Trigger Happy
control—and it is precisely because of these irreversible factors that a videogame story can become involving. The death of a certain character in Final Fantasy VII is often cited as an example of videogames’ power to induce emotional reactions— and if a player does so react, this is clearly because the death occurs in an FMV scene, and is irreversible: the player does not get a chance to resuscitate him. Similarly, the player’s discovery in Zelda 64 that Link is not, as he thought, a real Kokiri elf is potentially poignant only insofar as the player can do nothing about it.
Such storytelling as so far exists in videogames, then, is not really very interactive. The player may interact with the environment in which the story takes place but may not change the story at will. A good theoretical reason for this is pointed out by Olivier Masclef, the cheerfully erudite project director for Outcast (1999). “You need to have talent to write a story,” he says with a grin. “I’m not saying [videogame] players don’t have any talent—but it’s not their job.” Over Diet Sprite and watery coffee in the Los Angeles Convention Center, he tells me about the way in which his own game approaches these problems.
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