3. The Player and the Pentacle - Introduction
By Nick Jones
In the beautifully written and emotionally driven indie game, Spiritfarer, the player is charged with caring for the anthropomorphised spirits of the recently deceased. Once the spirits are ready, we must, in a bittersweet voyage across a timeless crimson sea, help them pass on. One such spirit, a somewhat snooty red and brown Falcon named Gustav, as he parts ways with us through the “Everdoor,” expresses to the player his bitter-sweet final words. This is a speech about life and death, purpose and meaning, and one that I might posit, is as important today as it was during the Palaeolithic Era, when we gathered around campfires in caves and told stories of the monsters and wonders residing in the outer dark.
“But you have to understand, Stella.” He says to the player, “That everything is but a meaningless arrangement of atoms. Everything you’ve ever known, seen or experienced - fortuitous circumstances. In the universal chaos, humanity emerged, not a tiny bit more purposeful than the rest, but with an incredible faculty: That of creating meaning, however fleeting it might be.”
As we ferry him across the red sea, surrounded by beautiful white blossoming trees, he tells us:
“I have no inherent meaning. Neither do you. But we can create, organize, put in order, and thus create purpose and meaning. Transcend the primordial chaos. All of humankind does so. We create machines that are useful - to take control. Machines like the dreaded chair, the one that subsumed me, made of me an object, but maybe, also, that made me truly realize what impermanence means. For our numerous creations only have meaning as long as they are useful. My chair, when it finally became unneeded, became once again a heap of metal. Melted back into the universal chaos, lost its inherent humanity. Usefulness is an easy way to meaningfulness, but not a trustworthy one. It vanishes as quickly as we do.”
The music quietens, it is sombre almost, as the silhouette of the Everdoor floats into view. Gustav continues:
“And so it seems the only hope humanity has for transcendence is through art. Meaningfulness pulled from our chaotic minds, not for utility, but for its own sake. And after the artist has been long gone, turned to dust, the art remains. And even after the last one of all humans will have returned to the primordial chaos, provided that we have protected it - Art will remain. And so it is, that art alone is left in our wake. The only veritable form of transcendence to ever have been in our grasp. Proof of our existence, and of our pitiful efforts to raise from the chaos, as would some unknown script from a long-gone power.”
At this, the falcon falls into silence, preening himself as we at last reach our destination. With one final embrace, the music swells and Gustav rises high into the air, glowing with a golden hue. We watch, tears in our eyes, as quietly and tragically/hopefully he disintegrates into the light, dispersed gently back to the ancient and mysterious great beyond. Through Gustav’s long-winded speech, we can discover something about the state of our world and our place within it.1 As I write this, our planet is being overwhelmed by chaos. Fascist regimes are popping up seemingly out of nowhere, bushfires are eradicating plant and animal life by the millions, the Covid-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc on populations across the planet, evil men enact unprovoked invasions of other countries, threatening thermonuclear war, and global warming promises to put an end to life as we know it. More than ever, people are searching for meaning, for a reason to all this horror, and more than ever, they are retreating into the fantastical worlds of entertainment to escape our own seemingly random one. Gustav reveals to use the secret truth of all art - it is a form of meaning - of transcendence - a way to move beyond the pain of the here and now and suggest order, structure, purpose and understanding to our lives as human beings. By entering into these worlds, we can learn and grow, and possibly even bring back tools to fix the real one that we actually live in.
People get it wrong.
We think that religion or politics might save us, might show us a better way, but both these systems are flawed. They require specific kinds of intellect or faith to explore them, resulting all too often in acts of brutality and tribalism. Story, on the other hand, is quite different. Through story (be it a good book or a provocative painting), we are offered an Everdoor of our own - a way to step out of this dimension and into another, and experience through the intangibility of the heart, purpose and meaning to the human soul.
Not A Cult Leader!
While this may sound like a theological statement for a new kind of spiritualism, I promise you it is not. I’m no cult leader and developing some kind of religious manifesto is far beyond the scope of my work. No. This is a book about Narrative Design and interactive storytelling, and how allowing greater levels of agency in your games, enables players to explore a higher realm of being - one that need not be governed by tribalism and misunderstanding, but rather collectivism and empathy. Whether you feel it or not, believe it or not, we are all connected. Our commonalities unite us, and we have far more to gain by embracing that connection than we do by rejecting it to die on hills of division. Through my studies in storytelling, I’ve come to believe that we’ve experienced this collectivism before in our semi-distant past, through the expression of folklore. Folklore has the unique capacity to engage thousands with deep messages about our own humanity, all-the-while adapting itself to the individual person or group receiving its message at the time. Through folklore, we see the transmission of ideas and beliefs across vast geographical spaces and over great periods of time. The stories change, adapt, mutate, and grow as they move and are (for the most part) resistant to extinction. As soon as one version of a folktale goes out of style, it rebuilds itself with new ideas and imagery to remain relevant for the current generation. It imbues its meanings not just in traditional “narratives” (such as myths, legends, and folktales), but also through various other motifs and practices: fashion and architecture, jokes and songs, children’s games and chants, superstitions and beliefs, food, and drink. Its reach as a mode of communication is powerful.
Today, folklore has seemingly taken a aback seat in our fast-paced, highly strung, modern society, but dig a little deeper and you can see it in action across all forms of entertainment media, urban myths, and cultural practices. As I said before, this is a book about Narrative Design in games, but it is also very much a book about folklore - in particular, the underlying story-engines that have driven this fascinating genre of storytelling throughout the scope of human history. WHile we won’t be delving too deeply into the countless stories and traditions themselves, we will be spending significant time looking into certain aspects of historical folklore (particularly elements deriving from continental Europe) to suggest a new kind of approach to Narrative Design in games, an approach built by myself and others, with the specific intention of creating space for the player to find transcendence. In short, think of it like this: If folklore is a door, then interactivity is the key, and behind that door lies the profound. An indescribable moment of bliss where we can experience self-made purpose or meaning - one that points us to the true nature of humanity - connection. So that’s it. Read on and enjoy. I’ve not held anything back here. Unlike the gnostic scholars and ceremonial magicians of our past, I’ve no desire to keep my tools a secret. Rather, I wish to share them openly with any who will listen and take on board my message. Religion won’t save us. Politics won’t save us. But stories?
They just might.
Spiritfarer. Developed by Thunder Lotus. 2020. Montreal, Canada: Thunder Lotus Games, Video Game.