Characters and Arcs - Video Game: Storytelling - page 45

these two things—Ripley's happiness or Newt's survival—you will engage
with the story and be emotionally invested in its outcome.
As we covered in chapter 1 , it's not the size of the stakes that matter
when it comes to emotional involvement of the audience. As stakes per-
tain to the Hero, the bottom line is that the Hero needs to care on a per-
sonal level in order for the audience to do the same.
Risk and Sacrifice
Being a Hero involves a willingness to take risks—usually big ones, with
stakes that are intensely personal to the Hero—and being willing to face
the consequences of failure.
Why is this risk-taking such an important part of being a Hero?
Captain Kirk, at the Plot Point 1 moment in an otherwise mediocre epis-
ode of the original Star Trek entitled “Return to Tomorrow,” makes an im-
passioned and memorable speech to his command crew as they debate
taking a risk:
They used to say if man [was meant to] fly, he'd have wings. But
he did fly. He discovered he had to. Do you wish that the first
Apollo mission didn't reach the moon? Or that we hadn't gone on
to Mars, and then to the nearest star? Risk! Risk is our business.
That's what this starship is all about. That's why we're aboard her .
He's talking about the Enterprise , but in reality, Captain Kirk—a classic
Hero figure if ever there was one—is putting into words the fact that risk is
what being a Hero is all about.
The Hero exists to resolve a conflict, yes, but if he does so at no person-
al risk to himself or anything he cares about, then nothing is really at stake.
The story will lack drama, and the audience is unlikely to be engaged at
any level but the most superficial.
Risk-taking can include the Hero making (or clearly being willing to
make) huge personal sacrifices in the name of resolving the conflict or
helping/protecting those he cares about.
Again, think of Ripley and Newt from Aliens . There is a point in the story
at which Ripley could safely leave the alien-infested colony on planet
LV-426, but she knows that Newt is still somewhere in the complex. Ripley
decides to risk her own life to go back in and try to rescue her surrogate
daughter. This is classic Hero behavior.