For most adventure games, the goal is often simple: there’s a bad thing, you must overcome this thing, save the princess. While the nouns in that run-through may change, the idea stays the same through video game  characters like Mario, Link, Master Chief, Solid Snake, and many more. It’s a classic set-up, followed in many movies, books and other medium throughout human’s history of the arts. American author and mythology professor Joseph Campbell described a basic pattern that could be recognized in stories around the world. Dubbed the monomyth, it involved a very simple set of steps for a hero:

1. Call to adventure
2. Overcoming a series of trials
3. Achieving a goal
4. Returning to the normal world
5. Giving out the gifts of his journey

Michael Abbott of The Brainy Gamer has put up an article this week discussing the implications of Campbell’s theory and how it applies to games. Of course, the implications he derives suggest the games are missing the mark even in some of the medium’s most celebrated adventures. Most adventures tend to neglect the fourth and fifth step, meaning once the world has been saved, the treasure found, or the princess saved, the game ends. This passes by what Campbell believed to be the most critical component, with the hero bringing their gifts back home and how they could reintegrate with the world they left.

While the concept sounds interesting on a scholarly level, how does it really apply to the gaming world and the way that narratives are conveyed within games? We can see within a lot of examples that this element of returning home is almost always removed, in order to convey the fact that Hero’s journey has not ended, making the way for the next sequel of entry. The question of whether gaming can convey this type of ending, without simply resorting to a long and arduous cutscene. We see evidence in recent games like Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, where the ending has a significantly long epilogue in order to demonstrate the consequences of the game’s climax.

Putting this element, returning from battle to either be accepted or rejected by the society you left, seems to be something that is avoided or forgotten when it comes to actual gameplay. Abbott does question in his article whether or not the critical element of “fun” would be easy to pass on to the player, when exploring the narrative simply for narrative’s sake at the end of a game. With the classic formula of battles ending in final boss going back as far as adventure games can go, all the way to the tributes of the “save the princess” found in modern takes like Braid, the defined ending seems to be a staple of the genre.

There is evidence of some games making an attempt to bridge this, even if it is unintentional. The game Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People Episode One: Homestar Ruiner, which we recently reviewed actually has gameplay that extends past the climax of the game, allowing you to enact the dénouement through the same kind of play as seen through the rest of the game. While not a very profound enactment of Campbell’s theory in games, it does show that there is evidence of playing past the hero’s return in games, and that there is some benefit delivered to the gamer to do so.

As narrative becomes a stronger pull for game development, and as the technology that allows designers to tell stories continues to expand, the creativity involved in conveying the story should be evolving, too. While that doesn’t say that games of the past haven’t done just as good, if not better in most cases, of a job of conveying strong narrative and traditional literary theories in games, the cinematic qualities and amount of world open to modern developers does give room to fit these elements into the landscapes that seem to stretch on forever in the worlds they’ve created.