What do Jane Austen & Half Life2 have in common?

What does the Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice have on common with the seminal first person shooter video game Half Life 2…?

The answer to this seemingly abstract question may provide an answer to how to infuse narrative gaming with a deeper comprehension of story-telling techniques. What makes stories distinct from one another is their topics, settings and characters. Hence a period romance in Georgian England about a headstrong woman, and a SciFi alien invasion adventure in the future 21st century about a reluctant hero scientist, are indeed very different.

But what unites stories on common ground irrespective of their ‘What’ is their ‘How’; the narrative techniques of perspective and context. Much like the same building material can be used to make a Mac-mansion monstrosity in the suburbs or an architectural marvel, the key element is How it is built not What it is made of?

Thus we might look to the underlying narrative building materials of Pride and Predjudice and Half Life 2 and see something remarkably similar. Moreover, along the way we might also gain some insight into the intrinsic problem-solving process of story telling common to novels, tv series, movies and games.

Pride and Prejudice and Half Life 2 have the same conceptual and structural problem - they are both rooted in a discrete and singular point-of-view - what we can call restricted narration. Lizzy Bennet and Gordon Freeman are not just the protagonists of their respective stories but the viewers experience of the narrative  is undertaken strictly through their eyes. P+P and HL2 are both first-person with the viewers perception changing and evolving with the characters’. When Lizzie Bennet thinks Darcy to be a prick and Wickham to be a Gentleman we also feel that way - we know and see the world as Lizzy does. So when Lizzy comes to conclusion that Wickham is an arsehole and Darcy is actually a stud muffin, we too come around to this point of view. Jane Austen gives her readers no macro level insight - our experience of the storyworld is entirely subjective to Lizzie’s POV.

Half Life 2 is very much the same. HL2 was the first major first-person shooter game to dispense entirely with device of the cut-scene as a means to progress game story. HL2 starts immediately in first-person perspective and the player never leaves the first-person eyeballs of Gordon Freeman until the game ends. The player’s view of the Half Life storyworld is literally and conceptually that of Gordon Freeman. A surprise to Gordon is a surprise to the viewer, a revelation to Gordon is a revelation to the viewer. The player/viewer knows no more or less than Gordon Freeman at any given time in the story.

This technique of rooting the narrative experience exclusively to a singular character is a very particular authorial choice in storytelling. In making it the creators of these two narratives have shaped very specifically the kind of narrative experience the viewer/player will have and the particular mode of journey and character change that will be undertaken. And certainly it can be a very compelling way to tell a story - the character’s journey and change is directly synchronized to the viewers journey and change at a 1to1 level.

However, for both P+P and HL2 this forced first-person experience also presents narrative problems and challenges. With the player/viewer in a highly restricted position with no external narrative world from beyond the here and now immediacy of the protagonist, the story can quickly become choked and suffocated with simplicity, lack of diversity and banality. To give the narrative life it needs external stimulus.

Both Half life and Pride and Predjudice use the same techniques to bring external stimulus to the story without ever leaving the first-person view. In P+P Jane Austen uses letters, themselves in the first person, to deliver perspective and alternate viewpoints to the viewer’s Lizzie-centric experience. The viewer only knows what Lizzie knows and so, in a highly pragmatic fashion, these letters allow Lizzie and the viewer to know and be informed of things that Lizzie and the Viewer would otherwise would not be privy to.

Pride and Predjudice has no cut-scenes just as Half Life 2 has no cut-scenes; instead crucial story developments beyond their first-person are brought directly to attention through letters. In Half Life 2 the substitute for letters is the news broadcasts and telescreen rantings of Dr Breen. From the moment Gordon Freeman steps off the the train in City 17 he (and by proxy you as the player) are presented with information, perspective and context beyond the first-person by the the faces and voices projected from screens hanging high above on the city walls. Just as Jane Austen’s letters bring a 3rd-person perspective to a first-person experience, so to does the crucial and deft use of regular ‘broadcasts’ in half Life 2 ensure that the intimacy of the first-person protagonist journey isn’t constricted lifeless by a lack of external context and dramatic-action kick.

What this observation in a small way helps us (both as players and creators of games) is to understand that game narrative experiences are not Revolutionary. Games do not throw out the storytelling play-book. Game narrative is simply an evolutionary step in a long history of evolutionary steps of narrative evolution; from books and theatre, to radio, to cinema, to TV to online and games. Each one of these great narrative mediums thrives by standing on the shoulders of its forebears. gaming is and should be no different. Wether by design or intuitive accident the creators of Half Life 2 have understood something very important about restricted narration in storytelling and - the same problem shared by a novel written more than a hundred years previous. And by that understanding have been able to formulate a game-based and game-world consistent dramatic solution. 

If we want to understand how to tell new fresh stories in a new medium we would be well served to look back upon the long rich history of storytelling that has constantly adapted itself. The story-baby should not go out with the interactive bathwater…

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I examined some of the key perspective experience concepts embodied in Half Life 2 in an episode of my Game Probe video-essay web series. You can see all 7 eps in the Game Probe series examining games such Bioshock, Company of Heroes, Portal, Mirrors Edge and Thief.