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0 Written by Benjamin Wiebe
The term Ludonarrative Dissonance has been a video game buzzword since 2012. The term has been featured in reviews from major news outlets like IGN (Imagine Games Network) and has become a staple of video essays on popular single-player video games—primarily in discussions of third-person action-adventure games, including Tomb Raider and Uncharted. The term has waned in popularity over the past four years. However, in light of The Last of Us Part II Remastered’s release, the concept of ludonarrative dissonance has been resurrected to discuss the game’s re-release and the addition to the No-Return game mode.
In light of this, I wanted to discuss this largely popular term, why it was created, and its applicability to so many of Naughty Dog’s games—especially their most controversial game, The Last of Us Part II.
Ludonarrative Dissonance and BioShock
Clint Hocking coined the term ludonarrative dissonance on his blog, Click Nothing, in his (short) critique of BioShock. The term “ludonarrative dissonance” refers to the dissonance between two “contracts” offered to players—the narrative contract and the play (ludic) contract. As Hocking notes, these contracts are given to the player at the start of the game and are interrelated with the game’s themes, which are central to the game. In the case of BioShock, Hocking states, “One is a ludic contract—literally ‘seek power and you will progress.’ The second contract is a narrative contract—‘help Atlas and you will progress’” (Hocking, 2007). These themes, Hocking notes, are directly related to the game’s thematic exploration of Randian rational self-interest—a philosophical position without concern for others. When the game dresses up the ludic contract through the little sisters, it gives players a choice on what they believe to be the better ideological position about the issue.
However, because the narrative contract “help Atlas and you will progress” is at odds with both Randian philosophy and possibly with the player’s choices regarding the Little Sisters, Hocking (2007) notes that BioShock suffers as a whole. The game’s ludic components—its mechanics that the player interacts with for the entire duration —are finely tuned to push players to accept an ideological position they wouldn’t otherwise hold. Still, that position fiercely opposes the game’s narrative loop. The imposed ideological position is insulted by BioShock’s narrative twist that “reveals” the player had no choice but to follow the narrative through the code phrase “would you kindly,” which forces the player to follow Atlas’s commands.
Hocking’s initial term, ludonarrative dissonance, was created to highlight the juxtaposition between a game’s narrative and gameplay and the two distinct statements made between a game’s narrative and play systems. Ludonarrative Dissonance, as coined by Hawking, was a way of comparing two statements made by games – the narrative statement, and the play statement. Francis (403-998-6453) To Hocking, ludonarrative dissonance can only be created when a game offers the player two distinct contracts tied directly to its themes. However, players discussing the term in relation to other video games have largely overlooked this condition.
Until this year, I had largely written off the term ludonarrative dissonance as click-bait for discussions of video games. The term’s framework alludes to objective video game analysis, and in this internet age, the credibility offered by the term’s inclusion is tempting. While art reviews are largely built on personal tastes and sensibilities, the growing desire for “objective criticism” can’t be ignored. It would appear that the internet era is defined by sharing opinions on the internet, and for the reviewer, whose job is to share an opinion, it must be distinct from the masses. Hence, the arrival of analysis as a tool for removing the self from a review and becoming distinctly “objective.” The most common approach to removing the self from a review is to discuss different elements of a game piecemeal to create an analysis—offering a rudimentary score in each category to discuss the merits of the many components of the modern video game. Thanks to Hocking, a new term was invented that could contrast these separate components and be used to “objectively” validate the position of the reviewer.
Ludonarrative Dissonance and Tomb Raider (2013)
Enter Tomb Raider (2013), a video game that tells the origin story of Lara Croft—an iconic treasure hunter of the 90s whose story was “modernized” by Square Enix in their reboot of the character. Tomb Raider (2013) is a darker video game, with its story about the transformation of Lara Croft from a university student into a hardened survivor. It’s a game that makes a great deal of Lara’s inexperience with surviving on a deserted island—we watch as Lara struggles to make a fire, scavenge berries, and hunt for food. Crucially, when we are introduced to the cult that calls this island home, we watch as Lara loses a part of her humanity to survive. Lara kills another human being. It’s a deeply moving moment of vulnerability—as the entire story has been—and it became a punching bag for internet commenters. Tomb Raider has become the poster child of ludonarrative dissonance in a video game. While the cutscenes tell a story of a vulnerable, scared little girl having to lose her humanity to survive and navigate the psychological turmoil associated with taking the lives of animals or other humans, the gameplay tells a much darker story. This is the story of a sociopathic woman—someone who isn’t afraid to fight whoever gets in her way (and dispatches enemies without breaking a sweat). The ludic contract, these commenters argue, is in direct contrast with the story being told to the player through the cutscenes—Lara isn’t the prey, she’s the predator.
This argument has never held water for me. Firstly, I would argue that the narrative isn’t about a scared girl crying over animals—across the entire game, we watch as Lara becomes a hardened warrior who isn’t afraid to charge into a fight. Lara isn’t a sweet, innocent doe in Tomb Raider—she starts the game at that point, but we witness her transformation into an obsessive and violent treasure hunter. When Lara gains a grenade launcher near the end of the second act of the game, her immediate reaction is to charge into the hordes of cultists and unleash her anger in a violent manner. The narrative contract with the player is explicitly clear—to survive the wild, Lara must shed her innocence and become a terror in the world. I believe that this is accurately reflected in the gameplay progression—we start the game with nothing, and to grow in power, we must take weapons from the dead and dominate the wilderness. The player transforms from a position of weakness, needing to sneak around to avoid and silently take down basic enemies, to an apex predator with a thirst for violence. We become intimately familiar with the island as a location, learning its ins and outs as we travel across it. At the start of the game, we were lost, moving forward in fear and with trepidation. By the end of the game, the ludic contract has been fulfilled—we let go of our humanity and are now the dominator of the wild.
In Hocking’s article, ludonarrative dissonance can only occur when the game explicitly binds its narrative themes and gameplay themes together—the meaning derived from the game is created by both its gameplay and narrative working together in tandem. Additionally, this is defined by choice—players must have meaningful choices to engage with the thematic statement the game has presented before them. The game works as a trap, transporting the player to a new world wherein they make ideological choices they wouldn’t otherwise—and with a deeper understanding of Tomb Raider’s (2013) story, we can see how the narrative and the gameplay coalesce into something greater. However, it isn’t a perfect example of ludonarrative dissonance because this single-player game still hasn’t offered the player a choice in the narrative.
Tomb Raider is a successful story of transportation—we adopt Lara’s worldview, and we take actions in line with surviving in the game. However, it isn’t a game that offers a narrative contract. As with BioShock before it, the player doesn’t have a meaningful way to interact with the linear story beyond choosing between playing the game or shutting it down. Thankfully, unlike with BioShock, this lack of choice doesn’t place the player in a position, unlike the game’s themes. While the player doesn’t have narrative agency, this isn’t used against the player in the story—Square Enix instead uses the gameplay to enhance the narrative’s weight.
Naughty Dog and Ludonarrative Dissonance: Uncharted
This is a technique that I believe to be a strength of Naughty Dog’s single-player action-adventure video games. Naughty Dog is the studio behind many of Playstation’s iconic characters, from Crash Bandicoot to Nathan Drake. The Uncharted series began in 2007 and became the blueprint of the third-person action-adventure game. Tomb Raider (2013) couldn’t exist without the Uncharted series establishing the tropes and cliches of the genre: third-person cover shooting intermixed with puzzles, with a plot revolving around a mythology come to life.
And like Tomb Raider, Uncharted has been haunted by the term Ludonarrative Dissonance since the inception of the term. Uncharted as a series follows the adventures of one Nathan Drake – a charismatic everyman is simultaneously the world’s luckiest and unluckiest man alive. Drake is defined by his wit and smile – no challenge is too big for the descendant of English Explorer Sir Francis Drake. Whether solving an ancient water puzzle, navigating a collapsing temple, or shooting a hundred goons in the head, Nathan Drake always has a way out.
If you are re-reading that sentence, shocked by the understated violence, then you are much like anyone who has discussed Uncharted and Ludonarrative Dissonance. The violence the player spends most of the game committing is shockingly absent from the game’s numerous cutscenes. The ludic elements of the game portray Nathan Drake as a psychotic killer with no emotional attachment to life, while the narrative elements consistently highlight Drake’s relatability.
As with Tomb Raider, I don’t think this statement is appropriate for discussing Uncharted. Firstly, Uncharted as a whole fails to meet the first criteria of ludonarrative dissonance: Offering the player two contracts. There is no narrative contract, nor is there a ludic contract. The narratives of this series are frequently forgettably serviceable. Save for the fourth entry, A Thief’s End (2015). Uncharted lacks a meaningful story that attempts to say more than “the real treasure was the friends we made along the way”. Additionally, the gameplay frequently still latches onto Drake’s relatability to connect us to the character – the banter between Drake and his companion, whether it’s Sully or Elana, is a strong characterization for the character in and out of cutscenes. And the violence present in the gameplay loop is a staple of the third-person cover shooting genre.
Uncharted was created from a desire to transport the player into the great action movies of old – it’s truly the game version of Indiana Jones. In the service of this experiential goal, very little effort was put forth to make a game attempting to have a deeper thematic purpose. There isn’t a narrative throughline as powerful as what was present in Tomb Raider, and the ludic contract is equally missing. This series is a power fantasy – and thus, a nuanced term like Ludonarrative Dissonance is ill-fitting to this conversation.
The Last of Us Part I: Ludonarrative Cohesion
While Square Enix was developing Tomb Raider, Naughty Dog was hard at work on another Playstation-exclusive title: The Last of Us. Headed by game director Neil Druckmann, The Last of Us is one of the most popular video games made in the last decade. Released in 2013, The Last of Us was a game that pushed to be more than a simple game – it was a complex story about a broken father and a haunted girl in an apocalyptic future where trust and survival aren’t compatible.
The Last of Us Part I is another third-person action game developed by Naughty Dog. Yet the conversation of Ludonarrative Dissonance is foreign to the title – primarily due to the role violence plays in the title. Violence is a core part of why Joel, our protagonist, is the way he is. An act of state violence destroyed his world, and 20 years into the fungal apocalypse, Joel is a violent, aggressive man who keeps a distant relationship with nearly everyone. By comparison, Ellie is young, seemingly unaware of what this world can take from her, filled with optimism and hope. The relationship between these characters forms the thrust of the narrative – we watch as they form a bond similar to that of a father and a daughter while the rest of the world slowly crumbles around them. The game’s narrative is full of stories of those whose blind trust in someone else betrayed them – and we watch as Joel and Ellie attempt to rebel against that ominous promise of failure. It’s a profoundly human game where the player isn’t offered a choice in the narrative.
However, the game’s strength is in its utilization of the ludic space. Conversations between Joel and Ellie, which would feel out of place in any cutscene, can occur organically as the player explores the wasteland previously known as the United States of America. The game has a segment where the player plays as Ellie, and it highlights the differences between these characters. As Joel, the player has upgraded their arsenal of weapons and increased their skills – and all of those upgrades are removed from our playthrough as Ellie. Joel has abilities that allow the player to be aggressive as they progress in the game – but as Ellie, the player is forced to play in a quieter, stealthy manner. While no contract has been given to the player, the ludic elements reinforce the game’s greater thematic message.
I need you, and you need me.
That is the driving statement of The Last of Us, and we live it out in every moment of the gameplay. Many of the game’s puzzles are extremely simple – help Ellie get across the water, find a ladder to climb the cliff, etc. But it creates the codependency that defines the game. When playing as Joel, Ellie is frequently the most significant aid to the player – finding extra ammunition and supplies or calling out the position of an enemy that may be sneaking up on the player. These interactions work with the game to create a ludonarrative cohesion – a link between the themes of the game and the interactions present.
The Last of Us Part II: Remastered.
The Last of Us Part II is equally cohesive. Its narrative revolves around a vicious murder that sends the player into an emotional state of manic rage. The game is all about emotional headspaces, and its narrative is designed to work with the gameplay and trap the player in Ellie’s angry, vengeful headspace.
This is the headspace that makes the remastered games No Return mode work so well. This year, The Last of Us Part II got its PS5 remaster. In addition to upscaling the textures for 4K, the remaster included two new game modes – a guitar-free play mode and the rogue-like No Return mode. No Return is a fascinating game to me because it both highlights why The Last of Us Part II works so well and because it is firmly at odds with the thematic statement of the game.
Firstly, I want to sing the praises of No Return. No Return is a rogue-like mode forced into a single-player game, yet it doesn’t feel forced or lacking in quality compared to the game as a whole. In my gaming career, I have interacted with a few less-than-stellar game modes being added to a game of a different genre – from Uncharted and Tomb Raiders multiplayer modes, to Bloodborne’s Chalice Dungeons, to the campaign of Star Wars Battlefront II (2017). These game modes are frequently defined by lacking balance, weak level design, and a feeling of being rushed. The Last of Us Part II: No Return, doesn’t contain any of those weaknesses – partially because it reuses some of the best maps from the main game. But the main reason it works is because of the enemy AI in The Last of Us Part II. The AI of this game truly is phenomenal – being predictable enough to feel fair to the player while also having significant variety in their patrolling paths to keep the player on their toes. The AI is fun to outsmart, and having a rogue-like mode that emphasizes stealth makes for a phenomenally replayable game mode.
The problem at the heart of No Return is that it is born out of that angry headspace that defines the first half of The Last of Us Part II. No Return feels like all the chunks of time we don’t experience as Ellie in the main campaign – hunting down infected, the Washington Liberation Front, and the Seraphites with extreme prejudice. The anger that defines both Ellie and Abby in The Last of Us Part II is at the core of No Return. All this to say – that anger is made the antithesis of the game in its final act. The end of The Last of Us Part II is centered on letting go of anger in the attempt to forgive the self – it’s a statement of non-violence. And yet, in the corner of the bootup screen, there is a game mode begging me to play it. Begging for me to give in to the apathy and embrace senseless violence.
There’s something deeply honest about a game that states that forgiveness is a choice each and every day through something as small as a menu. It’s… human to feel the pull towards anger. But I can’t help but think that including this game mode is the definition of Ludo-narrative dissonance. The ludic contract is in direct conflict with the narrative of the game. And while I think No Return has a ludic purpose and fits the narrative for half the runtime, the only time it is ludonarratively cohesive for the player to engage with the game mode is mid-campaign, as a side quest that can only be accessed from the boot menu. It’s an odd inclusion that weakens the game’s emotionally charged finale. In a game series so keen to tie the ludonarrative into something more significant, No Return is a misstep that undermines the narrative – and fitting of the descriptor, Ludonarrative Dissonance.
Reference:
- Hocking, C. (2007, October 7). Ludonarrative dissonance in Bioshock – click nothing. ClickNothing. https://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html
