Ludonarrative dissonance
The ludonarrative dissonance in game design describes the contradiction in terms of content between the game mechanics and the accompanying narrative.
An often-cited example of this is the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider , in the cutscenes of which a young, vulnerable and insecure protagonist is portrayed who, visibly shocked, has to kill a wild animal for the first time. Due to the gameplay of an action adventure game , a little later it becomes a killing machine that deliberately kills hundreds of opponents, in places cruelly and above all narrative unreflected. The playful requirement for progress in the game is in extreme contrast to the staging provided by the game authors, in this case the characterization of the main character. It is similar in the role-playing game Fallout 4 , which wants to give the impression in its narrative that the character is under a certain time pressure in search of her kidnapped son. In fact, the game mechanics design of the game tempts to interrupt the search in favor of other possibilities of activity, since the player does not suffer from this narrative, even if he interrupts the search for months.
The term became more widespread from 2007 after Clint Hocking , creative director of the open-world shooter Far Cry 2 , used this term in a critical blog post about the game BioShock . In the game Uncharted 4: A Thief's End , the developers deal with it self-deprecatingly and award the player the trophy "ludonarrative dissonance" after killing 1000 opponents.
Web links
- Clint Hocking: Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock. In: Personal blog. October 7, 2007, accessed July 18, 2019 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sebastian Bauer, Dominik Ehrenberg: My Scrum is Broken # 73: Ludonarrative Dissonance. In: heise developer . Retrieved September 16, 2019 .
- ↑ Self-referentiality and crossing borders - Walk the Line. In: Gain Magazine. October 5, 2018, accessed on July 18, 2019 (German).
- ↑ Sascha Kretzschmar: GUEST PLAYERS: The effect of ludo-narrative dissonance
- ↑ Dominic Stetschnig: These two trophies in Uncharted 4 are at least as funny as they are awesome