String of Pearls

One of the two methods of story telling in games. It involves a pre-scripted, linear story interupted by free play (challenges, puzzles etc). Notable examples are The Last of Us. Even games that have non-linear stories generally are just series of strings of pearls.

The opposite of The Story Machine, which generates a unique story every game. Schell (2015) (Chapter 17)

References

Jesse Schell. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. CRC Press, Boca Raton, second edition edition, 2015. ISBN 978-1-4665-9864-5.


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