Does anyone else find "plot twists" in games gimmicky?

[teebeeohh]

did you really just involve Nintendo in a topic about the quality of plot?
because lets face it, Nintendo games hold up on the merit of their gameplay.

and i kinda agree, plot twists are overused at this point, we fully expect big plot twists to the point that i sometimes end up waiting for the someone to betray me(because let's face it, unless you have a really good one lined up you will end up having someone betray the PC).

 

[Squilookle]

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.

Any chance you could provide a link to that article? I'd be very interested to read it.

 

[Ticklefist]

Good storytelling with strong emotional payoff is key. If you can accomplish that with a surprise ending, awesome. The new trend is the cerebral "what does it all mean" ending. That's a storyteller that wants YOU to give THEM the emotional payoff.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

I think they can be very gimmicky.

Debates about Bioshock 1's ending have sprung up recently, and I have repeated that I think it's "twist" was not very compelling.

I really like how Hotline Miami and Dark Souls handle their story, they give you just enough info to form the puzzle in your head. But they never fully give the solution to the puzzle.

did you really just involve Nintendo in a topic about the quality of plot?
because lets face it, Nintendo games hold up on the merit of their gameplay.

Well he brought up Majora's Mask, which has often been cited as a unique Zelda game (and thus Nintendo game) in terms of writing. For example. [http://www.damnlag.com/power-of-majora-mask/]

Heck, it was written by Yoshiaki Koizumi, who also wrote the Link's Awakening which had a pretty major plot twist (even if it may not have been surprising).

 

[4RM3D]

Plot twists are a like doubled-edged sword: they can both enhance the experience and destroy the experience. There is a related trope for that: the Deus Ex Machina.

Simple put, the plot twist needs to serve a purpose other than just being there for the WOW-factor. The best plot twist you see coming a mile away (e.g. subtle hints), but only realize it when the twist happens. I thought the plot twist in Iron Man 3 was pretty cool or The Sixth Sense. Can't recall any game stories at the moment.

 

[conmag9]

I'm not sure if gimmicky is the word I'd use, but I have been noticing lately that so many games are trying to have them, and the value declines if you're expecting a twist. So yeah, it would be nice to mix things up a bit with more straightforward (but still quality) stories. You can do lots without having to say "and your character is actually a an amnesiac enemy/dead all along/the son of some sort of evil god etc. Plot twists for characters beside the main are slightly more palatable (or rather, slightly less cliche. I still haven't entirely gotten tired of the idea).

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Your post sounds exquisitely smug. Could you provide some examples of what specific twists you've seen people raving about?

And yes, plot twists can greatly enhance a gaming experience. Not from a purely gameplay perspective, but they can surprise and make you more engaged with the story, thus increasing immersion and making you enjoy the game more.

Plot twists can also be a cheap way to tell a story, if they're cliched, predictable plot twists, like "Oh my gosh, the leader turned out to be evil". What I think you're implying is that twists made purely for the sake of there being a plot twists are cheap, but twists that are central to the story and fit the context of the narrative and characters are good.

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.

Wait... what? There being a plot twist in the story makes you as bad a recycler of material as Nintendo? And you're saying that The Sixth Sense, Bioshock, Wreck-it Ralph or any other piece of fiction with a big central twist can't be as nuanced as stories without them? Get your head out of your ass already.

 

[Korenith]

Plot twists are a bit of a gimmick in the sense that there seems to be almost an expectation for a good story to have one or two in certain circles (not just gaming). The problem is that some stories wouldn't be what they are without the twist (The Usual Suspects, The Wasp Factory etc.) but what people tend to do is assume that it's the twist that makes them great not the clever way it upends your entire perspective on the story up until this point whilst simultaneously showing us how wrong our assumptions can be. Good twists are brilliant but hard to pull off. Which is why M. Night Shyamalan (am I even close with that spelling?) is such a terrible writer. Because he's obsessed with twists and all his movies revolve around them rather than having them enrich the experience.

 

[Fappy]

As everyone already said they are a storytelling tool. If it makes sense within the context of the story it can serve to enhance the experience. However, relying on a good plot twist to remedy a bad story is certainly a cop-out.

 

[wottabout]

I always love plot twists, even terrible ones that don't make sense. I'm pretty easy to please, though. Like, you could just take any story and add at the end, "And it turned out that X was Y the whole time!" and I would be like WHAAAAAAAAAAT. Because then I have to think back through and be like, "Oh wow, so that explains that time when ----!" or "But that doesn't even make sense because ----!" I like getting to go back and reconsider things, and maybe getting to imagine things that happened before in a different light. Even if it's one of those crazy rave lights that make you all dizzy and then you vomit everywhere and can't see straight for two days.

The point is, I like those things, but I know other people don't, so if I wrote a game I would use plot twists sparingly. Well, except for the game I'm writing right now, where it turns out the protagonist's parents are vampires and her cousin is a timetraveling robot and some girl is stalking the protagonist but no one even knows she exists until the very end and actually the whole game takes place in a future where Sealand started a revolution and took over half of Asia. And those aren't even the important plot twists. But the whole game is just so I can practice making simple games in Flash so I'm not taking the plot very seriously anyway. But plot twists. Yeah. They're gimmicky, but I'm blindly devoted to them.

 

[ninjaRiv]

It's like films, I think; plot twists can be both good and bad. How many times have you sighed and said "Oh, Jesus that's terrible" when a character makes a terribly predictable or pointless reveal?

Games do the same and I think now they're catching up to film level, in terms of story telling so the twists are just examples of writers still getting their act together. Or maybe I'm just full of shit (plot twist!).

 

[Mr.Squishy]

They can be good. They can be worth it. Or they can be so ridiculously transparent that you know what's going to happen after the first five minutes (Looking at you, Dishonored).

 

[PortalThinker113]

As many others before me have already stated, plot twists are simply a storytelling tool. They are not inherently good or bad- it depends on how they are implemented into the narrative as a whole.

One of my personal philosophies regarding plot twists is that a plot twist can only be considered truly great if the story and twist hold up when the plot twist has already been spoiled, or you are experiencing said story for a second time. If you still feel power in the moment of the twist, if you still feel like a specific narrative point has been made, then the twist has been a success, as it is a part of the story being told, not the entire story. If the story now feels "ruined" because you had a plot twist spoiled, it is quite likely that the story was being held up by the twist, and without it, it doesn't have a leg to stand on.

To be clear, I'm not advocating the stance that all spoilers are okay. I hate having a twist spoiled just as much as the next person (Using recent examples, although I think both of these narratives have great twists that hold up even when already known, I can tell you that if Bioshock Infinite and Iron Man 3 had been spoiled for me beforehand, I would have been quite unhappy). However, good twists hold up regardless of whether you know them in advance or not, as that means that they have something to say about the characters and narrative at play. The twist is more than just a narrative "gotcha!" moment- the twist causes you to reevaluate the story as a whole and learn something important about the nature of the characters or the points the story is trying to make. I had "would you kindly?" spoiled for me LONG before I first played Bioshock, but I still felt the power in the Andrew Ryan scene. I understood the points it was making about free will and game narrative, and the moment (in addition to the rest of the story) held up regardless of the fact that I knew it beforehand. Contrast that to latter-day M. Night Shyamalan films and similar things- if a story is "ruined" by spoilers, chances are good that it wasn't that great of a story to begin with.

A good narrative needs to have stronger foundations than simply surprising the audience.

 

[Comocat]

Plot twists are just a tool, how they are used is what matters.

I agree is it a Sixth Sense plot twist or Signs plot twist? For the most part games don't have complicated enough stories to warrant a twist other than to give you a reason to keep playing (eg every final fantasy game ever made). But IMO a well done plot twist is rarely a bad thing.

 

[Zantos]

OT:

My question, though, is: isn't this kind of a cheap way to tell a story?

Yes. No. Man, there really should be a word that means both of these at the same time. No, "maybe" just doesn't cut it for me.

I find the good old "Yes with an if, no with a but" to work quite well in these situations. It's not too snappy, but I feel it has a certain weight to it.

OT: The plot twist depends on how it's used and how it fits. The best comparison I can think of would be to say "Does anyone find protagonists gimmicky". You can have a protagonist, you can have many protagonists, you can have no protagonist, if you feel brave you can have one but tell it from another perspective. It doesn't matter what you do, whether are not they fit well is to do with how they're written, how they interact with other characters and how they move through the plot. The protagonist device is not intrinsically good or bad, else we find that, I dunno, you don't like Duke Nukem and therefore also do not like Ezio Auditore because they both were leading characters.

 

[Wolfeyes555]

You can probably argue that plot twist in movies, shows and any medium is a gimmick. Thing is, just because somethings a gimmick doesn't necessarily mean that it is instantly bad. In the hands of a talented writer, the most gimmicky of gimmicks can still be good, even great.

Thing again, I'm probably the last person to ask about this. I love the Professor Layton serious to death and I'd argue that the series has the most ridiculous plot twist ever.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

I agree, plot twists are just a gimmick and they are generally used to hide weak gameplay. Good games don't rely on the story narrative to carry the experience and people who think they do aren't really into games but more into stories. Goto the library or watch a film if you care about story, play a game if you want to be challenged on your skills!

I can understand the sentiment but games are now getting to the point that they can tell stories while still providing challenging gameplay. Plus the interactive paradigm could make stories more interesting or more engrained due to more active investment of the player (just don't make an entire story based on player input or you have a blowout like Mass Effect 3) As for plot twists, like any method of storytelling, there are good examples and bad examples in all media. I say feel free to tell the story you want but make sure that it actually works and is not gimmicky

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

I'm talking Spectrum ZX81 and Commodore 64 era of gaming. Sure, there are examples of story in some games but it really wasn't anything but an explanation of why you were running to the other end of the screen or shooting/eating/absorbing strange shapes on your way there. Thinking about it, the game and the story were the same thing...they weren't seperate like they are now.

Planetfall was a dialogue and plot driven game released in 1983. Ultima IV, released the same year, is often remembered for it's story, too. Games with stories have been around for a while.

Now, this isn't to say that this means you must like games with stories, I'm just pointing it out. Personally, while I love the stories of many games, I wish more of them just wouldn't bother. It seems like a lot of games throw cutscenes and story in there because they feel like they have to. Seriosu Sam 3 would have been far more enjoyable if it were just a bunch of levels where you kill shit. It's story was of no importance, so why was it even there?

OT: Plot twists can be a fantastic element to a story if they're handled well. However, in the majority of cases, I'd agree that they're little more than a gimmick.