The word linear, when applied to video games, is death. We denigrate shooters on rails as trivial diversions best played with a beer in one hand and a light gun in the other. We treasure games like Grand Theft Auto, Deus Ex, The Sims, even Crayon Physics because they are profoundly nonlinear. They let us solve problems in unique ways and they let us design our own experience in large part. Then, surely, if our games are nonlinear, the stories that are bound to them must be too.

It would be a mistake, however, to think that video game storytelling is an entirely new medium. The history of nonlinear narrative runs further back than you’d think, but most of it is hidden like the mass of an iceberg. Academics tend to cite two things most often as the creative roots of nonlinear storytelling: a short story written by Jorge Luis Borges in 1941 called “The Garden of Forking Paths,” and a French literary movement in the 1960s called Oulipo — a contraction that when translated reads workshop of potential literature. But in truth, only academics really talk about these things.

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1. The Impossibility of the Internet

I did not think I would ever play Mother 3, but I did. The window for a real release by Nintendo had come and gone several years ago and every time I checked on the fan translation efforts, they were either mired in drama or seemed hopelessly far away from completion. I had made my peace with it, was content simply to imagine what it might be– the way I had a fever dream once when I was a little kid about playing Super Mario Bros. 3 years before it was released, with mutated Tryclydes and Shyguys that would chase you through mazes.

But — all things are possible given the Internet and enough time, and so I’ve played Mother 3. I am curiously happy about this, the same way I would be if I ever got to experience zero gravity. There are some things you simply don’t expect to ever do.

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