Narrative Goals In Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice: A Case Study of Narrative Design Elements

Abstract

This thesis intends to investigate the narrative goals and their role in contemporary narrative design in a game through a case study. Narrative design as a practice and a role in contemporary game development is still arguably not understood and approaches in narrative design continue to be contested among scholars and practitioners alike. Therefore, it is important to study and evaluate existing narrative design frameworks to better understand what narrative design is as a practice and better understand the role and function of narrative design in game development. In this thesis, this is done through a case study, with the object being the linear action-adventure video game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. The methods of this thesis are a combination of close-reading methods and goal-oriented regressive mapping and analysis of the game’s narrative and goal structures. The results of the analysis suggest that the goal-oriented approach to studying narrative design elements can uncover distinct patterns in the game’s narrative that are crucial to understanding how narrative design functions and how narratives are structured in the game. This supports both the on-going research of narrative design in game studies and further development of narrative design in video game development.