Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

“Who Am I?”

2014; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 9; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/1555412014543517

1555-4139

Zoe Ann Wendler,

Narrative Theory and Analysis

Portal and Portal 2 are quests for narrative identity, whereby players attempt to understand who exactly the player is playing the game as—a woman who can outsmart a supercomputer and survive chambers full of deadly neurotoxin. Valve provides this answer gradually but does not do so explicitly—rather, as they play the games, the players must come to a conclusion on their own as to who Chell really is. By using this very complex form of procedural rhetoric as the core narrative heart of their games, Valve has created a story that relies upon procedural rhetoric, psychological models of identity, identification, and sociological bond formation in the player in order to rhetorically craft a narrative that is cocreated by the player during gameplay. Such rhetorical narrative cocreation has been a longtime goal of game designers, and Valve’s achievement in Portal and Portal 2 illustrate the rhetorical power of a procedurally generated narrative.