S4: Isolated Flavor
Call of the Sea figures out how to pack every morsel of narrative alongside intricate puzzle pieces.
"Looking for a Clue" by neukomment is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Call of the Sea, released 2020, developed by Out of the Blue Games, available on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. This is a narrative game filled with challenging environmental puzzles solved by accumulating clues and identifying a solution. It is played in the first-person perspective on an island in the Pacific.
The intense warmth of the tropical sun hits my face as I exit the tent left by my husband’s expedition. The inside was sweltering with the ominous lack of breeze, so I quickly snatched all available notes and stepped outside to read them. It is difficult to make heads or tails of things.
There seems to have been disagreements among the crew, based on their writing. Photographs reveal concerned looks and a lack of trust on the faces, and the scribbled notes on the back of the photo confirm something is amiss. There is something…off…about the island. Something I cannot quite put my finger to. Perhaps the unbearable heat and a lack of water are putting me on edge?
The sun reflects off a piece of metal leaning against the outside of the tent. It appears to be an odd machine of sorts, covered in intricate symbols. I stuff the diaries and annotated photographs in my pack to sort through later. I suspect this machine is important, an actual indication of the next steps I should take to find my husband. I carefully copy each symbol into my notebook.
Most narrative games are purely vehicles for the story the developer wants to tell and, as they lack “mechanisms,” tend to be purely narrative flavor. I adore them, so when I say that they are all flavor, I do not mean that as a criticism!
The flavor is how story is delivered. It is why we are all in the game in the first place. However, the creators of Call of the Sea combined two fully realized experiences that are often the sole aspects of a game: Narrative (flavor) and Puzzles (function). As a quick examination, What Remains of Edith Finch, Firewatch, and Gone Home are almost entirely flavor. The Swapper, The Witness, and Shady Part of Me, are almost entirely puzzle.
The successful combination therefore is the result of an intentional design. By strictly adhering to the rule of Isolated Flavor, Call of the Sea gives both of these elements their proper due, and as a result presents a special experience in narrative games.
The execution of this - separating purpose from prose - seems simple. The narrative is supported with narration from the player character, photographs, notes, recordings, and the items found in the world. The game does an outstanding job of supporting the overt plot with a well-designed, prop-rich environment, and less obvious things that stitch together to present a fully realized setting.
All of these things are fully and entirely separated from the evidence and clues in your notebook. The flavor and function never mix. The developers remain absolutely disciplined.
The functional elements are similar. Your character makes sketches of items they discover, writes notes, draws the symbols seen on mechanisms tied to puzzles or hidden on cave walls (the occult? a hidden code?), and organizes them in a way that the relationships are clearly established. All of the elements for a single puzzle fit within two open pages, which means you never need to turn the page back and forth to see all of the information. As soon as you finish a puzzle, the game automatically moves your notebook forward to remove any notion that the past clues hold future relevance.
As a player in Call of the Sea, at all times I know where to look to immerse my mind into the puzzle or where to immerse my heart into the story. The execution is simple (to the player) and the value is clear. If you simply examine Call of the Sea, it seems like a nice feature. But, by comparing it to other games, I think you’ll better appreciate the design.
Quickly, we should examine two prominent roleplaying games. Yes, this is an entirely different genre, but I think it is useful to consider how such discipline could result in a superior player experience.
In The Witcher 3 (or Skyrim, or Mass Effect), the world is littered with books, posters, notes, and transcripts. There is so much flavor, delivered so often, that all but the most stalwart lore nerds quickly ignore it. As a result, the game’s texture effectively ends at the spoken dialog and any puzzles or information actually conveyed in the text is relegated to the realm of Easter egg and walkthrough content. With a little more discipline and perhaps a bit less flavor, more value could be brought to the overall experience.
My second case-study-in-paragraph-form is Elden Ring. I adore this game, but its combination of flavor and function is atrocious. It does not do a good job in signposting which elements of the lore are incredibly important and which are irrelevant. Consider the inventory! The inconsistency in the inventory alone is so rampant it almost seems intentional. I read the item text, I listened to the character dialog, I searched the environment, and I failed to solve a single quest without the aid of friends or the guide. It is just a jumble, applied inconsistently, and the result is that too many people must ignore the content, or leave the game to find the information required.
The One Cool Thing
Call of the Sea is not an easy game at all. In that, its creators share a philosophy with the creators of Elden Ring. Call of the Sea is also a game filled with tiny, flavorful details. In that, it shares a philosophy with The Witcher 3.
But, by using Isolated Flavor, Call of the Sea helps its players engage more fully with both the flavor and the puzzles. Not one or the other, but both, without anything being lost. Call of the Sea makes it so that flavor is not ignored like a website pop-up ad, because it isn’t noise that distracts from the puzzle. It’s a part of the full experience, like the aromatics from a perfectly made cocktail.
Call of the Sea recognizes flavor as something valuable and worthy of attention for the experience. By isolating it, they aren’t making it a second class citizen, but reserving its place for players to appreciate.
Preview for Next Time
Four down, one to go in Season 4! I started 2023 by finally playing the incredible The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt. I played the entire game, as well as both DLC packs and absolutely loved it. But, the premise of this blog is One Cool Thing and after 80 hours and a bit of thought, I wrote about one thing in particular.
Edited by Joshua Buergel
Separating narrative from mechanisms is a strong, even bold design choice. As you note, it seems like a lot of games try to merge them or at least make the narrative diegetic to the gameplay, which can be time-consuming or messy just as often as it can work out.
I'm playing through snippets of Persona5 Royal in between other games and while it doesn't neatly divide these halves of the experience, I appreciate that I can play 30-45 minutes of visual novel and then jump into a dungeon/battle experience with a completely different mechanical feel, that puts the preceding narrative on the line in a big way.