Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)

[Jacek_Pudlo]

@Peter Pears

Funny. Where you see trivialising, I see an opening scene which, in retrospect, is rather heavy handed in its symbolism, but which as a mood-setter did a fine job of making me expect a certain setting, only to yank the rug from under my feet later on.

You’re reducing the game to its twist-value.

@Peter Pears

It’s bugging me a bit that no-one seems to talk much about their first experience of the game - where the main theme isn’t made clear.

That’s the consequence of reducing the game to its twist-value. It becomes a disposable item, since it can only surprise you once.

@Peter Pears

I’m perfectly happy with letting a certain symbol be less meaningful if it’s to communicate something to me as a player/reader. Yes, it’s better if I can later dissect the symbol and see how rich it is, but if it worked the first time around, I’m happy.

When you release a literary text – and I believe IF games are literary texts – you are inviting people to visit your planet. Planet Thornton has a department of classical studies, a gay bar frequented by Caesar, a seedy strip club full of T.S. Eliot-quoting drunks, a statue of Pynchon, a cheeky Space Moose and a bunch of other stuff. Planet Gijsbers is dimly lit. It’s hard to see much, and the little you do see is symbolic, never literal, always referring to something beyond itself. As you explore Planet Gijsbers and realise that the axe isn’t really an axe, that it can’t be swung, and that the wife object isn’t even a proper object but a dumb noun with an EXAMINE routine attached to it, you come to the conclusion that you’ve been invited to the planet of a young man who is a bore to his friends and a nag to his family and whose imagination couldn’t fill a thimble, much less a planet.