Narrative

Narrative is the main story of the game, whether it is spoken or written. The narrative goes over the whole game, this allows the story to develop as the player goes though the game. Narratives can change within a game, this happens if the game has choices that allow the player to choose their own way of telling the story. they can choose to be good or evil and so on, this is particularly in RPGs as the player is role-playing as the character, making choices on their behalf. Some games with this choice element don't really effect the story, take Fable 2 for instance, this game has a great choice mechanic, you can destroy, kill, steal. As you do your character becomes more evil and the same applies to the good side too, but this morality choice dose not effect the story, you may get a comment every now and then or a small change in dialogue but the over all story does not change. This is known as an embedded narrative.



On the other hand there is a narrative called an emergent narrative, this is were the player creates their own story, this is often seen in games were there is next to no story, minecraft for example, people like to create their own stories of why they are in a large plane of existence without any reason, they set goals for themselves and can even get other people help by creating structures so the player can explore them.



Narrative is important to a game as it gives the player a reason to push on through the game, especially if other aspects of the game are failing. That's why people sometimes create their own stories to suit the game better, it helps them keep playing, gives them goals and makes the general experience a lot better.