All Stories Are One Story: Emotional Arc Guided Procedural Game Level Generation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a framework for procedural game level generation guided by emotional arcs, enhancing narrative coherence and player engagement through large language models and adaptive content creation.

Contribution

It presents a novel method to incorporate emotional arcs into procedural game narrative generation using LLMs and empirical analysis.

Findings

Emotional arcs improve player engagement and emotional impact.

The system successfully generates coherent branching story graphs.

Player ratings and sentiment analysis validate the approach.

Abstract

The emotional arc is a universal narrative structure underlying stories across cultures and media -- an idea central to structuralist narratology, often encapsulated in the phrase "all stories are one story." We present a framework for procedural game narrative generation that incorporates emotional arcs as a structural backbone for both story progression and gameplay dynamics. Leveraging established narratological theories and large-scale empirical analyses, we focus on two core emotional patterns -- Rise and Fall -- to guide the generation of branching story graphs. Each story node is automatically populated with characters, items, and gameplay-relevant attributes (e.g., health, attack), with difficulty adjusted according to the emotional trajectory. Implemented in a prototype action role-playing game (ARPG), our system demonstrates how emotional arcs can be operationalized using large language models (LLMs) and adaptive entity generation. Evaluation through player ratings, interviews, and sentiment analysis shows that emotional arc integration significantly enhances engagement, narrative coherence, and emotional impact. These results highlight the potential of emotionally structured procedural generation for advancing interactive storytelling for games.