[This piece was written as a part of Critical Distance‘s June 2016 Blogs of the Round Table feature] Videogame fiction, like a lot of adventure fiction for young people, places the central character in the position of rescuing a loved one. Often the loved one our hero must rescue is a damsel in distress with an implicit … Continue reading A Family That Plays Together
[Originally posted on PopMatters] Toren opens with a clarity of purpose but a mystery of place that I haven’t experienced in a game since Shadow of the Colossus. Like Ico, Vagrant Story or, more recently, Journey and Dark Souls, it tells a complex story with space, light, and movement. Like Dreamfall and The Legend of Zelda, … Continue reading Toren and the Art of Mythmaking
Violence is paramount to maintaining fantasy fiction and disembodied violence is a pillar of the fantasy genre. Disembodied violence is the celebration of violent power, or the expression of violent power against unthinking but vaguely human-shaped antagonists; it’s the kind of violence that isn’t really violent because it doesn’t take place against another person. Take Iron Man 2: in … Continue reading Imagine the Power: Disembodied Violence in Fantasy Traditions
“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive.” Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess” (1842) *SPOILER WARNING* In the latest Legend of Zelda title, Link saves a total of nine people from the villain, Yuga. They are (in no particular order): Gulley, the blacksmith’s son and Link’s childhood friend Queen … Continue reading My Last Princess: Women as Objects in The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
[originally posted on Unwinnable] Videogame interactivity is so great. Who wants to watch a hero when you can be the hero? That’s the promise games keep giving us on the back of the box, isn’t it? But they seldom deliver on that promise. Games welcome their players to a world, lay out a central conflict … Continue reading View From the Side
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