This has been brewing for awhile, but I'm still not quite sure how to say anything on the topic coherently. Let me start by saying I don't require the games I play to be narrative driven. I've sunk more time than I care to think about into Borderlands since it came out last October, and the biggest drive in that game is to gain levels and pick up loot. It's good clean fun built around the random positive reenforcement that we love so much. When games do try and compel progression through narrative, though, I like that narrative to be able to stand on its own merits, preferably with writing that doesn't make me cringe. Unfortunately, this seems to be too tall an order for many game creators. This is largely because videogame writers don't seem to know terribly well how to handle what I will generically call "twists" for now -- i.e. those plot elements that shift the immediate focus of the action or the meaning of those actions that have already occurred.
Prime example: towards the end of April, I picked up Assassin's Creed 2 -- nearly universally lauded as one of the best games of 2009 -- on the cheap and started playing through it. The first half of the game is quite enjoyable. I didn't even mind the "ancestral memory" conceit used to link the games in the series. The story (technically the story-within-the-story, but the main plot for all intents and purposes) is a simple but relatively compelling one of revenge against those who have unjustly wronged your family. It felt good saving the city of Florence from these corrupt men. Moving on from there, things start to get a little bit less enjoyable plot-wise as you move on to unravel the larger conspiracy that said men were pawns in, but the city of Venice is even more fun to explore than Florence, so it works out alright for the most part. All the while, there are opportunities to unlock secrets about the larger story surrounding the game -- the historical and modern activities of the Assassins (proper noun) and the Templars in which Ezio, the effective protagonist, is not a part.
This background information is generally pretty ridiculous. It involves elaborate plots and partnerships, not to mention ancient aliens (and alien-human hybrids!). One of the major failings is an attempt to assign roles in this conflict, particularly among the Templar, to far too many historical figures. If a historical figure has ever been vilified in any medium, whether it's Hitler or Edison, they were secretly a Templar. Anybody whom the game creators thought was a Pretty Cool Dude, be it Dante or Tesla or Machiavelli, was secretly a friend of the Assassins. It's unnecessary, distracting, and ridiculous; but it's also entirely optional and thus tolerable...until the last hour or so of the game.
Suddenly, in a major "twist", the alien relics show up within the main plot of the game. And then you have to kill the (evil, Templar-colluding) Pope, who bears another of these relics. And then you find a message recorded and left by the super-powerful-but-now-extinct aliens (whom ancient man thought to be gods) about how the sun is going to blow up someday, so screw your petty conflicts. It's ridiculous, it comes out of nowhere, and it leaves you saying, just like it does the sub-protagonist, "What the ****!?". I have no use for twists of this sort in any sort of story. If it doesn't make sense within the context of what we've been told or shown. If there have been no details to suggest that something is happening other than what we've been led to believe. If the mechanism that instigates the revelation requires supernatural origins. If the entire point is to cause surprise or speculation rather than concern or curiosity...leave it be.
Unfortunately, this is mighty common in videogames, including those that have story as a primary component and not just a generic motivator. I've been slowly working my way through Tales of Vesperia the last several months; and I can't help dropping it for awhile every few weeks because of the absurdity of its plot. The character interactions are mostly pretty great, and the first large story arc -- setting out to retrieve a stolen artifact necessary for the survival of your hometown -- is, again, straightforward and effective, even if I ran into plenty of problems with annoyingly "creative" words made up for the game (as always, xkcd proves right). After that first arc concluded, though, I realized that they were intentionally keeping everything about the workings of the setting as nebulously defined as possible so that they could make up as much crap as they wanted to to prolong the story. Pretty much every single major shift in the plot for the last 20-30 hours has begun/ended with the "genius mage" character going "oh snap! these magical crystal thingamabobs we've all relied on for basic survival for centuries are reacting in some weird way that nobody has ever documented before or thought to be a remote possibility! But now that I've observed it once I understand it completely and can say conclusively that we need to go do X next!" Either that, or some ancient, wizened creature says "puny mortals. you cannot comprehend what's really happening...unless you go do Z, in which case, yeah, you can comprehend it just fine. So...yeah, go do Z." It's ridiculous and makes it legitimately hard to play the game at times.
Even games from the same series or writer can use plot twists exceedingly well in one entry an quite poorly in the next. I complain about its popularity a lot, but Final Fantasy VII is a great game that has a handful of twists, all of which work. None of them seem too far-fetched (even if at least one is borderline traumatic in its surprise), and all work to make the eventual revelation about Cloud's real past and his relationship with Sephiroth make sense. Final Fantasy IX, on the other hand, doesn't handle its twists nearly so well. Whether it's Zidane's origin or the final boss, once you get past the second disk, the big twists all come out of thin air. Hell, as much as I love it, Mass Effect 2 even slips a little bit with the final encounter. I'm willing to overlook that as it makes a certain (if small) amount of sense based on what we know at that point, not to mention the fact that nobody makes any real claim to understanding beyond conjecture what was happening.
That really touches on the key thing. If a twist happens after it has been telegraphed, whether it's through subtle hints that take on greater meaning after the event or more obvious foreshadowing, that's good use of a twist. If a twist happens and there is no prior evidence to explain what happened or to make us think that such an event might happen, but the next portion of the plot is (at least in part) dedicated to illuminating the twist -- to seeing the characters come to understand why their world has suddenly changed and what that means, then that's a good use of the twist. However, if a twist occurs out of nowhere and somebody, instead, immediately comprehends the significance and cause of the event based entirely on knowledge which the audience didn't even know might exist, that's poor use of a twist.
Don't get me wrong. This isn't something that just happens in videogames. I'm still upset with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for this sort of sloppy story telling. It just seems to be more readily accepted in videogames, and it shouldn't be. People have been using games to tell legitimate stories for 20 years or more now. We shouldn't allow the overly-frilly drivel that passes for plot in most of our games today. I'm not demanding narratives that are going to blow my mind. I'm not even demanding narratives that are universally complex and multi-faceted. I'm asking for one simple thing: If you're not willing to take the time to make sure everything makes sense, keep it simple. Moreover, realize that if the characters are ever spending less time in a state of shock or confusion than the audience, you're probably doing something wrong.
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2 comments:
Jeremy's Theory of Plot Twists: it's impossible to change someone's mind on a plot twist. Once you've experienced the twist and made up your mind about it, case closed. (My brother and I do not discuss The Devil's Advocate or Pimal Fear because I absolutely hated the twists. We don't discuss Shaft (2000) because he hated that "twist".)
That said, here's why I accepted AC2's twist. First, there is foreshadowing that something magical (supernatural and/or super-advanced science) is going on behind the scenes. It started in AC1 and was quite explicit in the end! The glyphs in AC2 were also quite explicit.
Second, once I accepted ancestral memories and eagle vision, the twist is merely a change in quantity, not kind. Of course, the quantity one is willing to accept is a matter of taste.
Finally, the AC series seems to be telling a much larger story. To look only at AC2, the twist is a letdown. To look at AC1 and AC2 alone, the twists are confusing. But in a larger story, they're not twists; they're plot points.
Imagine this: AC3 works much the same as AC1 and AC2 except that Desmond relives the ancestral memories of someone in Industrial Age England. Most of the story would take place in the Industrial Age and how the Templars and Assassins went at each other then. (Babbage and Ada Lovelace as Assassins!!!) At the end of the game, we'd get another plot point (i.e., twist) elaborating on the plot points of AC1 and AC2. It finishes Desmond's need to mine his ancestors for information, and so we're treated to a new game series: Desmond and Lucy Kicking Ass in the Future. It's set squarely in the future and makes full use of the plot points established in the AC series.
Perhaps my standards for judging a video game's plot twist are much lower than for a movie or tv show. I'm trying to think of a video game whose twist really irked me. Lost Planet is one that comes to mind, but that was because the game mechanics changed with the final mission (and because I find flying mechs with swords to be really dumb).
As I was writing, I realized that AC2 was a terrible example of what I was complaining about. I get that there's plenty of room in AC3 to expand on the implications of the ending and that nobody claims to even remotely understand what's going on. Its biggest problem, twist-wise, is that I just think the backstory on which it's based is stupid and could have benefited from somebody telling the writers when to say when. Don't even get me started on Machiavelli's brief, entirely pointless appearance. Granted, frivolous historical and/or religious allusions have always irked me.
Oh well, that's what I get for starting out writing about one thing then shifting half-way through to write about another while only adapting the intro. I forget that other people even read this sometimes. Maybe shorter, more focused posts are the order of the day.
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