The Other Kind of Environmental Storytelling

When we talk about environmental storytelling, it’s typically within the context of video game design. It’s the collection of details in a set piece that lets you know what happened there. Tally marks left in a prisoner’s cell, a giant footprint of an unknown behemoth in the clearing of a field, downed power lines in a city, a single beam of light from the surface illuminating a single spot in an underwater grotto. These details are intentionally placed and are there, not to necessarily provide a specific narrative, but rather the implication of one. It creates a living world, that this place existed before and that it will persist after you. However, sometimes environmental storytelling takes on a different meaning. Sometimes the setting isn’t just a place where things happen, but an active participant in the storytelling. There’s a common screenwriter joke about the “city being a character in and of itself,” but honestly, it’s not that much of a joke to begin with. One of my favorite panels in comics is from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, Vol. 8: World’s End.

“So, if a city has a personality, maybe it also has a soul. Maybe it dreams.” I started thinking about this “other” kind of environmental storytelling after watching Dune: Part 2, specifically after thinking about Paul’s siege on Shaddam’s forces in the final act (sorry for spoiling the third major adaptation of a movie based on a book that came out almost sixty years ago). With the help of the Freman, Paul was able to …