> the first level was being created and I had no clue about the following events, and even less about how the game would end
I wonder if there is actual danger in this. Could you paint yourself into a corner and wind up in a situation in the story that just cannot be continued from?
Seems you could always come out of any situation, especially with sci-fi.
Abrams does this in miniature constantly, in most of his films. The result is that they're heavily coincidence-driven (you don't have to plan a coincidence!) and he often has to invent a coincidence to fix a coincidence he just introduced[0]. He's good enough at keeping action flowing that one may only notice the most egregious cases at first, but it's the kind of thing that once you realize how he operates, you can't not notice it.
[0] My go-to example of this from Star Wars is the sequence in which Our Heroes just happen to find the Millennium Falcon, and Rey just happens to know how to fly it excellently, and then Han and Chewie just happen to show up on another ship with what can't conceivably have been more than 20 minutes' notice, assuming we want to be generous and grant that they were somehow notified—they show up because Abrams needs them there now, and so he just has them appear by whatever conveyance is convenient for him, that is, lets him keep flowing and not need to edit or re-arrange anything or operate under any constraints whatsoever—but now Abrams has written himself a second ship he doesn't need, so he... has another set of coincidences happen, for no plot reason aside from destroying the ship he just added but doesn't need anymore.
Or in Star Trek when Kirk is marooned on a planet at the exact same spot as Old Spock. How lucky was that?
Also, the planet case a very convenient view of a destroyed Vulkan up in the sky... Just like that rebel base in Ep. VII has a view of several destroyed planets in the central part of the galaxy. Ugh.
Got to admit that Lost is a great example of not resolving things properly. I wonder though if that's because it was impossible, or just the JJ. Abrams's style. He's said in an interview that he keeps an unopened box on his shelf that he never intends to open, just because he likes the feeling of a forever unresolved mystery.
Yes, that's a definite possibility. I feel like it's less of a risk with a videogame that's got scope limitations, especially in relations to the system it has to run on, but it happens regularly with all sorts of books, more so the ones published on a regular tight schedule (think weekly comic books or webnovels). But even publications without deadlines can get impacted if the author isn't disciplined. George R. R. Martin famously wrote himself into a corner around the time of A Dance with Dragons and nobody has any hope left he'll get around to finishing ASOIAF. He tried to get away with it by using a cathedral and bazaar metaphor.
> "nobody has any hope left he'll get around to finishing ASOIAF"
At this point I think he's fed up with the story and wants to move on to other things, as is his right (I would, too!), but there's no polite way of saying this without upsetting fans. In this day and age, you really don't want to upset fans and their accompanying hordes of vicious trolls.
I wonder if it's wise at all, art-wise, to embark on a decades long book series. Had this been one book or even a trilogy, we all would have moved to greener pastures by now, satisfied with its ending. I say this as a fan of both books and TV show!
First, a disclaimer: I think Another World is a triumph, and one of my all-time favorites. I remain as impressed today as I was when I first played it, decades ago.
That said, I feel Chahi did paint himself into a corner: the ending of Another World is abrupt, and leaves things mostly unresolved, the fate of our hero uncertain, his story arc incomplete. I don't think Chahi even knew how to end it. I know there's an official sequel, Heart of the Alien (not on PC) but nowadays everyone agrees it's... less than good, and in any case, Chahi wasn't involved, so it's not his vision.
I wonder if there is actual danger in this. Could you paint yourself into a corner and wind up in a situation in the story that just cannot be continued from?
Seems you could always come out of any situation, especially with sci-fi.
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