The hero’s journey

Used in stories for many thousands of years, the Mono myth is this idea of a story structure of a hero. The story is centred around one key character in a certain order.   It makes stories that we know very easy to digest and it is a key link in allowing us to connect with the character’s struggles.

Perhaps more so than anywhere else, the game Journey uses this to guide its entire game narrative.

The game Journey is essentially a game about the hero’s journey. Using the game itself as a metaphor, thatgamecompany created a game that captured the narrative element within the core levels of the game.  The mood of the game is crafted with the same flow of the Hero’s journey.  In his speech, he explained that the games were created with the vision of connecting people. Jenova, creator of Journey, experienced an immense sense of loneliness as he played video games online. Journey was created to connect two strangers online and share an experience.

The entire level design of Journey IS about the struggles of a hero.  Each level was designed with the intent of reflecting the phases that the hero struggles with. I feel that the mono myth captures the flow of what a story is. The beginning, middle and end of a story each has a specific role to play.

The first part of the story helps us to understand the nature of the character, their fear and motivations that led them to start this journey and also make us feel something for these characters.

The middle of the story shows us the conflict and challenges that the character has to face and we become more attached to them as we watch them try to resolve this conflict.

At the last part we find ourselves rooting for the character as they struggle to conquer this obstacle. The struggle that they face parallels our own struggle and we begin to care for the character themselves until their eventual resolution of this conflict, and then the character returns back.

The mono myth structure helps us to understand and even create a sort of anticipation of what is going to happen to the character. Over time it has become a little overused in the mainstream media and as a result we have become numbed to it because of the repetition that arises from its popularity.

Regardless, I still feel that there it is a great structure help us understand how stories are told and playing Journey has helped me understand this universal story a lot better.