explorable virtual spaces, to engage the player in meaningful play. "The Player's Agency" looks at special narrative generation, or narrative praxis, the player performs by interacting with a video game, and asks at what point the player overtakes the developer as the author of meaning. Six video games are investigated to demonstrate the value for gameplay to be contextualised in narrative, along with some supplementary video games: Deus Ex (Ion Storm, 2000), Final Fantasy VI (Square, 1994), Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3 (BioWare, 2007, 2010, 2012). All games are examples of RPG genre, while manipulating the genre to serve their respective narratives, and range over a decade of video game history. 2 | P a g e Terminology FPS- First Person Shooter NPC- Non-Playable Character PC- Playable Character Platformer- two dimensional game which scrolls along the x and y axis RPG- Role Playing Video Games (unless stated otherwise) 3 | P a g e Introduction In this thesis I will discuss the presentation of narrative in roleplaying video games, or RPGs, with a specific scrutiny of Deus Ex, Final Fantasy VI, Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3. My objective is to look at the quality of narrative in certain RPGs in relation to the medium's place in literature studies, exploring how game and narrative inform each other to empower the player's role as an authorial agent. The first issue of the Game Studies states that existing fields, like literature studies, should be involved in the study of games alongside an independent academic structure of game studies (Aarseth "Computer Game Studies, Year One"). The work in this thesis builds on this research, drawing from game-centric ludology, story focused narratology, studies in-between and even those outside of video games. Five games are used to discuss the role of narratives in RPGs: BioWare's space opera epics Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3, Ion Storm's cyberpunk Deus Ex, and Square's Final Fantasy VI. With the exception of Final Fantasy VI, these are not typical role-playing games. Bioware and Ion Storm blend game genres in their respective games, taking cues from first person shooter (FPS) gameplay, RPG character focus, stealth, and adventure games. I have used these games as examples of the RPG genre because they are not conventional RPGs. These games draw from various cinematic, literature, and video game genres to create a fulfilling role play experience for the player in both gameplay and narrative by allowing the player a degree of control over a character's story in the virtual game world. RPG narratives give the player choice, with consequential and trivial decision making impacting upon the interpretation of the game world. When a player begins Mass Effect 1, the customisation screen facilitates the construction of a unique Commander Shepard (Figure 1.1, 1.2). The dialogue between Admiral Anderson and 4 | P a g e Councillor Udina in the cinematic after customisation is a result of choosing, for this example, to be male with a military history of losing an entire unit of soldiers on the planet Akuze: UDINA: Well, what about Shepard? HACKETT: He saw his whole unit die on Akuze. He could have some serious emotional scars. ANDERSON: Every soldier has scars. Shepard's a survivor. UDINA: Is that the kind of person we want protecting the galaxy? ANDERSON: That's the only kind of person who can protect the galaxy. UDINA: I'll make the call. Mass Effect, BioWare 2007 Some choices in video games are completely arbitrary: the character's ethnic appearance in Deus Ex or Mass Effect has no impact on the gameplay, the game's rules or its story (Figure 1.3, 1.4). The player's choice of in game name has next to no effect on the game beyond a personal attachment, especially so in Final Fantasy VI where preset names are provided and the story is fixed. However there are some choices in video games that are designed to impact on the fiction and rules of the game. Video games with consequential and game altering choices create interesting interactive possibilities for the player, providing a certain amount of control over the media. RPGs are designed with character customisation and player choice in mind; even arbitrary decisions like the main character's appearance can be manipulated by the player to some degree. It is the non-arbitrary player decisions within the plot of an RPG that empowers the player with a sense of control and authority over the medium. Deus Ex and to a greater extent Mass Effect create moral choices for the player, and even the fixed story 5 | P a g e of Final Fantasy VI allows the player at a certain point in the game to determine the order of the story's progression. The discussion of these choices, or lack thereof, and what they do to narrative in video games is the primary interest of this thesis. The concepts in my work are drawn from the contributions of ludology and narratology, two recognisable theories for video game studies. Ludology makes a case for the rules of the game, that is the constructs of the program that define a video game, to be the focal point for study and that other factors are supplementary to the rules that define the game. Narratology critiques the use of narrative structures in video games borrowing from literature theory to create definitions, such as in Tosca's video game 'close reading' where she importantly points out a distinction between "story that informs gameplay (feels as meaningful) and story that doesn't (feels superfluous)" ("Reading Resident Evil-Code Veronica X" 210). There has, unfortunately, been academic confusion between the two theories and how they interact. Frasca notes "there is a serious misunderstanding on the fact that some scholars believe that ludologists hold a radical position that completely discards narrative from videogames" (94), implying that bias-based commentary was more damaging than helpful. This perception of ludology as the anti-narrative video game theory is a derived from misinterpretation; the real issue was a concern that video games were