The Last of Us (with minor spoilers)

I finally got around to watching The Last of Us, and I really enjoyed it.  At nine episodes it managed to fill out some back stories to greater and lesser successes.  Did we need more Bill?  Sure, why not.  Did we need more Jakarta?  No, not really.

I guess I was left feeling that a really good two hour movie could have been made as well, one that would have outshined a nine-part series and brought home the point that Joel acted selfishly, but also relatably.

That's not hating, just wondering if an already baggy video game needed an equally baggy series to boot.

Friday Afternoon

My Dad is sick.  He started coughing last night, and today at lunch he had trouble swallowing (admittedly large) pieces of sausage and broccoli.  We got a big up of chicken broth into him, then he went down to rest for the afternoon.

I'm guessing (hoping?) it's just a cold.  His vaccination was last Saturday.  He's convinced he's having a reaction to it, I really doubt it.

We're keeping an eye of things.

Meanwhile, here's an insanely addictive write up (if you're 46 like me) of 50 all-text games (mostly) from the 1980's.

The write-up of 1985's A Mind Forever Voyaging is fantastic.

Found In Translation

My life is way too up in the air right now to do something as life-changing as buying a new video game console, but this is kind of cool -- the Hangul-ized logo for Cyberpunk 2077.  (I realize the release has been a shit-show.)

So roughly, we've got "SA-EEE-BUH-PUNG-KU."

Not easy to do, but very cool.

Too Much and Almost Enough at the Same Time

It took over a year, but I finally managed to finish Jon Peterson's Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role-Playing Games. And like the title itself, the book is simultaneously fascinating and yet maybe a bit much for its own good.

This thing is an absolute door-stopper of a tome -- 698 pages, with copious amounts of both footnotes and bibliographies.  It is dense and academic, in both the best and worst senses of those words.  It is incredibly well researched and easily makes the case for its own existence, i.e., the history of role-playing is worth this type of academic treatment.  The story itself stretches back to highly specific parts of 18th century military history, 19th and 20th century literary history (not just fantasy writers), 19th century applied statistics and probability, and more expectedly the rise of sci-fi fandom in the 1960's and 70's.

And yet, by the end of this virtual Everest of a history, I still felt like I knew less about the two main creators of Dungeons and Dragons -- Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson -- than I would have liked.  Sure, the story is there -- the various basements in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and Minneapolis, Minnesota  that birthed the hobby, the later falling out as the math- and business-minded Gary screwed the more wild-and-wooly creative genius Dave out of royalties -- but it also feels a bit more, well, academic than it should.  The personalities are there, but not brought to life as you'd hope in a history of role-playing itself.

What is of note is that Gygax was a devout Jehovah's Witness who was also a polymath of war, and specifically violence, who had a mind for charts and tables and rules, but Arneson was the guy who let you own and ride a dragon or swing a talking sword if you suggested it.  Their relationship was genuinely symbiotic for a while, but this account is more bloodless than I'd have liked.  (Interestingly, the idea of Gygax as proto-nerd also falls apart when you realize he was actually quite popular with the ladies throughout his younger and middle ages.  Dude liked to party, in fact, and had multiple affairs.) 

Also, it ends where it should more thoroughly culminate, with the rise of video games in the 80s and 90s.  (The MMORPG Ultima Online from 1997 is as late as we go, even though this book came out 2014.)  It's fine that Peterson didn't set out to chronicle the video game side of things, but also stunts some obvious momentum he has developed regarding the "gamification" of popular culture ca. 2020, and the future of virtual simulations using technology.

"proper 'worlds'"

"The virtual worlds hosted by Ultima Online [1997] and its many descendants are not real worlds, but they are worlds that can be experienced in a way that seems much more immersive than clambering through steam tunnels beneath a university.  Ultimately, computers largely resolved the dichotomy between realism and playability -- computers excel at the management of the enormous number of circumstantial modifiers that create a realistic game, but since the burden of calculating those factors falls on on human participant, the playability remains unaffected. . . .  This realistic playability does come at a cost -- a computer cannot improvise or innovate, traits that a human referee can leverage to craft a more engrossing world.  For many players, however, that trade-off is made happily.  In a multiplayer game environment, the computer can also fall back to the position of an intermediary, allowing humans to improvise and innovate with one another as players, which can approximate, and in some cases exceed, the imagination of a dedicated referee.  What makes these virtual environments proper 'worlds' is not so much their scenery as their inhabitants, the community that players join when they enter the game.  Like the real world, it is a place where individuals compete and collaborate as necessary to achieve their goals, and the interpersonal dynamics that this involves, as Chapter Four illustrated, lend a depth to the game that no system can model or simulate."

-- Jon Peterson, Playing at the World

"to reward honor and courage, and to penalize players for casual depravity"

Allow me to simultaneously age myself and pull out my nerd credentials by heartily recommending this article about the early video game Ultima IV, which turns 35 this year:

"It was the fan mail that set Garriott on a path toward reimagining what a computer role-playing game (C.R.P.G.) could do. In these letters, people described how they played the first three Ultimas, which were open-world games that did not require a linear path to complete, giving players the freedom to steal from shops or kill townsfolk. The letter writers explained, according to Garriott, that 'the easiest way to gain power was not to play as a good guy.' He was despondent. 'I inadvertently made games that drove the players to act dishonorably, as this was the path of least resistance.' What if, he wondered, there were a game in which your moral choices had consequences? He wanted the next installment of Ultima to reward honor and courage, and to penalize players for casual depravity. Garriott’s family and colleagues warned him that players might feel as if they were being punished for having admitted to enjoying robbing and murdering, but Garriott ignored them. 'This was the art I was compelled to make,' he said.

Where would these moral ideas come from? Garriott studied Christian theology, Greek philosophy, and Arthurian codes of conduct, but none felt applicable enough for all people. He was attracted to Buddhist and Hindu thought, but these traditions didn’t seem to offer a framework for a game. The plan for Ultima IV coalesced for Garriott after repeatedly watching his favorite movie, 'The Wizard of Oz.' Garriott had been ruminating on the essential ideals of truth, love, and courage and realized that the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion, respectively, embodied these concepts. With these three ideals, Garriott created a schema of relational virtues through which a player would develop a hero."

First off, Ultima IV is the first game I remember where you could "talk" to anyone and everyone.  Sure, a lot of the people in the game had little to say beyond "Hello" but no small number of them actually played key roles in your adventure.  You had to interact with them in ways beyond combat or stealing if you wanted to progress within the narrative frame.

Even as an 11 year-old I realized something special was happening here.

Second, I had a friend in high school who wrote an English class paper on the game.  (Or maybe it was the sequel, Ultima V, which covered similar ground?  Or both?)  The English teacher wasn't too thrilled but then again, video games were not taken seriously by anybody back then.  Pac-Man and Space Invaders were what people thought of when you mentioned gaming, not narrative driven quests for spiritual purity and enlightenment.

Third, my mom didn't let me play alone in my room.  We set up "the computer table" near her own work-space.  (At the time she had a typewriter, but not long after she had her own IBM.)  I spent hours there laboring over a Commodore 64, constantly jotting down clues and hints and notes and map locations on a legal yellow pad.  I'd ask my mom for help with turgid Tolkienisms, or run over to the phone to call a friend who was also working on finishing the game and who might have figured out one of its many daunting secrets before I had.

As something resembling "maturity" set in during high school she let it slip that she'd set things up like that on purpose.  She got a kick out of watching me play that damn game, and if it taught me that there's more to life than murdering bad guys and taking their stuff that's secondary to the rest, to her covert tutelage and tacit support of my love for strange adventures.

Into August

I started watching The Witcher television series this past weekend.  I am not a Henry Cavill fan (the Snyderverse DC movies sent me away screaming in boredom) but credit where it's due -- the TV show ain't bad.  Not excellent, and definitely grasping to be the next Game of Thrones when in fact the source material is incredibly different.  Sure, you've got the swords and the boobs and the ultra-violence, but the genres are not the same.  (IMO, historically informed epic fantasy vs. grim-dark weird fiction.)

I like that the magic in Witcher is very weird and violent and uncontrollable.  And that Geralt talks to his horse.

However, I have no idea how somebody unfamiliar with the video games or books could make heads or tales of what the hell is going on so far.  Even the books can be pretty vague about certain things, intentionally so.

But hey, I've got almost a month of free time with no baseball games to see live and a limited social life due to coronavirus.

(Have I mentioned that I recently watched and reviewed every film made by Werner Herzog?  Because I certainly did!)

Yet Another Take On The Last of Us II That Nobody Asked For

The problem with the game is simple: I like one character, and he dies early on.  Beyond him, I just don't like any of these people.  And forcing me to play  half the game as a character I actively hate was a chore.

The whole thing was too long.

Nice music though, and pretty good production values.

Also, please don't make me kill dogs in the future.

Update: God, how could I forget the cringe-iest sex scene ever?

Yet Another Last of Us II Hot Take Nobody Asked For! (Minor Spoilers)

I'm about four hours in and I'm just so damn bored.  I loved the first game, but remember how much I enjoyed it for the story first and the stealth / scrounge game-play a distant second.

A trans non-gender-conforming antagonist [ed: but antagonist isn't the right word, is it?]?  Like any character, if they are underdeveloped I just don't care about them.

Granted, I'm a grown-ass man now and I don't play vidya games nearly as much as I used to.  A consequence of this is that I just can't "plow through" games to get to the interesting bits.  Not enough time or energy on my part.

And frankly, Ellie has grown up to be a pretty big asshole.

I'm not sure if I'll finish it.  Then again, I'm off work for August and not going back to America for the first time in over a decade.

And I'm all out of Werner Herzog movies.

"defined more so by games than by stories"

"The impact of Dungeons & Dragons on the fantasy genre, however, was felt less in these details than in its formal structure.  Dungeons & Dragons conferred to the genre something that mere stories could not deliver: a way for fans to involve  themselves personally in fantastic adventures.  Where previously, the fantasy genre could only tantalize readers with the visitation theme, [e.g., A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, John Carter of Mars] allowing them to experience second-hand what it would be like to enter a fantastic world, Dungeons & Dragons offered its players the ability to direct the action in that world, the responsibility for the triumph or shame of the hero  and the watching over an author's shoulder as the protagonist's fate unfolds.  Naturally, authors of fantasy genre fiction quickly incorporated Dungeons & Dragons into their visitation stories [] to appeal to the tastes of this new audience, but those narratives still lacked that critical interactivity with fans, that ability to transcend the static page and improvise, to truly explore a fantastic world.  Once Dungeons & Dragons entered the equation, the possibility existed that the fantasy genre would one day be defined more so by games than by stories."

--Jon Peterson, Playing At The World

Git Gud? More Like Git Old

I find the "can we have eazy mode please?" debate kind of fascinating.  I played the hell out of Dark Souls and Bloodborne, but less so DS 2 and 3.  When Sekiro came out I pretty much decided to wait-and-see via Twitch and, frankly, it doesn't strike me as all that great.  The combat looks really repetitive with the parry mechanic, even more than any of the Souls games.  I also find "feudal Japan with ninjas" to be about as dishwater as possible for a setting.

Having said all that, I'm also getting old.  I don't even have a kid and I find it hard to make time for video games between work, books, and exercise.  So I guess my answer is, "Game developers should make exactly the game they want and who the hell has time to play every game they're a bit interested in anyhow?"  There's a ton of content out there that looks worthwhile but I know I'll never even scratch the surface of the stuff that I might enjoy.

For what it's worth, I'm currently making my way through the Yakuza 2 remake and nibbling a bit at the new MLB The Show, which is incredibly overrated but fun enough and perfectly designed to pick up for an hour and then put down.

And between Twitch and Youtube, it's silly to argue that anyone is "locked out" of the experience of these more difficult games.