My spy team managed to access Ron’s C64 and has just leaked the name of the chapters:
- “A Friendly Old Place”
- “Classic Jurassic”
- “Curse is a Curse”
- “Escape’s so ape”
- “Bad Tales”
- “Screw the New!”
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I think there is also a small misunderstanding about the term “antagonist”.
“Antagonist” doesn’t necessarily mean that the character is bad ; it just means that the character’s motivations go against the motivations of the protagonist.
Same thing… “Protagonist” doesn’t mean that the character has to be good. It just means that this is the character we’ll follow. We want the protagonist to succeed, whether they’re a good or bad person.
So, per definition, Madison and her crew are antagonists, at least, in this clip.
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But they have been already characterized in that clip as mean people, right?
It’s more that they refuse to help Guybrush, so they become a obstacle to his quest. And I’m pretty sure, judging by what we saw so far, that they will try to make his life more difficult, at least in the beginning.
That make them antagonists, and that doesn’t mean that they’re not doing that for a good reason, or even that, at the end, we’ll realize that they were good people all along.
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For example Guybrush is a pirate… So yeah. Pirates weren’t very nice people. How “good” Guybrush is of a person is debatable. And he’s just a terrible person in 2 specifically lol
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Exactly!
I think one the best example are the Deponia games.
The protagonist, Rufus, is a jerk, definitely not a good person. He’s still the protagonist. (And I know a lot of people hate Deponia because of that. I personally love it, but that’s another story.)
It’s what we call an “anti-hero”.
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I’m referring to a different aspect: regardless of the role these characters will play in the plot, the writers intentionally present them in such a way as to arouse dislike in the player.
For example, they express mean views toward the previous pirate leaders, mocking them and describing them as failures (by the way, “Making up trials for each other” is genius).
This behavior can’t be unintentional, the characters have been shaped in this way so that their moral is questioned by the player, who is more likely to label them as “bad” people instead of “good” people.
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For sure… in the beginning at least.
I feel they will be the kind of characters we’ll hate in the beginning and really like later in the game, when we finally learn to know them better.
I’ve seen that a lot in modern(-ish, like 2010) TV shows.
I really like this kind of writing.
… Or maybe, they will just be jerks throughout the whole game. Who knows?
And, repeating myself, that causes mixed feelings in me because I agree with their commentary on the old pirate leaders! And I kind of feel like Guybrush should agree, too…
I think these are two distinct aspects. The descriptions of the previous pirate leaders may be adequate, but the willingness to mock them is only an indication of the morale of the new leaders.
Another thing, then…
Antagonists can be written in the way that we don’t get their points of view right away, even though they’re right.
I think the game can be smart enough to make us reflect later about what was said so that we understand that they were actually right.
It’s a nice writing technique to manipulate viewers/readers/gamers.
It’s like in Breaking Bad. We like Walter and think he’s in the right in the beginning, even though, if we look attentively, we can see that he already was a psychopath from the start.
Then, later, when we understand how bad a person he really is, it’s already too late.
I think this game will do the opposite with these characters.
I’m just hoping that they send me on a fetch quest to secure some humorous items before I sail to Monkey Island and find out the secret.
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I really don’t think Guybrush – at least RG’s Guybrush – is a good person though.
He’s a jerk in MI2.
I can definitely see him grow in this game, change his way of thinking. That would interesting.
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So, regardless of RtMI and just talking about the topic in general…
That is true, in TV series the scriptwriters have plenty of time to build the character and to decide how slowly the viewer will realize the kind of person the character is.
… but for a game where, I assume, everything will happen in a few hours/days, I don’t think the writers can present a character who starts out as a stereotypical asshole and convincingly turns into a redeemed person before the end of the game.
In fact, I find it more believable to have one-dimensional, flat, stereotypical characters who remain that way rather than characters who dramatically change their morals in a few hours/days.
Another aspect is that, in my opinion, “seemingly good > actually bad” is easier to explain to the reader/player than the other way around, because hiding the bad sides is a fairly common behavior among humans.
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I disagree with that statement.
There are a bunch of games who do that perfectly well.
Last of Us, Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, Omori, Psychonauts, Broken Age…
I don’t think time is an important factor. A lot of movies succeed to do that, and most of them are about two hours long. A game like Monkey Island is about 10-15 hours long.
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I don’t remember Broken Age very well: which character starts as stereotypically mean and then turns into a good-hearted person?
I was thinking more of the opposite. Malek is a good person and evolves as someone horrible.
But maybe it’s not the best example…
Ace Attorney though… Ace Attorney Investigations 2, for example, as a character, a judge, who is despicable in the beginning of the game. I think everybody hated her until the end of the game, when she finally reveal herself to be a good person.
Danganronpa V3 has an horrible character, a liar, manipulative, who turns out to be a good person at the end.
Last of Us 2… I mean, a lot of people already talked about it…
Psychonauts is all about that - we get to understand how people are more nuanced that they seem to be.
All of these games are no more than 15 hours long. So I definitely think Monkey Island would be able to do that.
I’m not saying it will be incredibly deep, but still, it’s possible.
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Plague Knight, but he had romance on his side.
Possibly Black Knight? Lesser examples could be Mole Knight, Propeller Knight, and Tinker Knight, but we don’t know enough about their stories to understand how they reconciled with society.
King Knight is… an amazingly compelling protagonist, much like Guybrush in MI2 with ambition blinding him. His narrative built that he could have had an outstanding redemption arc, except… ah, it was not his nature. Such a beautiful tragedy.
. . .
. . .
Shovel Knight Dig comes out the end of September.
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EDIT: Ne.
Were we still talking about that? I was talking about writing techniques – and sorry if I got a bit carried away, it’s my job, I love talking about writing.