Ludonarrative Dissonance

Task: Read Hocking's analysis of Bioshock and write about a game with mechanics that compliment its story

Having read Hocking's article about Bioshock, I found the concept of ludonarrative dissonance very interesting, although Bioshock is probably not the game I would have chosen to exemplify it, rather maybe something like Fallout 4, which is an RPG in which the idea is for you to be able to roleplay any character you'd like, but one which forces you into a pre-existing role as a parent and partner, and to kill others in order to complete the game despite whatever our own inclinations may be. (One let's-player completed the game with a kill-count of 0, but had to use several exploits - such as forcing NPCs to kill each other - as well as a lot of patience and a lot of luck in order to do so, and still nearly broke the game.)

In any case, as for games that I believe are very ludonarratively consonant, Bloodborne is a game I finished recently which I believe fits this category. It helps in part that much of the narrative has to be gathered by inference, but unlike a lot of games with violent gameplay it is not at odds with the story. The constant cycle of death and rebirth as a mechanic is something ingrained into the narrative - you are cursed to hunt, unable to die, until you defeat the nightmare. If you fall in battle, you will be brought back again and again until you 'win,' Even beating the game, regardless of the ending, doesn't really end the cycle, as it launches you straight back to the beginning into a "New Game+," retaining most of your items and all your levels, but with stronger, scaled-up enemies, In addition, the "true" ending of the game is to kill the Moon Presence, the entity sustaining the nightmare, and in the process become an eldritch monster yourself, the ultimate progression of the "hunt beasts and use their power to become stronger" mentality that is at the core of the game. This even factors into the game's lore, as the original cause of the beast plague you're fighting was humans trying to use the power of the Great Ones, creatures such as the Moon Presence, to strengthen humanity.

The only aspect of the game that I would say is somewhat dissonant is the fact that no matter which ending you choose - walking away, being trapped in the dream forever as its supervisor, or the aforementioned 'true ending' - the game still immediately starts a New Game+ save, which is jarring seeing as none of the endings would entail events repeating themselves, unless we assume that this is a new hunter travelling the dream, in which case why do they look exactly like your previous one, with all the same items, weapons and armour? Given the series' opaque nature there may be an explanation for this in the lore somewhere (a fair amount of this discussion is on information not given in the game, only through meta-storytelling elements like acheivement titles and item descriptions), but it's not information that is readily available to players, and so this part of Bloodborne remains confusing. That said, the game at large is still very in-tune with its story, and so I would label it as ludonarratively consonant, for the most part.