What defines interactive storytelling ?

When we speak about interactive stories, we refer basically to all kind of narrative work in wich the spectator has somekind of input in the experience. Nowadays the most predominantly media in wich we can find such kind of narration are videogames, wich is the reason this blog focus on them.

The main characteristic of interactive stories is the control of the spectator over the experience. He can explore the world as he please, changing the flow of the narrative by choosing how to deal with what is presented to him and even leave the main narration suddenly just to come back as fast as he want. But more significant is the power of choice this kind of storytelling offers, sometimes letting the consumer to choose different options sets by the creator of the work, or even sometimes total new ones depending of the design of the same, changing how the plot develop or changing its world,

In return, this let the experience to be more personal, each person won't enjoy the story the same way, and even part of ourselves can, in a very curious way, be reflected in how we decide to affect the interactive work. How we deal with obstacles, what we decide to do, what we are best at and what we decide to focus on can be an impression of ourselves we leave in the world of the interactive story.

Other particularity of this kind of narrative is that, in contrast to other forms of storytelling, the size of the "world" of the story can be as big as the creator desires, because the player choose how fast he want to experience it and when it is going to end.

And yet, after all that has been said, the creator can limit the freedom of the spectator to such a degree that they cannot exit the main narrative nor explore at his heart content, or he can even force him to not stop the flow of the narration in any time. This unique freedom to create a story, limited mostly by the creator creativity and our current technology, cannot be found in any other form of storytelling.

To conclude this post, it has to be pointed out that one of the main traits of interactive storytelling is the significant levels of immersion it can offer, letting the spectator to make very peculiar bonds with the characters and the world they experience, and although the freedom of control can also means that the vision of the creator can be tharnised and his messaged ignored, is hard not to show some curiosity for such a peculiar way of telling stories, wich is still in a very young age.