Hello everyone! I hope you are doing well. These last two weeks have been difficult for me, as I managed to injure my ankle, and it has made for a very demanding distraction. What we have been able to do is finish the primary recording of Trinity of the Broken. I have one more read through to complete, but I am hoping that we will have it uploaded just in time for Christmas! Kayll Heath has done an amazing job bring Dante to life, and I really think you will enjoy his interpretation. In terms of writing, I am progressing slowly. I have been forcing myself to become better organized in my world building, since much of the established lore will also filter into my high fantasy series I am currently framing. As such, I have been putting everything in a wiki for quick reference. As you can imagine, it is easy to get lost in creating the lore and I end up on hours long trips down various rabbit holes.
This week I wanted to give my thoughts on the new Netflix series, Arcane: League of Legends. This was a show that I had initially blown off as a pre-teen money grab based on a game that I had played a few times upon release and quickly decided it was not for me. With the exception of the occasional tournament news, I had barely even thought of the game, let alone know anything about its characters and lore. It was only after seeing a multitude of reviews and comments that I decided to give episode one a shot, and oh my god, I am glad I did. There was no reason for this show to be that good.
First and foremost, this show is not trying to target children or pre-teens. It is most certainly made for the young adult / fantasy market. The storyline is complex, the characters are richly developed with both good and bad traits, and the world is vast and unknown, with a rich history that is often touched upon, leaving you wanting to know more about it. In its most basic description, Arcane is a story of two sisters that end up on opposite sides of an ideological war. The story takes place in the divided sister-cities of Piltover, a near utopian supercity, and Zaun, a poor and destitute slumland. A single council of upper-class elites presides over both Piltover and Zaun. A brilliant engineer, who was obsessed with magic, discovered a way to harness magical energy using technology, elevating Piltover to a major world power. Meanwhile, Zaun is on the verge of revolt, led by a criminal organization that has created a type of super steroid that temporarily transforms a person, giving them amazing strength and speed, but also makes them savage and recklessly ruthless.
What I enjoyed most about the show is how they address aspects of society that are often ignored or overlooked in most storytelling. It looks at the economic and civil aspects of the society, but it also looks into ideological differences within the opposing cultures. It looks at bias, mental illness, and coping with loss. There were so many layers set to in Arcane that you can not help but be drawn into it, and left with wanting more. I ended up watching the entire series in two days, something I almost never am willing to make the time for. If you have not checked it out yet, I highly recommend you do so. It should be obvious by now that just because it is animated, does not mean it is for children.
That leads me into the second part of my discussion, the advancement of storytelling in video games. My first game console was the Atari 2600. Games were simple in their plots, and their designs. Get the frog to the lily pad, escape the jungle, don't let the aliens destroy your cities. As the technology got better, so did the games, as well as, their plots. I still have a hard time calling Super Mario Brothers a story based game. For me, The Legend of Zelda was the first story based game I ever played, soon followed by Final Fantasy 2. While these games and stories were very linear, they were complete stories, and raised the bar for all later games. With the development of MMOs (Massive Multiplayer Online games) the developers needed more than just a story progression, or choose your own adventure style of storytelling. They needed to have a world that the players feel apart of. Most RPG (Role Playing Games) already included significant bits of lore and history that could be discovered and sought out, but eventually everything that could be included. Modern games have the ability to be ever expanding and visited in a number of ways.
Games like Kingdom Hearts have spin-off games and apps that add to the lore which appear on multiple gaming systems, as well as, mobile apps and websites. They are hiring screen-play writers and A-list actors to create an experience that is just as engaging, if not more, than the best movies or tv shows out there. I am an avid Destiny 2 player. While they had a slow start, Bungie has put together a model that spreads a story line out over the course of weeks, with aspects that connect them to the opening events of the game. This February Destiny will be releasing an expansion called Season of the Witch, a story that they have been building towards for over two years now. Not only has the main storyline been heading to this climax season, but the game has included lore that can be unlocked and discovered that provides deep and complicated connections between characters and events. It is the equivalent of experiencing The Lord of the Rings, but in your travels you begin to unlock the scraps of texts and maps that made up the Silmarillion and Atlas of Middle Earth. What used to be reserved for the most popular of fandoms is now becoming expected in any story based games, and we are better for it.
Just as we are able to lift animated movies and shows out of the stigma of children's entertainment, video games are removing the stigma of being a voice-actor, animator, playwright, director, or producer of video games as something worked on by armatures hoping to move on to "real" work. I know it has everything to do with the fact that the current game and animation creators, like me, are looking at the mediums they grew up with as viable tools to tell their story in the most vivid way possible. These people who have spent a lifetime being exposed to storytelling that was never even imagined before the 1980s. The last forty years have worked to raise the bar of entertainment to incredible heights. While there will always be a place for simplicity, I will often decompress by playing Freeflow or Candy Crush, people today have higher expectations of things they are expected to spend hours and hours upon. Even sports and racing games have career modes and require the player to manage all the little aspects of maintaining a sports team or a race car. I look forward to the future of videogames as technology continues to improve and developers are able to share their world build in ways that we fantasy writers have never been able to.
I want to thank you for giving me your time, it is invaluable and I am honored that you have shared it with me. I hope you feel it was time well spent. If you like what I am doing here, please feel free to hit the follow button, and then find me on Facebook and Twitter. May your days be fulfilling and your path be clear of trouble. All the best, and speak to you soon.
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