The Broken Hourglass Weekly Update
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Writers are prized for their ability to spin tales of interesting worlds and novel plotlines, and an effective way to explore multiple locations and themes within the same tome is to split up the responsibilities rather than placing the entire narrative load on a single protagonist, the writer splits up the most interesting characters to do very different things in very different places. Even if their goal is the same, their means and opportunity is not.
It would be an exaggeration to say that fantasy readers demand these expansive, far-flung stories, but the popularity of Jordan and Martin would seem to speak for itself. The terse, exclusively first-person, 100-page journey a Roger Zelazny-esque antihero might take us on seems to have been crowded off the shelf literally and figuratively by the expansive multi-scenario novels in vogue today.
As I reflected on this, it occurred to me that fantasy CRPGs have resisted this trend or if not actively resisted, then "failed to mirror" it. By and large, the central character still makes a "hero's journey" that covers a lot of ground an entire nation, an entire continent, or even a solar system and beyond are not an unusual backdrop for a CRPG. Game developers seem to have been spared the push to split the storyline to follow multiple characters. Although certain details of a player character's past may be revealed to shocking effect as the game progresses, the central storytelling figure remains the dominant feature in games.
