Ludonarrative Dissonance: Time Constraint Versus Nonlinear Progression
A look into the dissonance that exists between the narratives of a games story and game play
Videogames are a masterful mix of many narrative forms, each of which come together to tell a cohesive story. But sometimes some of these narratives do not always seem to compliment each other. Ludonarrative dissonance is the conflict between the game’s storytelling narrative and its gameplay narrative (Davidson, 2009). Ludonarrative dissonance is something that can be explored in any game to really understand how it is used in games and how it affects the overall narrative of the game. This is important because the narrative of the game does not simply come from the story. Ludonarrative dissonance is important to understanding the full narrative of a game as well as the immersionsof a game (Murphy, 2016). In order to fully understand how ludonarrative dissonance can affect the narrative in a game, this paper will take a look at how the dissonance between the story and gameplay of a game affect each other, and how they can be used to enhance the experience of the game (Seraphine, 2016). The games Persona 5 and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be used to explore this dissonance and its effects.
Persona 5 is a jrpg that follows a group of teens as they struggle against unfair circumstances that they have been dealt by society. The story has a lot of elements discussing society and how life can dole out things that are not deserved. The story is told mostly through the perspective of an insert character, who does not always show a lot of emotion. While not a consistently cannon name, for the purpose of this paper we will name him Ren Amamiya, which is his name in the anime adaptation of the game. The gameplay of the game is divided into two phases, one phase spent exploring the metaverse as the phantom thief Joker, and the other phase spent living the daily life of Ren.
The story of Persona 5 follows Ren Amamiya, as he lives out his yearlong probation in Tokyo under the care of a family friend named Sojiro. During this year, he discovers a mysterious power that allows him to travel to the Metaverse, another plane of reality that is formed from societal perception along with mementos, a part of the metaverse created by a psychological phenomenon known as the collective unconscious. He also unlocks the power of personas, who are spirit like beings that allow him to fight the shadows that exist in the metaverse. The metaverse mirrors the real world but can change depending on the collective perception of society or based on the twisted desires of certain individuals. These twisted desires such as overwhelming greed or a need for power can create palaces. Palaces are places in the metaverse that house the treasures of corrupt individuals, which act as a sort of anchor to the real world. Over his year long probation, Ren uses his powers to travel to the metaverse to begin thieving these treasures, righting the wrongs of people who created those palaces. Along the way he meets other companions, some of whom are also able to traverse into the metaverse with him. Together, they strive to bring justice to the corrupt members of society and change society for the better. The plot of the game is centralized around this idea of betterment of society and rebelling against the unjust rules that society forces onto individuals. These rules are something unfair that can chain down a person and imprison them. The phantom thieves strive to break these societal chains to make a more just and fair society.
Now for a look into the gameplay and mechanics of Persona 5. The gameplay of Persona 5 follows a very traditional jrpg turn based combat system with a menu interface utilizing resource management as a key element. While there is a lot of combat in the game, there is also another side of the gameplay. While there is combat in the game as the phantom thief Joker, there is also a more day to day side of the gameplay as Ren Amamiya. These two gameplay styles we will call the metaverse phase of gameplay and the daily phase of gameplay. The metaverse phase of the game focuses heavily on combat and palace exploration. This side of the gameplay is a very straightforward dungeon crawling style, which emphasizes strategical plans and unit formation along with careful resource management of health and magic points. During the daily phase of gameplay, you have the option of to go around Tokyo and explore different areas. You can shop for new weapons, armor, and items that can be used in the dungeons as well as do certain activities which raise your social level, allowing you to progress with certain character relationships. One of the most important things you can do during the daily phase is increase your relationships with confidants, who are friends and allies that can lend you special abilities to use during the metaverse phase. While there are a large amount of confidants to unlock and progress your friendship with, these friendships can often be hard locked based on the areas, time of day, where you are in the progression of the story, and your social stats. This can make confidant ranks extremely difficult to progress and is often a source of frustration during the game, as they are one of the most impactful and important uses of your limited time during the daily phase. These two phases combine to make up the bulk of the gameplay in Persona 5.
Persona 5 has a large amount of ludonarrative dissonance between the story and the game mechanics, however, this dissonance does not necessarily take away from the game. To start, the story and the mechanics need to be broken down into several themes. Then, we can look at the procedural rhetoric to understand how this dissonance affects the game. To understand the themes of Persona 5, it is necessary to understand how Japanese cultures view society and societal roles. In Japan youth are expected to conform to societies ideas of ideal and resistance to this is seen as deviant and problematic (Goodman et al., 2012). Persona 5 however glorifies this concept of resisting the societal chains binding the youth, fighting corrupt adults and challenging the system. This leads the story to have a very strong theme of rebellion. On the other hand, the gameplay has very different themes. While the gameplay works in conjunction with the narrative to drive your actions in game, in game actions are severely limited by the progression of the story and most importantly the time progression system. This system gives you certain times of the day to complete a set number of actions before you continue in the game. You are also given limiters in these time slots. For instance, on all schooldays you must attend school, leaving you with only an after school and evening period to use your time. The school day system works in a way that forces you into the daily life anxieties of a Japanese youth in school (Lewis, 2020). This leaves you with little time to allocate with confidants, increasing social stats, progressing side plots, and fighting in the metaverse. This timing constraint also leaks into the metaverse, as certain palaces have very strict deadlines which must be kept or be met with a game over. In this system the gameplay lies in, there is very little chance that someone will be able to help every confidant or be able to complete every task without the help of a guide. These factors lead the gameplay to contain themes of stress, constraint, and conformation to an unjust system. Herein lies the dissonance between a story that promotes rebellion against an unjust system and the gameplay that is itself an unjust constraining system.
This ludonarrative dissonance can be easily seen in Persona 5, but the most important thing about the dissonance in the narratives is how it affects the procedural rhetoric. Procedural rhetoric is a term used by Ian Bogost to show how a games themes, mechanics, and models work together to “make claims about how real-world processes do, could, or should work” (Bogost, 2007). Looking at the dissonance in Persona 5 through the lens of Procedural rhetoric allows us to see a different story than what we can see when looking at dissonance alone. The story of Persona 5 is a powerful commentary about society and how it is good to fight against unjust systems that only hurt other people. While this is a powerful story, these ideas and feelings could be expressed with just an anime or book. However, in order to fully achieve the narrative Persona 5 does, there must be some form of empathy fostered in the game. This empathy comes directly from the gameplay. While in the story Ren is forced into unjust situations and must deal with them however he can, in the gameplay the player is forced into choosing between friends, working a job, studying, and exploring the metaverse. This possibility of leaving people behind in game can foster empathy in the player and enhance the narrative of the story. While the games story makes claims about the systems in the real world, the gameplay attempts to force you into such a system, in order to make the player understand why this system should be rebelled against. This empathy in the gameplay is fostered further by the final twist in the games story, revealing that the entire game was orchestrated by a single puppet master, the god of control Yaldabaoth. This revelation works to resolve the dissonance between the controlling gameplay and the unjust circumstances of Ren and brings the player closer to Ren according to Lewis (2020). This inclusion of an unjust mechanic seems contradictory at first, and certainly can clash with the themes from the story. On closer inspection, these themes do not contradict, but rather lend themselves to the procedural rhetoric, making a more united commentary on unjust systems in society.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a rpg open-world game that has you roaming around Hyrule as the hero Link. The story is incredibly simple, with only one true goal, saving Hyrule from the evil Calamity Gannon. The gameplay is also rather simple, but with very few limits on what you can do, it leaves a very large amount of possibility in the players hands. The non-linear aspect of its open-world design leads to freedom being left in the players hands for what they want to do in the game (Vidqvist, 2019).Breath of the Wild focuses on Links journey to defeat Calamity Gannon, however, there are no time constraints or required paths to do so. In fact, after the tutorial sections of the game, there is no one thing the game forces you to do. Breath of the Wild is characterized by this vast amount of freedom.
Breath of the Wild begins with Link, the protagonist and the character you control, waking up in the shrine of resurrection, and being guided to the outside by a voice in his head, later revealed to be the trapped Princess Zelda. You are guided by an elderly man who is the ghost of the king of Hyrule, who asks you to defeat Calamity Gannon, the monster responsible for devasting Hyrule 100 years ago, who remains in the castle. Princess Zelda is also there, trapped by Gannon to contain him for the past 100 years. In order to save her you are told you must defeat Calamity Gannon. This is the basic summary of the story in Breath of the Wild, however, there are also people who can reveal to you the secrets of Hyrule, and memories you can unlock to reveals the events that took place 100 years ago leading up to Gannon destroying Hyrule. The story of Breath of the Wild is not an in-depth story, and it is not even incredibly important in the game. The story is there to set up the gameplay, and there are few characters to develop outside of a small cast. After completing the first four shrines you are let loose into Hyrule with only the mission of killing Gannon, and some helpful advice on were to go for help. This lack of gating leads to the incredibly freedom and agency provided by the game (Vidqvist, 2019)
The gameplay in breath of the wild fits more into a traditional western rpg category, with third person exploration, real time combat, and weapon management. The gameplay of Breath of the Wild is incredibly free form. You can run, jump, climb, glide, swim, and ride horses across Hyrule. There are very few places you cannot go to from the very start of the game, and very few things you can’t do with just a little imagination. Would you like to completely skip the story and beat Gannon right from the beginning? You are free to do so. Would you like to scour the land for every item and korok seed? You are also free to do that. What the gameplay of Breath of the Wild does is make very simple mechanics, with many underlying possibilities. This makes the game very easy to pick up and understand, but very difficult to master some of its more technical aspects. This has led the game to amass a large following of speed runners, who attempt to master the mechanics of the game and use them to beat the game as fast as possible. This is only possible due to the immeasurable ways of beating the game afforded by the mechanics, and their complex nature. The gameplay of Breath of the Wild has a very simple baseline, that can be built up upon however the player desires.
Looking at the dissonance of Breath of the Wild, you can see very little. In a broad thematic look at the story and the mechanics, there is very little dissonance. The story exhibits themes of adventure and freedom in decision. The gameplay features very similar themes, allowing a large amount of freedom and a possibility of new discovery of mechanics. There are very few examples of times where the game restricts you. An example of a restrictive part of the game include the quest “Under a Red Moon.” In this quest, you are given a riddle that leads you to a certain location, however, this quest can only be completed under a blood moon, which leaves you with a very small window of time once every blood moon. Blood moons in game occur on random nights, which makes the quest notoriously difficult to complete. This forces you to wait for a specific time and forces you to be at a certain location at that time if you would like to complete the quest. Another example of dissonance where the gameplay and story do not exactly fit the same theme is retrieving the master sword. In order to pick up the master sword the game forces you to have a certain number of hearts, which requires you to complete a certain amount of shrines and bosses to be able to take the master sword with you on your journey. While these are truly roadblocks that are locked either by a progression requirement and a time requirement, they are only the few examples of this in the game. These instances are also very weak forms of dissonance, as the game does not require these quests to be completed. Outside of these constraints, there is little to no dissonance.
For a game like Breath of the Wild this lack of clear dissonance is a good thing. The story does not make any commentary about the real world, and there is little need to foster empathy in the games story. Because of this, the themes that are reinforced by the gameplay are themes of freedom and adventure. The story tells you to freely explore Hyrule, but the action of climbing a mountain reinforce that and impart the feeling of adventure. You are told you can fight any monster but defeating a fearsome lynel will reinforce the idea of being a hero. In this game, dissonance is not needed in order to tell a different side of a story, because the overall story narrative only needs to tell one story, the story of an adventure. The game also encourages adventure with its progression of quests and story. For those who are interested in the backstory of characters and the lore of Hyrule, the more quests you complete the more about the story you will learn. However, there is great freedom in the option of choosing whether to unlock this extra story or not.
These two games represent very different approaches to ludonarrative dissonance. Persona 5 uses dissonance in order to enhance the message of the game. Alone the story exhibits a scenario where youth fight against an unjust system. However, with the inclusion of a restrictive and unjust system that the player is forced into, empathy for the characters is fostered. This dissonance is important for the game, as it takes a story and enhances it. It can take two different and seemingly opposing themes and make them work seamlessly to enforce the message of the game. On the other hand, Breath of the Wild is a very free game about adventure that utilizes very little dissonance. This is because the story is very minimal and does not force you into any one scenario. In this instance the lack of dissonance can enforce the theme of adventure in the game. While these games use dissonance very differently, they can both use their gameplay to enhance their stories and vice versa. For game design, understanding dissonance and how it can be used to add layers of perception to a game are important to the experience of player. As a player, understanding dissonance can deepen an appreciation of games for the art that they are.
References
Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive games (Vol. 5). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Davidson, D. (Ed.). (2009). Well Played 1.0: video games, value and meaning. Lulu. com.
Goodman, R., Imoto, Y., & Toivonen, T. H. I. (Eds.). (2012). A sociology of Japanese youth: From returnees to NEETs (Vol. 83). Routledge.
Lewis, Melissa Jane. “Life Will Change” First Person Scholar, 1 July 2020, www.firstpersonscholar.com/life-will-change/.
Murphy, D. T. (2016). “Hybrid moments: Using ludonarrative dissonance for political critique.” Loading…, 10(15).
Seraphine, F. (2016). “Ludonarrative Dissonance: Is Storytelling About Reaching Harmony?”. Academia. edu.
Vidqvist, J. (2019). “Open-World Game Design: case Study: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.” Tampere University of Applied Sciences
