The Sunday Papers
Sundays are for finally feeling human again. Before you inhale through both nostrils, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).
For Into The Spine, Yussef Cole wrote about being a freelancer in Armored Core VI. Not the cheeriest contemplation on the parallels between being a freelancer in FromSoft's mech-world and our real one, but hey, some gloominess couldn't hurt. Although I'd argue that 'success' is relative and there's always more to one's identity than the work they do.
In Armored Core VI, everyone is your competition, everyone is your enemy. Even those pilots you fight alongside in one mission will inevitably end up as your adversaries in the next. Allies and enemies alike, they’ll all wind up at the end of your gun’s barrel, whether as virtual avatars in your training simulations, there to hone your skills against, or as living, breathing combatants in the real world, come between you and the goals your mercilessly drive toward. You study their builds, their choice of armaments, their strategic approaches. Do they hold some advantage that I am not seeing? Does their laser shotgun counter my burst rifle? Do their tetrapod legs give them a height advantage over my tank treads? Do they have some secret knowledge that makes them more valuable, more worthwhile as pilots?
Cameron Kunzelman wrote about Myst's unforgettable world for Paste. Kunzelman returns to Myst's world 30-years on and finds it's not worth dwelling on what it did well technically, but moreso its general energy.
Overwhelmingly, these things are not told to us through dialogue. While there is some light exposition, it is through an absolute feeling of abandonment that all of this is communicated to players. Journals and
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