Her ultimate goal is to develop a medium-free theory of narrative, which for Ryan means moving beyond the idea that stories are primarily verbal and instead realizing that they are cognitive constructs. 7) Ryan lists eight conditions of narrativity, and these are grouped under four “dimensions”: the spatial, temporal, mental, and formal/pragmatic (p.
#Metroid prime maps series#
In Avatars of Story, Marie-Laure Ryan proposes a scalar notion of “narrativity” that blurs the boundaries between what constitutes a narrative and what does not from this perspective, the definition of a story “becomes an open series of concentric circles that spell increasingly narrow conditions and that presuppose previously stated items, as we move from the outer to the inner circles, and from marginal cases to the prototypes.” (2006, p. But things are perhaps more complicated, and a nuanced view of how we should evaluate the storytelling elements in video games can explain why earlier Metroid games, despite having less “story” than Other M, nevertheless are felt to recount the deeds of Samus Aran in a more coherent, satisfactory way.
#Metroid prime maps manual#
Indeed, the lack in many video games of anything more than a simple scenario recounted in an instruction manual is what has historically led some critics to question the storytelling significance of games in general. Metroid: Other M has a relatively detailed “plot,” told via cinematic cutscenes that features dialogue between identifiable characters however, it is an outlier in the series, as most of the previous Metroid games have far less in-game storytelling in the conventional sense. This quasi-cartographic focus can in turn help to theorize more broadly a way of decoding game objects and spaces (at least in the puzzle/action-adventure game genre ) which would serve two purposes: first, to improve design practices and second, to articulate how games are uniquely situated as a medium to model contemporary life. The final section will draw parallels between successful imperative storytelling and the processes of cognitive mapping that are felt to be integral to subjectivity in theories of postmodernism.
I will go on to explain the successes of the Metroid series in the second section, and to analyze the problems associated with Other M in the third section, in both cases using an imperative storytelling approach. In the first section, I will situate this analysis with certain recent examinations of “narrativity” and space in games, specifically those outlined by Marie-Laure Ryan and Steffen Walz in particular, I will use a theory of “imperative storytelling” as an interpretative framework that, working within these and other examinations, can be particularly instructive for the analysis of certain video game genres. Understanding how that system’s affordances are constructed in different Metroid installments is central to understanding how each game approaches storytelling. Metroid ’s mapping system, this paper will argue, is the key. But if Metroid: Other M appeared to stumble on the narrative level, an analysis of why – and in what specific ways – it did so might better help us to understand why earlier Metroid games were seen as great successes. Many fans saw this as a betrayal of the character, especially since Samus – in earlier games an autonomous bounty hunter – was now taking orders from a patronizing new character, Adam Malkovich. More significantly, the player-avatar protagonist, Samus Aran, was made to speak for the first time since her appearance in the original Metroid (Nintendo R&D1, 1986). Other M diverged from the first-person gameplay that had distinguished the Metroid series for much of the 2000s, returning to the third-person perspective of earlier games with a more “arcade” feel. When Metroid: Other M (Team Ninja, 2010) was released on the Nintendo Wii, it got mixed reactions from fans and critics. A revised version of this was published in Games and Culture in January 2017.
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