Narrative vs. ludic mechanics

*Quantum Break and God of War II spoilers ahead

The angle stone of videogames with narrative purposes is the player's interaction that tells the story. So as it would be a waste of time to compare both narratives independently of the mechanical application, let's see how both titles use their mechanics in the two pillars the interactive language is composed by.

Interaction with the environment

Those are a few examples of the sort of challenges you can find in Quantum Break:

There's a hollow between the platform you are placed and the one you have to access to, so you must rewind the time of a metallic piece just below the structure in order to build a bridge. What's the story behind that chunk? The protagonist put a piece of metal in front of him to cross.

After pressing the green button, the metal door at the end of the hall gets opened during a few seconds. You must stack the door stopping the time in order to arrive before it gets closed. What's the story now? The protagonist uses his powers to block a door and cross through it.

And my favorite one. A car is stacked in a loop smashing a column aggressively that you have to tie up stopping the time again. Story? The protagonist stops a random car of a random broken highway to cross using it as a bridge.

After that, at least you expect to find a dramatic situation where you need to apply all what you have learned but this is the most shocking sequence you find between the mastery of mechanics and the climax:

A walk over a deformed bridge on the middle of a time crack avoiding obstacles again, where the only mechanic you have to apply in order to cross it apart from the puzzles that are the same as the ones I’ve mentioned before, is to jump. So, are those segments tightly bounded to a narrative purpose that could be considered necessary to tell the story or at least, plausible? Just imagine the game with all of them removed and you'll get the answer.

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And here goes how Santa Monica creates temporal challenges. In God of War II there’s only two ways of controlling time. Slowing it down with the amulet of the fates where there’s a statue that allows you to use its power, and entering into portals that brings you to the past. From the very first moment where the time control power is introduced, the game forces us to apply it in a ludic way just like QB with the purpose of making sure that the player gets the mechanic's pattern.

So after acquiring the amulet of fates, the game focuses this tool on scenic puzzles to generate challenges for the player with little narrative substance as the ones I have mentioned before...

…until finding this one:

“I will not let you reach the sisters”

A translator is advised that Kratos is looking for him in order to force himself to translate a manuscript and open the path to the Temple of Fates. Before to complete your objective he jumps into the void killing himself. There's a portal in the same room that drives you seconds ago that happening, to have the chance of avoiding his death. Apart from that element, you have to move a time tower to be able to slow down the temporal flow and intersect his intentions before he jumps. Here we have a conflict between two determinations from antagonistic perspectives:

1) Main Character: to force the translator to reveal the manuscript and call the spire in order to arrive to the Temple of Fates, the place you've been struggling to go during the whole adventure. It´s an action that pushes the Kratos' vengeance desire a step ahead and reveals the frozen perception he has of other beings that are not his daughter or his wife, saving the life of someone who is going to burst his skull after using his services. A character's trait that has been announced in previous circumstances. So it connects with his nature and is shown in a necessary sequence to tell the story.

2) Antagonist: to avoid it by killing himself. That reveals part of the enemy's power you're about to fight with. GoW has always been a master class of anticipation to create spatial coherence, an element that other games have been inspired of, like Dark Souls. In that case is not a spatial revelation but a character's subtle information. Both translators are fully manipulated by the three sisters at the point of being predisposed to give their lives in order to serve them. In other words, they manipulate humans as time and don't care about sacrificing them for a greater good. An understandable ideological scale having in consideration they live surrounded by a bunch of threads with a whole life impregnated on them.

Furthermore, you spend most part of the journey shredding everything that moves. So the fact of finding this little quest changing radically the way of approaching the challenge, creates a brutal contrast increasing exponentially the emotional impact of the scene.

Then, exploiting the fact that you have mastered that pattern with the possibility of getting tired of it, they surprise you with that new one mentioned before:

An incorporation with the same philosophy, a training to build up an inevitable narrative moment to make sure you have mastered it to be able to apply it with no being helped by indications that breaks the story flow. Once you beat the sisters of fate, the scenario allows you to use a mechanism that opens a portal.

Arriving at this point, we know perfectly what we must do because of the previous moment we have used the same mechanic. To introduce it right here would mean to add a tutorial in the happening you have been struggling for the whole journey. In that way, you just focus on internal information increasing the impact of it.

It's not just a plausible moment for the player but a necessary sequence to make advance the plot. A perfectly matched buildup that generates a contrast between classic puzzles resolution and interactive narrative.

Interaction with subjects (boss)

*As in GoW you can’t face the average enemies manipulating time, I just going to take in consideration a boss battle where you do it in both games

QB follows the classic boss formula, which doesn't mean it has to be bad. It consists in examining the player to prove if he's able to apply all the knowledge he has been acquiring during the game in one section more hostile he is used to fight in. So, what have we learned? To shoot, to run, to slow down and to stop time. And this is how Remedy puts together all this requirements with a narrative purpose. Let's not forget we're on the climax, so it's always far effective to solve it through interaction:

First of all, to increase hostility of the environment: objective in a central position of the space which height takes advantage from you.

To stop and to slow down time: an opponent's strong movement that forces you to don't be stopped and use time control to protect yourself avoiding death.

To shoot: enemy waves.

After shooting bullets enough to vanish his protection and finally penetrate his torso, a cutscene is shown where you push his stomach…

…and he dies.

So, why Serene stands there waiting you to shoot with no moving himself around the environment? Why a group of enemies spawns continuously in front of the door? Have those people come from somewhere or they pop up because the enemy just uses range attacks so it would be boring to wait until he’s unprotected? Why is he throwing…I mean, what the hell is he throwing you? A force pulse? Is he a fucking lord Sith? This character is focus on the power of knowledge because of the ability to travel through the temporal space. But for any reason, he never anticipates your movements going back when you shot him or any variant, forcing you to discover another way of killing himself that should have been built during the game. It’s a mashup of average game design features put together with a massive lack of coherent and narrative presence. Furthermore, you can defeat him with no using powers as all the enemies you have killed before, which keeps struggling to turn this game into a shooter with a shallow layer related with time behind.

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In GoW II we could judge that battle in the same way that I‘ve done with QB, but again there’re elements that turns it into another mechanical application master class.

The sequence starts with an average battle versus the first sister, Lahkesis. A classic range attack system with an architecture that pushes you to interact with it to generate a distinctive layer. But after that encounter, her sister Atropos appears in order to contribute to your death…

…in that way:

She brings you over the sword you use in the fighting versus Hades at the ending of the first game, while she throws you destructive spells directed to its metal.

If you don’t avoid her power to contact with the sword, it gets broken. And that means that the Kratos from the past is not going to be able to achieve the power enough to kill him, so the one from the present is going to share the same ending. That action is a reflection of several sister’s psychology aspects.

There’s the cynicism they face the situations with, bringing the character to a scenario that stand for the theatre where his death’s function is projected on background. Every mistake you commit in that circumstance will represent a closer step to the presence of your own destruction, which highly increases the emotional impact of the scene. They could solve that with a classic formula, just like using the room you were fighting in before. But they don’t just increase the dramatic response but connect it with the character condition. Being used to see the fourth dimension like a painting makes you to get a frozen point of view about the existentialism. A trait that has been revealed first with the translator’s manipulation and have been exploded now because of the strength of their enemy, revealing that human lives are no more than puppets controlled by the threads they live surrounded by. Combining that factor with the knowledge they possess about your past shown by the crucial moment where they bring you, the respect for the enemy and its definition increase exponentially.

Furthermore, it connects with the prequel exposing a temporal dilemma.

It’s impossible to replay that scene from GoW I with the same perspective after completing the second game. Has the Kratos of the future stayed there seconds ago of grabbing the sword? Is the fighting versus Atropos the reason why the edge is a bit cracked? That creates another narrative layer even in other game that has no relation with temporal space.

After avoiding the death of your past, you enter again into the room where you were fighting before. But this time, an element that were irrelevant at the beginning, becomes the key to defeat both sisters. In a combat that apparently looked average with only a challenging purpose, they were applying the anticipation again to add elements later without losing spatial coherence. Now the protagonist of the environment are the mirrors you have to destroy because Antropos hasn’t crossed at time. This little buildup is applied with the sister Lahkesis as well, that at the beginning seems to use a gadget with the only function of throwing green spells being in reality a stick that allows you to use the amulets of fate once she feels weak. Combining both elements, the challenge is created with no popping up from nowhere. A battle between two sisters fighting together protecting themselves versus a berserk Spartan.

But the most remarkable part of this sequence is the ending. The fact of making a being able to control temporal space to loose himself around the fourth dimension by destroying its entry creates a paradoxical climax adding a poetic filter on it. Furthermore, you give back the cynicism you received before by closing both sisters in different portals splitting up their destinies condemning them to eternal solitude.

So this named aspects drive us to the determinant element that creates the hugest distinction. The dramatic necessity of the mechanics for the story.

In GoW II, the mechanical application is just a feature for the real purpose of the journey, which is the same as the rest of the franchise’s games. A tool that adds diversity and explores the mythology, but not the core where every aspect is based on. There's no chances of using time control on combat versus average enemies, which increases the strength of the moments where you can. Santa Monica is fully conscience that the core of the story is not about time. So they apply this mechanics just when is fully necessary for the story or when they want to train you in order to build up a narrative circumstance.

QB is based entirely on time. Absolutely everything is bounded with that central theme. Both plot and mechanics keep the whole adventure struggling to push them in order to reinforce the main theme. But you can beat the game with no using spells at any conflict scene, which makes them to be completely useless. The only moments you truly depend on them creating an emotional bound between yourself, your skills and the environment, are about solving "broken bridge" puzzles. What kind of value contains all the pretentiousness with time effects, slow motion camera and objects floating around the space if then the most dramatic applications I can give to those spells are about killing easier people I don't care about and moving fucking boxes

Lack of narrative design is a symptom of lack of character design

The reason why there’s such difference between the mechanical applications resides on the dramatic position of the characters.

It’s hard to empathize with Jack Joyce if his determination is revealed after the power acquisition. We don’t know absolutely anything about himself, not even the past or the current motivation. It’s not after the accident provoked at the beginning and the world’s destruction explanation when is introduced the man’s desire. So as there’s not character’s psychology defined, there’s not a link between it and his goal, which makes impossible to understand his actions resulting to be an uncomfortable experience from the very beginning. Why the hell a man able to control time would use it to avoid temporal space to be broken in order to save the world? We could respond to this this if we knew him, but there’s not a single trait that reveals his protective instinct towards planet earth or at least some aspect about his condition. But the worst problem is that character's soul is defined by his actions and reactions against the environment. And actions and reactions are what game and narrative design are based on. If as a writer you don't have a clear idea of who is your character and where is he or she going to, then results an impossible task for the narrative and game designers to create spaces and rules that reinforce his psychology coherently. This lack of information blurs his relevance within the story along with that of the player.

Kratos has a clear determination before the word "time" is named. This creates a dramatic layer over any of the rest you can find during the journey. His real purpose is not about travelling on time but to struggle desperately to forget. So we’re talking about a man whose life is driven by his own sins, not to compensate those making good actions but to forget them in order to stop crying blood. That’s why we enjoy playing GoW, because we understand the person we have under control even before of jumping into the action. That clear goal allows the writers and game designers to create environments reinforcing it. Every time he uses someone’s life to overpass a challenge there’s a love letter behind addressed to his family. That contrast between violence and love is reflected in every sequence of the franchise making you to feel there’s a clear and complex human being behind the screen you can empathize with.

It seems that GoW II 's premise is about the power acquisition in order to achieve the character's goal and QB 's premise is about a power acquisition in order to achieve a goal for a character. So, which importance has the fact of applying the mechanical aspects narratively rather than playfully? The importance enough to make one of those games to be considered for a lot of fanboys’ the best title of one of the most iconic franchises ever made, and the other to be forgettable the next second you complete it.

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