Bonus Stage - Skyrim

On a side note also this week I was working on this:

In order to further my understanding of narrative in video games and how they coincide with game-play I will be analysing existing games to see what I think works and what doesn’t. The basis for these will be games on either end of the narrative spectrum, those which place a heavy emphasis on narrative and those which have little to no narrative. Future case studies may be longer and indeed I may add to this one, this is a first draft of sorts.

Skyrim

With each Elder Scrolls game Bethesda seem to strive towards granting the player a free reign within the game world. With the newest in the series Skyrim the new ‘Radiant Story’ system aimed to essentially ‘build’ a side narrative around the players actions. As much as I loved the game if I’m thinking critically I would have to say this new system only partly worked. Admittedly the way new miscellaneous missions given by unassuming NPC’s and sending me to places I hadn’t yet discovered proved exciting to add extra scope to the game itself. However a greater variety of missions would have been refreshing as most tended to be either defeat enemies or retrieve item from specified location. This meant as much as the gameplay benefitted from this system as it granted a myriad of exploratory options, it wasn’t particularly effective in reinforcing the narrative experience as each question seemed relatively minor in comparison to the ‘properly’ written side quests.

I think an important part in a players enjoyment in a game comes from the bond they share with their character, which is why I think how people portray themselves in games can be a useful source of information in developing greater narratives. From the images I collected off various friends of mine I found most of my friends chose to do down the route of the brutish man mountain wielding a great sword or great axe. To me this is a great representation of the escapism we can all get from video games, I mean which guy hasn’t got that bit in the back of their mind that dreams of being the textbook hero with giant muscles who saves the world and gets all the fame and adoration.  One of my friends created a character and wanted to entirely avoid magic and make a purely warrior class, however he soon found the game ramped up its difficulty without magic. This struck me as potentially bad design, you would imagine if someone should choose to play one particular class they shouldn’t be ‘punished’ as such for it. That said it could also be argued this difficulty adds to the overall experience (both design and narrative) as it creates a more varied game world one which doesn’t always give the player an easier ride.