A Perfect Tragedy

Whew, thank goodness I keep that gas mask handy.  I barely managed to escape from that deadly gas from last week, but thankfully I’ve returned alive and well, and that stupid AI is gone, for now.  Although, if any of you have tried to get the smell of neurotoxin out of your curtains, hoo boy, I have stories I could tell.

 

Anyway, so I just got home from watching Breaking Bad at my friend’s house.  If any of you have watched that show, good for you, because it’s awesome.  I’m almost done with the series, and let’s just say that some heavy stuff goes down.  The thought-provoking and emotional story, deep characters, and intense moments work together to make an insanely good show.  But this blog isn’t about Breaking Bad, so where am I going with this?  Well, if you guys have read my character list, you’ll see that I tend to enjoy depressing and dark games with heart-wrenching character arcs and emotional plots.  After watching Breaking Bad, I thought about what attracts me, along with many other people, to sad stories such as these.  Every story has conflict, and the heroes often have to go through a lot of hardship, struggles, and trials in order to achieve their goals.  But no matter how much they lose or how hard their experiences are, they almost always triumph in the end, despite being hardened and changed people.  A lot of stories are like this because that’s what we love to see:  For someone to go through an immense struggle, but prevail against all odds and overcome their opponents, or whatever force is working against them.  There’s certainly nothing wrong with this, since many of the most beloved stories have happy endings.  But what about the ones that don’t?  What if the characters suffer and suffer, all for nothing?

There are quite a few stories that are much darker than the rest, and sometimes even after all that darkness, there’s still no happiness to be found.  Sometimes the story is morally-ambiguous, which means there are no clear heroes to route for.  So why do we even want to see these stories at all?  What’s the point of getting invested in a story only to feel depressed?  More importantly, how do the people who tell a story make a sad ending just as satisfying and give just as much closure as a happy ending?

Shadow of the Colossus, an older game which I’ll certainly discuss more in the future, is a perfect example of a story told that’s incredible, thought-provoking, and also as depressing as the continued popularity of A Christmas Story.  There are no good guys or bad guys, only flawed characters in a flawed world, much like our own.  Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, two games I’ve already expressed my utmost enjoyment for, are other examples of fantasy worlds where, spoiler alert, a lot of bad stuff happens.  Every character, as well as the major events of those games, has a good and a bad side to it.  So in worlds like these, what are we supposed to route for?  How are we supposed to know what to feel?  Well, the plain and simple answer is:  We don’t know.  In tragedies such as these, the conclusions that people derive from them are often quite varied.  There aren’t many arguments against Luke blowing up the Death Star, but there are certainly different sides to the decision of whether you should link the flame or let it die, in Dark Souls.  The endings of more well-known things, such as Titanic, have certainly shed a few tears, as well.

I joked in the last post about how you guys probably think I’m crazy for enjoying such depressing stories.  But the thing is, I don’t enjoy them.  A story that manages to feel fulfilling, despite being sad, is an amazingly told one.  But I never feel overjoyed at the prospect of bad things happening to a good person, or not knowing who the good guy is, if there even is one.  But stories like that are the ones that you really think about.  It’s great to feel overjoyed at a villain being defeated, or thinking “This is awesome!” at an intense action scene.  However, seriously thinking about a series of events and how they could have been avoided, or reflecting on a character’s actions and whether they were right or wrong, those kinds of things are what stick with us in life.  Those kinds of things are what you walk away from feeling satisfied, not because you enjoyed it, but because you’ve grown from it. 

Happy endings and happily ever afters are all well and good, but some of the stories that are true masterpieces are Shakespearean tales of love lost or pure hearts falling to darkness.  Perfect tragedies that stay with us forever, to think about, cry about, and learn from.