CBR: The Parallels of RPGs & Comic Books

[CBR News]

While the medium of video games is unarguably more interactive than that of comic books, game developer BioWare weighed in with CBR News on the similarities between their respective approaches to storytelling.


Full article here.

[alemander]

Awesome article/interview. Can't believe someone actually mentioned the best game ever made, Wing Commander 2, and the best moment from that game, when Spirit flies her bomber into the K'tithrak Mang space station.

[Dr. Whiskers]

Agreed Wing Commander Kicks @$$. I haven’t really played Dragon age, but currently my favorite game would be BioWare’s own Mass Effect. I won’t go in to details there since this is about comics. I’ve never really thought about these parallels before. However, given the fact that comics are my favorite medium and I love RPGS, I suppose there could be some truth to this. I can kind of see the connections their getting at. It’s true that there can be good stories and character development on both sides. Despite the similarities, in a good RPG you’re the one developing the character.

[Maestro]

Dragon Age is my favorite RPG. and nice Powers mention too!

[bryantpaul]

Oh man... a cool topic, but a seriously fluffy interview!

I think aside from some aesthetic and demographic crossover, comics and video games are pretty mechanically dissimilar.

Video games are explicit: you mash a button and can expect to see a reaction on the screen. They player is immersed in the action, and--one hopes--has a degree of control over the narrative.

By contrast, comics are implicit. The reader is given a percentage of information and asked to extrapolate the hidden details: the connective tissue that we call the gutters.

With few exceptions (there are a few first-person narratives in comics, though they're pretty rare), comics aren't particularly immersive (not to say that you can't relate to, or find yourself absorbed into a particular comic): we're literally painted a portrait of the protagonists and antagonists. Though we can be privy to their thoughts, it's as spectator and not as participant.

Paradoxically, I'd argue that prose shares more in common with RPGs than comics. Though it isn't a visual medium like comics, prose asks us to supply the visuals and take a more participatory role in the construction of the narrative than a comic does.