 I've done all the others, and yet I haven't even bothered to talk about something that I've put many, many hours into enjoying. How about favorite video games. I think I underestimate how much video games have shaped my life from childhood and well into adulthood. If I think about it, I've spent as much time investing in playing games as I have many jobs. Sometimes, the game became a job. Well, that's because if there's one thing I can be addicted to it's living in dreamscapes. Usually this habit gets unbalanced when I'm deeply depressed and unhappy. I use games to escape myself and my environment. Especially in those times when I had no way of addressing the issue.
But you cannot escape yourself, so, it's a pointless endeavor. When I'm in a mentally healthy place, I don't tend to do that. I suppose any sign of getting addicted to gaming is a good indicator of some lurking depression. Same with picking at my food is an indicator of severe anxiety I'm trying to hide. Anyway, enough moping at shadows! Teenage self, go outside and play live-action Zelda, please. Your friends are waiting for you, and you get to be Din this time instead of Farore. (I will explain this shortly.) So, here are my favorite games. These are ones I have probably spent at least 300+ hours playing at one point, or games that have stuck in my consciousness like a meme:
The Legend of Zelda appears three times, The Elder Scrolls series appears twice (I could argue three with Elder Scrolls Online, but it didn't quite make the cut. Pokémon is just one giant blob of games (let's face it, it's the same game just with different window dressing). And we have some clear themes here. Adventure and exploration is the name of the game with me. Let's start with the Legend of Zelda series. The first one I ever played with Ocarina of Time on the N64. I remember it was the first 3D-rendered game I ever encountered and at 9 years old, it sucked me right in. It was amazing. I get to play a hero. I get to wield a sword. I get to ride a horse. There's mysteries all over the place due to little teasers and bugs the developers left. And if there's one thing that gives Kyrie a bit of a hard on when it comes to a video game it's glitches and mysteries. Things that are there that aren't supposed to be there. (I'm that way about all of reality. Why do you think I'm so interested in the astral, esoteric meanings, and quantum physics? Mysteries get me going like no body's business. Especially uncanny things.) Anyway, the lore also captivated me. The story of the world being created by three goddesses, who left a powerful artifact behind. The idea of the sacred realm. The idea of people being in "alignment" or "inheritors" for specific attributes of this artifact. Time travel. The issues in timelines created BY time travel. My brother and I played this thing until our console was ancient. My brother, his friend, and I would spend time also outside live-action playing Zelda. We each assigned ourselves one of the Triforce energies. I always ended up with Courage and "Farore" as my goddess. Of course. What else would Kyrie be assigned but the goddess that created life on the planet and is in charge of earth, forests, wind, and breath and things like that? Even at 13 I knew this was inevitable in some way. There is no other one I would be. I later went on to play a number of others in the series, but Wind Waker with its ability to sail and the glorious style of colorful artwork kept me in the game for a long time. I loved the music of this game, especially. And finally Tears of the Kingdom I just finished this past year actually had me crying at a few parts. (Zelda forgetting herself and getting lost in time to save everyone. Like bawling over here. Resonated so much with that.) Also loved all the magic-technology. That was very fun. As well as the Studio Gibli art style. But enough about that, let's look at others. The Elder Scrolls series is another set that really has impacted my "inner lore". It's stuck in there much like Tolkien's works are stuck in my mind. For one, there's so much that's in that game that has nothing to do with the game plot itself. The developers really took their sweet time in making a world that was quite believable given the limited confines of a computer program. At one point while playing Skyrim, I found myself on a blog site as a resident loremaster. This came after I wrote two 100,000 word stories based on playthroughs that I not only carefully scripted, but also photographed as if for a film. Yes, I wrote two books. I read all the lore, and was in the process of extracting metaphysical truths from the lore itself. There was so much coherent story, that I could even write articles as if the spiritual stories and metaphysical rules of that world were that of my world. For example, examining the potential ethical problems of harvesting souls for soul gems and trying to answer the question of "what happens to the soul when the soul gem is used"? Hand me a reality rulebook, and I can make it like it's really happening. Anyway, this game series in particular is what started subtly formulating my perspective regarding incarnation. The attention to detail I gave each character when I would design a playthrough fit perfectly in when I started accepting reincarnation as a thing. In fact, one of the first utterances out of this self about that was something like, "Well, of course. It's just like designing a playthrough in Skyrim. Only in a bigger game world." And that was that. No more questions asked about whether or not reincarnation was a thing. Of course it was. Why else was I so good at character design? Do you see a common theme forming? Do I play video games just to hack and slash goblins? No. I do not. Even Pokémon was subject to my grand-view lens, even though I was a little girl with a Gameboy. How do you build effective teams? What makes a good team? How to elemental types pair and group with one another? All questions I was answering as I adventured around the game world, enjoying having Pikachu or Charmander in my party at every opportunity. How can you not? They are adorable and deadly! My favorite combination of traits. All of these other games have similar themes in common. Okami was a lesson in Japanese Shintoism, something I did not know much about, but I found myself loving the story anyway. Plus, wielding a tool called the "celestial brush" was just too attractive to my artistic self not to want to give the game a try in the first place. Fallout granted me a love of music from the 1940's that I didn't know I had. No Man's Sky is proving to be an unexpectedly spiritual experience with its story. Asking the questions of: what happens if you are in a simulation and the computer generating the simulation begins to break down? What if the computer became aware that it was breaking down? How might it change the game world? What happens to the reality simulation as the computer is "losing its marbles"? Just enough mysteries to make me want to explore more and think about it. Plus, the fact that creatures I befriend and make companions speak to my character telepathically (using {{ }} in the game interface for dialogue) is just hilarious and adorable. "{{ bleeee! suit-friend is here! best friend! best friend! bleeeeeee! }}" Cuteness overload. I will die for you Norm the...whatever-you-are. I thank you for your time. Adiamas. --Kyriel Comments are closed.
|
Categories
All
Archives
January 2025
|
RSS Feed
|
© 2025 Open Spyglass
|