Lost Planet 3

Lost Planet 3 wants to tell an Avatar-esque story and admirably dedicates itself to putting the player through a tricky emotional arc. The game wants us to change from “oil rig worker” to “environmental warrior,” and it wants that change to be genuine every step of the way. That means that we don’t play as an environmentally conscious driller in the beginning. Instead, we play as someone who just wants to make a buck. We start the game with no qualms about our destructive drilling, yet we must be willing to rebel against our friends by the end. If the believability of this arc isn’t achieved successful, the entire story falls apart.

exactly what happens, but it happens in an interesting way that’s worth talking about. Essentially, Lost Planet 3 tries to swap its antagonists with the player’s allies halfway through its story. We start off fighting the planet and working for the NEVEC Corporation, only to end fighting NEVEC and working for the planet. What’s particularly tricky about this kind of story is that it necessitates a lot of discrepancies between “showing” and “telling”: We need to be told that the planet is a shitty place, yet we need to see it as something potentially worth saving. We need to be told that NEVEC is a good corporation, yet we need to see it as something sinister. These contradictions might seem like bad writing at first, but they must be established early in the story in order to properly set the stage for the twist.