As of today, the entire framework to invent genuine interactive storytelling is available. Exciting times since the advent of point and click adventure games.
For decades, programmers have integrated blocking mechanics to stop the player from seeing the ending screen too soon. Puzzle mechanics, RPG mechanics and so on. But soon the story will be emergent and long enough for branching to be interesting in itself.
The Quantic Dream paradigm becomes irrelevant for being too costly and artificial in terms of interactivity. Soon, branching will be generated on the fly based on wisely presets and constrained prompts by the author himself.
It’s not absolute liberty, just a new tool for telling stories. Appropriate constraints wil be key for this to be interesting. Too tight will be boring, too permissive will be uncanny. But in the end it will give us genuine interactivity inside a narrative sandbox. One could envision the next Star Wars to be one of these interactive stories based on Stable Diffusion and linguisitic models. People will share their own paths and retell choices they made along the way.
Philosophically, this will probably fusion the idea of destiny that’s attached to linear movies together with the idea of consequences for one’s act. It’s a major shift and a detachment from passive behavior we often witness in modernity (the couch and doritos).
As for me, although I started MotionBox with the idea of inventing a new form of television that serves people’s best interests, I have to aknowledge that interactive television might be around the corner.
Storyteller and artists often have a stronger impact in the long run than the politician and the buisnessman. They shape the human trajectory.
Benjamin Arnaud