Narrators

When playing Thomas was Alone I was struck by the idea that I wasn't actually enjoying the gameplay but what kept me playing was the story, in particular I liked the way it was presented to me. If you look at Thomas was Alone from a mechanics view it is essentially a puzzle platformer but with the addition of the inner monologue esque narration it became more, I started to actually care what would happen to the shapes I was playing with. This started me thinking about in game narration in other games I had played and I noticed distinct differences.

There is the obvious narrators of Bastion, and Little Big Planet were the narrators, while arguably are not necessary, are such a big part of the game that it is hard to think of the games without them.

Dear Esther is another game that without that narration there would not necessarily be a recognisable story. The situational narration is needed otherwise you would walk around the island learning about it but not what led you to this place and a whole chunk of the narrative would be missing.

When thinking about the different types of narrators I wondered about the narration of characters and in particular NPCs. Portal is an excellent puzzle game but the addition of Glados and its continual reminder that it is there watching you creates an extra dimension to the players struggle. They also seem to use the narrator to cover the fact that the character is silent, usually the character would be able to respond to the antagonist but the way Glados teases you continues to add to the players drive.

A clever way of using a narrator that took some time for me to realise was the use of a narrator at the beginning of the game to set the story, examples of this are Borderlands and Dragon Age. The way it is presented at the beginning allows the game to impart back story to the player but in a way that makes it feel like the player was the one that had created it, of course it helps if the game is a sequel such as Borderlands 2. However this technique is the one out of all described above that if taken out of the game would not be missed, that's not to say that it isn't an excellent narrative device.

Overall I think narrators can make a good story much better, I know I haven't really said anything about narrators that haven't worked in games but when I think of any the main reason they have not worked is due to bad localisation.