Never Alone

Chosen question

Do the story nodes in your chosen game(s) work well to support gameplay and gameplay objectives? Why or why not?

Story nodes in the beginning of Never Alone take the form of cut scenes and exposition.
The initial cut scene introduces the world and the characters, however keeps it very vague, as we the players are constantly encouraged to explore deeper into Inuit mythology by the owl giving us the option to view certain clips and images to explain the mythos. However, as the developers understood that not every player would be as invested in the mythos and providing so much information could be distracting from game play, the choice to make this information optional is much appreciated.
Each cut scene and narrated segment we are given provides an objective, and dictates the mood of the scene. 'The girl was devastated' at the destruction of her village or 'The owl man was delighted' to have his drum back. It's a bit like taking a walk through this linear story book, only you can feel real tension in tense areas of the story because you, the player are capable of failure and dying, unlike in a story book where the survival of the main character is presumed to be guaranteed. However I feel as though narrated events where the player is still able to move, such as the bear den, could be better narrated to support game play rather than 'it is not easy to outsmart a bear', as this is a bit of trivial commentary basically telling the player 'here is a puzzle, you're on your own.' The moment the antagonist is chasing the girl is also narrated as 'he was more enraged at the sight of the bola' which tells the player blatantly the objective of the antagonist, and his emotion. However I felt like this was a bit too expository, and could have been better shown as later in tat same chase he cries 'stop, give me that bola!', essentially showing the same thing twice. These cut scene, or event nodes work well to keep the story in focus, but do not otherwise add much to the game or the game play itself. Overall, Never Alone uses nodes well, but not exceptionally so.