I haven't read game maven Ragnar T?rnquist's blog in awhile now, but I'm glad I hopped over there again. Turns out it's moved several times in the interim and still looks verrry frisky. Well then. Awesomely compelling writings as always — sheesh, if I could write Norwegian as well as he scribes English. There's just something about the way he punctuates his sentences and broils them with loads of "flava" that appeals to me. While he's not that prolific, he does take care on the projects he works on. I haven't played Anarchy Online and await the upcoming Dreamfall, sooo… my personal (and only-played) choice of his is The Longest Journey, a game true to its name that actually mixed illustrious fantasy and the technofetishism of my fave cyberpunk. Past, present, future, great voice acting and a triumph of the adventure when it was thought Sierra and Lucasarts-style adventures were DEAD.?How rare is that? Ahem.
In a recent entry titled Dreamfalling: the urban fantasy, Ragnar talks at great length — and candidly, too — about his vested interest in immersive cityscapes within video games. Elsewhere on his blog is a nod that the next GTA game should encompass a whole country. So, looks like there'll be a niner of cities within Dreamfall. I've only seen a few screenshots and am trying not to ruin the spoilers for subsequent chapters of the story, but it does whet the cerebral appetite. Two of my most cherished types of structures within a metropolis are A) a good airport and B) a good hotel. Put them together and that's a wonderful punch to me. The architecture, the atmosphere, the lighting (quality incandescents on those high-end check-ins contrasted with the bastard cheap-ass fluorescents in the 'port) and so much more — oh, yes, the PEOPLE. And it is about the people.
It's kinda cool to see what a Google search for "nine cities" turns up. Some pointing to recent world news, others to ancient mythology, spread all across. It's even cooler to realize how obvious an idea hypertext is but how we haven't had it until recently in all of human history. And there's a metaphor in there: underlined words, like gateways, portals, connected by roads. Like cities. Which in its own way, relates to the linked tomes of the Myst series and a myriad of dimensional travel methods portrayed in spec-fi classics (and some not-so-classics). From point A to point B, different sorts of experiences from a rustic backwater town to the advanced claustrophobia of a Los Angeles not unlike the one in Blade Runner. We want to go places.
Getting lost can be a good thing if you know how to get back. Most cities don't allow for the luxury of dropping proverbial breadcrumbs, but?in today's connected age,?a wi-fi hotspot is just around the corner and resolutions of satellite imagery and mapping devices will only get higher, providing many more magnitudes of zoom. Fine enough to count the individual hairs on your head. And the human body? It's really a universe unto itself on a picoscopic level. It can be suggested that what we see inside is what we want to see around us, hence the towering glory of skyscrapers or lavish art exhibitions which know no practicality but certainly are full of spirited, sparkling creativity.
Now, the same can be said for these virtual (as much as I like and dislike that word simultaneous) constructs that we project across the Internet. Many words wielded and welded together. A blog such as my own, each post a brick — to further that analogy — and many bricks making up a storey. Or, to play with homonyms, a story: the story of my life.