There’s a splendid moment near the beginning of BioShock Infinite. Soon after I click “Play Game” in the opening menu, my character is in a temple for an unknown religion. It’s gorgeously rendered, with torch-lit marble statues and hymns being sung. Cloaked worshipers walk in line, as if hypnotized, through streams of water running across the temple’s floors. It’s a beautiful place, but mysterious—and I want to see more. Yet, I can do it at my own pace, exploring the scene for as long as I want.
This, I think, is something only video games can do.
BioShock Infinite, developed by Irrational Games and released in 2013 by 2K, is far from perfect. Its story soon becomes muddled as the game descends into repetitive combat against wave after wave of robots and racist gunmen. Still, with sales of more than four million copies, its audience surpasses that of any 2013 novel. More to the literary point, many major video-game titles now feature fully developed fictional worlds with characters brought to life by voice actors.
If players of the BioShock games (Infinite is the third in the series) are lured by the graphics and action, they’re also hooked by the question posed by any good tale: What happens next? But there’s another twist as well: What should I do next? BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter, meaning the world is shown from the player’s perspective, as if it’s through his or her eyes. You don’t control a character on the screen—you are the character.
A decade ago, film critic Roger Ebert famously said this interactive aspect of games prevented them from being art. Indeed, first-person shooters that constantly put you in the line of fire may seem at odds with losing yourself in a novel. But in surprising ways, even violent games like BioShock Infinite or Halo allow immersion in the story much as page-turning thrillers or romance novels do.
In 2014, the best narrative games challenge Ebert’s claim that “serious film and literature” demand “authorial control.” Narrative video games run the gamut from first-person shooters to role-playing games that involve more than blasting another alien to very un-video-game-like stories such as Gone Home. Just as novels were once a new a form of storytelling that included a character’s inner life, narrative games have transformed author-controlled plots with player interaction.
