Super Nerd Sunday Presents: Narrative Discourse Continued!

With these definitions in mind, let’s think about what makes games’ post-structural take on narrative unique or special compared to other mediums. It’s important to generate these distinctions because, frankly, unconventional narratives aren’t at all uncommon, and determining what sets the narrative we’re focusing on aside from the others can help us hone in on just what video games do, why their portrayals of complex character, especially women, are so often problematic and what makes video games so potent as a means of telling stories.

After all, poems, comics and television shows all, in their own sense, take on aspects of post-structural narratives. Television shows will do so either through permitting thorough interaction of their audience (usually in non-explicitly narrative scenarios, such as reality or game-shows) or by utilizing external media to forward the story or provide it with context in some manner (in both explicitly and non-explicitly narrative scenarios, though the explicit scenarios are far more germane to our discussion). Comics utilize a similar set of principles, though their reliance on explicit narratives means that externalized narrative influence is far more prominent for them than any kind of reader influence (though some still exists in the form of polls that then determine narrative or, in some cases, comics that play on their reader’s ability to reinterpret or recodify texts through reappropriation or original approaches to reading text).

Poetry is more complicated, since we can divide poetry into two categories which have a great deal of overlap with video games: explicitly narrative and non-explicitly narrative poetry. Simply put, explicitly narrative poetry engages in a storytelling tradition whereby the poem attempts to convey a story of some sort with character who may or may not be directly named or even clearly identified. Non-explicitly narrative poetry eschews narrative to a different end, usually in order to generate an interpretive dialogue surrounding a set of themes, feelings or emotions that the author attempts to invoke or communicate. Both of these forms, however, require the influence and interpretation of a reader figure or group of reader figures in order to reach fruition and, as a result, have a great deal in common with our other mediums.

In non-explicitly narrative poetry the reader figure is especially important, as the reader figure is the crux upon which the poem rests: without a reader, the emotions cannot be transmitted by the author and the poem cannot operate. Even when the transmission does not occur exactly as intended, so long as some transmission occurs we can perceive the poem as some sort of success. Poetry which deliberately attempts to eschew narrative can, by merit of its unique aim, retain success regardless of whether or not the intended emotion is transmitted. Simply by evoking feeling in a reader or listener figure, the poem has succeeded. Non-explicitly narrative poetry can, of course, by merit of this flexibility and fluidity, have narrative elements imposed by readers. It could be argued, in fact, that this must occur to some extent, that the reading of the poem forms a sort of super-narrative structure which the poem then occupies even if an internal narrative of the poem itself is unavailable. But no narrative is explicitly intended in this sort of poetry, hence its name and its unique and intriguing status among literary mediums.

Explicitly narrative poetry can also possess this reader introduced narrative super-structure as well, but it contains within it the framework of some sort of conventional narrative, albeit one which may have unclear or fluid characters, plot and reasoning governing its narrative structure. This narrative structure usually (but not always) makes it easier to access a poem’s functionality, to comprehend the intended purpose of the author and form a connection with the author’s emotional work within the poem. By providing readers with a context through which their reading can be directed, poets can more readily shift attention to subjects they choose, more easily introduce and attach explicit meaning to internal symbols and ground readers in a context with which they feel more comfortable: that of a familiar narrative storytelling tradition. Of course, there’s a trade-off here: non-explicitly narrative poetry cannot be accused of bad storytelling, whereas narrative poetry can and, let’s be honest, often should.

If you attempt to tell a story, you risk doing it poorly, muddying the themes you are attempting to illustrate or bungling them somehow. It is an unfortunate risk that storytellers run that can sometimes be circumvented by refusing to include or involve a conventional narrative within a piece of work, favoring instead a focus on emotional transmission. A poorly told story can work against itself, while a poem which does not attempt to tell a story cannot fail in this respect: in fact, even if it fails in its intended or purported purpose, it may not fail at all in a greater sense if someone simply connects with it on some level, if someone finds or imposes value on the work.

Which brings us to games.

You wouldn’t be off base to observe that a great portion of storytelling in games is, for lack of a kinder word, poor. It is often clumsily executed. Characters are often broadly drawn and arbitrarily given to surreal action. Dialogue is often stilted and unbelievable or lacking in flow. Plotting will occasionally be sloppy, with a focus on guiding players through a series of interesting or attractive set pieces sometimes distracting from the actual telling of a conventional narrative story. This can certainly be perceived in all of the other aforementioned mediums, particularly television, but I believe the most significant parallel here lies between games and poetry. Because if a television program tells a story poorly it can rarely hope to succeed in spite of this fact: so much of television relies on explicit narrative and conventional storytelling that, without it, there really isn’t much to it. But a poem which tells a stilted or poor story can still succeed in evoking an emotional response, at informing and experientially enriching its reader. Yusef Komunyakaa’s poetic portrayal of a man leaping upon a grenade, for example, has all of the worst elements of a clichéd story within it: it utilizes an overused image to showcase an emotional payload which connects to said image. But in Komunyakaa’s case there is bitterness towards the man who has sacrificed himself, revulsion at what he has rendered and depression, not courage, stemming from this clichéd gesture. A clichéd, somewhat ineffective purpose is, by merit of clever framing, put to apt use.

In games, we can see this pattern repeated time and time again. Take, for instance, the Assassin’s Creed series of games. The story in these games is often poorly rendered, plot twists are telegraphed and many characters are nebulously developed, if they are developed at all. Historical figures are inserted into the plot, often to little effect, spare that of a celebrity cameo in television or film. And some characters are simply inserted so that set pieces can be included in the finished product. We need look no further than the final moments of Assassin’s Creed 2, which involve a romp into the Vatican where the protagonist, Ezio, is prompted to fist fight with the Pope in order to acquire his staff (in the story of the game, a powerful alien artifact which would allow Ezio entrance to a secret underground data storage facility) before descending into the basement of the Vatican for the games’ climactic cutscene.

This should sound pretty ridiculous and, in the game’s execution, it is. But the game does not fail because of these unfortunate patterns in its narrative structure. Rather, the play of the game, the means surrounding these at times unintentionally absurd structures, showcase an overarching method which saturates the game: a message that the refutation and refusal of authority and its structures without adherence to a newly constructed structure is a powerful and potent approach to life, one which gives its adherents great power and allows them a unique and rich experience within this context. Ignoring the plot is, in a sense, a part of maximizing this lesson as you are asked, again and again, to simultaneously construct and dismantle authority structures and figures as they inevitably turn on both you, as player and character, and themselves as both narrative figures and narrative devices.

As such we can see a method by which poor storytelling can be salvaged, and a link between the emerging medium of video games and the established medium of poetry. Which is kinda cool, right? But we haven’t gotten to the topic of gender yet, because my chosen starting example of the manner in which gender can be effective portrayed and utilized as a storytelling device in games is going to need its own five page article, and it’ll also explore the manner in which non-explicit narrative methods can be effectively utilized in games. That’ll come next week. Thanks for bearing with me!