Environmental Storytelling, Ideologies and Quantum Physics: Narrative Space And The BioShock Games

Abstract

In this paper, I present a narratological approach to the BioShock trilogy of games. I look at three narratological levels as they relate to space. At the level of the storyline, a large part of the game revolves around the piecemeal construction of the narrative of the game space – the narrative of the player's avatar is developed alongside the narrative of what happened to the space he is moving through. At the level of the storyworld, the game space symbolizes ideological oppositions – many locations are appropriated as a way of opposing the dominant ideology of the game space. At the level of the narrative universe, I focus on the last part of the trilogy, which is, to a large extent, a story about the story and, hence, metaleptic. The player and his avatar move through many different storyworlds and storylines, all alike yet subtly different from each other.