The Darkest Hour
The Darkest Hour, a phrase overused for time eternity, and yet a phrase that I enjoy. One that shapes my writing style greatly.
You know these moments in fiction. The time when the Villain looks like they may actually win (or does win in some cases changing the plot entirely) The moment where the trusted friend proves they were an enemy all along. The point in the dark fantasy where an entire country of the religion of evil is committing suicide en mass to feed the dark eldritch abomination.
No where I feel is this easier to spot than in video games and to really show praises for some of the more memorable ones, I will mention them here. They are the easiest in my opinion to find due to a couple of factors. Factors that really separate them from even novels in storytelling. The music.
In novels and to some degree, TV, the reader has to deduce what is going on due to what they have seen before. In Video games, the darkest hour is when the World Map music changes to minor key, when the preparations screen music changes to a darker tone. The part where who you thought was the villain is either dead, worse than dead, or has joined the good guys and an even worse threat has appeared.
Some notable examples of this idea in video games are the Dragon’s Table in Fire Emblem Awakening, Hollow Bastian in Kingdom Hearts, The entire second half of Final Fantasy VI, The Ocean Palace in Chrono Trigger, Derris Kharlan in Tales of Symphonia. There are so many examples that I cannot possibly list them all but these are ones that are exceptional and even take the idea of Darkest Hour to the most extreme.
The reason I mention this idea is that while there is still one part of The End of Utopia remaining, I have begun writing the newest draft of Book 2: The Messiah of Nightmares. Compared to the first book, there is much more at stake in the plot, and I even will be revisiting a few darkest hours in the past of my own life to properly feel the emotions needed to write this novel.