Reading over this forum as well as gaming reviews in general, I've observed a lot of references to "plot twists"--it's become a cliche, for instance, for industry commentators to discuss how "great" or "unexpected" this or that plot twist is; the implication being that unexpected curves in the arc of a storyline somehow have the potential to greatly enhance a gaming experience.
Sometimes, the use of suspenseful narrative structures seems to have supplanted the necessity of supplying a well-developed story, or--in extreme cases--of actually creating a game. I'm thinking of Heavy Rain: the gameplay was mediocre, the environments were uninspiring, and the storyline was... thoroughly mediocre. Yet people still raved it, particular its conclusory "plot twist"--a twist so anodyne it could've been culled from any potboiler novel.
My question, though, is: isn't this kind of a cheap way to tell a story? It's pretty well-established, in literature, that narrative corkscrews are an overtly commercial device--the Ancient Greeks, for instance, insisted that their tragedians retell well-known mythic stories for the partly the reason that it was felt that the drama would've been cheapened if they tried to hold the audience's attention by constantly upending the plot. Moreover, plot twists may not actually enhance your viewing experience: a recent study I read in Huffington Post suggests that film viewers relax and enjoy movies more when they're not awaiting the next twist in the narrative.
It's kind of funny--people bash a company like Nintendo for supposedly "reusing" the same plots over and over, when the reality is that 1) this strategy has a lot of antecedents in literature and mythology, and 2) it's a far more nuanced way of telling a story than to create a dark, 'edgy' narrative rife with mediocre dialogue and predicated on tawdry narrative twists to keep the audience involved. No one's going to confuse Mario for a narrative-driven game, but take Majora's Mask... the narrative is way beyond something like Heavy Rain in terms of nuance and sophistication.
Also, for fun:
A deus ex machina (pron.: /ˈdeɪ.əs ɛks ˈmɑːkiːnə/ or /ˈdiːəs ɛks ˈmækɨnə/;[1] Latin: "god from the machine" pronounced [ˈdeus eks ˈmaː.kʰi.na]; plural: dei ex machina) is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved, with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object. Depending on how it's done, it can be intended to move the story forward when the writer has "painted himself into a corner" and sees no other way out, to surprise the audience, to bring a happy ending into the tale, or as a comedic device.
...So yeah, the Greeks were so insistent about this they largely forwent writing actually original plot, though that didn't stop Euripides from shoehorning in a bunch of mini-twists in his work (arguably what makes him worse than Aeschylus and Sophocles, whose plots develop more organically).
BAD "plot twist": Heavy Rain's stupid "whodunit" BS; BioShock's bizarre narrative hijinks, KOTOR's brainwashing deus ex machina.
GOOD "plot twist": Aeris' death in FF7--it actually wasn't a "twist" since there was really no counteracting logic whatsoever--Deus Ex's slow-boiling conspiracy
Sometimes, the use of suspenseful narrative structures seems to have supplanted the necessity of supplying a well-developed story, or--in extreme cases--of actually creating a game. I'm thinking of Heavy Rain: the gameplay was mediocre, the environments were uninspiring, and the storyline was... thoroughly mediocre. Yet people still raved it, particular its conclusory "plot twist"--a twist so anodyne it could've been culled from any potboiler novel.
My question, though, is: isn't this kind of a cheap way to tell a story? It's pretty well-established, in literature, that narrative corkscrews are an overtly commercial device--the Ancient Greeks, for instance, insisted that their tragedians retell well-known mythic stories for the partly the reason that it was felt that the drama would've been cheapened if they tried to hold the audience's attention by constantly upending the plot. Moreover, plot twists may not actually enhance your viewing experience: a recent study I read in Huffington Post suggests that film viewers relax and enjoy movies more when they're not awaiting the next twist in the narrative.
It's kind of funny--people bash a company like Nintendo for supposedly "reusing" the same plots over and over, when the reality is that 1) this strategy has a lot of antecedents in literature and mythology, and 2) it's a far more nuanced way of telling a story than to create a dark, 'edgy' narrative rife with mediocre dialogue and predicated on tawdry narrative twists to keep the audience involved. No one's going to confuse Mario for a narrative-driven game, but take Majora's Mask... the narrative is way beyond something like Heavy Rain in terms of nuance and sophistication.
Also, for fun:
A deus ex machina (pron.: /ˈdeɪ.əs ɛks ˈmɑːkiːnə/ or /ˈdiːəs ɛks ˈmækɨnə/;[1] Latin: "god from the machine" pronounced [ˈdeus eks ˈmaː.kʰi.na]; plural: dei ex machina) is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved, with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object. Depending on how it's done, it can be intended to move the story forward when the writer has "painted himself into a corner" and sees no other way out, to surprise the audience, to bring a happy ending into the tale, or as a comedic device.
...So yeah, the Greeks were so insistent about this they largely forwent writing actually original plot, though that didn't stop Euripides from shoehorning in a bunch of mini-twists in his work (arguably what makes him worse than Aeschylus and Sophocles, whose plots develop more organically).
BAD "plot twist": Heavy Rain's stupid "whodunit" BS; BioShock's bizarre narrative hijinks, KOTOR's brainwashing deus ex machina.
GOOD "plot twist": Aeris' death in FF7--it actually wasn't a "twist" since there was really no counteracting logic whatsoever--Deus Ex's slow-boiling conspiracy
