Trigger Happy
Some diachronic stories, even in old games, are very complex, dipping freely into the myth kitty by basing themselves on Arthurian legend (Excalibur), Celtic sagas (Tir Na Nog and Dun Darach on the ZX Spectrum), Norse sagas (Valhalla), or Tolkien’s Middle Earth (The Hobbit), not to mention science fiction and fantasy derivatives of these basic templates. But notice that these kinds of stories are, formally speaking, mostly more like folktales than novels. And folktales, according to Russian theorist Vladimir Propp, adhere to one of a handful of simple formulae. They are highly plot driven and predicated on strong actions; what there is of a purely “literary” character can be readily stripped away. That’s ideal for computers. (It is hardly surprising, though obscurely disappointing, that no one has tried to make a videogame out of Nabokov’s Pale Fire.)
But what kinds of synchronic stories do such games have? Very little to speak of. The “story” of what the player actually does during the game would be merely a list of movements (up, down, run, shoot, open door,
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