"I am the last pillar."
- Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (PC / Playstation)
I spent a high school summer with my Playstation. I purchased a game for $45. In it I was undead, banished. I solved puzzles involving bells, light and the manipulation of objects in space. This was after my brother had lost interest in watching me play. Without him I had no copilot. I often got disoriented, wandering the same pathways again and again. I experienced loss of direction and failure of memory.
Despite this, I consumed plenty of souls and quickly advanced in rank. One Sunday I had a friend over. We went directly to my basement and I started up the Playstation. I was at a temple named "The Historical Origin of Existing Things". I entered the temple and presented the workings of the game. Fiddling with the controller, I displayed my mastery of the game and explained to him that imaginary violence is always justified. "It's the reforming work of civilization," I said.
While I was explaining my ideas I wandered around the temple aimlessly, jumping off cliffs and cutting walls. Somehow I fell between two polygons and into the ground. In this space nothing was recognized as truth and everything was perceived as violence against reality. The other characters in the game gathered around to look down on me as I struggled to move, beneath the earth and above the temple. They stared at me, ignoring my paralyzed state.
I was perceived as a fixed star. To the others, the temple and its broken dimensions were merely a reminder of the superficial character of modern philosophizing. Their state of mind paralleled the tragic psychological development of our spiritual life during the 21st century.
As I struggled with the controls, my friend expressed concern. He noted that morose existentialism wouldn't get me anywhere. He said that my attitude transforms everything into a reminder of inevitable loss. As an antidote to tragic narratives, he passed time in online worlds where sentient cacti and bouncing lizards prevented negative meditation. He bounded across a candy-colored fantasy pastiche with his distant lover. He missed her, but he knew he would see her again. He insisted that comfort and intimacy were still possible, and that emotions were not entirely dictated by our environment. He said that it's not necessarily cynical or nihilistic to feel good. He told me that he wanted me to experience life, no matter how damaged it might seem.