Unreliable Narrator

Exploring stories in games and the art of telling tales

- SAM BARLOW

Videogame awards season is here – the time of year when I hunker down and play through the year’s big games in a marathon crush for various jury duties. For a few weeks I live like a game reviewer, overwhelmed by how damn long games are. Flashback to the year when a fellow juror told me: “You really need to play at least 70 hours of this game to understand why its narrative is so special!” Normally this makes me grumpy towards bloated triple-A blockbusters and my heart soars when I hit a short and unique game. However, this year the triple-A blockbusters are pandemically thin on the ground and so I am left to get grumpy at the short and unique games. This is not the kind of behaviour I really want to boast about in public. But for now let me (half-heartedly) grumble about indie storytelling as I digest my thoughts on the recent Unpacking.