History telling contribute to construct a story with fragmented narrative
History In games, history is a very common way of storytelling. History includes many aspects, such as history of a country, past of someone, origin of item, truth of events. In games, history like treasure, which encourage players to find the key open the treasure. Therefore, how to tell history to players is a very important part for game designers.
1.Using a huge and long text to present the history is a stiff idea:
It is safe to say that only few part of hardcore players would read these text, because it would cost long time and big energy of players, which would interrupt the immersive experience of players during the process of the game. However, text is cheap, and cheap is a good reason for game company to use it to tell some story which is not important for the main story. Of course, good games would use different narrative ways to present a more complete world to players instead of using one ways. But, it is easy to see that a long and huge text would make players too tired to read.
2. Conversation is a vivid way to tell the story:
It is very common way to use conversation between player and NPC to guide player explore the story. By this way, player would have a good immersive experience and want to follow the development of the story. However, for a game company, it is very expensive to use this way to tell a story, because they usually have to spend a lot resources on, such as voice , environment, animation. Obviously, chat can make player feel like as the character in game, while only some important content of a game(like main story) can be used by this way because of limited resources. It is a good way for tell the main story, but not a wise way to tell history.
Compared with both ways, fragmented storytelling can be a cheaper way for game designers and a more relaxing and more interesting way for players to know：
different level of the same series of materials <Genshin Impact>
It tells a story about the Andrius, the dominator of wolves. These materials are used to upgrade weapons of players in game. Therefore, at first time of getting these materials, most players are easy to be guide to read these description of these materials, because it wouldn't cost them a lot of time.
The description of the item is a very common way to convey convey some information to players. The information should be relatively independent but connected with other information, which can make player easy to understand and guide them go head. There are many other ways to present these kind of information to players, such as, nickname, which is more concise; scene arrangement, which can bring players entertainment of exploration; even the failure of players, which can be a guide at the same time.
In general, the aim of fragmented narrative is to make linear narrative more complete. Therefore, if a game have a deep historical background, including item, people, environment...etc, fragmented narrative is a good way to present these content to players.
Skills and Keys of Fragmented Narrative(Chinese):
https://cowlevel.net/question/1929178
http://club.gamersky.com/activity/394226
Writing 'Nothing': Storytelling with Unsaid Words and Unreliable Narrators:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPkbAMj-xVA
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