Darkest Dungeon and Narrative Context

Darkest Dungeon is the best game I’ve played that doesn’t have a plot, and yet has a story. It’s a peculiar distinction to make, but it’s the only way I can think to describe how Darkest Dungeon’s narrative and themes are laced throughout every aspect of the game, without having a point A to point B plot.

Darkest Dungeon is layered in a gothic Lovecraftian aesthetic. You find yourself pitted against tentacled horrors and warped pigmen. The whole game has an oppressive feel, bearing down on you with inescapable hopelessness. It’s phenomenal. This is all communicated with an amazing mix of art and sound that comes together to create a vivid experience.

The final knot that hold the whole experience together, is the ancestor’s voice over.

Conflict and Tragedy

The ancestor’s voice over narrates the entire game, from combat, to the Hamlet (the game’s hub town), and all the little pieces of exposition we’re fed over the course of the game. It’s a low, pained tone that haunts us as we try and clean up the ancestor’s failings.

Darkest Dungeon is inextricably tied to the ancestor’s actions. We see the remnants of his dark rituals, grotesque experiments, and disregard for the townsfolk who were his charge. Each dungeon, each boss, and every broken thing about the Hamlet is the ancestor’s fault.

This is where conflict and tragedy intersect, rooted throughout the game’s design. Each boss is tied to the ancestor’s actions. When you enter a boss dungeon, the ancestor narrates a snippet of that boss’s history. They are always created by the ancestor. A problem that was the result of his greed. And you are there to clean up, throwing body after body at horrors to fix his mess.

In time, you will know the tragic extent of my failings...

—Ancestor

The ancestor starts in a position of power. A leader of vague title to the surrounding town. He’s wealthy and wants for nothing. But then his greed and selfish fascination with the Darkest Dungeon drives him to more extreme actions, until his end (this is all shown in the opening cutscene). Which is when the player, as the descendant, enters a derelict and broken Hamlet.

The ancestor starts as a powerful leader, but we enter after the tragedy, when he has already brought himself low and expired from this world. The ruins of the Hamlet, the dangers of the dungeons, are all that’s left of him. And it is all failure.

The minute to minute gameplay is laced with this subtext. Every raised undead and grotesquely summoned monster is reinforcing the ancestors actions. He may be gone, but his failings haunt us. The player is partaking in the tragedy, at the very tail end of it, by throwing heroes into the fray. And our frustration, either when a leveled up hero dies, or we run out of gold, its all part of the hopelessness that hangs over the Hamlet. All initiated by the ancestor. His actions still affecting us.

Plot vs Story

I wouldn’t say Darkest Dungeon has a plot. It may be possible to very loosely apply the boss encounters and build-up to the final dungeon on a plotline, but that feels like a stretch. Really, the game is about grinding out levels while partaking in the gothic fantasy atmosphere. But there is still a story.

The discussion of what plot versus story is can get convoluted, it depends on who you ask. In this context, I separate plot as being the story beats that make the backbone of a narrative. Hero leaves town, meets mentor, encounters villain, climbs Mt. Doom, etc. But lacks all the characterization, worldbuilding, and atmosphere that makes a story complete. The two are so intertwined that is makes sense to not break them apart outside of noodly conversation around narrative.

For games though, the way stories are presented can be very different than other media. Darkest Dungeon might not have the player following a clear route through a plotline, but it’s still enmeshed in story. The narrative permeates every aspect of gameplay. Heroes permadeath frustrates us, makes us angry or hopeless, even feeling like we wasted our time. The background sounds, especially when the torch is at 0%, evoke horrors just beyond our sight. And all of this, the reason we’re sending heroes to die in nightmare wrought landscapes, is because of the ancestor’s actions.

The game design is the narrative. Grinding levels is part of the conflict, a result of the ancestor’s tragedy. One the player strives to push against, despite the consequences of our predecessor’s actions constantly bearing down on us. Each dungeon run has narrative conflict rooted in its foundation, and supports the ancestor’s tragedy. The narrative and game design are so expertly interwoven that it creates an amazing experience. There’s no part of Darkest Dungeon that feels out of place.

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If you can’t tell, I’ve been playing a lot of Darkest Dungeon lately. I went through the same stages many players do, where at first I got incredibly frustrated, considered dropping it, but then ended up hooked. It’s a peculiar game that can shift from infuriating to comforting once you learn the tactics to deal with each enemy type. But I was particularly struck by how the narrative is tied to the gameplay, it really is phenomenal.

If you haven’t tried it, and you like the sound of a turn-based rogue-like, then I highly recommend Darkest Dungeon.

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Game Structure and Narrative

Recently I played Rise of the Tomb Raider, which was a lot of fun, but it got me thinking about narrative and game design. Namely, the idea that they don’t fit together well. A lot of games, Tomb Raider included, are broken into two parts: gameplay and story. They’re both pretty self-explanatory, but I want to talk a bit about how they interact.

The gameplay is the part where you run around and shoot the baddies, get the points/experience/whatever. Rinse and repeat. This is usually the part where the protagonist gets shot in the head and chomps on a turkey leg to regenerate health. The gameplay is always the meat of the experience. It’s what we spend the most time doing and why we play to begin with.

If the gameplay is the meat, then what’s the story? Usually, it’s the framing (or the skeleton). The story is an excuse to bust in the tower door and decapitate the wizard. It gives us a reason and context for what is going on, why it’s going on, and how we’re going to shoot it in the face. The story is told in three to five minute cutscenes that break up the action (unless it’s MGS). Again, the gameplay is the meat so we don’t spend a lot of time in the cutscenes.*

*I know there are certain games and genres that buck this trend. I joke about Metal Gear Solid, but JRPGs are story heavy as well, though if you consider their 100hr length versus how much of that is actually story it might be a rough equivalent to the format mentioned above.

The story will always be regulated to a second tier, and that is why is loses some of its importance, its ability to unfold and pull the player in. But, on the opposite end, I’d rather play a game with good gameplay and a bleh story than one with an amazing story but bleh gameplay. Bad gameplay is much harder to tolerate than a bad story.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a great game, with phenomenal gameplay and action sequences, but a bleh story. It’s only there to propel us on the adventure, and we never get to dig deep into the subjects presented. The game did its best to set up as much as it could, to try and communicate through subtext of conversation, but there’s only so much you can do in five minute intervals. It favoured the gameplay instead of the story. Even the cutscenes seemed eager to remind you of this. They had a tendency to end with gunfire, an explosion, or a threatening helicopter as if to say, “don’t worry, the gameplay is still here.”

No one takes notice of how messed up Lara’s become. She lights dudes on fire and stabs them in the head.

Gameplay and story have always been disconnected, and we don’t see it anymore. In gameplay mode the protagonist takes a shotgun blast to the face, ducks behind cover, and puts a band-aid on in. In story mode, a bullet to the gut means they’re dead. And we just accept it, because we all know the game wouldn’t be fun if the player died from one or two bullets. That’s why I dislike this structure. We’re used to it, but that doesn’t mean it’s good.

The Last of Us melds the two together well, but still falls into some of the same traps. Joel’s combat sequences are more than just gameplay mechanics, they build his character. Joel isn’t a good guy, he’s a broken, selfish person, and each time he murders an enemy we get the sense that it’s affecting (or reinforcing) his mental state. The gameplay shows us what he is willing to do for self-preservation, and this is then supported by the story in the cutscenes. When it comes to the game’s final decision, we’re more likely to believe that Joel would make the selfish decision over the altruistic one. In this way the gameplay informs the narrative.

Story as a bookend is frustrating. It’s clear that it’s only there to set up some context, to be an excuse for the adventure. I like the adventure, I want to be on the thrill ride too, but I want the story to keep up. To be more than just set up for the next action sequence.

Of course, this isn’t all games and there are some that do both phenomenally (Witcher 3 comes to mind). Do you guys have any examples of games that you think intertwine story and gameplay in effective ways?

This was originally posted on Medium.