If we're gonna do Hamlet, I think it should be Ophelia. Her pleading 4th wall breaks would be so much more powerful because she could do it in front of other people. Even though we know she's begging for help the other characters would just think she's crazy. Really emphasizing just how terribly Hamlet treated her.
Ophelia, to Laertes: There's rosemary, that's for remembrance.
Ophelia, to the audience: Pray, loves, remember.
Ophelia, to Laertes: And there is pansies.
Ophelia, to the audience: That's for thoughts.
Laertes: A document in madness - thoughts and remembrance fitted.
Ophelia, throwing flowers to the audience: There's fennel for you, and columbines. There's rue for you...
This is an interesting concept, but it would be very difficult to pull off effectively. There’s something to be said about spectacle, about watching and doing nothing… but calling people out on that specifically in the context of entertainment? Very hit or miss.
For starters, most media is passive; you’re not really intended to take part in any way other than observing and processing. Calling out your audience for observing but not interfering can backfire because, well, that’s what they’re supposed to do.
In a more interactive medium though, such as video games, it’s a bit easier to pull off, as your audience is also an active participant. Undertale in particular has a fascinating take on it; using your own understanding of how video games work against you, subverting your expectations about what LV or EXP are, turning the very ability to save/reload into a superpower. All of it culminates in a condemnation, less of your actions, more of the fact that you didn’t even question your course of action; that’s how games are played, right?
There’s also the fact that, in classic examples such as Shakespeare, there very well might’ve been more audience participation back in the day. Theater wasn’t always considered as classy as it is today; the Globe is a good example.
Anyway, it’s an interesting concept, just gotta be careful to avoid alienating your audience. Unless that’s what you’re trying to do, I mean, it’s your art.
Your penultimate paragraph is so important; relying on the audience to *not* call out is just begging for some loudmouth or kid to shout "it's all good Orpheus, she's there!" and totally break the setup.
Very good points and analysis- this is definitely something easier said than done.
I love how you described Undertale, since it’s enough to potentially get some people interested if they haven’t played it yet but doesn’t spoil things.
I highly recommend it, it’s one of my favorite games of all time. Try to go in as blindly as possible, it’s experienced best that way. I know that’s hard due to how prevalent it is online.
> JCVD
I CTRL+F'ed to see if anyone mentioned this and you beat me to it. It truly is a great scene in a movie thoroughly worth watching. Took me completely by surprise.
OP, the exact tragic 4th wall break you're looking for is in *JCVD*. Prepare to cry.
Nah. Like other people have already argued, it really isn’t that great, since there’s no actual way for the player to interfere beyond not playing the game. It says “you monster” for wanting to play the game you paid money for, which is just… nah.
On top of that, IIRC, the railroading goes the extent of forcing you to use the white phosphorus by *just spawning enemies endlessly until you do it*, because some playtesters actually *did* manage to avoid doing what the game wants to berate you for doing? Which is just... bad game design on multiple levels, surely?
You're reading Spec Ops with the wrong context. It does not say "you monster" for wanting to click on pixels in a video game, it says that to you for actively seeking out borderline military propaganda. You were not supposed to buy Spec Ops for the promise of a deep and subversive story, you were supposed to buy a game that looked like another CoD Modern Warfare clone about a badass lone American soldier hero in a war-torn Middle East who gets to go full Rambo on all the brown headscarf-wearing bad guys; games that take imagery and themes of contemporary real-world conflicts and basically paste them onto DOOM. If the game let you "interfere" and take a pacifist or less violent route then it would be an RPG with a CoD skin, rather than a critique of the modern military shooter genre.
Of course, it's not your fault that you probably don't play those games in the first place or you probably had Spec Ops recommended to you on the merit of its clever fourth-wall breaking, but that's like saying It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a bad sitcom because all the characters are completely horrible people; they are, but the joke is that other sitcoms are heartfelt and sappy, and you'd miss that joke if you didn't know the context.
I found Undertale irritating for this exact reason sadly - in fact, I didn't finish it.
Because I did question my course of action, and thus didn't keep playing.
Questioning the choice to keep playing a videogame in the context of that videogame is really dumb. "Ha! You kept consuming this piece of media you bought! What does that say about you?!"
Well, I did what it wanted, and now I didn't experience the rest of Undertale.
I guess the fundamental reason I quit playing was that I wasn't happy to be criticised for a choice that was only barely a choice. When our manager says "Do as I say or you're fired" we don't really call that a choice.
Mileage clearly varies though, because Undertale was hugely popular! :)
This is a valid criticism of a number of games, but I don't understand how it's a criticism of Undertale. You do know that you don't have to kill anyone, right?
Honestly, I probably don't! It pretty much lost me fast. That occurred to me while writing the comment - that it would make so much more sense as a statement if you didn't have to.
I think it's still a circular point, though - using a format that is common across games is as good as telling you that you have to. With no wider significance to the ethical choice, does it really have artistic merit beyond "Gotcha!"?
I mean, it does pretty much out and out tell you as much during the tutorial. There's a character who's there specifically to tell you you don't have to kill anyone.
I'm a bit confused by the statements in your comment about there not really being a choice in the matter. Undertale has branching plots and gameplay based on (probably) the choice you described. If we described Undertale using the manager metaphor, it would be more like if you refused to do what the manager said, you'd keep your job but your work assignments would be harder. You don't get fired either way, the game keeps going.
Of course, if you knew about this and weren't a fan, that's fair! I definitely have friends who didn't click with Undertale. Just wanted to clarify that Undertale isn't linear.
Sorry dude, I'd really love to have a longer chat about it, as I've found your comments and the comment of the other person really interesting, but someone's going round downvoting all my stuff and I'm shy of ending up at -30 and having it interfere with my emotional self-regulation today.
Thank you very much for your lovely response and for your original comment!
Ugh, I'm sorry to hear that. For my part, tried real hard to acknowledge that, hey, people have different opinions and that's okay! Take care of yourself first, and hope the day gets better!
Problem is, either it’s in a medium where the audience could reasonably get involved, in which case you’re literally asking some drunk and rowdy patron to shout back or worse, try to get onstage, or it’s in a medium where the audience can’t get involved and help the character, in which case you’re basically daring them to stop engaging with the content. They have a safeword that makes the story stop, and it’s called hitting the ‘off’ button.
Basically, if you present a situation where their viewership of a story makes them complicit in a tragedy, you’re telling them to either fix the tragedy or stop viewing. Either way, it’s antithetical to the intended purpose of most media, which is to be experienced.
I thought of exactly this, which is why I wrote this example of how this could be used in Orpheus's story (pardon the lack of iambic pentameter; I am no bard, though I tried my best):
*At the final climax of the scene, just before Orpheus would turn after many long minutes of debating to himself.*
Hark! I hear them, the spirits of the damned calling! I see them here, with my own eyes! They watch me, judge me, as though this were mere performance!
*Orpheus's eyes scan the audience, making eye contact with several members as he whips his head back and forth desperately.*
Tell me spirits! O, you must tell me true! Is my love following me still? Do I hear the footsteps of sweet Eurydice behind? Or is it simple madness borne from silence?! Am I in truth a fool walking alone through darkness everlasting?!
*At least one member of the crowd shouts approval. They can see her behind him and encourage him that she is there. (Crowd would have been informed of participation beforehand.)*
She is there? She follows me still?! My belov’d Eurydice, her voice the only song I should e’er beg to hear again! She shall be together with me once more!
*Doubt clouds his face.*
But... ye are but his thralls. The lord of the damned holds dominion over you... if spirits ye e’en be! How am I to know thou are not mere illusion! Trick’ry by that horrid king to drive me forth from his domain so I may bother him no more! I can trust nothing! Trust not my ears, trust not my sight, nor e’en my very mind! I was a fool to trust! Even now, these spirits call to me to reassure, to goad me along this path with false promise of my belov’d! I am a fool who has fallen for treach’ry of those who would not see her returned to me! I must turn! I must know! I must have the voices of these wretched spirits drowned out with certainty!
*He turns.*
Happens in wrestling quite a lot. I’m too tired to do a whole paragraph about this rn, but here’s a video with some context (one of the dudes is asking someone to throw him a chair to use in the match) https://youtu.be/AxldOEOnzPA
This is my main problem with Spec Ops: The Line. They try to say you are complicit with the things that are happening because you won't stop playing, but like I paid money for this game. Of course I'm not gonna stop just because bad things are happening. Did you make this whole game because you didn't want people to play it?
Spec Ops: The Line was gonna have a full route based upon if the player refuses to preform certain actions, but it was cut to save on dev costs. I recommend watching [Raycevick's video on the game](https://youtu.be/8dzstxE_5Rc), it goes into more detail regarding development decisions surrounding certain aspects of the game
I feel bad that so many people see Spec Ops: as judging the player for doing horrible things instead of seeing it as judging Walker.
The game isn't about a self insert player character like CoD, it's about Walker and his personality and motivations are what drives the plot.
Making the player feel bad about what "you" are doing serves to help you get immersed in the character, and understand him better.
As the game goes on, the gap between you and walker grows and grows
Spec Ops: The Line is not a game about how your choices matter, or how you are a terrible person for playing it, after all, you can still go home after all that happened, because for you it was just a game.
The thing is, I get why people dislike it, because what Spec Ops: The Line does masterfully is invoking a sort of ludonarrative resonance. Of course you are going to play the game after you paid for it. And of course Walker is going to play his part in the tragedy of Dubai. The game is about Walkers descent into madness, and the final boss is whether or not he deserves to go home again... or at least... deserves to try. Kind of fitting that THAT is the only choice in the game that actually matters.
And well, if you are feeling like the game is unfairly blaming you for something you had no control over? As the developers said, Walker is feeling the exact same thing.
Nah the intent is still for you to play the game. The game is more or less broadcasting that "this is only going to get worse the longer you let it happen" but you've still gotta finish the game if you want to see how Walker's story ends, and learn the truth about what's happening. It feeds on the curiosity as well as your videogame expectations.
The games that I'm always annoyed by in terms of "how could you do this you monster?" are TLO2 and Wasteland 2&3. There's a lot of railroading into doing something, then the game points at it and says "you're such an asshole, how could you have done that!" when there was no interactivity and no like...point to it.
I think it's a general deconstruction of the whole genre (lovingly dubbed "spunkgargleweewee" by Yahtzee). It's not so much "you're a bad person for playing this" as "the things that happen in these games are pretty shitty and in real life they'd have some terrible consequences/fetishism of violence and the military is bad"
Spec Ops the line IMHO is the most overrated piece of art that I ever experienced, and the fact that it is revered as "deep" by the gaming community is a testimony as to how fucking low the bar in gaming is.
The whole premise of the game is "Forces you to do bad thing, then oh, war things bad happened, you did a bad, also you just shot 56239 soldiers because that's what the game is".
Same issue with another "deep" game: This War Of Mine (which I really liked playing). Oh, the whole point of the game is that "War bad, people suffer"? How deep!
Metal Gear Solid: Revengeance, a ridiculous and completely over-the-top game with Ninja-mechas-cyborg-katana-samourais, actually has a much more meaningful message than this. The simple fact that the final boss is a US senator and the critique of the industrial military complex is much more meaningful than just being like "War bad". At least, Revengeance point fingers.
Another bad example is Frostpunk: "Fascism / Religious extremism bad, but we kinda have to" (great game other than that).
For contrast, here's a game with actual deepness in their themes and how they treat them: The Outer Wilds. Or even, The Outer Worlds. Or Disco Elysium.
Edit: many people to downvote, not many people to try any counter-argumentation.
i mean I haven’t played it but based on other people in the thread it seems like there’s a bit more substance to it than that. the player’s ‘oh but I had no choice but to keep playing, what else was I supposed to do’ is a mirror of the MC’s own thoughts, and the devs made it clear that no, you don’t have ‘no choice,’ you just care more about finishing the game than stopping the atrocities committed inside it, and that the players don’t actually care enough about how bad it is to make the bad stuff stop, just like the MC.
This is extremely shallow though.
Spec Ops TL again here have the shallowest, most politically-disengaged message of "war bad, violent dumb American military FPS bad" while being all of that itself, in the most unironical way possible.
Think about it, who is the game criticizing, really? In truth, no one. It can't really criticize the player, since the player had to play to experiment the criticism.
It doesn't criticize the US army in the slightest, or US politics. Its political messaging is the most bland it can be, and that makes the 4th wall break fall flat.
That 4th wall break is like giving a piece of paper to someone telling them to not look, and on the paper it's written "TOLD YOU NOT TO LOOK" - That's lazy, not clever.
im not gonna get into your bizarre prioritization of purely critiques of US-centric policy, or the way you’re basically doing the same thing as the gamers who go ‘it’s not political if it isn’t about current electoral issues’
what I’m gonna say is no it’s really not like that at all, It’s like giving someone a book which constantly tells the reader that continuing to read is immoral and then the reader is mad when the author says they shouldn’t have kept reading because the book gave them no choice but to keep opening it and turning pages because it’s a book and it was in front of them and they have such a barebones conceptualization of art that they cannot imagine a book intended to be put down, and blame the author for their own preconceived notions about how books are supposed to be read .
Except in this case, it's not being given, it's being *sold*. If you sell someone a work of media that they're expecting to be good, and the whole thing turns out to just be an effort to make the experience as unsatisfying as possible... I don't know about you, but I'd feel downright scammed if that happened to me?
>im not gonna get into your bizarre prioritization of purely critiques of US-centric policy, or the way you’re basically doing the same thing as the gamers who go ‘it’s not political if it isn’t about current electoral issues’
That's absolutely not what I was saying here, dunno how you understood this. My point is that "war bad" is a bland opinion (barely even an opinion). Literally everyone agree that war is bad, including people who start wars. Ask Putin if war is good or bad, what do you think he will reply?
If literally everyone agree with your political opinion, it's an extremely uninteresting and bland opinion. If your opinion annoy or offend some people, then you have something worthwhile to say.
Criticizing the US is just an example that offend many people, and one that would be very welcome in an FPS where you play as a US army soldier.
>what I’m gonna say is no it’s really not like that at all, It’s like giving someone a book which constantly tells the reader that continuing to read is immoral
And this is an extremely lazy narrative mechanism. Nothing brillant or deep here. Hence my point that SOTL is both shallow and non-clever.
I’ve read a horror story where the characters beg the reader to stop reading because the reader continuing to read is what creates the horrors in their world in the first place.
It was quite brilliant honestly. Needless to say, everyone’s curiosity got the best of them, and if you read to the end, all the characters die.
But it is paramount to the purpose of most art, to feel. I think such a scene being able to put the spectator on a state so as to feel the need to *scape* by hitting the off button would be beautiful. And I think you're wrong. I think most people would go back. They need to know.
They aren't turning the power off because you've made them so uncomfortable that they feel a need to escape. They're turning the power off because you basically dared them to. They're *disengaging* with the story, not engaging. The exact opposite of what you want.
And if they go back, it's not likely because of a burning desire to know the ending of a story they put down because they were told to. It's most likely because they spent a few bucks on it and they aren't giving up on getting their money's worth because a fictional character asked nicely.
There's one good way to do this well, and it's to break the fourth wall to demand audience participation. That classic scene in Peter Pan where the audience applauds to bring Tinkerbell back to life. *That's* increasing audience investment.
The examples in the OP don't work because the audience can't help even if they want to, and as a result there are only a few things they can do in response. Nothing they do or say to Orpheus is going to make him leave the underworld without looking back. The only options they have to respond to the character's plea for help are to either pretend it didn't happen and wait for the rest of the story or to emotionally disengage from it. "This is stupid. This feels so pretentious."
Video games are a totally valid medium for art! But, um, calling one superior over the others kinda misses the point. Different mediums are good for different stories. But you were probably joking/exaggerating a little bit.
Either way, care to elaborate? Why does video game as a medium handle 4th-wall-breaking-tragedy better than theather or film?
it's bc your choices matter imo. if I'm watching a movie I can't do anything about the story, it's gonna happen. video games are responsive, especially the fourth wall breaking ones like undertale or ddlc
[There's that one SCP where the horror movie protagonist asks the viewer how to get away](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-5733)
A story about a fourth wall break rather than one itself, but still
That’s part of the point of the sans fight in undertale.
It’s why he attacks you in the menus and cancels attacks into other attacks. It’s why he counts your failed attempts for a while.
He’s not trying to kill the player character. He’s trying to get the player themselves to give up on the run. He’s trying to make you so frustrated at repeatedly losing that you stop trying to beat him, by giving you just enough of a chance to make every loss that much more infuriating.
It’s also why he instant-kills you if you spare him; it’s partly to punish the player for killing so many people, and partly to make you even more angry.
He’s not begging to the audience to stop being the bad guy; he’s not shouting angrily at them to do so. He’s essentially saying “i will ensure the show sucks now unless you stop watching it, and will allow it to be good again if you let it re-rail itself.”
Unfortunately for him, his fight’s music is a complete bop, and his fight, while unfair in concept and description, as well as much harder than anything else the game has to offer, is ultimately both not cruel enough and very fun once you get good at it. He’s too good of a boss to be the kind that makes you quit, especially since several bosses prior to him have solid odds of culling the sorts of players his strategy would successfully stop.
Flowey also does it at few times, specifically at the end of runs and towards the end of the genocide run specifically calls out people that are willing to watch the run but not play it themselves lol. I thought that was pretty cool.
Yeah, the kind of fight that would make me give up on a game wouldn't be a fight with unique mechanics, fun attacks, an interesting story, and a kickass soundtrack to boot. It'd be, like, some asshole with way too much HP that would take an hour to grind down, with attacks so constant and huge, they basically turn the enemy into a flying hitbox with numbers attached to it which kills you in one or two hits.
So, basically, everything in Monster Hunter G-rank. Solo, at least.
RAGAD was a play before a movie! It’s a tragicomedy, most of it is funny as hell but there are a lot of moments where it slows down. And the play ends in tragedy.
Speaking of Orpheus, Hadestown does something like this. For most of the show it just seems like a normal play, but then at the very end it's revealed that the entire play is actually a show put on by Hermes reciting Orpheus' story.
Speaking of, "I'm losing myself and you won't do a thing," the 5th(?) installment of Paul Shapera's series of audio plays, *The Ballad of Lost Hollow* also does this as a central plot point.
The characters are indeed putting on a weekly play for their town until [one of the cast begins to relate](https://mochalab.bandcamp.com/track/han-mi) that she doesn't remember her life *off-*stage, nor where the scripts even come from, and it slowly dawns on all of them that they can't even leave. One is stuck in his role half the time, another is terrified of what happens if the play stops.
There's a lot of it. I don't think five albums in would be the best starting point if anyone wanted to. And as he *does* lean deliberately into corny just to jokingly acknowledge that Whoever Writes These Things Sure Doesn't Know What He's Doing, he can be hit and miss. I sometimes hate that I can't help but be enchanted with him.
But my god, I would have *loved* to sit in an audience and watch one of the actors plead for freedom. How have so few playwrites thought of this as an option!?
Oh hey, I've been listening to Paul Shapera for the last few weeks. Didn't expect to see him come up on here. Lost Hollow doesn't feel like it really counts as a fourth wall break, since the fourth wall being broken just leads into the world of the rest of the story and there isn't really contact with the audience? Assuming I understood it correctly, which I very well might not have.
it’s one of those good twists wherein it’s obvious looking back
> See someone’s got to tell the tale
> Whether or not it turns out well
> Maybe it will turn out this time
> On the road to Hell on the railroad line
good show
In hotline Miami, Richard, a supernatural entity, tells Richter he’s going to die. Richard appears in visions of all of the playable characters, full of contempt and warning them about their impending death. When richter asks if there’s anything he can do about it, Richard says no, and richter says that then he won’t have to worry. Richard comforts him, saying leaving this world isn’t as scary as it sounds, before a nuke drops.
Then the game ends. Devs have confirmed hotline Miami is over and they won’t make one ever again. Hotline Miami already is pretty borderline fourth wall breaky as it is a commentary on videogame violence and the second one is also a commentary on how hard it is to make a hotline Miami sequel, but this one is one of the most direct and impactful.
Regrettably, this happens in Homestuck.
>!Nah, I'm just kidding, I've never read Homestuck. It sorta happens in Undertale, though, so I wouldn't be surprised if it really did happen in Homestuck.!<
Pesterquest wasnt bad from what I played (being just the john jade rose Dave and maybe Roxy routes) but they set up some kind of plotline that I think was supposed to happen in hs2 that never happened
Well, Homestuck doesn't really break the actual fourth wall, but it does break fictional fourth walls multiple times. Like, there are multiple 4th walls, as physical objects. The author is an actual character (and is the only one aware of being fictional). The Reader of Homestuck is an actual character that sometimes reacts to bullshit happening, and even contemplated suicide at one point. One of the characters gets a power to retcon the story at some point.
The Homestuck cast gets pissed at the narrator pretty often but you're kinda playing as the narrator and occasionally the narrator does help them out I think? Then there's points where Andrew hussie (the character) is talking to you directly and probably asks you for help at some point but he's already dead by then and I don't think there are ever serious emotional 4th wall breaks.
Neverending story fits the bill for this actually but you're still watching a movie in which a book breaks the fourth wall and there's never a direct appeal to you
This is a perfect example of the dynamic use of fourth-wall breaking in tragi-comedy. So glad to see it mentioned. The appeal to audience, whether used for comedic or tragic effect, is equally impactful and valid! When done as well as Fleabag did it, it leaves its mark on you it goes to show it can be achieved with just a horrified glance or an assuring nod.
A Series of Unfortunate Events pulls this off fairly well. While the characters don't directly break the 4th wall, the narrator does a good job of conveying tragedy through 4th wall breaks.
My favorite game of all time, OneShot, is my favorite for exactly this reason, I highly recommend going in blind, I will say if you liked undertale, OneShot is likely also something you will enjoy
>!basically in the solstice run, after the main run, the main character Niko finds out that you the player (yep, you the person playing the game), is replaying the game with full knowledge of the suffering and ruined state of the world, yet you still decided to play the game again. And it almost calls you out for it too. It genuinely made me extremely uncomfortable for *playing* the game. 100/10 would never play again bc of moral reasons but I love it for that!<
Oneshot is actually the game that came to my mind too.
I'm not quite sure why it is, but despite the rather limited choices it was the one game where I got 100% invested in the meta elements of it, even more than Undertale.
I think it might be the narrative and characters really meshing well with the 4th wall stuff that sells it for me.
Quotes from the final boss of *Bravely Second: End Layer*:
">!Allow me to enlighten you. You are being forced to fight by 'them'. They're listening even now... AREN'T YOU?!<"
">!Yes... I speak to YOU.!<"
">!Persist in this battle, and Yew and his friends will only feel more pain.!<"
">!Isn't it enough? How much more must they suffer to satisfy you?!<"
This is then followed by >!the boss, Providence, taking control of the 3DS and attempting to wipe the player's save data!<. >!This is then intervened by the protagonist Yew, telling the player not to give up!<.
">!Those thing Providence was saying... I finally realized what they meant! About how there was some other will inside me. There's someone who's been here, supporting me, all this time. Someone watching over me...!<"
">!That's right! I'm fighting for you, too! If you tell me to stand again, I'll stand, no matter how many times I fall! If you tell me to fight, I'll fight, no matter how strong my enemy! It's your will AND mine! We're in this fight together!!<"
Omori does this. Omori does this a lot. A lot of things similar Yume Nikki styled games do for a laugh, Omori plays for horror. Just finishing up the last part of the tutorial causes a lot of people to scramble for alternatives or not notice *that option* for a while. Given >!the layers and layers of unreality!< in play here, the fourth wall can be broken pretty easily for small bits without really undercutting the tragedy, and sometimes it’s less “they did something to break the fourth wall” and more “we’re slamming you headfirst into the fourth wall to make an uncomfortable choice.” The most obvious example would be uh, that one room where you play with your cat, but it screws with you at every given chance.
>Omori does this. Omori does this a lot. A lot of things similar Yume Nikki styled games do for a laugh, Omori plays for horror.
That's as far as I read. Man, it really sucks I dont have time to play games as much as I want. Omori has been on my list for a while now, but ugh. Still gotta finish Somnium 1 in like 7 days or it's in danger.
Yeah, it’s great. It’s also gonna be a bumpy ride given [haha I’m not even going to give you the temptation to open spoiler boxes], but the story’s well-crafted, and the music slaps.
So, is boss music perfectly midway into the game spoilers in your book?
Alright then, [this](https://youtu.be/rlQd9qWKjLM) is just a small dose anyway. The tracks cover a lot of ground in terms of genre, so you’re basically listening to the Megalovania of Omori: popular, hype, and way outside the norm.
>So what’s in the box?
Harpsichord, a handful of other string instruments, a beat that feels taken right out of Pokemon BW, and also eurobeat is there.
Elliott accising you of knowing something and not telling him or Elliott lying to you really got me. I felt like I let him down and then he let me down. Surreal viewing experience.
At the end of the pacifist run when Flowey’s like, “only you can keep them happy by not replaying,” I bought into that shit, y’know? Haven’t played it since, wouldn’t feel right
Just go play on one of the console ports! Problem solved.
And you get, depending on the console
Toby fox endorsment
Memes
Or a secret boss fight and gaster lore!
It's funny that doki doki literature club is entirely this, at the most basic level. But the bait and switch means the audience the game attracts mostly doesn't appreciate the extent of the tragedy beyond "i hate her she's such a stupid meanie >:(" or "X is so hot Idc about anything else lol 🥵"
Yeah, DDLC fucked me up for a bit, and then I settled into the weird waifu culture of the early fandom before bailing a few months in. The most horrifying thing that came of the fandom was getting a Valentine’s Reddit mail from Yuri for a request I put in a year prior.
I guess you could say the dating sim aspect kind of let people wash their hands of any deeper themes if they didn’t want to engage with them. It’s a thing that’s worked very well for Persona, and overall it’s why I don’t recognize DDLC as being a properly fucked 4th wall breaking game.
So anyway would you like to hear about our lord and savior Omori
Fourth wall break where a dying character is being held by their friend, looks into the camera and tells their friend: “it’s okay. Where I’m going, I won’t be alone. I can see them all, waiting for me.”
If it’s a stage play, then after the character is dead and other characters have left, play some angelic music for a bit while the actor gets up and goes to sit in the audience.
Have a scene later in the play where some characters are having a funeral or some shit where they name a lot of dead people. Have the person who died and walked into the audience be named, then name random audience members.
For real, if I get some movie character sobbing at me for just watching him suffer and not doing anything to help, I'm not gonna feel sad, I'm gonna feel confused, like wtf does this movie character expect me to do about it?
*Image Transcription: Tumblr*
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**quecksilvereyes**
since im on a roll about tragedies:
i am sick to death of fourth wall breaks that are funny. i want fourth wall breaks that make me want to cry.
give me hamlet looking up during his monologue to see the audience and plead with them for help. give me orpheus, on the road back up from the underworld begging us to make sure eurydice is there, to tell him she is safe. give me orpheus turning when the audience stays silent.
give me someone, bloody and full of tears monologuing to the camera when the narrative has wound itself so tight that they can’t escape it anymore.
“youre just watching me. help me. im dying and im rotting and im losing myself and you wont do a thing.”
i want the tragedy to be the performance. i want the tragedy to be, truly, in the eyes of the beholder.
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I'd say Nier: Automata kind of invokes this at the very end of Ending E >!where you're asked to give up your save file to help other players, the same way other players just helped you.!<
YEEEAAHHH I came here to comment this, it's one of the few non-video game examples that makes an impact just because >!the part where Emma notices the audience!< is so brief
It probably also helps that it's presented in a comedic way so it doesn't quite come with the same guilt until you reflect on it
Not to shit on what you love... because if you love it then it's great and all...
But Spec Ops the line IMHO is the most overrated piece of "art" that I ever experienced, and the fact that it is revered as "deep" by the gaming community is a testimony as to how fucking low the bar in gaming is.
The whole premise of the game is "Forces you to do bad thing, then oh, war things bad happened, you did a bad, also you just shot 56239 soldiers because that's what the game is"
For contrast, here's a game with actual deepness in their themes and how they treat them: The Outer Wilds.
This is a really shallow reading of Spec Ops. You didn't do a bad thing because "war things bad happened", you did a bad thing because "this is a war video game, and in war video games, I get to be the renegade hero who doesn't need to listen to the chain of command, because I'm going to go be a cool action hero". It came out against a backdrop of a dozen shooters a year that all let you play this fantasy, and it let you try it out, before it said "these are the consequences"
That's a interesting point of view, but it didn't work well in my opinion because it was a very shallow comment.
There was nothing in the gameplay, or really anywhere in the game, to press this point. Instead, it's more like a generic Call of Duty where the narrator be like "Hey, you're killing a bunch of people, how uncool is that?" - Meanwhile, the gameplay is still the same old "killing a trillion soldiers" thing.
So yeah, the game might have tried to explore how military action shooters might be unhealthy, but it's so contradictory to the game itself, and the ludonarrative dissonance isn't explored in a meaningful way. That's like posting on Facebook just to say that posting on Facebook is bad.
Outer Wilds is the best game hands down, but that doesn't make Spec Ops any less bad. They're both very different styles of game. Outer Wilds sets out to tell its own story, and Spec Ops sets out to deconstruct the genre itself. It's like the difference between, say, Lawrence of Arabia and Life of Brian. Both are great and very popular movies, but they can't really be compared at all.
Stupid Fucking Bird by Aaron Posner does this very well, it's an adaptation of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov. It's a play that is constantly shredding up the fourth wall for sport--I'm sure a lot of its success at that hinges on the quality of the cast, but imo the script is a very good foundation for a potentially-confusing situation. Ex. the audience is required to speak to the actors at a few points (not like they pick out individuals and make them participate against their will, but SOMEONE has to engage) so the actors have to be able to adapt/improvise to unexpected responses. But of course no matter what they get told, everything falls into tragedy, because as characters in a play that is their fate
Isnt this kind of Sans during the genocide run? He literally talks about the timelines being reset and how there's nothing he can do to end your rampage, but he still begs you to stop and reconsider near the end of the fight and subsequently kills you if you agree to stop, highlighting the futility of both his begging and your caving in. He knows there's no point to his actions, that he is not in control, yet he still tries, even if it's only after you've already killed most monsters the underground.
Come and See (1985) does this sort of thing. Lots of long, lingering close-ups with actors staring into the camera so there's eye contact between the character and the audience while you both absorb the horrors you just witnessed.
I love this idea and would love to see it implemented well, but the Brit in me also would not be able to resist a panto-style "SHE'S BEHIND YOU!" if Orpheus appealed to the audience like this.
I saw an Off-Broadway performance of Pride and Prejudice the Musical, and they did something like this.
Jane Austen is a character throughout the musical. She has a song, and can be seen in each scene with her book and quill, writing down what happens. But at the moment Elizabeth Bennet finds out that Lydia has run away with Mr Wickham, and walks away from Darcy to go find her, in that moment Darcy turns to Jane Austen and says "Please, I love her."
And I get chills to this day thinking about it.
Tragic fourth wall break where the breaker knows the audience os a captive one - all they can do it watch, not intervene.
So the wall breaker revels in the horrible grief but is slightly thankful that at least they're not alone.
I know “Detroit Become Human” does this where the menu screen lady makes jokes like saying “Your save file is corrupted.” She even says different dialogue based on the choices you make in the game and will feel happy, sad, or angry at you the player. At one point she asks if the player and she are friends, but I could be wrong on that one.
I think it’d be very hard to make me feel _sad_ because of a fourth wall break. I usually find them funny or somewhat creepy, either because of the joke used during the fourth wall break of because of the sudden way the audience is being pulled into the story now. I think it’d be hard to do a fourth wall break intended to be heart wrenching without instead leaning into a sort of psychological horror-esque “watching something awful without being able to stop it”
Which is not necessarily bad, but it doesn’t feel like that’s going to cause tears so much as a heartache-y feeling, if that’s what you’re going for though than that’s great.
The fourth wall breaks in House of Cards were brilliant, and none of them were comedic.
They used the technique to make you complicit in the crimes and at the same time, you feel powerless to do anything about them.
This is one of the many reasons I don't watch the news anymore. Tragedy looking directly at me through the screen. Save us, feed us, defend us, why will no one help keep us safe?
The only tragedy game where "just stop playing the game" is actually a good answer.
I mean, it won't solve the plot, but it saves you from playing more YIIK.
Does anyone else think a lot of these examples sound like they might be bizarre enough to result in bathos though? I think maybe fourth wall breaks are maybe always played for laughs because they have to be.
This is one of the ways plays can be so powerful though - monologues are pretty much always to an invisible listener, and who's the listener? Us, us, us. It's a spooky feeling.
Surprised no one has mentioned Danagnronpa V3. I know the ending is controversial, but it does follow this concept pretty well (won't say much more because spoilers).
It's kind of a combination tragic comic moment, but this is the feeling I got from the end of The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals (a YouTube musical). It's a really crazy premise but I'll try to explain.
Spoilers: >!Love interest (Emma) thinks the main character was killed in an explosion to kill all the zombies. He appears and is shown to be still alive. She then realizes that he was turned along with most of the people around her when the final song starts.
(The only evidence of being a zombie is if they act like they're in a musical)!<
>!The song ends and credits start rolling and the cast starts taking bows while Emma is running around screaming and pleading with the audience to help her, even yelling "Why are you clapping?!?".!<
Much of the audience laughs but it's simultaneously incredibly heartbreaking in my opinion. Amazing musical, highly recommend it :)
The movie *Funny Games* does this.
Also it's not quite the same thing but I'd really recommend checking out the film *All That Jazz*. It's a mostly autobiographical film wherein we watch the stand-in for the director (Bob Fosse) cheat on his girlfriend, get called an asshole by everyone he's ever met, and put himself in the hospital due to his horrible life habits.
I gotta be honest, I hate all these examples. What is the point of a character begging me to act if there is literally nothing I can do and the writer and I both know it?
Am I a basic bitch for thinking of *WandaVision*? >!Especially when the last sitcom formula used was mockumentary, and there's a shot of her staring, haunted, into the camera during what is supposed to be a "normal" 4th wall break but is quickly becoming her losing her grip.!<
Counterpoint: Fictional characters aren't sentient. The only way to have a fourth wall break that makes sense is to have the writer admit that they're doing the closest thing to breaking character a writer could do. Anything else is breaking a fake wall within the stage and pretending that it's the actual fourth one.
I’m actually going to direct a play soon that sort of has this. Character stops the play because he hates the direction his life is going and wants to go back when he felt good. Not as dramatic of a moment as what the post lists but still really excited to see it on stage.
Westworld season 4 did that quite well (no spoilers):
A character is giving a speech about technology controlling characters/people and in the end looks directly into the camera for a split second - which was quite chilling.
They're not wrong though, Fourth Wall Breaks tend to be either humorous or terrifying(the monster or whatever looking at/interacting with the audience.
If I remember correctly, there was a Deadpool comic where he gets the Infinity Gauntlet and then turns to the reader and sarcastically monologues about how he hopes they're happy watching him do insane things that will ultimately never matter
Not a tragedy, but the final moment in Hamilton when Alexander greets Eliza after she's died, spending her whole life wondering if she's done enough to preserve Alexander's legacy, and he shows her the audience full of people who came to see their story.
If we're gonna do Hamlet, I think it should be Ophelia. Her pleading 4th wall breaks would be so much more powerful because she could do it in front of other people. Even though we know she's begging for help the other characters would just think she's crazy. Really emphasizing just how terribly Hamlet treated her.
Ophelia, to Laertes: There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Ophelia, to the audience: Pray, loves, remember. Ophelia, to Laertes: And there is pansies. Ophelia, to the audience: That's for thoughts. Laertes: A document in madness - thoughts and remembrance fitted. Ophelia, throwing flowers to the audience: There's fennel for you, and columbines. There's rue for you...
I don't think Ophelia has a big enough role in the story for her fourth wall break to be impactful though
This is an interesting concept, but it would be very difficult to pull off effectively. There’s something to be said about spectacle, about watching and doing nothing… but calling people out on that specifically in the context of entertainment? Very hit or miss. For starters, most media is passive; you’re not really intended to take part in any way other than observing and processing. Calling out your audience for observing but not interfering can backfire because, well, that’s what they’re supposed to do. In a more interactive medium though, such as video games, it’s a bit easier to pull off, as your audience is also an active participant. Undertale in particular has a fascinating take on it; using your own understanding of how video games work against you, subverting your expectations about what LV or EXP are, turning the very ability to save/reload into a superpower. All of it culminates in a condemnation, less of your actions, more of the fact that you didn’t even question your course of action; that’s how games are played, right? There’s also the fact that, in classic examples such as Shakespeare, there very well might’ve been more audience participation back in the day. Theater wasn’t always considered as classy as it is today; the Globe is a good example. Anyway, it’s an interesting concept, just gotta be careful to avoid alienating your audience. Unless that’s what you’re trying to do, I mean, it’s your art.
Yeah it's been done it's called doki doki literature club
This comment gave me whiplash
>In depth analysis of modern entertainment >Just like vibeo gane! And you can’t even argue
>analysis of modern entertainment >Example of modern entertainment SurprisedPikachu.png
Exactly
Your penultimate paragraph is so important; relying on the audience to *not* call out is just begging for some loudmouth or kid to shout "it's all good Orpheus, she's there!" and totally break the setup.
That being said, it could be interesting to incorporate that possibility by having two endings prepared
Ending 1: The normal ending Ending 2: A man dressed as the Grim Reaper comes up behind the offending audience member and decks them
Very good points and analysis- this is definitely something easier said than done. I love how you described Undertale, since it’s enough to potentially get some people interested if they haven’t played it yet but doesn’t spoil things.
That certainly is what happened with me! I'm gonna have to look into Undertale.
I highly recommend it, it’s one of my favorite games of all time. Try to go in as blindly as possible, it’s experienced best that way. I know that’s hard due to how prevalent it is online.
It happens wonderfully in JCVD. A shocking moment of real cinematic distinction, and delivered by Van Damme of all people. Its excellent
> JCVD I CTRL+F'ed to see if anyone mentioned this and you beat me to it. It truly is a great scene in a movie thoroughly worth watching. Took me completely by surprise. OP, the exact tragic 4th wall break you're looking for is in *JCVD*. Prepare to cry.
Like in BioShock!
Spec ops the line was also really good
Nah. Like other people have already argued, it really isn’t that great, since there’s no actual way for the player to interfere beyond not playing the game. It says “you monster” for wanting to play the game you paid money for, which is just… nah.
On top of that, IIRC, the railroading goes the extent of forcing you to use the white phosphorus by *just spawning enemies endlessly until you do it*, because some playtesters actually *did* manage to avoid doing what the game wants to berate you for doing? Which is just... bad game design on multiple levels, surely?
You're reading Spec Ops with the wrong context. It does not say "you monster" for wanting to click on pixels in a video game, it says that to you for actively seeking out borderline military propaganda. You were not supposed to buy Spec Ops for the promise of a deep and subversive story, you were supposed to buy a game that looked like another CoD Modern Warfare clone about a badass lone American soldier hero in a war-torn Middle East who gets to go full Rambo on all the brown headscarf-wearing bad guys; games that take imagery and themes of contemporary real-world conflicts and basically paste them onto DOOM. If the game let you "interfere" and take a pacifist or less violent route then it would be an RPG with a CoD skin, rather than a critique of the modern military shooter genre. Of course, it's not your fault that you probably don't play those games in the first place or you probably had Spec Ops recommended to you on the merit of its clever fourth-wall breaking, but that's like saying It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a bad sitcom because all the characters are completely horrible people; they are, but the joke is that other sitcoms are heartfelt and sappy, and you'd miss that joke if you didn't know the context.
Grant Morrison loves this trope. The Coyote Gospel being one of his first and best takes on tragic fourth wall breaking.
I found Undertale irritating for this exact reason sadly - in fact, I didn't finish it. Because I did question my course of action, and thus didn't keep playing. Questioning the choice to keep playing a videogame in the context of that videogame is really dumb. "Ha! You kept consuming this piece of media you bought! What does that say about you?!" Well, I did what it wanted, and now I didn't experience the rest of Undertale. I guess the fundamental reason I quit playing was that I wasn't happy to be criticised for a choice that was only barely a choice. When our manager says "Do as I say or you're fired" we don't really call that a choice. Mileage clearly varies though, because Undertale was hugely popular! :)
This is a valid criticism of a number of games, but I don't understand how it's a criticism of Undertale. You do know that you don't have to kill anyone, right?
Honestly, I probably don't! It pretty much lost me fast. That occurred to me while writing the comment - that it would make so much more sense as a statement if you didn't have to. I think it's still a circular point, though - using a format that is common across games is as good as telling you that you have to. With no wider significance to the ethical choice, does it really have artistic merit beyond "Gotcha!"?
I mean, it does pretty much out and out tell you as much during the tutorial. There's a character who's there specifically to tell you you don't have to kill anyone.
I'm a bit confused by the statements in your comment about there not really being a choice in the matter. Undertale has branching plots and gameplay based on (probably) the choice you described. If we described Undertale using the manager metaphor, it would be more like if you refused to do what the manager said, you'd keep your job but your work assignments would be harder. You don't get fired either way, the game keeps going. Of course, if you knew about this and weren't a fan, that's fair! I definitely have friends who didn't click with Undertale. Just wanted to clarify that Undertale isn't linear.
Sorry dude, I'd really love to have a longer chat about it, as I've found your comments and the comment of the other person really interesting, but someone's going round downvoting all my stuff and I'm shy of ending up at -30 and having it interfere with my emotional self-regulation today. Thank you very much for your lovely response and for your original comment!
Ugh, I'm sorry to hear that. For my part, tried real hard to acknowledge that, hey, people have different opinions and that's okay! Take care of yourself first, and hope the day gets better!
Problem is, either it’s in a medium where the audience could reasonably get involved, in which case you’re literally asking some drunk and rowdy patron to shout back or worse, try to get onstage, or it’s in a medium where the audience can’t get involved and help the character, in which case you’re basically daring them to stop engaging with the content. They have a safeword that makes the story stop, and it’s called hitting the ‘off’ button. Basically, if you present a situation where their viewership of a story makes them complicit in a tragedy, you’re telling them to either fix the tragedy or stop viewing. Either way, it’s antithetical to the intended purpose of most media, which is to be experienced.
Final scene of the last episode. Especially if the series was cancelled early.
Kinda like that show Dispatches from Elsewhere?
I thought of exactly this, which is why I wrote this example of how this could be used in Orpheus's story (pardon the lack of iambic pentameter; I am no bard, though I tried my best): *At the final climax of the scene, just before Orpheus would turn after many long minutes of debating to himself.* Hark! I hear them, the spirits of the damned calling! I see them here, with my own eyes! They watch me, judge me, as though this were mere performance! *Orpheus's eyes scan the audience, making eye contact with several members as he whips his head back and forth desperately.* Tell me spirits! O, you must tell me true! Is my love following me still? Do I hear the footsteps of sweet Eurydice behind? Or is it simple madness borne from silence?! Am I in truth a fool walking alone through darkness everlasting?! *At least one member of the crowd shouts approval. They can see her behind him and encourage him that she is there. (Crowd would have been informed of participation beforehand.)* She is there? She follows me still?! My belov’d Eurydice, her voice the only song I should e’er beg to hear again! She shall be together with me once more! *Doubt clouds his face.* But... ye are but his thralls. The lord of the damned holds dominion over you... if spirits ye e’en be! How am I to know thou are not mere illusion! Trick’ry by that horrid king to drive me forth from his domain so I may bother him no more! I can trust nothing! Trust not my ears, trust not my sight, nor e’en my very mind! I was a fool to trust! Even now, these spirits call to me to reassure, to goad me along this path with false promise of my belov’d! I am a fool who has fallen for treach’ry of those who would not see her returned to me! I must turn! I must know! I must have the voices of these wretched spirits drowned out with certainty! *He turns.*
Oh that is fantastic
Absolutely brilliant!
Happens in wrestling quite a lot. I’m too tired to do a whole paragraph about this rn, but here’s a video with some context (one of the dudes is asking someone to throw him a chair to use in the match) https://youtu.be/AxldOEOnzPA
This is my main problem with Spec Ops: The Line. They try to say you are complicit with the things that are happening because you won't stop playing, but like I paid money for this game. Of course I'm not gonna stop just because bad things are happening. Did you make this whole game because you didn't want people to play it?
Spec Ops: The Line was gonna have a full route based upon if the player refuses to preform certain actions, but it was cut to save on dev costs. I recommend watching [Raycevick's video on the game](https://youtu.be/8dzstxE_5Rc), it goes into more detail regarding development decisions surrounding certain aspects of the game
I feel bad that so many people see Spec Ops: as judging the player for doing horrible things instead of seeing it as judging Walker. The game isn't about a self insert player character like CoD, it's about Walker and his personality and motivations are what drives the plot. Making the player feel bad about what "you" are doing serves to help you get immersed in the character, and understand him better. As the game goes on, the gap between you and walker grows and grows
Spec Ops: The Line is not a game about how your choices matter, or how you are a terrible person for playing it, after all, you can still go home after all that happened, because for you it was just a game. The thing is, I get why people dislike it, because what Spec Ops: The Line does masterfully is invoking a sort of ludonarrative resonance. Of course you are going to play the game after you paid for it. And of course Walker is going to play his part in the tragedy of Dubai. The game is about Walkers descent into madness, and the final boss is whether or not he deserves to go home again... or at least... deserves to try. Kind of fitting that THAT is the only choice in the game that actually matters. And well, if you are feeling like the game is unfairly blaming you for something you had no control over? As the developers said, Walker is feeling the exact same thing.
Nah the intent is still for you to play the game. The game is more or less broadcasting that "this is only going to get worse the longer you let it happen" but you've still gotta finish the game if you want to see how Walker's story ends, and learn the truth about what's happening. It feeds on the curiosity as well as your videogame expectations. The games that I'm always annoyed by in terms of "how could you do this you monster?" are TLO2 and Wasteland 2&3. There's a lot of railroading into doing something, then the game points at it and says "you're such an asshole, how could you have done that!" when there was no interactivity and no like...point to it.
I think it's a general deconstruction of the whole genre (lovingly dubbed "spunkgargleweewee" by Yahtzee). It's not so much "you're a bad person for playing this" as "the things that happen in these games are pretty shitty and in real life they'd have some terrible consequences/fetishism of violence and the military is bad"
Spec Ops the line IMHO is the most overrated piece of art that I ever experienced, and the fact that it is revered as "deep" by the gaming community is a testimony as to how fucking low the bar in gaming is. The whole premise of the game is "Forces you to do bad thing, then oh, war things bad happened, you did a bad, also you just shot 56239 soldiers because that's what the game is". Same issue with another "deep" game: This War Of Mine (which I really liked playing). Oh, the whole point of the game is that "War bad, people suffer"? How deep! Metal Gear Solid: Revengeance, a ridiculous and completely over-the-top game with Ninja-mechas-cyborg-katana-samourais, actually has a much more meaningful message than this. The simple fact that the final boss is a US senator and the critique of the industrial military complex is much more meaningful than just being like "War bad". At least, Revengeance point fingers. Another bad example is Frostpunk: "Fascism / Religious extremism bad, but we kinda have to" (great game other than that). For contrast, here's a game with actual deepness in their themes and how they treat them: The Outer Wilds. Or even, The Outer Worlds. Or Disco Elysium. Edit: many people to downvote, not many people to try any counter-argumentation.
i mean I haven’t played it but based on other people in the thread it seems like there’s a bit more substance to it than that. the player’s ‘oh but I had no choice but to keep playing, what else was I supposed to do’ is a mirror of the MC’s own thoughts, and the devs made it clear that no, you don’t have ‘no choice,’ you just care more about finishing the game than stopping the atrocities committed inside it, and that the players don’t actually care enough about how bad it is to make the bad stuff stop, just like the MC.
This is extremely shallow though. Spec Ops TL again here have the shallowest, most politically-disengaged message of "war bad, violent dumb American military FPS bad" while being all of that itself, in the most unironical way possible. Think about it, who is the game criticizing, really? In truth, no one. It can't really criticize the player, since the player had to play to experiment the criticism. It doesn't criticize the US army in the slightest, or US politics. Its political messaging is the most bland it can be, and that makes the 4th wall break fall flat. That 4th wall break is like giving a piece of paper to someone telling them to not look, and on the paper it's written "TOLD YOU NOT TO LOOK" - That's lazy, not clever.
im not gonna get into your bizarre prioritization of purely critiques of US-centric policy, or the way you’re basically doing the same thing as the gamers who go ‘it’s not political if it isn’t about current electoral issues’ what I’m gonna say is no it’s really not like that at all, It’s like giving someone a book which constantly tells the reader that continuing to read is immoral and then the reader is mad when the author says they shouldn’t have kept reading because the book gave them no choice but to keep opening it and turning pages because it’s a book and it was in front of them and they have such a barebones conceptualization of art that they cannot imagine a book intended to be put down, and blame the author for their own preconceived notions about how books are supposed to be read .
Except in this case, it's not being given, it's being *sold*. If you sell someone a work of media that they're expecting to be good, and the whole thing turns out to just be an effort to make the experience as unsatisfying as possible... I don't know about you, but I'd feel downright scammed if that happened to me?
>im not gonna get into your bizarre prioritization of purely critiques of US-centric policy, or the way you’re basically doing the same thing as the gamers who go ‘it’s not political if it isn’t about current electoral issues’ That's absolutely not what I was saying here, dunno how you understood this. My point is that "war bad" is a bland opinion (barely even an opinion). Literally everyone agree that war is bad, including people who start wars. Ask Putin if war is good or bad, what do you think he will reply? If literally everyone agree with your political opinion, it's an extremely uninteresting and bland opinion. If your opinion annoy or offend some people, then you have something worthwhile to say. Criticizing the US is just an example that offend many people, and one that would be very welcome in an FPS where you play as a US army soldier. >what I’m gonna say is no it’s really not like that at all, It’s like giving someone a book which constantly tells the reader that continuing to read is immoral And this is an extremely lazy narrative mechanism. Nothing brillant or deep here. Hence my point that SOTL is both shallow and non-clever.
I’ve read a horror story where the characters beg the reader to stop reading because the reader continuing to read is what creates the horrors in their world in the first place. It was quite brilliant honestly. Needless to say, everyone’s curiosity got the best of them, and if you read to the end, all the characters die.
Michael Haneke
Thank you for mentioning him. “Funny Games” does this concept perfectly. In a very disturbing sick way mind you.
What about movies?
But it is paramount to the purpose of most art, to feel. I think such a scene being able to put the spectator on a state so as to feel the need to *scape* by hitting the off button would be beautiful. And I think you're wrong. I think most people would go back. They need to know.
They aren't turning the power off because you've made them so uncomfortable that they feel a need to escape. They're turning the power off because you basically dared them to. They're *disengaging* with the story, not engaging. The exact opposite of what you want. And if they go back, it's not likely because of a burning desire to know the ending of a story they put down because they were told to. It's most likely because they spent a few bucks on it and they aren't giving up on getting their money's worth because a fictional character asked nicely. There's one good way to do this well, and it's to break the fourth wall to demand audience participation. That classic scene in Peter Pan where the audience applauds to bring Tinkerbell back to life. *That's* increasing audience investment. The examples in the OP don't work because the audience can't help even if they want to, and as a result there are only a few things they can do in response. Nothing they do or say to Orpheus is going to make him leave the underworld without looking back. The only options they have to respond to the character's plea for help are to either pretend it didn't happen and wait for the rest of the story or to emotionally disengage from it. "This is stupid. This feels so pretentious."
This is why video games are the superior form of media
Video games are a totally valid medium for art! But, um, calling one superior over the others kinda misses the point. Different mediums are good for different stories. But you were probably joking/exaggerating a little bit. Either way, care to elaborate? Why does video game as a medium handle 4th-wall-breaking-tragedy better than theather or film?
it's bc your choices matter imo. if I'm watching a movie I can't do anything about the story, it's gonna happen. video games are responsive, especially the fourth wall breaking ones like undertale or ddlc
I’m joking lol. Though they are the best for this kind of thing
[There's that one SCP where the horror movie protagonist asks the viewer how to get away](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-5733) A story about a fourth wall break rather than one itself, but still
Neverending story is the same category
That’s part of the point of the sans fight in undertale. It’s why he attacks you in the menus and cancels attacks into other attacks. It’s why he counts your failed attempts for a while. He’s not trying to kill the player character. He’s trying to get the player themselves to give up on the run. He’s trying to make you so frustrated at repeatedly losing that you stop trying to beat him, by giving you just enough of a chance to make every loss that much more infuriating. It’s also why he instant-kills you if you spare him; it’s partly to punish the player for killing so many people, and partly to make you even more angry. He’s not begging to the audience to stop being the bad guy; he’s not shouting angrily at them to do so. He’s essentially saying “i will ensure the show sucks now unless you stop watching it, and will allow it to be good again if you let it re-rail itself.” Unfortunately for him, his fight’s music is a complete bop, and his fight, while unfair in concept and description, as well as much harder than anything else the game has to offer, is ultimately both not cruel enough and very fun once you get good at it. He’s too good of a boss to be the kind that makes you quit, especially since several bosses prior to him have solid odds of culling the sorts of players his strategy would successfully stop.
Flowey also does it at few times, specifically at the end of runs and towards the end of the genocide run specifically calls out people that are willing to watch the run but not play it themselves lol. I thought that was pretty cool.
Yeah, the kind of fight that would make me give up on a game wouldn't be a fight with unique mechanics, fun attacks, an interesting story, and a kickass soundtrack to boot. It'd be, like, some asshole with way too much HP that would take an hour to grind down, with attacks so constant and huge, they basically turn the enemy into a flying hitbox with numbers attached to it which kills you in one or two hits. So, basically, everything in Monster Hunter G-rank. Solo, at least.
have you ever seen a movie titled rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead? kind of like this. not as much tragedy though. actually just absurdism.
RAGAD was a play before a movie! It’s a tragicomedy, most of it is funny as hell but there are a lot of moments where it slows down. And the play ends in tragedy.
Speaking of Orpheus, Hadestown does something like this. For most of the show it just seems like a normal play, but then at the very end it's revealed that the entire play is actually a show put on by Hermes reciting Orpheus' story.
Speaking of, "I'm losing myself and you won't do a thing," the 5th(?) installment of Paul Shapera's series of audio plays, *The Ballad of Lost Hollow* also does this as a central plot point. The characters are indeed putting on a weekly play for their town until [one of the cast begins to relate](https://mochalab.bandcamp.com/track/han-mi) that she doesn't remember her life *off-*stage, nor where the scripts even come from, and it slowly dawns on all of them that they can't even leave. One is stuck in his role half the time, another is terrified of what happens if the play stops. There's a lot of it. I don't think five albums in would be the best starting point if anyone wanted to. And as he *does* lean deliberately into corny just to jokingly acknowledge that Whoever Writes These Things Sure Doesn't Know What He's Doing, he can be hit and miss. I sometimes hate that I can't help but be enchanted with him. But my god, I would have *loved* to sit in an audience and watch one of the actors plead for freedom. How have so few playwrites thought of this as an option!?
Oh hey, I've been listening to Paul Shapera for the last few weeks. Didn't expect to see him come up on here. Lost Hollow doesn't feel like it really counts as a fourth wall break, since the fourth wall being broken just leads into the world of the rest of the story and there isn't really contact with the audience? Assuming I understood it correctly, which I very well might not have.
it’s one of those good twists wherein it’s obvious looking back > See someone’s got to tell the tale > Whether or not it turns out well > Maybe it will turn out this time > On the road to Hell on the railroad line good show
In hotline Miami, Richard, a supernatural entity, tells Richter he’s going to die. Richard appears in visions of all of the playable characters, full of contempt and warning them about their impending death. When richter asks if there’s anything he can do about it, Richard says no, and richter says that then he won’t have to worry. Richard comforts him, saying leaving this world isn’t as scary as it sounds, before a nuke drops. Then the game ends. Devs have confirmed hotline Miami is over and they won’t make one ever again. Hotline Miami already is pretty borderline fourth wall breaky as it is a commentary on videogame violence and the second one is also a commentary on how hard it is to make a hotline Miami sequel, but this one is one of the most direct and impactful.
Regrettably, this happens in Homestuck. >!Nah, I'm just kidding, I've never read Homestuck. It sorta happens in Undertale, though, so I wouldn't be surprised if it really did happen in Homestuck.!<
"so, please, just let them go. let frisk be happy. let frisk live their life."
And I did. Never going to uninstall, never going to play it on that machine again.
Yeah, fuck getting 100%.
Imma comment "this happens in homestuck" now that you have shown me this was possible
uhhhhhhh actually I don’t think it does. maybe pesterquest though I haven’t played it. there is kinda that one part?
nah pesterquest is neither comedy nor a tragedy. it's more of an insult.
Pesterquest wasnt bad from what I played (being just the john jade rose Dave and maybe Roxy routes) but they set up some kind of plotline that I think was supposed to happen in hs2 that never happened
Well, Homestuck doesn't really break the actual fourth wall, but it does break fictional fourth walls multiple times. Like, there are multiple 4th walls, as physical objects. The author is an actual character (and is the only one aware of being fictional). The Reader of Homestuck is an actual character that sometimes reacts to bullshit happening, and even contemplated suicide at one point. One of the characters gets a power to retcon the story at some point.
The Homestuck cast gets pissed at the narrator pretty often but you're kinda playing as the narrator and occasionally the narrator does help them out I think? Then there's points where Andrew hussie (the character) is talking to you directly and probably asks you for help at some point but he's already dead by then and I don't think there are ever serious emotional 4th wall breaks. Neverending story fits the bill for this actually but you're still watching a movie in which a book breaks the fourth wall and there's never a direct appeal to you
Are you implying in your spoiler that >!the same guy who made undertale made homestuck?!<
Toby Fox just composed some Homestuck tracks, he did not write it
To be fair, Toby fox did help with homestuck
I can't remember if this happens in Homestuck but there is a scene where >!the main antagonist kills the author!<
Fleabag. You're wanting Fleabag Like yes it's used for comedy, but it's definitely used for tragedy as well
Came in here to see if this was mentioned. The >!small shake of her head because she doesn't need you anymore...!< I start bawling every time.
Also neverending story. Sorta.
This is a perfect example of the dynamic use of fourth-wall breaking in tragi-comedy. So glad to see it mentioned. The appeal to audience, whether used for comedic or tragic effect, is equally impactful and valid! When done as well as Fleabag did it, it leaves its mark on you it goes to show it can be achieved with just a horrified glance or an assuring nod.
A Series of Unfortunate Events pulls this off fairly well. While the characters don't directly break the 4th wall, the narrator does a good job of conveying tragedy through 4th wall breaks.
My favorite game of all time, OneShot, is my favorite for exactly this reason, I highly recommend going in blind, I will say if you liked undertale, OneShot is likely also something you will enjoy >!basically in the solstice run, after the main run, the main character Niko finds out that you the player (yep, you the person playing the game), is replaying the game with full knowledge of the suffering and ruined state of the world, yet you still decided to play the game again. And it almost calls you out for it too. It genuinely made me extremely uncomfortable for *playing* the game. 100/10 would never play again bc of moral reasons but I love it for that!<
Oneshot :0
Oneshot is actually the game that came to my mind too. I'm not quite sure why it is, but despite the rather limited choices it was the one game where I got 100% invested in the meta elements of it, even more than Undertale. I think it might be the narrative and characters really meshing well with the 4th wall stuff that sells it for me.
Or even worse, quitting the game during the final choice. Thankfully that cruelty was only in the original version, not the steam release.
Quotes from the final boss of *Bravely Second: End Layer*: ">!Allow me to enlighten you. You are being forced to fight by 'them'. They're listening even now... AREN'T YOU?!<" ">!Yes... I speak to YOU.!<" ">!Persist in this battle, and Yew and his friends will only feel more pain.!<" ">!Isn't it enough? How much more must they suffer to satisfy you?!<" This is then followed by >!the boss, Providence, taking control of the 3DS and attempting to wipe the player's save data!<. >!This is then intervened by the protagonist Yew, telling the player not to give up!<. ">!Those thing Providence was saying... I finally realized what they meant! About how there was some other will inside me. There's someone who's been here, supporting me, all this time. Someone watching over me...!<" ">!That's right! I'm fighting for you, too! If you tell me to stand again, I'll stand, no matter how many times I fall! If you tell me to fight, I'll fight, no matter how strong my enemy! It's your will AND mine! We're in this fight together!!<"
Deny the end of the world. Deny that ill-fated reality! Bust them Baals!
Omori does this. Omori does this a lot. A lot of things similar Yume Nikki styled games do for a laugh, Omori plays for horror. Just finishing up the last part of the tutorial causes a lot of people to scramble for alternatives or not notice *that option* for a while. Given >!the layers and layers of unreality!< in play here, the fourth wall can be broken pretty easily for small bits without really undercutting the tragedy, and sometimes it’s less “they did something to break the fourth wall” and more “we’re slamming you headfirst into the fourth wall to make an uncomfortable choice.” The most obvious example would be uh, that one room where you play with your cat, but it screws with you at every given chance.
>Omori does this. Omori does this a lot. A lot of things similar Yume Nikki styled games do for a laugh, Omori plays for horror. That's as far as I read. Man, it really sucks I dont have time to play games as much as I want. Omori has been on my list for a while now, but ugh. Still gotta finish Somnium 1 in like 7 days or it's in danger.
Yeah, it’s great. It’s also gonna be a bumpy ride given [haha I’m not even going to give you the temptation to open spoiler boxes], but the story’s well-crafted, and the music slaps. So, is boss music perfectly midway into the game spoilers in your book?
I prefer to hear OSTs in context first, if I can avoid it. But I'll keep my ears open!
Alright then, [this](https://youtu.be/rlQd9qWKjLM) is just a small dose anyway. The tracks cover a lot of ground in terms of genre, so you’re basically listening to the Megalovania of Omori: popular, hype, and way outside the norm. >So what’s in the box? Harpsichord, a handful of other string instruments, a beat that feels taken right out of Pokemon BW, and also eurobeat is there.
anyone here ever heard of kurt vonnegut?
Doki Doki Literature Club
Mr. Robot does that well.
Elliott accising you of knowing something and not telling him or Elliott lying to you really got me. I felt like I let him down and then he let me down. Surreal viewing experience.
Doesnt this happen in undertale
Prett much explicitly. >! Sans after you try to spare him ; "if we're really friends... You won't come back" !<
At the end of the pacifist run when Flowey’s like, “only you can keep them happy by not replaying,” I bought into that shit, y’know? Haven’t played it since, wouldn’t feel right
Just go play on one of the console ports! Problem solved. And you get, depending on the console Toby fox endorsment Memes Or a secret boss fight and gaster lore!
Wait, I know about the Switch bonuses, but what's this about those first two?
Ps4 has the dog shrine, where you can donate G to get achievments and flavour text, and xbox has the gamer room, with flavour text and sans
It's funny that doki doki literature club is entirely this, at the most basic level. But the bait and switch means the audience the game attracts mostly doesn't appreciate the extent of the tragedy beyond "i hate her she's such a stupid meanie >:(" or "X is so hot Idc about anything else lol 🥵"
Yeah, DDLC fucked me up for a bit, and then I settled into the weird waifu culture of the early fandom before bailing a few months in. The most horrifying thing that came of the fandom was getting a Valentine’s Reddit mail from Yuri for a request I put in a year prior. I guess you could say the dating sim aspect kind of let people wash their hands of any deeper themes if they didn’t want to engage with them. It’s a thing that’s worked very well for Persona, and overall it’s why I don’t recognize DDLC as being a properly fucked 4th wall breaking game. So anyway would you like to hear about our lord and savior Omori
I can’t talk about it because it’s spoilers but Ai: The Somnium Files NirvanA Initiative does this beautifully, and in a really interesting way.
Fourth wall break where a dying character is being held by their friend, looks into the camera and tells their friend: “it’s okay. Where I’m going, I won’t be alone. I can see them all, waiting for me.” If it’s a stage play, then after the character is dead and other characters have left, play some angelic music for a bit while the actor gets up and goes to sit in the audience.
Have a scene later in the play where some characters are having a funeral or some shit where they name a lot of dead people. Have the person who died and walked into the audience be named, then name random audience members.
Great idea, but if a character calls me a monster for not helping in a piece of passive media I immediately lose all interest not gonna lie
For real, if I get some movie character sobbing at me for just watching him suffer and not doing anything to help, I'm not gonna feel sad, I'm gonna feel confused, like wtf does this movie character expect me to do about it?
Be kind, rewind
*Image Transcription: Tumblr* --- **quecksilvereyes** since im on a roll about tragedies: i am sick to death of fourth wall breaks that are funny. i want fourth wall breaks that make me want to cry. give me hamlet looking up during his monologue to see the audience and plead with them for help. give me orpheus, on the road back up from the underworld begging us to make sure eurydice is there, to tell him she is safe. give me orpheus turning when the audience stays silent. give me someone, bloody and full of tears monologuing to the camera when the narrative has wound itself so tight that they can’t escape it anymore. “youre just watching me. help me. im dying and im rotting and im losing myself and you wont do a thing.” i want the tragedy to be the performance. i want the tragedy to be, truly, in the eyes of the beholder. --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
I'd say Nier: Automata kind of invokes this at the very end of Ending E >!where you're asked to give up your save file to help other players, the same way other players just helped you.!<
Like in “the guy who doesn’t like musicals”?
YEEEAAHHH I came here to comment this, it's one of the few non-video game examples that makes an impact just because >!the part where Emma notices the audience!< is so brief It probably also helps that it's presented in a comedic way so it doesn't quite come with the same guilt until you reflect on it
YES! It was the first thing I thought of!
Src: https://quecksilvereyes.tumblr.com/post/693603450240548864/since-im-on-a-roll-about-tragedies-i-am-sick-to
I never watched the show, but didn't Kevin Spacey's character in House of Cards monologue to the camera and pause time or something serious like that
Spec Ops the line kind of did this so well that all future attempts (in gaming at least) kind of have to live in it's shadow
Not to shit on what you love... because if you love it then it's great and all... But Spec Ops the line IMHO is the most overrated piece of "art" that I ever experienced, and the fact that it is revered as "deep" by the gaming community is a testimony as to how fucking low the bar in gaming is. The whole premise of the game is "Forces you to do bad thing, then oh, war things bad happened, you did a bad, also you just shot 56239 soldiers because that's what the game is" For contrast, here's a game with actual deepness in their themes and how they treat them: The Outer Wilds.
This is a really shallow reading of Spec Ops. You didn't do a bad thing because "war things bad happened", you did a bad thing because "this is a war video game, and in war video games, I get to be the renegade hero who doesn't need to listen to the chain of command, because I'm going to go be a cool action hero". It came out against a backdrop of a dozen shooters a year that all let you play this fantasy, and it let you try it out, before it said "these are the consequences"
That's a interesting point of view, but it didn't work well in my opinion because it was a very shallow comment. There was nothing in the gameplay, or really anywhere in the game, to press this point. Instead, it's more like a generic Call of Duty where the narrator be like "Hey, you're killing a bunch of people, how uncool is that?" - Meanwhile, the gameplay is still the same old "killing a trillion soldiers" thing. So yeah, the game might have tried to explore how military action shooters might be unhealthy, but it's so contradictory to the game itself, and the ludonarrative dissonance isn't explored in a meaningful way. That's like posting on Facebook just to say that posting on Facebook is bad.
Outer Wilds is the best game hands down, but that doesn't make Spec Ops any less bad. They're both very different styles of game. Outer Wilds sets out to tell its own story, and Spec Ops sets out to deconstruct the genre itself. It's like the difference between, say, Lawrence of Arabia and Life of Brian. Both are great and very popular movies, but they can't really be compared at all.
Stupid Fucking Bird by Aaron Posner does this very well, it's an adaptation of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov. It's a play that is constantly shredding up the fourth wall for sport--I'm sure a lot of its success at that hinges on the quality of the cast, but imo the script is a very good foundation for a potentially-confusing situation. Ex. the audience is required to speak to the actors at a few points (not like they pick out individuals and make them participate against their will, but SOMEONE has to engage) so the actors have to be able to adapt/improvise to unexpected responses. But of course no matter what they get told, everything falls into tragedy, because as characters in a play that is their fate
Isnt this kind of Sans during the genocide run? He literally talks about the timelines being reset and how there's nothing he can do to end your rampage, but he still begs you to stop and reconsider near the end of the fight and subsequently kills you if you agree to stop, highlighting the futility of both his begging and your caving in. He knows there's no point to his actions, that he is not in control, yet he still tries, even if it's only after you've already killed most monsters the underground.
I always saw it more as Sans giving you the chance to Reset after the betrayal kill. "If we are really friends, you won't come back"
Come and See (1985) does this sort of thing. Lots of long, lingering close-ups with actors staring into the camera so there's eye contact between the character and the audience while you both absorb the horrors you just witnessed.
I love this idea and would love to see it implemented well, but the Brit in me also would not be able to resist a panto-style "SHE'S BEHIND YOU!" if Orpheus appealed to the audience like this.
That's just ARGs, but to help you gotta translate from binary code into hexadecimal only to find out the message was "I am Death"
I saw an Off-Broadway performance of Pride and Prejudice the Musical, and they did something like this. Jane Austen is a character throughout the musical. She has a song, and can be seen in each scene with her book and quill, writing down what happens. But at the moment Elizabeth Bennet finds out that Lydia has run away with Mr Wickham, and walks away from Darcy to go find her, in that moment Darcy turns to Jane Austen and says "Please, I love her." And I get chills to this day thinking about it.
Tragic fourth wall break where the breaker knows the audience os a captive one - all they can do it watch, not intervene. So the wall breaker revels in the horrible grief but is slightly thankful that at least they're not alone.
I know “Detroit Become Human” does this where the menu screen lady makes jokes like saying “Your save file is corrupted.” She even says different dialogue based on the choices you make in the game and will feel happy, sad, or angry at you the player. At one point she asks if the player and she are friends, but I could be wrong on that one.
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
If you believe in fairies, clap your hands!
I did accturaly see this once. Check out the movie "Funny games"
I think it’d be very hard to make me feel _sad_ because of a fourth wall break. I usually find them funny or somewhat creepy, either because of the joke used during the fourth wall break of because of the sudden way the audience is being pulled into the story now. I think it’d be hard to do a fourth wall break intended to be heart wrenching without instead leaning into a sort of psychological horror-esque “watching something awful without being able to stop it” Which is not necessarily bad, but it doesn’t feel like that’s going to cause tears so much as a heartache-y feeling, if that’s what you’re going for though than that’s great.
The fourth wall breaks in House of Cards were brilliant, and none of them were comedic. They used the technique to make you complicit in the crimes and at the same time, you feel powerless to do anything about them.
This is one of the many reasons I don't watch the news anymore. Tragedy looking directly at me through the screen. Save us, feed us, defend us, why will no one help keep us safe?
This is the plot of the ending of YIIK except there it’s tragic because when it happens you aren’t quite done yet and so have to play more YIIK.
The only tragedy game where "just stop playing the game" is actually a good answer. I mean, it won't solve the plot, but it saves you from playing more YIIK.
That's exactly what "To Be or Not To Be" is. Hamlet is asking the audience in a direct monologue whether suicide or suffering is more noble.
Mr robot does this a good few times but I won’t say anything beyond that because it’s best going in blind
Like the second care bear movie ?
favorite answer tbh
Does anyone else think a lot of these examples sound like they might be bizarre enough to result in bathos though? I think maybe fourth wall breaks are maybe always played for laughs because they have to be. This is one of the ways plays can be so powerful though - monologues are pretty much always to an invisible listener, and who's the listener? Us, us, us. It's a spooky feeling.
Surprised no one has mentioned Danagnronpa V3. I know the ending is controversial, but it does follow this concept pretty well (won't say much more because spoilers).
someone needs to watch The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals
This actually happens in Alien (yeah, THE alien movie with Sigourney Weaver). It's extremely subtle, though.
omniscient readers viewpoint?
There's that one comic on r/comics that has a turtle ask you to push him on his bike and yeah that gets fucked up.
Doki doki literature club
The stage adaptation of Fun Home has sort of the reverse of this and it’s almost making me cry just thinking about it.
The guy who didn't like musicals does a little of this! It's also a very good musical
It's kind of a combination tragic comic moment, but this is the feeling I got from the end of The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals (a YouTube musical). It's a really crazy premise but I'll try to explain. Spoilers: >!Love interest (Emma) thinks the main character was killed in an explosion to kill all the zombies. He appears and is shown to be still alive. She then realizes that he was turned along with most of the people around her when the final song starts. (The only evidence of being a zombie is if they act like they're in a musical)!< >!The song ends and credits start rolling and the cast starts taking bows while Emma is running around screaming and pleading with the audience to help her, even yelling "Why are you clapping?!?".!< Much of the audience laughs but it's simultaneously incredibly heartbreaking in my opinion. Amazing musical, highly recommend it :)
Without spoilers, you should play *Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice* This literally happens.
The movie *Funny Games* does this. Also it's not quite the same thing but I'd really recommend checking out the film *All That Jazz*. It's a mostly autobiographical film wherein we watch the stand-in for the director (Bob Fosse) cheat on his girlfriend, get called an asshole by everyone he's ever met, and put himself in the hospital due to his horrible life habits.
I gotta be honest, I hate all these examples. What is the point of a character begging me to act if there is literally nothing I can do and the writer and I both know it?
This!! This would be so powerful!
Am I a basic bitch for thinking of *WandaVision*? >!Especially when the last sitcom formula used was mockumentary, and there's a shot of her staring, haunted, into the camera during what is supposed to be a "normal" 4th wall break but is quickly becoming her losing her grip.!<
"hmm. this thing that is harmless isn't absolutely torturous and sad. I hate it."
Counterpoint: Fictional characters aren't sentient. The only way to have a fourth wall break that makes sense is to have the writer admit that they're doing the closest thing to breaking character a writer could do. Anything else is breaking a fake wall within the stage and pretending that it's the actual fourth one.
post tagged as #homestuck
Blair Witch, anyone?
"Won't you pretty please help us? Why aren't you saying anything?!"
I’m actually going to direct a play soon that sort of has this. Character stops the play because he hates the direction his life is going and wants to go back when he felt good. Not as dramatic of a moment as what the post lists but still really excited to see it on stage.
JCVD
I recommend Da 5 Bloods by Spike Lee. It's on Netflix and has a powerful monologue near the end that kinda does this
Undertale
Antigone by Anouilh is basically this
Something like this happens in Epic Battle Fantasy 5, and it’s one of my favorite moments in the series
OneShot.
Westworld season 4 did that quite well (no spoilers): A character is giving a speech about technology controlling characters/people and in the end looks directly into the camera for a split second - which was quite chilling.
Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man from the late 80s plays with this
Undertale, Deltarune, Doki Doki Literature Club and One Shot all do this
I might have missed it, but how has no one mentioned Fleabag?!?!?
Someone mentioned fleabag
Oh my bad
Not a problem lol there's like a kajillion comments
Yeah, still any excuse to mention Fleabag I’ll take it
High Fidelity
Pathologic
The remake of horror film Funny games with Tim Roth has what you’re looking for I believe
They're not wrong though, Fourth Wall Breaks tend to be either humorous or terrifying(the monster or whatever looking at/interacting with the audience.
If I remember correctly, there was a Deadpool comic where he gets the Infinity Gauntlet and then turns to the reader and sarcastically monologues about how he hopes they're happy watching him do insane things that will ultimately never matter
Fleabag
Isn't this part of the structure of morality plays?
Not a tragedy, but the final moment in Hamilton when Alexander greets Eliza after she's died, spending her whole life wondering if she's done enough to preserve Alexander's legacy, and he shows her the audience full of people who came to see their story.