Propp and Co.

Proppian analysis of action adventure games. It sounds like a fairly straightforward title to be honest however it is far from it. Masters year at university expects a much higher standard of work than previous years. So for this assignment i have strayed slightly from the path to better understand the project and have ended up writing about some pretty heavy stuff.

The main questions that i have arrived at are: Are games narratives? if not how do they USE narrative? What IS narrative? All of which can be answered through in depth study from multiple angles, using multiple definitions.

So what do i think? well in context of assignments like this my opinion counts for jack. Here it is anyway: I believe that games ARE narratives. They don’t just contain and use them they are in themselves narratives. This is because games never stop telling their stories, just because the attention shifts from cutscene to long and interactive shooting sequence does not mean that action is not furthering the plot. In some cases this may be abstracted and focus more on the human interaction but how can commands such as press X now, break the 4th wall if there is no wall to break? The pace of deliverance of the story may change during play but it is always in context, if it wasn’t the player would be very confused. One argument is that interaction defies narration and therefore the work produced is not narrative. Well i think that while the smaller sequences of action may change the overall plot remians completely in tact, just because i chose to kill someone with a rocket launcher over using a crossbow will not affect whether the villain escapes, if he is written to escape: he will. Narrative is the overlying story, broken down by structuralists like Propp into units. These units in a game will never change, just the unimportant catalysts between them.

Where there are rules there are of course exceptions. One funny example comes to mind: the classic N64 game Goldeneye (not the remake just released). The last level where you fight your nemesis it is actually possible to kill him before he reaches the end of his path (should you have saved the right weapons) meaning you never get to the dramatic fight on the very edge of the suspended platform, instead it just cuts to Bond’s escape. 

It is an interesting subject with a lot of reading to do around the subject matter bringing in theorists from multiple backgrounds and time periods. I am enjoying this type of work and have made a good start on the final piece which i shall post up here upon completion (or after the deadline).