The Narratives in Open World Games

The Narratives in Open World Games

by ZHOU Fangli

Abstract

Open world games are now more and more popular in the market. Almost every great piece indicates that it has a great sandbox and the player could have the best freedom to discover the game world. However, is it certainly good for the game? Not really. It is undoubted that open world games have great freedom for players while it brings a problem, how to tell the story, or how the developer pass their opinions to players. Manovich pointed out the conflict between database and narrative. When the game has a larger database so that players can explore and interact with, its ability of narrative then reduces. In this essay, three open world games would be analyzed. First, Minecraft would tell you how an extreme sandbox game attracts players and how the game passes information through the interactivity. Second, a Chinese tactical role-playing game Heroes of Jin Yong published in early years would show a delicate non-linearity story net. Readers could see how non-linearity, this typical feature of sandbox concept, works in open world games. At last, the sight would be focused on Next-Gen games, which are becoming the mainstream nowadays. One of the most distinguished, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt would present its algorithmic branches and epic narratives. This might be one of the most successful example that finds a perfect balance between interactivity and narratives. And from it, the tendency of Next-Gen games to be more comprehensive and integrated is not difficult to found out. This essay should be suitable for those who are interested in video games and want to see how they tell the story and interact with players.

Content

For sandbox games, its name, sandbox, might be vivid enough to express the meaning, which is just like playing in a box where players could make castles or the Great Wall with sand and tools as they want. Thus, such games are those that players have extremely high degree of freedom in the game world to do almost anything they want.

The core of a sandbox game is freedom and creation. However, if defining sandbox games in this narrow sense, most games nowadays which claim their high degree of freedom are not “sandbox”. They are just presenting a main story line with many smaller interesting interactions and branches spreading in the huge map. Maybe, among the popular ones, only Minecraft could be defined as a real sandbox game. Whereas the concept of sandbox games could increase the immersion and content, which offer players a more real and tense experience. Hence people could find the sandbox elements from many great works, so-called open world games, in the market nowadays, such as Grand Theft Auto V and Fallout 4.  

However, the concept of sandbox also brings a problem. On the contrary of high degree of freedom and creation is a loose construction and a dim game designer’s opinion. Players might be lost in the unlimited discovering, collecting, creating and destroying. They might have nothing more interesting to do and finally give up the game due to lack of motivation. This might be the contradiction of narrative and interactivity as Adams (as cited in Jenkins①) indicated,  “Interactivity is almost the opposite of narrative; narrative flows under the direction of the author, while interactivity depends on the player for motive power”. Therefore, how to find the balance, both make the story attractive enough and provide a highly free game experience, might be a problem which every game developer need to consider carefully.

In this essay, I will analyze the structure and narrative in two different open world games, Minecraft, Heroes of Jin Yong and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt to show how this type of games tell the story and balance the interactivity and narrative. And each game will present an important feature in emphasis.

Minecraft & Unlimited Possibilities

The generation of video games are now running into the “Next-Gen”, which generally means high visual quality and great game experience as playing in a real world to common consumers. However, it is in such an era where people persuade the visual and sound effects and movie-like game experience that a pixel-style sandbox game attracts millions of fans. That is Minecraft.

Minecraft was a really simple game that only took its developer Markus Persson one-week spare time to create it, whereas nowadays it is as popular as GTA5s, or even more. Minecraft should be one of those that are described as “Not all games tell stories” (Jenkins②). It only offers some basic rules for players and then it is players’ time. The core of the game is to destroy and place cubes. Different patterns represent different type of cubes, such as water, wood, stones. And they have different functions, for example, people can use red stones to build logic gates, circuits and even a CPU. Players perform like a creator in the world that the game generated.

However, Minecraft is not merely an open world where people can do anything but without getting information from the game itself or the developer. The game has four different modes. In survival mode, players have to discover the environment, gather natural resources and craft some blocks. The mobs (short for mobile), such as animals and enemies, may invade players so that players have to build a shelter and manufacture different items including weapons. In addition, hunger, wounding, drowning would all reduce the character’s health point, until game over. The hardcore mode could be regarded as the variant of survival mode. The difficulty would be locked at difficult mode and the player will only have one life chance. The third one is creative mode, which might fit the concept of high degree of freedom and unlimited creation best. In this mode, the character is the god. Players can get any materials and resources from the item menu and place or destroy them immediately. They will also have the ability of flying and will not be attacked and feel hungry. People could concentrate on huge projects, such as building the Chinese Great Wall or making Westeros in Game of Thrones reappear, in this mode. And in last adventure mode, players could adventure in custom maps, similar to survival mode, but with some limitations. The interactivity here is between the map sketcher and the player.