Did I absolutely hate turning the lights off in Living Memory? Yes. Did it feel terrible to see the amusement shut down completely? Aboslutely. Did my heart shatter into tiny bits seeing all Cahciua, Otis, and all the others disappear into nothing. Without a doubt.
We turned off heaven. And we get to see it's husk forever.
It made me depressed like no other video game has in a long time. And I loved every, single minute of it.
Video games in general are thought of as entertainment. But this wasn't entertainment. This wasn't even catharsis through tragedy. This was CBU3 showing us a masterfully crafted statue, giving us a hammer, and asking us to break the smash the shit out of it. This was CBU3 then leaving that rubble for us to see. Forever.
In Ultima Thule we got to turn the music on. We looked at the scraps of lost souls stuck at the edge creation, and, through our unrelenting optimism, created an afterlife for them.
In Living Memory, we did the opposite. We saw a pristine heaven: the manifestation of nostalgia. And we turned it off. We turned it all off: the music, the lights, the people.
All gone.
It feels terrible, terrible. From a game design perpective there are few things quite as unsatisfying as making a place worse and less interesting- from turning a vibrant level into one that's just grey. Hell, seeing the area turn grey almost made me feel unsatisfied on a meta level. Most levels are designed first as featureless greyboxes, before the design is slowly and laboriously overlayed on top of it. In Living Memory, we're almost revesing the level design. We're unmaking a part of the game
In Living Memory, FFXIV didn't entertain us. It made us uncomfortable in an intentional, directed way. And I respect the hell out of CB3 for doing it.
This wasn't entertainment. This was Art. Art can make us uncomfortable. And that is completely okay.
In fact, the more viscerally you hate it, the more powerful of an Art Piece it becomes.
It is extremely difficult to do this sort of Art for a AAA multi-million dollar game. It is extremely risky. And I am grateful to CBU3 for taking this risk.
submitted by /u/Mostopha
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Continue reading...
We turned off heaven. And we get to see it's husk forever.
It made me depressed like no other video game has in a long time. And I loved every, single minute of it.
Video games in general are thought of as entertainment. But this wasn't entertainment. This wasn't even catharsis through tragedy. This was CBU3 showing us a masterfully crafted statue, giving us a hammer, and asking us to break the smash the shit out of it. This was CBU3 then leaving that rubble for us to see. Forever.
In Ultima Thule we got to turn the music on. We looked at the scraps of lost souls stuck at the edge creation, and, through our unrelenting optimism, created an afterlife for them.
In Living Memory, we did the opposite. We saw a pristine heaven: the manifestation of nostalgia. And we turned it off. We turned it all off: the music, the lights, the people.
All gone.
It feels terrible, terrible. From a game design perpective there are few things quite as unsatisfying as making a place worse and less interesting- from turning a vibrant level into one that's just grey. Hell, seeing the area turn grey almost made me feel unsatisfied on a meta level. Most levels are designed first as featureless greyboxes, before the design is slowly and laboriously overlayed on top of it. In Living Memory, we're almost revesing the level design. We're unmaking a part of the game
In Living Memory, FFXIV didn't entertain us. It made us uncomfortable in an intentional, directed way. And I respect the hell out of CB3 for doing it.
This wasn't entertainment. This was Art. Art can make us uncomfortable. And that is completely okay.
In fact, the more viscerally you hate it, the more powerful of an Art Piece it becomes.
It is extremely difficult to do this sort of Art for a AAA multi-million dollar game. It is extremely risky. And I am grateful to CBU3 for taking this risk.
submitted by /u/Mostopha
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...