Not only are we playing fast and loose with the entire concept of narration and narrators, but at the moment the entry contains the knee-slapping notion that HAL 9000 is the first unreliable narrator. Are you kidding me? Not only are we hundreds of years and an entire medium off the mark, HAL 9000 is in no way the narrator of 2001.

I'm amazed this kind of classic zero-research zero-thought hooey made it through moderation, but I attribute it to the fact that they are wading through thousands of entries. I won't even get into how poorly written it is. Rather than replace it or delete it, I hope we manage to clear up this point before contributing to this tragedy:

In a video game, what constitutes a narrator?

Here's a start: Narrator and Unreliable narrator at Wikipedia.

To be honest here, the term is a little complicated. There are very few "narrators" in a game anymore. The only one I can really think of in a game recently is Battlefield: Bad Company.

Adjusted.

ok. Deep Breathes.

Rather than whining here you might want to consider first fixing the problem yourself with the power of editing.

Yeah, but when people post incorrect stuff, or overwrite your correct info with false info... less fun.

"To be honest here, the term is a little complicated. There are very few "narrators" in a game anymore. The only one I can really think of in a game recently is Battlefield: Bad Company.
"

I made a comment on the other thread in this concept page about exactly that. This page is basically full of spoilers and serve no purpose to the people who have or haven't played the games.

The ones who DID already know about it don't really learn much from this page and if they didn't play some of the other games when they find this page, now they know about it and it only serves to maybe spoil a  story twist in the game or perhaps THE story twist in the game.

Now, the ones who DIDN'T know about it are immediately spoiled. Not that they will totally guess who the said "narrator" is but rather that when they finally get to playing the game they will probably associate the fact that somewhere in the game, someone is lying to them. Now this could be very minor (like an NPC lying to you in a side-quest in, say, Oblivion) or this could be something much, much bigger like the ending of a game. I know at least one game that falls DIRECTLY in the category of this concept (that is: a real off-screen narrator that is misleading or unreliable because of what the game reveals at the end).

In games like Portal where it is pretty much obvious for comedic purposes, that the "narrator" or main antagonist is lying, it could be tolerated but in other games where this concept constitutes a major twist in the storyline I don't think it should be.

Whoops, still getting used to the comment system. Thanks for the fix, snide.

The only game actually mentioned in the body of this article that could be considered a spoiler is the direct reference to SHODAN in the system shock games. I don't think you can call it a spoiler when the game is that old.

"The only game actually mentioned in the body of this article that could be considered a spoiler is the direct reference to SHODAN in the system shock games. I don't think you can call it a spoiler when the game is that old.

I'm not disagreeing, but I'd like to see this debate continued so that we can figure out what does and does not constitute a spoiler.

"

!!! Warning - Spoilers ahead !!!

(BTW, I think spoiler bbcode-ish "OnMouseOver" forum tags are requisite)

!!! END of the Spoilers !!!

im actually about half way through bioshock and have just seen it listed here which pretty much fecks the story up for me.

I agree that some Concept pages should be spoiler tagged, but if you're looking at this page...you're setting yourself up for teh spoilarz. Aren't crucifixes spoilers for the Bible? This whole site is a massive WIKI/DM for video games. I know spoilers are frustrating, but you could get the same from Wikipedia.

This page is so badly done and the concept is so badly defined I will have to go on a  rampage to fix this goddamn thing. DON"T THROW AROUND LITERARY CONCEPTS IF YOU DON"T KNOW WHAT THEY MEAN!!! THIS IS A DEEP POOL AND NOT FOR KIDS!! First of all people are getting the whole narrator and character thing mixed up, which is pretty fucked up then the reliability of the narrator must be assessed after a narrator is properly defined. I WILL GET ON WITH MAKING THIS PAGE BETTER in the near future though, the definition of an unreliable narrator is so badly done its like a drill in my head.

Ok have done a forum post defining a narrator:
http://www.giantbomb.com/unreliable-narrator/92-191/what-is-a-narrator-read-before-adding-games/35-8360/#1