The Garden of Forking Paths

The best fiction creates not just a plot and characters, but also the sense of a virtual world for readers to inhabit. Moreover, the web, unlike the codex (or indeed audio and video), is not an intrisically linear medium. Does that mean works of phiction should allow readers to exert control over the narrative?

Some traditional novels have experimented with structures such as alternative endings and parallel storylines, occasionally to good effect (e.g., The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles) but more often not (e.g., An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears). An interesting online example is The (Former) General In His LabyrinthΦ by Mohsin Hamid, a Booker-shortlisted author. This is part of the experimental We Tell Stories website from Penguin. The branching, converging and figure-of-eight narrative structures are technically very well implemented, but ultimately unstatisfying.

There are many other examples, from the surreal but engaging collection at Dreaming MethodsΦ to the rather dry StorytronΦ, with its multi-choice options and old-fashioned computer-game feel. But however presented, most choose-your-own-adventure-style stories are unfulfilling – except perhaps to those, like my younger self, with a borderline obsessive-compulsive desire to catalogue every possible plot configuration and ending.

The main problem, as I see it, is that the choices must either be an illusion (i.e., the narrative arc will be essentially the same whatever decisions are made), in which case the reader is being duped for no purpose, or they are real (with genuine consequences for experiences and eventual outcomes), in which case they might be missing the most satisfying elements of the story. The latter is rather like being forced to wander lost around an unfamiliar town when you thought you'd paid for a guided tour by a knowledgeable local.

A possible exception is Chris Tolworthy's intriguing project, Enter The StoryΦ, a multi-year effort to adapt great literature (and some non-fiction) to a game format, starting with Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.

Photo: Chris Tolworthy

With his spare line drawings and focus on the characters and plot, it seems to me as if Chris just might have hit on a formula that will work.

So-called 'interactive fiction'Φ – in which readers (or players) can determine their own actions by typing commands – takes an even more extreme approach to trying to make fiction like real life. But despite the name, these are usually considered games, not stories, and from the very earliest, like AdventureΦ and ZorkΦ, to more recent classics, like RivenΦ and Hotel Dusk: Room 215Φ, they focus on puzzle-solving rather than plot. Yes, elaborate backstories are often used to give them colour, but they are still no more than backstories. This was the case even for the computer-game version of our old friend, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyΦ.

Image: Wikipedia

FaçadeΦ is an artificial-intelligence-based interactive story, and an award-winning attempt to create narrative and dialogue through user-controlled game play. But I'm afraid that even this left me cold. Like a clunky pair of 3D glasses, the interaction creates a barrier to the story rather than drawing the reader inside.

To my mind, interactive fiction is better used as an elaboration or diversion than for providing the overall framework for a plot. One way is have games embedded in, or associated with, the story – similar to the way in which Chain FactorΦ and Drop7Φ (best described as the 'Tetris meets Sudoku') were created to accompany the mathematical detective TV series, Numb3rsΦ. Another interesting project in this regard is SacrygirlΦ, an online game for children by book illustrator Nathan Jurevicius.

Of course, now that we're reading on mobile computers, a close integration of text and gaming action is eminently possible. Among other things, such hybrid approaches might enable books to benefit from the moreishness of games, which usually provide increasing engagement and satisfaction the more times they are played (unlike all but a miniscule fraction of novels).

The thought of mixing literature with video games – the sacred with the profane – will strike some as sacreligious. It is true that novels can achieve some things that games cannot – the first-person perspective in most games, for example, makes impossible the 'free indirect' point of view used in much fiction. But in general such prejudice is based on the wholly misguided notion that games are intrinsically low-brow. Of course most of them are, but then so is most fiction. And some computer games have elevated the concept of interactive storytelling to art.

What? Am I really trying to convince you that bloodthirsty and degrading offerings like Grand Theft Auto IVΦ are works with genuine artistic merit? Well, yes. Consider the following review of that very game by Texas-based writer Philip LoboΦ:

"GTA IV, while retaining the structure and gameplay that typifies the entire franchise, is different in that plot plays a much more prominent role, and this difference marks it as artistically superior.

Though interestingly – and in contrast to the never-ending paths offered by many of the games described above – GTA IV really only offers the player two plot choices:

"Niko’s final choice is between embracing the new or preserving the old, two mutually exclusive and equally tragic options."

Image: Open Letters

"The final decision of the game underlines [an] intractable tension. Niko must choose to break his vow never to trust Dimitri again, to hang up his vendetta, and make a large sum of money, or to use his knowledge of Dimitri’s location to hunt his enemy down and avenge his treachery. The choice is, in fact, depicted as such: money or revenge. There could not be a more bald-faced opposition between the Old and New Worlds. This choice alone would be interesting, but GTA IV does not stop there. The consequences of the decision further enrich the game’s exploration. If Niko decides to embrace the Old World code of honor and revenge, his love interest, Kate McReary, is gunned down at Roman’s wedding. If Niko turns his back on vengeance and adopts New World capitalism, Roman is killed instead. Kate, as Niko’s future for a new life, is the cost of holding on to his old values, while Roman, Niko’s beloved family and best living link to his old life, is the price paid for assuming the new mode. There is no middle path, no “best of both worlds.” There is the choice of letting either the future die, or the past."

And then the dénouement:

"In the very end, Niko stands over the broken body of his last enemy, a different foe depending on the choice he has made and the loved one for whom he takes his last revenge. One of his companions tells him, 'You’ve won!', and in game terms he is not incorrect: the end of the plot means the final challenge has been met and the story is over. But the hollowness of these words removes any feeling besides (perhaps) grim satisfaction. No matter how Niko has won, he has lost, and if you wait, as I did, for the credits to finish rolling and the screen to go black, you hear Niko speak from the darkness: 'So this is what the dream is like. This is the victory we longed for.'

"And then the screen glows, and we see Niko once more. His phone rings. He answers it. His surviving loved one offers condolences. The player is free to play on, and Niko is forced to live on after the narrative ceases, to live after the victory he longed for. The game is over. The game continues."

Who ever would have thought it: a blood-and-guts, first-person-shooter game that in some regards displays more restraint and introspection than most of what you can find in an airport bookshop.

And it is not alone. Here are the views of journalist and game-reviewer Chris SuellentropΦ on the PlayStation 3 game, FlowerΦ, a consumate work of art that involves the user controlling (in a fashion) a swam of flower petals. In this case the game virtually dispenses with plot and choice altogether:

"There is a wrongheaded assumption among many game players that choice is the sine qua non of game-play. Flower rebuts that notion, creating a sense of freedom within a linear structure. There's very little choice and almost no story, no crafting of a character and no choosing of your own adventure.

"In Flower, the players don't choose the game's path or insert themselves into the story. This isn't a game that's willing to relinquish control to the all-important you. Flower demands that you relinquish control to the game and its designers, and it's all the better for asking its players to surrender themselves to it."

Flower is described by its publisher as "the video game version of a poem". To see what she means, turn the page to see a trailer. Yes, it's a touch too saccharine, but I find it hard to escape the conclusion that the world of computer games has already trounced the world of literature when it comes to bold artistry, creativity and imagination...