Superhero Project

This project was kind of a difficult undertaking for me, so I can’t vouch for its quality. I like writing, but I don’t think interactive fiction, or choose-your-adventure stories will become a major part of my writing. It was fun experimenting, learning, and reading about the different components that go into making a good Twine story, and a good choose-your-adventure so I appreciate the experience.

When I was thinking of the character BB, I initially wanted them to be much more fleshed out. I wanted them to be cynical, and selfish, but not so much that they could overlook a person in pain without remorse. I wanted their first priority to be themselves with just enough leeway for them to still be a reasonable human being. Though by the end of the game it feels like the choices are more forced than natural, so it doesn’t seem to convey what I initially wanted to be the character’s personality. There are small hints at their personality and interests in their choice in music, though it isn’t quite enough to humanize the character, which is why I killed of the supporting character.

In hindsight, killing off the side character, who is the trigger for the story, doesn’t seem like the best way to illicit a response for a character, I don’t think it was the worst idea, but it definitely shouldn’t have been the only method for doing so. If I could go back to the start of the assignment I would want to right up an essay for each path so it would be a bit more structurally sound, but also so I could have tried providing more depth to the main character, and have the side character, Paul Reeves, become more involved with the story as a sort of sidekick.

The reader/BB is supposed to be torn between their desire to live a comfortable life and the responsibility that comes with their strengths. It’s a typical archetype for superhero stories, the trope of “with great power, comes great responsibility,” but it’s told from a more selfish point of view. The darker path in the story addresses the protagonists selfishness by forcing them into a position where their choice to prioritize their wants causes Paul to lose their life causing them to feel the weight that their negligence can carry. In retrospect, this seems a bit too heavy-handed, though I feel like it was a serious enough situation to rattle the protagonists foundations and cause them to think that they would want to prevent it from happening again, either as a method of atonement, or because they realize the weight that a life other than their own can carry.

In one of the paths, BB has to search the mind of a man named Diego, who was a high ranking member of the fictional gang in my story, in order to find information about their operation and resources. This sort of covert operation would have played a bigger role in the overall story, and would have led to BB going through more and more members of the gang, and discovering more about their innerworkings which, in turn, would have given BB the choice to continue pursuing the gang, or giving up due to the magnitude of their operation and the dangers associated with them.

Overall, I think I could have done better. My lack of forethought crippled my decision making, and my ability to write more compelling and/or interesting choices and paths for the characters involved.