Things I Played: Everybody's Gone To The Rapture - An Apocalyptic Game About The Triviality of Life

Have you thought about what you'll do when you go to the rapture? I admit I hadn't before I played Everybody's Gone To The Rapture - the latest Walking Simulator from the good folks at The Chinese Room - but now I'm left wondering. The Chinese Room's third game, released in August last year, is great but with so much praise shifted onto it already I'm struggling to find something to add to the story. It is, as stated by so many others before me, a mature and sombre game. One that leaves traces of emotion like little specks of liquid light. Actually let's leave it there because I won't find a better alliterative phrase than that.

Briefly then, Everybody's Dog and Their Rapture is set in the aftermath of an apocalypse. A quick look on Google doesn't reveal much about what kind of game it is. Even a short video doesn't say much at all. To tell you the truth, I didn't have much of an idea about what the game was really about until the last thirty minutes. Put simply and without spoilers, there's been an apocalypse, something about an infection in a small local village. It was quarantined but everybody died and we suddenly emerged afterwards. But there's nobody around. Just spectral light and audio recordings that reveal fragmented pieces of time and space in and out of order. Memories, relationships, feelings, thoughts. The expanse of fraught personalities laid bare. And cows too. A dozen of them at least.

To use an over-used comparison, the game is a lot like The Archers: At The End of The World. The small villages of Yaughton and Tipworth where the game is set, typifies a quintessential, even cliched, Englishness. We're caught in arguably the most exciting thing that's ever happened there but it only serves to reflect the lives of people who lived there before the catastrophe. This means we get to eavesdrop on past events of bishops afraid of losing control of their parishioners, nattering housewives caught up in pointless gossip, unfaithful husbands worried about getting caught, and even scientists trying to fix things to the bitter end. You know; ordinary folk dilemmas.

This means that unlike most media, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture gets its kicks from favouring banality. Filmmaker Chris Marker has a brilliant quote about this type of thing that reads 'I've been round the world several times and now only banality still interests me'. The experience EGttR offers is like a soulful sojourn to the supermarket; like time spent getting dressed in the morning; attempts at deicing your car in the middle of Winter. None of this happens int he game but it's no different to the simply drama of Stephen meeting with Lizzie for a pint, Frank crying about his cows, or Howard making sure the train signs are put up correctly. It's tender to the point of revealing how most games are fucking terrified of being so.

While the religious elements might not float everybody's boat it's hard to deny the designers have done a pretty damn good job emphasising the point that not everybody turns into John Cusack or Tom Cruise when threatened by the end of the world.

I mean, I would but not most people.

Pros:

- A wonderful setting? Never been to Shropshire but I reckon so.
- Exceptional music and voice-acting
- Respects the player's intelligence and/or attention-space

Cons:

- Too slow for some? Probably is.
- Emotional events can be a tad hit and miss.
- I saw some scaffolding go through a chair. And grass doesn't grow on roads, I think.

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Things I Played: The Talos Principle - A Game Where An Android Ponders The Meaning of Life

I once read a quote by one of the writers of The Talos Principle which said something about how video games are a great medium for tackling philosophical topics. While I've never been able to find the quote every time I've looked for it, I do remember the reason being something about games and philosophy requiring the same type of thinking. Obviously, that isn't always true; some games are simply about blowing things up for fun, but not all of them deal in the vicarious thrill of destruction. One example being said writer's game, The Talos Principle which works both as a puzzler and a rumination on the self-sustaining nature of technology.

The core experience of The Talos Principle is a puzzle game. It plays a bit like Portal or Antichamber but rather than charming anti-heroes or eclectic aesthetics, the game offers more by way of philosophical conundrums. In the beginning, there are words and these words come from Elohim, the game's central Deity figure who presides over a kingdom for which you are the only inhabitant. He's convincing speaker and wants us to solve puzzles to prove ourselves worthy. But do we abide by His plans? Or do we defy him to strike an essence of free will? And if we do does that mean our actions are the result of our desire or that of pre-determined Universe? Oh, and why is life so hard?

Okay, I added that last one in because life is hard but The Talos Principle is all about these types of rhetorical questions. Aside from a cacophony of puzzles involving electrical jammers, light refractors, and time-travel, it also engages on subjects involving knowledge, reason, and self-doubt. Topics range as far and wide as the ethics of artificial intelligence, Ancient Egyptian concepts of soul-body dualism, and twentieth-century neuroscience and the story provides a non-self-effacing yet non-pretentious look at the manner in which we can feasibly say to know our reality. It also features a snarky, critical piece of AI named the Milton Library Assistant, named after one of the game's chief influencers, John Milton, whose letters crop up a fair bit throughout.

While I admit I became a bit bored of the puzzles towards the end, preferring instead to ponder over the thrilling text logs, the majority of the game proved overwhelmingly positive. It's easily one of the best I've played in the past few years and it's convinced me that video games and philosophy can indeed go hand in glove. I noted too that it required a strong scientific approach to solving puzzles - hypothesise; take action; etc - and thus, in its own way, provides a way for science and philosophy to co-exist peacefully. Of course, we shouldn't tell the internet about that but it's largely the addition of Tom Jubert's and Jonas Kryatzes' writing that gives The Talos Principle its edge and proves Kryatzes' point that video games can indeed be used to do a spot of philosophy from time to time.

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Things I Listened To: FTL: Faster Than Light OST

Recently, I read a point about how video game soundtracks make the best music to work to. The person's theory was that the music is designed from the beginning to be part of the background and it naturally encourages attention to be spent elsewhere. While I'm not sure that's always true - especially when it comes to sweeping orchestral scores - I do find myself listening to game OSTs quite a lot when working.

This seems to be especially true for a lot of modern indie game soundtracks, like this one for FTL: Faster Than Light; a game I haven't played but whose soundtrack I really dig!

It's futuristic-yet-minimalistic score really works a treat as a divider between it and the terrifying silence of the real world. Have a listen!

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