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Trigger Happy
147
was developed in order to enable the player to see the
action from the most useful angle. In Mario 64, for
instance, the player must often rotate the camera to a
different compass point, or select a view from slightly
farther away, in order to guide the rotund plumber
across a particularly narrow bridge or up a series of
tough platforms.
Cinematic camerawork of the kind that is
immediately noticeable or stylish, however, often
depends for its effect on hiding something from the
viewer, not letting you see everything. When the
detective mounts the staircase of the Bates Motel in
Psycho, Hitchcock deliberately chooses a very tight
shot on his hand moving up the banister, inducing
tension through dramatic irony, as we know what
awaits him at the top of the stairs, although he does not.
But there can be no dramatic irony in videogames,
because dramatic irony depends on a knowledge
differential between spectator and protagonist—yet in a
videogame the player is both spectator and protagonist
at once.
True, some videogames attempt to replicate this
kind of stylized shot choice, most notably Resident Evil
2 (see fig. 6). But in a videogame, as opposed to a
movie, this becomes a fraudulent and frustrating