Video Games are Where the Detective Story Has Always Belonged: The Progression of Detective Stories into Video Games

From its inception, the detective genre has always tried to challenge the reader with a mystery. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of the various traditional mediums this is a challenge that is largely unmet as the mystery is revealed to the reader regardless of their ability to actually solve what was presented. With the more recent medium of video games however this challenge to a reader can finally be met. A detective story can now be presented to a player who must then solve it themselves in order to progress through the game. This thesis is divided up into multiple parts where I explore the nature of the detective genre, the nature of story telling in video games, and how the ludonarrative inherent in video games makes them an ideal home for the genre. From there I look at the actual adaption of the genre and how it divides up depending on how closely an individual game tries to follow the story conventions of the traditional medium that spawned the detective genre