After having discussed narrative and space, I wanted to look at one of the games we played in the past and how it utilizes space in particular. Return of the Obra Dinn takes place in a relatively small space (about a three story wooden ship) but the length and depth of the narrative of the game appears to transcend it. I would like to call attention to how I believe the game appears to do this.
One mechanic of the game I noticed that causes the player to be more cognizant and attuned to the space of the ship is the white mist that leads the player from one dead body to the other. I believe the function of this was to force the player to look around, following the mist as it swirls in the air high and low, in order to develop a skill quite necessary to the game. This skill would be attention to detail, more specifically, looking in places that one would not normally look given a more rigid point of view. While playing I noticed that if you move on ahead and don’t follow the white mist, the game will pause until you return to follow it, which I found to further prove my hypothesis.
Another way in which the game transcends space is the usage of time. The game does not stay within the time period of when you first arrive on the ship and look around as a normal detective would. Instead the player is equipped with a compass that allows them to travel back in time and witness events that occurred when a dead body is presented. This allows for certain areas of space to occupy multiple narratives, seen as over time multiple things occur in any given space. Putting all these narrative together builds up a larger narrative and the dead bodies from each event lead you down a trail and through time, transcending space along with it.
What I won’t mention is the embedded narrative structure which I find to be quite obvious. Though I will mention this game does a great job of it as the player learns not from any direct narrative but from listening and witnesses events and conversations that occurred in the past and forcing the player to put them together. Whether they get each event’s details right or not is up to the player and putting it together is the task of the game and it’s embedded narrative.
Overall, I found Return of the Obra Dinn to serve as an ideal model for what a game can narratively with only a limited amount of space. It takes a constraint and uses it to its advantage.
