In the PC/Mac game The Novelist, you play a very nosy ghost living in a house the Kaplan family rented for the summer. You flit through the house, exploring their thoughts, memories and dreams. When they sleep, you can whisper directions into the ears of Dan, the family patriarch. This influences the outcome of the Kaplans' story.
It isn't as fun as it sounds.
The Novelist tells the story of Dan Kaplan, who has brought his family to a coastal house so he can finish the most important novel of his career while, according to Orthogonal Games, "trying to be the best husband and father he can be." It's a cerebral game, one that "asks one central question: Can you achieve your dreams without pushing away the people you love?"
It was a ballsy game to make, for reasons we'll get to, and it prompted Alec Meer of Rock, Paper, Shotgun to write two reviews: an emotional reaction ("I frequently cried at the outcomes of the decisions I made for the Kaplan family.") and an objective reaction ("...it’s an awkward, drawn-out and often monotonous journey..."). Meer is a game critic writing for a game-centric blog, which may explain why it's hard for him to acknowledge the deep-cutting truth: The Novelist just doesn't work as a videogame.
That doesn't mean it isn't an important step forward.
The Novelist tells its story by scattering Post-It notes, diaries and letters throughout the house and letting you discover them. Kent Hudson, the game's lone creator, has done this before in games like Bioseshock 2. The problem is, people don't leave incredibly personal things like this lying around to be found. The first time you find an unguarded diary in a game like The Novelist, it's exciting; reading it feels mischievous. By the time you've found 10 diaries, though, it feels like a game mechanic. Inauthentic. Perfunctory.
The Novelist's key gameplay conceit, aside from riffling through the Kaplan's belongings, is a stealth system that impels you to never be seen by the Kaplans. You can cause light fixtures to flicker, drawing their attention away from a room you'd like to explore. There's little else to it beyond that, so the stealth element is a mostly meaningless obstacle to the story. You can turn it off and play in "story" mode, thankfully, but that creates a new problem. It becomes, as author and Georgia Tech professor Ian Bogost put it in his review of Gone Home, "a complicated menu system for selecting narrative fragments."
In his efforts to communicate complicated emotions, Hudson too-conveniently stuffs the Kaplans' home with hackneyed mementos. Early on players will discover a drawing from Tommy, the son, depicting his father weeping over a typewriter while Tommy stands in the background looking sad. The trope of children revealing their deepest insecurities and fears via Crayola drawings is vastly overused in film and TV shows, and The Novelist deploys it over and over.
Slowly, the rooms and spaces in The Novelist begin to feel unreal. The player soon understands that to reach the end – to "win" – they're really just playing an egg-hunt in a toybox filled with plastic people. The found-mementos method of storytelling in games doesn't work so well when it's relied upon so heavily.
Hudson added variety to his storytelling by building in the ability to read the characters' minds. His writing is smart and believable, but in each chapter, the characters invariably possess one or two great desires that compel them to act single-mindedly. Linda wants her marriage to be stronger and she wants to pursue a career in painting. Tommy wants more of dad's time. Dan wants to write his book and drink. Players rarely see a side of the Kaplans that isn't directly related to what each character wants.
That makes it very hard to like any of them, since they rarely show any attention to each others' needs without direct influence from you. How self-absorbed must Dan and Linda be to ignore the disturbing drawings Tommy creates so prolifically? Only you can make Dan act less like a selfish prick. Until you intervene, he's on autopilot, wandering zombie-like through the house, exchanging only the occasional clipped comment with his family.
By giving power over the Kaplans to the player, The Novelist limits their potential for believable development. The interactive nature of videogames empowers players in this story, and by necessity strips power from the characters. You make all the decisions, and they're reduced to whiny, steaming flesh bags of need and want.
Those who dominate the game industry are afraid to write stories that aren't framed by a heavy barrel and an iron sight, and here we have The Novelist making a genuine effort to tell a valuable interactive story about "life, family, and the choices we make." Making this game took courage.
Perhaps if The Novelist had been a novel, it would have avoided the pitfalls the "game" parts impose upon it. Then again, who would have paid attention to a novel about a struggling novelist trying to balance life and family? Obviously, Hudson wouldn't have written that book; he wanted to use an interactive medium to add weight to his story by offering choices and different outcomes.
Perhaps there is a way to do that elegantly. Videogames might one day be a great way of telling a story like The Novelist, but before that can happen interactive storytelling in videogames must be more interesting than whispering something into the ear of your sleeping protagonist, or picking between an evil or good action on a "conversation wheel."
The truth is videogames are not yet as good as novels or films when it comes to telling stories. The Novelist crashes headlong into that reality by throwing the full weight of a story upon the best storytelling tools games currently have to offer. It doesn't work, but it reveals something about the medium, and for that reason The Novelist is important.
