Story worlds 21/10/11

Story worlds 21/10/11

In this lecture we were looking at how the world that a story is set in is just as important to telling the story as the characters are. This goes back to the point that a character doesn’t have to be a person, but could be the world itself as it has an important part in the overall story.

The story world alone can tell you almost exactly what the story is about, a good story would set the scene with iconic features to certain genres. This is used a lot in film openings setting the film with futuristic landscapes and flying cars to show the film is set in the future, or possibly another planet.

We then looked at multimedia story worlds, so stories that have been spread over many media, like games , novels, comics, movies etc. All of these will have some iconic element that is seen in all of them to connect with the audience and show it is still part of the same thing. These become a franchise and can be recognised over all the media.

We were asked to pick a franchise and pick out 5 iconic elements of that franchise. As small group we decided to look at Atlus’s Persona franchise:

·      The persona- These are creatures or beings that you can summon in the games, they are meant to reflect traits of the people that summon them. There are a large range of persona that you can customise and fuse together to make new persona.

·      Torot cards- the use of Torot cards is a key feature, in the games you can ‘social link’ with other characters. Each character has a different card that represents them, enhancing social links allows you to strengthen your persona that come under the same card.

·      Igor and the velvet room- the velvet room is a place that exists somewhere in between worlds, you can access this room to fuse your persona. Igor is the person who fuses them, he is also the one that tells the main character about persona and how they work. The velvet room is also memorable by the music when inside, it is the same throughout the games and you immediately know where you are.

·      Moral choices- In the persona games you always have choices about what you want to say to people and what you want to do, this affects certain outcomes, especially to do with the social links.

·      The music- the persona games are also known for there amazing music and it always has a huge influence on the atmosphere and feel of the game.