Narratives And Why Games Need Them

A narrative is essentially a story, without it neither films nor literature would exist, unfortunately the mainstream games industry is only just realising the importance of narrative, and that is what I would like to talk about. In recent years, game developers have started to try and stray from the classic run-and-gun sort of games with a complete lack of story to ones with exciting innovative ideas and real depth. Let's take the Mass Effect games by Bioware, these Sci-fi games are all about the narrative, and the ability to create your own. You take on the role of Commander Shepard, and instantly you are able to decide their gender and cultural background, instantly changing how the game will be played and how characters react to you, and throughout the story you will have to make genuinely difficult decisions that alter other events further along in the game and the sequel games after that, ultimately changing the fate of the galaxy and the races that populate it (it's all very epic like that). But most importantly they are able to do this all whilst having an engaging and fun shooting mechanic, the story gives a genuine reason for the violence, it's quite symbiotic. I think it's that game developers beleive that if they focus on the narrative the gameplay will suffer, but with Mass Effect 2 winning numerous gaming awards this clearly isn't the case.