Introduction

This blog centres around the idea of 'kinetic frames' as a major aesthetic element prevalent in a certain game design tradition. In my posts I will be looking at a number of video games which have sought to find ways of  framing a cohesive digital world by using extensive scripted, cinematic-style cutscenes.

While critics have mostly seen the potential of the videogame medium in telling narratives based on the possibility of creating interactive worlds, many released games do not aim toward this goal as the ideal: rather, they craft meticulously detailed (and fundamentally static) stories within explorable worlds, in which the player is only one element. Games like these use their authored narratives to contextualize and provide momentum to player-input and do not feel the need to transform the player into a storyteller. Instead, the digital universe is slowly revealed to the audience as a response and a reward to input.

With this in mind I will examine a set of specific games, all released on the Sony PlayStation 2 console between 1999 and 2004.  My analysis will be divided into eight to nine blog posts in which the importance of non-interactivity and its role in the aesthetic identity of these games will be examined. I will be arguing that the need of combining notions of authorship with interactivity does not apply to all video games. Instead, another kind of game can exist, and has existed, in which the two seemingly contradictory elements easily exist simultaneously.

I will be discussing a wide range of games from a variety of genres, ranging from RPG to survival horror to stealth-action. Games such as Final Fantasy X (Squaresoft, 2002),  Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (Konami, 2001) and Resident Evil 4 (CAPCOM, 2004) and others will be included based on their implementation of a strong non-interactive narrative or story thread which informs the gameplay and the world in which the player operates. Each exemplifies a particular variation in tone, style, genre and content, but in all of them the story is scripted and included in the digital experience as a major part of the game.

By looking at each of these games on their own and in relation to each other I will aim at identifying how such seemingly disparate examples can be subtended by their common inclusion and adaptation of kinetic frames. My writing will be both close analytical and comparative in nature, aiming to bring to bear techniques of film and literary criticism to digital narratives which seem to encourage analysis and interpretation.