Was playing Bastion – more on that later – when it suddenly occurred to me that I had to quit the game and do the blog/lunch thing, and I had nothing.
Nada. Zip. Not a thought in my head as to what to write about. Mind so empty that you can hear the wind whistle through it.
So I guess this is one of those days when I just sort of mess around.
What a great sound. Part rock, part blues, part hot jazz, all fun.
My word, are the words coming slow right now. And I’m not sleepy or anything.
I just rolled a natural 1 on my blogging roll today, I guess.
Anyhow, Bastion. Acquired it in the wee hours of the morning. Was itching for a new game and it was the second-highest rated game on my Steam Wishlist.
The highest is Terraria, but after my unpleasant experience with Starbound, I am not willing to take a chance on a similar game.
My deal with Starbound : after a very cool opening sequence…
…you grab some stuff from your ship and beam down to the surface of the planet and… that is it.
You’re completely on your own. Do whatever, the game doesn’t care. You have a quest but there is zero indication of how to achieve it. You are given a quick intro to the basic controls of the game and after that, the game has told you all it’s going to tell you.
And that is way too unstructured for me. I need a plot, goals, quests, direction.
I mean, I get the idea : I am supposed to explore and dig tunnels and build structures and gather materials and so on, in the Minecraft style.
But I am not that kind of gamer. I am many things, but a self-starter ain’t one of them. That style of game is commonly referred to as a “sandbox” game, and appeals primarily to the “builder” type who loved Lego as a kid and gets great joy from building and making and arranging things.
That ain’t me.
So I returned Starbound and got Bastion instead.
It’s a hard game to describe because it’s rather unique. I supposed “action RPG” makes a good starting point. You play an enigmatic character known only as The Kid, who survived a terrible event known as The Calamity that tore his world apart, reducing it to mere floating fragments of shattered reality.
And yet, it’s done in the art style of a much more cartoonish and lighthearted kind of ARPG. It makes for a very interesting combination.
One minor annoyance is the omnipresent narrator. When I read the phrase “completely narrated” in the game’s description, I wondered what that could possibly mean.
I mean…. anything with narration is completely narrated, right?
Turns out, in this case it means “a narrator that talks a LOT”. Like all the time. And while I usually like old-timey cowboy style narration, this guy is downright obtrusive.
And always in the storyteller third person, telling me (as The Kid) what I think and feel about what is going on.
“The Kid knew that this would be a tough fight.”
“They thought they were in charge, but The Kid set them straight on that real quick.”
“The Kid could feel a warm soft breeze on his taint. ”
I’m getting used to it, but still, I never thought I would think a game had too much narration. I love that stuff!
More spoken word = good, right?
More after the break.
We’ve (Still) Got Religion
These days, it’s au courant to laugh at how way back in the 1930’s and 40’s and even in the 50’s, it was fashionable for the more optimistic intellectual types to predict that this new understanding of industry and science surely meant that the end of organized religion and all other foolish superstitions was in sight.
I mean, surely by the unimaginable year of 2021, religion would be a distant memory view with the same sort of uncomprehending horror with which we view human sacrifice or, at the very least, the same indulgent disdain with which we now view all that falderol about phlogiston and the aether.
Um, nope. Religion is still here and going strong. It diminishes over time here in the modern world, true, but it does so very very slowly.
So it’s not too outrageous to say it hasn’t lost much ground.
Where I differ from the other intelligentsia on this is that I do not consider this to be some kind of tragedy.
It is the inevitable result of the secular world’s complete failure to provide serviceable replacements for so much of what religion does for people.
Overthrowing an outdated cosmology and shooing religion out of the factories and laboratories of the world was only the beginning, and to believe otherwise takes (and took) an act of staggering ignorance.
Because what does “logic” and “reason” have to offer a grieving mother who just buried her only child? You could be the world’s leading expert on the science of grieving and it wouldn’t make it hurt any less.
To whom does a person suffering through an incredibly painful and serious illness reach out for comfort and strength? Einstein? Carl Sagan? Bugs Bunny?
Where does someone go to for guidance as to how to lead a good life? A therapist? A life coach? Doctor Phil?
And most importantly, what does science and reason offer by way of giving people a sense they have a place and purpose in this crazy huge universe of ours?
If anything, science goes in the opposite direction by reminding us how small and insignificant we are.
Until we develop the spiritual tools to offer superstition free alternatives to these and so many other religious functions, religion will be alive and well in 3021 too.
And that assumes that replacing them is even possible.
Because the truth is that religion’s unbeatable advantage is that it can give people comfort, guidance, and joy without needing to justify it.
Whatever you need, it’s got. Through it, a human being can synthesize whatever emotional inputs they need in order to continue to function.
Science can’t ever replace that. Reason needs reasons. Religion does not.
I am not religious myself. I was raised atheist and became agnostic out of politeness. I will admit that I think that in the long run, humanity would be better off without it.
But only when we have truly come up with something better.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.