This is a question I’ve been asking myself most recently. In the world of interactive media, what meaning did narrative have in telling an interactive story? Was it a means to an end? Was character motivation the driving factor? How did I shape my stories? Why did I shape them to be the way they were? Was it to question traditional writing and media?

Oftentimes I heard phrases like ‘story wrappers’, and other times about ‘world building’. Two very different wavelengths seemingly on the opposite ends of one another, spoken as one word with intention – ‘narrative’.

It made me think about where I stood, and what other game devs thought. Some said that narrative was like the short, mid and long term goals we give to players. Others said that narrative was all about rich worlds, interesting characters and the overall plot. But surely narrative isn’t as simple as ‘last man standing’ or ‘highest scorer wins’, nor as simple as having interesting characters and dialogue? Story wrappers tend to align with these goals, and so may seem that way, but was it really that simple on either end of the spectrum? 

I decided to look to the games I played to get a better sense of what narrative could be. In a nutshell – Horizon Zero Dawn? A coming of age story about discovering your identity. Gris? A journey of healing through the stages of grief. Venba? Food, family and identity.

When described in this way, there isn’t an immediate takeaway on what the gameplay could or would be. So let’s break one of these down further and find the narrative arc’s equivalent to the short mid and long term goals.

Horizon Zero Dawn was likely ‘Become a Nora Brave’, ‘Save the Nora’, and ‘Discover your identity’. All of this was wrapped in the envelope of a coming of age story.

These aren’t very obviously related to mechanics almost immediately. Become a Nora Brave is the tutorial or demo stage one could say, where players can safely learn how to navigate and fight in the world. Narratively however, it allows us to build a world, introduce the players to the various characters that inhabit it, and make a bond to connect with their personality and world.
There’s a clear goal and end point in sight, which is to ensure that by the time players have become a Nora Brave, they have an understanding of the system the Noras follow, the rules of why people interact with Aloy the way they do and set the tone of the story.

Save the Nora has more actionable consequences to the narrative, and ends up being a good mid term goal, that allows us to send the player beyond everything that they and Aloy know.
It gives players a chance to decide what they want to do in this world – how many people they help, and what they want to explore in the world. Are the machines what captures Aloy’s interest first? Does she therefore explore the cauldrons? Does she instead speak to other Nora to understand the various tribes and aid them? 
Saving the Nora is the space where quests sit, building up to further questions about how the corruption spreads, how its affecting the way of life of all the Nora, and gives the player a chance to set themselves up as the hero of the story.

Finally, you come to one of the core reasons you’ve embarked on your journey, to discover ‘who’ you are, where you came from, why there’s so many mysteries around your birth. Again, this has a lot of narrative connotations – we’re speaking to why we care about Aloy’s story, why she needs to know who her mother is, what the secret of the world is. 
This isn’t a last man standing mechanic, nor necessarily a detective story where you piece together clues – though it can be if you look at all the information the player is provided as Aloy!
Nonetheless, the hook is simple, and vaults players towards new machines, ways of dealing with them, and people, of all kinds. 

Horizon Zero Dawn tells Aloy’s story beautifully, in a way that makes you come back time and again. But it isn’t JUST the story or the giant robot dinosaurs – its about how the gameplay and narrative intersect beautifully, pushing the game forward.

So I come back to the question – is it a story wrapper? Is it about World Building? Or is it a place where narrative and gameplay intersect meaningfully?

Personally, the space where narrative and gameplay intersects is where some of the most interesting stories can come from. Life is Strange, Spec Ops the Line, The Vale, and so on all find a space in this area where the two intersect. Considering these are the games that I find most interest in, I’d say that’s where I’d like to stand with regards to narrative.