Video Game Plot Esclation would be a decent trope I think. Persona 3, Persona 4, Final Fantasy (well all past the 3rd one) would be a big example of that.

As would be the rule "if there is a world map you will be saving the world."

However there are Fantasy series out there that do the same thing Lord of the Rings started just taking a ring to Rivendell and ended up saving the world. Or Negima!'s go teach middleschool in japan, save the school, Save the magic world

edited 9th Jul '11 1:13:57 AM by Raso

I think "Plot escalates until you have to Save The World" is not specific to videogames either. As the only tangientially-related example that comes to my mind, take Naruto: Title character just wants To Be a Master and become the Leaf's next Hokage. His Rival just wants to exact revenge on his older brother. But it just so happens there's a criminal organization out collecting all those canned beasts so someone somewhere can, yes, Take Over the World, and that would really put a cramp in one Highly-Visible Ninja's personal dream....

Huh. And there I thought that's exactly what The World Is Always Doomed was about...

Anyway, this reminds me of Zawinski's Law of Expansion ("Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.")

Maybe we can formulate something similar. Say, a Law Of Escalation: Every plot attempts to escalate until someone has to save the world. Plots which cannot so escalate are replaced by ones which can.

edited 9th Jul '11 12:22:43 PM by TripleElation

The World Is Always Doomed is the "No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again" angle.

I think this trope is both misnamed and written to be videogame specific. It should be something like Plot Quest Upgrade or something showing that eventually a strange plot eventually evolves into saving the world. There's no point in making it videogame specific since it's a plot trope.

Always Save The World?

Yes.

Also, plot escalation is a cornerstone of storytelling, in terms of both what's at stake (i.e. going from looking for your lost dog to SavingTheWorld), to the obstacles blocking the protagonist from reaching his goal.

Two sources are great for this (and really need a works page on the wiki). One is Freytag's Die Technik des Dramas and Robert McKee's Story.

Stories' tendencies of upping the ante definitely needs to be troped.

edited 9th Jul '11 7:39:36 PM by ArtemisStrong

Bump.

Something along the line of Raising the Stakes? It's currently red-linked, and it describes going from "save your village" to "save your country" to "save the world." I can see how it would be used for other tropes though.

Constant Raising The Stakes maybe?

Raising The Stakes sounds like a gambling trope to me.

I like Plot Escalation, without the Video Game part. While the trope seems to mainly apply to video games, there is no reason (as said above) why a plot trope should only apply to video games.

I like Plot Escalation as well.

On another note, do you feel "heroes save the world" in and of itself tropable? The whole reason I found out about this mess was because I noticed it doesn't exist. I disagree that ninjacrat's contention that "it would be boring" is a reasonable objection, but I'm not quite sure how we would handle it.

I actually started a Special Efforts to hunt down any trope claiming to be medium specific.

nrjxll, we can just do a Trope Transplant. The plot being about saving the world is a common Motivation Trope.

Right, we can sit here for a month discussing it (or based on the post dates, a month not discussing it) or someone can do something about it. I'm someone, so I'm gonna do something, and since there seem to be many people saying that saving the world is tropable, I'm rewriting the article to be about that, and I'm doing it now.

All right then.

My computer froze halfway while I was typing the article and I can't be assed to try again. Someone else?

Escalating Scale Of Villain Threat, get one for natural disasters and we're done here. Maybe Rising Threat Level?

edited 18th Aug '11 4:14:12 PM by Cider

Bumping to try and clear this up. Anyway, I think the goal is pretty simple. We Trope Transplant this somewhere else, fiddle with the description so that it's not written videogame specific, and clean the examples. Then we need to either YKTTW or just write a new description for Saving the World.

Bumping again.

So, name choosing. Escalating Villainy Threats, Rising Threat Level, any others?

Before any name discussion, I want to get something straight - should the current definition (as opposed to the Exactly What It Says on the Tin one) really focus on video games?

Nope.

No, it still needs to be rewritten. Go ahead and do a rewrite for both.

Thread bump.

How would Escalating Scale Of Villainy Threats differ from Sorting Algorithm of Evil? Not that Plot Escalation is unrelated to the latter, but isn't it distinct?

edited 17th Mar '12 10:39:35 PM by ArcadesSabboth