I was going to begin by saying I Am Alive is a game about a man named Adam, but that would be inaccurate. It features this man named Adam, and Adam is the character that the player controls, but it’s not really about him at all. It’s about everyone that Adam interacts with.

I don’t mean this in some clever artistic analysis way, either. I simply mean that the game’s story doesn’t really have anything to do with the protagonist or his goals.

Dead Space had a similar issue, though not quite so badly. There was still some level of development for Isaac Clarke. By the end of I Am Alive, however, the only thing that has really changed is the physical location Adam happens to be in. The problem is that the game developers treated the “story” as “the excuse for the player to go around and do things”.

All we really know about Adam is that he was on the East Coast when the big disaster had happened and is trying to get back to his wife and daughter. They never indulge the player as to why he was on the East Coast. There is a moment where the dialog sounds as if Adam was actually going through a rough patch in his marriage, but it is never really focused on. No concept of his career, how his marriage was going, or if he even has any flaws. He’s simply a man looking for his wife and daughter, like a combination of Alan Wake and Henry from Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

This is a decent enough point to kick-off from, as we have the character’s, and therefore the player’s, goals. His mission is to find his wife and daughter. Yet shortly after finding his home empty, his wife and daughter having left to seek shelter elsewhere, the player stumbles upon the “real” plot. A young girl Adam confuses for his daughter, which leads him to seeking out and running errands for the young girl’s guardian, Henry, and her mother.

That’s it. The game ends with the story arc of the characters that Adam helps, but he is left to continue on his journey. It’s almost like an episode of Kung Fu or Quantum Leap, only those on-going shows have time to establish the personalities and histories of the protagonist.

This creates a major disconnect between the player and the game world. I have no reason to empathize with the protagonist, and technically neither does he. The best you really have is caring for the young girl, and the greatest reason I could do that were the small touches that reminded me of my niece. That’s a kind of projection that the developer really shouldn’t rely on. Monsters, Inc. connected us to Boo through Sullivan and Mike, and then had Boo conflict and interact with their world, priorities and mucking up the status quo. Alan Grant professed to hate kids, yet found himself in the role of protector of two in Jurassic Park.

There are slight hints to this in I Am Alive, but the fact that Adam’s search for his wife and child is being interrupted by trying to help these folks out is never really addressed. People occasionally ask him about his family, but he doesn’t really say much about it. In the end, you just get the feeling that he’s the nicest and most altruistic guy in the world. He never explains why, even as much as the idea that he’d hate to see his own family in such danger out there in the cruel and dangerous streets of the outside world. He just nods his head and asks everyone what he should be doing.

This is not effective story-telling. I know it is hard to build a traditional three-act structure for a game, but it is possible. A player does not always need to be given commands in order to provide gameplay.

The game certainly tries to add information through optional narrative, of course. If you choose to help victims then they’ll provide you information, such as how most civilians were sent to shelters that soon became overcrowded and, after using every last available resource, empty and deserted. You never visit one of these shelters, however, and the manner in which this information is given suggests that it isn’t as important as helping Henry, the little girl and her mother. It’s a B-plot that never ties into the A-plot.

For those not familiar, in film and television writing there will often be two, sometimes three, simultaneous plot-threads occurring. They will frequently be referred to by a letter, and the letter could be indicative of the importance within that film or episode. Often enough the A and B-plot of these episodes will somehow combine in a climax, thus concluding all plot threads and wrapping everything up in a nice and neat resolute package.

Let’s take the ever popular Firefly episode of Shindig as an example. The A-Plot involves Captain Malcom Reynolds landing on the planet to try and nail a job with Sir Warrick, who isn’t sure he should entrust his cargo to the Captain and crew of Serenity. The B-Plot involves Inara and her rather wealthy client Atherton Wing’s marriage proposal. These two plots converge at the party, joining into a single plot, or perhaps a new C-Plot. After all, Inara is still considering the marriage proposal and Reynolds still needs to land that job. Now he also just needs to survive.

Multiple plot threads that converge are an excellent way to develop different characters while moving the overall story forward, and bringing them together not only gives a firm sense of unity, that everything is part of the whole, but also makes it easier to tie up all the loose ends.

In I Am Alive, the A-Plot is given to Henry, the young girl and her mother. Adam’s story is the B-Plot, which is simply handed off to the victims that the player may or may not help. The two plots never converge, and therefore no sense of unity is established, nor are the loose ends tied up. In fact, even the A-Plot is left with a strand or two of thread left dangling worthlessly.

This results in a weak plot that feels as if it ultimately goes nowhere. You have discovered nothing of Adam, and Adam himself has been left unchanged. No revelation has occurred.

This is the weakness of the game, and why I write about it separately from the gameplay. I Am Alive tries to tie the story in with gameplay, to give the player purpose to explore the city. Instead, they may as well have left the story out and just allowed the player to wander and explore at their whim.

What they should have done was tied the B-Plot, Adam’s story, in with the main plot line. As he performed all these errands for supposed side characters, have him stumble on small clues that could lead him to his family. Finding someone wearing his wife’s favorite coat that they got on vacation, desperately questioning how they got it only to learn that it was left hooked on some shrapnel in a building elsewhere. When the A-Plot later takes the player to this location, find other clues as to what happened, such as chalk drawings left behind by his daughter. Flash back to moments with his family, when he bought that coat with his wife, or perhaps an argument they had when she bought it even though they couldn’t afford it. Visions of his daughter creating the same chalk drawing in his driveway, and how he asked her about it.

This way, even though the game still ends without him finding his family, progress seems to be made. The player feels like they’ve gotten some answers and have figured something out. The game (hopefully) leaves room for a sequel at the end, and the gameplay is good enough to warrant a return.

However, the story has left me with little interest in Adam himself or his plight. I understand the need to keep giving a player goals, to push them forward in the game as an excuse to create gameplay. That doesn’t mean you cannot add in several other elements of traditional storytelling to move the plot, and characters, forward.