Image: weird little medieval guy, FromSoftware/Bandai Namco
Narrative is defined as "a spoken or written account of connected events; a story."
Everything has a narrative. Your morning drive to get gas has a narrative. There is a set sequence of events that you can write down, in order, and leave it on the page or tell someone about. Narrative is what drives the world. What does a spreadsheet tell you about a business? It might tell you that it is failing or that it has had an excellent year with record profits. Bring out the champagne! That's a story worth writing about. The rise and fall of FTX will no doubt be made into a terrible docu-series and I have zero doubts Jonah Hill will play the lead role. That will have a narrative, and so does Elden Ring.
Elden Ring, developed by FromSoftware, much like the various "soulsborne" titles before it, is a bit sparse on heavy handed story telling. Yet, that isn't really true. The game begins with an opening monologue taking you through the necessary details leading up to the rising of the Tarnished and the bleak world you are thrust into. The Lands Between have been pummeled by tragedy after tragedy, beginning with the assassination of the radiant Godwyn the Golden at the hands of the Black Knives during the Night of Black Knives. This would set about a chain of events leading to the Shattering and the Tarnished being guided back to the Land Between by the Grace of Marika.
That's, admittedly, a lot, and there's a lot of missing details. Whose Marika? What's a Tarnished? Why is this not fed to me while someone makes it very clear to me that it is, in fact, an airplane and not a spoon?
Elden Ring's narrative is seldom directly given to the player, at least in the way many are accustomed to. After entering the world of The Lands Between there is some guidance given. Defeat the demigod children of Marika who have turned The Lands Between into a never-ending warzone and mend the Elden Ring. From there, it is up to the player to figure out what to do next and how to go about it. Some things are never obliquely given up to the player. Now that I look back at my time when the game initially released, I would never have found Ranni if not for stumbling onto a guide. The reason being was that I was lazy and impatient and didn't want to miss anything so I stole from myself the enjoyment of discovery. Why? Because I am acutely aware of the massive lore community that hungrily awaits the release of anything new from FromSoftware. While a great resource, I don't think that this debate over what is narrative and what isn't wouldn't even be a thing if it wasn't known how ever present the giant Elden Ring lore community is.
"You can't say it has a narrative if you have to go to YouTube to find it," said the broken record.
Well, you don't have to go to YouTube. Many choose to. While I had a brief moment of weakness (and several more after that), I did not have to go to YouTube to chisel out the narrative of Elden Ring. There is plenty of dialogue and item descriptions that take a very small amount of time to digest and discover, you guessed it, the rich narrative of Elden Ring.
There is a common bit of advice for creative writers that I feel applies here. After you finish your story, go back and look at the beginning. Nine times out of ten, you can probably chop the first few pages off of your story and improve the product as a whole. Writers generally end up using the space to get there thoughts in order. For video games, I think consumers have gotten a bit used to being able to see a larger part of those first few pages and the exposition dump written there.
Still thinking about a fantasy novel, stories are almost instantly better when given room to breathe but also giving readers the details that they need to know to curl hook in them.
That is what Elden Ring does. We know what we need to know and we will have to trudge on to find out the rest.
That sounds like a great way to present a narrative to me.
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