By Anna German
One thing that has stuck with me as we’ve continued on with the course is questions of the role of narrative vs. interaction. More specifically: why tell a story in an interactive manner? Is there something different to be gained from an interactive versus passive narrative? Would the same story be more or less compelling told in another manner? And are there stories where inserting interaction improves the narrative or is interaction always for some other benefit?
By looking at Unpacking I think we can start to answer some of these questions and get a deeper understanding of the possibilities of interactive storytelling.
Unpacking involves the player in a detached and yet personal manner. On one hand you are the person unpacking so it is theoretically your life and yet you have no agency in it. None of the events that we glean from the items we unpack are things that we experience or get to affect in any way. This placement of the player in the narrative can be compared to other media we’ve looked at this quarter. Choose Love, for instance, had a similar mechanic of having a main character outside of the player and yet sort of placing the player in the protagonist’s shoes. Choose Love, however, seems to have a pretty obvious reason for what is gained by adding interactive components to the narrative. The player gets to imagine themselves wooed by three attractive men and is satisfied that they get to watch a movie where what they want to happen happens. Other games we’ve played like Adventure, Zork, or even The Stanley Parable the interaction a player has with the game is what makes the story. The player is placed in a world with set elements but the way they go about playing the game determines what story is told. Unpacking is a different story. The interactive nature of the game does not allow the player to change the story and there is no satisfaction from a desired ending. Unpacking is interesting because while there is a cohesive narrative it is not really a story that is told to players like in other video games or interactive narratives. Moreover the story is secondary to the gameplay, you do not need to understand much to finish the game, and each player is likely to end with a slightly different version of what happened because there’s no official narrative. Unpacking is at its core a game, the point of the interaction is to have fun by placing things in the right spot. So the answer to why interaction is clear but then why narrative?
The easy and obvious answer is, In order for there to be a game, even the most open world exploration game, the designers must create a world for the player to be in. And creating a world requires creating a narrative. Unpacking was developed with a specific through line to create a consistent story but even if that hadn’t been the case the collection of objects would point to some sort of narrative. In our presentation we asked, “ Does the game have a real narrative/Is the game telling a story?” Considering the earlier explanation that games must have a narrative it seems like the obvious answer is yes, but the second part about telling a story is more complicated. Without any text or a clear official line it is difficult to really define what we get from Unpacking as storytelling. I think, though, that the choice to make specific items have meaningful placements, have certain years be highlighted, and keep some items throughout does mean the game is telling a story. Unpacking, at its core, is about evoking a certain feeling that’s generated when we go through old belongings. The only real places you can fail in the game are in service of developing that feeling and as a result the story. Just a few small choices take it from simply a game that has a needed narrative to an intentional work of storytelling. Winning Unpacking isn’t just about getting to the end and emptying every box but also learning something along the way about the person whose life we’re unpacking and as a result the human condition as a whole.
Overall, Unpacking stands out for an innovative approach to storytelling. The game is in some ways a mystery; the story can only be gleaned through investigation and deductive leaps and yet, it is not a complicated story or even a particularly exciting one. It is the way we get to interact with the story that is unique. Unpacking differs from other interactive narratives by not having the player in control of driving the story, only discovering it. Having the main goal of the gameplay to be non narrative based also made the small amount of story, and even agency, feel more like fun little surprises than an absence of needed information. The core of the game is the way it evokes feelings and the calm way that we go through makes the game and story enjoyable. The player does not feel stressed to uncover some hidden story but gets to slowly uncover fun (or sad) tidbits. The storytelling mode works because while the player is still interacting with what’s going on they are not actually stressed by needing to look for or drive a story. By separating the agency over the story and the interactive elements, Unpacking offers an approach to interactive narrative that feels stress free and yet fulfilling.
Intermittent Mechanism 