Metroid Prime and Player Agency in Narrative

Narrative design in modern open-world games is lacking due to developers' propensity to avoid the painful task of content curation and a failure of designers to create meaningful changes in their game environments.

Letting the player have an effect on the environment is a great way to make a game’s world feel alive. Here, Damon Reece examines how Metroid Prime’s world can seem much more real than that of Dragon Age: Inquisition due to the former allowing the player’s actions to change that world.