Narrative is the storyline within a video game that allows the player to go through an experience that the games providing. Game designers implement a narrative within their games because without it, the game may be boring as there will not be any real objective to playing the game. Also a narrative helps players as it in placed within missions so that player knows what is going on and what they have to do in the mission or it can be placed before and after you complete a mission to allow the player to get ready and to immure them into the game. There are many advantages and disadvantages to narratives. An advantage to using a narrative within a game is that it provides the gamer with a story and purpose to what they are doing or about to do. Also using a narrative within the game allows the player to be more immersed and feel more part of the game. A disadvantage with narrative is that it can slow down the gamers progress which may get annoying for the gamer. There are two main types of narrative which are FMV (Full Motion Video) and Cut Scenes.
FMV
FMV stands for Full Motion Video, which is a high quality video footage put into a video game and are usually quite long. They are usually pre-recorded and are played when the player reaches a certain checkpoint so that they can see what their current mission is going to be. FMV also are not based within the actual gameplay so it is based outside it which allows the designers to make a high quality full motion animation. An example of a game that uses FMV is Call of Duty as they provide one long high quality video at the start of the campaign to provide information about what is going on to the player and also another shorter on at the end of each mission to show the players progress. There are advantages and disadvantages of using FMV. One advantage is that it prepares the player for the mission and allows the player to get into the game even before doing anything. However, a disadvantage is that some FMV are around 2-5 minutes long, which may annoy players especially when there are no skip buttons to skip the video. Also another disadvantages is that it takes a couple of minutes for the FMV video to load and start which again may annoy the player and make them less immersed with the game.
Cut scenes is a small clip that is coded and created to be rendered so that it can be put into the actual game engine. This allows the cut scenes to have a smooth transition and look more professional. Also this means that they can be used within a game and part of the story line. A game designer uses cut scenes as it can be smoothly transmit the movie scene along with the gameplay rather than waiting for a long video to load. An example of a game that uses cut scenes is Assassins Creed. Assassins Creed use the cut scenes may times but the main one was when the enemy was about to get assassinated. Cut scenes are preferred over FMV's because they don't take long to load so the player will not have to wait and ruin the experience and also it will not interfere with the gameplay.
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