Gaming Narrative Quotes

The right way to enjoy 'Heavy Rain' is really to make one thing because it's going to be your story. It's going to be unique to you. It's really the story you decided to write.

Be it a video game, comic book, or cheque book, the question always is, 'What story do you have to tell?'

The most important thing in games isn't the designer's narrative, but the story the player creates through his experiences.

My first book, 'To Be or Not To Be,' took 'Hamlet' and converted it to the choose-your-own-path format. It was a great fit for a book where you control what happens - a book as game - because the plot of 'Hamlet' is very game-like: get a mission from a ghost to kill the final boss, kill the final boss, and game over. You win.

'Heavy Rain' is a cousin of the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books.

Some media used to talk about video games only to say how violent or addictive they could be. With 'Heavy Rain,' they talked about the story of the game and the emotions they felt while playing.

Video games as a storytelling medium are, from a mathematical standpoint, a branching narrative. You start at one place, you can go in multiple different directions, and there's a multitude of different endings.

With 'Journey,' we created an emotional arc for two different scenarios. So, if you play alone, it's a good game. You have what we think is a complete emotional arc. You will feel, I guess, a sense of transformation in the single-player. Because it's a hero's journey.

I've always thought that one of the things that the Internet and the gaming world permits as a narrative technique is to not tell the story from beginning to end - to tell stories sideways, to give alternative possibilities that the reader can, in a way, choose between.

Traditionally games never used professional writers to create their narrative, so there's definitely a residual feeling that hiring a proper writer is somewhat of a luxury, rather than a necessity. Like a feng shui consultant.

I had a very specific idea of the personal nature of the story I wanted to tell, really changing the image and the perception of Kratos.