Brainsplat is a little 'feature' I guess you'd call it that
I'll write occasionally and post here. The things I post under this title won't
necessarily be arguing a point or be very long and in-depth, rather they'll
just be my musings on a particular subject that I feel like writing a short
piece on. Often they'll be on my thoughts of a certain design idea or aspect of
game design I want to talk a little bit about. It's just my thoughts going
'splat' onto the page for people to have a look at.
The fourth wall has always been something that's interested
me. Mostly I've seen it used for humour, like Deadpool whacking people with a
health bar in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom
3 or characters in theatre performances talking to the audience as a gag.
But characters interacting with their audience has so much more potential that
can be explored. I remember in the BEN Drowned/Haunted
Majora's Mask ARG when players of the game were being called out and
'targeted' it added to the fear and immersion in this game, and it was really
cool to see. I recently started reading Deadpool
Kills the Marvel Universe and Deadpool
Killustrated, where the concept is that in an alternate universe Deadpool
becomes more self aware, and decides to try and free his fellow fictional
characters by killing them off for good so that they won't be forced to endure
the everlasting hardships placed on them by their writers. There's a beautiful moment
where Sherlock Holmes deduces that he and Watson are fictional characters, but
they decide to try and save their worlds regardless. The idea of self aware
characters is just really interesting to me, and I think there's a lot that can
be done with them.
