thinking about this birdsite thread
https://twitter.com/StardustCstaway/status/1011657919404937217
and I had a different question, sorta related: what are the games (or other interactive experiences) in the past five years or so that are most opinionated about what a narrative even is, or how a narrative works?
@aparrish Kentucky Route Zero. It has a really interesting way of structuring a video game narrative (that I don't really want to go into because it's way cooler to experience than explain)
@qonnyr I would actually be interested to hear your take, since I played the first episode and it seemed pretty standard-adventure-game-ey to me in terms of structure? been a while since I played it though so I'm probably forgetting some stuff
@aparrish I'd definitely recommend playing through the rest of the episodes. Acts 3 and 4 in particular are much more interesting, I think. In general I really appreciate how most of the choices in the game don't shape the world (like secret endings and whatnot), but instead shape how you as the player and story-experiencer feel about the characters and the world.
@aparrish My favorite example is probably a music performance in act 3 that has the player choose the lyrics to a love song. It doesn't affect the story at all, but it allows the opportunity to build subtext and backstory for the character introduced in that act.