Interactive Plots in Video Games
“The end is never the end,” Wreden and Pugh write. Their game and many others show that now more than ever, video games are becoming interactive storybooks, and seem to tell an infinite number of stories that change every time a player participates in them. From Donkey Kong, the first example of a complete story in a video game, with a beginning and an end (Guinness World Records), to the various independently released or self-published games created today, brilliant stories have always existed inside of games. Many game-players would even say that these stories rival or might even be better than some of the greatest books written today. Their reasoning for this is that in video games such as Her Story, The Stanley Parable, Antichamber, and Undertale, a story is told from the player’s input in that game, and therefore wraps them into its story by making them the main character. These games use a player’s choices, their plot, and the tropes of games created before to create a story that is dynamic, which lets players create their own story.…show more content… The major question in games that attempt to tell a story from an open point of view would be how to present the player with a sense of free will. Merriam-Webster defines free will as the ability to make choices that are not controlled by another object or cause. This concept is something that requires an infinitude since it is impossible to program in an unending amount of options or even a truly infinite world. The writers for these games obfuscate the lack of true free will by creating the illusion of
