'Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they had all gone out on that stream, bearing the swords, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire.' - Joseph Conrad
Figure it's about time I start talking about the Souls games. The franchise which started with Demons' Souls has as of late reached what may be its pinnacle, and, to me, alot of it comes down to subtext, theming, and minimalism.
Some retro-activists in the tabletop gaming community (most notably those folks at Goblinoid) have been rattling the fences in adhering to the age old rule - keeping it fucking simple. The problem (as paraphrased by me) lies with too many people seeking to add epic scope to their fantasy worlds, drowning themselves in details and world-building, and possibly overlooking the whole point of escapism in general. In example, the absurd complexity of the Star Wars universe is entirely fan-generated. The original three movies were minimalistic and to the point. What exact role Jedi had played in the 'Clone Wars', and what role they played in general, became a subject of fanfiction and eventually - ironically - became cannon. But if you were to take only the three original films as valid source material... the entire Expanded Universe falls apart. The same can be said of the D&D empire, with its rules and regulations and mythos, which - though encouraging players to generate their own content - burden creativity with the wealth of pre-existing dogma, simultaneously making the game as accessible to just any Joe Blow off the street. If anybody can DM, then what makes a good DM?
The plot and scope of Dark Souls is barely explainable. You play a faceless adventurer. What you learn about the world, you learn by playing the game and actively seeking out that information. What little you do learn has birthed an online community of theorists attempting to make plot-ends meet. What you do know is this - you are a torch-bearer, in a dark, dark world.
In Dark Souls, you light bonfires - which act as way-points and rest areas. The further you progress through the game, the more light you have brought into the world, all the while being manipulated by primordial deities. You absorb information, and choose your path, as ambiguous a decision as it may be - and even the consequences have no event horizon between right and wrong. It is an open-world, whose magnificent vistas and bizarre landscapes beg to be explored - your quest is only restricted by its ruthless difficulty.
Figure it's about time I start talking about the Souls games. The franchise which started with Demons' Souls has as of late reached what may be its pinnacle, and, to me, alot of it comes down to subtext, theming, and minimalism.
Some retro-activists in the tabletop gaming community (most notably those folks at Goblinoid) have been rattling the fences in adhering to the age old rule - keeping it fucking simple. The problem (as paraphrased by me) lies with too many people seeking to add epic scope to their fantasy worlds, drowning themselves in details and world-building, and possibly overlooking the whole point of escapism in general. In example, the absurd complexity of the Star Wars universe is entirely fan-generated. The original three movies were minimalistic and to the point. What exact role Jedi had played in the 'Clone Wars', and what role they played in general, became a subject of fanfiction and eventually - ironically - became cannon. But if you were to take only the three original films as valid source material... the entire Expanded Universe falls apart. The same can be said of the D&D empire, with its rules and regulations and mythos, which - though encouraging players to generate their own content - burden creativity with the wealth of pre-existing dogma, simultaneously making the game as accessible to just any Joe Blow off the street. If anybody can DM, then what makes a good DM?
The plot and scope of Dark Souls is barely explainable. You play a faceless adventurer. What you learn about the world, you learn by playing the game and actively seeking out that information. What little you do learn has birthed an online community of theorists attempting to make plot-ends meet. What you do know is this - you are a torch-bearer, in a dark, dark world.
This game is hard. You will die. It markets itself as being hard. It has no qualms about its difficulty, seeking to fire the nostalgia of the Nintendo-core and provide an experience much removed from the contemporary mainstream. You stand alone against monstrous beings of exaggerated ferociousness, will stand in awe at the scope of them while furiously attempting to survive their onslaughts. You travel in a world made-up of dungeons, without refuge, one more perilous and beautiful than the last.
When Robert E. Howard wrote his stories, when Fritz Lieber and Arthur C. Clarke and Burroughs penned their pulp adventures - those adventures which D&D is based off of - there was no time for world-building or character mapping, only the furious maelstrom of creation, of putting pen to paper. Star Wars, three of the greatest films ever created, never bothered to answer questions about its world - only presented it to you for the sole purpose of telling a great story. I think the worship of J. R. R. Tolkien has grown too big for its own boots. Its created a market, in the fantasy genres, that look away from stories to sell worlds. Earthsea was once a single novella about some wizard fighting a dragon.
I think there is something to learn in minimalism.
Anyway, I've accrued and have been reading (inside and outside school) several novels deems Works on Empire, notably The Man Who Would Be King, Heart of Darkness, and Orwell's Burmese Days (the latter being spectacularly written). There's something romantic (in a misguided sort of way I suppose) to me about British Imperialism. Maybe it's because I'm a Canadian soldier and haven't shaken entirely free of traditional sentimentality. I know I'm not the only one who occasionally sees the world in that light. Looking back to pulp fiction and British Colonialism in general, some parallels can easily be drawn between the concept of 'points of light'(that civilizations exists only as isolated outposts bearing torch against great tides of chaos and darkness) and the spread of Empire to the savage 'third-world' of the 18-19th Century.
Hm.
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