Ludonarrative Dissonance

“Ludonarrative” is pretentious for “Gameplay and story” and dissonance means the two don’t really match together. Like I could be slaughtering people by the thousands and then all of the sudden the videogame tries to make me feel bad about it, and then I just continue slaughtering things by the thousands. Or perhaps you’re playing someone who is portrayed as a righteous hero completely unironically but then the gameplay usually involves you being rewarded for taking as much morally dubious action as possible.

Apparently talk around this term started sometime with Bioshock, where criticism was raised around the mission-based and incredibly linear nature of the game (you are told to go here, do thing, then told once again to go here, do thing) and the choice making mechanic involving saving children for less personal benefit or mudering them for greater benefit. I hardly think Bioshock matters in this regard, as much as the Little Sisters are poorly thought out as a moral mechanic, mostly because Bioshock was both aware of its incredibly linear do what you’re told nature and because it didn’t suddenly fall back on that in spite of pointing it out because at that point you’re near the end of the game and have a very clear objective.

The idea around ludonarrative dissonance has been getting more traction, particularly levied as a criticism against games that refuse to let the player make decisions but then criticize the decisions the player makes. Let me give you two very obvious examples that typically get brought up in this regard.

One is Spec Ops: The Line. You play as some soldier who decided to be a hero and not phone home after getting his mission done, leading to tragedy after tragedy occuring. The blame is shifted partially to the player for letting all of those poor pixels die. In an early version of this game, they let players phone home the mission early only to figure out that that’s what everyone’s going to do because that’s what they’re told to do, so they had to remove the choice to do so for their narrative to make any sense.

The other is The Last of Us: Part II, to me an infamously trashy game that’s more iconic of the downfall of Sony than anything else. The point in its narrative people pick apart is that Abbie(? i forget who cares) learns to regret seeking revenge after chasing a roided up lesbian for nailing the previous game’s protagonist, bearing permanent injuries as the result of her mistake. The problem is that, despite being an action stealth game that’s very clearly aping Metal Gear Solid, at no point is the player given any real ability to influence Abbie to take peaceful options. This “great step forward for videogame storytelling” lost to a goofy Japanese PS2 game.

The first example is bad mostly because it shoves an option onto you and then lambasts you for it. The second is bad because despite its heavily lauded story focus it actively ignores the nature of the medium its in and becomes little more than a movie where you occasionally have to press some buttons to see the rest of what happens. Both are frustrating because the developer could’ve actively created a better world and let the player and narrative evolve from it but chose not to to get their dumb middle school philosophy across. KILLING PEOPLE IS BAD, DID YOU LEARN THAT IN THE 5TH GRADE?

Most people can just kind of accept ludonarrative dissonance. The nice thing about a video game is that if the written narrative is poop then you can just enjoy the gameplay bits of it, but these two games were both generic third person shooters that were entirely sold on their narrative so you can’t really make that fallback.

Indeed, most people don’t really care that GTA missions require you to avoid getting arrested despite the fact that getting arrested is usually little more than a minor inconvenience, nor do they care that Dante is a whole lot cooler in cutscenes than they are at playing the game. On top of this, there’s motivation in these games to match your gameplay to their narratives, with arrests still being a penalty and DMC’s cool factor being an essential part of your score.

If you’re starting to notice a pattern here don’t worry because there is one and it’s incredibly obvious.

Ludonarrative dissonance is almost entirely caused by the narrative rather than the ludo. The first two games had heavy ludonarrative dissonance because gameplay was never considered when writing their stories. The last two have minor dissonance because gameplay and cutscenes were made fairly separate.

The story as most people see it is derived entirely from the gameplay, and this gameplay does not need to change as long as that story is matched with the idea you wanted. For example, if your player is supposed to be a wimpy coward who can’t take on big threats directly, award him for utilizing clever methods to avoid direct fights and punish brash action. If the player is meant to be a hero, it’s ideal to give motivation to take heroic actions.

Ludonarrative dissonance is the “tell don’t show” of videogames where instead of finding clever ways to get information across to the viewer/player on an unconscious level instead you just TELL them that’s how they’re supposed to feel. It’s bad storytelling and that’s why it’s so frustrating. The player being someone with their own thoughts and feelings is something that is more important than ever when you’re considering the narrative in a game, and if you have a point to get across then you better damn well make it so that the gameplay gets that point across too.

Good games do this, bad games don’t. Reinforce your ideas.

Addendum: Ludonarrative dissonance GOOD?

I see some arguments where people mention ludonarrative dissonance is a good thing and then they bring up something that isn’t ludonarrative dissonance and ???, as an example Metal Gear Solid 2’s “fission mailed” sequence where you get a fake game over while the game is still ongoing is somehow considered ludonarrative dissonance. This is more gameplay mechanic dissonance, the player is trained to think a mechanic works one way only for it to suddenly work differently to confuse them.

I think there’s a communication error there so I’m not going to bother on that aspect.