I enjoyed writing this, and did it almost non stop from start to finish once I had started because it just captured my imagination so much. I'm really glad that I planned it out before I started as it made writing the correct things in the correct places far easier. I would really like to finish the story, as I think that the introduction/first chapter that I have written for it has a multitude of places it can go.
I would have liked to have spent a bit more time describing the places and events, but as there was a restrictive word limit, I didn't want to go crazy and not be able to actually finish the arc within the story. The planning really did help, and writing it all up into a Word document before moving it all over into quest made it a simple task of copying and pasting each section into the write heading.
Learning about the monomyth, Propp's theories on narrative and the three act structure made it a lot easier to both plan and write the final piece. Research into choose your own adventure books and text adventures gave me a lot of inspiration and thinking of situations that could have some form of choice withing gaming made it a whole lot easier to come up with my own.
I am glad that I ended up using the setting that I did and not one of my scrapped ones as it was my own original setting, my 40k setting may have had a huge amount more choice to it, and the Berlin crime setting had more opportunities for better dialogue writing, but the setting I ultimately chose was special to me as all the elements within were my own ideas.
I chose to write as a choose your own adventure book as opposed to a text adventure as it seemed as though there would be more opportunity for writing longer sections, as text games rely on solitary sentences of description as opposed to the more free form choose your own adventure books which allow for more descriptive and creative writing.
The module was a good experience, and really helped me to hone some of my writing skills. I really did learn and understand the importance of planning and mapping a story, something I will do every time from now on, as it made everything so much easier. My own research that I did on dialogue, pacing and descriptive sections taught me some things that I will put into practice each time I write from now on. In summary, I think the module taught me a lot and I have improved as a writer as a result of it.
Tuesday, 11 December 2012
Propp's Narrative Theory
Narrative Theory
Narrative theory is a way of analysing story structure. It
was explored by the Russian formalists in the 1920s. Vladimir Propp came up
with several character types that fulfil universal roles found in a lot of
literature. Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of narrative focuses on how narratives are
constructed through a sequence of stages.
Taking The Lord of the
Rings as an example and breaking it down to show how it is structured in
accordance with these theories.
The Hero: This is probably Frodo in LoTR, he at least fills the role of the victim hero. Any of the
series’ other “good” characters could be the seeker hero, perhaps Aragorn most
of all.
The Villain: Sauron, his character creates the disruption by
being the ultimate evil.
The Donor: Bilbo, who gives Frodo both the ring which is
central to the series’ plot, as well as the mithril shirt that saves the
characters life at one point.
The Helper: In Fellowship
of the Ring this would be any of the people following Frodo, however
overall, Sam would be the ultimate helper figure in this series.
The Princess: in LOTR
the princess character is slightly odd as there doesn’t appear to be anyone
that fits this on immediate glance. Towards the end of the series, perhaps
Frodo falls into this character type as he would be the most threatened by the
main evil character. During this time when Sam has to save Frodo from a giant
spider, Sam becomes the Hero to Frodo’s Princess.
The Dispatcher: Gandalf, who sends Frodo off on his quest at
the beginning of the story.
The False Hero: Boromir, during Fellowship when he tries to take the ring from Frodo and use it’s
power. Saruman, when Gandalf goes to seek his aid. Perhaps there is a “Reverse
false hero” in King Theoden of Rohan who is being manipulated by sorcery only
to snap out of it and assist the heroes in the climactic final battle.
Going by Todorov’s theories, we can analyse the format of
the story using these types also.
The State of Equilibrium – Frodo’s life in the Shire in the
first chapter.
Disruption of Equilibrium by some action: Bilbo gives Frodo
the ring and Gandalf sends him off on his quest.
Recognition of Disruption: When the road becomes dangerous
and the Hobbits realise that their journey will not be a peaceful one. They
initially seem to be having fun on and not taking it seriously.
An Attempt to Repair the Disruption: Frodo destroying the
ring in the volcano .
Reinstatement of the Equilibrium: There isn’t really one for
the main character, Frodo, who begins a new journey to the elf lands at the end
of the story but his companion Sam returns to his old life at the end.
Scrapped Ideas and Maps
While designing my choose your own adventure story, I went through many different initial ideas and settings in which to base my narrative, each time, I found that there was some flaw with them that would make them either too difficult, or too boring to write. I still, however, mapped them out and wrote brief synopses for them as though they were three act structures.
Idea 1, a detective story set in 1980's Berlin.
This setting was inspired by my trips to the city of Berlin, one I find fascinating and full of possibility when it comes to writing narratives. The city has such an interesting history that many kinds of narrative could be written within it.
A brief synopsis is; An American national is found floating dead, in the middle of the Spree river, between east and west Berlin. The FBI send out one of their specialist homicide agents in an effort to solve the crime that involves one of their citizens. The story is focused on this Agent's tale, and his struggles with overcoming cultural differences and a language barrier in order to reach his goal and solve the case.
A more detailed synopsis is as follows.
Act 1
Tim O'Brien, is on a plane from the United States to Germany, he is sat on the plane next to a West German woman, during the opening scene we learn a little about Tim's character through his interaction with his fellow passenger. Tim then lands in Berlin and is met by the partner the German authorities have assigned to help him in this case, Andreas Schilling. Schilling is initially disaproving of the American, as it is revealed O'Brien barely speaks a word of German, and Schilling grudges his role as an interpreter for what he considers a a brash American. What initially seems an open and shut case of a woman falling into a river and drowning is blown open by the discovery from an autopsy that she had been poisoned by a well known communist developed nerve agent and that she had been killed in the eastern, Russian controlled sector of Berlin.
Notes - Tim and Andreas begin as grudging allies, with neither of them really that fond of the other, however exposure to each other forms a bond between them of mutual respect and comradeship. We known little about the woman found in the Spree during act one other than that she was an American citizen that died in the river Spree. Most of the first act is focused on the relationship between Tim and Andreas.
Act 2
The pair of detectives plan to get into the eastern part of the city to better carry out their investigation, but they are blocked completely by east German authorities, they face many obstacles relating to political pressure during this and are strictly told by both the US ambassadorial staff and the West German police not to continue their investigations in East Berlin. The first culmination of this act is when Tim and Andreas are able to get into the eastern sector, (via a number of methods that are choices for the player to take). They manage to move through the east unimpeded for a time, with Tim's natural skills as a detective beginning to make headway with the investigation and Andrea's help with this being invaluable. Eventually they are captured, due to Tim's inability to speak German, when questioned by some of the DDR's Stasi agents. They are then put into a holding cell and told they will never leave as no one on their side knows where they have gone, and also because they were expressly forbidden to take this course of action. They manage to escape the holding cells with the help of a mysterious woman, who turns out to have been a CIA Agent, she reveals to them that the woman found in the Spree was also an American spy whom she had been working with. She gives the pair a hint at where they can find some substantial evidence and sends them on their way to the Stasi headquarters.
Act 3
The pair arrive at the headquarters near Alexanderplatz, and infiltrate the Stasi building using (player choice) subterfuge. The pair find what they are looking for and leave, although on the way out, an alarm sounds and the pair have to fight their way out of east Berlin (there is a chance here, for Andreas to die). On return to the west, Tim takes his evidence to his superiors who tell him that they can never reveal what he found out, as it would cause too large an international incident (this is the denouement, things are the same as they were at the beginning). The final scene is of time being on the aeroplane back to the US, with the same woman from the start sat next to him, she asks him in German "did you find what you were looking for?" the final image is of understanding in Tim's eyes as he knew what she was asking.
Notes - there are choices for the ending, I find it to be more poignant if Andreas dies as his budding friendship with Tim is one of the main focuses on the story
Idea 2- A choose your own adventure set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
I am very familiar with the setting of the 40k universe, having read books set there since I was a teenager, there are many, many ways one can make a choose your own adventure in this setting and it has tabletop rules that could be scaled down to work in a paper RPG format. When mapping out the Idea, i found that it had by far, the most possibilites within the map compared to any of my other story ideas.
Brief Synopsis
A planet is in open rebellion against the Imperium of Man, Space Marines of the Angels Obsidiae chapter are sent in to help with the pacification. We find out during the story that the insidious forces of Chaos are responsible for the rebellions and our protagonist must defeat them (or join them).
Act 1-
Your character is a member of a team of Space Marines, sent in to assist the other Imperial Forces with the pacification. During the first act, not much other than exposition occurs, (although almost every interaction with the planet's population has a choice for the player to make). The player is attacked by many civillians and has the choice to dispatch them or just try to pacify them without casualties. The end of the act, we find out that Chaos Space Marines of the Word Bearers legion are responsible for all the troubles.
Act 2-
Act two is full of choices and the story branches off into many divergent paths here. The "good" path involves the player trying to find a way to stop the mind control of the civilians by the Chaos Sorcerors whilst fighting the forces of the dark gods at every turn. The end of the act sees a mighty chaos lord confront the team of space Marines, killing their sergeant the marine the player controls takes charge of the squad and continues.
The second "neutral" path has the player just killing the civilians if they attack them and fighting Chaos like in the good path. Daemons are summoned and the player's squad is killed to a man, leaving him by himself.
The "evil" path has the player abandoning his team after the incessant whispering of Chaos corrupts them into joining its cause. The player has options to follow Chaos in two different ways, one following the god of war and death, and thus gaining an attack buff, and the other following the chaos gods undivided, giving them a buff to their armour. The culmination of the evil act 2, has the player being hunted by his former battle-brothers, depending on how the player chose to follow chaos, they have the options of helping the Word Bearers legion or just killing in the name of their patron god of war and murder.
Act 3-
Good Path; The team successfully scuppers the Word Bearers plans in a climatic battle between the players dwindling squad and the Chaos Lord who killed their former sergeant. The final conclusion is the player being promoted to full sergeant status on return to their captain.
Neutral Path; The player fights alone through the skeleton of the city left behind by his brothers, he stays on the planet, forced to roam the broken wastes forever, thought killed in action by his chapter.
Evil Path: The player helps unite the forces of Chaos in order to defeat the Imperial forces on the planet. Using his new found dark powers, the marine duels with his former captain, either defeating him and gaining the favour of the gods for all eternity or being crushed at his hand and seeing all he has worked for turn to ash.
My main focus when writing this was to come up with some interesting combat mechanics, based on the 40k tabletop system as well as the scope of choices that you can have in a 40k inspired setting. I like it as it mirrors some of the choices one can make in video games with a morality system, having an almost completely different experience depending on which path is taken.
Scrapped Idea 3- Stupid Fantasy Parody
I like the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, it mercilessly plays around with tropes from the fantasy genre in a humorous way. I thought I could do something like this with a choose your own adventure, but found out that my comedy writing leaves a lot to be desired. I wanted to make every in the setting as generic as possible whilst still having a way to incorporate player choice. The map for this one leaves a lot to be desired as I haven' come up with nearly as much player choice for this setting, and was thus scrapped. I wanted to have some unnecessary loops in this project that would be frustrating for the player, to simulate the experience of some of the old text adventures
I kind of wrote the narrative by ear, and added parts to the map as and when I thought of them, as such, the map and narrative appears a lot more linear than the rest of my ideas. I managed to write about 8 pages for this until I realised what I was doing wasn't good enough and scrapped the idea.
Idea 1, a detective story set in 1980's Berlin.
A brief synopsis is; An American national is found floating dead, in the middle of the Spree river, between east and west Berlin. The FBI send out one of their specialist homicide agents in an effort to solve the crime that involves one of their citizens. The story is focused on this Agent's tale, and his struggles with overcoming cultural differences and a language barrier in order to reach his goal and solve the case.
A more detailed synopsis is as follows.
Act 1
Tim O'Brien, is on a plane from the United States to Germany, he is sat on the plane next to a West German woman, during the opening scene we learn a little about Tim's character through his interaction with his fellow passenger. Tim then lands in Berlin and is met by the partner the German authorities have assigned to help him in this case, Andreas Schilling. Schilling is initially disaproving of the American, as it is revealed O'Brien barely speaks a word of German, and Schilling grudges his role as an interpreter for what he considers a a brash American. What initially seems an open and shut case of a woman falling into a river and drowning is blown open by the discovery from an autopsy that she had been poisoned by a well known communist developed nerve agent and that she had been killed in the eastern, Russian controlled sector of Berlin.
Notes - Tim and Andreas begin as grudging allies, with neither of them really that fond of the other, however exposure to each other forms a bond between them of mutual respect and comradeship. We known little about the woman found in the Spree during act one other than that she was an American citizen that died in the river Spree. Most of the first act is focused on the relationship between Tim and Andreas.
Act 2
The pair of detectives plan to get into the eastern part of the city to better carry out their investigation, but they are blocked completely by east German authorities, they face many obstacles relating to political pressure during this and are strictly told by both the US ambassadorial staff and the West German police not to continue their investigations in East Berlin. The first culmination of this act is when Tim and Andreas are able to get into the eastern sector, (via a number of methods that are choices for the player to take). They manage to move through the east unimpeded for a time, with Tim's natural skills as a detective beginning to make headway with the investigation and Andrea's help with this being invaluable. Eventually they are captured, due to Tim's inability to speak German, when questioned by some of the DDR's Stasi agents. They are then put into a holding cell and told they will never leave as no one on their side knows where they have gone, and also because they were expressly forbidden to take this course of action. They manage to escape the holding cells with the help of a mysterious woman, who turns out to have been a CIA Agent, she reveals to them that the woman found in the Spree was also an American spy whom she had been working with. She gives the pair a hint at where they can find some substantial evidence and sends them on their way to the Stasi headquarters.
Act 3
The pair arrive at the headquarters near Alexanderplatz, and infiltrate the Stasi building using (player choice) subterfuge. The pair find what they are looking for and leave, although on the way out, an alarm sounds and the pair have to fight their way out of east Berlin (there is a chance here, for Andreas to die). On return to the west, Tim takes his evidence to his superiors who tell him that they can never reveal what he found out, as it would cause too large an international incident (this is the denouement, things are the same as they were at the beginning). The final scene is of time being on the aeroplane back to the US, with the same woman from the start sat next to him, she asks him in German "did you find what you were looking for?" the final image is of understanding in Tim's eyes as he knew what she was asking.
Notes - there are choices for the ending, I find it to be more poignant if Andreas dies as his budding friendship with Tim is one of the main focuses on the story
Idea 2- A choose your own adventure set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
I am very familiar with the setting of the 40k universe, having read books set there since I was a teenager, there are many, many ways one can make a choose your own adventure in this setting and it has tabletop rules that could be scaled down to work in a paper RPG format. When mapping out the Idea, i found that it had by far, the most possibilites within the map compared to any of my other story ideas.
Brief Synopsis
A planet is in open rebellion against the Imperium of Man, Space Marines of the Angels Obsidiae chapter are sent in to help with the pacification. We find out during the story that the insidious forces of Chaos are responsible for the rebellions and our protagonist must defeat them (or join them).
Act 1-
Your character is a member of a team of Space Marines, sent in to assist the other Imperial Forces with the pacification. During the first act, not much other than exposition occurs, (although almost every interaction with the planet's population has a choice for the player to make). The player is attacked by many civillians and has the choice to dispatch them or just try to pacify them without casualties. The end of the act, we find out that Chaos Space Marines of the Word Bearers legion are responsible for all the troubles.
Act 2-
Act two is full of choices and the story branches off into many divergent paths here. The "good" path involves the player trying to find a way to stop the mind control of the civilians by the Chaos Sorcerors whilst fighting the forces of the dark gods at every turn. The end of the act sees a mighty chaos lord confront the team of space Marines, killing their sergeant the marine the player controls takes charge of the squad and continues.
The second "neutral" path has the player just killing the civilians if they attack them and fighting Chaos like in the good path. Daemons are summoned and the player's squad is killed to a man, leaving him by himself.
The "evil" path has the player abandoning his team after the incessant whispering of Chaos corrupts them into joining its cause. The player has options to follow Chaos in two different ways, one following the god of war and death, and thus gaining an attack buff, and the other following the chaos gods undivided, giving them a buff to their armour. The culmination of the evil act 2, has the player being hunted by his former battle-brothers, depending on how the player chose to follow chaos, they have the options of helping the Word Bearers legion or just killing in the name of their patron god of war and murder.
Act 3-
Good Path; The team successfully scuppers the Word Bearers plans in a climatic battle between the players dwindling squad and the Chaos Lord who killed their former sergeant. The final conclusion is the player being promoted to full sergeant status on return to their captain.
Neutral Path; The player fights alone through the skeleton of the city left behind by his brothers, he stays on the planet, forced to roam the broken wastes forever, thought killed in action by his chapter.
Evil Path: The player helps unite the forces of Chaos in order to defeat the Imperial forces on the planet. Using his new found dark powers, the marine duels with his former captain, either defeating him and gaining the favour of the gods for all eternity or being crushed at his hand and seeing all he has worked for turn to ash.
My main focus when writing this was to come up with some interesting combat mechanics, based on the 40k tabletop system as well as the scope of choices that you can have in a 40k inspired setting. I like it as it mirrors some of the choices one can make in video games with a morality system, having an almost completely different experience depending on which path is taken.
Scrapped Idea 3- Stupid Fantasy Parody
I like the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, it mercilessly plays around with tropes from the fantasy genre in a humorous way. I thought I could do something like this with a choose your own adventure, but found out that my comedy writing leaves a lot to be desired. I wanted to make every in the setting as generic as possible whilst still having a way to incorporate player choice. The map for this one leaves a lot to be desired as I haven' come up with nearly as much player choice for this setting, and was thus scrapped. I wanted to have some unnecessary loops in this project that would be frustrating for the player, to simulate the experience of some of the old text adventures
I kind of wrote the narrative by ear, and added parts to the map as and when I thought of them, as such, the map and narrative appears a lot more linear than the rest of my ideas. I managed to write about 8 pages for this until I realised what I was doing wasn't good enough and scrapped the idea.
The Monomyth
Most stories that take on any sort of "Hero's Quest" arc can be defined by the term, Monomyth, coined by Joseph Campbell to describe an almost universal structure to stories that isn't largely affected by time period or region of the world from which they are derived. It is structure that has been used throughout the history of storytelling and varies only a little between regions of the world that the story was originated from.
The Monomyth is separated into 17 different stages which the stories protagonist must progress through in order to reach the end, and thus their ultimate goal.
The first stage is "The Call to Adventure" in which the hero is summoned and told of their objectives in the quest that they must take part in, usually to a region unknown to their people. Often when the hero is called, they will refuse the summons initially and stubbornly refuse the quest, this is always overcome by some incident and ultimately the hero will always partake in their quest eventually.
Once the hero is on track and has begun the quest, they will meet their supernatural guide or helper, often the hero will receive some form of artifact from his new mentor which will aid them in their quest.
The belly of the whale describes the hero being fully separated from the life they knew before and now fully involved in their quest, this will often be the initial part of the character's metamorphosis from average Joe, into all conquering hero.
All the above stages describe the initial phase of the Monomyth; the Departure. In the second part, the character begins their initiation proper.
In the second part, the Initiation, the character will invariably have to go through a series of trials and tribulations described simply as "the road of trials". These tests are often to see the resolve of the character and his or her determination, often the trials will be in sets of three and sometimes the hero will fail one of them.
The character will then go through the stages, meeting the goddess, and temptation from a character of the opposite sex. Whilst meeting the goddess, the hero will meet a character who they love more than anything and during the temptation phase the hero will have to overcome their own desires for physical pleasure as a test to see if they have the mettle to continue their quest.
The initiation part also contains the stage Atonement with the Father. Here the hero will meet a being of supreme power, often represented as a father figure, this is the mid point of the story and the hero continue on from this meeting with new found knowledge.
The next part is the Apotheosis, normally during this part, the hero will witness someone dying a physical death and receive some sort of new knowledge as a result. The part can also be described as a period of rest between the previous section before the hero begins their return.
The Ultimate boon is the final stage of the initiation, and during this the hero's goal will often be reached. All previous stages have just been preparation for the trial the hero faces in this final battle.
The third and final part of these stages is called the return, and here, after their ultimate victory the hero will begin their long trek back the their start point. During this stage, the hero will go through a different sort of trial. Initially they will be unwilling to return having found the life of adventure agreeable and the new experiences not something they want to let go of. The hero will though, still need to return in order to give the boon they found back to their people. The hero will ultimately return to their people and live a life of freedom.
The original Star Wars trilogy fits this story arc well, and in fact, Lucas studied the monomyth when writing the saga of Luke Skywalker.
The Monomyth is separated into 17 different stages which the stories protagonist must progress through in order to reach the end, and thus their ultimate goal.
The first stage is "The Call to Adventure" in which the hero is summoned and told of their objectives in the quest that they must take part in, usually to a region unknown to their people. Often when the hero is called, they will refuse the summons initially and stubbornly refuse the quest, this is always overcome by some incident and ultimately the hero will always partake in their quest eventually.
Once the hero is on track and has begun the quest, they will meet their supernatural guide or helper, often the hero will receive some form of artifact from his new mentor which will aid them in their quest.
The belly of the whale describes the hero being fully separated from the life they knew before and now fully involved in their quest, this will often be the initial part of the character's metamorphosis from average Joe, into all conquering hero.
All the above stages describe the initial phase of the Monomyth; the Departure. In the second part, the character begins their initiation proper.
In the second part, the Initiation, the character will invariably have to go through a series of trials and tribulations described simply as "the road of trials". These tests are often to see the resolve of the character and his or her determination, often the trials will be in sets of three and sometimes the hero will fail one of them.
The character will then go through the stages, meeting the goddess, and temptation from a character of the opposite sex. Whilst meeting the goddess, the hero will meet a character who they love more than anything and during the temptation phase the hero will have to overcome their own desires for physical pleasure as a test to see if they have the mettle to continue their quest.
The initiation part also contains the stage Atonement with the Father. Here the hero will meet a being of supreme power, often represented as a father figure, this is the mid point of the story and the hero continue on from this meeting with new found knowledge.
The next part is the Apotheosis, normally during this part, the hero will witness someone dying a physical death and receive some sort of new knowledge as a result. The part can also be described as a period of rest between the previous section before the hero begins their return.
The Ultimate boon is the final stage of the initiation, and during this the hero's goal will often be reached. All previous stages have just been preparation for the trial the hero faces in this final battle.
The third and final part of these stages is called the return, and here, after their ultimate victory the hero will begin their long trek back the their start point. During this stage, the hero will go through a different sort of trial. Initially they will be unwilling to return having found the life of adventure agreeable and the new experiences not something they want to let go of. The hero will though, still need to return in order to give the boon they found back to their people. The hero will ultimately return to their people and live a life of freedom.
The original Star Wars trilogy fits this story arc well, and in fact, Lucas studied the monomyth when writing the saga of Luke Skywalker.
The Three Act Structure
The three act structure is the structure by which most narratives are arranged. It has a definitive start and end point, an inciting incident which gets the story going, two large plot points which antagonise the main character, and a denouement (or return to normalcy) at the end.
The first act is often used as exposition, as a means to set up the rest of the story by introducing the main characters, environment and setting of the story. The first act always contains an inciting incident which begins the protagonist's journey and sets up the action for the coming acts.
The culmination of the first act is usually described as plot point one, during which, the character will go through some form of difficulty and things can seem bad and maybe even beyond repair, the character will reach a low at this juncture of the story.
Act two is often the largest act, in terms of size and scope, and most of the story will take place within it. The characters will go through most of their trials and tribulations here, the vast majority of character development happens here, and this will often culminate in the form of plot point two, in which the character will be brought to an all new low point, seemingly making the main goal impossible.
Act three will contain any form of final battle, the character will find what they seek in the end of the story and things will be resolved in such a way that the denouement can occur.
The first act is often used as exposition, as a means to set up the rest of the story by introducing the main characters, environment and setting of the story. The first act always contains an inciting incident which begins the protagonist's journey and sets up the action for the coming acts.
The culmination of the first act is usually described as plot point one, during which, the character will go through some form of difficulty and things can seem bad and maybe even beyond repair, the character will reach a low at this juncture of the story.
Act two is often the largest act, in terms of size and scope, and most of the story will take place within it. The characters will go through most of their trials and tribulations here, the vast majority of character development happens here, and this will often culminate in the form of plot point two, in which the character will be brought to an all new low point, seemingly making the main goal impossible.
Act three will contain any form of final battle, the character will find what they seek in the end of the story and things will be resolved in such a way that the denouement can occur.
Text and Point and Click Adventure Games
Text adventures were a staple of the gaming environment during the the 80's on the Commodore 64 and Spectrum systems. Text adventures told stories that placed the player at the centre of the narrative, with their choices affecting the outcome. Some of the most popular games of this type during this era were The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and The Hobbit, which cast the player into the roles of Arthur Dent and Bilbo Baggins respectively and told the stories of these novels in an interesting (and quite humorous, in the case of the former) way and Zork. Text adventures are known for their systems of control as being a command prompt in which the player gets a brief description of their surroundings and directions they can travel in, as well as any important items in the location they are in, the player then types in basic commands such as "go north", "pick up x item", "use x item", "talk to x character" etc. These games featured the same kind of intricate mapping as a Choose Your Own Adventure book in their design and had sometimes had several different ways to reach the goal, although most of the time, they were somewhat a more linear experience.
Certain text adventures, like H2G2 were known for their devilish difficulty level or even the expectation that the player had prior knowledge of the narrative before playing the text adventure, as sometimes the information the player needed to finish the game was within the novel the game was based upon. Often, text adventures would have the player picking up all sorts of items and then trying (often in vain) to combine the item with something else to unlock the next area of the game.
With advances in computer technology and what computer games were capable of, text adventures sort of evolved into point and click adventures (if not evolved then they were at least the spiritual successor) which worked in a similar way, but instead of text descriptions of the players surroundings, the game had complete a complete (animated) visual image of the game world. They had some similar mechanics as the text adventure, as players would need to collect all sorts of junk from around the game world to see if it worked when combined with any other object in the environment. Point and Click adventures had their golden age during the early years of PC gaming and were amongst some of the best games of their era, Lucasarts was famed during this time for producing the very best of the point and click adventures in the form of the Monkey Island Series, Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max, which all featured expansive game worlds and fully voiced dialogue.
So, the text adventure and point and click kind of died a death in the late 90's with the birth of modern games consoles and the endless first person shooters that today's gaming market is known for. Although, there may be some light at the end of the tunnel with this, as Telltale Studios' The Walking Dead, which is, at it's core, a point and click adventure, has received great accolades from critics and players alike receiving both an 82% from critics and an 8/10 from players on the Metacritic website.
Having played through each episode of the Walking Dead i can safely say that it is one of the better narrative's of the current game generation, it features believable characters who go through all sorts of development over the five episode plot arc and you really grow attached to the protagonist and his friends by the end of it all. It has a vast array of player choice, with at least one important event in each chapter which affects the outcome of the game, and it manages to do this without seeming clunky, each time you play, you are playing through the same linear story, but subtle differences occur depending on the decisions your character makes. This game has the classic point and click style as well as the morality systems modern RPG's are famed for, and it doesn't make you feel like a bad person with your decisions like the "black and white" morality of most games as each decision seems to take on a more greyish hue than the simplistic "good" or "bad" decisions one can make in other RPGs. Maybe I'm heaping the praise onto this game too much, but I really think that is is just that good.
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| Text adventures were notorious for their command prompt system, which caused their players no end of frustration due to the limited amount of commands the game understood. |
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| A typical screen from a point and click, we can see the common commands that were synonymous with the text adventure here represented as buttons on the left of the user interface and an inventory panel to the right. |
With advances in computer technology and what computer games were capable of, text adventures sort of evolved into point and click adventures (if not evolved then they were at least the spiritual successor) which worked in a similar way, but instead of text descriptions of the players surroundings, the game had complete a complete (animated) visual image of the game world. They had some similar mechanics as the text adventure, as players would need to collect all sorts of junk from around the game world to see if it worked when combined with any other object in the environment. Point and Click adventures had their golden age during the early years of PC gaming and were amongst some of the best games of their era, Lucasarts was famed during this time for producing the very best of the point and click adventures in the form of the Monkey Island Series, Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max, which all featured expansive game worlds and fully voiced dialogue.
So, the text adventure and point and click kind of died a death in the late 90's with the birth of modern games consoles and the endless first person shooters that today's gaming market is known for. Although, there may be some light at the end of the tunnel with this, as Telltale Studios' The Walking Dead, which is, at it's core, a point and click adventure, has received great accolades from critics and players alike receiving both an 82% from critics and an 8/10 from players on the Metacritic website.
Choose Your Own Adventure Stories
Choose your own adventure stories are narratives that use a system of numbered paragraphs which the reader selects to have a unique experience of a story, this gives a the normally linear experience of novel reading an interesting twist, as the reader will have some form of choice in how they progress through the narrative. The Fighting Fantasy series is the most well known of these with 25 books set in a variety of environments and also using some pen and paper RPG mechanics for combat and character progression. The amount of choices in some of these books is staggering and although, each path ultimately leaves the player at the same endpoint destination, the choices the player makes to get there could be different several times.
I made the above "map" for a choose your own adventure book called Return of the Wanderer from the Penguin Adventure Gamebooks series which uses a very similar choose your own adventure, combat and character progression systems which are commonplace within the genre. From this map, I can a clear way of the mapping and progression of the story, where the choices end in death or dead ends and when they loop back to the main narrative. This map showed me that, although there seems to be a great deal of choice within these books, it normally is something of an illusion, as each path ultimately leads to the same destination, just in slightly different ways.
The scope for what is achievable with this system is great, but as fine as multiple branching storylines are, there has to be a definitive start, and end (perhaps not so much an end, as multiple outcomes to the story may be possible).
These stories often follow the Quest story structure and also feature elements of good vs evil conflict arcs. In many of the stories, the character goes through the adventure by themselves and often dialogue isn't a big feature of them. They are mostly set in a high fantasy environment and contain a lot of the tropes frequently associated with such. As generic as the settings are, they are good fun and tell a story in an interesting way, although it is difficult to grow attached to the characters that appear within them as opposed to a traditional novel due to the fact that mostly, they don't have the best writing.
I made the above "map" for a choose your own adventure book called Return of the Wanderer from the Penguin Adventure Gamebooks series which uses a very similar choose your own adventure, combat and character progression systems which are commonplace within the genre. From this map, I can a clear way of the mapping and progression of the story, where the choices end in death or dead ends and when they loop back to the main narrative. This map showed me that, although there seems to be a great deal of choice within these books, it normally is something of an illusion, as each path ultimately leads to the same destination, just in slightly different ways.
The scope for what is achievable with this system is great, but as fine as multiple branching storylines are, there has to be a definitive start, and end (perhaps not so much an end, as multiple outcomes to the story may be possible).
These stories often follow the Quest story structure and also feature elements of good vs evil conflict arcs. In many of the stories, the character goes through the adventure by themselves and often dialogue isn't a big feature of them. They are mostly set in a high fantasy environment and contain a lot of the tropes frequently associated with such. As generic as the settings are, they are good fun and tell a story in an interesting way, although it is difficult to grow attached to the characters that appear within them as opposed to a traditional novel due to the fact that mostly, they don't have the best writing.
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