Time for my English major side to bleed into my interpretation of games and this time I have an excuse, we're talking about literature. Now every good Easter egg hunter knows that games make sly references to classical literature all the time. Hell, some guys are essentially video game versions of classical literature (e.g. Dante's Inferno [however regrettable that may be]). But when video games embed classical literature (or any literature for that matter) into a game, it opens up an interesting interpretative question. How does the game change the way we read that particular text and how does text change the way we experience that particular game. The theory of video games is a young one, but the literature seems to be in some sort of agreement that the difference between interpreting a video game and interpreting a piece of literature is in how one perceives the medium. We do not "read" games, instead we interact with them, making the action of "play" the central focus of a game. Now narrative structures can relate to play insofar that they embed meaning into our actions. For example, the entire Final Fantasy franchise uses narrative to make what is at best a lackluster turn based combat system meaningful. It's also the reason why games like Modern Warfare were given such high praise: shooting at people is far more gratifying when you know why you're shooting. But what happens when we work in reverse? How do we change the way we read a text given its new intertextuality within a game. Do we read it in a hierarchical sense, meaning we interpret the text in solely in the context of game? For example, the mere mention of the word "paradise" in Fallout 3 has huge connotations. Paradise is the yearning for all residents given the post apocalyptic setting. However, quite literally, the Capital Wasteland represents a Paradise that was lost. Furthermore, the Eden creation kit shows a yearning to regain paradise, much like how Adam and Eve wished to stay within Eden. Furthermore, the action of accessing the text requires you to gain "bad karma", so the text is turned into taboo for the player. What does it mean to read Paradise Lost as a text that is taboo? Do we continue down this line of interpretation, drawing parallels between the vault 101 wanderer and Adam/Eve or do we work from the opposite direction? We can examine the interpretations of those passages and then ask how does this change the meaning of the game (or reinforce meaning). Or perhaps we can use the interpretation of the passages as the organizational structure for our interpretation of its intertextuality. What I mean is if we take a critical lens to the first excerpt from Book 2, anyone who has read Paradise lost knows this is one of the angels that followed Satan in the war against God. Book 2 serves as a role call for all of the demons in hell and Moloch specifically is cited to be deceiver. What does this deception mean in terms of the game? Who is the deceiver? Are you deceiving people within the game.? The questions are endless and there is a fruitful literary and video game oriented conversation to be had. I unfortunately am no longer a college student who has the time or resources to explore these questions (ehhh I probably have the time and will probably look into it more myself), but had I been allowed, this would have probably been my senior honors thesis for English. Soon our classics will be embedded in code, used to serve as foils for a new non linear story. The quicker our scholars recognize that, a new life of interpretation will exist for video games and literature.
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