On Narrative: story and discourse

1. In the Introduction to Story and Discourse, Chatman quotes Claude Bremond, who says: “Any sort of narrative message… may be transposed from one to another medium without losing its essential properties: the subject of a story may serve as argument for a ballet, that of a novel, can be transposed to stage or screen, one can recount in words a film to someone who has not seen it.” Chatman goes on to suggest that “transposability of the story is the strongest reason for arguing that narratives are indeed structures independent of any medium”.
   
   Choose a narrative that has been expressed in both an interactive and a non-interactive medium, for example the game Tomb Raider and the movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Discuss how the transposition to/from interactive media has changed the narrative. Has the structure of the narrative remained intact?

In most movie-turned games, most narrative is conserved insofar as certain kernel events, settings and existents are maintained. However, the user is inserted in particular points of the narrative structure that allows for some freedom of play. This “freedom” is also restricted by the rules of the game. In this, there is some element of self-regulation. The user is not allowed to make decisions that will drastically change the course of the narrative.

When I was thinking of an example to cite, many of the typical movie-turned-games came to mind. But as we were in lecture on Tuesday I was reminded of Indiana Jones when we were talking about “different stories, same plot”.

Then the “primitive” Atari/LucasArt era came to mind and I remembered the really prehistoric arcade games made during the 80s of the Indian Jones movies. The one I most recall has to be Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Most of you would probably remember that one because of that scene with the live throbbing heart.

Anyway, in that game, developed by Atari in 1985, the general plot is the same as the movie. The mission for Indy remains the same. But while the game tries to preserve the settings and some characters, the theme of the game, being one of those old scrolling adventures, fails to capture much of the movie’s original narrative. Indy does still carry that whip, fears bats and snakes, and his ultimate goal is still to stop Mola Ram (harharhar!).

Like most arcade games of the time, they were not so interested in preserving the narrative as they were in providing some short-lived entertainment. Thus narrative structure was not very much preserved, save for the characters and some settings.

2. Chatman observes that “whether… the author elects to order the reporting of events according to their causal sequence or to reverse them in a flashback effect – only certain possibilities can occur… Of course certain events or existents that are not immediately relevant maybe brought in. But at some point their relevance must emerge, otherwise we object that the narrative is ‘ill-formed.’” This is the notion of self-regulation.
   
   Interactive media allows for choice and control on the part of the reader/user. What problem does this raise for self-regulation? What, if anything, does this suggest about designing interactive narrative?

Let’s think about the piece of “interactive narrative” as a game, to make this easier. A large part of game design in my opinion is really in predicting what the user would do when playing the game. In order to maintain some integrity of the narrative I think, would require a complex of rules and boundaries in which the user can move freely within and play, yet control the ultimate outcome. (or, produce a number of outcomes)

For example, in the example cited in class – text-based H2G2 by infocom – largely follows the narrative of the book closely, yet allows the user to freely attempt to play around at commands. Yet, while the user can make all kinds of demands of the system, the structure of the narrative is preserved in that settings, kernels and existents are all maintained. Choices made by Arthur Dent thus help propel the story forward but does not change the main bits of it. This is probably my rudimentary example of how a piece of interactive media is somewhat self-regulatory. The game designers left a certain amount of leeway for the user to play with, but set down many rules that help restrict the amount of choice the user has.

3. Discussing the concept of interpretation, or "filling in the gaps", in narrative, Chatman states that “there is… a class of indeterminacies… that arise from the peculiar nature of the medium. The medium may specialize in certain narrative effects and not others. For instance, the cinema may easily – and does routinely – present characters without expressing the contents of their minds… verbal narrative, on the other hand, finds such restrictions difficult… Conversely, verbal narrative may elect not to present some visual aspect… The cinema, however, cannot avoid a rather precise representation of visual detail.”
   
   Think of an example of the use of narrative in interactive media. With reference to your example, suggest what the “peculiar nature” of interactive media may be, and which narrative effects it may specialize in.

I’m not really sure since everyone seems to think of this proverbial “peculiar nature” differently. Anyway.

So I was saying I used to play a lot of Resident Evil (the original main series) growing up and sure, it freaked the hell out of a wee girl of a tender young age of 10 thereabouts (blame the brother), but the point I’m making is that, there is a fixed narrative and the plot unfolds as you play the game. But if you can’t get past a particular corridor with that particularly tough zombie dog, you really can’t get anywhere and the story is suspended there until you manage to kill it or run past it really quickly. This I think is one example of a peculiar nature of interactive media.