Oneself, but another: Phenomenology of narrative identity in role-playing videogames.

Abstract

This article presents a perspective from phenomenological hermeneutics, a discipline chiefly constituted in literary analysis, on the construction of the narrative identity of the avatar, through which the player interacts with the world of the narrative in role-playing video games. The analysis is developed around a single title, Dark Souls (Bandai Namco, 2018), but it is proposed as a relevant approach for theoretical reflection on the whole genre. The main discussion is the nature of the character's identity arising from the interaction between the game mechanics of the title and its contextualization in the diegetic world of the story. This is observed through the theoretical framework of the French author Paul Ricoeur, in his work Oneself as Another (2006), in which he explains that narrative identity of a character is established from the dialectic relationship between sameness and selfhood, and that therein lies an opening of meaning for interpretation. It is argued that role-playing video games involve the same narrative phenomenon, and that it is determinedly influenced by the interactive nature of games as a medium.