In the theater, "the fourth wall" is called that separates the stage from the audience - sometimes it's a void, but it happens that the thoughts or feelings. When the actor talks directly to the audience, he breaks the imaginary wall and as far as possible involve others in the presentation.
To do this, at least one condition: the quality of the show must be on top. Otherwise, instead of clowning arts get no tricks. In games increasingly difficult: not only the fourth, but the other three walls are questionable, and the quality of the show often depends on the skill of the player. Let's see how developers send Alice in Wonderland and Humpty Dumpty - in the real world.
Hey, I'm talking to you!
Stay fit snob and say that the game itself - already dismantling the notorious wall. Gamer and so affects the characters, scenery, plot, and vice versa: his behavior often depends on the rules and the game's story. It's hard to imagine another kind of art, where we dive in to work with the same acceleration.Therefore, look at the game "fourth wall" in a theatrical perspective is very limited.
However, developers often resort precisely to this reception, causing characters to directly access to the player. This is the protagonist of The Bard's Tale - for replica to the player he was in his pocket does not climb as squirrel-drunk from Conker's Bad Fur Day. The latter even knocking on the monitor and requires feedback as a battle scene from Alien, parodying the movie "Aliens." And yet Conker's Bad Fur Day demonstrates that called behind the scenes: the hero does not see these scenes, and we - on the contrary.
A textbook example of dialogue games and reality - a meeting with the boss Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid 1998. Not only is the villain reads the stored other projects Konami on PlayStation, so also undertaken a session of street magic. DualShock, vibrating, crawling on the floor, and a telepath divined user actions until he knew to change the connector controller. The author MGS Hideo Kojima just brought to mind the idea is in the air - the characters began to turn to the player since the mid-nineties, for example, is able to gnome helicopter pilot from the Warcraft II. And in the final Tomb Raider II Lara Croft, before taking a shower, said, «Have not you seen enough?» And camera shot from a shotgun.
In the above examples, it is important that the games are good in themselves - just as a joke turns into an artistic technique. For weak gameplay destruction "fourth wall" does not work, even if you make it the main feature of the product - such as Deadpool from the studio High Moon.
As in the comic book of the same name, or fighting game Marvel vs. Capcom, the hero Deadpool constantly talking to you, jeering at developers and writers ("Why should I fight the villains of the fourth grade? High Moon, you could not find me a more solid contenders?"). As a result, the jokes are stored, and the game itself - not. Best comics for fun reading.
Outside of all measurements
Break "fourth wall" is possible in the opposite direction, without becoming less effective. Hero was published in 2001, Max Payne during a drug trip realized that lives inside the game, and all his actions controls one on the other side of the screen. Naturally, insight scared Max "could not be worse," he concluded. Employees Remedy no stranger to self-irony: a success not only fun, but also a reference to the movie "The Matrix", where he was a firefight in slow time and caught in a "reality" hero.
In fact, both works illustrate the paradox of the Black King from "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll.When Alice Tweedledum and Tweedledee met, they told her why the king in any case can not wake up: All Through the Looking Glass, including its inhabitants, and the main character - only his dream. On the other hand, the Black King - part of the dream of Alice. So what will happen if she wakes up?
Authors games much scare not only their own characters, but also the players. It's not about the horror genre, but a quite everyday things. In 2002, on the GameCube got Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.She successfully simulated failure or sound control, delete all save and exit the console down - worth the character completely fall off the rails, going crazy and the game.
Something similar is repeated in the studio Rocksteady action adventure Batman: Arkham Asylum, where the villain Scarecrow Batman poison gas, and the game shows a failure, a black screen and intro movies. But who are not rebooted in the hearts of the console, he noticed that this movie is different from that shown in the beginning of the story. Both projects are developing the idea of the X-Men in 1993, published on the Sega Genesis. After defeating the boss, we beheld another full screen of zeros and ones with the requirement to restart the console. Oddly enough, this is what we wanted to continue.
Wrong Turn
It may seem that the reference examples scrapping "fourth wall" fall to the nineties, and in the future, developers only use ready-made ideas. But this is a common place of any art, when the means of expression come to a standstill, is always a creative person, ready to blaze a new trail. In the end, are primitive at first glance, entertainment, and details "fourth wall" in just a minute .
Original and technological solutions are the projects with Augmented Reality (Augmented Reality or simply AR), including available on mobile platforms. By Ingress, where you can fight on the map hometown to AR Defender 2, where the battlefield becomes even stool. In short, to put an end early.
Nice try to close the topic is seen in The Stanley Parable, where we manage the office staff, wandering through the corridors under the narrator's comments. Major temptation - enter the right door when the narrator says that Stanley went to the left, and generally act against the advice. It is clear that the voice-over refers directly to the gamer, not a hero, but, unlike all of the games, voice comments not happened, but that just might happen.
The Stanley Parable jeering at you: "You see, there's nothing here" - said the voice, when you defying his instructions, run into a dead end. On the other hand, does not remain without barbs and follow the instructions clear - here it is necessary to destroy the stereotype of clerk (read - casual players) how stupid title of another's will. Similar idea, by the way, have taken place in the cult BioShock.
Will live
What battering sledgehammer developers take with them into the future? Trying to answer this question is akin to guesswork. Modification is added to the GTA V first-person view, is already there, so come out this deal even with the support of virtual reality glasses, we stop to think about the "fourth wall" as a category. Will the game with augmented reality - like Wonderbook - help search for socks under the bed? Ask whether a future Mantis issue is not about love player to Castlevania, but, say, «You like porn, do not you»? Reach whether interactive entertainment to the point where the player will no longer feel the distinction between themselves and the character, whose hands batters villains?
In Fenimore Cooper's novel "Deerslayer" a character Harry Fidget. Describes the nature of Harry's simple: during the escape from prison, he was doing the door in places not covered by the architect. If you submit a game design patterns, as a prison, and developers like Hideo Kojima - as Fidget, it becomes clear that the search for non-trivial ways to interact with the players will continue. At least still alive ready to surprise the developers.
