T w e n t y S i d e d

The Firebat tells Chris, “The Wendigo, he keeps you alive and aware and feasts on your organs one at a time.”

Uh. Unless the Wendigo has a medical degree, he does either one or the other. There are a small number of organs you can live without, but if the Wendigo begins grabbing stuff based on convenience then you’ll bleed out, pass out, or otherwise stop being alive before he gets very far into the meal.

But I guess the Stranger got proven wrong less than a minute later.

It’s obvious he needed to die. Nothing kills the tension like having a hyper-competentWe’re grading on a curve, here. badass looking out for you, and nothing raises the stakes like the bad guys taking out your strongest ally. On the other hand, this couldn’t be more brute-force if the writer reached into the frame and yanked the Stranger off stage like an unpopular vaudeville act. He died pretty much the instant his exposition had been delivered.

If nothing else, cut to some other part of the story for a bit so the two things aren’t right next to each other in the minds of the audience.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

The interrogation of Josh was pretty annoying because it kept asking you to choose between two things that said the same damn thing, and then Josh would reply with more crazy person nonsense instead of making his case. Josh could say something like, “Hey, remember your prank from last year that killed both of my sisters?” It doesn’t justify what he’s done, but it might give the other two something to think about.

Josh kept saying things that would enrage Mike. Mike was all bloodlust and no thought. Chris was constantly choosing between two things that don’t seem to matter. All of these things are justified, of course. Josh is crazy. Mike is a hothead. Chris is indecisive. They’re dumb teens and they’re acting according to their established character. This happens all the time in movies. Because of emotions, lack of information, immaturity, or character faults, characters often do things that are obviously counterproductive to those of us in the audience. In fact, that’s a big part of what drives this genre. “Oh no. Don’t go out in the dark alone. Just wait until morning.” Running against the wishes of the audience creates tension and suspense.

The problem is that this isn’t a movie. It’s a videogame. When you pop up a dialog choice like this, you’re getting the audience involved. The goals of the audience (stop people from being destructive) runs counter to the goals of the writer (smash characters into each other to create conflict) and it’s really hard to resolve that without situations like this, where the audience is frustrated with the offered choices.

I don’t know how I’d fix this scene. The choices are annoying. If you take them out you get a huge cutscene with no interactivity. If you make the choices better then they become false choices because the game won’t react to them. If you have the game react to them (perhaps Chris talks Mike into being gentler so they can properly interrogate Josh and discover he really wasn’t involved with Jess) then it would defuse this situation and avoid a lot of the chaos that follows.

Also, what’s the deal with The Stranger? Why is he trying to clean the monsters out of the mine? At night? Why not just seal it up? Or wait until daytime when they’re supposedly dormant?

Also also: Now that the big reveals have happened, I can say the writer has been cheating like crazy. In light of these revelations, the scene where Jess is kidnapped is total nonsense. Apparently Jess was grabbed by a monster. As we’ll see later, they can decapitate a human in one swipe. But instead the monster dragged her away while she struggled? And the Stranger was coincidentally nearby? He was close enough to the action that Mike thought he was involved, yet he didn’t hear the screaming or react? “Huh. There seems to be some sort of drama going on nearby. I guess I’ll make no effort to investigate. Instead I’ll just alternate between walking very slowly and then magically teleporting when nobody’s looking.”

I’m willing to allow for foolish characters, coincidences, movie physics, and characters that have trouble seeing things off-screen. But the writer still needs to obey the basic rules of time and space.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

At the start of the episode I referred to the fact that Emily ought to be dead, but then I blanked on what specific event should have killed her. Now I remember: It was the part where she was on top of a massive metal tower that collapsed, fell into a hole, and landed on top of our quarrelsome lovebirds. I’m sure they survived because they were under the effect of movie physics, where you’re only impacted by acceleration happening within your local frame of referenceYou can ask people who have been in airplane accidents why this isn’t true. Or rather, you can’t ask them. Which is kind of the point I’m making..

One details that’s confusing me: There’s a grave marker for Beth. But Beth wasn’t buried. And she’s not terribly close to the sign. If the game is saying that Hannah made the sign for her sister, then why didn’t she put the sign near the body? And Beth’s body isn’t eaten, which is confusing considering what’s lurking down here.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.