How does Fire Emblem Awakening overcome the challenge of incorporating narratives into the video game?
How does Fire Emblem Awakening overcome the challenge of incorporating narratives into the video game?
Introduction
Lev Manovich (in Cassidy, 2011, p. 294) once stated “interactive narrative remains to be a holy grail of new media” and video games industry is assessed to be one of the possible mediums to reach that Holy Grail.
However, there are limitations around incorporating narrative into video games, due to significant differences between video games and traditional story-telling mediums, specifically interactivity and player/viewer motivations, which leads to assumption that the way stories are told in traditional media cannot be used in video games. On the other hand, if the narrative is used to enrich the game world and motivate player, rather than limit his/her freedom in decision-making process, it unwraps different possibilities to video games industry. Fire Emblem Awakening demonstrates how the story can be incorporated into the game and this work observes the limitations and unique features demonstrated in this particular game: including over-reliance on cut scenes and interconnecting gameplay into the story.
This work analyses whether Fire Emblem Awakening is a successful balance between gameplay and narratives and tries to observe whether it has shifted from combining game and novel/movie to a completely unique story-telling medium.
Challenges and limitations of incorporating narratives into video games
Even though video games should not be compared to traditional storytelling mediums, video games industry holds a potential of being a unique interactive narrative medium.
There are certain limitations towards the whole concept of video games as a storytelling medium. Certain features of video games set it apart from narratives differ from traditional narrative media; the main one is the difference in “motivations for a person entering a dark theatre with a bag of popcorn than a person who is turning on the Play Station to play a game”
Introduction
Lev Manovich (in Cassidy, 2011, p. 294) once stated “interactive narrative remains to be a holy grail of new media” and video games industry is assessed to be one of the possible mediums to reach that Holy Grail.
However, there are limitations around incorporating narrative into video games, due to significant differences between video games and traditional story-telling mediums, specifically interactivity and player/viewer motivations, which leads to assumption that the way stories are told in traditional media cannot be used in video games. On the other hand, if the narrative is used to enrich the game world and motivate player, rather than limit his/her freedom in decision-making process, it unwraps different possibilities to video games industry. Fire Emblem Awakening demonstrates how the story can be incorporated into the game and this work observes the limitations and unique features demonstrated in this particular game: including over-reliance on cut scenes and interconnecting gameplay into the story.
This work analyses whether Fire Emblem Awakening is a successful balance between gameplay and narratives and tries to observe whether it has shifted from combining game and novel/movie to a completely unique story-telling medium.
Challenges and limitations of incorporating narratives into video games
Even though video games should not be compared to traditional storytelling mediums, video games industry holds a potential of being a unique interactive narrative medium.
There are certain limitations towards the whole concept of video games as a storytelling medium. Certain features of video games set it apart from narratives differ from traditional narrative media; the main one is the difference in “motivations for a person entering a dark theatre with a bag of popcorn than a person who is turning on the Play Station to play a game”