Narrascope 2022 was an event organized for people to exchange ideas around narrative games, and it took place on July 30–31. The recordings are viewable on YouTube.
I watched Nessa Cannon’s Narrascope presentation, “Using chess as a metaphor in game narrative.” The title accurately summarizes its contents:
Cannon drew on her background — someone who started playing chess at the age of 3, and who later worked as a chess coach — to discuss how the game and its pieces have been accumulating symbolic meaning for centuries. This means that the symbolism of chess can easily be integrated with other thematic elements, and Cannon identified three ways of involving chess in storytelling:
- Overt chess inconography. The example that Cannon gave was the character from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney whose office includes a chessboard. It’s a prop to make them look smart.
- Characters representing specific chess pieces, which is something I have seen in The Avengers: it’s a pair of characters named “Knight” and “Steed” who work for a higher authority and foil the plots of diabolical villains.
- “Chessboard subtext,” where story elements reflect the interactions of chess pieces on a board. This rarely happens on its own; authors often include one of the other approaches to call attention to the subtext.
It turns out that there are more possible variations of chess games than there are atoms in the observable universe, which means that dedicated enthusiasts will find historical matches or sequences of moves that fit almost any story.
This symbolism moves in either direction: writers can start with a chess game and develop it into a story, or enrich an existing story by drawing parallels with chess strategies. Weak stories can also benefit from chess allusions to appear more fully developed. And when I say “weak stories,” I specifically mean Kingdom Hearts III.
Cannon brought up Kingdom Hearts III during her talk to note that it opens with two characters playing chess. “Seeing this, like, in the very beginning of the game, shows a lot of how methodical these characters’ plans are.” She pointed out that it suggests “there’s a long game going on, and the people have been planning this for a really long time.”
I support that interpretation, but I’m reluctant to say that the subtext is applied consistently throughout Kingdom Hearts III. The overall plot is a barely functional pile of excuses — the entire franchise exists solely to escort players through experiences with various Disney properties.
(And that’s fine! I had a lot of fun re-enacting Disney moments while smacking monsters with a giant key. It’s entertaining, but I would not hold this series aloft as a triumph of narrative elegance.)
The good guys in Kingdom Hearts III win every time, and there are only so many ways to maintain dramatic tension in that situation. The idea of a grand strategy is invoked to claim that you were supposed to foil evil plans at Location A, that it was a ruse to draw you away from something sneaky happening in Location B.
But this ultimately proves Cannon’s point about chess being a way to enrich narrative experiences. "It's really powerful," she said. "I think that it's really under-utilized."
For intricate stories, the inclusion of chess metaphors can add extra depth. For shallow stories, chess imagery can disguise the lack of a coherent narrative.
In Cannon's words, "It'll add a layer to your game that might not have been there before."
