With a Terrible Fate

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is here! In preparation for diving into a brand-new, Zelda-centric Zelda adventure, join Dan and Aaron—neither of whom had started this new journey at the time of recording—as they return to their roots as Zelda fans and analysts, exploring the range of representations and symbolisms Princess Zelda has borne throughout the years. How can Nintendo's stance toward spin-offs and experimentation inform our approach to Echoes of Wisdom? What do Zelda's transformations across decades of games reveal about the essence of her character and the virtues undergirding Zelda's universe? What can the evolving dimensions of Zelda and Link's relationship with each other, Ganondorf, and the player illuminate about the good and bad aspects of control? Listen in and find out!

Spoilers for: Mulholland Drive, I Think You Should Leave, and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, The Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Phantom Hourglass, A Link Between Worlds, and Tears of the Kingdom.

References:

Hughes, Dan (2017). "Does The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Belong in the Video Game Canon?" With a Terrible Fate.

——— (2015). "Link the Gaijin: The Outsider God and the Hero in The Legend of Zelda." With a Terrible Fate.

Suduiko, Aaron (2015). A Comprehensive Theory of Majora's Mask. With a Terrible Fate.

——— (2020). "The Horror of Code Vein is You." With a Terrible Fate.

——— (2023). "Tales of the Abyss, Kabbalah, and Gaming as a Spiritual Act." With a Terrible Fate.

What is the value of a PlayStation 5 Pro, and which console technologies beget innovations in video-game storytelling? Especially with the advent of a 30th-anniversary PS5 Pro, the time is right to dive into a conversation surveying some memorable moments in tech-grounded narrative innovations from the PS1 onward.

What difference do graphics and load time really make to interactive stories? Where do gimmicks end and innovation begin in inventions like motion-controlled peripherals and VR? How might trends in game development reveal ideals like "immersion" and a player's sense of "entitlement to the world" underlying which new technologies make it to market and which don't? As players, what creative ways can we discover to experience new design standards in our favorite series, even in the absence of a new console? Listen in and find out!

Be on the lookout for Kingdom Hearts III spoilers, as well as structural spoilers for the layout of story in Black Myth: Wu Kong. (And please forgive Aaron's Tales-addled mind misnaming the Eikons and Titan in Final Fantasy XVI!)

References

Cohen, Skylar. "You Only Launch Once: What Game Consoles' First Titles Need to Succeed"

Hughes, Dan. "Pokémon Rose Episode 17: 'What's That On Your Shoulder?'"

———. "Understanding Xemnas in Kingdom Hearts II"

Suduiko, Aaron. A Comprehensive Theory of Majora's Mask.

———. "Critical Review: Okami's Lessons on Religion, Video Games, and Storytelling"

———. "Final Fantasy VII Remake is the Template for 'Grown-Up' JRPGs"

———. "Game as Mind: A Psychoanalytic Explanation of Returnal."

———. "The Philosophical Justification for FromSoftware's DLC"

———. "Scarlet Nexus: The Pathos of Karen Travers"

———. Tales of Praxis

———. "Three Core Ways the Nintendo Switch Will Make New Stories Possible"

The With a Terrible Fate podcast is back with a vengeance! On the heels of Aaron's relocation to Los Angeles for his PhD, we've settled into a new weekly recording time and are excited to share more regularly scheduled conversations about the storytelling of video games with you, our dear listeners.

First on the docket is a follow-up to the conversation of our last episode, which discussed the normative and metanormative content of games that tell rich, spiritually and intellectually rewarding stories far beyond the constraints of what popular culture typically has in mind when it mentions "morality in gaming." Now, we take a step back to ask whether the tools of game design could be used to actually require and motivate gamers to engage with these philosophical levels of inquiry when they wouldn't otherwise do so. Miyazaki's games trained a generation of unsuspecting gamers to become sophisticated anthropologists and historians of lore; what could come of turning these same mechanics to the domain of values and their sources?

Mind the spoilers for Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erdtree, Mass Effect 3, the Dark Souls series, Bloodborne, Spec Ops, and Undertale. Also note some spoiler-free discussion of the Ultima series and Baldur's Gate 3.

Citations:

Hughes, Dan, "The Gwyn Moment," With a Terrible Fate, 4/14/22.

Suduiko, Aaron, "Why You Must Play Tales of Hearts R 389 Times," With a Terrible Fate, 6/5/24.

Williams, Bernard, "A Critique of Utilitarianism," in Utilitarianism: for and against, Cambridge University Press, 1973.

On this week's episode of With a Terrible Fate's podcast, join Aaron and Dan in a treacherous, invigorating relitigation of domains of video-game discourse with a reputation for being too messy and inert to matter to the ordinary gamer. The two main bugaboos on the agenda are "morality" and "immersion" in gaming. What does it mean for games to have moral content, and how can this content actually help to illuminate the many reasons we have for playing games rather than leading us into often distracting conversations about whether playing games at all is "good" or "bad"? And how might "immersion" distract us from the rich experiences games give us by dynamically playing with the distance between player and avatar, and telling stories about the changes in that distance?

Listen in to find out! Along the way, we alight on topics ranging from the value of video-game adaptations into television to the potential of games to provide players with mystic and esoteric experiences. We even make time to consider Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree, and we break down how to read the philosophical debate over our emotional reactions to works of fiction—featuring exegesis of work from Aaron's undergraduate thesis adviser and mentor, Richard Moran.

Be on the lookout for spoiler-ish discussions of The Last of Us Parts 1 & 2, the TV adaptation of The Last of Us Part 1, Silent Hill 2, Tales of Hearts R, Elden Ring, and Shadow of the Erdtree (though spoilers focus more on Elden Ring than on Shadow of the Erdtree).

Works Referenced:

Hughes, Dan (2017). "Does Silent Hill 2 Belong in the Video Game Canon?" With a Terrible Fate.

Moran, Richard. (1994) “The Expression of Feeling in Imagination.” Philosophical Review 103.1, pp. 75-106.

Suduiko, Aaron. (2017) "Guilt & Inequity in Silent Hill 2." With a Terrible Fate.

— —. (2022) "How Elden Ring Turns Its Player into an Outer God." With a Terrible Fate.

— —. (2023) "Tales of the Abyss, Kabbalah, and Gaming as a Spiritual Act." With a Terrible Fate.

— —. (2024) "Why You Must Play Tales of Hearts R 389 Times." With a Terrible Fate.

Walton, Kendall. (1978) “Fearing Fictions.” Journal of Philosophy 75.1, pp. 5-27.

— —. (1990) Mimesis as make-believe: on the foundations of the representational arts. Cambridge: Harvard University. Print.

***WARNING: THIS EPISODE IS HAUNTED!*** The characters in the first game we discussed were haunting our podcasting software, so please excuse some small technical difficulties throughout the episode and a rather abrupt kickoff on account of a lost introduction. We jump directly into spoilers for Inscryption, a game that ought to be played without spoilers, so we strongly recommend only listening to this episode after playing! (Or, skip ahead to 45:30 to pass over this discussion.)

In a belated installment of the With a Terrible Fate podcast, Aaron and Dan travel back in time to Mother's Day 2024 in a discussion ranging from the horrifying, to the metafictional, to the maternal, to the personal. We kick things off (0:00:00) with a long-overdue debrief of Inscryption following Dan's completion of it and agree that it's something you simply have to discover for yourself—as well as being something that you absolutely must discuss with others who have experienced it! Later (0:45:30), we contemplate portraits of some memorable mothers from our gaming lives. Finally (0:52:54), we wrap things up with an exploration of how single-player gaming can include a range of rich, intersecting, real-life ritual practices, which can equip us to game more mindfully if only we can attend to those rituals in our conscious mind.

Be warned (again!) for thorough spoilers of Inscryption, along with some smaller structural spoilers for elements of (in the motherhood section) Tales of Eternia, Tales of Hearts R, Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, Scarlet Nexus, Returnal, God of War & Ragnorok, and (in the ritual section) Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, along with some reprised spoilers for Inscryption.

Works Referenced

Erin Waldram, "How Majora's Mask Teaches Us to Connect With All of Ourselves"

Aaron Suduiko, "Why You Must Play Tales of Hearts R 389 Times"