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Games

Has a Spoiler Ever Allowed You to Enjoy a Game More?

Accidentally reading a spoiler for 'Pyre' allowed me to sit back and enjoy the ride, rather than stressing out.
Image courtesy of Supergiant Games

A few hours into Supergiant Games' latest, Pyre, I was frustrated. I'd been coasting through the team-based, sports-influenced action game, but there's a point where the plot takes a turn, and you have a new understanding of what you're participating in. It's also when the game's difficulty spikes, where the other groups you're fighting start putting up a real fight.

In short order, not only did I start losing, but I was getting my ass kicked. My enemies were using actual strategy, forcing me to learn how to use my characters properly. That's not a bad thing—it's how most games scale skill and difficulty—but I was caught off guard. In Pyre, you face off in a series of arena-based fights called "rites," and certain ones allow a member of your team to escape the hellscape you've all been banished to. If you lose, someone on the other team escapes instead. There are no do-overs, no restarts. If you lose, you lose.

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The game doesn't communicate the consequences of losing. This grated on me.

I quickly found myself profoundly stressed during each subsequent match, shouting at the screen in a way that was probably unreasonable for an otherwise pretty chill game! Since I wasn't there for Pyre's gameplay—the story and world had grabbed me—I briefly considered ratcheting the difficulty down.

But on a lark, I did a Google search about Pyre to discover the consequences of losing, and found a Polygon review of the game with this paragraph:

Pyre crosses over from traditional multipath narrative game into truly brilliant with one major design element: You cannot lose the game. If you fail in a rite, your journey simply continues. If one of your opponents gains freedom in place of your own exiles, you simply have to accept that result and its impact on the plot, and keep going. And at times, the game tugs at your heartstrings in ways that might make you want to lose.

"Holy shit," I thought. It actually doesn't matter what happens in the match, it simply changes the way the plot unfolds. Maybe that means you end up with a "bad" ending, but at least it's an ending. And while it means I should still put my all into each encounter, increasing the chance of a "good" ending, I should stop pulling my hair out when one goes off the rails and I'm on the losing side. It's fine.

Just like that, I was enjoying Pyre again, thanks to a spoiler. It's weird, too; I'm one of those people who is, in most other instances, staunchly against spoilers. (I watch the first trailer for a movie, never the second, and if it's a horror movie I'm interested in, usually none at all.) But there are exceptions to every rule, and in this case, a spoiler gave me peace of mind.

Has this happened to you before? Have you ever benefited from being spoiled?

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