From the lecture notes - 3
From the lecture notes 3
“Looks like we have to say goodbye for now. This town seems pretty gloomy, but I’m sure you can light up the place with your own little brand of sunshine…”
Mis amigos del Club San Juan de la Cruz, hablemos despues de la lectura si la necesesitan en la lengua de su tocayo—es decir, Espanol, no Latin, lo siento. Pero todavia pienso en Ingles, y en Ingles prefiero hablar.
Gracias; thank you for inviting me. I should say I have a great deal of respect for you. Without saying too plainly why. These are nettled times, and words are thorns; they stick in your mouth and sting when you mean the best by them. I cannot commend your group without kicking dirt on many others, most of whom I still think mean well. We all do, I do believe that. We just have the hardest time understanding each other and making ourselves understood. We are all building Babel, aren’t we?
Again, let us talk afterwards and dig into these difficult matters. I will not impose further upon the patience of the group as a whole, but will get right to the game. There is something refreshing, in that genre of which Earthbound is at once an example and an exception, an exceptional exception, there is something refreshing in the Manichean structure of things. There is a force of evil and there is a force of good—but more than that, they are and have always been separate. There was no Fall in any of those RPG worlds, which makes sense, doesn’t it? because each of them is an Eden.
Ah, there are pastures and pastures here for any of my young students to explore if they have a mind. What are the causes, what the effects, of the Japanese setting their quests in Medieval Europe? Of course it is chiefly cosmetic, but even in this does it not reveal something of its creators’? Where are the gaps in their understanding of the missionaries’ faith, or in the West’s understanding of their own, and what syncretism of all this can match the synthesis that has taken place in Japan’s economics?
To return from the dismal science to the town that seems pretty gloomy. The people of Threed, it seems, did nothing to deserve Zombies. In the same way, there is no evidence of some taboo that, once broken, has released Giygas like a chick from a fresh egg. The meteorite fell, and that’s all. The only instigator of it may be said to be…us. The ones holding the controller. After every name, Itoi himself asks us, are we sure? and after every name we say, yep, excited to see what will happen. We need the meteorite to fall, we need those almost arbitrary enemies—now bullies, now cultists, now Zombies—arbitrary in the form they take and where they come from, but mind that they aren’t too powerful too soon in the game—because that is the game, or the game-like side of it, anyway. The story-like side of it is adorable.
We need the game to go that way, with enemies to fight, because Earthbound pushes things far enough on the story-side to remain compelling with tried-and-true mechanics. If it had done something new at base, had inquired into the reason for Giygas too closely, it would have been like sending us Ghosts of Starman right at the beginning, instead of Spiteful Crows (which can be plenty hard). It would have been overweening pride, and the powers that be at Nintendo would have dismissed any such game as being too risky.
Yet in real life, there has been a Fall, and there have been Apotheoses. We are ready, and have always been, for a game that does more than drop a Giygas out of nowhere.
Giygas is good. It is in the resistance that we are expressing ourselves—a self-assertion typified in the child. But not everyone wants to play children’s games. And God knows not everyone wants to play ‘Teen’ and ‘Mature’ ones. There has never been a truly adult game, appealing in both its gameplay and story to the self-assertion typified in the adult: the self’s free aspiration towards a sovereign good. Until there is, we can get back on the tour bus and play music and talk to each other, and leave the kids to do their thing.
From the lecture notes 3
“Looks like we have to say goodbye for now. This town seems pretty gloomy, but I’m sure you can light up the place with your own little brand of sunshine…”
Mis amigos del Club San Juan de la Cruz, hablemos despues de la lectura si la necesesitan en la lengua de su tocayo—es decir, Espanol, no Latin, lo siento. Pero todavia pienso en Ingles, y en Ingles prefiero hablar.
Gracias; thank you for inviting me. I should say I have a great deal of respect for you. Without saying too plainly why. These are nettled times, and words are thorns; they stick in your mouth and sting when you mean the best by them. I cannot commend your group without kicking dirt on many others, most of whom I still think mean well. We all do, I do believe that. We just have the hardest time understanding each other and making ourselves understood. We are all building Babel, aren’t we?
Again, let us talk afterwards and dig into these difficult matters. I will not impose further upon the patience of the group as a whole, but will get right to the game. There is something refreshing, in that genre of which Earthbound is at once an example and an exception, an exceptional exception, there is something refreshing in the Manichean structure of things. There is a force of evil and there is a force of good—but more than that, they are and have always been separate. There was no Fall in any of those RPG worlds, which makes sense, doesn’t it? because each of them is an Eden.
Ah, there are pastures and pastures here for any of my young students to explore if they have a mind. What are the causes, what the effects, of the Japanese setting their quests in Medieval Europe? Of course it is chiefly cosmetic, but even in this does it not reveal something of its creators’? Where are the gaps in their understanding of the missionaries’ faith, or in the West’s understanding of their own, and what syncretism of all this can match the synthesis that has taken place in Japan’s economics?
To return from the dismal science to the town that seems pretty gloomy. The people of Threed, it seems, did nothing to deserve Zombies. In the same way, there is no evidence of some taboo that, once broken, has released Giygas like a chick from a fresh egg. The meteorite fell, and that’s all. The only instigator of it may be said to be…us. The ones holding the controller. After every name, Itoi himself asks us, are we sure? and after every name we say, yep, excited to see what will happen. We need the meteorite to fall, we need those almost arbitrary enemies—now bullies, now cultists, now Zombies—arbitrary in the form they take and where they come from, but mind that they aren’t too powerful too soon in the game—because that is the game, or the game-like side of it, anyway. The story-like side of it is adorable.
We need the game to go that way, with enemies to fight, because Earthbound pushes things far enough on the story-side to remain compelling with tried-and-true mechanics. If it had done something new at base, had inquired into the reason for Giygas too closely, it would have been like sending us Ghosts of Starman right at the beginning, instead of Spiteful Crows (which can be plenty hard). It would have been overweening pride, and the powers that be at Nintendo would have dismissed any such game as being too risky.
Yet in real life, there has been a Fall, and there have been Apotheoses. We are ready, and have always been, for a game that does more than drop a Giygas out of nowhere.
Giygas is good. It is in the resistance that we are expressing ourselves—a self-assertion typified in the child. But not everyone wants to play children’s games. And God knows not everyone wants to play ‘Teen’ and ‘Mature’ ones. There has never been a truly adult game, appealing in both its gameplay and story to the self-assertion typified in the adult: the self’s free aspiration towards a sovereign good. Until there is, we can get back on the tour bus and play music and talk to each other, and leave the kids to do their thing.
