Narrative

The Oxford dictionary defines Narrative as follows:

“A spoken or written account of connected events; a story”

See what I meant earlier in this chapter’s introduction? It’s already outdated! The narrative doesn’t have to be necessarily spoken or written... it can be told through images, both still (photography, art) or moving (motion pictures and, yes, video games!).

There is one common mistake, though: the belief that interactivity might change the basic rules of storytelling that have been set through millennia of human history. It doesn’t. The story is the goal, regardless of how it is told. So, the rules of a good story never change.

In fact, in this chapter, we will just briefly discuss how a good story is written. It is a huge topic that would need a few books in itself. As usual, I can never recommend enough that you pick up this topic and study it in depth if that’s what interests you the most. Not all designers...