rhizomatic foreshadowing
Tags: gamedev, writing
Published: 2023-12-24 16:21:07

---
title: rhizomatic foreshadowing
published: true
date: 2023-11-28 00:00:00 UTC
tags: [ 'gamedev', 'writing' ]
canonical_url: https://onwriting.games/daily/20231128-1941-rhizomatic-foreshadowing/
---

Today I want to talk about one of the writer's best friends: **foreshadowing**.

The premise is simple: subtly hint at things that will happen in the future of our story to capture the reader's attention.

In linear narratives, it is generally used to create suspense, manipulate the questions the reader asks about the story, or simply provide colorful details that are reinterpreted with the important events of the story.

It can be subtle or even meta with this, as is the case with Ted Chiang in "Story of Your Life," from the beginning:

> Your father is about to ask me the question. This is the most important moment in our lives, and I want to pay attention, note every detail.

We still don't know anything about what's going to happen, but the author is already giving us clues that something strange is happening with time. **It's not moving linearly**.

When we know nothing about the story, these lines are confusing. But in the end, this makes **a lot of sense**.

Then we have foreshadowing that is better forgotten, as in the entire work of the boy wizard student from She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, where the professor named Lupin ends up being a werewolf 🤦.

Now, foreshadowing works the way it does because of one property: the linearity of the medium.

What happens when we introduce non-linearity?

Foreshadowing as we know it breaks down.

Unless we use it in a linear way, forcing events to happen, we have **no way of knowing** if such and such a narrative event will occur in the future.

This presents both a difficulty and a unique **opportunity**.

If at all times we are aware that we do not know what paths the player will take, can't we use foreshadowing to pose questions that may or may not be resolved depending on what happens and make this an **element for replayability**?

This is exactly what Flavourworks did in the game [Erica](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1514930/Erica/) (the game used to be a PS4 exclusive, but they released it on PC too, yay!).

The game is an FMV with branching narrative, nothing surprising there.

What caught my attention is how they managed to make it so that when choosing a path in the game, there are questions posed that as a player you intuit will be resolved in other paths.

This presents a **very concrete motivation** to play the game again. The much-desired replayability.

I am terrible. If you don't give me a solid reason to go through the story again, I won't.

That's how I played games like Until Dawn or The Quarry only once, they didn't generate enough interest for me to return to the story.

But Erica did it so well, that it not only left me with posed questions: when going down another path, it answered one question and even reinterpreted things that had been told to me in the initial branch.

This made me want to explore all the paths to achieve an understanding of the entire story.

(They failed in the game design front, by introducing frustrating interactions, but that's another topic)

I'd love to hear your opinion if you play(ed) it.