Resource Game Design - Ludo-Narrative Harmony

[Nakiya]

NTN 002

Hello everyone. Today i would like to talk about Ludonarrative Harmony in video games. Ludonarrative Harmony is what we describe as consistency in the different elements of a video game (Narrative, Music, Gamplay, Visuals etc…). When Ludonarrative Harmony is in play, all parts of the game should be working hand in hand to pointing the player towards a singular vision.

So why is this important? If you read my previous thread about the armature in story writing, I mentioned that its easier for readers to follow the story if you point them towards the armature. This is the same for video games too. If the different elements in video games are working against each other, it causes the player to feel whiplash. When this happens, players would view different elements of a game in isolation instead of seeing it as a coherent experience. In some cases, it would break the player expectation of what the game could do bringing it to a lesser experience. This is exactly the kind of thing we would want to avoid as much as possible. It is your job as a designer to create a coherent experience that is consistent throughout the entire game.

When the elements of a game are in conflict with each other, this is what we call Ludonarrative dissonance. a good example of this is in Red Dead Redemption 2.
In Red Dead Redemption 2, It features a wide open sandbox where players spend most of their time in. The design of this environment encourages the player to experiment and try to find different things in the sandbox. This gives the player an expectation that they should be trying to look for different solutions to approach a problem. This is fine in isolation but becomes a huge problem during story missions. The game locks you into a linear experience actively discouraging you from experimenting. It gives the player whiplash due to the dissonance lowering the experience overall. Its bad design.

How do we prevent this from happening? Developers can choose what they want to add to the game. A huge misconception is that by having more things in a game, it makes it better. The reality is that by introducing something into the game, It gets much difficult to hold the armature of the game. Every thing thats added also comes with trade offs. Developers should only be adding elements that elevates the armature of their game. Doing this it keeps the experience consistent and elevating the experience as a whole.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a good example that shows proper implementation of Ludonarrative Harmony in games. In the game The prince steals the dagger of time. This artifact gives player to use the main mechanic of the game which is using the sands of time as a fuel to go back in time by a few seconds to undo your mistakes. The narrative of the game also says the same thing. The prince used the dagger of time and stabs the hourglass unleashing the sands of time turning everyone into sand monsters. In order to progress the game, the player is required to kill every sand monster in the stage. The dagger of time that the Prince uses is also a plot device. The only way to truly kill a sand monster is to stab it with the dagger of time absorbing their sand essence. This supports the narrative of the as he is required to get every single grain of sand to turn back time to before he stabs the hourglass. By having the dagger of time being both a narrative device and a core mechanic of the game, It lets the player be immersed in the story and feel like theyre actively participating as events unfold.

All games with narratives should strive to be like this where there is consistency with gameplay and narrative. A skilled designer can design a mechanic that supports the story that theyre trying to tell. Inversely a skilled writer can take any mechanic and write a story that supports it. I hope this thread encourages people to start thinking about ludonarrative harmony in games.

 

[Forveleth]

I never thought about this consciously until I heard Arin from Game Grumps talk about it in a few videos. There have definitely been games where I found myself thinking "they really wanted this mechanic in the game " because it felt so out if place from everything else. But then I have played games where there is a very common mechanic that was seamlessly integrated. I can not think of specific examples atm but I have definitely noticed this.

 

[limenlux]

I was only vaguely familiar with this sort of concept in relation to tabletop games and their mechanics supporting the theme, which in turn facilitates an emergent narrative. Thinking about this within the context of my favorite video games will be entertaining. Thank you for bringing up such an interesting topic.

 

[Set Real Goul]

This is a solid post

When the elements of a game are in conflict with each other, this is what we call Ludonarrative dissonance. a good example of this is in Red Dead Redemption 2.
In Red Dead Redemption 2, It features a wide open sandbox where players spend most of their time in. The design of this environment encourages the player to experiment and try to find different things in the sandbox. This gives the player an expectation that they should be trying to look for different solutions to approach a problem. This is fine in isolation but becomes a huge problem during story missions. The game locks you into a linear experience actively discouraging you from experimenting. It gives the player whiplash due to the dissonance lowering the experience overall. Its bad design.

I think these are more fitting examples of ludonarrative dissonance. The RDR2 example feels a bit too abstract to me.

There's Thief 2014, for example.Throughout the entire game, the protagonist is constantly described as a legendary thief. And gameplay-wise, he can actually be pretty good at it. But literally in almost every mission, the protagonist somehow manages to screw things up in the cutscenes or circumstances will be such that he is seen and the alarm is raised and... raise the alarm, even in the tutorial mission, which is basically the prologue to the story.

The original NG3 is another good example. The protagonist is a ninja who absolutely tears through his enemies in gameplay, but in the story and cutscenes, the game tries to push a pacifist message and portray him as some kind of maniac.
For example, at the beginning of the game, a terrorist organization attacks London and the protagonist kills them. But then suddenly there's a cutscene where he's portrayed as being incredibly evil for killing these enemies. Like, dude, this is literally a fucking hack-and-slash game.

I hope I added some better examples.