Or
How mechanics can enrich a story, foster relationships and underwrite an entire experience
How mechanics can enrich a story, foster relationships and underwrite an entire experience
PLEASE BE AWARE OF THE SPOILERZ WOT FEATURE HEAVILY IN THIS PIECE OF WRITING
My mum is, thankfully, still alive as of this writing. If she were to die I’d be terribly upset. She brought me up, fed me, clothed me, drove me places, steered me in the right direction, supported me, let me drink in the house as a teenager because I’d “do it anyway, so may as well do it safely”: she sorted me out basically. My dad did all these things too (‘cept the driving), but he doesn’t work as well within this situation, but he’s still a very upstanding chap. If my mum were to die it would be pretty horrible for me. You, however, wouldn’t really care. I don’t hold that against you, you simply don’t have any of the necessary context (see above) for it to concern you. Likewise, that’s why the one-two dead mother and a dying dad opening of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons didn’t wash in my house of unflinching cynicism. By the end of the game, however, I was invested in the characters and their plight, to the point where I genuinely cared about where everyone ended up. That’s not to say that the writing resonated with me any more than it had when it went whizzing past my mark at the beginning, it just means that there were other bits of the game that filled the emotional-investiture deficit.
My mum is, thankfully, still alive as of this writing. If she were to die I’d be terribly upset. She brought me up, fed me, clothed me, drove me places, steered me in the right direction, supported me, let me drink in the house as a teenager because I’d “do it anyway, so may as well do it safely”: she sorted me out basically. My dad did all these things too (‘cept the driving), but he doesn’t work as well within this situation, but he’s still a very upstanding chap. If my mum were to die it would be pretty horrible for me. You, however, wouldn’t really care. I don’t hold that against you, you simply don’t have any of the necessary context (see above) for it to concern you. Likewise, that’s why the one-two dead mother and a dying dad opening of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons didn’t wash in my house of unflinching cynicism. By the end of the game, however, I was invested in the characters and their plight, to the point where I genuinely cared about where everyone ended up. That’s not to say that the writing resonated with me any more than it had when it went whizzing past my mark at the beginning, it just means that there were other bits of the game that filled the emotional-investiture deficit.
