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No, this isn’t a recipe, it’s a random comedy reference.

I just finished playing through Live Forever, and oh my fucking God, it blew my tiny mind. I thought it was superb – actually, genuinely, superb. Not so very much of a game per se, being basically a series of set pieces, and enough dialogue to drown you. But, yeah, amazing stuff. Its main strengths are its storytelling, its characters and its dialogue – but it also has bucket loads of atmosphere, beautifully designed areas and some surprisingly challenging fights. I actually had a few (only mildly painful) WoW flashbacks when I was fighting some kind of Thaddius demon, and juggling electric charges between my party members. Thankfully, unlike your average raider, you can force your NPCs out of the bad shit yourself.

Despite this cavalcade of praise I am nevertheless somewhat ambivalent. Why is nothing ever simple – even pleasure. The thing is, I hate myself a little bit for liking this thing so goddamn much because, in many ways, it ought to have annoyed the fuck out of me. It’s pretentious, pseudo-philosophical, dependent on cheap narrative tricks, and so bloody metatexual it’s a wonder it hasn’t talked itself out of existence yet. Oh, yeah, and shot through with crazy Oasis references (I always preferred Blur). In short: it thinks its way cleverer than it actually is:

My God, is that a reference to the most famous line in Joyce’s most famous short story. Your erudition has slain me, sirrah.

In short: playing is akin to sitting next to a complete, but not entirely talentless, prick who takes a time out every ten minutes to shriek DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THARR in your ear:

But, damn it all to hell, it somehow works, and works beautifully. Even though it shouldn’t, which his why it’s a triple fried egg and chili chutney sandwich. I suppose the important thing is that I completely loved it. Loved it so much that I missed the latest episode of The Apprentice (another of my shameful weaknesses). Loved it so much that I actually want to play it again, even though I only just finished it. Loved it so much that it’s been tugging at my thoughts all day.

So, what’s it about? Well, that’s a good question. It consists of a variety of embedded narratives, all told by unreliable narrators (one of whom, incidentally, is you) – and it’s a story about stories, I suppose, which is to say it isn’t really about anything. There’s an ostensible plot about a gem that bestows immorality on the bearer but I think mainly what it’s saying is: “awwwhhhh.” Like Jesus:

Hmmm, this is turning into a random comedy reference post. Well. It’s a theme. Awwhhhhhh.

In terms of atmosphere, Live Forever is kind of like Beckett meets Pulp Fiction. You’ve got a bunch of lowlife scum having self-consciously philosophical discussions, punctuated by constant absurdities to remind them of their largely marginal place in the world they apparently inhabit. So, yeah Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Wankers.

In more concrete terms, here is why I loved this module:

It amused the hell out of me, basically, and showed just enough irony, just enough willingness to puncture its own gravitas, that I was able to bear the awwwwhhhhh. Also the characters were wonderful – Blood and Chief, especially. I loved them. Came perilously close to shedding a tear for them at the end.

As I say, it’s not without problems. Mileage may vary depending on your stomach for awwwwhhh and sometimes the writing, well, it tries to fly a bit too high and comes crashing down:

Uh…say what? A cocktail of literary cacophony? Swing and a miss there chief.

Similarly:

Heartless blood? Err. No. Just no.

I do feel a little churlish for mentioning these, because I think part of the reason the writing crashes and burns on occasion is connected to the fact most of the time it’s soaring. I mean, for your average NWN module I’m not in a position to point out that a couple of the high falutin phrases don’t work out, because I’m too busy weeping over the writer’s inability to place a comma. I’d rather the peaks and troughs of ambition than smooth sailing to mediocrity. See, I can torture a metaphor with the best of them.

And the other thing that really pisses me off about Live Forever is the fact the writer is a complete wanker. Now, normally I’d hesitate before calling someone a complete wanker on the Internet … or anywhere really … but firstly who’s going to care and secondly he seems to be going to plenty of trouble on his own behalf to get cosy in the wanker-zone. Specifically, he writes:

Your enjoyment will vary depending on how smart you are.

What? No! Oh no! You didn’t just say that, did you? Seriously, stop waving your dick around, you’ll have someone’s eye out. I don’t even know how to begin addressing this, but how about: “tolerance of a certain sort of undergraduate level self-referential pretension” is not the same as “smart.” And let’s leave it at that. Actually, the other thing that bewilders me is that pretty much every commenter (except VanillaGorilla, go you) seems to have taken this statement at face value. Now, I can understand people who loved the module going away, smugly satisified with this evaluation of their intelligence as bestowed by Some Dude On The Internet, but people who didn’t like the module seem entirely willing to accept that they only didn’t enjoy it because they were too dumb to get it.

One commenter, Andgalf, gives a fairly balanced perspective, concluding that he personally didn’t like it, because the dialogue is extensive and, to him, not that interesting, and the module appears to be about nothing – all of which is not only fair but absolutely correct. The author replies “I’m very pleased you took the time to play it through despite your lack of comprehension. I totally understand where the confusion comes from. I myself realized when I was writing this module that the point of it is difficult to grasp if you’re an idiot” reiterating the same bullshit he does on the vault submission, whereupon Andgalf rolls over amiably and takes it: “You’re truly a gifted artist! I really mean it! And it’s fully possible that I’m a little too dumb to understand your module. ”

My ghast is profundly flabbered.

And all this makes it slightly galling to me that I rate Live Forever as highly as I do. But we judge the work, not the creator. And I guess it’s just as well re,ally.