Jonny 5 is alive (Game Blog number 5: FEZ)

This week I played FEZ, a puzzle platformer with a clever 3D twist. (Get it? Because you can twist the map. heh) 

The premise is crazy simple, you play as Gomez, a small blocky character who receives a Fez that allows him to turn the world in 3 dimensions to explore maps from a new perspective. The game focuses on this mechanic with maps that must be turned back and fourth over and over in  order to solve them.

The Game does contain some fairly complex story, but most of it is backstory or world history that you slowly uncover as you play. I personally didn't see much of this backstory as I didn't finish the game and it takes a long time for the story to really make an appearance. Also from what I can gather you could play the game and totally ignore the story, it's really only there to enhance the gameplay which is the most important aspect of the game. Using Marie-Laurie Ryan's terminology that would make this a 'Narrative Game,' "in a narrative game, story is meant to enhance gameplay." (2009, p. 45)

As for story in-game story, there is next to none, the game is level based with very few story nodes as you play. The levels essentially create an open world which can be explored at your pleasure but it always comes back to the gates that you must unlock by collecting cubes. Thanks to these gates there is some game progression as you unlock more of them and uncover more of the map to be explored. These points, where the player must visit a specific location to advance, are where the few story nodes are located, but there are no choice nodes so the game is still linear.

Thanks to the lack of story in this game there really is no character development. Gomez is essentially a husk for the player to inhabit and explore the world, otherwise known as an avatar. This means that "the player identifies primarily as their in-game representative rather than with them as a separate, fictional character." As put by Jessica Alred (2013, p. 357). Because Gomez is 'empty' of character, the player is able to project themselves onto him, like an image onto a blank screen. The effect of this is that there is no separation between the player and their in-game persona, they can explore the world as themselves. The fact that Gomez's appearance is basically featureless adds to this effect.

To be honest I still felt next to no involvement to the embedded narrative. That is to say I barely noticed that there was an embedded narrative, but through the avatar of Gomez I did find myself very immersed in the emergent gameplay, or the traversal of the game. Despite there being no penalty for dying in-game I still felt bad for dying. Since I was the character, when he died in a way I died, and when he reached an objective I reached the objective. So even though there was next to no narrative in the game I still felt connected and immersed thanks to the avatar nature of Gomez.

Fez is a clever game in its design and is a lot of fun to play. Its lack of story isn't an issue since it makes up for it with clever and interesting gameplay that draws the player in and keeps them entertained. I'd give it 6 jonnys.

Bai now.

References:

Jessica, A. (2013) Characters. The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, pp. 375

Marie-Laurie, R. (2009) From narrative games to playable stories: toward a poetics of interactive narrative StoryWorlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies, Volume 1, 2009, pp. 45