Gaming Taking the Back Seat
The PlayStation 3 was the first console where I was introduced to what I am going to call the narrative driven game. These are your cinematic games and walking simulators where the mechanics take a backseat and the story and visuals take over.
These games tend to review well and get high scores but a large number of gamers just don’t like them because they have turned up to play and not watch and whilst I completely understand their point of view, I just can’t help but get captured by these games.
Choice Driven Narratives
Heavy Rain
One of the earliest games I played that introduced me to this genre was Heavy Rain. At the time, I had not played its predecessor Fahrenheit, known as Indigo Prophecy in North America, but picked it up and played it through in a few short days. Heavy Rain has a bit going on mechanically, you walk around, look at things and use motion controls and buttons to interact and perform actions but your choices and failures all impact the story and its outcomes. Knowing that choices had meaning, it meant that I poured every ounce into each action trying to get it right or trying to pick right and worrying when I didn’t. I was completely hooked.
Telltale games
The Telltale games were another franchise that started to become popular around this time. I first encountered them on the console with their Back to the Future game delivered in five parts from the PS Store. These were actually pretty good but they’re bigger success came with The Walking Dead.
Based on the comics of the same name these games streamlined the mechanics even more, making most of the narrative drama driven by fairly straightforward binary choices. Take this action or take that action. But the game would constantly tell you that actions have choices, and that certain characters would remember things. This provides that decision dilemma, constantly second guessing and building the drama.
Telltale would later go on to make The Wolf Among Us, Tales from the Borderlands, Game of Thrones, Minecraft Story Mode and Batman all available on the PlayStation 3 and all decent narrative driven games.
Exploration Driven Narratives
The Unfinished Swan
The Unfinished Swan is a wonderful indie title. It’s short and has mechanically more going on than some of the above but it is largely a walking simulator. The story is told to you through drips and drabs, discovered at your own pace and with your own interpretations. It’s a really great game and one I want to replay.
Journey
Journey is one of the console’s most acclaimed titles and its legacy as a small studio title is huge. It’s not straightforwardly a walking simulator. There is another interesting mechanic that I will leave unsaid in this review, but the narrative is not told by any words, it is understood through gameplay, lighting, music and this other mechanic. It really is a must play for anyone interested in these games and I was absolutely blown away by it. I completed it in one sitting in one night and it was a formative moment.
Rain
Rain, not to be confused with Heavy Rain although there is quite a bit of heavy rain in it, is a fascinating title that is arguably also a puzzle game instead of a straight up narrative exploration game. No words are spoken and your character is invisible unless the rain is falling from the sky and you must explore, solve some puzzles and escape from other ghostly creatures.
Even if the mechanics are taking a back seat, the medium of games still provides a unique angle into exploring a story, whether it’s through the choice driven mechanic or by exploring at your own pace. These games are also some of the most accessible for non-gamers to dip their toes into the water. I absolutely love this style of games and despite their lack of gaming mechanics I think they can provide some of the most nail biting, dramatic stories.