epicusernamehere wrote:
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tldr
My only comment - There shouldn't be a single person on the planet who's still using Flash. It's a security nightmare...
13 Reasons Why is so bad that a flash game did it better
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Sep 15, 2021
0
#5
Oh, I wasn't familiar with Ruffle. Apparently, it's a Flash emulator that doesn't use a Flash plugin. (The Internet Archive uses Ruffle.) Maybe it's OK to use the emulator.
Sep 16, 2021
0
#9
i just realized that the paragraph on the child is longer than the paragraph on the rest of the characters from run 3 (not combined, but still)
<WARNING>
This article contains spoilers for both Run 3 and 13 Reasons Why. I highly recommend that you experience the Run 3 story for yourself, so if you haven't already played it, don't read the article until you have. But before you play it, just know that the HTML version is currently an incomplete version of the original Flash version unless if you install Ruffle at https://ruffle.rs, which means that the storyline isn't complete there unless if you install it, so please wait a bit or install it before reading this.
First, before anything, let's familiarize ourselves with everything in the title.
The aforementioned flash game is Run 3. It's the last game in the Run trilogy and also the game that introduces a storyline. To sum up the storyline, a group of aliens from an unnamed Planet ends up in a system of space tunnels and gets separated from their homeland. As you progress through the game and complete more side tunnels, you'll start to see the downward spiral of the characters along with the drama that arises from their paranoia. Also, a grand total of 10 people (if we include volunteers, 3 or 4 without them) worked on the game and there weren't any assigned writers of the storyline. Keep this is mind.
13 Reasons Why is a show on the CW network. To keep it simple, we'll only review the 1st season. The secondary reason for this is because it only goes downhill from there. To sum it up, a boy who has a name that won't be mentioned because I don't remember it was walking home from school when he finds a box on his doorstep. The box contains records of his crush who killed herself a few weeks beforehand. Already, we should expect a much more serious and overall better story from this, right? Well... we'll get to that later. The records contain the 13 reasons why she did it, thus the name of the show. The show has the efforts of hundreds of people with dozens of assigned, talented writers. Keep this in mind as well.
Now that we know everything about the show and the game, let's do some actual comparing and contrasting.
First, let's compare the characters. Let's start with the characters of Run 3. We'll start out with The Runner. She can be described as the level-headed one of the group. She just wants to map out the tunnels for future explorers. We have The Skater, who's also kind of level-headed. He's just minding his own business and also exploring. We have The Bunny, the comic relief and also super cute just like in real life. The Lizard, who sleeps a lot but is also kind of cute depending on tastes, also like in real life. The Gentleman, the fancy moneybags guy with a fancy taste. The Student, the big brain boi. And now we get to the most complex 3, and my 3 most favorite characters. The Angel is the highest paid engineer in the Planet and wants The Child in his custody. The Duplicator is is the biological father of The Child, is in a mental decline, and wants to keep custody of the child. And now perhaps my favorite character in any story I've ever experienced, The Child.
He doesn't even have a "real" name, and yet he's my favorite. He's in the midst of all the chaos. He's not here nor there, and yet at some point, he has to make a decision that will impact the rest of his life. All he wants to do is go home, and he has to endure the constant struggles of being the subject of a crisis until he can. They're fighting for him, but against each other, and eventually... I probably don't have to repeat myself. The reason why he's such a brilliant character is that it's the perfect implementation of the theme that this kind of stuff can be mentally degrading to a child. It's kind of like the Trolley Problem, but instead of killing people, he has to decide if he should go for his psycho biological dad or the sane stranger. It's all up to his own psychology, and for a child, it can be extremely stressful to look at a super complicated question and come up with an even more complicated solution. For some reason, it just hits hard. I've never felt more for a 5-year-old alien than someone about my age and species.
Now, the characters in 13 Reasons Why. There were characters, and that's all I can remember of them. They weren't memorable in any way and just served to advance the plot. You remember the crush that killed herself? Yeah, that was more romanticized than I thought possible for something as serious as suicide.
So there you have it. A paragraph of just one character of a flash game made by a total of 10 people only if we include volunteers is longer than a paragraph about multiple characters of a show with hundreds of people working on it. But now, you're probably wondering what I mean by Run 3 doing 13 Reasons Why better.
The story of 13 Reasons Why is about mental health issues in a high school setting. Everything about the show is humanlike. The characters, the location, etc. But Run 3, as we went over, has nothing to do about humans. It's all space and alien-type stuff. You'd assume that you'd be able to connect with people of your own species more that 2-D circles that are aliens, but you'd be wrong as my paragraph on The Child shows.
Welp, here we are. The end of the forum post. The purpose of this forum was just for me to get loads of feeling about these pieces of media off my chest and why flash games are the ultimate art form. I suppose that I'll see you guys in a later post.