December Talking Meme: Day 4

flowersforgraves asked "What video game has been most influential, impactful, or meaningful to you this year (whether you played it this year or previously)"

Man, I really like this as a question. Because sometimes things linger in your head regardless of when you last touched the source of them. Like for the past few weeks I’ve kept thinking “aim for the gaps, not the trees”, and I got that from a kid’s novel about skiing/snowboarding that I read in middle school. Or that I’ve lately been thinking about part of a Taliesin Jaffe interview I watched in 2018 about friendships cycling in and out based on physical proximity and life stages.

Anyway, video games.

This year I played a lot of Uncharted and Ace Attorney, but I would be lying if I said they were the most influental/impactful/meaningful, despite how I’ve generally enjoyed them. Solid games, not the sort to linger emotionally in my head. Butterfly Soup 2 was very good but I think it would have personally wrecked me a lot more if I’d played it in college or earlier as opposed to right now where I’m settled re:the relevant topics.

So instead I’m going to highlight Horizon Zero Dawn, even though I still haven’t played the sequel. It’s not my favorite video game story of all time nor is it my favorite video game gameplay of all time, but this year I’ve kept thinking about one of the final lines of dialogue you hear in the game, where a major character talks about her mother insisting that “You have to use your smarts to count for something, to serve life, not death.”

I dunno, “Serve life, not death” is a solid ethos. A good thing to ponder.

( some HZD specific stuff )