Plot Inversions
Inversion gets a point for trying to throw a few plot twists at players.
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Inversion gets a point for trying to throw a few plot twists at players.
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Plot Inversions
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
That actually is a pretty surprising twist and it's not really something I would expect out of a game like this. Still seems like they could have handled it better though. Too bad I'm not a big fan of sad or tragic endings.
Ok, well, I've got kids and I can tell you that this twist is stupid. For all the reasons yahtzee outlined. What would be the sidekick's motivation for not telling the truth early on? I can see initially trying to spare him the tragic truth, but when the guy is obviously going to put himself and his buddy at extreme risk it seems like it would make more sense to come clean.
Now, as a parent, what would have made more sense is that they don't use this as a bullshit afterthought twist, but they use it as the protagonist's motivation for fighting the invaders.
1. Finds daughter dead.
2. decides he has nothing to lose and so sets out on a mission to just kill as many of the assholes as he can.
3. realizes he is actually making a difference.
4. motivation gradually shifts to helping mankind instead of just hunting for vengeance.
then, at the end, if you really want to have a "twist" you can show that the girl was actually killed by friendly fire or something. that humans fighting the invasion accidentally hit the building she was hiding in. Then you can have the hero be all sad and conflicted and you can go home pretending that you made something with deep significance.
Now, as a parent, what would have made more sense is that they don't use this as a bullshit afterthought twist, but they use it as the protagonist's motivation for fighting the invaders.
1. Finds daughter dead.
2. decides he has nothing to lose and so sets out on a mission to just kill as many of the assholes as he can.
3. realizes he is actually making a difference.
4. motivation gradually shifts to helping mankind instead of just hunting for vengeance.
then, at the end, if you really want to have a "twist" you can show that the girl was actually killed by friendly fire or something. that humans fighting the invasion accidentally hit the building she was hiding in. Then you can have the hero be all sad and conflicted and you can go home pretending that you made something with deep significance.
Am I the only one who thought of "how spiderman three should have ended"?
"You knew...all this time...and you chose NOW to tell me?"
"I...I thought now would be the perfect time."
"I TOOK A GRENADE TO THE FACE DUDE!"
But yeah, that is a pretty stupid twist.
And to make it even better, Mr. sidekick could lie to him and tell him that the...whatever they are did it in order to trick him into fighting because the Humans need every soldier that they can get.
"You knew...all this time...and you chose NOW to tell me?"
"I...I thought now would be the perfect time."
"I TOOK A GRENADE TO THE FACE DUDE!"
But yeah, that is a pretty stupid twist.
Slothboy said:
And to make it even better, Mr. sidekick could lie to him and tell him that the...whatever they are did it in order to trick him into fighting because the Humans need every soldier that they can get.
I'm reminded of the punchline of a comic, where a brother and sister are split up as infants and meet later in life and fall in love. The one person who knew they were siblings, waiting for the "right moment" to tell them, waits until their honeymoon. I could never tell if it was meant to be a case of gross incompetence or the most amazing dick move ever.
Because if you are fighting a hopeless war against an unsurmountable threat and the only thing you have to care for dies. Well you will still won't be motivated. But when you realized how much of difference you before you faced the truth and then it all comes together and the confession came out. Russel would have realized that it was just as hard for his friend to hold back the truth but realize it was a small price to pay to rally the people forth and that her death was never in vain and that she would have been proud of him.Slothboy said:
That twist is stupid. And I disagree with Yatzhee... I would like to give them credit for at least trying, but given that the sidekick motivations can be as accurately deconstructed by him as stupid, I won't even try.
In fact, I think the most likely possibility was that the writer thought a twist was required to add some drama to the story, which he wrote/envision in the same order the player experience it, with little planning. So by the time he wrote the "big revelation", he has too much work done for someone to point out that it goes against all the previous characters interactions...
All current games has a script, but most use them as an excuse to shoot things. I will applaud games that try it, as long as the results are better than soup opera quality...
In fact, I think the most likely possibility was that the writer thought a twist was required to add some drama to the story, which he wrote/envision in the same order the player experience it, with little planning. So by the time he wrote the "big revelation", he has too much work done for someone to point out that it goes against all the previous characters interactions...
All current games has a script, but most use them as an excuse to shoot things. I will applaud games that try it, as long as the results are better than soup opera quality...
Oh God! Please tell me this person told them before they ever.....did anything.Formica Archonis said:
That's just wrong, and so is Mr. Sidekick. I agree with Yahtzee that it could have worked if they did it right, but sounds like they didn't.
Also, Mr. Protagonist sounds like a prick.
Well, it was a comic (as in webcomic) so doesn't really matter.Imp Emissary said:
But the comic was distinctly PG so no specifics on who did what and when to whom. Leaving kids in cages because they aren't HIS kid? Yeah, that's deep in the heart of prick territory. Hell, it implies that it's not even about human life, it's that someone's stolen his most valuable possession and he wants it back, which is an awful way to think of one's kids.Imp Emissary said:
Here's a question: Would the plot unfold identically if the guy was a car nut and the aliens stole his car? If so, then the kid is MacGuffin [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin] of the worst sort - made into a human just to amplify the shock ending.
Yes, I know it's not real, but you, me, and Yahtzee all got mad at a fake guy for not saving a bunch of fake kids. Just because something isn't real doesn't mean it can't effect us in some way.Formica Archonis said:Well, it was a comic (as in webcomic) so doesn't really matter.Imp Emissary said:
Leaving kids in cages because they aren't HIS kid? Yeah, that's deep in the heart of prick territory. Hell, it implies that it's not even about human life, it's that someone's stolen his most valuable possession and he wants it back, which is an awful way to think of one's kids.Imp Emissary said:
Here's a question: Would the plot unfold identically if the guy was a car nut and the aliens stole his car? If so, then the kid is MacGuffin [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin] of the worst sort - made into a human just to amplify the shock ending.
Anyway, yeah I didn't think about it like that. The daughter doesn't seem to be much more than a "girl in a refrigerator", (If you know of that trope), and that's only at the end. Until we find out she is dead she sounds like she has even less of a place in the story (other than a plot device). I mean usually they try to make us care about someone even a little bit before they kill them off to "give us motivation". In this game she's dead from the start, and the y just don't tell us so Mr. Protagonist has a personal reason to keep shooting things.
Also, love the avatar.
I am tired of games - especially action games- believing they need a twisting, turning, complicated plot to match cinematic plots, or justify the time spent with the player.
They should watch a movie some time.
A lot of the best action movies have extremely simple plots.
Die Hard - a lone cop has to go up against a building of terrorists to save his ex-wife, armed only with bare feet and a gun with only a few bullets. No major twists (spoiler: they're not really terrorists, something we know from the beginning), nothing that isn't just character driven. In fact, it's the perfect video game plot. It's what's called "obstacle writing". Character must go from point A to point B and writers place obstacles in his way. It helps that the obstacles would be character based, but it isn't necessary. Guess what? Mario has the same style of plot.
The same could be said for Terminator, Alien, Aliens, First Blood, Iron Man, Avengers, even Batman Begins (could even be said for Dark Knight Rises).
They should watch a movie some time.
A lot of the best action movies have extremely simple plots.
Die Hard - a lone cop has to go up against a building of terrorists to save his ex-wife, armed only with bare feet and a gun with only a few bullets. No major twists (spoiler: they're not really terrorists, something we know from the beginning), nothing that isn't just character driven. In fact, it's the perfect video game plot. It's what's called "obstacle writing". Character must go from point A to point B and writers place obstacles in his way. It helps that the obstacles would be character based, but it isn't necessary. Guess what? Mario has the same style of plot.
The same could be said for Terminator, Alien, Aliens, First Blood, Iron Man, Avengers, even Batman Begins (could even be said for Dark Knight Rises).
Yeah, that kind of reminds me of this one scene from Terminator: Salvation, when John Connor's shouting & looking for Kyle Reese, but with each cage of captured humans he finds, he frees 'em & tells 'em to "GET TO THE TRANSPORT" or something like that. Then off he goes on his search for Kyle, and to blow up the factory. Same for Wolverine & those captive mutant kids / test subjects on Three Mile Island in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. And I agree with you guys, that last minute twist did feel like it was written into the story @ the last minute. Not even Shyamalan would pull a twist like that out of his ass. Smelled like it came from somebody's ass, doesn't it?Formica Archonis said:
The plot twist in Spec Ops is that the person that the main character is trying to rescue has been dead the entire time, which means that all of the broadcast messages, and pretty much everything else related to that individual, has been one huge delusion in the character's mind (as in, he was partially projecting his own desires and faults onto this imaginary entity), and depending on how the player chooses what to do up to that point, we're either treated to a partial redemption of the character, or that character ultimately following the gruesome, twisted path of his dead-the-entire-time commanding officer
the kicker is that everything he's done before the reveal has been utterly devastating to everybody around him, and many, many people and most basic human principles were sacrificed (willingly or not, often to the tune of heinous war crimes) on the pretense of a goal that never existed, for a man who has been detached from reality since the beginning of the game, and nobody ever really caught on, or at least, didn't survive long enough to realize it, all the while committing terrible acts in the name of this false mission
perhaps it was a mediocre game, but the plot itself is viscerally horrifying enough for reviewers to praise what would have just been another boring, by the numbers shooter
the kicker is that everything he's done before the reveal has been utterly devastating to everybody around him, and many, many people and most basic human principles were sacrificed (willingly or not, often to the tune of heinous war crimes) on the pretense of a goal that never existed, for a man who has been detached from reality since the beginning of the game, and nobody ever really caught on, or at least, didn't survive long enough to realize it, all the while committing terrible acts in the name of this false mission
perhaps it was a mediocre game, but the plot itself is viscerally horrifying enough for reviewers to praise what would have just been another boring, by the numbers shooter
You're not on a planet. You're on a giant robot alien spaceship where there are a bunch of domed city/countries. One of the domes has begun to fail so the people living in it have gone Mad Max and in desperation have tunneled out of their dome and into yours in an invasion for resources. At least so another site tells me.
As for the second twist, didn't Dead Space already cover the whole 'trying to find a dead loved one' already? I know that one your character is insane and blocking out the memory of your girlfriend shooting herself rather than someone else withholding the information, but the end result for the player is the same. At least with that one we know we're being manipulated some as well because the other folks need an engineer to repair the ship and unfortunately your crazy self is all they have so it helps to justify the twist. Bizarre that Inversion would just drop this one on the player and never back up exactly why your sidekick would do that to you.
So was it not just the shitty checklist after all, Yahtzee? Someone tried to force some semblance of color into the gray authoritarian conformist gunwank?