When I look back at narrative at games I think about two games that I got with my PS4. This would be the Uncharted series and Until Dawn. In both of these games there is an underlying narrative to the game along with some gameplay mechanics. I’ll start with Until Dawn as the first example. The premise of Until Dawn is that you jump between six main characters throughout the whole story as you stay at a cabin for the night. As you find out, there is a larger threat that awaits the characters at the cabin once they have all settled in. You must work to stop this threat and stay alive until dawn. From the very beginning the main gameplay mechanic is walking and interacting with your environment. You piece together what had happened a year ago with the murder of Josh’s two sisters. There are various totems, photos, etc. that help paint a larger picture of what happened before the events of when you arrived. These items are hidden throughout the map and are there for you to collect.

In addition to collecting items, the player can also have an impact on the story. Until Dawn introduces an element known as the butterfly effect, based on an action that the player takes at one point in the story. While the game relies heavily on scripted scenes, the player has impact on what happens during those scenes, usually they are presented with two options. Many choices have no effect, however some a lasting effect, causing the butterfly effect to start. Because of this butterfly effect it causes a branching effect, and will create multiple endings for the player. While the underlying story of what happens is the same, how events turn out are in control of the player based on the decisions that they make.

The Uncharted series on the other hand has a different approach to narrative. It tells an overarching story through the four games. While each game has its own separate story, they all tie together into the who universe that is the Uncharted universe. Similar to Until Dawn it uses cut-scenes to tell most of the narrative.  However Uncharted differs from its gameplay mechanics as it involves the typical shooting that one would see in a mainstream triple-A game. While it incorporates shooting as a feature of the game, it is not the main focus. Mostly with Uncharted it is about the exploration of the location that you are in and doing platforming or solving a puzzle. From there it will unlock a greater unknown room which will advance to another cut-scene and thus the narrative.

Many of the actions take don’t have a lasting impact on the story as stated by Huntemann “Adventure games center on narrative, or a sequence of events that may be experienced in a combination of orders but generally proceed through a dominant story arc. Because of this focus on narrative, adventure games limit player agency, which can be defined as the ability for the player to act in ways that change the game world or the direction of the narrative.” While the user can interact and test with the world of Uncharted, the story itself is set. Unlike Until Dawn where the player’s actions have direct impact on the story, Uncharted’s narrative is a linear one in which the user plays through a “movie” in a sense. While there is more gameplay added to make up for this lack of choice within the narrative. Uncharted does tell a story, however it is more limiting in what choice the player has in the story and how the effect it.

With both of these games is that they could have been a film or TV series. However, both were created as video games. As stated by Batti and Karabinus ““The problem is that it doesn’t matter: games have no choice but to tell stories,” but abruptly veered away from the most obvious follow-up to that statement: games have no choice but to tell stories because they are made by humans, and humans think in stories.” To me I don’t like horror films and would not have watch the Until Dawn version of that, but since it was a game I was able to experience the horror genre. By including narrative, it can expose the player to genres that they have never experienced before as narrative brings them into the games world.