Blaphemous 2: Game Narrative is Constructed with Player Interaction via Visual and Text Design

Introduction

When it comes to narrative, it is a common belief that game as a playable form of movies and novels, that game, movie as well as any media share the same structure for narratives, that are stories surrounding humans or anthropomorphic items, and player being similar to other audience that plays the role of observer and experience the stories via narratives (Juul ,2001). However, as games enter the view of scholars and are being studied, ideas emerged regarding narratives for games, suggesting that game narratives are in fact, independent or at least have distinct features from other narratives. Including the player is not simply an observer but a co-creator of the stories as the narrative story includes the actions done by the protagonist, which are more or less controlled by the player as a form of agency. According to Juul’s Star War game example, the player has the power to change the designer’s narrative set for a movie with specific characters and events, simply by continuing playing or losing the game.

Juul’s paper brings out my topic of game narrative is a unique type of narrative constructed by both the game designer and the player trying to interact with the game world. Here I need to bring up another concept called “paratext”, referred to as text and illustrations surrounding the main narrative and extend it(Genette, 1997), paratext are often implemented into games as items including descriptions or writings from characters(Banfi, 2022), at a point that for games with large amount of item descriptions, it is possible for paratext to contribute almost as much as the main plot or even more (Svelch, 2013). On the other hand, Newman suggests that rather than fully rely on the primary-playing system, the visual design and character interactions that make the player immerse into the game environment is what makes a game interesting (Newman, 2002). Therefore paratext consists of visual elements and sub plot interaction serve a role of showing the game world to the player, that it extends from the main plot and completes the narrative.

Meanwhile Martin’s paper regarding monsters in video games suggest that the role of monsters in games can either be objects that existed to be overcome by the protagonist, independently acting in the background or have friendly interactions with the player through different types of narratives (Martin, 2023). Implying that if the narrative can be changed to an extent via player interaction, then the interaction towards monsters in the story can also shift throughout the game.

For games like the Blasphemous series, paratext serves an important role in the narrative as it helps the player understand the story via item interactions, while the primary-playing tells the narrative through mandatory cutscenes. Here I will illustrate with the game Blasphemous 2 on how games use visual design to encourage the player to interact with the game world and immerse into the narrative in three aspects.

The first aspect is about the genre and the magic circle of the game. Blasphemous 2 as a soul-like game it has a primary playing system of defeating monsters and exploring the map for storylines to move on to the next area. In other words, the playing system encourages first time players to focus on mastering the skills to defeat the monsters rather than immersing in the plot events in the story, on the other hand, it also gives the player more opportunities to interact with the visual elements in the game while exploring the map. Therefore, paratext which mostly appear as items, visual elements and non mandatory character dialogues will serve a bigger role in explaining the narrative to the player(S. E. Jones, 2008). Meanwhile the player can not only decide whether to interact with the items, but also the order to interactions, when I played the game for the first time, I first got the in front of a gate that I could not pass and I started to go back in the map to look for any cues, which makes me inspected the area, and talked to the characters in the villages on my way to the unexplored areas, that was where the protagonist walked into houses of the people, when I tried to start a conversation with the praying people, I saw it in the subtitle that they were worshipping on the “miracles” which grant desires by turning human into monsters. These houses mostly do not directly contain any keys to unlock the new areas immediately but power up items or clues on where to find the key, yet they serve the purpose of telling the player the story settings on where the monsters fought in the story are from. This is a case of paratext triggered by player interactions to serve narrative, as the village houses extend from the main plot and playing system, and gives clues to push the main plot while contributing to the narrative by blending the story settings into conversations with the minor characters the player interacted with.

Such paratext helps the player immerse into the magic circle, in this case the magic circle refers to the rules and norms constructed by the game world and applied in the game world only. For the Blasphemous series, there exists the concept of “miracle” that at first seemed to appear randomly on people with strong will and turns them into monsters, and that “miracles” are seen by all characters including the protagonist as a way to be chosen by the god, and a lot of people suffered deliberately to have “miracles” cast on them. In this case the magic circle is constructed with the help of paratext in item descriptions, in the game the items obtained can be exchanged with minor characters for skill points, power upside or even plot relevant keys. The items usually have a short description about how it was used, blessed or cursed when the player selects them in the inventory. One example is the hammer of the blind artist which looks like an ordinary hammer for crafting, yet in the description it was said that the hammer was used by the artist to punish himself. These item descriptions constantly remind the player of the self harming norms in the game world even when they decide to take a pause at the main progress and tidy their inventory. Therefore helping the player to immerse into the world constructed by the narrative with both the main plot and the paratext hidden in details that got discovered by the player through interactions.

The second aspect on how paratext with interaction can contribute to narrative is the agency of the player. Player having agency in controlling events happening in the game is one of the major differences between game and movie narratives, which consist of one set of preset plot, order and characters with specific personalities. As mentioned in the genre aspect, in Blasphemous 2 the player can decide whether and when to interact with minor characters across the map to see if they can give clues on unlocking the next area. Other than my experience as a first time player exploring the main plot then encountering minor characters, it is possible for the player develop the side plot and interact with the characters first, by the time the player fights the mini boss monster to unlock the new area, they already have an idea of how the monster was once human and a general idea of its backstory, despite the main plot then subplot player also encountered the same pieces of information, due to the late knowledge of the monster’s backstory, they tend to be less immersed in the sad tones across the village and might feel less empathetic towards the mini boss monster. In this case the player can use the agency of interactions to decide on the order and pace each piece of information is presented and experience the story differently, which cannot be achieved by movie and novel’s pre-ordered narratives.

Another example of player agency is mainly acted on the character construction part of the narrative, that the player do not simply observe but also contribute to the character development of the protagonist, and so the interaction and the plot events together form a complete narrative. When it comes to enemy encounter in the Blasphemous series, “execution” is a feature that can be carried out on non boss enemies, when the enemy health gets lowered enough there is a chance to collapse where the player can kill it in one hit and earn extra points, if the player waited for a few seconds the monster will stand up and continue fighting. Before playing the game I heard that the protagonist was an executioner for the church that was brought back to life by the miracle and determined to go against the church and the miracle sending god, and nothing more about him. When I did my first run on the game, I ignored the execution option and kept attacking, but as the second monster collapsed, I learned to use the feature which in return, gave me some extra points and saved me half of the fighting. On the third execution opportunity, I found myself beginning to see it as a mercy kill for people who were turned into monsters after learning more about the story settings on the way. This is an evidence of changing narrative throughout my gameplay, rather than just the main plot of the protagonist fighting his way to the god, the “mercy kill” option combined with the character interaction paratext give out an implicit meaning to the protagonist’s never-stated objective, that going against the miracles is to end the suffering to the people, this is a narrative constructed in run time by how I control the character in the game, which is different to the preset narratives in movies with specific character personality and objectives.

Lastly, the third aspect on how player interactions shape game narrative are the cultural and emotional factors given by the game’s visual design, that the narrative on the game environment is only completed when the player makes sense with it, which the player gets the cues from interacting with the existing game environment including buildings, areas and characters.

For the cultural factor, it comes down to the expectation and projection the player made to the game world. The game environment of Blasphemous 2, excluding the monsters wandering around, is very similar to Europe in the middle ages. With this kind of historical context, cases such as self-harm in the name of atonement or other religious reasons as well as worshipping items and people that witnessed godsent miracles are often heard of. Therefore the game environment design helps the player to project their expectation of middle age Europeans onto the people in the game, thus making sense of the narrative by filling up the gaps with the pattern of middle age Europeans and immersing in the filled game environment when listening to the characters during interactions. While how the characters are faithful towards the miracle and whoever turned into monsters by it while interacting with the player, is matching the part made in the player’s mind about middle age Europeans and therefore cause the immersion to be even stronger, at this point the narrative about character personality and behaviour is completed by the player’s expectation projection, which is triggered through interacting with the faithful people in the game.

For the emotional factors, there are elements that are different from a historically accurate middle age European city that encourage the player to interact under a generally sad emotion. In the game the illustrations are using a grey toned pixel art to mimic oil paintings as shown below, and many areas in the maps take place in ruins, this type of visual design can add a feeling of desolate throughout the gameplay. In addition, the non-enemy characters in the story are always staying in one location, yet slowly moving their body in a cycle, usually too busy praying, worshipping or simply breathing, they never change their position to look the protagonist in the eyes even when the player is interacting with them. The character movement also contributes to the quiet yet sorrowful environment in the game, giving the player a sense that the characters are too weak or too focused to talk to the protagonist. As mentioned above that paratext also includes illustrations that extend from the main plot, therefore the paratext of character motions upon player interaction help shape the setting that people in the game are suffering yet loyal and faithful towards the miracles, thus completing the narrative.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the soul-like genre of Blasphemous 2 caused it to be more relying on paratext such as trading, talking or other forms of interactions with minor characters, visual elements of the map and characters as well as item descriptions to fill up the empty space in the game narrative, and paratext only serve the role of filling the narrative through player interactions when the player explore the game environment. Therefore by having the player interacting in the game environment, they can get more context from the paratext to complete the game narrative. In addition, the player has the agency to control the protagonist to take different strategies toward different characters and shape the protagonist’s personality. Which makes game narrative different from movie narrative, that movie narrative requires specific characters, personalities, events and order for a story yet game narrative allows the player to fill in the gap with minor differences following a main plot by interacting with the game environment.

Reference:

1. Ryan Banfi, Ellie’s Journal: Para-Narratives in The Last of Us Part II, the international journal of computer game research, vol 22, issue 3, 2022, ISSN:1604–7982

https://gamestudies.org/2203/articles/banfi

2. Jesper Juul, Games Telling stories? A brief note on games and narratives, the international journal of computer game research, vol 1, issue 1, 2001

https://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/

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https://gamestudies.org/2303/articles/martin_review_svelch

4. James Newman, The Myth of the Ergodic Videogame : Some thoughts on player-character relationships in videogames, the international journal of computer game research, vol 2, issue 1, 2002

https://www.gamestudies.org/0102/newman/

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https://gamestudies.org/1314/articles/jan_svelch