What it is, why it matters, and why I think it’s not always an issue
Imagine you’re playing Dying Light. The game has told you that the night is dangerous. You spend the early-game nights huddled in UV light soaked safe-houses, hearing the screaming and raging undead outside. Eventually, you’re pushed to explore the night and…it’s really not much different than the day. Why?
Despite my personal disappoints, Bioshock Remastered has gotten me thinking about game design again. In particular; ludonarrative dissonance.
For those unfamiliar with the term, it originated with Clint Hocking’s critique of the original Bioshock, in which he made the observation that there was a significant disconnect between the themes the gameplay was preaching, and the themes the narrative was preaching. The narrative – and indeed canonical – ending of Bioshock is the one in which you rescue all the Little Sisters. However, through gameplay, you’re incentivized to reject morality and sacrifice the Little Sisters, as that’s what benefits you the most. It’s a collectivist narrative in which you are expected to act as an individualist.
As I’ve been revisiting Dying Light, I’ve noticed a similar thematic issue arising. The narrative and the early gameplay say that you are a scavenger. Due to the zombie outbreak, it’s incredibly dangerous to live on one’s own. Every significant survivor community lives in abandoned towers or skyscrapers, outfitted with UV light that burns the zombies if they approach. But the situation is presented as fragile, and if the power goes out at the wrong time or a zombie somehow sneaks into a community, it’s the end. Survivors spend their days parkouring around the city, running and climbing on rooftops to avoid the zombies below, and scavenging whatever scrap they can find.
However, on top of this, there’s a specific kind of super-evolved zombie that comes out at night. It’s agile, dangerous, and basically immortal in story. As such the night is portrayed as a no-go for anyone. Every character despises needing to do anything at night, with most flat out refusing. And early in Dying Light, this is by all means true. You avoid the night ardently, and only catch glimpses of these monsters in the distance, from safety. You can hear them roaring and hunting in the city, and you feel like there’s only a thin wall and some magic lights between you and death.
However, eventually you’re forced to confront these creatures. And…it completely falls flat. At least on regular difficulties, the minimap in-game not only shows you where these hunters are, but exactly where their cone of vision is. You are given a massive gameplay advantage over these zombies before you can even lose to them.
As such the tension of the game crumbles. The narrative of being a fearful scavenger falls apart when you lose the fear of being hunted, and effectively the night becomes better to loot during, as EXP gains are increased. To play the game efficiently, you loot and fight at night while playing Metal Gear Solid with your minimap, avoiding the dangerous zombies. You’re no longer a scavenger, you’re Solid Snake with parkour skills.
For me, this dissonance is jarring. It threw me out of the world, out of the characters and conflict. While the narrative made the survivors out to be smart, once I – the player – faced the night, it made their hesitancy feel like cowardice. It sabotages the world building in a major way. In fact this is the core of why so many people care about ludonarrative dissonance; it’s the sign of a strong story being sabotaged due to the game design not being smart enough to work with the narrative.
However, that’s the key that is so often ignored. “A strong story being sabotaged.” If a game has a weak story, I’d argue that no amount of ludonarrative dissonance will matter.
My example? Grand Theft Auto V.
Personally, I have a multitude of issues with the game. It’s filled with so many terrible and awful game design decisions, that I could write a dozen articles easily. But you know what I never think of? Ludonarative dissonance.
At it’s core, GTAV suffers from huge ludonarrative dissonance flaws. Franklin, an up-and-coming small time criminal who wants to learn how to pull off big scores, is perfectly able to fight his way out of gang wars and police shootouts within the first few missions. Trevor – the methed out drug producing hothead – is just as good at fighting the law as Franklin.
And this isn’t mentioning the major flaws, like how the game portrays American individualism and capital obsession as a flaw, yet entices players to constantly work towards amassing money and capital of their own. Hell, you can even argue this is a case of metanarrative dissonance, as the player is directly incentivized and persuaded to spend real money amassing fictional capital in a game that claims that capitalism is a spiraling obsession.
But no-one cares. Why? Because the story is one of the least interesting, least crucial parts of GTAV. The game is an open world sandbox with a story tacked on, and so when your audience comes exclusively for the gun play and wacky driving, the finer elements of narrative design tend to escape them. I only realized this flaw myself once I’d given up, and cheated my way to infinite wealth. Sitting on stacks of virtual green, walking through a garage filled with anything I could dream of, I realized how futile the grind was. How even if I’d spent 500 hours getting the outfit, car, and apartment of my dreams, I wouldn’t be happier. And only by cheating, did the narrative of GTAV fully come into focus, and the morals it espoused finally came true.
Perhaps this may come off as a rambling train of thought rather than a concise treatise on the meaning of ludonarrative dissonance. But to condense my thoughts into one sentence; Ludonarrative dissonance is a critical issue in narrative-driven, character heavy games where the gameplay directly interferes with either the progress of the story, or with the growth of the characters. Ludonarrative dissonance matters when you want to tell the tale of a person on a quest for revenge debating whether or not it’s moral to take a life, and the gameplay has you kill hundreds along that journey. Ludonarrative dissonance does not matter when your characters are flimsy puppets, and your story is a pretext to extend the life of your game that you feel obligated to add.
Copious Critiques 