Rambling About "Deep Mysteries" in Stories
Recently, I decided I was curious about the story in Dead Space 2. I was aware very roughly of the plot of the first, and wondered how the details of the marker and necromorphs were being built up in the setting. So I hit up Youtube for video walkthroughs, knowing full well that I wasn't really interested in playing it myself.
I probably should not have started that so late.
Not-entirely-pleasant dreams that night aside, I can still say I find the whole setup interesting, but I didn't really see any answers to the big questions. What are the marker-induced visions trying to accomplish? They seem helpful sometimes and destructive other times. What was the purpose and origin of the original marker? Why do government/church people keep wanting to make more? It's hard to buy the "energy source" theory when you keep getting outbreaks that cause massive death and no small amount of material loss.
Sometimes it's okay for the big mysteries of a setting to go unanswered, and the Dead Space universe seems to still be within that realm to me, but it's edging toward being an issue. If it goes on long enough without any trace of making sense, I get the feeling that either A) no answer is going to measure up to the suspense and/or B) the writers behind the story really have no idea themselves where they're going. Once I get that sense, all the mystery and depth just come across as senseless fluff. When I came to feel that way about shows like Lost, Heroes, and the new Battlestar Galactica, my interest nosedives.
Mystery needs a good, dramatic payoff to be worthwhile. Otherwise, it's just building up audience expectation that will never be met - and missed expectations can turn an awesome story into a total letdown. That's not uncommon in the realm of anime. I might point to Evangelion as a prime example, where the audience gets to suffer (IMHO) through a lot of emo crap while seeing a story develop of conspiracy, rebelion, and divine (?) purpose only to have an "ending" that devolves into a bunch of quasi-psychological stuff instead of resolving what the audience was watching.
In counterpoint, part of why I really enjoyed Book of Bantorra was how, in spite of fragmented pacing and odd storytelling, it actually manages to pull the major threads together at the end and give resolution.
While pondering all this, I found myself remembering Xenogears. Strangely, I could draw some parallels back to the Dead Space games between the marker and Zohar, the necromorphs and the Wels...
Xenogears was ridiculously ambitious as far as storytelling. The gameplay reached beyond standard RPG fare slightly in that you had both your characters and their mecha to improve, but the story... Good grief. Era-spanning plans, reincarnation, "gods" both created and (possibly, at least) natural - the scope of it all was insane. Honestly, I find myself wishing it wouldn't be such a chore (due to sheer length and dated graphics) to play again, because while I was stunned by it at the time, I doubt I fully appreciated it all.
My personal "review" of the game is forever shaded by the infamous Disk Two. Instead of playing my way through the story, the game started telling me the story and just letting me play through little snippets along the way. That, to me, dragged the game down by breaking expectations of gameplay (rather than story). In retrospect, it might have shared 20 hours off an already really long game.
It's been years, so I'm not sure. I may track down a copy of the Xenogears Perfect Works to peruse. But I felt like the story made sense. Certain details may have eluded me, but overall it seemed like there was a pattern to it rather than just writers making things up as they went along. And that's really the important part.
It doesn't actually matter whether the mystery in a story is the result of cobbled-together ideas with no grand plan, or a finely-crafted epic. What matters is how it looks to the audience.
Illusion is a valid storytelling technique.
I probably should not have started that so late.
Not-entirely-pleasant dreams that night aside, I can still say I find the whole setup interesting, but I didn't really see any answers to the big questions. What are the marker-induced visions trying to accomplish? They seem helpful sometimes and destructive other times. What was the purpose and origin of the original marker? Why do government/church people keep wanting to make more? It's hard to buy the "energy source" theory when you keep getting outbreaks that cause massive death and no small amount of material loss.
Sometimes it's okay for the big mysteries of a setting to go unanswered, and the Dead Space universe seems to still be within that realm to me, but it's edging toward being an issue. If it goes on long enough without any trace of making sense, I get the feeling that either A) no answer is going to measure up to the suspense and/or B) the writers behind the story really have no idea themselves where they're going. Once I get that sense, all the mystery and depth just come across as senseless fluff. When I came to feel that way about shows like Lost, Heroes, and the new Battlestar Galactica, my interest nosedives.
Mystery needs a good, dramatic payoff to be worthwhile. Otherwise, it's just building up audience expectation that will never be met - and missed expectations can turn an awesome story into a total letdown. That's not uncommon in the realm of anime. I might point to Evangelion as a prime example, where the audience gets to suffer (IMHO) through a lot of emo crap while seeing a story develop of conspiracy, rebelion, and divine (?) purpose only to have an "ending" that devolves into a bunch of quasi-psychological stuff instead of resolving what the audience was watching.
In counterpoint, part of why I really enjoyed Book of Bantorra was how, in spite of fragmented pacing and odd storytelling, it actually manages to pull the major threads together at the end and give resolution.
While pondering all this, I found myself remembering Xenogears. Strangely, I could draw some parallels back to the Dead Space games between the marker and Zohar, the necromorphs and the Wels...
Xenogears was ridiculously ambitious as far as storytelling. The gameplay reached beyond standard RPG fare slightly in that you had both your characters and their mecha to improve, but the story... Good grief. Era-spanning plans, reincarnation, "gods" both created and (possibly, at least) natural - the scope of it all was insane. Honestly, I find myself wishing it wouldn't be such a chore (due to sheer length and dated graphics) to play again, because while I was stunned by it at the time, I doubt I fully appreciated it all.
My personal "review" of the game is forever shaded by the infamous Disk Two. Instead of playing my way through the story, the game started telling me the story and just letting me play through little snippets along the way. That, to me, dragged the game down by breaking expectations of gameplay (rather than story). In retrospect, it might have shared 20 hours off an already really long game.
It's been years, so I'm not sure. I may track down a copy of the Xenogears Perfect Works to peruse. But I felt like the story made sense. Certain details may have eluded me, but overall it seemed like there was a pattern to it rather than just writers making things up as they went along. And that's really the important part.
It doesn't actually matter whether the mystery in a story is the result of cobbled-together ideas with no grand plan, or a finely-crafted epic. What matters is how it looks to the audience.
Illusion is a valid storytelling technique.
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