Environmental Narrative Practices in Open-World Games: A Prerequisite for a Player's Immersive Experience

I. Preface

Nowadays, "open world" has gradually become the trend of the domestic game industry, and more and more domestic game manufacturers have begun to "roll" up on the track of "open world". "Open World" is like a fine wine bottle, whether it is an old IP or a new concept, it can be filled with a bottle. Until the player actually drinks the wine in the bottle, it is never known whether the bottle is good or bad.

But the real can conquer the player must be seriously polished content of the work, the author has served as a world view planner in a number of MMORPGs, and is now in charge of the open world narrative of a game, this time I want to share some narrative practice experience from the perspective of environmental narrative.

When we talk about environmental narratives, what are we talking about?

It seems that when it comes to open-world narratives, everyone can say two things: the perfect presentation of the structure of the three non-linear missions of the wizard, the mature fragment narrative in Dark Souls, and the various immersive NPCs in the Big Bad...

[ Déjà vu and very different "open worlds" ]

In fact, unlike everyone who can talk about two sentences, few people can tell the whole story of the open world. This is because the open world itself is not clearly defined, and the concept of "open world" itself is expanding as game technology and ideas evolve.

To date, high-quality open-world narratives seem to follow a common rule: immerse players in a highly immersive world, and then immerse players in them with excellent storytelling. This rule also provides a basic solution for open-world narratives: first building on a great environmental narrative, and then building a unique emergent experience for the player.

As a foundation and first step, "ambient storytelling" is also considered by the game world to be a prerequisite for immersive storytelling experiences.

01、What is environmental narrative?

a) From conceptual origin to widespread knowledge

"Environmental storytelling," a term coined by former Disney designer Don Carson, used it to sum up the biggest challenge of his 15-year career as a designer — "how to take the viewer to the world he imagined and linger in." ”

Don Carson's approach is to construct a real or imaginary "space" in which the audience's "travel experience" replaces the traditional "linear experience" of watching a performance.

Now, Don Carson's approach to designing amusement park attractions coincides with the idea of building "virtual worlds" in video game design to immerse players in them.

But 22 years ago, at the beginning of this century, the debate between "game science" and "narrative science" was intensifying, and linear narrative games were in the ascendant, Don Carson's Interpretational Storytelling did not become the mainstream of game narratives, and the slightly barren technical and expressive power of the year also made the genius idea seem a bit fanciful.

It wasn't until a decade later, at GDC in 2010, that Harvey Smith and Matthias Worch brought them up titled "What Happened Here?" -Environmental Storytelling" speech, the environmental narrative was revived, entered the vision of the game makers and became widely known.

[ What Happened Here? Environmental Storytelling,2010,GDC ]

In the decade or so since the explosion of computer graphics, the "broadcast game" based on the traditional linear narrative experience has quickly become the mainstream of AAA games, but it has gradually made players aesthetically tired.

Around 2013, there was even a kind of doubt in the game industry: the game could only be used to smash the development funds on the film to attract attention, and lost the entertainment of the game as a game.

"Environmental narrative" seems to be "another way out of the predicament."

b) A more "game" narrative

So, what is environmental storytelling?

For the game narrative, I use the famous "iceberg theory" to explain simply: a large number of underlying world view settings such as timelines, story contradictions, power settings, etc. are hidden under the water, and the player cannot perceive it; and the presentation based on these settings, such as tasks, cutscenes, etc., is the content that the player can experience.

In fact, on the "iceberg", the player's experience is also divided into two types, the aforementioned broadcast narrative belongs to the "scripted narrative experience", and the environmental narrative belongs to the "unscripted narrative experience", and the order and process of the player's experience story are not fixed.

[ The environmental narrative is more like the part above the iceberg, submerged into the water ]

Different from the broadcast, the experience threshold of environmental narrative is higher, which requires a certain degree of deductive reasoning, and requires players to "piece together" and even brain to make up the whole story with various details.

By definition, environmental storytelling is an interactive narrative method in which designers indirectly transmit game content and emotions to players through environmental elements such as images, sounds, levels, and characters, with the aim of allowing players to actively integrate into the game process and allow players to become the main participants in game narratives, not just passive audiences.

In layman's terms, it is to use the environment and space to design the narrative.

To put it more in layman's terms, it is "I don't know what happened to you, you taste it yourself."

02. Four ways of environmental storytelling

In fact, both open-world and box games are increasingly using environmental storytelling—

The environmental narrative can set off the atmosphere and strengthen the "identity" of the player in the game: "Escape" uses dim lighting and severed arm stumps everywhere, making the player think of the tragedy of the interrogation room, and then making the darkness outside the door more creepy;

Environmental narratives generally do not take the initiative to tell the player what to do, but guide the player to discover the hidden secrets and clues in the game through their own actions: "Eddie Finch's Memory" Barbara's room, the player can learn from the furnishings, books, tapes, the former child star, after fading the aura to become a waiter's depression and melancholy; in "Interstellar Pioneer", the player learns about this incredible and wonderful civilization through the communication records left by the Nomads;

Environmental storytelling can also limit or guide the player's movement: The whiteboard for writing notes in Generation Zero is both a message for those who are left behind and a guide for the player.

Environmental storytelling achieves the above effects in four main ways:

Evoking and inspiring Innovative Spaces; interpreting Events; embedding Embedded Narratives; emerging Emergent Narratives.

a) Evoke/Inspire Active Spaces

The so-called evoking and stimulating is that the game scene evokes the inherent impression in the player's mind, and on this basis, brings the player a unique sense of substitution for the game. These stereotypes are derived from novels, movies, games, and other everyday lives that players have seen.

For example, in The Last of Us's famous "Giraffe Scene", lovers of the post-apocalyptic theme will feel very intimate, and ordinary players can also evoke the impression of "downtown" and "visiting the zoo" in their minds, and marvel at the wonderful fusion of the two.

As can be seen from the above examples, the evoking/excitation method is widely used in realistic games, and based on well-known scenes, the game can easily evoke the resonance of the player.

b) Performing Events

An important source of game substitution is the player's "empathy" for the game character during the game, that is, the player's empathy for the game character. One of the ways of environmental storytelling is to provide a venue for players to play the role of the game, and to provide a stage for you to play a good "TA".

For example, in the prologue of "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt", in the Demon Hunter's Castle in Kelmohan, there are warm fireplaces, half-empty wine bottles, afternoon sunshine, and melodious music, so that players can experience the relaxed mood of the scarred Geralt at this moment. This precious half-moment of leisure is also in contrast to the sinister demon hunting journey in the future, allowing players to better understand Geralt's inner emotions, empathize and play the role of the demon hunter at the same time.

c) Embedded Narratives

In traditional works of art such as films and novels, authors can decide when users will receive specific narrative information. The embedded narrative used in the game environment narrative is to disperse the narrative information in various positions in the scene, which needs to be obtained by the player in exploration and interaction.

Players need to obtain various pieces of information in the game, and then reconstruct (brain supplement) the story in their minds, and the "fragmented narrative" that has been on fire with the "soul game" in recent years is an application of embedded narrative.

Firewatch uses a lot of embedded narratives, and players need to interact with various items and clues in the game scene (check the log, use the walkie-talkie, etc.) to unlock the truth behind the whole story. The game's creators refer to Burning Man as the "First Person Narrative Exploration Game," and its bright colors, suspenseful story, and even the entire game are built on top of a great embedded narrative.

d) Emergent Narratives

The so-called emergent narrative is to create a story by providing the player with the conditions to create a story, allowing the player to create a story with autonomous game behavior. This "condition" is a large number of basic game mechanics in the game, and players allow players to "create" their own stories in the game through interaction with the mechanisms and the influence between the mechanisms.

Sandboxes and simulation games are representatives of emergent narratives, in which the game narrative designer is no longer like a playwright, but more like an urban planner, providing space to nurture the story. What kind of story will happen in this space is determined by the player's own choices.

The famous "Sims" is the masterpiece of emergent narrative, every step of the player's choice of manipulating the character will be presented through NPCs/events in the game through the game's unique mechanics, and finally each player can harvest their own, interesting and unique story.

How should environmental narratives be done?

As mentioned above, environmental storytelling enables narrative immersion in four ways:

Arousal: A very story-based environment allows players to awaken a certain memory or impression in their minds, and based on this, provide a content experience unique to the game.

Interpretation: The environment can provide a stage for the story and events to occur, allowing players to empathize with the characters while feeling the story.

Embedding: There are many clues and fragments in the environment, allowing the player to make up the story behind the brain after exploration and reasoning.

Emergence: There are all kinds of people and things in the environment, and there are endless possibilities, and the player's choices will eventually generate their unique story.

Careful analysis can be found that the focus of the first two (evoking, deductive) is to shape the game scene while presenting the "non-interactive narrative content", and the latter two (embedding, emerging) are more "interactive narrative content" combined with the creation of the environment.

In environmental narrative, non-interactive narrative content (scene shaping) is the basis for carrying interactive narrative content (content ecology), so if you want to do a good environmental narrative, it is mainly divided into two steps: first do a good job of non-interactive narrative content, and then do a good job of player interaction narrative in the scene.

01, non-interactive narrative content: scene narrative

Before talking about how to design non-interactive narrative content, which is the so-called scene narrative, I would like to explain how the scene narrative helps the plot advance with the most traditional "three-act" narrative structure.

The "three-act" narrative structure divides the story into three parts: the beginning (the introduction to the story), the middle section (the main body of the story), and the end (the end of the story).

In the game's narrative setting, a big difference between the worldview and the player's story is that they are before and after the player's "start of the game" time node. The worldview constructs the "initial" game environment that the player sees when they enter the game, and builds on the player's story.

In summary, it is not difficult for us to get a game narrative structure like this:

Among them, the beginning of the story is mainly to explain the characters, lead to the goal, and correspond to the "arousal" environmental narrative: all the scene environments that the player sees when entering the game are shaping the player character, explaining the player's goals and providing a sense of substitution.

The middle and end of the story is the process of escalating the conflict to resolving the conflict, in which the player's emotional investment will increase, corresponding to the "deductive" environmental narrative: the player plays a role in the game scene, experiences the dramatic conflict on the environmental "stage", and even changes the game scene as the story unfolds.

a) The basis of scene narrative: believable

When setting up the world with a game worldview/prehistory and applying an evocative narrative, a scene environment that makes the player "believe" is the foundation that holds the characters and story.

For humans, everyone has a Bayesian reasoning machine in their minds, and people construct cognitions based on past life experiences, and constantly change their cognitions based on newly collected evidence.

Then the first step in scene narrative is to use the scene to mobilize the cognition in the player's mind and let the player "convince" himself.

1. True evidence

Therefore, when we set the world, we need to consider the reality as the basis, and the human civilization that has gone through thousands of years is an inexhaustible treasure trove.

The real test of the earth environment and human civilization can make the world setting naturally have a certain rationality, and for the environmental narrative, the following three aspects of the real test are the most important: the humanistic background, the operation logic, and the natural environment.

Most realistic games are more likely to get such evaluations as "strong sense of substitution" and "immersive experience", not only because of the realistic painting style, but also because the portrayal of the environment in realistic games is closer to the real life of players, and the inherent impressions in the player's mind are constantly mobilized.

For example, the environment of St. Denis, the "city of trade" in "Red Dead Redemption 2", is based on the American city of New Orleans:

New Orleans in the 19th century was near the coast and bustling, making it the largest immigrant city in Louisiana at the time. At that time, the legal system was not yet mature, and various cultures, races and beliefs collided and merged here, like a melting pot of cultures. It is precisely because of such a reliable evidence base that the St. Denis presented in the game can make the player immersive.

2. High concept integration

Of course, not all games are GTAs and Red Dead Redemption, and most games will have some surreal "high concepts", such as the T virus in Resident Evil, the Infinity Stones and the Cosmic Cube in the Avengers universe.

If you want to integrate high concepts into environmental narratives, you can still start from the three aspects mentioned earlier, namely humanistic background, operation logic, and natural environment, and pair high concepts with each element.

I'm used to using the "what, why, how" rule to incorporate high concepts into environmental narratives, using the Horizon: Dawn of Zero series as an example:

Why: A swarm of intelligent machines capable of absorbing biomass into energy has self-replicating properties and loses control and begins to attack humans, destroying the Earth's ecosystem.

What: Because the group searched for all the biomass to replenish, all the animal populations on Earth suffered a catastrophe.

How: Humans have preserved the gene pool of earth's animals and plants, and genetically engineered them to respawn after the earth's environment has been "restarted."

The final result is that under the influence of comprehensive factors such as ecological environment and genetic engineering technology, the diversity of "reborn" animal populations has decreased sharply, so human beings have left the "Gaia" system to restart civilization to create a large number of "animal mimic" intelligent weapons to help reshape the ecological circle, but these intelligent weapons have entered a new round of "out of control"...

3. Clue deduction

As mentioned earlier, the way the worldview is built in the previous history way to build the game environment that the player sees when entering the game, we can use the timeline as a clue to deduce, and the starting point of the deduction is the environment setting described in the previous two points, and we integrate the environment setting through real evidence and high concepts.

Pick out the parts of the worldview/prehistory that involve the area, and superimpose the results of these stories in turn onto the environment settings obtained at the beginning, and finally get the environment settings that the player sees when they enter the game (the beginning of the game).

Take "Only Wolves" as an example to briefly illustrate:

20 years after the Sword Saint Reed led the Reeds to expel the Inner House and win the "War of The Thieves of the Nation", the Inner House gathered heavy troops to invade the City of Reed again. Reed and other passages to the outside world were destroyed by Ichiro's orders, and the two sides fought bloodily outside the gate of the only passage. Traces of the battlefield outside the city of Reed, cut off traffic arteries, soldiers of both sides strewn with corpses... They are all environmental narrative content derived from timeline deductions.

b) Scene storytelling technique: do subtraction

After three steps: real evidence, high concept integration, and clue deduction, we can get a relatively complete environmental narrative setting, and based on this production level, art resources, and so on.

Judging from the previous narrative, it seems that the environmental narrative requires a lot of settings and game resources to present the story, and the corresponding need for higher production costs. So, is environmental storytelling just exclusive to big games?

First, let's go back to the basic definition of an "evoked" narrative: the environment allows the player to awaken a certain memory or impression in their minds, and based on this, provide a content experience unique to the game.

All of the techniques we have mentioned earlier are to evoke the inherent impressions in the player's mind with in-game visuals, but in fact, we can achieve this indirectly through the rich imagination of human beings.

Let's first look at a picture, "I want it all" After the meme fire, a series of "abstract" memes have been derived, but even if it is black and white pixels or a few coloring blocks, we can also make up the original memes through "imagination brain supplementation" and smile.

We can conclude that "evoking an inherent impression in the mind" and "seeing a sufficiently realistic picture" are not equivalent. In environmental storytelling, we can also take advantage of this and achieve environmental storytelling by doing "subtraction.".

1. Resource dimensionality reduction

We know that in visual content, the amount of information decreases sequentially from animation, 3D model, and 2D original painting, and the production cost is also decreasing in turn, and we can set the narrative content through the way of "dimensionality reduction" of the amount of information. Taking "Generation Zero" as an example, we can even reduce the complex performance animation into some branding textures, mobilizing the player's curiosity and self-brain supplementation to achieve a similar narrative effect.

In this way, by retaining the most core narrative elements and achieving your narrative with as few art resources (needs) as possible, believe me, your cooperation with art children's shoes will be very pleasant.

Of course, if you do too much subtraction of art resources, it will inevitably make the "sense of quality" of the game itself slightly reduced, but this does not mean that the narrative of the game will weaken, if you don't believe it, we will know by watching "Word Game": all the pictures in the game are composed of Chinese characters, including game scenes, performance animations, etc., but when the player sees the following picture, a vicious frost dragon will still appear in his mind.

2. Leave blank

One of the characteristics of environmental narrative compared to linear narrative is that we can throw away a lot of process presentation, and by presenting the "key points" in the story, let the player deduce the coherent story by themselves, which is the so-called "blank space".

In layman's terms, it is a continuous "line" that is dismantled into "points" one by one, allowing players to string these "points" into "lines" by themselves.

For environmental storytelling, these "key points" can be designed in the form of examples× states× content.

Take the chestnut in Robinson Crusoe: After Robinson was stranded on a desert island, he recorded the passage of time by calculating the sun and the moon by carving a dent on a large pillar with a knife. Imagine that when the player enters the game, he can see such a scene: on a desert island that is sparsely populated, the surface of the large pillar is densely covered with notches that record time, but it stops abruptly after a certain notch, and with the empty simple ferry port and the abandoned dwelling in the cave, it is enough to make people wonder whether the survivors of this desert island will eventually die alone, or wait for rescue? Couldn't bear the loneliness and built the canoe and left? Can his canoe cross the ocean?

The "fragmented narrative" in the soul game makes extensive use of this blank space technique, casually picking a chestnut from "Only Wolf": a dim candle flame, a Buddha statue with a "vicious" face around it, a constant carving and pondering to suppress the anger in the heart, and compassion for the protagonist of the ninja, all of which create a character who is helpless to retreat but full of resentment and cannot be calmed.

c) Dynamic presentation of scene narrative: stage interpretation

As mentioned earlier, by making the player "believe" the scene narrative can provide a sense of basic substitution, shaping the characters, providing goals, analogous to the "beginning" in the three-act narrative structure. The scene narrative can also complement the traditional linear narrative to present a "happening" player story experience.

In a nutshell, it is through the previous method to set up the stage, so that the player can assume the performance role on the stage, and then let the player complete their own performance through excellent stage effects.

1. Player Guidance

Each performance has a well-developed schedule, analogous to the plot sequence of a traditional story. Scene storytelling can also achieve a similar function through a number of techniques, guiding players to play characters according to our "program schedule".

The main ways in which scene narrative guides players are as follows:

Visual guidance: Guide the player through the path of the level, scene art, etc., to help the player clarify the "goal".

Dynamic Effects: Advance the narrative by dynamically placing parts of the content effects at different stages in the player's path.

Sensory assistance: through some sound effects (hearing), collision interaction (somatosensory feedback), etc. to assist the presentation of narrative content.

2. Accentuate emotions

While presenting the player's story, the environmental narrative is also constantly driving the player's emotional changes. To explain how environmental storytelling affects player emotions, I borrowed a term from the visual design field: Mood Board to illustrate.

The emotion board, usually a collage of images, text, and mockups, is a visual practice commonly used in the design field to express design definitions and directions. Its essence lies in being able to visualize the user's emotions. It can help define the 5 major contents related to visual design: color, graphics, texture, composition, and fonts.

In the game's environmental narrative, you can also start from these contents to design emotional foil.

Color: Change the player's mood through player filters, overall scenes, and the color design of individual objects. Take "Wind Traveler" as an example to illustrate:

Graphics & Texture & Fonts: Through the design of the visual content of the game such as models, materials, textures, and text, the player's emotions are set off by narrative techniques such as contrast, suspense, and association. Take The Last Survivor 2 as an example:

Composition: Set off emotions through the scheduling of game shots and the position of characters/objects. Still using "The Last Survivor 2" as an example to illustrate:

d) Mass production of scene narrative content: co-creation

I have already introduced how the narrative planner should design the scene narrative, but in the actual game production process, there is often a more realistic problem in front of us: the amount of environmental narrative settings required in the world environment is too large, and the human capacity of the narrative may be seriously insufficient (I have a situation where I have to dock more than a dozen levels, art and other assets at the same time in my work).

In order to solve the problem of mass production of environmental narrative content, we can choose to let everyone participate in the narrative process, become a link in creating stories, and replace human stacking with cooperative co-creation to improve efficiency.

After an entire open world environmental narrative implementation practice, I summarized several steps of collaborative co-creation:

Sticking to the core of the story: Before working with the level and art students to create a co-creation, we need to clarify a premise: the story synopsis and core emotions. Both of these can allow the environmental narrative to be wrapped up in the overall narrative framework and achieve the desired narrative effect.

Split story elements: Using the "six elements of the story" to split the story, the narrative planning design includes the story skeleton of "time, place, characters" and synopsis, and the specific "cause, process, result" story is filled with the flesh and blood of the asset children's shoes.

Content element splitting: Abstract the seven most used content elements in environmental narrative (traffic paths, architectural layouts, scene objects, light atmosphere, exterior decoration, graffiti murals, and dynamic effects) and classify them according to production functions.

Co-creation mode standardization: According to different content elements and the corresponding functional children's shoes to cooperate and co-create, and finally form a standardized co-creation model, forming workflow and delivery standards.

02. Interactive narrative content: never-ending curiosity

The previous narrative clarifies how to design a scene with a very narrative experience, so that the player can immerse themselves in it and play the "game character" we want the player to play. Scene narrative can use two techniques of "arousal" and "deduction" to help shape the player's own story experience.

Never-ending curiosity is human nature and one of the inexhaustible driving forces for the development of human civilization. The interactive narrative content in the environmental narrative also takes advantage of this to make the player tireless, and it uses the game as a "interactive art" feature, allowing the player to feel, recognize and even create a story in the interactive experience of playing.

I will explain the principles and design methods of interactive narrative content from the aspects of "embedding" and "emerging".

a) Embedding: Fragmented narratives that everyone "loves"

After the fragmented narrative was "put on the altar" along with the fire of the soul game, this "embedded" environmental narrative technique was widely recognized and applied by the game industry.

In fact, fragmented storytelling provides a way for players to reason, brainstorm, and create stories, allowing the storyteller to change from a narrative designer to the player himself. This is also the reason why fragmented narratives/embedded narratives impress and enjoy players in a simpler form of expression: it makes the player's emotional outpouring more meaningful.

Therefore, when we design the embedded narrative, we actually design the "clue content" and "clue performance" for the player's reasoning restoration. These two points are clarified, combined with the actual situation of game production, and the narrative can be designed and embedded in the narrative by × the main body of the story × the mechanism × content.

Dark Souls 3 has a story called "The Land of Twilight": it tells the story of The Knight Hillis from the Land of Twilight, who has been searching for and ending his grandfather who is madly missing, and gradually builds trust after meeting the player by helping each other. When the player helps her defeat her mad grandfather, she swears to the player to be the player's knight and sacrifices herself to help the player defeat the next strong enemy, the boss.

Let's take this story as an example of this design approach:

However, we need to pay attention to the fact that narrative designers need to leave a design margin when doing embedded narrative design. That said, we need to place enough pieces of information in the scene, as players may miss some of them.

In addition, there are actually two kinds of information fragments embedded in the narrative: one is to affect the progress of the story, such as embedded information in puzzle games; the other is not to affect the progress of the story, but only to expose the worldview settings, such as showing the relationship between the characters and so on. These two pieces of information need to find a balance point to use, to balance the freedom of interaction between the player and the expressive desire of narrative planning.

b) Emergence: Compose a unique story

Whether it is a scene narrative or the embedded narrative mentioned earlier, it is essentially a different way of presentation after the narrative planner writes the story script. Even if the narrative is embedded, it is to scatter a complete script into clues scattered in the game, allowing the player to reason and restore the story through exploration and investigation, in the final analysis, it is only for the player to "feel" that the narrator of the story has changed from the narrative designer to himself.

But the "emergence" narrative really gives the decision to the story to the player, and the player's autonomous game behavior itself is creating the story.

As I mentioned earlier, the prerequisite for players to create their own stories is to provide players with a large number of basic game mechanics that interact with each other or that feed back a variety of outcomes driven by player interactions.

Therefore, for emergent narratives, narrative planning needs to design the basic game mechanics and the influence logic between these mechanism units, and then you can design emergent event feedback through these two points. Take the NPC system with the most use of emergent narrative as an example:

Mechanic Unit: Refers to the basic interaction mechanism between the player and the NPC. For example, the dialogue interaction between the player and the NPC (greetings, praise, humiliation, etc.), the interaction of behaviors (gifts, demands, expressions, etc.), the numerical values between the player and the NPC can perceive each other (friendliness, prestige, personality, beliefs, etc.), and even attack the player.

Influence Logic: Refers to the interaction between the mechanism units after receiving the interactive input of the player. For example, the judgment comparison between values, the output of results (such as the personality of the npc will be hostile to the player whose reputation value is higher than his own), the choice of random mechanism (such as when the relationship with the NPC deteriorates, he will randomly target the player in different ways), maintain a "memory" of the player's behavior (such as the NPC will remember the player who has hurt the TA), or triggered by some key node (such as after marriage, all women's attitude to the player changes), and so on.

Event feedback: Refers to the event content of NPC feedback after the player's interactive input and the logical operation between the mechanisms. For example, NPCs interact with players (NPCs with low favorability come to the door to find stubble), non-interactive events (NPCs with strong self-esteem who have been humiliated by players commit suicide), behavior tree changes (such as NPC with broken legs can't go out and can only sit in the yard every day in the sun), attribute changes (female NPCs who have undergone huge blows cut their hair short), and so on.

Let's take some emerging narrative examples from actual games to illustrate simply:

All in all, the beauty of emergent narratives lies in the fact that the creators do not deliberately arrange the story, but let the player and the game jointly generate their own story, which is also in line with the three basic sources of human internal drive proposed in the psychological "self-determination theory": autonomy (created by the player himself), relationships (only the player's own), and competence (the strange story of successful interpretation).

summary

As a more "game" narrative method, environmental storytelling also poses a greater challenge to the professional ability of narrative planning.

At this point, I would like to conclude the article with a sentence from Hemingway's work: "No one is an island, alone in the sea." Each person is like a little piece of dirt, connected to the whole land. ”

This is a true portrayal of the game makers, the game as a complex product involving a variety of disciplines of knowledge, the need for sincere collaboration between all functions, the collision and exchange of all knowledge, in order to build a virtual world that allows players to linger.

Of course, this is also the original intention of the function of "narrative planning": to make narrative planning as a hub between the story and the user experience, and also as a link between the various production functions of the game, to pinch together every link of game production to finally present the most perfect game narrative.