Believability - Video Game: Storytelling - page 102

and that unexpected events in a story are to be avoided. Of course, that's
not the case at all.
No one wants to experience a story in which it's always possible to
guess what's going to happen next. The real world in which we all
live—and which all fiction attempts to emulate, to one degree or anoth-
er—is not usually very predictable. Our stories, even artificially constructed
as they may be, are generally designed to feel at least as surprising as the
real world does. After all, a predictable story is a boring story.
Good stories regularly surprise the audience, and good games regularly
surprise the player. The element of surprise is a vital component of good
storytelling and solid game design. But it's also very easy to mishandle, be-
cause every revelation has the potential to hurt believability. The success-
ful storyteller walks a tightrope, attempting to strike a perfect balance
between these two vital and often contradictory story elements.
Master storytellers of ancient times were well aware of the importance
and the risk of incorporating a major shock, especially at a story's end. In
Poetics , Aristotle, mindful of the need for a significant surprise at the cli-
max but concerned about believability, warned, “The ending must be both
inevitable and unexpected.”
A more modern take on that thought comes from Academy
Award-winning screenwriter and novelist William Goldman—author of
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men , and The
Princess Bride—who advises, “The key to all story endings is to give the
audience what it wants, but not in the way it expects.”
Their lifetimes and experiences separated by thousands of years, these
two writers are nevertheless giving us the same advice with regard to the
delicate issue of handling surprise.
Crafting a Good Surprise
Think about a trope you've seen a hundred times in the movies: two or
more characters in a story start discussing a plan, but the audience isn't let
in on it. The camera cuts away just before the details are revealed. Why?
To preserve the element of surprise. And on that rare occasion when the
audience is actually allowed to hear what the plan is, I promise you: things
are not going to go according to plan.
That's how important surprise is. Even when the audience is let in on
what's going to happen, they're really not!