In the last issue, we talked about the gameplay design part of "Eldon's Ring of Law", which is large enough to support the structure of the game and become a large and generalized "open world box", but if it is only an ARPG that is very cool to play, the voice of Miyazaki Hidegao is not up to today's height. Because, in the world he created, narrative and expression are even higher than the existence of gameplay design. Countless soulology, wolf science, and environmental researchers have spent a lot of time in desk work outside of play, becoming archaeologists of the history of dynasties in a video game. In this issue, we'll look at why the old thief's "fragmented narrative" is so fascinating.
Open narrative
The game mode of "Old Man Ring" began to focus on the open world, but in fact, as early as the original "Dark Souls 1" and even "Ghast", Miyazaki Hidetaka's narrative has completed the "open world", which can be called open narrative. The so-called open narrative, that is, allowing the player to interpret the story on their own, is not only the order of reading the story, but even the internal logical order of the story, which is not fixed. The author deliberately obscures the plot, and the merits and demerits are determined by posterity, and this sentence itself contains the greatest uncertainty.
The technique refers to the historical study of the real world, for a past without a history of faith, can only take into account the multi-party intelligence, to come up with a conjecture that is not contradictory, but perhaps still absurd, this mystified rendering of the historical story is exactly the tone that the old thief hopes to make the game present. The player's task is not to restore and piece together the fragments of an event, but to speculate on the character's motivation through some side words and words, and then to confirm or falsify it through the evidence witnessed by the naked eye in the course of the game, and continue to speculate on the motives of the characters lying or inconsistent words and deeds on this basis.
Why did Raganda abandon his wife and children, and who among Rena La and Lagunda was the one who was the one who was the one
On this theme, soul games have very rarely abandoned two basic narrative principles: the full story and the active narrative. Leaving the blank space and imagination space to the player is not led by the story to lead the player's adventure, but through the player's knowledge and what he sees, so that he can understand the entire worldview. It can be said that in the Soul Realm and the Ring Realm, there is not a single thing that is the player's tacit common sense, and all definitions require a process of exploration. Each prop has an ominous account, the loot of defeating the boss will hide an unknown conspiracy, but also marks the degree of secrecy of this information, equivalent to the player after overcoming the difficult plot reward, but these words have not been organized into a file, the player who has traveled all over the world is a walking library.
The text is not directly related to the prop itself
At the same time, the clue "his goddess" is buried to exclude the recognized "goddess Erica"
Of course, this narrative framework of "letting go to pieces" is a double-edged sword, and if it is not handled well, it will make people feel that they are fooling the player, which has the effect of building the authenticity of the world. Obviously, this problem still exists in Hidetaka Miyazaki's game, but as long as you carefully observe the prop description, you can basically have a like-dislike relationship with the characters and forces in the game. Compared with the later imitators who were quite successful, the author believes that the old thief specifically used the following methodologies to help us analyze the problem when realizing this idea.
1) Figurative and metaphorical
For example, in the world of the "Old Man Ring", there is a kingdom system with the "Golden Tree Law" as the core principle, and the capital of the kingdom grows a towering light sacred tree, and the rest of the territories also have relatively dim small trees. Trees sprinkle energy and grace on all things, and at the same time absorb the fertilizer of civilization in the soil, and all things are dead and alive. Careful observation is not difficult to find that the "Golden Law" is actually the most basic energy conservation and ecological environmental protection of our reality, but the old thief uses the meaning of the miracle of the golden sacred tree to romanticize this common sense, and this operation of defamiliarization with reality is a figuration that is easy to be accepted by players.
The Rune Rune is an ancient script that exists in reality
Subsequently, a descendant of the Divine Clan took the "death of destiny" in the law, and the "Eldon Ring" was broken, and then the major royal families launched a "broken war" for the fragments of the ring. These are the original texts of the game, and before the player actually touches what the "Eldon Ring" is, it can actually develop reasonable associations. The so-called "death of destiny", that is, the power of death, the evidence is that the creatures in the game are difficult to say that they are really dead, and will only continue to rot, including the golden tree itself, and many of them have stopped functioning. The kingdom mentioned in the text falls apart, which can be seen as the beginning of the oil war between the families at the end of the gradual depletion of energy, which is a logical metaphor, so that the player may think that the initiator of the lawbreaker is terrible, or the national policy of relying solely on the energy of the Sacred Tree is too rash, and as more clues are excavated, the player may perceive other metaphors. Figurative and metaphorical are superficial to each other, like the writing and deciphering of codes, full of fun to understand puzzles.
2) Three-dimensional narrative and side description
Also using the new example, there are remnants of ancient dynasties under the kingdom, and under the ruins appear underground an underground lake full of corrupt venom, and the player continues to go deeper to find a more ruined dynasty ruin, in which highly mutated creatures are enshrined in the boss named "Dark Outcast Esty". Apparently, long before the establishment of the current kingdom, there are two areas separated from the top and bottom, and the player's mechanism through the corrosion lake is activated by the end near the ground, indicating that the lower dynasty is the isolated party, and also corresponds to the title of "Dark Outcast", and finally when the player faces this boss, he can find that its resistance to the attack of the corrupt attribute is very low, indicating that the peripheral lake is not its ability, but the blockade imposed on it by the old dynasty.
Bridges from the lake of corruption interrupted from the outside
From the structure of the organ to the monster data in the game, in fact, it bears the responsibility of narrative, just like the "lens language" in film and television creation, not all content arrangement must be explained by lines, such a film will only appear weak.
Put into video games, through the visual side description may seem inferior, and the old thief's hand has become a habitual gamification narrative, may wish to call it a "game language" three-dimensional narrative.
Modern Mythology & Modern Mythology Game
How far are myths and reality? Nowadays, when myths and stories have been processed by a large number of artists, myths and reality have a clear distinction, and even have a clear "belief" and "unbelief". In fact, the birth of the myth has never been a matter of faith or not, and its portrayal of nationality has long become an indisputable fact over the years.
Whether it is the Yanhuang War and the legend of the gods in our traditional stories, or the Trojan siege in the West, the tragedy of Oedipus, or the more popular Norse myths of Valhalla and Nibelungen in recent years, they are all based on the products of national history, and also strengthen the interpretation of this history by future generations, such as our advocating the transformation of nature and advocating the territory of great unification, and the stories are all praising the collective, which can be explained as the mystical group subconscious, and can also be explained as a method of ideological domination that adapts to natural conditions.
One side of the water and soil to support one person, one side of the people also have the myth of one side of the people. For modern countries and people, there is also a need for modern myths, but they may no longer appear under the name of "myths".
The first step in this regard is Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings", there are all kinds of long-lived and intelligent elves in Middle-earth, there are all kinds of large-waisted, brave and industrious human races, or inhuman monsters such as orcs, sub-peoples, dwarves and dragons, but the only thing that can be done is the "hobbits" who love life, have no quarrel with the world, and are in a safe corner. In fact, readers who understand the history of Middle-earth are not difficult to find that the "hobbits" are the real British, that is, the homeland of Tolkien.
Tolkien, an old Londoner of the British Empire and a paleo-Englishman at Oxford University, found that the United Kingdom was a country devoid of myths, and that the history of Celtic mythology dates back to before the Anthonnes became an island civilization, in which the heroic deeds of King Arthur had nothing to do with the British today. Therefore, he created a fantasy novel based on contemporary mythology, strengthening the national character of Britain and endorsing the modern British.
Of course, "The Lord of the Rings" has not yet broken through the geographical limitations of mythology, and it is still applying the ancient model after all. Is there a possibility of a modern myth that can be recognized by the entire modern human civilization? I think the old thief is doing this.
Whether it's the Age of Fire of the Dark Souls, the Twilight of the Gods of the Eldon Ring, or the Cthulhu Mythos in the Blood, the common proposition is that "the gods are dead." We can feel an emotional bond that belongs only to modern people in the soul game, although faith has collapsed, realism and class privilege trample on the beauty of all things in the world, but in the game story, there is always a group of small mortals who are not afraid of death, trying to protect the last shred of "humanity", a cluster of "embers", a little "reason".
However, in the soul world, we see the theory of historical circulation, the Gewen royal family cannot be eternally solid, the mission of the goddess of sin and karma to choose the chief of all things will also be wrong, and even on top of this, there will be escapism (the world in the painting), nihilism (usurper), accelerationism (fire extinguishing) and other vain attempts to open up another cycle, from the heroic view of history to the people's history view, dare to call the sun and the moon for a new heaven. In the blood source, it is the complete opposite side, positive is denied, human efforts are finally only ants in the shadow of ancient gods and foreign gods, pessimism and defeatism may also become the mainstream national nature of modern human civilization. The wolf is an exception, very classically speaking of fatalism, the concept of reincarnation in Eastern civilizations, and of course, in the end, its acceptance in the West is not high.
The ring where the "old man ring" is located is a broader world, and all of the above can be found in this work, large and all the impressions of this work, of course, we still lack too much time to dig out the main theme that this huge work wants to express, whether it is a smorgasbord that encompasses all the temperament of modern civilization, or the middle thought that finally highlights the harmony and difference, the world is the same, or other more romantic interpretation.