GamerNode: Columns - God-Given Talent

God-Given Talent

Plunging back into the realm of Too Human this week, it began to become a persistent thought that perhaps videogames are butchering and manipulating mythology to serve as a basis for their own universes. Sometimes it's a lack of narrative-based creativity on the behalf of the scriptwriters, and sometimes simply a studio of Viking-obsessed developers determined to bring that beer and horned helmets feeling to our living rooms.

It begs the question; why are developers substituting original storytelling for the same tired old myths we'd prefer to keep in the museum in their true format, and warping them into game-worthy versions of their original incarnations? I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't remember Thor ever being more than fifty percent machine in any of the tomes of Norse mythology I read. I don't really remember Jormungand being a huge battleship instead of a big sea monster, either.

With games such as Rise of the Argonauts being released recently, and their subsequent poor reviews across the board, I wonder if they might have been better received had the developers simply created a gaming experience based directly on the text and nothing else. Adultery, cyclopean titans, witches; it's Oblivion with a boat, so why butcher it? Shadow of the Colossus is an amazing title, and yet no one ever thought that Hercules has taken out monsters twice that size without the horse?

Admittedly, the protagonists in mythological texts, be it Greek, Norse, Egyptian, or otherwise, are usually very predictable and generic. But taking this into account, could we not simply remove the avatar offered to us by the text, and replace him or her instead with someone completely different? I'd be interested in playing as Jason's second-in-command, or perhaps one of the lesser Norse gods. The fantastic Paper Mario series used this to great effect, with Luigi relaying tales of his own adventures to Mario every time you visited. You got the impression that he was simply a bystander to Mario's greatness, but still played a significant part in the orchestration of plot events.

Mythology has always been the inspiration for a lot of effective character stereotypes and genres of narrative, from horror to your title-a-month action shooter. The overcoming of great obstacles, the epic journey across harsh and unforgiving terrain; these are all staple-marks of the legends that came before us. Even the recent industry obsession with the "coming Apocalypse" derives from the Norse end-of-the-world tale, Ragnarok.

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