{"id":23447,"date":"2022-12-14T17:30:32","date_gmt":"2022-12-14T17:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/14\/the-most-memorable-and-playable-narratives-of-2022\/"},"modified":"2022-12-14T17:30:32","modified_gmt":"2022-12-14T17:30:32","slug":"the-most-memorable-and-playable-narratives-of-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/14\/the-most-memorable-and-playable-narratives-of-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"The most memorable and playable narratives of 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\n

In a year that brought about continued experimentation in gaming, as well as refinements of a style<\/a>, it was arguably a throwback that charmed me more. \u201cReturn to Monkey Island,\u201d<\/a> the revitalization of a franchise that had lain dormant since 2009, was a glorious callback to a largely bygone era of point-and-click adventure games. <\/p>\n

Yet \u201cReturn to Monkey Island\u201d doesn\u2019t strike me as a work of nostalgia so much as a reminder \u2014 a statement piece about the power of interactive storytelling, and a look at how much the medium has evolved since \u201cMonkey Island\u201d creator Ron Gilbert last directed a game in the series, way back in 1991. Gilbert was again at the helm in \u201cReturn to Monkey island\u201d alongside longtime collaborator Dave Grossman, and what could have simply been a celebration of all things retro \u2014 see Gilbert\u2019s own 2017 game \u201cThimbleweed Park\u201d \u2014 was instead a relatively thoughtful meditation on getting older. <\/p>\n

Set in a world of mystical pirates with unsolved treasure-hunting mysteries, \u201cReturn to Monkey Island\u201d ultimately celebrates small moments \u2014 telling a story to your children at a park, or walking into an old neighborhood bar only to discover the regulars you knew are all gone and maybe there\u2019s no real need to try to relive past adventures. It\u2019s a game that prioritizes relationships, even those with foes, over big, plot-focused storytelling.<\/p>\n

I was thankful for the chance to direct the pirate Guybrush Threepwood around the \u201cMonkey Island\u201d universe again. Its puzzles, most of which require Guybrush to communicate with others, allowed me time to ponder \u2014 to get to know the locals, so to speak. Interactivity here is used to forge relationships, an argument that often it\u2019s not the stories we tell \u2014 or play \u2014 but the communities we build. <\/p>\n

The original 1990 game, \u201cThe Secret of Monkey Island,\u201d was a landmark in video game storytelling, a work that asked us, with a few very notable exceptions, not to solve byzantine puzzles but to use perplexing situations to build relationships, often with humor. And \u201cReturn to Monkey Island\u201d reminded me that the reason I fell in love with video games<\/a> was not for the challenge or the desire to win or compete, but for the joy of discovering a story at my own pace and of my own direction. That\u2019s partly why, I believe, the games I gravitated toward in 2022 were those that not only prioritized narrative but did so with patience \u2014 and often with experimentation. <\/p>\n

Many of the games I loved the most this year \u2014 \u201cImmortality,\u201d \u201cWayward Strand\u201d and \u201cBeacon Pines\u201d among them \u2014 seemed to ponder the very concept of traditional narrative structure. They tinkered not only with technology, but with how we experience a story. There\u2019s real power in that, and not just because we are active participants. We are placed in a constant state of curiousness, wondering where the storytellers are leading us and when we\u2019re the ones driving the tale. It\u2019s not just a game\u2014 it\u2019s a dialogue. <\/p>\n

\n
\"A <\/source><\/picture>\n
\n

\u201cImmortality\u201d is a love letter to cinema as well as thesis on how cinema can be reimagined. <\/p>\n

(Half Mermaid)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThe process of writing a movie is to pull out the pieces you need and arrange them and very carefully orchestrate things,\u201d says Sam Barlow, the director of \u201cImmortality,\u201d his live-action follow-up to \u201cHer Story\u201d and \u201cTelling Lies.\u201d \u201cImmortality\u201d is a sort of collection of multiple films. Audiences will piece together three \u201870s-era genre films, but also the behind-the-scenes clips that accompany them as well as some promotional ephemera, such as late-night television appearances. The underlying goal is to stitch together the life of a particular actor, Marissa Marcel, portrayed by Marion Gage, and to discover why she suddenly stopped working. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a game, and an audience that is interacting and expressing themselves, you don\u2019t have to carefully keep their eye on the ball in the way you would a movie,\u201d Barlow says. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to worry about having 90 minutes to get the beginning, middle and end out. Just the level of curiosity and engagement they have means you can bring them and say, \u2018Here is the story in a form that is sprawling and you can pick the direction and explore the pieces you would like.\u2019 The joy I have in creating a story is giving people some of that. It allows things to become a bit more personal and earned.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cImmortality\u201d is at once a love letter to films but also an upending of them. <\/p>\n

Its interactivity isn\u2019t in picking narrative choices and directing an actor to take one action over the other. Instead, we zoom in on various pieces of the scene \u2014 an actor\u2019s smile, a mask in the corner, a kiss or a director\u2019s scorn \u2014 and then we jump to another scene with a connected image. The first few moments can be jarring. We\u2019re going from an interview to a Gothic film to a sleazy detective story, sometimes to the film within the film and sometimes to behind-the-scenes moments. But after about 30 minutes we\u2019re used to the time jumps, have a handle on each film\u2019s exaggerated imagery and are getting to know Marcel. <\/p>\n

\n
\"Three <\/source><\/picture>\n
\n

In \u201cImmortality\u201d we uncover the mystery of actor Marissa Marcel (Manon Gage) by clicking on various pieces of an image to uncover narrative strands. <\/p>\n

(Half Mermaid)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

As the story unfolds there are hints at something more sinister beneath the surface, but \u201cImmortality\u201d also feels topical. It deals with workplace abuse, personal identity, labor issues and our society\u2019s inability to often see beyond the superficial. Barlow has cited Rita Hayworth and her sculpted and shape-shifting image as an inspiration, as well as some of her off-camera turmoil. \u201cImmortality\u201d also aims to capture the shift from a studio-driven system to the so-called auteur-era, poking holes in the idea of a single genius along the way. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe transition from a studio running things and controlling power to a director running things \u2014 he\u2019s still controlling his talent and now maybe sleeping with them at the same time,\u201d Barlow says. \u201cWhen we were speaking to women working in the industry around the \u201860s and \u201870s, a recurring theme was the failure of the sexual revolution. That these freedoms have been granted, but a lot of them ultimately benefited the man.\u201d <\/p>\n

That it conveys such themes and ideas in a series of individualized and randomized scenes \u2014 some can be as short as a few seconds; others a few minutes \u2014 is a triumph. \u201cImmortality\u201d was not only the best game I played this year but the most unique, and one that argues that the narrative structure as we know it isn\u2019t necessarily as codified as we sometimes believe. <\/p>\n

Loose, too, in its approach to story was \u201cWayward Strand,\u201d a heartwarmingly charming story about visiting with the elderly at a floating nursing home in the sky. <\/p>\n

\n
\"An <\/source><\/picture>\n
\n

\u201cWayward Strand\u201d allows the players to choose whose stories they will follow. <\/p>\n

(Ghost Pattern)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWayward Strand\u201d reminded me a bit of interactive immersive theater \u2014 the long-running New York production \u201cSleep No More\u201d was an influence, say its creators. Early on, \u201cWayward Strand\u201d throws players a curve when a character suggests that those we meet will give us tasks to complete. But those tasks never materialize. <\/p>\n

Instead, \u201cWayward Strand\u201d is solely about discovering different stories. We meet Esther, a woman who seems to have mysterious powers. Maybe. Esther may just be adept at using astrological charts to tell people what they want to hear. There\u2019s Mr. Avery, who imagines himself a famous writer, and the grandmotherly Ida, who had a traumatic past but passes time by knitting scarves. <\/p>\n

We hear tales of World War II, of long-lost loves and of interpersonal nursing home drama. We\u2019re only in the nursing home during work hours, and a clock will help us maintain a routine. The clock also ensures we will miss a number of narrative strands. It\u2019s our choice which stories we choose to follow, a decision we make by deciding who to talk to. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe embraced the fact that players were always going to be missing things that were going on,\u201d says Jason Baker, one of Wayward Strand\u2019s developers with Ghost Pattern. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried to keep it fairly short, so if somebody did miss something they could play it again,\u201d Baker says. \u201cBut the vibe of the game \u2014 the themes of the game \u2014 are about being OK with only having a limited window or perspective on a particular reality and living with that and thinking about that. Fortunately, in our game, because of the setting, you\u2019re not expecting that there\u2019s these incredible things happening around the corner that you\u2019re missing, even though there are interesting things happening around the corner that you\u2019re missing. But I think players are content to spend time with characters, which was our goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWayward Strand\u201d reminded me of some other games I\u2019ve only begun to scratch the surface on \u2014 the historical fiction of \u201cPentiment,\u201d for instance, where our perspective on a mystery is dependent on who we talk to. But its underlying mission, that we all have a story to tell and we\u2019re all perhaps unreliable narrators, is something uniquely suited to interactive drama, where we can select which tales to follow and investigate. Instead of exploring a narrative, we\u2019re journeying through a fully realized world, finding our own stories within that universe. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think what we found in making \u2018Wayward Strand,\u2019 by the player not being able \u2018solve\u2019 the characters, it allows the characters to be fuller representations of humanity,\u201d says Baker.<\/p>\n

\n
\"An <\/source><\/picture>\n
\n

In \u201cBeacon Pines,\u201d we rewrite a story by discovering new words. <\/p>\n

(Hiding Spot \/ Fellow Traveller )<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The world of \u201cBeacon Pines\u201d felt slightly smaller, but no less inventive. In a fairy tale-like setting with cutesy talking animals, the game allows us to constantly remix the story. It\u2019s slightly more traditional than \u201cImmortality\u201d and \u201cWayward Strand,\u201d but its thoughts on how to freshen up the choose-your-own-adventure narrative structure kept me hooked. The game is set up as if we are exploring a book, only it\u2019s one that is constantly being rewritten. <\/p>\n

We\u2019re tossed in a world with a number of dark underpinnings. Our hero\u2019s mother has gone missing; his father has died. And an abandoned factory on the outskirts of town has suddenly been revived, only it\u2019s leaking neon-green goo that can have drastic effects on everything it touches. <\/p>\n

Our young critter wants to find his mom and get to the bottom of what\u2019s happening in the town, but to do so he has to navigate life with a protective grandparent and a host of odd townsfolk, as well as become a master of language. As the story progresses, our actions are written down in an interactive book. The more words we discover, the greater ability we have to go back in time and change the course of the narrative.<\/p>\n

In all these games, the puzzle is simply piecing together the story. Barlow recalls the original \u201cMetroid,\u201d only he replaces action with narrative. <\/p>\n

\u201cI always relate these games to the way a \u2018Metroid\u2019 game works,\u201d Barlow says. \u201c\u2018Metroid\u2019 changed the game because instead of just going left-to-right, you could go left-to-right and up-and-down and you could re-traverse rooms. So the act of playing a \u2018Metroid\u2019 game is to slowly build up a mental map in your head of the planet you\u2019re exploring. You have a deepening appreciation of rooms. You re-traverse again with a new power that unlocks a different way to navigate the room. There is an act of re-traversing a space and gaining mastery of space. Half of what is going on in a \u2018Metroid\u2019 game is the version in your head. <\/p>\n

\u201cDoing that, but explicitly with story content, which is what these games are doing, is really fun,\u201d Barlow says. \u201cYou\u2019re allowing people to unlock layers and see a piece of content that opens up a new interpretation of what you\u2019ve already seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

And where we click, who we talk to or what adjectives we choose, is all driven entirely by our own curiosity. The effect is not simply exploring a world someone else created, but visiting one that feels explicitly made for us. <\/p>\n

\n
\n

‘Return to Monkey Island’<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n