Video games have a terrifically terrible time deciding what they are. Are they interactive movies? Interactive narratives? Are they just time-wasters? If they are any of these things, how do they do what they need to do to get their point across? Do they have a point? What is it?
Limbo circumvents a lot of the problems of modern games by removing a few key elements: dialogue, plot and music. What we get is an experience — but still a narrative. Let me explain.
First and foremost, here is what we know about Limbo: a boy is in a world, the world is kind of fuzzy and black and white, it’s very dark, everything and everyone is out to get him. You control the boy through a series of perilous encounters with giant spiders, people throwing spears and giant machines. Eventually the game ends with you coming across a girl picking flowers. You do not speak to the girl or even approach the girl — in fact there is no guarantee it’s even a girl.
Narrative once meant “to narrate.” This isn’t really the case any more — nowadays it means to exist and tell a story. This story doesn’t need to be explained, it just needs to exist. For all intents and purposes, Limbo does not have a plot — it has a narrative, but no plot. What does this mean exactly? It means the user is allowed to generate the experience based on the day-to-day activity of this little boy. For all we know this is a normal circumstance for our avatar — this is a normal day — he travels around a darkened landscape, avoiding death on every corner and trying merely to survive.
Or maybe it’s not. Maybe this is a special circumstance — maybe by “limbo” they mean purgatory — or hell — or dreams — we can’t know for certain — which is what makes this an interesting form of storytelling. It’s the concrete “being there” we get and nothing else. It’s an experience more concerned with narrative as an art — as what we view and interpret rather than a plot.
Is this still a narrative though? Yes it is. It’s not traditional — but I would find it hard to believe the developers didn’t have a plot in mind when they painted this picture. It’s closer to Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual than it is to a game in its narrative. The difference between this and say, Uncharted 2 is that we are assumed to be intelligent, creative humans that are capable of filling in the gaps. That isn’t to say there is anything wrong with Uncharted 2 — for every Fellini there needs to be a Michael Bay — the two forms, as well as all others can coexist without there ever being a “right” solution. What Limbo does is give us a narrative without a plot — and for that, I’m thankful, grateful and incredibly impressed.
“This everyday world affects the way art is created as much as it conditions its response.” – Allan Kaprow
Everyday we as human beings get up and do our routine. We take a shower, we work, we love, we eat with utensils, we travel. It’s these mundane events that add character to our lives — whether it be the type of job we have, the kind of furniture we own or the type of people that like us. This accumulation of the mundane is how we become known to acquaintances and thus becomes the way we convey our story to the outside world.
Video games do not generally catalog these everyday worlds, but that doesn’t mean some haven’t tried. While The Sims latches onto this idea full force, it fails to recognize the other portion of the equation: the incredible. In a mystical, magical world, like say, a video game world, the incredible is arguably the most important facet of engagement. But by encompassing and utilizing the mundane, plotless narratives can develop, even if the designers don’t intend on it.
Take Fable II as an example. If you’ve played the game yourself, you’d likely describe the narrative of the game as being something like this: I found a box, wandered around the world, bought a house, got a husband/wife, accidentally cheated on husband/wife when a Frankensteinian scientist resurrected a woman who fell in love with me on first site, had children, gave gifts to peasants, worked at the blacksmith, watched my dog die and then did some big event for some reason I can’t remember.
The most important takeaway in Fable II is the mundane, it’s not the plot. The plot is a bland revenge fantasy — but the hours the player spends working, exploring, expressing and emoting is the narrative the player walks away with. It’s these seemingly trivial things that not only affect the world’s view on you, they have an effect the outcome of the game — they make the narrative what it is.
While Fable II takes this idea to its maximum, it still has the issue of being convoluted in its plot. Would anyone have minded terribly if the plot was removed? Or rather, if the narrative itself just naturally built up to a logical end, as opposed to working in opposition of the mundane narrative? I’d like to think not. I’d like to think that the plot of the game would have benefited immensely from just existing in the background — maybe even happening on “accident.” Either way, it’s one of the few games that do this — and many others could stand to learn a thing or two from Fable II.
Take the Mass Effect series. Here you’re given the opportunity to save the universe — twice (three times, perhaps?). But what exactly are you saving? Sure, Bioware does an excellent job of layering the world together to reveal a semi-livable place — but who are you? What defines you? In Mass Effect it’s your reactions that define you, it’s how you react to conversation nodes. Comparing that to Fable II, where your actions define you showcases the primary difference between the two. In one, you react to the world, in the other, the world reacts to you. Because of this reactionary measure, Mass Effect is a bit doomed to always play as an experience rather than a full fledged life. Who is Commander Shepherd? We only get the emotions of him/her, we never see the mundane. Do space cowboys even have a mundane?
I could go on and on with a slew of more comparisons, but I think I’ll end here. The main argument I’d like to make is that the mundane is okay — no matter how extravagant or over the top the plot of a game is — it’s the personal narrative that’s going to have an effect on the player. We don’t need action all the time — look at a game like Far Cry 2, now get rid of the random encounters — now think about how normal it would be to drive across the environment and how incredible it would be.
It’s the mundane, the commonplace, the everyday that makes a narrative worth exploring — it’s not the plot. After all, as the saying goes — before enlightenment we chop wood, carry wood — after enlightenment we chop wood, carry wood.
“This everyday world affects the way art is created as much as it conditions its response.” – Allan Kaprow