"The storyteller of a fragmented narrative is not the author, but the player."
For single-player game lovers, the Dark Souls series is definitely one of the "best video games", and the excellent combat and tricky difficulty have labeled this completed series a "maverick". Despite the game's malicious design against the tide, a large number of players continue to devote themselves to this world full of "dark despair, painful death, and endless reincarnation".
But dark souls are not only worth boasting about, if you want to successfully create a world with immersive experiences, then a description of this world is essential. Today we will start with Dark Souls and talk about the "fragmented narrative" that has gradually emerged in the game industry in recent years.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > start with Dark Souls</h1>
If it is too rigid to start seriously explaining, defining, and explaining, it is better to start from the huge world created by our good friend (lao) friend (zei) Hidetaka Miyazaki today.
One of the most well-known characters in Dark Souls 3 is the Irusil boss who has been persecuted by a large number of philosophies because of his name, Pope Shalivan ♂. In the game, the player defeats Sarivan to obtain his soul, which is then exchanged for two of his weapons, the Great Sword of Sanctions and the Great Sword of Sin, at the exile Rudos.
(Sanctions Big Sword)
(The Great Sword of Sin Karma)
And the spell that the player can get (related to Sarivan) in the world in DLC1.
(Spell: Icy Weapon)
Add to that the variety of details that players can directly experience in the game. For example, the ubiquitous group of bishops in Irusil, the gate of Irushil and the three watchdogs of the sewers, the remains of the archbishops who died in the sewers.
Then, through the short description of these equipment, as well as the details of the game, we can infer the life of the character of Shaliwan.
"My name is Charlevan and I don't remember how old I was. His hometown is the painting world of Eremias, who currently lives in Irusil and is unmarried. Every day, you have to wrestle with the undead to go home. I don't use spells, and miracles stop at a shallow taste. I never sleep because the tree people don't sleep at all. Every time before dying, I would summon an illusionary little brother, and then he would be a 20-minute repeater, defeating the undead and immediately returning to the blood. One slash is a whole day, never leaving the undead until the next day. Aldridge said I was normal. ”
(Sha Liang Sha Ying wants to live a peaceful life, referring to the fact that he can't kill people every day)
After Irusir excavated the capital of sin, Shalivan, a genius magician from the world of painting, may be influenced by unknown forces, or perhaps his pure ambitions are inflated. He betrayed Gwendring, son of the Sun King, and dedicated him to Airdridge for him to devour. Shaliwan, who had gained strength and proclaimed himself Pope, sat on the throne and waited for the "fire" to be extinguished
You see, there is never a single paragraph in the game that describes the origin of Shaliwan in a positive way. But through the very fragmented information in the game, the player himself pieced together a living character and created a specific story of this character, which is the charm of "fragmented narrative".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the core of a fragmented narrative</h1>
Now that we know the specific methods of "fragmented narrative", we need to further understand its core, which is also its soul.
No matter what kind of narrative technique, its core purpose is only one: to tell a story to others. Whether it is "direct narrative", "flashback" or "fragmented narrative", the technique is only a cloak. What must be wrapped up in it must be a logical story, a clear theme.
A "fragmented narrative story", like an iceberg, reveals only one corner, but there is a complete logical whole underneath this corner. Specific to the concept of "story", as the author finally wants to show the audience should be a story with complete logic, and the content is a few key information intercepted from this story.
(The "Iceberg Theory" in Literature)
Why do players find the story in the game so exciting when playing Dark Souls? The atmosphere is so substitutionary? Because in the context of the story, every event and every character is connected by logic, and the player "makes up" the whole process by piecing together "clues". The development of every thing seems "relatively reasonable", which creates a sense of exquisite design. But this sense of design does not come entirely from the author, but more from the player's own understanding and interpretation of the content.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > used in the literary and film industry</h1>
The application of fragmented narratives in the literary industry dates back to the middle of the last century, and is used in one of the famous American novels, Slaughterhouse Five.
(This book has been hailed as one of the world's greatest anti-war books and one of the most important Novels of the American 20th Century.)
The work depicts the strange dreams of a mortal, who travels through time and space between the Nazi concentration camps and the future planets, intertwining real war with fantasy technology, breaking through the limitations of time and space to find the truth he is seeking. The novel uses a large number of fragmented main lines to vividly express the inner trauma of the author Vonnegut, bringing readers a very substitutionary reading experience.
In the more mature film and television industry, this method is collectively referred to as "non-linear narrative", and at the top of this method is the famous director Christopher Nolan.
Director Christopher Nolan's famous work Fragments of Memory fits exactly what we call a "fragmented narrative" today. The narrative order of the film is intricate, and the first impression is "chaos". But as the story progresses, the audience finds that the film as a whole always revolves around the main line of "the protagonist of the short-term amnesia seeks revenge for his wife through the notes left behind, his own tattoo collection and search". By the climax of the film, when all the clues are pieced together and the truth floats on the surface, the audience will only have a sense of happiness.
(Selected for the Library of Congress's Protected Film Fragments of Memory)
It can be seen that the core of the "fragmented narrative" is always a complete story that is attractive enough and logically consistent to form a closed loop, so that the entire game (story) develops around this main line. You know, the method is always the core service.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > developers</h1>
In fact, "fragmented narratives" have had their place in the game industry for a long time.
For example, since its release in 1986, it has the highest-rated series in the history of games, The Legend of Zelda.
(After 33 years of history, a total of 15 "The Legend of Zelda" series has been released so far)
For these established game production companies, "fragmented narratives" are nothing new. But today's gaming industry isn't just about leading head companies, it's also about independent games spread across all levels of the pyramid. The proportion of indie games on Steam has increased year by year, increasing by a full 146% in 2017 compared to 2015, which can be seen that it is those "indie games" that are booming in the game industry.
(The number of indie games growing year by year, and the revenue from indie games decreasing year by year)
In recent years, the famous and unknown indie games have also thrown themselves into the arms of "fragmented narratives". Examples include the Cthulhu-style exploratory game Sunless Sea, the dark dungeon exploration game The Binding of Isaac, or the horizontal version of Souls Like game Blasphemous.
(Souls Like's side-scrolling action game Blasphemous is typical of fragmented narratives.)
Why are so many games with "fragmented narratives" popping up all of a sudden? Let's savor the mysteries in pieces.
1. Lower standard requirements
In fact, "fragmented narrative" is not only attractive to players, it is also a "developer-friendly" way of storytelling. For developers, the script of "fragmented narrative" is a very "lazy" approach. Developers don't need to write a complete script at all, just think about the main line and side development, and then write some important fragments. In the past, what determined the level of screenwriting was the degree of completion of the script, and there were many people who could write good settings, but there were only a few people who could write a good script.
(That's right!) The person who can write a good script is ko no Miyazaki Hidekoda! ）
For example, in Dark Souls 3, after defeating a monster, you "happen" to find a corpse that died against a wall in the blood sea of corpses, and "coincidentally" the corpse has a soul on it, and the name of this soul is "the soul of the exhausted warrior", so soon you can imagine the scene of the fierce struggle with the exhausted warrior who fought the monster to death before he died. If there was a dead nun with her hands folded behind his corpse at this point—you already had a picture in your mind, right? But if this story were to be written into a script, it would be a lengthy text no matter how condensed, and not many players would necessarily experience the emotions carefully. But for a "fragmented narrative" game, the developer only needs to arrange such a scene in the game, then the player will add bricks and tiles to make it a good story.
("Dark Soul 3", Neutral Gay-ri Gay-kaku Shui-Oji, Derecollied Wisdom SomeWhat Humus, 让 SomeWhat Humusful;
And this kind of good story is not the screenwriter's deep skill, but the player's brain hole is too big. Just like the reading comprehension we often do when we were students, we always need to make up for the emotional analysis that the author did not think of. The player's brain supplement ability is stronger than the screenwriter's writing level most of the time.
And this, too, we will mention below from another perspective.
2, low development costs
Now let's say you're a developer and you're working on an indie game, what are the things you need to consider before you start? Let's pick out some.
The above points alone are enough for a game production project to fall into a dilemma or even a difficult situation. But for "fragmented narratives", many problems can be easily solved, or even circumvented.
For example, props and scene design, as we mentioned above, use scene construction instead of plot. For example, many of the NPC's settings and behaviors can be briefly described through his props and equipment, and we don't even need any plot about the character's past, as mentioned at the beginning of the note on Shalivan and his two weapons.
Everything done above is to simplify game production, reduce development schedules, and limit production costs. It also perfectly alleviates the multi-party pressure on construction period, capital, cost and profit.
For indie games with limited funds, incomplete scripts, and short deadlines, "fragmented narratives" seem to be a perfect narrative means of writing the most "deep" scripts at the lowest cost and in the least amount of time.
(The unforgettable stories created by Hidetaka Miyazaki, and those who seem to have really existed))
But that doesn't mean that "fragmented narratives" are a low-level narrative, from Demon Souls to Dark Souls to Only Wolves. For Hidetaka Miyazaki, who has become handy, whether he has a triple-3 blockbuster or a sketch solo, he can create jaw-dropping game miracles.
(Of course, there are also the fireproof girl sisters and puppet girls who the players can't forget; the original painting @saberiii)
But if those texts are really singled out and integrated, in fact, the expressiveness of "fragmented narrative" is not as good as the traditional narrative method. Compared with the traditional way of telling the story, a large number of language words are described in detail from one or more aspects, creating the most realistic world for readers or players and restoring the whole picture of the event. The language of the "fragmented narrative" is fragmented and obscure, and the description of people and events is limited to a few words. But for indie games, money and time are more important.
3. Powerful scalability
In addition to the advantages of money and time cost, "fragmented narrative" is more important than the extensibility of the setting.
The topic returns to Dark Souls, if any reader is familiar with Norse mythology and is very familiar with the Dark Souls series. Then he will soon discover that in fact, whether in "Dark Souls" or in "Bloodborne" in the guise of Cthulhu, his script background is actually adapted from Norse mythology. Hidetaka Miyazaki adapted the "Norse mythological system" in a complete and mature "Norse mythological system", using his imagination to add his own private goods. This makes the already mature background more perfect and more eye-catching.
(The "Twilight of the Gods" in Norse mythology is the ultimate battle for the destruction of the world)
Norse mythology is originally set in the "end times", the world will usher in destruction no matter what, and the world of Dark Souls fits this setting. The Norse gods will eventually usher in the "twilight of the gods", and the fate of defeat has not shaken the gods, they firmly believe that after the defeat, the remnant gods will build a new world, and the kings who inherit the fire in "Dark Souls" also burn their souls with the same faith. The gods of Norse mythology are imperfect and omnipotent, and the world is not eternal, as are the decadent kings of Dark Souls, the burning embers, and the world that will eventually be destroyed.
(The true meaning of the Dark Soul is not only the darkness, smallness, and greed of human beings, but also the never-give-up, adversity struggle.) Original Painting @alcd)
For "fragmented narrative", the most important and basic thing is the setting. And even if it is a setting, you can apply those mature systems and integrate your own story into it. For example, the miracle "Homecoming Road" in "Dark Souls" is an example that perfectly fits the myth and the plot perfectly.
(The resurrection of Hodel and Badr in Norse mythology is also described as "homecoming", which is also very much in line with the game's setting of the resurrection of the undead in a campfire.)
In addition, let's mention "Only Wolves". Anyone who has had a slight touch with Dark Souls and Only Wolves knows that both games have similar cores — death, rebirth, challenge, the difference is only in the way they fight (although that's part of the kernel). They all take a "fragmented narrative" approach, and it's easy to find things that are very similar but are really just skin-changing: "Returning to the Buddha" and "Returning to the Bone Pieces", "Pills" and "Dripping Stones", "Healing Wine Jugs" and "Original Bottles", and so on. They are simply different in appearance and name, but they are perfectly integrated into their respective worldviews through their own one-sided descriptions. If you switch to a traditional narrative, you may have to spend a lot of time on these things to complete the setting to avoid the situation of "narrative imbalance" destroying the sense of substitution.
(Similar but not identical props, just replacement instructions, but perfectly integrated into their respective worldviews)
It can be seen that the "fragmented narrative" has considerable extensibility, making the setting and script more free. Screenwriters only need to make a slight modification in the script to place their story in a complete and mature worldview, or simply modify some of the settings to create another similar but different world. Either way can make a good script.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > addictive player</h1>
With the development of the game industry, practitioners have found that games have a characteristic that neither of them has compared with literature and film - interactivity.
In literature and film, the audience is merely a spectator, and no matter what efforts we make or what kind of voice we make, we cannot have an impact on the future that has not yet happened but has already been determined. But the game is different, it is a new medium of communication, with a high degree of interactivity.
The joy of fragmented narratives is twofold, one lies in the "desire to explore" and the other lies in the "sense of accomplishment". Players want to know what's next and go looking, a process called "exploration." The player makes his own interpretation of the story, and the result is a "sense of accomplishment".
In the game, a main line is wrapped around a large number of branches, some of which are independent of each other, some of which are interconnected, and some of which overlap each other, and this cascading structure makes the story more tense. The player's different choices in the game lead to different results, and even affect the direction of other stories in the world, which also greatly enhances the sense of substitution of the game.
(Kill or let go?) Players need to track the clues themselves and make the final decision)
For example, the "sequential tracking" side quest in The Witcher 3 requires the player to play Geralt and learn as much as possible about the character of Kardin during the mission process. Players can deduce what Carladin did in the past from conversations with characters, documents in the port of the game, and letters looted from others, and ultimately decide whether to kill Carladin.
Players are like a detective, finding enough clues in the box court arranged by the production team, piecing together their own "truth", and making their own choices. The "desire to explore" brought by such side-clicks to the player is far more violent than the impact of directly putting out the story content and disk.
At the same time, fragmented narratives tear large amounts of lengthy text to shreds and scatter throughout the game. Players can selectively read and understand, saving players' time, which is a "low information" way of playing. Even if some information needs to be collected and read in its entirety, it can be divided into multiple parts and integrated into the game's plot and interaction, which is easier to accept than mandatory text reading, and will not be carried away by the massive amount of information in a flash. What's more, this is also a process of satisfying the player's "desire to explore".
(The film clip of "Ten Days of Danger" shows the identity of the heroine on the side)
The movie "Ten Days of Danger" is full of this kind of key information written on the corners and corners, just imagine how divided the game experience would be if the text of this information was concentrated and forced to read it during the game.
The "desire to explore" mentioned above does not only exist in the main line of the story, but also a large number of scene arrangements in the game can also provide some irrelevant plots. For example, the exhausted warrior mentioned earlier and the nun behind him, even if there is only one scene, those players with excessive imagination will make up for the acquaintance of the warrior and the nun, the two embark on a journey, encounter the abyss monster, and finally die in every process and detail, and immediately make up a few thousand words of sadomasochism and humanities, or other solutions that conform to their own aesthetics and logic. This brain patching process is the most important thing for the player.
(The soul of an abandoned corpse is picked up from the dead body, and it is his friend or lover who is crying with a headache on the other side?) ）
The "sense of accomplishment" is even stronger.
We're moving our attention to the Dark Souls series again. In fact, the Dark Souls series is a game whose plot structure is designed to be quite easy for players to understand, if you sort out the story of Dark Souls, players will find that the plots and branches that seem to intersect are actually independent of each other.
(Dark Souls 1 Plot Tree)
I believe that everyone has also seen some analysis of the plot of the "Dark Souls" series on the Internet, from a few pictures and a few sentences, and many long quotations from the scriptures. But in fact, no matter what kind of analysis, it is only the player's self-understanding of a missing element in the plot. For the game itself, these "superfluous understandings" are not indispensable, but for the player, this understanding is a kind of restoration of history, a sense of reinforcement, a sense of self-satisfaction, and this "hardcore" exploration makes the sense of achievement more and more intense.
And Dark Souls 3 is the best representation of this "hardcore sense of accomplishment". As the finale of the Dark Souls series, Miyazaki's old thief has undergone the preparation and baptism of Blood Source and has worked the plot of Dark Souls 3. Compared with "Dark Souls 1", which only has a simple prototype, it is clear that the plot depth and breadth of "Dark Souls 3" are far beyond all previous works.
(Dark Souls 3 Plot Mesh)
Even under such a complicated plot, there are still many "soul scientists" who have successively thrown themselves into the dark soul world created by miyazaki's old thief. They look for clues in the game, argue online, and even unpack the game to look at the deprecated data, text, and models to speculate on the hidden (or abandoned) plot and write about it.
At this time, look at the mesh diagram above, how many official and clear correlation lines can you find? And those related lines speculated based on the content of the game can be said to be all the plots mined and written by the players themselves.
But for Miyazaki, for Dark Souls, those are really important?
No, without that, Miyazaki is still the producer who changed the history of games, and Dark Souls is still a major part of game history.
But for the player, do those really matter?
Yes, very importantly, that is the only evidence that the player replaces Miyazaki as the narrator of the story.
The storyteller of a fragmented narrative is not the author, but the player.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks</h1>
"Fragmented storytelling" is a narrative technique with many advantages, and it has a good affinity for many game types in the game industry. In recent years, games have become more and more favored by this "low-information" narrative method, which reduces the cost and threshold of independent games, makes game production more popular, makes more independent games germinate, and makes the game market more active and diversified.
For players, it also provides a simpler way to understand the plot and delve into the plot. The process of players seeking clues and brainstorming the truth in the game world is also a process of discovering and substituting their own game characters and cognition of this game world. The deeper you dig, the more you understand, the more real the world becomes, and your actions in the game have meaning. The player at this time, the "I" at this time, the "you" at this time, is the witness of this world, the practitioner of this journey, and the narrator of this story.
We'll sit by a fire in a tavern in the game, where firewood crackles, and say to someone we don't know, "Come, I'll tell you a story, it's my story..." ）
In the end, which game works can be sent to the throne of "palace level" by "fragmented narrative" let us wait and see.