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Narratology 3. Boundaries
by Richard Paez
Response to Question #3
Response to Question #3
Richard Paez
LIT 3003: "The Forms of Narrative: Narratology of New Media"
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Boundaries: The Narrative Impact of Visual, Aural, and Geographic Constraints
Books are subdivided, their elements bound, into volumes, chapters, and pages. These boundaries exist due to both formal and material limitations. Material limitations (such as those which existed before advances in technology allowed for small, uniform type in compact codices) forced the printing of long texts in multi-volume sets. Chapter and section breaks are placed mostly for formal reasonsthey allow for changes in topic, theme, or trope without too much distraction or need for explanation. Often the transition from one section to the next will mark a shift in focalization, place, or time. The attributes of a printed texts pagesdimensions, thickness, margins, and so onare a compromise between the printers technological limitations, the publishers financial considerations, and authors narrative intentions. Conventions of narrativerule of genrealso act as boundaries. Classical tragedy, for example, requires a noble characters fall from grace (Aristotle, The Poetics). The science fiction proposed by Arthur C. Clark (as opposed to the "science fantasy" of Star Trek) insists on narrative fidelity to the known laws of science. The logic of place and time, although not as rigid as in the extradiegetic reality of the readers world, act as limitations on the movements of reader, writer, and character as well.
Video games, like print narratives, also contain material and narrative boundaries which restrict their authors and readers. Unlike printed texts, however, the boundaries within video gamesthose areas of the diegesis the player is temporarily barred access from, the permanent edges of the map, and so onare made manifest by being naturalized: they are made to appear as natural aspects of the game worlds geography and physics(1). Authors of video games have more freedom in setting their narrative boundaries in some senses, but are much more restricted in others. While manifestly different in appearance, the geographies of first-person games such as Robyn and Rand Millers Riven and god-games such as Sid Meyers Civilization III are both subject to these margins.
The material and narrative boundaries in video games are very closely tied to one another. Video game authors must always contend with the memory and computational limitations of computers. This is why fully interactive game-worlds (such as those created on the "holodeck" in Gene Roddenberrys Star Trek universe) do not exist in our world. Economic limits on production are ever-presentRiven, when first published in 1997, took a team of forty people four years to make, and came in the form of five CD-ROM disks. It would have been economically difficult to make the diegesis much bigger or the narrative much longer. Furthermore, the narrative possibilities authors can make available within the diegesis are limited by the technical limitations of the computer systems their programs are designed for. The "front end" of video gamesthe diegesis presented on the screen, the range of actions available to the playeris always limited by the "back end"the power of the computer and the capability of the program (Harpold, in interview). In some cases these boundaries are immutable, in others they are gradually relaxed as the story progresses.
The authors of Riven dealt with the limitations of storage by designing the diegesis to fit the mediaRiven the world is made up of five islands; Riven the text is made up of five CD-ROMs. By placing one island on each disk, the authors were able to naturalize the loading time involved in switching between disks by paring them with the players movements from one island to another. Narratively, the first-person experience of Riven consists of exploration and puzzle-solving, and like its predecessor Myst, is structured similarly to a detective drama (see Paez, Question #5). However, unlike a similar printed story, where authorial submission to genre convention prevents the main subject from accessing knowledge too quickly, the main subject in Riven is under the control of the player, whose natural impulse is to resolve the conflict (capturing Gehn and rescuing Catherine) as quickly as possible. Thus the authors combine their need to meet storage limitations and their need to prevent the player from breaking out of the narrative thread by limiting the movement of the players avatar. Some of the most obvious examples of this are limitations in movement: the avatar can neither swim (forcing the player to find and activate the linking books; Figure 1), nor climb (thus forcing the player to solve the many puzzles faced by the avatar), nor deviate from the paths and walkways of the island (again, keeping the player on the paths plotted by the narrative). More complex examples are illustrated by the various lock, key, and code puzzles of the game: to get to the top of the fire marble orb on temple island, the player must raise the ramp from the inside the orb, then find a path back to the main part of the island to access the ramp (Figure 2). Doing so requires transversal of a huge portion of Rivenboth geographically and narratively.
Likewise, recovering the prison booktaken from the avatar in the first scene of the narrativerequires discovery of Gehns sacrificial scaffolding near the village, acquiring access to and exploring the prison cell, and finally traveling to the Rebels age, where the avatar receives both the prison book and Catherines journal. These narrative limitations on the avatars actions do not imply that they player is left without narrative choicesthere exists a wide range of choice available of where to go and what to look at. Instead, it creates the first-person, interactive version of similar narrative blockages in print narratives. While in a print detective narrative the main subject might be prevented access to the warehouse which contains the clue by a gang of thugs, the formal structure of Riven does not allow its main subject the combat or skullduggery the print texts detective might attempt. Thus the player must submit to the formal rules of the game (and the avatar to the narrative physics of the diegesis), approaching the solution from the directions allowed by the boundaries of the narrativenamely exploration, observation, and puzzle-solving. To "win" at Rivento complete the narrativethe player must eliminate the restrictions on the avatars movement within the narrative. One could say that "winning" Riven the game is really a matter of overcoming the boundaries of Riven the narrative.
Conceptually and narratively, Civilization III stands in stark contrast to Riven. Whereas Riven is experienced from a first-person perspective, Civilization III is one of the so-called god-games: the player sees the world not from the point of view of a character, but from an aerial perspective where whole cities take up less than one square inch of screen space (Figure 3). As shown in Figure 3, at any given point in time the player is subject to at least three formal boundaries. The first boundary is that which exists between the known and unknown areas of the worldthe boundary between those map-tiles which the players agents have explored and those which are as yet unexplored. The second boundary exists between the areas that are and are not covered by the "fog of war;" in other words, those areas which the players agents are able to currently "see" as opposed to those they cannot. In Figure 3, the bottom portion of the screen is shaded graythus, the player knows what the map looks like (because members of the civilization have been "there"), but not what is occurring on them (because no one in the players control is currently "there"). The final boundary is that between the players domain of cultural influence (those tiles which "belong" to the players civilization) and the domain outside that border. On the map shown in Figure 3, this boundary is marked by a dotted green line.
The first two of these three boundaries have distinct parallels in print narratives. The black boundarythat between the "known" world and the "unknown" worldis equivalent to those geographic or temporal areas of a print diegesis which the reader can assume to exist but which havent been visited in the narration. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is sent away to England. Thus, we as readers know that England exists within the Hamlet diegesis, but since the narrative (or better said, the characters through which the narrative is focalized) never "goes" there, we have no idea of what it looks like. The gray boundarythat between what is in sight of the actors and what isntis equivalent to places visited in the past of the narration but currently unoccupied by its focalizing character. The reader knows that the place exists (its appearance and layout) but if the narrative is currently focalized through a character who is elsewhere, not what is transpiring in that place at the current time.
The last boundarythe cultural boundaryis the most difficult to plot onto the geography of print narratives. However, it serves as one of the most important narrative boundaries in Civilization III. Winning or losing the gamereaching the end of the narrativeis based on conflict, on expanding the players boundaries at the expense of the opponent. The player must either conquer the world (spread his or her influence to the "edges" of the map/diegesis, culturally or militaristically) or acquire the resources needed to build a spaceship that will allow expansion off-world. Although this latter condition seems pacifistic, building a spaceship requires that the player control vast geographical areaboth a large number of cities and a vast array of resources are needed to build the spaceshipthus forcing the player to "push back" the dark areas of the map and those which are outside the players realm of influence.
Thus far only visual boundaries have been considered and plotted onto equivalent boundaries in print narratives. However, video games allow for another perceptual dimension not materially realized by print bookssound(2). Riven contains complex aural elements, which in several cases contribute to the narratives presented by the text. The creators of Riven went to great lengths to create the illusion of aural immersionnatives speak to the avatar, animals vocalize, objects create sounds both independently of and because of the actions of the avatar. Dismissing the aural elements of the Riven narrative as part of the background noise of the soundtrack would hinder the players progress through the narrative severely, however. Several puzzle elements depend entirely on the sounds made by the objects involved (see Paez, Question #1, for a discussion of the narrative significance of puzzles as opponent-actants in Myst and Riven).
Exploring the islands of Riven, the avatar finds five wooden "eyes" (Figure 4): four mounted on the surfaces of walls or rocks, the fifth found on Gehns desk (retrieved from the lake by the Natives village). Touching one of the eyes causes it to rotate in its socket, revealing a number on its backside. As the eye rotates, it emits a sound like that of one of the animals encountered on Riven. Making note of both the visual and aural clues given by the eyes is vital to solving the puzzle in the rebel cave, where a combination-lock puzzle blocks access to a linking book. Each "tumbler" of the combination lock is represented by the image of an animal. To open the lock, the avatar must select the tumblers associated with an animal in order, based on the numbers associated with the eye that made that animals sound. To make this connection, however, it is necessary for the player to fully explore the islands and to investigate the animals that live there. Non-language sound is normally thought of as a secondary, non-narrative element in video games. In Riven, however, the players ability to progress in the narrative depends on attention to such non-signifying aural elements, establishing them as narrative limits on the players movements just as concrete as visual or geographic boundaries.
Dr. Harpolds claim that "the minimizing or elimination of restrictions of the players domain of influence is both the aim and the condition of narrative progress in the game" is supported by the visual, aural, and geographic boundaries illustrated in this essay. To succeed in Rivento make progress and reach an end in the narrativethe player must overcome boundaries in the form of doors, blocked passages, and other restrictions. Movementthrough normal space, the linking books, the bars that keep Catherine imprisoned, and finally through the star rift which returns the Avatar to Earthis thus, to use Harpolds terms, "both the aim and condition of narrative progress in" Riven. Similarly, expansion beyond boundaries in Civilization III is the players goal in the games narrative. As the players civilization expandsculturally, militaristically, and geographicallythe players narrative options increase due to the "minimizing or elimination of restrictions of the players domain of influence."
Video games, regardless if they are oriented from a first-person subjective focalization or from an aerial god-perspective, produce narrative during gameplay by imposing boundaries between the player and the fabula elements of the story and then allowing the player to overcome those boundaries. Often, these boundaries exist to keep the player from discovering elements of the fabula out of their intended orders (although some leeway exists in certain game narratives). Other narrative boundaries exist in response to the storage limitations of computers or the back-end limitations of computer programs, and are naturalized to seem a normal part of the game world. These two types of boundaries are often combined, or designed into the narrative itselfsuch as the island shorelines and locked doors in Riven and the fog of war in Civilization III.
(1) The most famous example being the "impenetrable forest" node in Infocoms Zork, where the "edge" of the game world is naturalized as a forest too thick for the player to cross. The narrative does not exist beyond the tree line, however, to prevent the gamer from becoming conscious of this narrative boundary, the programmers naturalize it by assigning it a believable, material barrier.
(2) Unlike video games, print texts do allow for the material possibility of smell, such as found in the "Scratch-N-Sniff" style books. However, the contribution of smell to the narrative structures presented in such texts is too complex a subject for proper treatment in the current essay.
Figures
Figure 1. Why not swim there? Left: The Sacrificial Scaffolding in the lake near the Riven Natives village. Right: A nearby island, seen from the Jungle Island. Images ©1997, Cyan, Inc.
Figure 2. Stairway to Heaven: the lever raises the bridge, converting it into a ramp to the top of the globe. This indicates that there is something of importance up therebut how to get back to the beginning to access the ramp? Left: The bridge connecting temple island (the avatars starting point) to the first fire marble. Right: The bridge raised, forming a ramp to the top of the globe. Images ©1997, Cyan, Inc.
Figure 3. Players view of Civilization III map/diegesis. Image ©2001 Infrogrames Interactive/Atari.
Figure 4. Double Vision. Left: the wooden eye mounted on the rock by the bay. Right: the same eye, rotated to show the Riven Natives symbol for the number 5. As the eye rotates, the sound of the shark-like creature emanates from the icon. Image ©2001 Infrogrames Interactive/Atari.
07/08/2006 Posted on 07/08/2006
Copyright © 2024 Richard Paez
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