Trigger Happy
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discontinuous break between gameplaying, which still
has no story to speak of, and watching, which bears all
the narrative load. In general the player runs around
fighting, solving puzzles and exploring new areas, and
once a certain amount of gameplay is completed, he is
rewarded with a narrative sequence that is set in stone
by the designer. This alternation of cut-scenes and
playable action delivers a very traditional kind of
storytelling yoked rather arbitrarily to essential
videogame challenges of dexterity and spatial thought.
Why “arbitrarily?” Well, it is as if you were reading
a novel and forced by some jocund imp at the end of
each chapter to win a game of table tennis before being
allowed to get back to the story. Actually, with some
games it’s worse than that: it’s the other way around.
You really want a good, exciting game of Ping-Pong,
but you have to read a chapter of some crashingly dull
science-fantasy blockbuster every time you win a game.
Where’s the fun in that?
How many roads must a man walk down . . .
Several videogames, however, are a little more
sophisticated (in a purely narrative sense), in that they
decide which FMV sequences to play at any particular
time according to what the player has done so far. This
