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Re: details of the story=Cool. Execution in H2=Cra | |
Posted By: mr_mcmurder <olmec1980@yahoo.com> | Date: 12/30/06 7:05 p.m. |
In Response To: Re: details of the story=Cool. Execution in H2=Cra (Saint) : Problem with your explanation is that Gravemind didn't resolve the conflict,
"Deus ex machina" means "god from a machine." It was a term coined by the Greeks when plays were derided for having an intractable situation, when suddenly, a contraption built under the stage would produce some such god right between the conflicting characters, and he would solve it out of the blue. It completely destroys the story progression, and the viewer is left wondering what the hell of even following the story in the first place was, because it is not obeying any rules that were set up previously. As I stated, the conflict was that the Master Chief was falling to the bottom of a lake, unconscious (or maybe you will argue he was "sleeping/waiting" a la Chuck Norris, and we can have a whole polemic discussion about that), and that the Arbiter was falling down a huge pit-chasm hole thing. Gravemind saves them both, and then puts them together and sends them off on two quests, all while hitting us over the head with how their characters are very different, so perfectly different, in fact, that the viewer is sorry he got reminded about that fact. A deus ex machina is a sign of poorly put together writing. It shows the writer has essentially written himself into a corner, and he has to simply break out of the whole action he has set up to get out of it. Gravemind as a character may not be stupid. The god Apollo in and of itself is not, either. But when Apollo pops up from under the stage, or Gravemind is catching bodies falling down bottomless abysses left and right and them lecturing them about how they are a yin and yang, just in case the viewer doesn't know, you are out of the story, and you suddenly don't care, because apparently the writer doesn't, either. |
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