It’s kind of interesting that a game should come out that only frames this as part of a tradition of allowing a special no-kill run, as I tried above with Fallout 3. I think they (or other developers who try this route) could also pitch it as “making AI that isn’t suicidally incompetent.”

Well, yes and no. Yes, I am looking for more/better story arcs built into games. But no, while this does sometimes come at the expense of more open-ended, player-driven narrative (an expense I am willing to pay for a better story in some games), it does not necessarily have to be so in all cases.

My point in this post, I suppose, is that we can come up with our own narratives for games, but it can only take us so far. By the end, I am indeed describing things we can do to encourage a sort of “interactive authorial narrative” potentially at the expense of “sandbox/emergent narrative.”

Don’t get me wrong: I like emergent gameplay just fine. I am happy for this to be the primary narrative experience for some games. But I take umbrage with the idea that this is THE only narrative mechanism, or even the best narrative mechanism, for games in general. I think that some really excellently executed games with more author-driven narratives stand as a testament to the fact that player-driven narrative is not the be-all, end-all to telling stories in games.

That said, if NPCs in Fallout 3 were not so single-mindedly obsessed with throwing away their own lives to attack you, for instance, this would enhance the sandbox element, if anything. We could then reasonably go ahead and play pacifist merchants to our heart’s content.

I have no problem with the relative aimlessness of open-ended, sandbox play, but Fallout 3 also has a central storyline with a discrete plot and themes. I just note that the game might be more affecting if there were some point to playing through the game not just as a good guy, but as whatever guy (or gal) you choose to create. I don’t think that addressing my character’s cannibalism in the plot stories would necessarily take away from the experience of playing a psycho elsewhere in the wastes—do you?

It sounds like you’re looking for more/better story arcs ‘built into’ the game, whereas emergent gameplay tends to come from more open-ended environments.

Aside: One of my favorite stories was when the guys from Red vs. Blue were invited up to Bungie to test the Halo 3 engine. The employees there regularly jump into server matches to gametest/take a break. One guy jumped into the server the RvB guys were using to discuss the machinima option. Spying a group of Spartans suicidally huddled together, he immediately went into attack mode. The RvBers just turned and just *starred* at the intruder. He stopped, obviously a little unnerved by this unexpected response, and signed off.

Stray thought: If you described what you were doing in F3 without the backstories, I’d have assumed you were doing a speedrun, which in Marathon (yeah I know, but it’s the only game I’ve played really extensively) was as often about degree of difficulty as it was about actual speed. People would complete levels, e.g., without killing anyone.