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fungal-wasted · 1 year

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Ancestral, Overgrown and Crystallized Mounds

Or, another one of those posts where I look at backgrounds to get art references and perhaps some information.

Disclaimer: I don't know much about actual architecture to use proper terms, nor am ai fully familiar with the materials presented.

Credits: All images were taken by @dromaeo-sauridae. We had fun talking about these areas.

The Mounds are places scattered around the map, where the snail shamans seem to reside in. We can find three of them in-game, one in the Crossroads, another one in Crystal Peak and a third one in the border between Queen's Gardens and Fog Canyon. This section focuses mainly on what makes the mounds stand out and what elements they share with other places in the game.

All three mounds:

Are closed places that must be accessed through an entrance, and as such, can't be seen fully with the in-game map.

Have wood-like planks as the main material

Have mask-like patterns on their floors and walls.

have at least one structure that resembles the ribs and spine of a larger cresture

Have masks hanging from sticks

Use torches

Now, let's take a more detailed look.

The bench in the Ancestral mound seems to have it's own unique design, and is colored lighter than most other benches. We can see something resembling ribs right next to the Shaman. Now: how likely are bones to be found in the game? We don't know much of the world beyond the system of caverns we commonly refer to as Hallownest. However, mamy people consider Gruz Mother to have a spine, and tools like the mantis claw are made from it, so, by some means, the snails have made use of these bones. Another possibility has to do with the Forest of Bones that did not make it into the final game but... that's not the point of this post.

In this path we can notice two main elements. Firstly, the walls seem to be made of curved structures, that could be bone, once again, or another sturdy material. Secondly, we can see wood planks on the foreground. The closest mention we have of wood comes from Zote's nail being made of shellwood. What this material is exactly and how it is obtained is not shown directly, but I will state from now that it is present in almost every area, either in one-way shortcuts, or support. The Mounds have an abundance of it, though.

Two things thay stand out to me here are the nets with.... masks? pebbles? on them. I am not sure about their purpose beyond storage. This photo also gives a closer look to the shellwood structure. Some kind of rope is used to make it stick together.

We can also get a closer look at the torches. What fuel do they use? Why use them instead of lumaflies? So far, the mounds and the Colosseum of Fools are the only places I recall using torches for lighting. Lurien and Herrah have candles surrounding them, but that seems to have a different purpose.

Bigger masks can be found on the walls all over the place. The design doesn't particularly match any seen bug. Though I must admit I have not checked for resemblances to the Soul Totems or other creatures. It's more likely just a generic mask design.

Here you can get a look at the Overgrown Mound, showing more of the same elements, except the place is covered in moss. The mask on a stick has a slight resemblance to a vessel's head, but this sprite is reused in all mounds and besides there isn't much new to point out.

And finally, these are images of the Crystallized Mound, from the tunnel that leads towards its entrance, the gate itself snd the place where the last Snail was located.

#hollow knight #snail shaman #game ref #analysis #no id #sadly idk how to describe most of this

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skanecanyon · 5 years

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That One Time I Brought Down Richard Nixon

This dream is actually from a couple of nights ago so the memory of it is fading fast, but I shall do my best to document it as accurately as I can. The first thing that I can recall, I'm down by the pavilion on Lake Como, which is an actual lake very near where I live. In real life, there is a large pavilion right on the lake where they host concerts and plays and stuff during the Summer time. Directly across from it is a big hill that is occupied by a bunch of oak trees and a picnic area on top. Carved into the side of that hill is the Hamms waterfall. It's been like this for as long as I can remember. In my dream, however, the waterfall and picnic areas are missing and instead, the whole hill is densely covered in forest. Nestled deep in the heart of this forest is a small shack. I find myself breaking into this shack in the wee hours before dawn because I'm trying to find incriminating evidence about something Richard Nixon did. The inside of the shack is dimly lit with a couple of incandescent work lights hanging from the ceiling. It's kind of dirty and unorganized inside. There are some old paintings that are covered in dust propped up against one of the walls. An old cash register sits on a podium in the corner. The rest of the stuff in there is just stuff you would expect to find in a gardening shed, lawn mowers, garden tools, bags of fertilizer, etc. The shed belongs to the Parks Department (Como Park), but for some reason, it is also being used by Richard Nixon. I don't know exactly what it is I'm looking for, but I know I have to find it fast before the Parks and Rec. workers show up. Time is running out, and before I get a chance to get out of there, in walks Richard Nixon. At first we are startled to see each other. I'm thinking, oh shit, I've been caught red handed, but then Nixon says to me, "where's my breakfast?" in a somewhat demanding tone. It was then I realized that he thinks I work for him. I look over to my right and there is now an offshoot kitchen in the shed that is fully furnished in 1970s style furniture and appliances. Nixon sits down at the kitchen table and opens his newspaper, while I go to work making him something to eat. He sits silently reading his paper. I'm the only one doing any talking, but I'm mocking him by imitating his voice and hand gestures. I'm saying shit like, "I am not a crook," and giving him the double V for victory hand gesture that he is famous for. He occasionally looks up from his paper with a look of confusion and concern on his face. He doesn't know what's going on, and starts to seem suspicious of me. Then a couple of dudes in black suits and sunglasses show up and say, "C'mon, it's time to go." I suspect that they are secret service. Side note: I'm probably dreaming about Nixon because I recently watched a special on television that was comparing the Trump presidency to the Nixon presidency. So the vision of Nixon was fresh in my mind.

Outside, a black car is waiting. I go to get in the back seat, but it's filled with pumpkins. I have to move them all out of the way so that there is room for my mom. I don't know where we're going, but I know that we're picking up my mom along the way. So I toss all of the pumpkins behind the back seat into a trunk area and climb in. This is actually the last I see of Nixon. I don't think he ever got in the car. Next thing I know, I'm sitting in the back seat with my mom and the two secret service dudes are in the front seat. We end up driving to a house on Summit Avenue. In real life, Summit Avenue is an area of Saint Paul where fantastically wealthy people live. Large plots of land with large mansions on them. Normally, the East and West bound lanes are separated by a large, grassy boulevard, dotted with large, old trees, gardens and a bike path. In my dream however, the boulevard is also occupied by large houses. We pull up to one of these houses and get out of the car. It is a Southwestern style adobe, but it has been painted powder blue instead of the traditional clay color that you would normally see. In real life, we don't have any houses like this around here.

It turns out that these secret service dudes are also double agents who are looking for incriminating evidence against Nixon as well, and they think the guy who lives in this house is just the one to get it for them. He is like a black market dealer who has connections. I don't recall my mom being present anymore for the rest of the dream, but me and the two secret service guys enter the house. As we are approaching on foot, the one SS guy says to me, "You just keep quiet and let us do all the talking." On the inside, the house is like a museum of avant-garde art. Weird porcelain statues of body parts. Strange paintings hanging on the walls. The main room that we enter is mostly white and contains many small stair cases that lead to different levels of marble floors, each one displaying different statues and paintings. It’s almost like an M.C. Escher painting. There is a sunken living area in the center with some furnishings. The guy who lives there is the guy who played Nick Tortelli (Carla's sleazy ex-husband from the television show Cheers). He's probably in my dream because I recently saw that guy on an episode of The Last O.G. His wife is sitting on a couch in the living area. She is being played by Maureen Collins who used to be one of the cast members of Mad TV back in the day and also has a reoccurring role on Parks and Recreation as a news media person. I saw her on a recent episode of P and R and so that's probably why she is in my dream as well. The guy (who I will refer to as Nick from this point on) is standing at a counter with his back turned to us as we enter the house. He is putting something into what appears to be a secret safe located under a porcelain sink basin. This is hard to explain. The sink basin rises up out of the counter top on hydraulics or something, revealing a safe underneath (not unlike a safe that is located behind a painting). He then hits a secret button and the sink recesses back into the counter top, completely hiding the safe that is underneath. Now it just looks like any other normal wash basin and functions as one too. He turns to greet us as we enter. "Please, come in and make yourselves comfortable," he says. He is very hospitable. I make my way to the sunken living room where his wife (who I will call Maureen from this point on) is sitting, while the two SS guys walk off with Nick to negotiate a deal to get information about Nixon.

As I sit there with Maureen, I can't help but notice that she looks very familiar, but I can't put my finger on it. I ask her if we have met before and she tells me, "Yes, you guys were here not too long ago for the buyers convention." By "you guys," she is talking, not about me and the SS dudes, but rather me and the other managers that I used to work with when I was running a game store in real life (Games By James). I worked there for over ten years and we used to have to go to these annual buyers conventions where vendors got a chance to show off their latest products. These were always held in convention centers and never in private houses, but for some reason in my dream, it had been held in a house. As soon as she said that, I remembered who she was, and I said something to the effect of, "Oh yeah, I remember. You had some games set up right over there," as I pointed to a long hallway that was behind me. She was nodding her head and said, "Yes, that's right." She seems kind of perturbed that I didn't recognize her though and her responses had a snarky tone to them.

After a few minutes, the three men return. The two SS guys seem disappointed. They were unable to negotiate a deal to get the information they were looking for. "C'mon, let's go. We're done here," the one SS guy says to me and motions towards the door. I get up to leave and as we are walking toward the door, I get an idea. Maybe flattery would work. As we passed a statue of a giant pair of lips hanging on the wall, I point to it and say to Nick, "I like that. You know, I always thought it would be cool to have a bathtub faucet that was a giant mouth that water came spilling out of" (that actually would be pretty cool in my opinion). His eyes lit up. He thought that was a fantastic idea. He was so glad that someone else could appreciate fine art. My compliment worked and, after some consideration, he decided to give us the information we were looking for. Then he invited us to attend a party that was going on in another part of the house.

He led us through the house to a large screen porch (for lack of a better description). Maybe about 10,000 square feet. There were several dinner tables set up in there. People were sitting around talking, laughing, drinking, eating and having a good time. There was a large open area that was being used as a dance floor. A band was playing in one corner of the room, featuring a rather flamboyant male lead singer. I don't recall the song. There was a piano in the background that people were sitting on, but it was not being used by the band. Lots of people had gathered and were listening to the performance. I parked myself in a chair directly opposite from the band, about maybe 50 or 60 feet away. The lead singer was carrying a hockey stick for some reason, and he was mingling with the audience while he was singing. At one point, he came up to me and stood right in front of me. He brought the hockey stick up above his head and brought it down fast and hard like a club. He was trying to hit me over the head with it, but I put my arms up in a defensive posture and blocked his blow. The hockey stick broke in two as he smashed it against my arms. Oddly enough, it didn't hurt or do any damage to me. Next thing I know, I'm wearing roller blades and have a hockey stick of my own. There's a loose tennis ball on the dance floor. I take to the dance floor and I start manipulating this tennis ball like a goddamn pro. The singer is trying to block my shots, but I'm out maneuvering him like crazy. He doesn't stand a chance. I shoot the ball into the area where the rest of the band is set up. He's trying to stop me, but he can't. I'm hitting the drum set and some of the other musicians, but they never stop playing. They just try to duck my shots. The lead singer has stopped singing though and he has a concerned look on his face as he is unable to stop me. I get the ball on the rebound several times and I'm doing all kinds of trick shots. At one point, I scoop the ball up into the air with my stick and hit it like a baseball. I never played league hockey as a kid, but I do have a stick and skates in real life, and I've played plenty of neighborhood games. I can hold my own, but in my dream, I'm much better than I am in real life.

This is about all I remember. I must have woke up at this point. I don't know exactly what the evidence was that I obtained, but it must have been pretty valuable because Nixon was in fact brought down. Dick was tricky, but not as tricky as me.

#dreams

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loadacademy575 · 3 years

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Beyond A Steel Sky Soundtrack

Way FourArtistBernard KirschenbaumYear1976Typestainless steelDimensions250 cm × 220 cm × 240 cm (100 in × 86 in × 96 in)LocationLynden Sculpture Garden, Milwaukee, WisconsinCoordinates: 43°10′34.6″N87°56′10.4″W / 43.176278°N 87.936222°W

Beyond the Supernatural, a 1980s role-playing game; Stormfront Studios, a U.S. Video game developer originally named Beyond Software 1988–1991; Literature. Beyond, a 2015 non-fiction book by Chris Impey; Beyond (comics) (set-index article), things in comics called Beyond, including: Beyond (Virgin Comics), a 2008 series from Virgin Comics. His last major song was a reach back in time when things weren’t so complicated. Grover Washington Jr.’s sax and a steel pan play you to a beach, blanket for two, a musical safe haven where he.

Way Four is a public art work by artist Bernard Kirschenbaum at the Lynden Sculpture Garden near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The stainless steel sculpture is an open circle that creates an orbit for two triangles; it is installed on the lawn.(1)

The Metropolis scenery is heavily inspired by the architecture of Hugh Ferriss, while the film's music is taken from the 1948 Superman serial composed by Mischa Bakaleinikoff. For the animation work, the storyboards were done digitally, but the character animation itself was hand-drawn on paper before each frame was scanned and digitally. Apple’s new Apple Arcade subscription-based gaming service is basically Apple’s way of helping customers sort through the chaff in the App Store, as the highly curated service features premium.

See also(edit)

References(edit)

^Buck, Diane (1995). Outdoor Sculpture in Milwaukee: A Cultural and Historical Guidebook. Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin. pp. 182–183. ISBN0-87020-276-6.

Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Way_Four&oldid=935129731'

Five years after she debuted with An Ember in the Ashes, Sabaa Tahir is finally bringing her beloved story to a close. A Sky Beyond the Storm finishes the story Tahir began in her 2015 bestseller, but the journey has been much longer for author herself. 'I began writing Ember 13 years ago,' she tells Bustle. 'I have spent more than a decade of my life writing, breathing, laughing, mourning and celebrating with my characters. They are a part of me, as familiar to me as my hands or my face. So when I wrote the final words on the final page of the final book, I felt as though I was saying farewell to my best friends, to a piece of me.'

An Ember in the Ashes launched at a time when multi-doorstopper YA fantasy series — think Victoria Aveyard's Red Queen and Sarah J. Maas' A Court of Thorns and Roses — were at their height. But as an #OwnVoices novel, written by a Pakistani American woman and starring multiple characters of color, Ember was unlike most of its peers. It was the first in a long line of YA fantasy novels from South Asian and Muslim authors, hitting store shelves ahead of Roshani Chokshi's The Star-Touched Queen, Swati Teerdhala's The Tiger at Midnight, and Hafsah Faizal's We Hunt the Flame.

But according to Tahir, there's still much work to be done to diversify YA publishing. 'Over and over, authors from marginalized groups are told, 'We already have a book like this,' or 'We already have an author like you.' But books by marginalized authors shouldn’t be a quota you fill,' she says. 'How many vampire books written by white authors? Dozens. I’ve nothing against that, but authors from marginalized groups deserve the same respect. Just because authors have similar experiences or ethnic backgrounds doesn’t mean their stories will be identical. We contain multitudes and our work is meaningful and distinctive.'

While Tahir doesn't have any immediate plans to return the Ember series after A Sky Beyond the Storm, she'll continue writing and pushing representation in publishing forward. 'All I can say for sure is that I want to do something different with my writing,' she says of her next project. 'Maybe explore some darker terrain.'

But before you start longing for Tahir's next work, read on for an excerpt from the hotly anticipated A Sky Beyond the Storm.

Excerpt from A Sky Beyond the Storm, exclusive to Bustle

I: The Nightbringer

I awoke in the glow of a young world, when man knew of hunting but not tilling, of stone but not steel. It smelled of rain and earth and life. It smelled of hope.

Arise, beloved.

The voice that spoke was laden with millennia beyond my ken. The voice of a father, a mother. A creator and a destroyer. The voice of Mauth, who is Death himself.

Arise, child of flame. Arise, for thy home awaits thee.

Would that I had not learned to cherish it, my home. Would that I had unearthed no magic, loved no wife, sparked no children, gentled no ghosts. Would that Mauth had never named me.

“Meherya.”

My name drags me out of the past to a rain-swept hilltop in the Mariner countryside. My old home is the Waiting Place — known to humans as the Forest of Dusk. I will make my new home upon the bones of my foes.

“Meherya.” Umber’s sun-bright eyes are the vermillion of ancient anger. “We await your orders.” She grips a glaive in her left hand, its blade white with heat.

“Have the ghuls reported in yet?”

Umber’s lip curls. “They scoured Delphinium. Antium. Even the Waiting Place,” she says. “They could not find the girl. Neither she nor the Blood Shrike has been seen for weeks.”

“Have the ghuls seek out Darin of Serra in Marinn,” I say. “He forges weapons in the port city of Adisa. Eventually, they will reunite.”

Umber inclines her head and we regard the village below us, a hodgepodge of stone homes that can withstand fire, adorned with wooden shingles that cannot. Though it is mostly identical to other hamlets we’ve destroyed, it has one distinction. It is the last settlement in our campaign. Our parting volley in Marinn before I send the Martials south to join the rest of Keris Veturia’s army.

“The humans are ready to attack, Meherya.” Umber’s glow reddens, her disgust of our Martial allies palpable.

“Give the order,” I tell her. Behind me, one by one, my kin transform from shadow to flame, lighting the cold sky.

Beneath A Steel Sky Soundtrack

A warning bell tolls in the village. The watchman has seen us, and bellows in panic. The front gates — hastily erected after attacks on neighboring communities — swing closed as lamps flare and shouts tinge the night air with terror.

“Seal the exits,” I tell Umber. “Leave the children to carry the tale. Maro.” I turn to a wisp of a jinn, his narrow shoulders belying the power within. “Are you strong enough for what you must do?”

Maro nods. He and the others pour past me, five rivers of fire, like those that spew from young mountains in the south. The jinn blast through the gates, leaving them smoking.

A half legion of Martials follow, and when the village is well aflame and my kin withdraw, the soldiers begin their butchery. The screams of the living fade quickly. Those of the dead echo for longer.

After the village is naught but ashes, Umber finds me. Like the other jinn, she now glows with only the barest flicker.

“The winds are fair,” I tell her. “You will reach home swiftly.”

“We wish to remain with you, Meherya,” she says. “We are strong.”

For a millennium, I believed that vengeance and wrath were my lot. Never would I witness the beauty of my kind moving through the world. Never would I feel the warmth of their flame.

But time and tenacity allowed me to reconstitute the Star — the weapon the Augurs used to imprison my people. The same weapon I used to set them free. Now the strongest of my kin gather near. And though it has been months since I destroyed the trees imprisoning them, my skin still trills at their presence.

“Go,” I order them gently. “For I will need you in the coming days.”

Beyond A Steel Sky Soundtrack Cast

After they leave, I walk the cobbled streets of the village, sniffing for signs of life. Umber lost her children, her parents, and her lover in our long-ago war with the humans. Her rage has made her thorough.

Beyond A Steel Sky Soundtrack Trailer

A gust of wind carries me to the south wall of the village. The air tells of the violence wrought here. But there is another scent too.

A hiss escapes me. The smell is human, but layered with a fey sheen. The girl’s face rises in my mind. Laia of Serra. Her essence feels like this.

But why would she lurk in a Mariner village?

I consider donning my human skin, but decide against it. It is an arduous task, not undertaken without good reason. Instead I draw my cloak close against the rain and trace the scent to a hut tucked beside a tottering wall.

The ghuls trailing my ankles yip in excitement. They feed off pain, and the village is rife with it. I nudge them away and enter the hut alone.

The inside is lit by a tribal lamp and a merry fire, over which a pan of charred skillet bread smokes. Pink winter roses sit atop the dresser and a cup of well water sweats on the table.

Whoever was here left only moments ago.

Or rather, she wants it to look that way.

I steel myself, for a jinn’s love is no fickle thing. Laia of Serra has hooks in my heart yet. The pile of blankets at the foot of the bed disintegrates to ashes at my touch. Hidden beneath and shaking with terror is a child who is very obviously not Laia of Serra.

And yet he feels like her.

Not in his mien, for where Laia of Serra has sorrow coiled about her heart, this boy is gripped by fear. Where Laia’s soul is hardened by suffering, this boy is soft, his joy untrammeled until now. He’s a Mariner child, no more than twelve.

But it is what’s deep within that harkens to Laia. An unknowable darkness in his mind. His black eyes meet mine, and he holds up his hands.

Beyond A Steel Sky Soundtrack Download

“B-begone!” Perhaps he meant for it to be a shout. But his voice rasps, nails digging into wood. When I go to snap his neck, he holds his hands out again, and an unseen force nudges me back a few inches.

His power is wild and unsettlingly familiar. I wonder if it is jinn magic, but while jinn-human pairings occurred, no children can come of them.

“Begone, foul creature!” Emboldened by my retreat, the boy throws something at me. It has all the sting of rose petals. Salt.

My curiosity fades. Whatever lives within the child feels fey, so I reach for the scythe slung across my back. Before he understands what is happening, I draw the weapon across his throat and turn away, my mind already moving on.

The boy speaks, stopping me dead. His voice booms with the finality of a jinn spewing prophecy. But the words are garbled, a story told through water and rock.

“The seed that slumbered wakes, the fruit of its flowering consecrated within the body of man. And thus is thy doom begotten, Beloved, and with it the breaking — the — breaking —”

A jinn would have completed the prophecy, but the boy is only human, his body a frail vessel. Blood pours from the wound in his neck and he collapses, dead.

“What in the skies are you?” I speak to the darkness within the child, but it has fled, and taken the answer to my question with it.

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symbianosgames · 7 years

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Kate Walker has been in a wooly limbo for far, far too long, but at last her tale comes to the last panel of its triptych. Syberia 3 is slated to be released on April 25th, finally, after years of delays and funding problems. When we last saw our intrepid lawyer-turned-adventurer, the year was 2004 and her mobile phone was a barbaric monochrome affair that only worked as a phone. But, mercifully, the will to tell this never flamed out and we now have a Syberia installment for our times.

If the preview I was given at GDC 2017 is any indication, we’re due for a fascinating story that might just be worth a thirteen year wait--and far from feeling like a dated throwback to a long-dead era of gaming, it’s surprisingly timely.

I looked at a section of the game that was about two thirds of the way through the story--for this I was but a passenger, scribbling my notes away. But I was able to actually get my hands on the game for the prologue and found the controls to be a thoughtfully designed puzzle in their own right.

We still have the same adventure game experience that fans of the series might expect, with items to collect, and plots advanced through Byzantine puzzles. Benoit Sokal’s delicately surreal sensibility once again spills out into a painterly world just to the side of our own. The subtitles are still that distinctive handwritten print that is also very much Sokal’s. But there are new ways of interacting with puzzles that are meant to use a full range of motion to simulate various actions.

For instance, one early puzzle saw me find a knife to use as a screwdriver to open up a control box for a switch. I was using a PS4 remote and I found I had to use all 360 degrees of control stick motion to turn the screwdriver, open and close the panel, and insert a fuse. It’s meant to imitate intuitive physical motion--"how would you interact with this object if you were actually there with it?", rather than “how would I poke at this in a videogame?” It takes some getting used to, but it has a lot of promise.

***

Of even greater importance to me is Kate Walker’s story, however. I spoke to Benoit Sokal directly about this; Walker was, after all, an example of a woman whose quest for her own independence was central to the story of the very first game. She showed what kinds of stories videogames could tell if they weren’t shackled to convention, and how a narrative of women’s liberation was not inimical to the production of a good, challenging game.

More than anything, she embodied the idea that a woman’s quest for wonder and meaning in her life was ideal for a fantastical story. So where does Syberia 3 take her? Sokal offered a few tantalizing hints.

The themes of Kate Walker’s story in this installment will center on doubt, particularly “starting to make Kate a bit darker,” in Sokal’s words. He said that he wanted to “deconstruct” her and her character in this narrative, making the most of the transformative forces that carried her through the first two games. She gave up everything in the first game--a good job, a socially advantageous marriage, her home in New York--to pursue a dream in mythic Syberia: finding a lost heir, seeing the land where mammoths still roam, and rescuing a civilization under siege. Sokal also alluded to “questions about her sexuality” that may come up in the narrative but gave few additional details. What he wanted above all was to make her story more complex.

When I took control of the game to play the prologue, she was true to form, staring down powerful men who did their damndest to make her feel foolish and weak. We find her recovering from mortal injuries in a Syberian hospital-cum-asylum, having to prove her good health to a scrutinizing scold of a doctor who tells her “you’re one of the very last representatives of a world that is fast disappearing, Ms. Walker... that no one will miss.” There are fully voiced dialogue options--voice actor Sharon Mann makes an enthusiastic and triumphant return as Kate Walker; hers is a voice that reaches across the years, stirring more than a little nostalgia for the earlier titles. But Kate’s role here is to look forward more than ever.

“Syberia 3 is about Kate’s future,” Sokal told me, “while 1 and 2 were about her past.”

That future is about deciding who she is now. More than ever, there seems to be no going back to New York. Even her traveling clothes, from the strange device she wears around her neck to her homemade snow boots, are now more of that fantastic world beyond the veil than her old life.

***

As I played through the game I felt a range of familiar sensations come back: it really was like the old Syberias but with a rich graphical and control update.

Syberia 3 is a game that truly benefits from its lavish graphical upgrades; Benoit Sokal’s vision takes flight here as his gorgeous drawings and paintings come to life with hitherto unmatched fidelity. The world through which Kate Walker learns and grows is one that bores like a tunnel through everything we think we know, a dreamscape that assembles the familiar into beautifully strange gardens.

The mid-game level I was shown by a Microid’s developer takes place in Sokal’s vision of Pripyat, Ukraine--the ghost city that once housed Chernobyl’s workers and families. You and a band of Syberian tribespeople known as the Youkols are making your way through abandoned Metro tunnels, but come across an impasse that requires you to send an automaton to the irradiated surface to find the tools to clear it. Throughout the game you see desiccated or decaying Socialist realism, just as you did in the other installments. I asked why that aesthetic seemed to fascinate Sokal.

He talked about wanting to make a world “fantastique et monstreuse,” and that the “paradox of Soviet civilization,” which his Ukrainian family grew up with, was ideal for exploring that blend of fantastic and monstrous.

“[Pripyat] has become paradise on Earth for the wolf packs prowling about the buildings,” he said. “There are ruins where the vegetation is sprouting everywhere you look and where you can see bison wandering the streets. The place is both horrible and fantastic. The contrast between such terrible misfortune and the abandoned beauty is inspiring.” One of Pripyat’s most iconic places, the abandoned amusement park, is given new life in its Syberia 3 counterpart, Baranour.

The brutal realism of Soviet architecture contains its own beauty, even as the fires of its industries devastated countrysides; but there was also beauty in the stark contrast between that pollution and the ways in which nature endured. Sokal spoke of a childhood memory where he beheld “little white flowers blooming on the trees amid a sooty countryside, blackened by factories.” It is, he said, “the most horrific and amazing background for that little white flower.” That image, which he calls a paradox, inspired much of the art direction for the series.

In Syberia 1, Kate Walker dynamiting a massive statue of Soviet Man blocking the railroad tracks was almost painfully on the nose in its gender and political commentary, leaving behind a dead factory and cosmodrome where a drunk cosmonaut finally achieved his dream of going to space. In each game, Walker explores dreamscapes of ruin that echo what many Russians and Eastern Europeans saw over the last two decades. Fallen statues, fallow fields, cold and empty factories, ashy dachas. In finding the beauty of these places, Sokal uses them as a seedbed for the wondrous fantasies Kate Walker discovers; aviaries, beautiful forests, waterfalls, icy wonderlands where mammoths herd together.

That white flower of beauty persists and blooms into something all the more enchanted in Syberia 3, and as with Dragon Age’s Morrigan, Walker makes it her mission to learn about and protect what is magical in this world against the final revenge of the machines.

***

That theme emerges in a surprisingly timely form. The overall thrust of Syberia 3 was described to me by one of the Microids developers thusly: Walker and the Youkol people, whose nomadic way of life has been dictated by the migrations of sacred snow-ostriches, are trying to flee from fascists who are attempting to assimilate them into a sedentary, “civilized” way of life. The Youkols’ culture is the “fast disappearing world” that Walker’s condescending doctor spoke of, after all. In the face of that, she becomes an outlaw to help the Youkols, hunted by the regime and a private detective who will stop at nothing to put their march across Syberia to an end.

Walker must endure all of this and make critical choices as she helps lead the Youkols and their snow-ostriches to “the promised land.”

Syberia has always been about journeys, and this tale of fascists trying to stop a religious minority from enjoying the transformative power of travel is gut-wrenchingly current. That pursuit of freedom through motion is a theme from Sokal’s own life. “The story of Europe is just that,” he said, “wandering from country to country. In Syberia you see my story of the 20th Century, traveling by train.” He referred to the memorable train journey that defined Walker’s alchemical trip through the first game, adding “the train of Syberia is the train of Europe.” He envisions it as a spinal throughline, connecting cultures and changing people in a world where another country and another language were an hour away by rail, even in a Europe divided by walls.

Now, powerful forces wearing uniforms and flying in rusty Sikorsky attack helicopters conspire to end the journey of Walker and the Youkols; the stakes are higher, as they should be for the last entry in a trilogy. But from what I saw in the bits of the game I had access to, it’s not so heavy-handed as to turn the meditative and cerebral Syberia series into an explosive action-adventure hellscape.

The theme and feel of the series endures; perhaps like a white rose.

Katherine Cross is a Ph.D student in sociology who researches anti-social behavior online, and a gaming critic whose work has appeared in numerous publications.

#IFTTT #Blogger

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symbianosgames · 7 years

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***

“Syberia 3 is about Kate’s future,” Sokal told me, “while 1 and 2 were about her past.”

***

As I played through the game I felt a range of familiar sensations come back: it really was like the old Syberias but with a rich graphical and control update.

***

Walker must endure all of this and make critical choices as she helps lead the Youkols and their snow-ostriches to “the promised land.”

The theme and feel of the series endures; perhaps like a white rose.

Katherine Cross is a Ph.D student in sociology who researches anti-social behavior online, and a gaming critic whose work has appeared in numerous publications.

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes