One of the most unusual aspects of video games is the manufacture-as-you-go time element. Diagetic space is not a set item, is practically an unknown as the characters are moved within it to complete their mission. I can’t say with certainty that all games—nor even this one, Silent Hill—is unmindful of relative space, but the linear narrative follows along in some manner of chronological time based only upon when the mission is started until it is successfully completed. I do not know as yet if the characters sleep—most likely not, at least until a certain task has been accomplished. But they are dependent upon the user to get them to a plot point that will transition the story to a new level. Dramatic structure seems to be the timeline built into the game, and this is affected by how it is played. Whether it takes the user (in real time) one hour or thirty hours to reach that point, the character has in fact traveled anywhere from a direct point A to point B, or allowing for my moonwalking (backwards, going nowhere) has spent a good deal more time wasted in false leads or wrong paths. I’m sure that my “guy,” after a couple hours under my control, is a lot more wiped out physically and emotionally with nothing to show for it than had he been guided by a more experienced user.
Pausing the action is somewhat like sticking a bookmark in a book to save your place. Saving a game is insuring that my character will not be made to suffer the whole ordeal again by going back to the starting point.
Again, time cannot be measured within the story because of user input, and so I shouldn’t complain, I suppose, that there is no change of clothes or so much as a yawn to indicate any desire to rest. Although the exertion is accounted for by pick-me-ups in the form of health drinks in this particular game, and it seems that I recall certain necessary “revitalizers” in interactive fiction pieces that were offered as important to the survival of the protagonist on his journey.
As for how long it takes the narrator to tell the story, the narrator being to a large degree the user, that’s wide open. In book format, there is a difference between a second grade reader and a speed-reader, but there is the additional glitch here of where the reader/user is taking the story each time he enters it. Even the most experienced gameplayer will no doubt stumble upon occasion within the disorderly (although clearly “ordered” software programming) narrative structure of forest he is navigating.
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