Both styles can be effective. The old Infocom style text adventures generally used second person narratives:
You are in a round room.
> PISS IN THE CORNER
Sorry, I don't understand "corner".You are in a round room.
And that generally worked. The style was very much based on the pencil-and-paper role-playing games of the time, but you can tell a tale and get the player to identify with the protagonist. Of course you probably need to be a bit careful what words you put in the player's mouth, (and what thoughts you put in the players head!). Even then, games like Curses and Trinity play from the perspective of someone who definitely is not the player, and they still work very well.
Japanese style ADV games on the other hand tend to use first person, at least from the examples I can bring to mind. The dialog tends to be stream of consciousness from the MQ.
This is a very strange room I find myself in. It appears to be completely round.I think this possibly works better for ADV text. Second person seems a bit like constantly telling the player what to do. It's all right for descriptive text, as in Zork you have to say what happens to the player as the result of his choices. But then you get a lot more choice per text passage in Zork than you do in any ADV game.
It's all a bit confusing to me. They told me to take a piss in the corner, but there are no corners to piss in.
Maybe I could do it in the middle and claim the piss drained there. Maybe that would work. Or maybe they would see through my ruse and be angry with me.
It is a conundrum.
Anyway, opinions anyone?
3 comments:
1st person pov usually used since it brings the player more involved with the plot and the decisions being made. The narrator and the reader are supposed to be a single entity.
2nd person pov is post-modern. Really untested and not widely used. It restricts the reader's imagination. But it has its plus points. Pen and paper games usually use 2nd person narratives. Restricting the reader's imagination makes sure that reader sees the same thing as the author and not come up with his own interpretation that is different from the writer.
1st person - tested and proven
2nd person - experimental but workable.
Thanks for the insightful analysis, That's not an angle I'd have considered.
I'm not sure I'd agree about second person being postmodern in a gaming context. In traditional literature, certainly. In gaming, I think the form is well enough established, if only by way of the pen-and-paper RPGs that paved the way.
But, yeah. On the whole I'm thinking first person is the way to go, Leave the player as much room for interpretation as possible, given the confines of the story.
1st person, the goal of most games is to get immersed, 1st person does that better than 2nd
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