Monday 20 March 2017

Entry 05: Ludo-narrative resonance/dissonance

Ludo-narrative resonance and dissonance refer to when a games gameplay mechanics can assist or conflict with story elements respectively. Both ludo-narrative resonance dissonance have an effect on the immersion of a game, generally the resonance brings you into a game and the dissonance drags you out.

Ludo-narrative resonance as mentioned above is when the mechanics of a game can assist the story. This aside from shooting the bad guys because the character doesn't like them, or anything else that is literally doing what the game is saying should happen, is generally considered the rarer of the two. SPOILER ALERT; As an example in The Last Of Us as the protagonist Joel you kill pretty much everyone who gets in your way and this is directly acknowledge by dialog, and all the melee combat is relentlessly brutal, all of that lends itself to Joel's survival of the fittest mentality and adds evidence to the idea that Joel may not quite be a hero in the story. A simpler less context heavy example is playing Trevor in GTA V, you go around stealing cars and killing everyone in sight, but Trevor is very clearly mentally unstable and its very believable for him to go out and do that, unlike CJ in San Andreas who is rebuilding Grove Street by decapitating and old lady then molotoving her body before parking you car on a prostitute and detonating it with plastic explosive. I wouldn't say that really adds to the story of GTA but it still technically comes under ludo-narrative resonance, but at least it doesn't detract from the story.

When mechanics of play are detrimental to the story it results in ludo-narrative dissonance. This is extremely common, as most games are games first and foremost with gameplay taking priority over story, at least during gameplay at least. There are examples of this all over the place, from average Joe mowing down hundreds upon hundreds of nameless thugs/terrorists/nazi's but the moment you hit a cutscene they have a mental breakdown after shooting one person, or nigh immortal supersoldiers for characters when they are supposedly human, or when they are actually supposed to be unstoppable supersoldiers they have some ridiculous one hit kill weakness (cough cough Halo). This all can bring you out of the game such as the moment you ponder how your heroic adventurer can slaughter hundreds of men or just plain do something ridiculous (you can grapple hook cops off the roof in Batman: Arkham Origins, try it's hilarious), or it can just piss you off, I have thrown a controller or two because some c*** stabbed me in the foot and killed me. Also a punch from, Mei a 5' possibly overweight or overdressed (heatstroke, come on people) scientist, and Soldier 76 a 6'1" super soldier smashing the butt of his rifle hurt the same amount, fuck off, thats about as believable as an 11 year old kid in Africa building a battle robot... wait a minute. Basically this shit just doesn't make sense, but that's okay, it doesn't always need to, unless maybe it's Metal Gear, which takes everything into account, but that still doesn't make sense anyway.

This topic is a bit more cut and dry than the others, it would probably be better if ludo-narrative resonance where the gameplay assists the story was more prominent, but we don't want everything to be pretentious crap where everything has to mean something profound. This may be a bachelor of arts but I ain't some nancy boy hipster prick who thinks I'm better than someone because I can make up some bullshit meaning for why Masterchief has to fight the covenant instead of hug it out, Vietnam's over they can all shut the fuck up now.

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