highimpactsex

blogger and game dev

no more social media. i make text games that are poorly rated in game jams and talk about cool niche stuff.


(the article spoils ending of Infidel and mentions a spoilery event in Planetfall. none of that is reflected here in this)

just finished Infidel (1983) by the late Michael Berlyn (Suspended, the Bubsy series) with the help of Patricia Fogleman and i'm quite floored by how modern the ending of the game is. linked above is an article explaining the historical context and the ending.

but suffice to say, it's refreshingly critical of the white adventurer in text adventure games. it almost peers to the futures of the MYST series and beyond by saying this kind of colonialist spelunking in video games is not okay.

this is another example of how prescient infocom as a video game company is. these text adventure games that are still ahead of our boring 2022 times when it comes to storytelling and interactivity. sure, the technology may be "rudimentary", but there's a kind of "literary" oomph that makes video game narratives today cower.

to quote berlyn in a heated exchange about the game,

Adventures are so STERILE! That’s the word. And I want very much to make them an unsterile experience. It’s what I work for and it’s my goal. Otherwise, why not just read Tom Swifts and Nancy Drews and the Hardy Boys?

the entire exchange is worth reading and it's recorded in the post i linked. it's very much about the quandaries of what makes up a Narrative Game and what is its responsibilities to the player. as jimmy maher writes,

I find this discussion fascinating because it gets to the heart of what a narrative-oriented game is and what it can be, grappling with contradictions that still obsess us today. When you boot an adventure are you effectively still yourself, reacting as you would if transported into that world? Or is an adventure really a form of improvisatory theater, in which you put yourself into the shoes of a protagonist who is not you and try to play the role and experience that person’s story in good faith? Or consider a related question: is an adventure game a way of creating your own story or simply an unusually immersive, interactive way of experiencing a story?

this game seems like it has just opened the pandora box of narrative games and we still aren't able to close that box with a good answer. i'm not sure if we'll ever get this resolved. kinda crazy that Infidel, some 1983 game, got this idea of narrative games being something abrasive to the player experience out.

my opinion is that the game would've gotten a bit more out of the idea if the game reflects your asshole protagonist more. as it stands, the ending comes out as a surprise. but i suppose that's why the ending works too.

honestly, i'm a bit unnerved by how Their Time in This World, my own game, mimics this structure lol. if some boomer played that game and assumed i played Infidel beforehand, i wouldn't be surprised... just another example of how far-thinking this game is.

it's certainly not my favorite infocom work so far, but i've got to give it credit for being an important title in the history of video game storytelling.


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