What will my narrative be?

So here is the real question: What will my narrative be? If I am planning on having the narrative make up a significant portion of the game, then what will it be about? What will it say? This is still completely open at this point.

Jack had me thinking about what my point of view on the subject is. I think narrative is an important part in any game and on the immersion of the game (for certain genres, that is), but I am just as guilty of skipping over narratives. There are some games which I have more of a tendency to skip than others. For example, Oblivion. You can completely skip over the narrative, even when describing a quest. But there is a log that is kept and a marker is placed on your map for where you should go. Therefore, listening to the narrative is unnecessary, and since they are often presented in a boring manner, I tend to skip over them. This kind of narrative leads a player to be only interested in game play. You want to explore more than do.



In contrast, some of the Final Fantasy games hold my attention more. They have really detailed stories, which are often very important to certain tasks you do.

The story is more interesting, too. I even enjoyed the story when there weren't the cinematic effects: back in the Final Fantasy IV and VI days for the Super Nintendo. This kind of narrative leads players to be interested in both narrative AND gameplay, since the interactivity is what furthers the narrative. You want to accomplish certain tasks.


But now I'm off track talking about more games. There are a few different directions I can go in for the narrative.
-I could have a really interesting narrative, almost like a book, which has little to nothing to do with the rest of the game.
-I could have a very descriptive narrative that tells the player to do something specific, telling them how to interact with the game. (This is probably more how game designers should work to keep a player interested)
-I could have a narrative that is incredibly boring and monotonous, which would drive the player to want to skip the narrative and get on with the game. But it would go on and on and on and on.... (I am leaning towards this one!)

Again, how exactly I am going to do it is up in the air at this point. This is what critiques are good for :-)