Linear and Non-linear Storytelling

One of the ideas discussed recently was the concept of linear and nonlinear storytelling.

Linear storytelling is that where there is a set path that is never deviated from in relation to the narrative. It is the most frequent technique used in the medium of storytelling, be it film, games, comics or novels. Linear storytelling gives the writer complete control of the happenings within the world that they have created. From the characters that their audience will meet/ interact with to the dramatic arc of happenings, a linear narrative is often chosen over non-linear storytelling because the audience’s attachment to the plot can be effectively controlled by the author.

 An example of Linear Storytelling would be the film Star Wars. In the film, Luke Skywalker will get tangled into an intergalactic battle with the character Darth Vader, witnessing the Death of his mentor Obi Wan Kenobi before vanquishing the evil Emperor in the final film of the series. Those events are plotted by George Lucas and delivered at perfect points to illicit responses from the audience. But what if Obi Wan could have been saved? or Luke could have joined “the Dark Side” at the end of the film, ending the series with a much darker conclusion? Well this is what is explored by a non-linear narrative.

Non Linear narrative is a much more complex form of storytelling and is very rarely executed in any medium. In a non-linear narrative, the control of events is almost entirely dictated by the audience as they have the freedom to move within the confines of the author’s world. The freedom this gives the audience is a double-edged sword for the writer because it makes the narrative very difficult to craft in such a way that can illicit the same emotional responses that are delivered in the entirely controlled confines of a linear narrative. This does not mean that Non-Linear narrative is not a plausible technique – in fact two video games have received critical acclaim for presenting a non-linear narrative to gamers: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Bioware, 2003) and  9 hours, 9 Doors and 9 Persons (Aksys games, 2009)

Star Wars: Knights of the old republic placed the character into the role of a new military cadet. The player created and named their own character – deciding how they fight, talk and deal with elements within the world before setting off into the game.  During the game, players can approach most events with a flexible nature. Would they negotiate past the rough looking gangster on the door or end up in a brawl? This would then spill out into the story at points; for example if they have fought with the gangster it might result in the player being barred entrance to the area, or for members of that gang to attack the player later. Or even conversely someone may approach the player about similar jobs in the area or congratulate them on killing such a horrible person. The player essentially provokes responses from the game by exploring choices.

One of the most unique decisions that effected the narrative, and also highlights how flexible a non-linear narrative can be, was when as a player you could choose to side with one of your team-mates Bastila who had become a Sith apprentice, or confront her and continue the flow of narrative thus far (saving the universe against the Sith). If the player choses to join her, they do just that. The team-mates that accompany continue their roles and in turn choose to attack both the protagonist (turned antagonist) and Bastila. This scenario is the most dramatic example of non-linear narrative that I can personally think of because it results in the death of several key non playable characters that the player may have spent up to twenty hours of gameplay interacting with them previously.

The other game that I mentioned as an example: 9 Hours, 9 Doors and 9 Persons (999), also highlights both the complexity and effects of a Non Linear Narrative.

Unlike the completely free nature of character building in Knights of the Old Republic, 999 places the player into the role of Junpei – a seemingly normal young man who has awoken on a rapidly sinking ship. He must work together with eight other individuals to escape the ship by progressing through numbered doors and solving the puzzles inside. Now on the surface this scenario could be linear – Junpei could be involved in every door and talk with every character but this is far from the case. In 999 Junpei can only move through certain doors each time and talk with certain characters. Unlike most narratives which move with the protagonist, this one progresses without Junpei at points (if there are two doors, Junpei will progress through one with several individuals while the rest will move through the other door). But it is the manner in which this story is crafted which is the most interesting aspect to its non-linear nature.

During the plot, certain characters will do certain actions each game and by viewing this from different angles and allowing those characters certain freedoms, it can result in vastly different outcomes. One example:

If Junpei progresses through certain doors, he might end up paired with a girl called Clover. This girl’s brother ‘Snake’ was killed earlier in the game by a mystery person/ persons. After this event the girl becomes more and more unresponsive. In one play through, if the player interacts with Clover in certain ways, she will be much more open and trusting of the character and in that final room Junpei will ‘let slip’ what he saw when he encountered her brothers dead body. This will lead to the character of Clover returning back to her normal, responsive self because she realises her brother cannot be dead due to what Junpei said. Her trust in Junpei and the other characters is returned to its normal state (she had considered the characters 'Seven' and 'Santa' to have been possible suspects to have killed her brother). This will lead the narrative forward in a far different way to if the player had not made those actions.

If her brother had remained ‘Dead’ at the end of the game and the player was with her, she would have taken a fire axe that was in that room. Later, she would persuade three other people (including Santa and Seven - the people she suspected of killing her brother) to quickly explore a room that hadn’t been seen with her before killing them with the fire axe – as revenge for her brother’s death. The player, not having witnessed this would await their return and discover that only Clover is there. He will then be killed by her too. This is considered a ‘bad ending’ but it shows the distinct nature of the non-linear narrative. Unlike Knights of the Old Republic, a game which gives the player or Protagonist complete control over proceedings and the stories narrative arc, 999 works in a different way. Ultimately the player will have a control over the gameplay they experience, and the narrative that they see – but it is the other characters that alter the story that is told. In this game, the writer has such an understanding of his characters that he builds the plot around what they would do – what their ‘True Character’ would accomplish in the scenario presented.

(The "Axe Ending" that was described above http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkcP6xhEqks&feature=related)

This is an incredibly interesting way to craft a narrative and when researching further, he discusses the process of crafting this narrative on the 999 website:

I would like to inquire as to how hard it was to write the script for this game, as well as how many words, pages, etc. Also, I'd like to know how an idea like the Nonary Game came to exist, as well as how each character was formed, and how you decided what number each character would get. I am aspiring to become a video game designer myself, and I am curious as to how this game came together, considering how well thought-out it was.

Originally, I had a very simply story, which was essentially "There are a number of doors with nothing written on them, and you split into several groups and move forward. Depending on how you split up the group, the ending of the story changes." It wasn't on a ship to begin with, though: It was in a mysterious building...But my bosses said "It's hard for us to visualize this story. We can't relate to it, and it doesn't catch our hearts." ...So I decided to set the story on the Titanic, a location that most of us know about, and is easy to visualize. The rule where each group was determined by the numbers was also formulated at about the same time. We had a number of discussions where people said this story or that wouldn't sell, and then we came back with new characters, or rules, or stories. I kept tacking on new interesting ideas, and eventually we got our final story. Of course, as I'm sure you can imagine it was really hard to make sure that everything made sense and fit together. Because we'd just thrown so many things in without thinking, it was really quite hard to make it all work... As far as coming up with the characters... After I decided to use "9" as the theme, I used the enneagram for reference. For the character numbers, we just thought about the ending and who went in what group, and worked our way backwards from there. We made a huge chart in Excel and messed around with the numbers there until we got it right

What were your inspirations when creating your characters? Did you take a niche or a cliche character commonly found in anime and manga, and put them into this situation by adjusting them to the situation that they were in? Or did you take characters with traits from games that you had previously made and just put them into this entirely different situation?

I mentioned this in [question 17], but I used the Enneagram for reference. "Did you take a niche or a cliche character commonly found in anime and manga, and put them into this situation by adjusting them to the situation that they were in?" Yes, that's exactly what I did. I made a box, and put the characters in it, and then the story just progressed on its own. All I have to do is just work toward my "twist." So I suppose that, for me, the plot isn't really all that important. It's just an imaginary picture. As I write the story, it evolves. The 3 most important things are these: The box, the characters, and the "twist."

The characters and plot are all really well done in this game. I was just curious as to how you developed them all so well. What do you work on first; plot or characters? How do you know when they're complete? Where do you draw inspiration from?

“For me, I first start by creating a rough draft of the characters' personalities. Then I make a sort of rough draft of the setting. Next, I figure out the "twist" for the story, and work toward that by coming up with a plot that fits that particular twist perfectly. So the "twist" comes first, basically. Of course, the characters and the setting that I come up with early on almost always end up drastically changed. I write a rough draft, then draw a line, then erase my rough draft, then draw a new line... It's just that process over and over. I don't know when it's "done" until I finish writing the whole script. I always write my stories thinking "I wonder what's going to happen to these guys afterwards?" Overall, I don't change the "twist", but I will change the story A LOT to get to it. So far as inspiration goes, all that I can say is that it mostly comes from me, while I'm writing my drafts. I believe that when I concentrate very hard on writing, all of my worldly thoughts just go away, so perhaps that has something to do with it. Also, this particular idea is in the game as well, but I need some danger to have that moment of clarity and inspiration. The closer I get to a deadline, the more I'll think "Crap! The deadline is coming up!" and that helps me come up with great ideas. So I'll try to work myself into a corner like that, and I also have the product manager and the other people on the team to help me out by getting me into that mode of thinking.”

How hard was it to create 9 distinct people to interact in various ways as the game progressed? There were times of conflict, times of great emotional stress and whatnot, and creating 9 distinct persons to handle this and talk amongst others with their own personalities and quirks seems incredible to me.

You're right. It was a real challenge. To be honest, though, the 9th Man dies pretty quickly, so there were really only 8 characters... But even so, 8 is still too many for a single story. Story theory says that you should really only have up to 7 characters. For instance... Luke, Obi-wan, Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, R2-D2, C3PO... You see? That's 7. If you add in Darth Vader and the Emperor, that makes 9. I believe Star Wars is a very well-developed story, and the characters are all very solid. What Star Wars uses as a base are legends and myths. According to Jung, those myths and legends are born from the human psyche, as archetypes. That fits into the enneagram I was talking about in [question 26]. With that said, the creation of the character wasn't too hard because I already had a formula to work from that's been passed down through all of human history. To make that actually work, however, was really hard. This story had rules, and it also had specific points it had to hit, so I wanted the characters to do very specific things, but...they didn't always cooperate. I tried my best to move them in the way that they were designed to, but even then there were times where the story wouldn't work and I sort of had to force them. It was very tiring.

999 Answers segment with the Writer on official website

 Information Sourced from: http://www.aksysgames.com/999/answers

My own game concept was heavily influenced by this style of thinking – the concept that characters are at the centre of the narratives progression and that the player is exploring the narrative branches just as much as the world itself.

Of course creating any story with a Non-Linear narrative presents its own problems – namely combinational explosion. If you present the player/ audience with a number of routes to choose from, and repeat this, very quickly the number of different routes and outcomes explodes into vast numbers – as shown by the diagram below.

The way that the writer or game designer would combat this is by placing in inevitable events or goals that would happen every time. By doing this the designer can funnel the choices the player makes back to a strict point before allowing it again. An example of this can be seen in the flowchart for my game concept Zork:

In the concept, the player will have to make a decision over which route they would like to take out of three options and progress through that. After they have finished that segment of gameplay the plot will force the player, no matter their route, back to a singular point where they will once again make their decision. Only at the end of the game will the diverse effects of the player’s decision be shown by several ‘endings’.

Away from the concepts of linear and non-linear forms of storytelling, a ‘good story’ must have several ingredients to make it successful – especially in games. Any story must begin with a scenario which can force the protagonist onwards, be it a mystery or series of happenings – if the opening can create feelings within the player/ audience and draw them in then the story has been successful.

Many games and books will begin with powerful events – from Harry Potter being abruptly told that he is a wizard from living many years under a staircase, to the murdering of the protagonists parents in Fable and being enlisted into the Heroes Guild by the mighty Wizard Maze.

[Footnote: Dragon Age: Origins and the many different origins of the player character]

One of Dragon Age: Origins unique narrative aspects are the idea of experiencing a different origin depending on your characters race. But each of these starts and ends in the same way, and give the player meaning to push on with their quests:

Dalish Elf: You begin by living a normal life as an elf until the protagonist and a childhood friend go into the woods together and uncover a secret mirror. This mirror makes the players friend disappear and the player is forced to leave the town with the Grey Warden Duncan

City Elf: It is the day of your wedding and you must go to the centre of town. Just before you are to be wed, human noblemen from the town take the women (and you if you are female) to the castle. You end up breaking out and killing many soldiers in the process. When you reach the town you are forced to leave in case trouble is brought upon the town with the Grey Warden Duncan

Human Noble: You begin life as a prince of a castle somewhere in Ferelden. After experiencing a day in the life of a Noble you are awoken to the sounds of fighting. The castle has been overrun by men hired by a rival count. By teaming up with your characters mother you attempt to escape the castle. Your ‘father’ was mortally wounded in the escape and your mother stays with him to allow you to escape with the Grey Warden Duncan – who had been residing in the castle at the time (taking great interest in your character).

Mage: You begin life in the mages tower and you must complete your initiation into the fade. After resisting the temptations of the demons which reside in the fade you are roped into aiding your magician friend into getting his blood from a storeroom so that he may elope with his lover. The task fails dramatically and Duncan takes you under his wing in order to save you from being killed for insolent behaviour.

There are two other Origins but they all follow the same technique:

Present the character with an equilibrious state (living normal life), a conflict occurs which then forces the character to take up the call to arms that due to the life they have led had been ignored.

It is a common technique to draw the player into their character by seeing how they lead their life but see that life stripped very quickly from them – so that the Player can almost share the loss they have experienced. This technique is often referred to as the “Hero’s Journey”.