Narrative

Narrative / FMV / Cut Scene

Narrative

Narrative is a storyline of a video. The narrative of a game can exist without a plot or as a larger system in which the plot exists. Narratives can be embedded within missions to ensure that the gamer knows what the current mission is going to be about or they can emerge during the gamer's progress throughout the game. Furthermore, video game designers often use narrative within their games in order to highlight to the player what point they are in the game, or they may do it to notify the gamer that there is a new mission at hand. Narratives are usually included in single player games rather than multi-player games, this is because single player games have a storyline to follow whereas multi-player games are often just competitive competitions between others. An example of a single player game which uses narratives is 'The Last Of Us'. This game is all about surviving a zombie apocalypse; this storyline keeps the player involved and also helped them keep their progress up to date as there was narratives throughout the game. There are two different types of narrative, they consist of FMV (Full Motion Video) and Cut scenes.

The advantage of having narratives within a game is that the gamer is aware of their progress in the game and what mission they will have to complete to continue their progression. However, a disadvantage of including narratives is the fact that it will indefinitely slow down the players progression, as they will have to wait until it is over in order for them to continue playing. 

FMV

FMV, which stands for Full Motion Video, is real life video footage used within video games and allows gamers to see what current mission is going to based upon. They are pre rendered movies which have been pre recorded into the game's engine. FMV is used within games as it allows the game designers to use their skills and use full motion animation for the cut scenes which enhances the visual style of the game as the cut scenes quality improves drastically; for example, the new call of duty 'Advanced Warfare', uses the actor Kevin Spacey to play the role of an army general, which more or less looks like an animated movie. The downside of including FMV during a game is that the transition between game play to the FMV is very noticeable and may take time to load up.

Cut Scenes

A cut scene is is a movie sequence which has been coded and created to be rendered in order to fit in within the game's engine. It is a scene which develops the storyline and is often shown after the completion of a mission, or is something important has happened which may divert the storyline, This may sometimes limit the performances and the limitation of what can be created within a cut scene. However, they have much smoother transitions than FMV and looks more professional. Cut scenes are often used to smoothly transmit the movie scene along with the playable area of the game, this will in turn keep the gamer immersed into the game as they will not have to wait every time it loads. A game which uses a lot of cut scenes is adventure games such as Assassin's Creed for example. this game uses a cut scene after every successful mission completed. Cut scenes are often favoured over FMV, due to the fact of that doesn't take time to load, not very noticeable transition and still has a good visual style.