A Fable: or, how to recognize a narrative when you play one

This article marshals various critical models to demonstrate to both ludologists and narratologists that their respective methodologies are not antinomic. Through an analysis of the narrative properties of two video games in the action-adventure genre, Fable and Fable II, this article exposes commonalities between traditional narrative modes and electronic multimodal narratives. Nonetheless, this article's consideration of possible worlds semantics destabilizes established tenets of mimetic theory and points to a significant distinction between traditional narrative worlds and the virtual worlds of video games.