“I'm jumping on the bed!” Exclaims my sister, while she makes Link duck up and down on a bed. I can barely constrain myself from telling her that she's supposed to be going up Death Mountain to save the Gorons from all the monsters. She insists, instead of following the plot, on hanging out in Lon Lon Ranch doing pretty much nothing. Between gritting my teeth and trying to hint her where she is supposed to go I realize she isn't playing the game wrong, but playing it the best way a game can be played: Her way. She's participating in a world that functions understandably and having her own kind of fun.
Games often do their best to constrain the player in a set of rules. These are usually physical limitations – Mario can only jump so high and Masterchief can only soak so many bullets. However, most video games will leave a lot of the justification of specific character action to the player. Almost never will a game constrain the player's head narrative. Is Mario finally tired of the princess being in another castle? Does Masterchief have PTSD? Why did your Pokemon choose now to evolve? Once questions like these are asked within the context of a game it can potentially be a lot more interesting. The best games for this type of play are sandbox games, but you can express your play style in unlimited ways across genres.
In Skyrim your interactions with NPCs are extremely limited and many characters are rarely very fleshed out (though this is probably a result of the world being so huge and there being so many). This leaves a lot of room for the player to imagine their own stories. In one of my playthroughs Lydia, one of the games many followers, had grown up in the city Whiterun and joined the Companions, a fighter's guild of sorts. After a certain fantastic skirmish with roaming giants Lydia was handpicked to serve the Jarl. Afterward she could only watch as the land of Skyrim was wracked by civil war while her Jarl wrestled with which side he should join, if any. It was about this time I met her and she became my Housecarl. With this imagined backstory Lydia became a much more interesting character. This impromptu style of filling in the story where there is none applies even better to the player's character, and the game is kind enough to leave your background mostly open-ended whether you play a thief or a mage.
Mass Effect might seem like a game where this playstyle would not apply, but think again. There is no better application of your imagined character's ideas and beliefs than constant testing. The basis of one of my playthroughs was simply unite as many allies as possible against the Reapers as possible, which led to more than a few decisions I might have made differently playing for myself. Another playthrough I was a space cowboy while another I was a lost romantic who never quite understood the weight of my decisions, always filling in the story for my characters when there wasn't one or it wasn't enough.
The best games find ways of giving the player as much freedom as possible while still following its rules. Arguably many videogames are merely skeletons for you to build a personal story or experience out of. Maybe next time you play a videogame play as if your character had an odd religion or was afraid of water(sometimes part of the gameplay if water kills you). Maybe make up a backstory for another character or enemy that doesn't have one, insignificant or not. You can imagine all kinds of ways to play your games then.
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