Welcome to Souls Week.
With Elden Rings almost upon us, we’re making this weekSouls Weekon Eurogamer.
- Cyril Connolly
It’s hard to conceive of an artistic medium more ephemeral than video games.
Not exactly what an aspiring game designer might call “actionable intel.”
The Soulsborne games teem with the psychological obtuseness common to mythology, the symbolism of dream worlds.
In the game’s fantasy, just like in the dream, we accept this scenario without rational protest.
What does it all mean?
Hell if I know.
But your shrink might have a few guesses.
Joseph Campbell had his mythic Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Or what Jung might have called the Collective Knocked-Unconscious.
- The power of surprise
We are crafted by evolutionary processes to be hyper-sensitive to novelty.
And the riches to be discovered are dizzyingly plentiful.
Stepping on a pressure-sensitive floor plate in a narrow corridor sends darts whistling out of a wall behind us.
A consistent feature of all these games is the From Software rugpull (patent pending).
The player is dropped into a setting full of genre-staple bromides.
A gothic and grimy Victorian cityscape.
Or the high-fantasy castles and crypts we’ve stormed in countless action RPGs.
Then things start to get weird.
Or the werewolf fantasy takes a sudden left-turn into Lovecraftian cosmic horror.
Miyazaki is the master of contrast.
Its other name is death."
Creativity is the default state of thriving and growing organisms.
Kids thrive within a predictable routine where the ground beneath their feet is not shifting without warning.
The less you reveal, the more people can wonder."
Creative products are a conversation, after all.
A statement is final, after all, but a question can linger for centuries.
