Harshit Singh
ABSTRACT:
This paper investigates narrative trust in choice-based interactive digital narratives (IDNs). Not to be confused with literary notions of the narrator’s reliability, narrative trust is a form of emotional engagement where players believe not just in characters, plot, or outcomes but in the systems that shape them. Drawing from player surveys and close readings of four games – The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Detroit: Become Human, Depression Quest, and With Those We Love Alive – the study explores how emotional reliability is constructed, felt, and sometimes broken. Trust, we argue, emerges not from the number of endings or the complexity of branching but from the system’s ability to register intention with coherence and weight. Through structural analysis of design mechanisms like responsive hesitation, we show how narrative systems earn or lose credibility. When players feel misrecognised as the system responds with silence, flattening, or didactic funnelling, trust collapses. But when a system hesitates, absorbs, or simply listens, even refusal can feel like recognition. This paper calls for design that values resonance over spectacle, showing that emotional mechanics are not soft features but central engines of narrative play.
KEY WORDS:
digital games, game studies, interactive digital narratives, narrative choice-based games, narrative studies, narrative trust, player agency, structural design.
DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2026-9-1.38-50
HOW TO CITE:
Singh, H. (2026). Narrative trust in choice-based games: Rethinking emotional immersion through Twine and AAA dialogue trees. Acta Ludologica, 9(1), 38-50. http://doi.org/10.34135/actaludologica.2026-9-1.22-37
Narrative Trust in Choice-Based Games: Rethinking Emotional Immersion Through Twine and AAA Dialogue Trees © 2026 by Harshit Singh is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0
