Narrative Piece - Evaluation

Evaluation

The main purpose of being set the task of writing our own interactive narrative pieces was to demonstrate an understanding of the theories we have been introduced to over the course of the module, and in that respect, I believe my finished piece does that. However, although my piece may follow the three-act structure, use one of the seven plot points, and work on some level as an interactive story, my process for reaching that stage was pretty horrific. I started this task with a clear idea: to make a half-life related story. Which is all well and good, but I had NO idea what I wanted to do in that context, I had no ideas, and what made the matter more complicated was combining that with my other idea which involved taking the aspect I most enjoy in films, a coward overcoming their fear, and using that as a gameplay mechanic. Again I had no idea how I was going to do this.

                It took me a fairly long time to pin the basic plot of my story, even now I haven't given everything that happens in it, though the holes are fairly minor details when looking at the overall plot. The worst part by far was combining that plot with a playable, semi-enjoyable gameplay mechanic. For the majority of my time spent on this project the mechanic has eluded me, and it's caused me a lot of problems in the story department, I just could not think of a way to make it work in such a way that it represents the characters progression from cowardly to courageous, and I still don't think I've got it right in my final piece, but at the very least I believe it's almost there. The problem I see with the system I have at the moment is that the idea is to instil a fear in the player of choosing the brave options, because there's such a high risk involved (death), but the fact is a player will most likely just go back and try again or skip past it entirely. For this reason I believe my idea would be more suited to a more closed environment, such as a text-based game. A text-based version would allow me to make the game far more unforgiving, so that when you die, you must start from the beginning, as you must do in The Hobbit. More problems are raised by this such as how the dice roll system would be adapted to a computer, and whether anyone would have the patience for such an unforgiving game. The Hobbit certainly got on my nerves at first, but it grew on me, maybe if it were a text-based game my story could reach a cult status akin to super meat boys insane difficulty, only with less fun and more frustration!

                Now that I've finished, I think I'm most pleased with how well everything came together towards the end of the project, especially the first act, which was the part I managed to flesh out the most, it shocked me how a lot of the ideas just fell into place so suddenly. I probably spent about three quarters of the time we had on this project feeling like I'd given myself an insurmountable task, like I'd dug myself a very nice hole with my idea, but I'm so pleased that I managed to get out of it in the end, even if it felt like I was a mile underground at the time. I believe I have gained a lot from this task, besides my knowledge on various narrative structures, namely perspective. I am not the avid writer I used to be as a youngster in school, using my free-time during the day to go and write stories. Narrative is a much deeper and theoretical subject than I imagined, and I finish the module with a great respect for it. As for what I would have changed, there are a few things, most importantly I would make sure I have better organised notes and ideas, it was hell trying to look through all the crap I managed to spill onto a page in a lesson. I would also combine this organisation with better overall planning, though in the case of my final piece the lack of planning is down to a lack of any significant time with a fully formulated story in my head. As for the story itself, I would have liked to write my piece a little more descriptively than I have done, right now it's possibly even more vague than the Half-Life plot! Taking all these things and making sure I did them if I were to write another narrative piece, I believe I could create something far better than the one I handed in for this module.