The romantic sublime in video games
One of my friends is going to make so much fun of me once she sees this title
Instead of doing an MFA, I’m spending a not-insignificant chunk of my free time on video games. Even now, at the ripe old age of 23, it somehow makes me feel guilty to say that as if my mum or dad is going to suddenly come around the corner and ask what I’m doing instead of studying.
Not that I would call myself a “gamer” in the strictest sense of the word – I fall very much into the casual category, where the stuff I like is more story-focused, and if a puzzle frustrates me too much (looking at you, Zelda: Skyward Sword), I’m not above simply googling the solution to progress to the next stage of the game (or just giving up entirely & asking my sister to help me).
I particularly love open-world games. Like so many others, when Zelda: Breath of the Wild (BoTW henceforth) came out in 2017, my life was completely changed. The moment when Link steps out of the shrine where he has been sleeping for a hundred years and the camera pans to reveal the lush, sweeping, incredible world that makes up Hyrule sent shivers up my spine. When paired with the soundtrack,1 it’s an incredible experience that even I, as someone who had never touched a Zelda game before this and thus had no childhood attachment to the game, felt deeply moved by the world it depicted.
There are so many things that this first encounter with the world of Hyrule that is pulled off so masterfully – the claustrophobic darkness of the shrine, the moment when Link puts his arm up to shield his eyes against the light, and of course, that moment when we realise how big the world is, and how tiny we are by comparison.
A quick definition of the romantic sublime – that moment when you feel completely and utterly emotionally overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of creation (in the literal Romantic sense, usually a natural scene, but here I’m using it loosely in the sense of artificially created renditions of nature too), to the point where you completely lose all rational thought. That’s basically exactly what I felt when I first saw the scene above. Yes, I have seen nature before, and no, I was less impressed by it than when I saw this computer-generated scene (kidding. sort of.)
As a first “serious” video game for a complete beginner, BoTW was both terrifying and eye-opening. Like Link, who has no memory of this place, we, the player, wander around this giant space, free to literally do anything, discovering stuff for the first time. However, also like Link, we are isolated, doing it all alone. A thought that I had a long time ago was that Link is really all alone in this huge world and since this is nearly a hundred years after the big cataclysmic event that I will not spoil, he has no memories of his past, or even what he is fighting for – everyone who once knew him is really old or dead. A big part of this story is that he has to purify the corrupted souls of champions who have just been sitting there, haunting these huge mechanical objects, for the last hundred years. Yes, he has some help, but after he frees them, he’s all on his own to face the final boss.
But to be fair, I was never playing this in complete isolation – my sister is my first and best gaming partner (who does all the hard bits when I get too anxious and scared to fight the bosses). However, it really does speak to the masterful execution of the game that it manages to make you feel so many things even while playing with others.
Another great game that manages to combine both aspects is Genshin Impact, which I’ve been playing for the better part of 1.5 years, and which I started during the pandemic. Once again, it’s a game I started playing with my sister because it has great co-op functions and we both immediately became absolutely obsessed with the lore that was hinted through the game, diving down deep fandom threads which claimed to know what was going to happen next. I very vividly remember sitting in my very quiet & freezing flat in Oxford, helping my sister grind artifacts for one of her favourite characters and complaining about the horrible (biased) rng generator the game uses. In a year when travel was impossible and I was mostly restricted to the tiny rooms of my flat, the game was a wonderful fantasy to be able to explore and get lost in.
Since starting it, I’ve dipped in and out of the game a few times, but recently, my friend (who has specifically requested to be referred to as Couch Gremlin) and I have been really enjoying the new midsummer event that’s being drip-fed to us. We’ve spent many a merry night over the last couple of weeks sitting on the couch and playing through the quests, having a friendly (lol) competition as to who can roll the latest 5* character. It’s super addictive, and if you happen to download it to try after reading this, let me know what you think.
While Genshin very obviously draws upon so many other great games, there’s a similar feeling of awe that you get when you first enter the world, and its scenery generates the same impact that the sublime describes. I’m very sure there’s something to be said about the sublime when used in the context of something that is artificial - is it still the sublime when it’s not “real” nature? I’m too lazy to actually parse this thought (apologies, I have a mahjong game to set up and I’m distracted by thinking about how the logistics of this is going to work with our uneven table), but there’s a lot to be said also about how our emotional receptors are constantly overwhelmed anyway, to the point where the things that we respond to are evolving and incredibly short-lived. But that is detracting from whatever the point of this newsletter was so I’m going to end it there.
Other exciting games on my list to play next (I’m always taking recommendations):
Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
Disco Elysium
The Witcher
Dark Souls (maybe, I’ve been told it’s very hard and I find it difficult to be invested in a game if I can’t beat a boss after a couple of tries)
The Ace Attorney Trilogy
Undertale
The Stanley Paradox
Maybe getting back into otome games that aren’t Mystic Messenger
To the two friends who have been patiently awaiting a video game newsletter, I hope this was satisfying! However, the more of them I play, the clearer it becomes that there’s a lot left to grapple with, so stay tuned for more terrible video game takes and MAYBE me thinking about the gothic horror found within Dark Souls…
Til next week!
Random plug, but my cousin does amazing covers of video game and anime soundtracks, go & show her some love: @pittanmusic!
Late to this but no game has given me that feeling of a tiny, claustrophobic, closed-off world expanding into infinite possibility quite like No Man's Sky. You should absolutely play it.
Had a cathartic moment playing The Return of the Obra Dinn, definitely worth a playthrough