So there's basically nothing I can tie into video games from English class, so it's time to go off topic. During the beginning of the year, our class read a short story called Birthday Party by Katharine Brush. It was basically portraying how marriages don't always have happy endings and that people drift apart over time. By giving the characters a very vague mien, people are easily able to relate this shorty story to real life. I didn't relate this story to marriage of any sort per se, but rather, I took in a different context and switched marriage to the topic of marching band. I connected Marching Band Competitions( State Marching Band Championships in particular) to be the husband while the people who make up the different marching bands are the wife. The people who march all give in countless amounts of dedication as well as hard work in order to potentially win first place at the State Championship.
Just like the wife in the story, we try to please the significant other(in my case, the judges of the State Championships) in that we present them a product and hope for the best. This thought didn't really click for me until yesterday. Yesterday was the State Championships for Kentucky and the marching band I felt as though we played that we could have that night. We've worked hard everyday, doing intense work outs as well as going through strenuous weather conditions. Our journey represents the trek that couples go through and the vain attempts in order to please each other. However, the endings to both stories are different this year, or at least, in my perspective they are. In Birthday Party, the wife is left depressed and ashamed with a hint of being shunned by her husband. Although we may have gotten third in the competition, we were not left in some sorry state. I believe that we performed to the best of our abilities and that it doesn't really matter what those judges think. Thus the correlation between both stories end here...However, next year's competition may speak a different story.
Before I get into this post, i'll have to admit that this game won't be 8-bit or retro, so sorry about that. There hasn't really been much to go off of in English class so far because we've just finished watching a movie called Jane Eyre and have started reading Wuthering Heights.
None of these subjects are really relateable to video games, so I'll try my best. Jane Eyre closer to my topic than Wuthering Heights so I'll just roll with that. The main character in Jane Eyre was sort of "abandoned" at the beginning. Her parents had recently died so she moved in with her aunt and they basically treated her like trash. She later runs away to find her own freedom and it;s basically just this long journey. She was sort of relateable to the main character of Bastion who is nameless throughout the story.
Bastion was a video game created by Supergiant Games for the Xbox, iOS, and computer. The story takes place after a giant calamity and player wakes up in a totally vacant place where just about everyone is reduced to ash. These people would be comparable to the love Jane Eyre received and the Calamity in the game represented the death of Jane Eyre's parents.After the Calamity, the people around the player died and when Jane's parents died, all the love she was suppose to be receiving disappeared. Jane's run-away journey is basically the same as the player's journey in Bastion: they were both looking for someone or something to complete them. The different levels in Bastion represented the journeys that Jane had to go through throughout her life such as the experience with her Aunt, Edward, and St. John. Jane Eyre's experience with the Edward Rochester is also like the Player's adventure in getting crystals to save restore the world. Although it didn't happen at first, Jane later became fixated on Edward, but had to go through rough experiences such as a deceived marriage as well as jealousy with the other marriage candidates. The player had to fight monsters that guarded certain crystals which were essential to restoring the world and that became fixated on that goal. I feel as though both Bastion and Jane Eyre contain a character that is relateable to the average person in that even when times are tough, we should stay headstrong and focus on what's important to us.
Alright so before I get into anything, I'll admit that the game that i'm about to tie in isn't retro. It's not even in 8-bit, but I figured that the story and interpretations of the game would make up for it. So I had some independent reading for class and the book I picked was The Plot Against America, written by Philip Roth.
It was about a Jewish family living in America when Lindbergh was president and how the community around them was basically anti-Jewish. That doesn't really matter right now, but what does matter is that the main character in the book, Philip Roth, starts off as a dependent child and later loses his childhood innocence(I interpreted his stamp collection to be his childhood innocence) as he matures into an independent man later in the book. Finding a book about this topic was extremely hard and I couldn't think of any other English assignment that I've done so far that could be related to games. I finally found one after basically years of thinking and the video game of this week's blog goes to Limbo, developed by Playdead and Double Eleven and is available on the PS3, Xbox 360, Windows, and iOS.
Limbo is a a 2D puzzle game where the player controls a nameless boy that has recently woken up in a forest and tries to find his sister while avoiding traps. This sounds like the average cliché puzzle game, but what makes it stand out from the others is that it's in black and white and there's no dialogue or narration. The interpretation of the game is left to the players and what they want to believe in. Philip Roth from The Plot Against America and the character from Limbo are very similar in that my interpretation of Limbo and the mental journey Philip endures travel parallel. In the beginning of Limbo, the player wakes up in a forest and the trees surrounding him make him look like an ant in comparison.
This setting represented insignificance which is what Philip felt like in the beginning of the book. Philip relied on everyone else's opinion in order to make his own decisions and judgments. The sister at the end of Limbo is what the player strives for which could represent Philip and his strive for independent thinking after being accustomed to his father's biased political views. The traps throughout the game may could also be interpreted as the obstacles Philip Roth faced during his journey through maturity such as the political views of his other siblings and relatives which attempted to sway him to one side or the other. There's also this giant spider in Limbo which is comparable to the Nazi visions that have been plaguing Philips mind at the beginning of the book.
At the end of Limbo, the player finds his sister, but the scene cuts off there and the credits roll. I compared this to the event in The Plot Against America where Philip is kicked in the face by a horse during his running-away-from-home-attempt and loses his stamp collection. The player in Limbo finds his goal, his truth, his freedom while the Philip loses his childhood innocence and begins to mature and become independent. I'd recommend the game to anyone because the artwork is phenomenal and it provides a very unique type of gameplay. The game is like a mix of creepy and depressing artwork, but it's something most people wouldn't expect and that's what made this game stand out to me.
