![reflexive entertainment video games reflexive entertainment video games](https://hisgames.org/images/145/lionheart-legacy-of-the-crusader_70570.jpg)
Bioshock Infinite subverts player expectations by making these binary “decision-moments” wholly irrelevant to the narrative, most often leading to minor cosmetic differences on a few side characters. Bioshock Infinite subverts this mechanical trope by adopting similar “decision-moments” at certain points of the game, such as the decision to choose between two different brooches for Elizabeth. Many story-driven attempt to provide the illusion of agency by allowing the player to make binary or semi-binary choices at key moments to influence the direction of the plot. How can Mass Effect or The Walking Dead provide a truly emergent, player-driven narrative when a writer pens all dialogue choices, determines where the story will go, and how it will all end? Bioshock Infinite deals with the conflict between emergent and fixed narrative.īioshock Infinite self-reflexively critiques this trend mechanically and narratively. Nonetheless, story-driven games constantly seek to combine authored narrative and player-agency despite the fact that the two inherently contradict each other. While interactivity allows for a rich range of narrative permutations, all is mooted by authorial intent and a fixed story arc. Players are constrained to only the narrative and strategic paths that designers create. That said, games like Bioshock Infinite are incapable of creating player agency because the designer authors all possible choices and outcomes. For games like Bioshock Infinite, narrative is delivered as an incomplete product, players must fill in the blanks that the authors have left, creating their own, personal, version of Bioshock Infinite. On a self-reflexive level, these terms refer to embedded and emergent narrative in games, “constants” being embedded narrative elements such as cutscenes, dialogue, and background chatter, and “variables” being emergent elements such as character customization and combat tactics. The universes are characterized by “constants” and “variables”, elements of the plot that are consistently the same across playthroughs, and elements that differ depending on player choice. In its ending, Bioshock Infinite introduces a plot twist revealing that the game exists in a multiverse, where an infinite number of alternate timelines are generated by every possible choice that a player makes in a game. A popular reading of the game, ( read: mine) frames it as a “meta-commentary” on the problematic nature of video game storytelling. Taking cues from film and literature, story-driven games have cleverly deployed self-reflexivity to critique formal issues such as the narrative limitations imposed by interactivity, society’s attraction to violence in entertainment, and geek culture’s disinterest in reality.īioshock Infinite follows Booker DeWitt’s journey into the floating utopia of Columbia to retrieve a psychic girl named Elizabeth for mysterious employers. Self-reflexivity most often manifests as the “breaking of the fourth wall”, when on-screen characters seemingly become aware of their existence in an electronic game and engage with the player directly. The most common postmodern practivce in video games is self-reflexivity, when a work of art raises questions about itself as a created construct. Indeed, if we are to look beyond their status as a cultural commodity and the indistinction between “high and low gamer culture”, there exists a rich practice of challenging prior conceptions of what the medium can do. If video games are art, and all art forms undergo some postmodern phase where they question form and subjectivity, then examples of postmodern video games must exist. “But is it art?” is a common question raised by postmodern art. Marcel Duchamp challenged common understandings of what constitutes art by overturning a urinal and titling it Fountain. Postmodern literature challenged the notion that narratives have to tell cohesive stories, Toni Morrison’s Beloved employs a fragmented narrative told by multiple narrators with subjective perceptions of reality and expects the reader to piece the plot back together and create their own subjective understanding. In the arts, postmodernism manifested as a mockery and challenge of previous conceptions of what art constitutes. The grand, Western narratives of religion, philosophy, and civilization were delegitimized by an increasingly globalized world filled with a plethora of worldviews thus, relativism, subjectivity, and skepticism became the predominant response to the big questions. Broadly defined, postmodernism is an “incredulity towards the metanarrative”, the rejection of a universal cultural mythos.
![reflexive entertainment video games reflexive entertainment video games](https://arpegi.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/49146489-mumbo-jumbo-cubis-2-pc.jpg)
Postmodernism is a bit of a loaded word within my circle of friends. WARNING: Spoilers for Bioshock Infinite, Spec Ops: The Line, and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty follow! Three Postmodern Games: Self-Reflexive Metacommentary