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It’s been a hot minute, I know. But I’m hoping you’ll forgive this newsletter’s long absence. Since I don’t expect you to forgive me, and since, frankly, I don’t forgive myself, I think we should just dive right in.

Video Games & Storytelling

I can’t say I’m a “gamer” per se, but I do enjoy relaxing with an interactive glowing screen on many nights. Perhaps I’m best described as a casual gamer? Point being, most of the time I’m simply looking for a diversion, something relatively mindless. But every now and again a game will really suck me in and keep me engaged for a long, long time. The Last of Us was one of those games, several years ago. I’m now about 45 hours into Horizon Zero Dawn, and I’m absolutely loving it. (“A bit behind the times, aren’t we?” I know, shut up.) Having reached a pivotal story point, I know this one’s going to stick with me for a long time, and I with it.

I’ll do my best not to spoil anything, story-wise, because if you haven’t played it yet I recommend it heartily, and discovering the twists and turns of the story has so far been a wonderful treat. Instead, I want to make a point about storytelling generally, using this game as an example.

But as the explosives tester said, let’s back up. Storytelling isn’t always a straightforward enterprise, but it can be. And it certainly has been at times, especially in our beloved fantasy books. We meet characters, we’re told the stakes, and then the story proceeds to its ultimate — usually predictably happy — ending: Gandalf reveals the nature of the Ring to Frodo (in chapter two!), who sets off to destroy it; Garion must recover the Orb of Baldur and use it to destroy the evil Torak; Shea Ohmsford is the last survivor of the house of Shannara, the only one who can wield the Sword of etc. etc. etc… You know how it goes.

This doesn’t mean that characters’ motivations can’t be interesting, or that the social or political commentary can’t be poignant. But in classic storytelling, the basic structure I described is well established and easily recognizable. And that brings us back to video games. Because it wasn’t just books: my favorite video games growing up were always the Legend of Zelda games, which followed this formula to a T. Lots of old games, maybe most of them, used this simple story structure: think Metroid, Final Fantasy, and so on. Some stories were slightly more complex than others, some had shifting motivations and stakes as the story went on, but generally things were kept pretty simple.

But as I’ve played through Horizon Zero Dawn (among others), I’ve noticed that video games have, to some extent, mirrored the storytelling evolution that books have gone through. Now these massive, worldbuilding-heavy games look an awful lot like the epic fantasy books that are so popular with the current generation (and with listeners of the Legendarium, bien entendu). In both books and games, where the stakes and the goals used to be clearly stated upfront, now things are much more drawn-out, especially in the early going. It took 45 hours of (admittedly fairly leisurely) gameplay for me to finally get an explanation for what’s at stake in Horizon Zero Dawn.

But so what? Am I really complaining about this? Not really, no. As I’ve mentioned before , I think the heavy emphasis on worldbuilding and upfront investment brings with it a greater possibility for immersive, instructive stories to be told. It’s a high-risk, high-reward proposition: if you can make it through the first 500(!) pages of The Way of Kings or the first three books(!) of The Wheel of Time, then your eventual reward will be substantial.

My concern, though — and I’m not sure I would even call it that — is that the barrier for entry into the epic fantasy genre (in the form of books, or games, or whatever) is getting pretty high. Perhaps I shouldn’t worry too much about it, since every in-group, from jocks to bronies to heavy metal enthusiasts, creates such barriers. But since I think epic fantasy has so much to offer, I tend toward evangelism on the subject. And it’s hard to evangelize something when you have to caveat it with, “…but the game’s storyline really gets good after the first 30 hours.” Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go give The Witcher III a shot.

Update: Since I started pecking this out, I’ve actually finished Horizon Zero Dawn. I guess I was closer to the end than I thought. I was slightly disappointed that the short third act became much more of a generic hero-must-punch-bad-guy-until-victorious story. But I should emphasize “slightly” here, because there were one or two moments of decent catharsis. Besides, what other kind of ending was I really expecting? Ultimately I would advise you, if you haven’t played this one yet, to do so as soon as possible.

Join us live on YouTube

In honor of the 5th anniversary of our first episode (2/23/2014), Kenn and I are doing a live video on YouTube on Saturday, 3/2 at 5:00pm EST. We’ll be answering questions, of course, and we’re planning to read some of our hate mail as well. I hope you’ll join us.

Links

Brandon Sanderson’s appearance on the Legendarium

Listener Andrew is shaving his head for charity

Blue Team started their discussions of Dune