Using the Hero's Journey in Games

Contents

A Story Structure The Hero's Journey How Do I Design With It?

The Hero's Journey

The first thing that comes to mind when you think of a classic hero's journey is a story like Jason and the Argonauts, Homer's Odyssey, or the story of Perseus. The most famous modern hero's journey is Star Wars. I recently just saw Mel Gibson in The Patriot and marveled at how well it followed the classic journey. A hero's journey doesn't have to be about saving the world; it can take a lot of different forms. In a game, however, most stories will take the form of a more classic or traditional hero's journey since those are the kind that offer the most conflict, action and suspense. In the most basic sense, a hero's journey is a trip that a central character goes on in order to resolve a problem.

One of the best reasons to utilize the classic hero's journey into your game is its simplicity. Everyone grows up listening to, reading about or watching stories about heroes. As a game designer it allows us to utilize a known mechanism or formula within our games that people will understand and associate with easily. This allows us the ability to spend less time explaining ourselves and more time developing the story. The formula for a hero's journey has been refined over thousands of years, so there is no reason to try and improve it. Instead you should spend your time trying to figure out how to make it new and interesting. Most people will probably not even consciously know they are involved in a hero's journey until the end, and if they do, they probably won't care.

Screen shot from Blademasters, a game that uses the Hero's journey

There are several kinds of hero's that can be used in a game. I won't go into elaborate details about them here because books are written on the subject, but knowing about the different kinds of hero archetypes can help you decide early on what kind of a hero fits your story and what kind of actions they will be taking. There is your classic heroic hero, willing and unwilling heroes, group orientated and loner heroes, anti-heroes, tragic heroes, and trickster heroes. Some heroes may combine several of the archetypes into one complex personality. Other heroes may only wear the illusion of another kind of hero for a while until something happens to reveal their true self.

Sometimes the main character in a game is actually a group of people. Usually you want one character in the group to be the leader, but it is possible to switch the role of hero from one person to the next in the game. Several members of the group may fall into a hero's archetype as well. In a movie like Beverly Hills Cop, Axel Foley is a static hero archetype who doesn't change much throughout the story, whereas the other main character Rosewood is arguably the real hero of the movie since his personal journey is much more complete. In this way several main characters can coexist during a game without conflicting the story too much.

The Benefits of the Journey

Since many games involve playing as a specific character (typically in first or third person viewpoint) during the game, it makes a lot of sense to play as the central character of the story. Usually the point of view of the story is also written from the player's character's point of view, so a hero's journey works well. The character in the game would also be very boring if they weren't somewhat heroic in their deeds and efforts. The hero and player may be reluctant in accepting their mission, but events should always force them into a no turning back scenario early in the game so that no matter how they feel about the story they know that they must move forward.

Since using a classical hero's journey allows you to work with established story structures and character archetypes when starting your story, you should be able to flush out your initial story much faster. I find that I typically have to write a minimum of four or five completely different stories before I land on one that most of the team likes. Because a designer rarely has the time to rewrite their story as many times as they need to in order to get it right, it is important to be able to iterate the story as quickly as possible. Starting with an initial outline or formula will help you to design your game's initial story much more quickly.

Variations

There are some slightly different variations on the journey, presented in books by Joseph Campbell, Christopher Vogler or others, but I'll try to put it into a summary form. Both Vogler's and Campbell's books go into incredible depth about the subject. Vogler has a great short summary and tends to put a more modern and practical approach onto the hero's journey, whereas Campbell adopts a more classical approach. It is interesting to compare and contrast their differences, but I would recommend reading Vogler's book, largely because it is a summary and modern analysis of Campbell's work (which is in turn a summary and modernization of ancient mythology and stories). I have used Vogler's outline as the basis for my work, because of its simplicity and practicality.

Vogler's Outline	Campbell's Outline
The Ordinary World	The Call to Adventure
The Call to Adventure	Threshold Guardians
The Reluctant Hero	Wise and Helpful old man & the Magic talisman
The Wise Old Man	Refusal of the Call
Into the Special Fantasy World	Passing the First Threshold
Tests, Allies, & Enemies	Hero Partners
The Inmost Cave - Second Threshold	Mystical Insight
The Supreme Ordeal	The Labyrinth & the Princess
Seizing the Sword - Reward	Losing the Guide
The Road Back	Hero Deeds & Dragon Slayers
Resurrection	The Dark road of the Trials
Return - Ending	The Hunt
	Into the Belly of the Beast
	The Mystical Marriage
	The Sacred Grove
	Sacrifice & Betrayal
	The Hero's Return
	Resurrection
	Monster Combat
	The Resurgence of Evil
	The Enchanted Forest & Helpful Animals
	Descent into the Underworld
	Atonement with the Father
	Unmasking
	Final Victory

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How Do I Design With It?