Thursday, 5 November 2015

The Seven Basic Plots (Spoilers)

The idea of the Seven Basic Plots is that that each story or game follows the guidelines of one of the following:

Classic Dr. Robotnik
Overcoming Evil/Monster
Any of the Sonic the Hedgehogs feature Sonic, the protagonist travelling through many worlds, levels and stages ultimately trying to defeat the antagonist, Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik. There are many other characters, like Sonic's sidekick, Tails who aid him along the way. It is a platform game where you control a character and collect Rings along the way, allowing extra lives or transformations to help travel through each stage. In later games, these can be used as currency, restoring health or improving statistics.
Robotnik's aim is to rule the planet and to do this, he needs to defeat Sonic, who aims to overcome and thwart Robotnik's plans to save the world from this, and various other threats.

Rags to Riches
At the beginning of Skyrim, you create your character by customising the looks and the race. When you actually first start the game, you're placed in a moving carriage along with other Prisoners heading for execution. You are lead up to the block where the execution takes place and a dragon disrupts the event, causing a distraction and a chance for you to flee. After doing so, a new life is started and you discover that you are the Dovakiin, destined to save the world and slay the dragons. To do this however, you must complete many quests along the way, which is why this story fits the Rags and Riches plot; you start off nearly facing your death, only to become that who prophecies have spoken of.

Voyage and Return
(The Longest Journey/Dreamfall: The Longest Journey/Dreamfall Chapters:The Longest Journey)
In Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, the player controls 4 characters in different worlds, however the events that occur to each character happens in chronological order. What happens in another world affects that of the original one that the player starts in, and I believe one travels between worlds, this is why I think it fits in Voyage and Return plot.
Super Mario Bros.


The Quest
Mario is a game that everyone knows and loves. The Italian plumber travels through Mushroom Kingdom, usually on a mission to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser, a Koopa Villian. This suggests a hint from Overcoming Evil/Monster as Mario needs to defeat Bowser, or other enemies from the Koopa species.



Tragedy
To The Moon is a role-playing adventure game void of battle systems, inventory or party systems. In the game you play as either Dr. Eva Rosalene or Dr. Niel Watts and aim to fulfill Johnny Wyles' dream of travelling to the moon, before he dies. The aim is to go back into his memories and insert a desire to go to the moon at a young age and therefore can live a full life without any regrets. However this doesn't happen so the two characters have to explore many of his memories, discovering other good and bad events of his life.

Comedy
In Portal, you are trapped in a testing facility and your goal is to complete various tests set by a robot named GLaDOS. Due to this, it can also fit into The Quest and Overcoming Evil/Monster plots. I put this under the Comedy plot due to GLaDOS' commentary throughout the game, and also Wheatley's contribution in Portal 2. They add comedic value to the otherwise possibly dark nature of the game. (Someone trapped and being used as a test subject.) GLaDOS makes snide comments about each section and sometimes actions which one would find funny.

Rebirth
Bigby Wolf is the main protagonist of the point-and-click adventure game The Wolf Among Us by Telltale Games. In the Fables universe, Bigby Wolf is the Big Bad Wolf, a classic bad guy, however in this game he is the Town's Sheriff. This game works based on the decisions you make while playing as Bigby, this means that you are ultimately in control of whether or not Bigby becomes better than the stories. This also means that The Wolf Among Us may not follow the Rebirth Plot as closely as it can do, due to the player's decisions.

Bigby Wolf
Bigby Wolf

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