Supervised by Professor Hanil Kim
The game narrative completed with the user's participation leads the user into the world of the game through emotional enjoyment. Therefore, a game narrative that gives a sense of interest and immersion has a great influence on its success.
The narrative is essential in all games, but an adventure game genre is a game that plays the narrative itself, and the narrative is more important than anything else. The narrative consists of dramatic events and plots. Dramatic events are the motifs, the minor narrative elements that become the core of the narrative, and plots are linked to the fabrication of events. This study
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examines the narrative and motifs of adventure games to identify their char-acteristics and explore ways to use them for more diverse narrative expe-riences and active users' participation. The user's participation in the adven-ture game was focused mainly on narrative and action, and each narrative and motif were considered.
Objective criteria are needed to analyze and compare game narratives and motifs with different characteristics. In this paper, ' The Narrative-Motif Structure' was used, which was researched and developed by the Korea Cre-ative Content Agency's 'Film and Animation Storytelling Support Tool De-velopment Project'121). 'The Narrative-Motif Structure' consists of a layered narrative creative model that encompasses motifs. Regarding plots, the Set-ting Motif, the motif of the situation and event in which the story begins, the Driving Motif, the unfolding aspect's motif, and the Episode Type that creates specific content, and A Pattern of Four Endings. These elements are com-prehensively connected to complete the finalized narrative by plotting the Hero’s Journey.
In this paper, first, the utility of the 'The Narrative-Motif Structure' based on movies was identified. The narrative experience of an adventure game arises through interaction and rewriting. Interaction is about making a difference through action, and rewriting is about combining story elements through choice and exploration. The medium of interaction and rewriting is a quest and functions as a motif in the game. The quest's narrative meaning is created with scenes that the user creates every moment, and the quests are connected to each other to complete the narrative experience. This process
121) Ewha Women's University, 'Film and Animation Storytelling Support Tool Development Project Report', Korea Creative Content Agency, 2013
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creates a cinematic narrative and experience of the game in line with the motif combination method and plot connection structure of 'The Narrative-Motif Structure'.
『The Walking Dead』 was selected as an epic-oriented case, and『Rise of the Tomb Raider』 was selected as an action-oriented case. 『The Walking Dead』has a rewrite-oriented user participation method that required to di-rectly intervene in the story element, and『Rise of the Tomb Raider』has a method of solving a narrative set by interaction-oriented user participation.
Therefore, while『The Walking Dead』becomes a narrative that experiences various changes,『Rise of the Tomb Raider』shows the characteristic of pur-suing an experience focused on a single narrative. Furthermore, they all em-phasize catharsis using tragic ending among the patterns of ending.
In the aspect through the motif and episode specification of the 'The Narrative-Motif Structure', it can be seen that the combination of the Setting Motif and the Driving Motif is repeated. The motif combination of step-by-step narratives becomes material for creating motifs of the entire narrative, creating a unique narrative form of adventure games that contain stories in the story.
The step-by-step narrative of 『The Walking Dead』is filled with com-plex incidents and conflicts created by various Setting Motif. The whole nar-rative depicts the journey and trials for the purpose with a consistent Driving Motif. The step-by-step narrative of『Rise of the Tomb Raider』centers on Setting Motif, which puts the main character in trouble and makes him strug-gle. In contrast, the entire narrative uses Driving Motif, which has dramatic changes made by colleagues and antagonists. These features can be seen as
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a result of creation appropriate for the way users participate, but biased and iterative motifs lead to narrative imbalances.
For various narrative experiences and active user participation, it is nec-essary to develop a motif to resolve this imbalance and expand emotional enjoyment. To explore how to use narratives and motifs for this purpose, it is reasonable that the entire narrative follows the Hero's Journey when ex-ploring using 'The Narrative-Motif Structure'. Hero's Journey is a prototype of a linear plot used by various narratives for a long time. It is an effective structure for creating character composition and story stages suitable for adventure games. Furthermore, the Episode Type, which is the content of each stage of the Hero's Journey, can guide quest design. Regarding the motif, it is necessary to create a differentiated narrative experience by reviewing the specifications of 'The Narrative-Motif Structure', selecting a motif that can be sufficiently used in the adventure narrative of an adventure game, and developing it as a story element.
This study aims to improve understanding of the narrative and motif of adventure games through 'The Narrative-Motif Structure' and to confirm the utility of 'The Narrative-Motif Structure' utility as an analysis model.
Besides, it was possible to confirm the morphological characteristics of the adventure game narrative, the plot and the structure of the motif, and the specification of the motif that needs to be developed was extracted and or-ganized from 'The Narrative-Motif Structure'. These findings could be help-ful in comparative studies of game narratives and creating a successhelp-ful game narrative.
There is a lack of research due to not being able to deal with sufficient