WEEK 6 Game Analysis

Could your game have developed its narrative and told the same or a similar story without any of the characters?
This week I played the puzzle platformer called Fez (2012). I argue that the game could have developed it's narrative and be told similarly if the characters were removed from the game. The term 'characters' tend to refer to a person or something that has humanoid tendencies. If a character in game were to be replaced by something that is lifeless like a pencil, it is still possible for the narrative to play out.

As long as the player has a sort of avatar to control then , I feel, that the game and narrative will still work. "The avatar is, in this most basic sense, the user’s representative in interactive digital space..." (Jessica Aldred, 2013). It wouldn't necessarily have to be 'who will the player control?' , it could be 'what will the player control?' If Gomez was replaced by a shape like a sphere, that sphere would still have the mission to save the world with the narrative being unchanged. Gomez is a bunch of squares joined together to form the shape of a person, so transforming him into a simple square could still do the job of saving the world. A character named Dot is a guide for Fez and tells him the means of the 3D world. Dot is represented as a floating 3-Dimensional shape and could be removed by acting as a narrator of some sort.

The playable character Gomez is important as he was chosen by Geezer (old man) before him who also wears a Fez hat. It's as if whoever wears the Fez hat, can see the world as 3D and save the world from being destroyed. If these important characters were removed and replaced by something more complex or even more simplistic like a shape then it is possible for the narrative to develop. This is why I argue that the characters could be removed or even replaced as the narrative should still be able to play out.