A really heartrending twist would be the revelation that the hero and the villain(s) had been working towards the same goals all along. You finally strike down the antagonist, go through his stuff, and find out that you were both actually working towards a common end, but neither of you had ever realized it.
A really heartrending twist would be the revelation that the hero and the villain(s) had been working towards the same goals all along. You finally strike down the antagonist, go through his stuff, and find out that you were both actually working towards a common end, but neither of you had ever realized it.
So why did the hero think they were villains in the first place? This is more likely to be a recipe for angering the reader with your far-fetched authorial machinations than to be heartrending.
So why did the hero think they were villains in the first place?
That's the story! And there are any number of ways you could go about it-- maybe the villain used means the hero didn't agree with to an unknown end, or the nature of the goal required anyone attempting to achieve it to maintain secrecy, or both sides were deluded by some third party.
This is more likely to be a recipe for angering the reader with your far-fetched authorial machinations than to be heartrending.
Heartrending is a matter of personal taste, I guess-- you certainly seem to dislike the idea. But I think as long as you wrote the story in a plausible fashion such that the twist would follow naturally from the circumstances preceding it, put clues in the text, and avoided giving the impression that you had pulled the twist out of nowhere for cheap melodrama, there'd be no reason for it to be any more aggravating to the reader than the experience of coming up against yet another traditional "walking antithesis" villain.
This is more likely to be a recipe for angering the reader with your far-fetched authorial machinations than to be heartrending.
Heartrending is a matter of personal taste, I guess-- you certainly seem to dislike the idea. But I think as long as you wrote the story in a plausible fashion such that the twist would follow naturally from the circumstances preceding it, put clues in the text, and avoided giving the impression that you had pulled the twist out of nowhere for cheap melodrama, there'd be no reason for it to be any more aggravating to the reader than the experience of coming up against yet another traditional "walking antithesis" villain.
I don't dislike the idea; I just think it's one of an entire class of authorial machinations that tend to fall flat without a lot of extra skill and effort that inexperienced writers are unlikely to realize is required.
Oh, I see. Yeah, it-- and others-- would definitely take effort and planning to pull off. Not the sort of thing one just tacks on the end, haha!
actually it could be tacked on the end with ease if you played metal gear rising revengeance you would see that in the end both the protagonist and antagonist have the same goal more or less, even after the protagonist kills the antagonist he completes on with his legacy
Hmmm. Save the princess who's fallen into a coma. The hero via a potion brewed from a magical plant root, the villain by sacrificing 10,000 souls and the magical plant root to a dark god. Same goal, lots of conflict and disagreement...especially if neither tells the other what their ultimate goal is.
Hmmm. Save the princess who's fallen into a coma. The hero via a potion brewed from a magical plant root, the villain by sacrificing 10,000 souls and the magical plant root to a dark god. Same goal, lots of conflict and disagreement...especially if neither tells the other what their ultimate goal is.
not really even if the hero knew the villain's goal the hero wouldn't just watch while the villain takes 10,000 souls, and shouldn't the villain just do it the hero's way it seems less time consuming that way
I think plot twists in general are cliche. It's a brave author who even tries to put them in, given that many players can work things out in the opening 5 minutes. At some level they're also inconsistent with allowing player choice, as twists work much better in a linear narrative structure.
When your primary purpose is to allow player choice, then the story expends most of its energy in exploring logical outcomes to that choice.
I haven't yet played any narrative rpg that really did a twist well, or even attempted such. The plots of every large-scale RPG I can think of, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Witcher, NWN etc, were all predictable because they had to spend all their energy on exploring choices.
In the worst case, when twists are attempted, they can feel more like a betrayal of player agency rather than an interesting plot development.
Comments
nope they even killed the I am your mother twist
So why did the hero think they were villains in the first place? This is more likely to be a recipe for angering the reader with your far-fetched authorial machinations than to be heartrending.
Heartrending is a matter of personal taste, I guess-- you certainly seem to dislike the idea. But I think as long as you wrote the story in a plausible fashion such that the twist would follow naturally from the circumstances preceding it, put clues in the text, and avoided giving the impression that you had pulled the twist out of nowhere for cheap melodrama, there'd be no reason for it to be any more aggravating to the reader than the experience of coming up against yet another traditional "walking antithesis" villain.
I don't dislike the idea; I just think it's one of an entire class of authorial machinations that tend to fall flat without a lot of extra skill and effort that inexperienced writers are unlikely to realize is required.
not really even if the hero knew the villain's goal the hero wouldn't just watch while the villain takes 10,000 souls, and shouldn't the villain just do it the hero's way it seems less time consuming that way
How so?
I haven't yet played any narrative rpg that really did a twist well, or even attempted such. The plots of every large-scale RPG I can think of, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Witcher, NWN etc, were all predictable because they had to spend all their energy on exploring choices.
In the worst case, when twists are attempted, they can feel more like a betrayal of player agency rather than an interesting plot development.