Welcome to Article One of a Five-part series in which I will chronicle and analyze the use, abuse, and effect of narrative across a variety of genres and games. Article One will cover some games of the FPS/Shooting genre, Article Two will cover some games of the RTS/RTT genre, Article Three will cover games of the western RPG and JRPG genres, Article Four will cover a few Action/Adventure Games, and Article Five will be a summary, and an in-depth look at some of my favorite game stories of all time. If you enjoy this, remember to check back every Thursday for the next installment.

Warning: Spoilers will likely be present in every article. Read at your own risk.

We’ve come a long way from the days when the only explanation for your character’s actions sat tucked away in the instruction booklet. Or have we?

Modern games seem to swing haphazardly between no apparent narrative and far, far too much. As a direct result we’ve had some truly spectacular piles of crap land in our laps over the last few years. Very few games have been able to walk the narrow line between the two extremes and provide just enough to satisfy the player without overwhelming them. This is a tougher target to nail with shooters because adding a bunch of unnecessary junk on top of the action serves mainly to complicate things in an unfavorable way. Some games have overcome this problem by doing away with story entirely, to prevent complications of any kind. Other games, however, manage to find that line and walk it perfectly, and that’s really what we’re here to talk about.

Deus Ex was the second game that hit every mark for me (Metal Gear Solid was the first, but that story is for another article). It was intense, it was tough, it looked great, and the story was as deep as I’d ever seen at that time. Few games since Deus Ex have been able to grab hold of me in the same way; I can count the games that have measured up on one hand.

Up to Deus Ex I wasn’t aware that a story could be told through interaction rather than the occasional cutscene (This was before I‘d been exposed to RPGs, Deus Ex is most responsible for my love of that genre to this day). It opened up a whole new world for me and showed me what story could do in the medium. Ever since then I’ve been fascinated with the way that the player can interact with the narrative. Being allowed to interact with characters in other ways than the traditional “forcibly insert bullet into skull, move on” was something that I found enthralling; feeling like an active part of the world rather than simply moving through it. Every new game I pick up is one I hope will be able to measure up to that experience; to say that it is a rare occurrence is to belittle the astronomical odds at work. Lightning has a better chance of striking the same spot two hundred times in a row.

Since Deus Ex I have seriously expanded the games and systems I am familiar with. To this day, no other game has provided the same kind of eye-opening experience Deus Ex did.

Now, on to something a bit more recent.

Gears of War took a unique approach to narrative that I hadn’t expected. I’m still not sure if it was intentional or just a lousy work ethic; either way, it’s interesting enough to earn a spot here.

I won’t lie. I bought Gears of War because I thought the idea of chainsawing a guy into itty bitty meat chunks was awesome, and it was. So was blasting Locust in the gut with a shotgun and watching their bodies snap in half, blowing them up with a targeted blast from an orbiting satellite, and listening to their heads pop like a smashed cantaloupe when struck by a bullet from a sniper rifle. I’m certain that almost anyone else that has played and enjoyed Gears of War would agree that the meat of the game (forgive the pun) is found in the gameplay, and not the story. They’re absolutely right.

The main thing to note about the story in Gears of War is that it pretty much stays out of the way. It rarely (if ever) intrudes on the action in a negative way, and provides you with only minor information about what’s going on. For all intents and purposes, the player is jumping into the shoes of a couple of seriously battle-hardened soldiers who don’t go out of their way to conveniently explain anything to the player about what's going on. The characters are there for the exact same reason you are; blowing the enemy into tiny little pieces, chainsawing them in half, and just generally killing them in every brutal fashion available.

This is the part where I can’t decide if it was intentional or just really, really lousy writing that resulted in such simple greatness. By establishing the characters in the manner they do, they are able to completely ignore any of the finer points that might be established in the world. There’s absolutely no need for these grunts to know basically anything about what’s going on beyond what they're doing, or talk about it, or even think about it. As a result, they provide a perfect playground for the player, who doesn’t care one way or another about what’s actually occurring; we just want to kill lots and lots of stuff, and the narrative in Gears of War sets us up for that perfectly.

Gears of War II follows a lot of the same concepts as the first game. The characters are focused on more personal matters than anything else that is occurring. There’s more information about what the COG is up to in the instruction manual than in the game itself. At first I thought Gears of War II missed the mark of simplicity the first game hit so well by focusing so heavily on Dom’s search for Maria. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was nice to have a little bit more story going on, but the whole mess went on a bit longer than I thought it really needed to. By the time Marcus and Dom finally found her, I was silently thanking some deity that the search would be over, and I could get back to finding new and ingenious ways of killing Locust.

And then the moment came. Out of that God-awful torture chamber came a twisted shell of a human being. Dom’s final moment with his wife was one of the most unexpected and powerful moments in a game I’ve seen in a good long while. So powerful that it has forever connected me to these characters. From that point on, killing the Locust horde stopped being about fun, and started being about payback. It had become, as they say, personal. One moment took that entire game to the next level for me as a gamer; I didn’t care about anything else that was going on anymore. My goal, until I beat the game, was just to slaughter as many Locust as I could find.

One moment changed my entire relationship to that world, and those characters. That is the goal of a good narrative, in my opinion: to link you to a world, or to characters, in a personal way. Whether you love them or hate them, a good narrative’s purpose is to keep you from feeling indifferent toward them and their world.

In further installments of Loving the Narrative, I will continue to explore some of the most beloved games in their respective genres, and more of my personal experiences with game stories. Tune in next Thursday for Article Two, where I will be discussing Real Time Strategy and Real Time Tactical games.