Experiencing, Experimenting with, and Performing Visual Narratives

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This article seeks to delve further into how videogames rely and/or innovate upon other modes of visual storytelling, thus contribute to an ongoing effort in the field of game studies. This article focuses specifically on AAA action-adventure videogame franchises like Ubisoft’s Assassin Creed, Naughty Dog’s Uncharted, and BioWare’s and Electronic Art’s 2007-2012 Mass Effect. Within these, local gameplay missions combine with the development of a large-scale story which unfolds on the screen over hundreds of hours, just as in TV series, and relies on immersive and spectacular images, like in cinematic blockbusters. In their design, these games invite us to follow long linear paths, showing us non-interactive “cinematic” sequences that advance the story, encouraging us to relentlessly move our avatar forward, accumulating power, overcoming obstacles, and carrying the narrative trajectory towards its goal. While a more innovative trend of independent videogames seeks to create and refine a specifically interactive form of narration, the videogame industry continues to channel technological innovation into the making of large-scale visually spectacular storyworlds. As a result, these commercial games remain structured by the linear and teleological patterns inherited from traditional modes of storytelling. Nevertheless, the analysis of these games and their designs must not obscure that of the play experience they offer. Specifically in their focus on action, these games open up the possibility for a disrupted experience of linearity during the completion of localised gameplay challenges as the player’s engagement with images becomes kinaesthetic and her involvement in narrative constructions becomes active. Indeed, by offering a form of immersion based on the player’s bodily implication, difficult performance, failure, and repetition, these games allow players to experiment with causalities and hence build their own short narratives: during gameplay sequences, players can save and load, die and retry, and thus go through various versions of small-scale stories, which temporarily obscure or even clash with the large-scale narrative framework scripted by developers. Some players might also engage in creative practices, such as speedrun, which arguably constitute new forms of narrative experiences and storytelling.