All Video Game Characters Have Amnesia

👋 I like to answer questions from folks about writing, narrative, and game design. Reply to this email or hit the comment button at the bottom of the article and ask me anything.

Well, maybe be not anything. Don’t ask about what happened at the Simmons residence on January 24th at 1:10 am. I know nothing about that murder – and I never will!

Anyway, here’s a really good question I got a while ago…

“What story trope do you think lends itself best to games? And which is the trickiest to pull off?” –Michael

I think it’s the same answer for both, Michael!

The first game I got a Narrative Director credit on is called Fallen Legion Revenants, an action RPG set in a plague-ridden steampunk kind of world. This was a few years before the real world became plague-ridden, too. When I was hired onto the project, the game’s creative director, Spencer Yip – a friend, frequent collaborator, and highly-gifted game designer – showed me the dev team’s initial concept art and story ideas. They knew there were going to be two lead characters, the ghost of a warrior (eventually) named Rowena who’d lead the action-based combat sections, and a machiavellian politico (eventually) named Lucien who’d lead the dialogue-driven social strategy sections. The player would flip between them over the course of the game.

I began my work for Spencer by writing a story treatment, incorporating their ideas and shaping them into a broader narrative. My basic early concept was that Rowena would be summoned back to the plane of the living, as a ghost, by Lucien. Lucien makes Rowena an offer: help him overthrow a tyrannical ruler, and in return, he’ll help Rowena reunite with her son, who’s been locked away in a dungeon. Rowena doesn’t fully trust him, but as a ghost, she doesn’t remember most of her life – only her son, who she loves dearly. Desperate, she takes the offer. However, as she regains her memories throughout the game, Rowena learns it was Lucien who betrayed her to the tyrant, thereby putting her son in jeopardy. Though Lucien is now trying to correct the mistakes he made to make their world better, their partnership is tainted, leading to some juicy choices for the player.

As a narrative designer, my job is to build a story that encourages players to engage with the mechanics. I want them to play the game more. A great story can have that effect. I still remember being in elementary school and playing Final Fantasy IV on the SNES with my friends Mike, Sam, and Jon across a series of sleepovers. We were hooked by the story of Cecil, a knight who questions his king, forms an adventuring party, and goes on a quest to to the moon (!) to save the world. The grand scale of the 16-bit world, and the surprising self-sacrifices of our heroes, compelled us to grind and level up our party – well past our bedtime – to find out what happens next.

Things really “click” when I build story elements and mechanics that dovetail with the core game mechanics. This brings us to amnesia, which I think is an ideal story trope for games, particularly roleplaying games. RPGs often center exploration as a pillar of gameplay. The player goes on a quest where they travel to different locations – a forest, a temple, a gigantic man-eating monster disguised as a forest temple – to learn more about their world. Amnesia, the kind cured by exploration, as seen in The Hangover documentaries, allows me to explicitly reward the player for exploring. When the player visits a new location, talks to an NPC, or defeats a seemingly familiar mini-boss, a memory is unlocked, and that’s effectively a puzzle piece used to solve a mystery at the heart of the story. (“Who am I?”) When it’s done well, amnesia can be a strong narrative hook that integrates perfectly into the mechanics. It’s no coincidence that amnesia is a plot device used extensively throughout the Final Fantasy series. Ironically, I forgot it was used in FFIV!

So, why is amnesia tricky to pull off? Sadly, it’s become a known cliché. When Spencer read my early treatment for Fallen Legion Revenants, one of his biggest notes was that amnesia is overused in JRPG stories, and he explicitly wanted to subvert the tropes of roleplaying games, not lean into them. So that was a no-go, and remember, I began working with him on the project several years ago. Now I think it’s understood to be a cliché in the west, too. The various pages on amnesia on TV Tropes list dozens of examples in gaming. There’s a Wikipedia page listing games with amnesia. This recent video by popular video game YouTuber Dunkey recalls all the times game characters get “amneeeeesiaaaaa.” The video below has 1.2 million views and thousands of comments adding additional examples.

However, the list of games where amnesia is a plot point includes games praised for their outstanding narratives, classic and recent releases, such as Disco Elysium, Bioshock Infinite, Final Fantasy VII, and Baldur’s Gate 3. Frankly, I hope there’ll be many more amnesia games.

One worry I hear again and again from young game writers and narrative designers is a fear that what they’re writing is cliché. It’s a blocker that prevents them from writing anything, as if stories that are 100% original are even technically possible. All fiction builds upon our collective tropes, clichés, references, inspirations, and stolen crap. Even work we find stunningly original takes elements from other work and combines them in unique ways. We stand on the shoulders of giants, and that’s a phrase you could say is, well, cliché!

As creators, I don’t think we should worry about clichés. Our job is to tell the best story possible with the tools at our disposal. Genres and story elements go in and out of fashion, but that shouldn’t stop us from telling the stories we want to tell, the way we want to tell them. The sitcom format was dead until Abbot Elementary revived it. Farming simulators were considered uncool Facebook spam notification generators, but now we think of Stardew Valley. I’m sure a bestselling game will come along and redeem amnesia. Soon studios will forget it ever was a cliché and insist all their games must contain amnesia.

🎲 Your Turn: What’s your favorite story trope in any medium (games, books, movies, TV, comics)? Let’s celebrate the tropes we love! Reply to this email or comment with the orange button below and tell the whole world.

📨 Next Week: Have Amanda and I burned out on sexy X-Men already? We tackle our greatest challenge yet: self-exploitation!