The experience I get from watching Memento today is very different than that of my first few watches. The first few times the film's editing made me feel confused, just as it was supposed to. It put me into the head of Leonard. I went through the story feeling a lot like he does. But as my watch count increased the confusion decreased. I remember everything. Now the movie's clever editing does not have the same effect. The only way to get more juice from the movie is to show it to someone who hasn't seen it.
Bioshock's environmental storytelling has a similar thing where repeated go-throughs diminish the effect. The first time through I didn't know anything. What's Adam? What are these little girls? How did Rapture fall? What went down between Atlas, Ryan, and this Fontaine guy? As I went through I was figuring it out. There was a sense of discovery. A sense of being in that place. But going through the game again just now the effect was gone. I already knew the answers to all that stuff. Thus, listening to all the diaries and whatnot was mostly just tedious. The emotion was largely gone. Despite the well-written and interesting characters and themes, deconstructive elements and so forth, I felt numb.
But I can go through some stories over and over again and always enjoy them. Frodo's choosing to keep the ring and go to Mordor at the end of FOTR is always powerful to me. In The Martian I go through the same emotional trip each time. I see so much of myself in Watney's struggle that I cheer him on each time. I literally got a little emotional just writing that. For me, emotional connection to the ideas or characters in a story makes it meaningful each time.
Bioshock's narrative worked best for me going in blind on my first time. It was like a mystery story. Once I knew who-dunnit it could not be quite the same. Or maybe it's like a puzzle game. There's a certain lack of replayability. I realize that lots of stories are more enjoyable some times than at others, but I can't shake the sense that Bioshock's methodology is particularly susceptible to diminishing returns.
I guess I'm glad I went through it again because I at least learned a bit about what makes a story work for me. But the experience itself didn't give me much of a kick.
Diminishing Returns
The experience I get from watching Memento today is very different than that of my first few watches. The first few times the film's editing made me feel confused, just as it was supposed to. It put me into the head of Leonard. I went through the story feeling a lot like he does. But as my watch count increased the confusion decreased. I remember everything. Now the movie's clever editing does not have the same effect. The only way to get more juice from the movie is to show it to someone who hasn't seen it.
Bioshock's environmental storytelling has a similar thing where repeated go-throughs diminish the effect. The first time through I didn't know anything. What's Adam? What are these little girls? How did Rapture fall? What went down between Atlas, Ryan, and this Fontaine guy? As I went through I was figuring it out. There was a sense of discovery. A sense of being in that place. But going through the game again just now the effect was gone. I already knew the answers to all that stuff. Thus, listening to all the diaries and whatnot was mostly just tedious. The emotion was largely gone. Despite the well-written and interesting characters and themes, deconstructive elements and so forth, I felt numb.
But I can go through some stories over and over again and always enjoy them. Frodo's choosing to keep the ring and go to Mordor at the end of FOTR is always powerful to me. In The Martian I go through the same emotional trip each time. I see so much of myself in Watney's struggle that I cheer him on each time. I literally got a little emotional just writing that. For me, emotional connection to the ideas or characters in a story makes it meaningful each time.
Bioshock's narrative worked best for me going in blind on my first time. It was like a mystery story. Once I knew who-dunnit it could not be quite the same. Or maybe it's like a puzzle game. There's a certain lack of replayability. I realize that lots of stories are more enjoyable some times than at others, but I can't shake the sense that Bioshock's methodology is particularly susceptible to diminishing returns.
I guess I'm glad I went through it again because I at least learned a bit about what makes a story work for me. But the experience itself didn't give me much of a kick.