Recurrence

First off, allow me to say this is the best indie game I have ever played. We’re not going to talk about the narrative of this game right now but trust me when I say that it touches the face of Bioshock in terms of allowing the telling a story without writing it out. It’s gorgeous. 

Of the myriad things we could speak of, I want to talk about the concept of recurrence. It comes in all shapes and sizes in games specifically - mechanics, environments, characters. It’s that last one I want to touch on. 

When a character affects the story/flow of the game more than once, that’s recurrence. The Final Fantasy series (really JRPG’s in general) are pros at doing this. Sephiroth, Kefka, Seymour, all villains that toy with you and mock you throughout the story. And it works, right? You get angry with them - they’re so close and yet to so far away every time you encounter them until that fateful last encounter. 

(As a side note, it’s my belief that it’s this theme that caused FF8’s failure in the hearts of many - your final boss was not your recurring villain. Missed opportunity. They knew better.)

The key word up above is anger. Recurrence is effective because it causes us to become emotionally involved. The people we see most, those are the people we are most in love/hate with. You can’t love or hate someone without ample cause to do so - and that ample cause comes from ample interaction.

This is something video games know full well. Look at every great villain in every great game/series - I bet you bottom dollar they show up more than once.

Limbo does this early on and it’s fantastic. Slight SPOILER WARNING here.

The Giant Spider at the beginning of the game is a recurring character. It doesn’t toy with you or mock you - but it hates you. And because of your various interaction, you come to hate it. So much so that, by the time you’ve defeated it, ripping off its limbs is the most satisfying thing in the world.

That satisfaction of dismemberment would not have existed without the repeated attempts on your life from that Spider. You thought you killed it, it comes back - it has such a passion for killing you that when it shows up, you’re scared out of your mind and then finally ecstatic at your victory.

That’s what emotional investment will do for you. Look at that, we DID talk about narrative after all.

Get it?