Micah Phua is a writer and editor, passionate about stories that inform as much as they entertain.
Editorial
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Personal
- Video Games as Narrative Medium
Learning How to Die
“You Died.”
These words pop up on your screen in blood-red font every time you fall prey to the various denizens of Lordran. And after your screen fades to black, and you possibly throw your controller away in frustration, you reload the game from the nearest checkpoint and dive back into the world. You are infuriated, but also determined to best that which brought about your demise. You die, over and over and over again, and frustration hangs over your head like an ominous stormcloud of doom. But, it is this way of dying, and learning and re-learning through your past mistakes and experiences, that reveal the world’s elements in meaningful ways. Each death brings you closer to completion and closure, to understanding more of the multi-faceted and open-ended story.
Dark Souls, produced by Japanese production company From Software and directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, has provided no insignificant amount of frustration for gamers the world over. However, besides the frustration, many of those gamers are drawn to the Souls franchise and games like it because of their unforgiving game mechanics and classic role-playing game elements. Unfortunately, because of this, story oftentimes takes a backseat, as it is perceived, at least from the start, as being vague, and perhaps uninteresting compared to the gameplay. For example, when I first picked Dark Souls up in 2011, I thought that it would be another action role-playing game, with a relatively standard story arc consisting of a warrior destined to defeat some mad tyrant (or really, you can insert any fantasy narrative trope in here).
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“You Died.”
These words pop up on your screen in blood-red font every time you fall prey to the various denizens of Lordran. And after your screen fades to black, and you possibly throw your controller away in frustration, you reload the game from the nearest checkpoint and dive back into the world. You are infuriated, but also determined to best that which brought about your demise. You die, over and over and over again, and frustration hangs over your head like an ominous stormcloud of doom. But, it is this way of dying, and learning and re-learning through your past mistakes and experiences, that reveal the world’s elements in meaningful ways. Each death brings you closer to completion and closure, to understanding more of the multi-faceted and open-ended story.
Dark Souls, produced by Japanese production company From Software and directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, has provided no insignificant amount of frustration for gamers the world over. However, besides the frustration, many of those gamers are drawn to the Souls franchise and games like it because of their unforgiving game mechanics and classic role-playing game elements. Unfortunately, because of this, story oftentimes takes a backseat, as it is perceived, at least from the start, as being vague, and perhaps uninteresting compared to the gameplay. For example, when I first picked Dark Souls up in 2011, I thought that it would be another action role-playing game, with a relatively standard story arc consisting of a warrior destined to defeat some mad tyrant (or really, you can insert any fantasy narrative trope in here).
...
(Read more)