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Just finished Hitmen for Destiny. I read the first two planets of Accidental Space Spy and the Sister Wives story some time ago, but I guess I was put off of Hitmen for Destiny for a couple of reasons. First was "hitmen" (that trope's nearly as overused as zombies these days), and the second was the weirdest spoiler of the ending that showed up in the Tails Gets Trolled thread: That it was all about some guy's desire to make himself an amazing destiny because he thought his girlfriend deserved more than a working stiff schlub like him. Another kind of resolution I feel is way overdone. I read Hitmen for Destiny over several days and I couldn't figure out right until the end how the heck that spoiler was supposed to have anything to do with anything. I really appreciate the effort that went into maintaining internal logic. I figured out what was going on with the unicorn universe almost immediately and it was real instructive insofar as understanding the way the author was going about the worldbuilding. Even before I got to that point I had plenty of faith in the way the narrative was crafted, but yeah, it really is a big testament to how easy it must be to write provided you have a clearly thought out gameplan. Once you have the basic assumptions out of the way it's real easy to come up with jokes that sound like straight out monkey cheese abstractly even if there's a perfectly rational explanation behind it. More importantly, though, it's the reader's belief in this coherence that helps get everything to come together. As far as Rolf goes, I thought it was pretty clear that his destiny was supposed to decouple from Annette's right after the Barn Beast, and found myself wondering exactly how this would have been managed. I really want to see how the Barn Beast's death was originally supposed to go down, not because I care about it being "cool", but because as presented it was really difficult to guess why anyone would have wanted to kill the Barn Beast in the first place, or how this could have been so difficult that it would have necessitated two heroes. Especially since the Barn Beast itself was such a strange monster- it must have been reasonably intelligent, since it somehow managed to learn about at least two prophecies. Concerning the ending- Definitely too happy. I guess I just didn't have the same sympathy for most of the characters as the rest of you did. I found myself identifying most strongly with Bianca, who was tortured and spent three years as a tentacle monster in addition to all the awful stuff that happened to her on panel. I never really want to see any of these people again and I feel better off not knowing about what else they're going to be doing. Which I guess is kind of a happy ending, in a really meta way (for the reader that is). Last point. I feel like the best format for this work, by far, would be Adventure Game. Goodness knows we've all been gobbed around by ridiculous non-intuitive puzzles before. The very organic way these puzzles are solved would make for a very fun game of adventure guesswork as compared to the normal frustration. Like imagine the Mexican standoff scene in the end which must be solved by rejecting every possible solution offered until another character enters the scene. It could also make for some great action sequences. I really liked how, rather than getting progressively more difficult, the difficulty of killing the monster was pretty much random. Because it's not like they'd be in order or something. I also find the prospect of the end-game boss being the same wimpy tutorial monster you fought to get used to the playing style so outrageously funny that I wish someone would actually try it. Wouldn't work as well for Accidental Space Spy, though, since so far I haven't seen any action sequences in that at all. Then again that's how most adventure games work so whatever.
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Dec 1, 2012 03:30
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 08:56 |
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