Promised this ramble several months ago...
Dec. 3rd, 2013 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ramblin_rosie... and it isn't polished and may not be totally coherent, but tonight's SPN reminded me of the point I wanted to make. (No SPN spoilers, btw, and it's not actually about SPN at all--that's just the jumping-off spot.)
Since it is so likely that [children] will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage…. Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let the villains be soundly killed at the end of the book.
-- C. S. Lewis, "On Three Ways of Writing for Children"
This advice, IMO, applies to more than just children's books.
There are a lot of different kinds of PC games available on the market--board games, card games, puzzle games, etc. And there are lots of different tastes when it comes to games. I find that with rare exceptions like Chuzzle and Risk, I tend to prefer either building games like the Build-A-Lot and Roads of Rome series, where you have a specific set of tasks to complete on each level, or quest games that have an actual storyline. The Chocolatier series, for example, is in the matching/trading game genre on one level, but on another level, the stories of the Baumeister family give the trading a purpose, which makes the games more fun (and in Chocolatier 3: Decadence by Design, you have the freedom to invent your own recipes, which makes it all the more fun for me). For a long time I mostly stuck with puzzle/Match 3 types of quest games, but I finally got bored enough with those to try my hand at hidden object games (HOGs).
Now, some HOGs have really awful graphics and/or music and/or just flat don't work properly. Some have a really uninteresting/badly written storyline, especially those that are for (read: written down to) children. And there are some that just don't appeal to me based on the clearly daaaaark story synopsis. But there are quite a few very good games/series that *look* dark on the surface but actually focus on *defeating* evil and restoring order, light, and justice. That usually involves one or more villains being soundly killed by the end of the game. The resolution can sometimes fall flat--in Natural Threat 2, for example, the villain is defeated by a means that is not only totally chintzy but also comes out of nowhere, hasn't been foreshadowed at all. And sometimes the resolution feels rushed, as in Phenomenon: City of Cyan. Still, several games pull it off quite well, generally with wonderful graphics and at least tolerable music, and a handful even do it well enough to be worth replaying. I can think of only one that's a standalone (The Book of Desires, where a little girl's selflessness thwarts a book designed to trap the selfish); most are series. Here are a few I really enjoy and would recommend:
Some of these, especially Dark Dimensions, have pretty significant horror elements to them, but the resolution--wherein captives are freed and darkness is driven back--makes those elements worth battling through.
And then there's Brink of Consciousness: Dorian Grey Syndrome.
(Note: I'm going to spoil this game because I emphatically do not recommend it.)
Now, I'll admit slight bias up front: part of what bothers me about this one is that the hero/POV character goes into what he knows is a dangerous situation without a gun. If he'd had a gun, and if he'd used it at the end, I think the resolution would have been much more satisfying. But I suppose there could be endings without guns that would likewise have been much more satisfying than the ending that was written.
The villain of BoC:DGS is a serial killer who wears a mask to hide his aging face and who is obsessed with preserving the beauty of youth. Specifically, he kidnaps and kills good-looking young adults--some of whom have done him wrong, real or imagined, but some not--and then turns his victims into grotesque pieces of art. The hero is an intrepid reporter who's been investigating the case. The villain kidnaps the hero's fiancee in order to lure the hero to his house, put the hero through an elaborate obstacle course in order to prove his love for the girl by not giving up the (seemingly) vain hope of rescuing her, and then kill both of them and turn them into a sculpture of True Love. The hero does run the gauntlet and nearly catches the killer--this is the first point where I think the hero should have just shot the creep--but just as he starts to lunge for the killer, the hero falls through a trap door and into one of the preservation tanks the killer keeps his trophies in. It looks like all is lost.
Then the hero's girlfriend, who has been playing dead, gets up, cold cocks the villain, and gets the hero out of the tank. Rather than making sure the villain's dead or tied up, however, they simply leave him while they run off to call the cops. So naturally, at the end of the standard game, the villain wakes up and gets away.
Then, in the Collector's Edition bonus chapter, the villain lures the hero to an abandoned amusement park. Both want revenge. There's another creepy gauntlet, though without the dead bodies, and finally the hero and the villain face off on a rooftop.
Only the villain's put himself in a preservation tank with a remote control so that he can commit suicide and make it look like the hero killed him. After one last monologue, during which the hero makes no move to pull the plug, the villain does commit suicide.
And the frame works. The last shot in the game is of a newspaper headline declaring that the hero's been charged with murder.
I'm really glad I was using a free trial, because I would have tried to get my money back. I felt robbed. Even though the villain's dead, he dies on his own terms and actually wins in that the hero gets blamed for a crime he didn't commit. THAT'S NOT HOW YOU END A STORY, DEVELOPERS!
There's a second game in that series now, Brink of Consciousness: The Lonely Hearts Murders. Needless to say, I haven't played that one and probably never will.
TL;DR: Yes, kill the villains, but even if you don't, or if the heroes have to die as well, just make sure the bad guys lose.
Since it is so likely that [children] will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage…. Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let the villains be soundly killed at the end of the book.
-- C. S. Lewis, "On Three Ways of Writing for Children"
This advice, IMO, applies to more than just children's books.
There are a lot of different kinds of PC games available on the market--board games, card games, puzzle games, etc. And there are lots of different tastes when it comes to games. I find that with rare exceptions like Chuzzle and Risk, I tend to prefer either building games like the Build-A-Lot and Roads of Rome series, where you have a specific set of tasks to complete on each level, or quest games that have an actual storyline. The Chocolatier series, for example, is in the matching/trading game genre on one level, but on another level, the stories of the Baumeister family give the trading a purpose, which makes the games more fun (and in Chocolatier 3: Decadence by Design, you have the freedom to invent your own recipes, which makes it all the more fun for me). For a long time I mostly stuck with puzzle/Match 3 types of quest games, but I finally got bored enough with those to try my hand at hidden object games (HOGs).
Now, some HOGs have really awful graphics and/or music and/or just flat don't work properly. Some have a really uninteresting/badly written storyline, especially those that are for (read: written down to) children. And there are some that just don't appeal to me based on the clearly daaaaark story synopsis. But there are quite a few very good games/series that *look* dark on the surface but actually focus on *defeating* evil and restoring order, light, and justice. That usually involves one or more villains being soundly killed by the end of the game. The resolution can sometimes fall flat--in Natural Threat 2, for example, the villain is defeated by a means that is not only totally chintzy but also comes out of nowhere, hasn't been foreshadowed at all. And sometimes the resolution feels rushed, as in Phenomenon: City of Cyan. Still, several games pull it off quite well, generally with wonderful graphics and at least tolerable music, and a handful even do it well enough to be worth replaying. I can think of only one that's a standalone (The Book of Desires, where a little girl's selflessness thwarts a book designed to trap the selfish); most are series. Here are a few I really enjoy and would recommend:
- The Awakening series (Princess Sophia, who is fully human, wakes from an enchanted slumber and has to find out not only who she is and why she was enchanted but also what happened to her kingdom and her parents while also saving the kingdom)
- The Drawn trilogy (the player has to rescue a princess and her kingdom by retrieving items in other worlds that exist only within the princess' paintings and drawings)
- The Nightmare Realm two-parter (similar to Drawn, except the POV character is the mother of a girl who is one of many with exceptional creative powers; disclaimer that I haven't had a chance to finish the second game)
- The Living Legends series (defeating a Snow Queen/White Witch type of villain)
- The Sacra Terra two-parter (defeating demons and freeing their captives)
- The Dark Dimensions series (uncovering the crime that caused a town to become a cursed ghost town)
- The House of 1000 Doors series (the inhabitants of a [divinely-created?] magic house use their various gifts to free trapped ghosts and defeat various kinds of supernatural evil; I'm *dying* to finish the most recent game)
Some of these, especially Dark Dimensions, have pretty significant horror elements to them, but the resolution--wherein captives are freed and darkness is driven back--makes those elements worth battling through.
And then there's Brink of Consciousness: Dorian Grey Syndrome.
(Note: I'm going to spoil this game because I emphatically do not recommend it.)
Now, I'll admit slight bias up front: part of what bothers me about this one is that the hero/POV character goes into what he knows is a dangerous situation without a gun. If he'd had a gun, and if he'd used it at the end, I think the resolution would have been much more satisfying. But I suppose there could be endings without guns that would likewise have been much more satisfying than the ending that was written.
The villain of BoC:DGS is a serial killer who wears a mask to hide his aging face and who is obsessed with preserving the beauty of youth. Specifically, he kidnaps and kills good-looking young adults--some of whom have done him wrong, real or imagined, but some not--and then turns his victims into grotesque pieces of art. The hero is an intrepid reporter who's been investigating the case. The villain kidnaps the hero's fiancee in order to lure the hero to his house, put the hero through an elaborate obstacle course in order to prove his love for the girl by not giving up the (seemingly) vain hope of rescuing her, and then kill both of them and turn them into a sculpture of True Love. The hero does run the gauntlet and nearly catches the killer--this is the first point where I think the hero should have just shot the creep--but just as he starts to lunge for the killer, the hero falls through a trap door and into one of the preservation tanks the killer keeps his trophies in. It looks like all is lost.
Then the hero's girlfriend, who has been playing dead, gets up, cold cocks the villain, and gets the hero out of the tank. Rather than making sure the villain's dead or tied up, however, they simply leave him while they run off to call the cops. So naturally, at the end of the standard game, the villain wakes up and gets away.
Then, in the Collector's Edition bonus chapter, the villain lures the hero to an abandoned amusement park. Both want revenge. There's another creepy gauntlet, though without the dead bodies, and finally the hero and the villain face off on a rooftop.
Only the villain's put himself in a preservation tank with a remote control so that he can commit suicide and make it look like the hero killed him. After one last monologue, during which the hero makes no move to pull the plug, the villain does commit suicide.
And the frame works. The last shot in the game is of a newspaper headline declaring that the hero's been charged with murder.
I'm really glad I was using a free trial, because I would have tried to get my money back. I felt robbed. Even though the villain's dead, he dies on his own terms and actually wins in that the hero gets blamed for a crime he didn't commit. THAT'S NOT HOW YOU END A STORY, DEVELOPERS!
There's a second game in that series now, Brink of Consciousness: The Lonely Hearts Murders. Needless to say, I haven't played that one and probably never will.
TL;DR: Yes, kill the villains, but even if you don't, or if the heroes have to die as well, just make sure the bad guys lose.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-08 05:55 am (UTC)