{"id":3024,"date":"2012-07-24T11:00:16","date_gmt":"2012-07-24T15:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=3024"},"modified":"2012-07-23T10:58:41","modified_gmt":"2012-07-23T14:58:41","slug":"no-no-no-thats-not-the-way-it-happened-shall-i-start-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=3024","title":{"rendered":"“No no no, that’s not the way it happened. Shall I start again?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

“No no no, that’s not the way it happened. Shall I start again?” If you are\u00a0unfamiliar\u00a0with this phrase you likely haven’t played the 2003\u00a0Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>It’s a great platformer, but aside from that, I have always enjoyed this little\u00a0narrative\u00a0flourish\u00a0in how the game deals with your inevitable (and frequent) deaths.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>When you die, the narrator explains, “No no no, that’s not the way it happened. Shall I start again?” It’s the game over screen that you’ve seen so many times in so many games but in this case, the voice-over explains that your game play is\u00a0actually someone else telling you a story. You are listening to the main character tell you his personal history. Your character isn’t\u00a0dying, you are failing to get your character, the guy talking to you, to perform the correct \u00a0telling of his story.<\/p>\n

It’s a fig leaf, I mean it’s just a game over screen with this extra bit of voice-over, but at the same time I think it does something clever for making the linearity of the game take on a new nature. The story already happened, you’ve just got to perform it right.<\/p>\n

This approach can be found throughout otherwise familiar parts of the game. \u00a0For instance, when you save your game the narrator says\u00a0\u00a0“I’ll start the story from here next time” and whenever you pause the game he says\u00a0“Shall I go on?” Again, it is a little touch, but for me it did a nice job at providing a new context for what playing the game\u00a0actually\u00a0is. Players are acting out the telling of a story of events that have already come to pass.<\/p>\n

Sitting in the Animus\u00a0Linearity\u00a0and Retelling<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can see a more robust version of this kind of story telling in how Assassin’s Creed<\/em><\/a>\u00a0works. I’ll just quote Wikipedia for exactly what is going on as it is a bit confusing and involves make\u00a0believe\u00a0science.<\/p>\n

The player is in reality playing as a modern-day man named\u00a0Desmond Miles<\/a>, who through the use of a machine named the “Animus”, is allowed the viewing and controlling of the protagonist’s\u00a0genetic memories<\/a>\u00a0of his ancestors, in this case,\u00a0Alta\u00efr ibn-La’Ahad<\/a>, a member of the\u00a0Assassins<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What’s important here is that the Animus isn’t a time machine, it’s a machine that lets you recover memories of what already happened. If it were a time machine you could change the past, however, as a replay machine, the device provides a straightforward\u00a0narrative\u00a0mechanism to constrict the\u00a0linearity\u00a0of your movement and trajectory in the game world. \u00a0If you go too far off course, or you get caught, you are simply failing to preform the memory and the history it represents. It’s rather wild, as you are\u00a0actually\u00a0playing\u00a0Desmond\u00a0on your XBOX who is, playing\u00a0Alta\u00efr on the Animus which is recovering memories of the past somehow stored inside your genes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bastion and Procedural Retelling<\/strong><\/p>\n

It strikes me that the active\u00a0narration\u00a0technique in Bastion<\/em><\/a> works the same way. In this case, your actions on the screen trigger the narrator telling you what “the Kid” did at various points. If you haven’t seen it in action I would suggest watching a few minutes of the game in the video play through below.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

The narrator explains all of your actions and tells you what your character, “The Kid,” is doing. The narrator also attributes different characteristics to you and your intentions as you do things. \u00a0Listen to how Matt Miller<\/a>‘s review of the game\u00a0reports on how this active narration style changes the experience of playing the game.<\/p>\n

“A horrible calamity has befallen his people, and he must rectify the situation. As he wakes, a distinctive voice begins to speak, telling the Kid\u2019s story as it unfolds. Walk one path, and the narrator tells you why the Kid chose that way. Walk the other path, and the voice might foreshadow what lies at its end. Choose a combination of weapons to take out on your journey, and he comments about that particular load-out. Retry a challenge, and he remarks about the Kid\u2019s indomitable resolve. The excellently written and smartly acted narration lend a new layer to the sense of progression. You don\u2019t just want to complete that challenging mission or get that elusive piece of gear for its own sake; you also want to hear what the narrator has to say about it when you do<\/em>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In this case, the mechanisms for retelling the story are a clear part of what players find valuable in the experience.<\/p>\n

How do these retelling game design devices change game play?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The non-linear\u00a0possibilities\u00a0of games are really exciting, and I think they are particularly exciting for folks like us at Play the Past who want to talk about the different ways that the past could have happened, or how things like simulations can\u00a0communicate\u00a0complex\u00a0interdependence between historical factors. With that said, modes for inviting players participate in the telling of linear stories is exciting as well.\u00a0I would be curious to hear from others about particularly clever techniques, tactics, or techniques in games that toy with\u00a0linearity\u00a0and notions of retelling stories. \u00a0I would also be curious to hear others reflect on their experiences with the Animus, the the narrator of Sands of Time, and the\u00a0narrator\u00a0in Bastion. Does the scripted retelling, the performance of a story, lead you to<\/p>\n

ps, you can get Animus: History is our Playground on a tshirt<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“No no no, that’s not the way it happened. Shall I start again?” If you are\u00a0unfamiliar\u00a0with this phrase you likely haven’t played the 2003\u00a0Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.\u00a0It’s a great platformer, but aside from that, I have always enjoyed this little\u00a0narrative\u00a0flourish\u00a0in how the game deals with your inevitableContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":3038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[255,86,256,257,237],"coauthors":[191],"class_list":["entry","author-owens","post-3024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-articles","tag-linearity","tag-memory","tag-narration","tag-retelling","tag-storytelling"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Animus-shirt.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3024"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3035,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3024\/revisions\/3035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3024"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=3024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}