The "Games telling Stories?" Blog: Part 1

For this series of questions, I've decided to make my favourite game of all time, Final Fantasy VIII :) as the basis for discussion...

1. Discuss the tension between agency and narrative structure within the game. Do you agree that narrative and interactivity can never co-exist? Why/why not?

In the game of FF8, its flow of narrative adopts a somewhat branching structure which allows the player to have a certain level of local agency. A classic example would be as the main protagonist Squall engages in conversation with other characters in the game, there are times when the player gets to select his response from a list of pre-determined dialogue that would make him appear as either enthusiatic, friendly or simply indifferent (for myself, I tend to choose the third direction because somehow I think this would suit his image better :p) which would in turn affect how others respond to him. At other times, the player is also given the choice to roam about various places on the world map, engage in certain activities that could result in a reward/ the "unlocking" of special weapons or Guardian Forces (GF) which could in turn aid/strengthe the combat tactics of Squall and his team or challenge other non-player characters (NPCs) to a card game of Triple Triad (something which I myself never venture into because I didn't want to be "demoted" for failing to focus on the mission given to me :p). However on the whole, these would not affect the overall flow of the narrative(except maybe for slowing it down?) nor its outcome (i.e. the lack of global agency) which takes us to the second question whether if narrative and interactivity could never co-exist...

Umm, actually... I think it's possible that both narrative and interactivity could co-exist or well, at some level anyway but that's only because I think the notion of "interactivity" is rather subjective, depending on different people. What is really "interactivity" per se? If I was to define "interactivity" as simply allowing the player to make a number of choices during gameplay, then I would say that FF8 is a highly-interactive game for it continually requires me to make a number of choices from on-the-spots decisions such as how to defeat certain characters and monsters (i.e. the various possible combinations of attack and defence) to more complex decisions like who should I (as Squall) choose to take along with me for a particular mission (especially when the game only allows an allocation of 3 characters to a mission) that could in turn affect whether the mission be a success or failure :p nevermind about whether my decisions would affect the ultimate ending/outcome of the game or not, so long as I get a strong sense in being able to move its narrative forward and if that's all that matters to me.