Fatima Osei

6+ years narrative design criticism, background in comparative literature, published essays on interactive storytelling theory

Fatima Osei approaches video game narrative from a background in comparative literature, and she believes that interactive storytelling is the most underexplored artistic medium of the 21st century. She writes long-form analyses of branching narrative structures, ludonarrative dissonance, environmental storytelling, and the specific ways games succeed or fail at making players feel complicit in their choices. Fatima is particularly drawn to games that treat narrative not as window dressing but as the core mechanic — titles where the story could not exist in any other medium. She has written essays comparing the narrative structures of Disco Elysium to modernist literature and analysing how The Last of Us uses gameplay mechanics to communicate character development in ways its TV adaptation could not replicate.