Monday 13 August 2012

On Dark Souls: After The Dust Has Settled...


    So, here I am again, inspired by a presence I could not perceive, to write in this cathartic for my mind and soul blog once again. This time, I want to tell you a story. It's a magnificent one, filled with intrigue and mystery. Such is the complexity of its eminence that it would require whole days for me to put it down on "paper". So I am just going to relay one chapter of my adventure, a short but very important one. It is a small venture of sorts... a trip down a wide, stony staircase...

    It has been a while since I finished Dark Souls for the first time. Back in the day things in my life were quite different. My social priorities were much more specific and simple, my free time somewhat diminished. I'd try to steal every possible moment to enjoy this bleak endeavor and each time, after the latest of the day's hours had past and the end of each sessions had reared its ugly head, I'd be left awestruck and mesmerized. The universe of this masterpiece... simply inspiring.

    You must understand dear reader, I am a very dedicated gamer. I enjoy my moments under the best possible circumstances attainable, low lights and the silence of the night being key among them. Even now, as I sit down invoking the feelings I experienced back then I listen to this, recalling the shivers on my skin as a silent tribute. The atmosphere is once again the same in the core of my mind and I labor to keep the bluntness of the world around me at bay. But on that fateful day, mere minutes before the end of my journey, I was robbed of all such novelties. I was expecting a visitor. A very important one in that time. It had to be done then and there. The story had to come to a close. I once again stood before the vessel, key to the great gate. The interaction prompt called out to me. It had done so many times before. This time its call would not go unanswered.

    They say that beauty is horrific in its own right. And oh, they are so correct. The staircase that stood before me was unlike anything I had expected. Its form simple, minimalistic. Yet the figures that inhabited it... indescribable. Prithee, it's not like I didn't KNOW what they were... or once had been. It's the essence of their presence what drives the wedge deep into the mind's eyes, invoking a sense of loneliness and... wonder. After the majestic leap in the hear of darkness you are finally standing before the final stretch. And it all seems so unbelievably surprising, so... different. I stood there, motionless. I started walking down, slowly as if I was about to be beset by something unknown and formless. Each step another moment of clarity, of recollection and a sense of accomplishment. Venturing through that final cavern was as magnificent a voyage as the rest of my experience combined. Suddenly I knew what the feeling was all about: I shall see the end. It will be years before the next trip. The moment before me will mark the finale.

    I reach for the fog... it's white and shuddering like all the others before it. But this one is unique. This is the LAST one. I pass through and my senses heighten, the finality of that which lies before me makes my heart pump faster. It is the apex, the absolution and primordial sin. I am there to finish... it. But do I have to. Do I NEED to?

    After a little while it is done. I make a choice of grand importance and sit back, watching the credits roll as I try to realize the magnitude of this offering's greatness. I am motionless. Breathing slowly, drenched in serenity.

    So much time has passed, and as I stare at the empty cell in which I am drown once again beginning anew a thought crosses my mind...

    I had been expecting someone that evening...

Saturday 7 April 2012

On The End of Mass Effect 3 - An early retrospective...

    So here I am... still trying to wrap my head around what happened, what I witnessed at the end of my five-years-long journey and what led to it - what went wrong. For me, Mass Effect has always been one of the greatest endeavors in creating noteworthy, engaging and enthralling science fiction. It wrestled with all of the genre's cliches, inconsistencies and stagnation and came out - via force or wit - victorious. The starting point of this epic drama was not it's strongest part, far from it. But in each chapter the people behind the mythos added to it, nurtured and enriched it. After reading books, comics, bits and pieces it all becomes and amalgam of different cultures, historic facts and information. It seems complete. It's real. It's a living entity.

    The least you can expect from it is to offer some closure. To the player, to the leading character, but most importantly - to ITSELF. Mass Effect as an entity was entitled to grandeur, to present such a catharsis that future generation of gamers - and art-lovers in general - would remember and treasure. Expectations where high, a situation totally understandable after the magnificent second part - but we had FAITH in the people making it, birthing it. They would lead us, and through the eyes of Shepard take us on a trip through fire and pain, baptize us in fire and drag us - or what would be left of us - to the other side of the blackness. As Jacob Taylor stated while being on board the Normandy SR-2 "we're going to lose people, no way around it". We were ready to feel loss. Just not of this kind.

    That loss, that disappointment, came in the form of losing Mass Effect entirely. After the supposed, botched, marketie and underwhelming "end" all I am left with from my beloved universe is a taste of non-existence. Like, by being led to a curtain-fall like this they totally ruined the entity as a whole. I grab the controller to restart, to see the alternatives and discover a total lack of motivation. The magic is gone. It's lost...

    Nearly...

    Whilst listening to the soundtrack, reminiscing on the events experienced I feel a sense of healing. The darkness comes back to haunt my thoughts, to shut out the music. But this... this is stronger than the darkness.
    It is the essence of it, the very core. The reason why I respect and love Mass Effect. It is the sheer genius and ability of all the people that came together to take me away from this tiresome place, during nights of serenity and wonder, on a journey through the stars, into the cosmos. Because it is the people, their stories and the feelings that bind them together that form the singularity into which we were drawn in 2007. A singularity that pulled us back some months ago, and up to the last five minutes, those agonizing FIVE MINUTES, had left us awed and speechless.

    I am still betrayed. But before betraying me, Mass Effect gave me so much more than most other, sincere even, offerings would or could have. It made me dream, long and wait. While driving the knife in my back, I caught in it a glimpse of regret. Like wanting to set things right.

    Maybe it will.

    The knife is still there. But as I am left waiting for the darkness of disappointment to clear, my love for it is not bleeding out. And as I reach out to place the disk in the drive once more, I feel the scar. I am wounded. But still hoping...

    Still smiling.


                                           FiOth