Aristotelian tragedy requires
hamartia. And that's this sort of built-in flaw in the main character that guarantees his downfall. (And if it's also sometimes a strength, even better because that contrast elicits emotion from the reader.)
So how do you do that in a video game? It's easy for a written to give some tragic flaw to Loghain or Anders. But they're not the main characters--so whatever happens to them won't make the story a tragedy. Only the main character can make the story a tragedy.
So what kind of tragic flaw (hamartia) can the player have? That's tricky because the player has her own conception of the character. Maybe you have to give her tragic events and let her come up with her own reasons for it. I could imagine that happening if Bioware decided to make a game with the Warden as the main character where the outcome of the Dark Ritual was bad news (which of course they won't--but this is an example in a thought experiment). I might come to view my Warden (the one that completed DR) as a tragic character.
But maybe to adapt Aristotle to video games you have to grade the choices that the player makes that contribute to or decide the ending. In DAO, the choice was the Dark Ritual. In DA2, the choice was mages or templars in Kirkwall.
So maybe it looks like this. If you're going to have a tragic ending where the player is the main character the decisions need these four components or the player will reject it rather than feeling catharsis:
Aristotle on Traits of a Tragic Character
1) Audience can identify with character's goals and wants
2) Character is well-taught in regards to virtue.
3) Realistic.
4) Consistent psychology.
into
Imaginary Aristotle on Choices with Tragic Consequences in Video Games
1) This is a decision that needs to be made.
2) These choices all seem plausible ways to bring about a desired solution.
3) These decisions make sense within the context of the story and there's not some obvious alternative that I'm not allowed to choose.
4) Consistent with player's psychological conception of character.
I'm not sure how I feel about that. I suppose the question is where the inevitability comes from. Do you need choices that all lead to failure? That's not really a tragedy of the main character then. That just means something bad happened to him. He didn't bring it about. He's not to blame. Okay, so the character has to make a decision that guarantees the tragedy. And we want it to be his fault. That seems to mean that if the player has the ability to make a decision that will lead to tragedy there must also be a path that doesn't lead to tragedy. Another option is to have the tragedy-ensuring decision made before the player takes control of the character (kind of like the decision in Oedipus takes place before the play starts). Though I'm not sure if you can do that well in a video game unless you use memory loss (like Plaenscape: Torment had) so that the player can identify with the character and experience the consequences of the past in the same way the character does (as it is a surprise to both). So it seems to have a tragedy where the player character is responsible, the tragedy has to be avoidable or it needs to have happened outside of player's control in a way that doesn't break character identification (as Planescape was able to do successfully using memory loss). I'm curious if anyone thinks I'm being too narrow here and if there are other ways to pull off character tragedies in video games. And I'm not saying these are the only ways to have tragedies in video games. I'm saying these are the only ways I can think of having tragic main characters in video games that will work in accordance with Aristotle's advice. If someone decided to make a game about a tragic city, for example, that would be a different thing and would have different rules.
Modifié par Giltspur, 01 décembre 2012 - 12:20 .
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