Setting

The interactive nature of video games adds another layer of complexity to their settings, as players are able to directly engage with the world and its occupants. This interactivity also adds depth to the connections setting and story, as players’ actions drive the plot, the characters, and the themes. Decades of complex video game narratives have delivered standout examples in each category, emphasizing the story-setting relationship in genres ranging from first-person shooters to role-playing games. 

The relationship between setting and plot is explored in Portal (Valve, 2007), a puzzle-platform game set in a scientific testing facility in an unknown time and location. When players first gain control of Portal’s silent protagonist, Chell, they’re given a portal gun and told to complete a series of tasks throughout the sterile, pristine facility. When the tests take a life-threatening turn, players are given a chance to escape the facility. The player’s decision to leave the confines of the pre-approved testing area represents a major turning point in the plot, and the change in the narrative is reflected in the setting. Chell’s new environment is dirty and chaotic, lacking the well-designed visual instructions from the tests. Players must learn how to interpret sloppy, handwritten clues and navigate the muddy setting, adding a new dimension of difficulty to the escape.

The first-person shooter BioShock (2K Games, 2007) demonstrates one possible relationship between setting and character. Set in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in 1960, BioShock tells the story of Rapture, an underwater objectivist utopia built by business tycoon Andrew Ryan. Ryan envisioned a world where men would rule through sheer force of will rather than through government or religious authority. As a product of Ryan’s singular vision, Rapture reflects his ideals, and its decay shows how those ideals have been corrupted with time. When players first enter Rapture from above, they’re treated to sweeping vistas of a glowing city beneath the waves. The city seems calm and serene from the outside, suggesting that Ryan peacefully realized his ideas. The chaos players find inside the city tells a very different story. After widespread riots, Rapture has been torn to pieces, and what’s left is plagued by blaring sirens, violent lights, and overgrown vegetation. In spite of Ryan’s ideals, he was not able to dominate through will alone, and the ruins of Rapture reflect the disastrous results of his attempt. 

Setting and theme share a strong connection in Persona 5 (Atlus, 2016), a role-playing game set in a fantasy version of modern-day Tokyo. Persona 5’s story explores the theme of cognitive distortion, suggesting that people’s hearts and minds can be warped by strong desires. When distortions are strong enough in the Persona-world, they can take the physical form of otherworldly buildings called Palaces. It’s the player’s job to guide the protagonists, the Phantom Thieves, through these Palaces to steal the objects of desire that led to the initial distortion. Each Palace is a unique setting developed to match the desires of the person with the distorted mindset. The cruel volleyball coach sees himself as a king and the school as his castle; the abusive art thief imagines himself as the owner of a fine museum and sees his victims as his works of art. The metaphor of theme-as-setting concludes once Phantom Thieves steal the object that created the distortion, as the Palace crumbles and the owner is freed from their poisonous mindset. Their setting is restored to normal, as is their view of the world.