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Dear Reader,

When it came to what I decided my research topic to be, I already had the exact question in mind

way before I even entered the Rhetoric and Composition II class. It was mainly because one of

my friends had done a research topic similar to mine, but I decided to change it and make it out

of video games. I never really changed my idea at any point and kept with the same topic

throughout aside from simply rewording the question that I had in mind because the only thing I

truly cared about was talking about the narratives in different video games. Similar to writing my

theory paper last semester for 1301, the only challenge I really had when it came to writing this

paper was deciding on the games that I wanted to focus on since there’s a huge variety of video

games to choose from. I’m hoping to enlighten people who might not be familiar with video

games as a whole as well as people who might not enjoy video games for their stories and stick

to their gameplays and have them understand that they can be a medium for sharing a compelling

story similar to books and movies, the only difference being that video games are much more

interactive. When it comes to writing choices, I want to stick to an academic format but keep the

casual word choice. If I have to look up a thesaurus for different words to use, I already failed by

keeping it casual. I want to keep the word choice as if I were to speak my mind out and have it so

that I’m speaking to someone. The only concern that I truly have is when it comes to writing

about topics that I really enjoy, it’s going to be extremely difficult to try to stay on topic.

Hopefully what I wrote is something that is readable and understandable even when I can ramble

on about this specific topic for countless hours as well as also trying out the games mentioned

here since I know I’m going to do the same thing anyways :)

With regards,

Carlos Baltazar
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Carlos Baltazar

Professor Balzadua

ENGL 1302.02

6 October, 2023

The Narrative Storytelling in Video Games

Video games over the years have definitely made it much more of a priority to include a

story within their video games. Video games have come a long way from having their story

placed in the manual when players received the video game to having a whole genre of video

games called visual novels which is primarily story based games. The question I’m going to be

discussing is “How do video games become a great medium for narratives?” I’ve always thought

about how video games have such amazing stories and how they are able to make stories that are

in my opinion on par with novels. I’ve decided to look into this research question as wanting to

create video games is the reason for wanting to get into higher education with a computer science

degree and to pursue building video games that are heavily story based to create narratives that

other people can enjoy.

LITERATURE REVIEW

To start off, One of the first sources is Josiah Lebowitz’s “Interactive Storytelling for Video

Games: Proven Writing Techniques for Role Playing Games, Online Games, First Person

Shooters, and More”. The book goes over an in-depth analysis on interactive open world video

games and how much freedom these games give to the players, as well as go through a national

survey of people’s preferences of storytelling. In Sokol’s “Video Games are the Modern Form of
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Storytelling”, the article gives a general understanding about the history of storytelling in video

games as well as brings up other video games like “The Last of Us” and “Mass Effect”. Finally,

in PowerPak’s “MyHouse.WAD - Inside Doom’s Most Terrifying Mod”, this YouTube video is a

video essay of a person’s playthrough of a Doom II mod called MyHouse.WAD. This mod has

nothing to do with the original game, but uses a very deep understanding of other mediums

outside of the game as well as within the game itself through easter eggs to give off a narrative.

Comparing a bit from my research with the other sources, all of these sources go more in

depth to specific genres of video games. The book focused on a specific genre of open world

games like the Fallout series which revolves around an open sandbox in which the player can

explore around alongside the story and find more story elements about the open world through

side quests that don’t change the overarching narrative of the main story of each of the games.

The article goes over The Last of Us which is primarily a story based game with hints of

gameplay sprinkled around. The game has large amounts of cutscenes which almost feel like

watching a movie at some point which helps you get more immersed into the world when you

enter the gameplay sections of the game. As for the YouTube video, it goes over an in-depth

analysis on MyHouse.WAD, a Doom II mod which heavily alters the original game of Doom II

which makes it feel like a completely new game. The game uses the Doom II engine to tell a

story as well as uses other elements outside of the game and into the source code which includes

more backstory of the game. When it comes to all of the ideas brought upon by the games

mentioned in the sources, I definitely agree with the sources’ arguments and plan to add more to

their ideas through using the games that my participants had mentioned.
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METHODS

The main methodology that I’m going to be using for this research is surveys. All the questions

that I’m going to ask are mostly going to be short answer questions with one multiple choice

question. Surveys are definitely the easiest type of method to conduct research solely because of

the idea of making the survey online, so for convenience purposes, I went with a survey for my

research question.

The amount of participants is going to depend on how many people are willing to

conduct the interview with me. All of my participants are friends of mine that I have met both in

person and online. All of the people that I mention have at least played one video game that has

some form of narrative no matter how small the narrative is. All of my data that I collected from

people will be a Google Forms document all with the short answer questions. For the consent

form, it’ll be located in the first page of the Google Forms basically asking consent for the

participant in order to conduct the interview. A few of the questions that I asked were the simple

“What’s your favorite video game and why?” and then I followed with “What’s your favorite

video game narratively?”, as I wanted to see a difference between whether people have chosen

their favorite video game because of how it's portrayed narratively or was it a different game

entirely. I also asked about what contents makes the story enjoyable and how the game portrays

the story because over time, video games had made their experience of video games through

other means than just cutscenes. I just wanted to see what people had chosen so I could

specifically go over those elements in depth. And finally, the multiple choice question I asked

was “Which feature is the most important when choosing your favorite game?” I also asked a

bonus question of on a scale, how much would you recommend this game to someone else, with

that someone else being me. This could also be more motivation to get me to try more games.
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I’m able to monitor what I learned through transcribing the different answers that each person

gives in the Google Form. The things I plan to do with this research is understand what aspects

seem to be the things that people look into and talk about them more in depth in some of the

games that the participants had mentioned as well as the games mentioned in my sources.

RESULTS

As expected, every single person had chosen a different video game which makes sense. Video

games have existed for decades and there’s a huge range of different video games that exist, so it

would be extremely difficult to get two people to have their favorite video game to be the same

unless it’s extremely popular. Another thing is that a few people had kept their choice when it

came to their favorite video game narratively compared to others who had chosen a completely

different video game. As for the aspects that made their game enjoyable, some of the most

common responses were characterization, plot, world building, and dialogue to make you feel as

if you are a sentient being actually a part of the game world compared to someone simply using a

controller. Most of the games’ narrative seems to be told solely through cutscenes but there are

some games where their stories are told from the world and their characters’ dialogue. The things

that people look for when it comes to what makes a good story in a video game is simply when it

comes to the characters and whether they seem interesting as you’re going to be with these

characters depending on how important they are to the plot. With the multiple choice question,

most people simply chose that gameplay is the most important part of a video game compared to

narrative, graphics, replayability, and competitive, which makes sense because a video game’s

main aspect is the gameplay, and if the gameplay isn’t what people favor, it ultimately kills the

vibe that people would not even try to attempt the game.
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DISCUSSIONS

Some of the things that were mentioned when it came to the surveys that I conducted were the

different aspects of the video game’s story and what made it interesting to take part in and the

ones that were the most important when it came to the story of a video game were: plot,

characterization, worldbuilding, and dialogue. Each of the video games that are mentioned in this

paper all have their own strengths when it comes to the story, but I’m going to focus on the

aspects that are mentioned for each game.

One of the strong points of Fallout 4 would definitely come with its plot, worldbuilding,

and dialogue. The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic society in areas like Boston and other

parts of New England. It takes on a 1950’s aesthetic with the game starting off on October 23rd,

2077, the day that the bombs dropped during a Great War between the United States and China

in the Fallout series. The worldbuilding comes from aspects of everything being entirely

destroyed and with enemies like raiders and mutated animals and all of the story comes from the

whole idea of the vaults that exist in the world meant to be a sanctuary for survivors, but which

had ultimately become nothing more than experiments meant to study behavior. The main plot of

the story is that on the day that the bombs dropped, the main character and his family get put into

a cryogenic sleep which malfunctions and results in the main character’s spouse dying and their

baby son being taken away by raiders. The whole journey is the main character traversing

through the Commonwealth 210 years after the bombs had dropped to get their baby son back.

One of the main things when it comes to dialogue is that there are four different factions in the

game and choosing one of the factions will make the other factions despise you because there’s a

war going on between them. The story of Fallout and how they introduce the story is through the
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1950’s computer terminals that display the history to fill in the gap of the 210 years the main

character has been in cryogenic sleep. Things that get mentioned is how the vaults had operated

to simple entry logs that people of the world had written down before they might have

succumbed to death at some point of their lives.

With The Last of Us, the game is primarily a story game that has a small amount of

gameplay sprinkled into the game. The game takes place around the United States in the year

2033 when a mutant fungus has ravaged the world and transforms its human hosts into much

more terrifying zombies. The game is composed of cutscenes that portray the story between Ellie

and Joel, a dynamic duo of the father figure and teenage girl trope as their story. With the game

being mostly cutscenes between characters, the story is the most compelling part of the game

rather than the gameplay. Rather than getting immersed into the world, you get immersed with

the characters and you start to share the bond between the characters to the point where you’ll

feel when something happens to them.

The Doom II mod, MyHouse.WAD seems to focus more on the worldbuilding of the mod

as there’s no dialogue or many “characters” as the mod seems to be a story of the main mod

creator. With worldbuilding, the game would begin with the map of the creator’s house, and

nothing else, but sooner or later, the mysteries of the house start to unravel after completing the

first level of the house. There’s no explicit dialogue, but there have been many interpretations of

what the story is trying to portray. The only thing that is given through a narrative is Google

Docs that were written during the development of the mod which talk about specific dreams that

the mod creator had while development which correlate to specific events that happen in the

map.
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One of my friends, Kayla, had mentioned about their favorite video game Disco Elysium

and how the game tackles plot, characterization and dialogue. The player takes the role of an

amnesiac who is a detective who’s meant to uncover the mysteries of himself which is a nice

touch because it makes both you and the character one and the same which is not knowing

anything about themselves and the world around them and as you learn more about yourself and

who you were through dialogue options which are affected through the actions that you make as

well as the main character changing themself based on the gameplay mechanics that you choose

to make.

Finally, my girlfriend, Kyra, had called The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as her

favorite video game narratively. She mentions how the world building seems to be the main

selling point of the video game being one of the few games in the series that’s a major open

world game where you can see the world change at your own pace, and even though there’s a

main quest to follow, all of the side quests that exist add nothing to the actual main quest aside

from adding more story to the world that you’re residing in, all which makes the world more

memorable. The player doesn’t need to be told too much about the world's history aside from the

main plot when they can see literal geographic features and come to their own conclusion. There

are also cutscenes related to the main plot, which are like "unlocking memories" that tell the

history of what's going on; they're short and sweet, so it makes you trying to find out the truth of

what happened feel all the more rewarding since you have to collect them.

CONCLUSION
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Overall, there are many aspects of a narrative that many developers bring to the table when it

comes to how they make their narratives compelling and having people willing to continue

playing their games like plot, worldbuilding, and dialogue etc.

All I want coming from people is to understand what kinds of elements that people look

into when considering a narrative and realizing that video games can also be a good medium for

storytelling similar to other forms of media like books, art, film, and music. Even though most

people consider gameplay when it comes to video games since they are games first, people

should be able to consider the aspect of the narrative and whether the narrative makes the video

game more compelling than if it didn’t have one.

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Works Cited

Lebowitz, Josiah, and Chris Klug. Interactive Storytelling for Video Games: Proven Writing

Techniques for Role Playing Games, Online Games, First Person Shooters, and More.

Focal Press, 2012.

Power Pak. “MyHouse.WAD - inside Doom’s Most Terrifying Mod.” YouTube, YouTube, 11

May 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wAo54DHDY0&ab_channel=PowerPak

Sokol, Josh, and Karissa Schaefer. “Video Games Are the Modern Form of Storytelling.” The

Berkeley Beacon, 25 Jan. 2021,

https://www.berkeleybeacon.com/video-games-are-the-modern-form-of-storytelling/