Driving home from church one morning full of Christ, I thought, giddy in the head almost and if not speaking in tongues at least singing in tongues in some kind of witless, wordless psalm, I turned on the radio for the twelve o’clock news and heard how a 4-year-old had died that morning somewhere. The child had kept his parents awake all night with his crying and carrying on, and the parents to punish him filled the tub with scalding water and put him in. These parents filled the scalding water with their child to punish him and, scalding and scalded, he died crying out in tongues as I heard it reported on the radio on my way back from of all places church and prayed to almighty God to kick to pieces such a world or to kick to pieces Himself and His Son and His Holy Ghost world without end standing there by the side of that screaming tub and doing nothing while with his scrawny little buttocks bare, the hopeless little 4-year-old whistle, the child was lowered in his mother’s arms. I am acquainted with the reasons that theologians give and that I have given myself for why God does not, in the name of human freedom must not, by the very nature of things as he has himself established that nature cannot and will not, interfere in these sordid matters, but I prayed nonetheless for his interference.
I confess, I haven’t read as much Buechner as I would like, but whenever I read quotes like this, I know I really need to remedy that. Another good Buechner quote:
If you tell me Christian commitment is a kind of thing that has happened to you once and for all like some kind of spiritual plastic surgery, I say go to, go to, you’re either pulling the wool over your own eyes or trying to pull it over mine. Every morning you should wake up in your bed and ask yourself: “Can I believe it all again today?” No, better still, don’t ask it till after you’ve read The New York Times, till after you’ve studied that daily record of the world’s brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible. Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day. If your answer’s always Yes, then you probably don’t know what believing means. At least five times out of ten the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, maybe more so. The No is what proves you’re human in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really Yes, it should be a Yes that’s choked with confession and tears and… great laughter.
In just a few weeks, Mrs. Opus and I will be heading to Rochester, Minnesota for the 2012 L’Abri conference. It’s been several years since we’ve attended, so we’re quite excited. I’m particularly intriguing by this year’s theme: “In the Beginning… Celebrating and Defending the Doctrine of Creation in a Naturalistic Culture”. A quick glimpse at the planned schedule reveals a number of potentially interesting seminars including:
Evolutionary Ethics: A Sound Foundation for Morality?
Created Mind vs. Accidental Brain: Naturalism and the Possibility of Reason
Philosophical and Scientific Evidence for the Creation of the Universe
Creativity in Film: from Genesis to Production
Beyond the Evolutionism-Creationism Debate: Naturalism and Theism as Conflicting Worldview Stories
Who were Adam and Eve and Why should Anyone Care?
The Uniqueness of Human Sexuality and Marriage and the Challenges for an Evolutionary Understanding of Human Origins
Miracles, Science, and the God-of-the-gaps
The Creation of Narnia and its Ecological Implications
Human Sin and Aggression: Comparing Biblical and Evolutionary Accounts
How Christian Faith Helps us to Love Science
Comic. Tragic. Brutal. The Life and Writings of Flannery O’Connor
As you can see, a number of the seminars look to deal with the relationship/interplay/tension between science and religion, which has long been a more than passing interest for me. I look forward to hearing from folks like Jerram Barrs, Denis Haack, Jack Collins, and AJ Poelarends, and I hope to blog/tweet, as much as possible, about what they have to say.
The universe is a universe of nonsense, but since you are here, grab what you can. Unfortunately, however, there is, on these terms, so very little left to grab — only the coarsest sensual pleasures. You can’t except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with a girl if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental pattern produced by the collision of atoms, and that your own response to them is only a sort of psychic phosphorescence arising from the behaviour of your genes. You can’t go on getting any very serious pleasure from music if you know and remember that its air of significance is pure illusion, that you like it only because your nervous system is irrationally conditioned to like it. You may still, in the lowest sense, have a “good time”; but just in so far as it becomes very good, just in so far as it ever threatens to push you on from cold sensuality into real warmth and enthusiasm and joy, so afar you will be forced to feel the hopeless disharmony between your own emotions and the universe in which you really live.
My Filmwell colleague M. Leary has written an intriguing essay on approaching cinema as a spiritual discipline via two concepts in Christianity and other religions: pilgrimage and intentional isolation.
One repeated theme in the broad narrative of the Bible is the positive effect of periods of withdrawal and solitude. Inasmuch as historic monastic practice shares in these important narratives, from Moses on Sinai to Jesus in the wilderness, there are precedents for temporarily disengaging oneself from the endless movement of culture and commerce. The tendency of the critic in our age is to feel that in order to comment on anything, one must have seen everything. But this sort of thinking often derives from the insistence by the marketplace that its cultural products are continually important, that each Cannes or Oscar season represents a quantum advance over the last. We need to step away from twitter and the local release schedule every now and then. It is okay to take a few months and watching nothing but Douglas Sirk films. Or even nothing at all.
I feel like this accurately describes my current state of movie-watching (and cultural engagement in general), or at least, what I want/need it to become. Of course, this state has been at least partially forced upon me with the arrival of our third child, which means I simply don’t have as much time as I once did for such things. So you could say I’m disengaging by default. And I’m starting to realize, I think, that this is OK. In fact, this disengagement from “the endless movement of culture and commerce” can be a good thing that I need to take ownership of.
I ought to start thinking about how I can better prioritize the time I have, how I can better focus my time on a small set of items (movies, albums, books, etc.) and fully explore and enjoy them. It’s the concept of going deep rather than wide.
Russell D. Moore on the importance of, and the challenges inherent in, Christ’s humanity:
The answer to this question has to do, first of all, with the one-dimensional picture of Jesus so many of us have been taught, or have assumed. Many of us see Jesus either as the ghostly friend in the corner of our hearts, promising us heaven and guiding us through difficulty, or we see him simply in terms of his sovereignty and power, in terms of his distance from us. No matter how orthodox our doctrine, we all tend to think of Jesus as a strange and ghostly figure.
But the bridging of this distance is precisely at the heart of the scandal of the gospel itself. It just doesn’t seem right to us to imagine Jesus feverish or vomiting or crying in a feeding trough or studying to learn his Hebrew. From the very beginning of the Christian era, those who sought to redefine the gospel argued that it doesn’t seem right to think of Jesus as really flesh and bone, filled with blood and intestines and urine. It doesn’t seem right to think of Jesus as growing in wisdom and knowledge, as Luke tells us he did. Somehow such things seem to us to detract from his deity, from his dignity.
I’m pretty jealous of Toronto cinephiles. Not only do they have one of the world’s premier film festivals, but they also have all kinds of unique film programs running throughout the year. Case in point: “Attack The Bloc”, an exhibition of Cold War-era sci-fi films from behind the Iron Curtain. Curated by Twitch’s Todd Brown, the exhibition features everything from arthouse fare like Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Solaris to films about blood-fuelled race cars and time travellers trying to assassinate Albert Einstein.
From Brown’s exhibition notes:
The Cold War was the unquestioned Golden Age of science fiction, as the utopian hopes and apocalyptic fears of the post-Hiroshima age, and the rising tensions of a world dominated by two great superpowers, seeped into all avenues of popular culture. Yet while we are well-acquainted with the forms these futuristic fantasies took in the United States — from the energetic exploitation fare of Roger Corman to the philosophical speculation of Stanley Kubrick to the pop-culture mythmaking of George Lucas — and such other Western-aligned nations as the UK (Doctor Who, the Quatermass series) and Japan (Godzilla and his rubber-suited kin, the sunny Astro Boy and the dystopian Akira), we are considerably less familiar with the science-fiction offerings from the other side of the Iron Curtain.
The science-fiction tradition in the one-time Eastern Bloc was as rich and varied as anywhere in the Western world, and the region's film output is every bit as diverse as our own, ranging from art-house fare to populist comedies, hilariously cheesy space operas and grand adventures. And while there are some instances of open propaganda, there are also strains of sly satire — as well as evidence that the camp and excess of the swinging sixties didn't completely pass the Soviet world by. We present here a broad range of Soviet-era science fiction, a mix of acknowledged classics and outright pulp from Russia, the former Czechoslovakia, Poland and Estonia. Bearded ladies, post-apocalyptic wastelands, robot companions, vampire cars and outbursts of random dancing all wait within. Join us, comrades!
Here's a complete list of the films being shown at the exhibition:
I’m really tired these days. How tired? Well, I’m not entirely sure about my ability to string together coherent sentences on a regular basis. But when I look at this photo… well, I’m not any less tired, but it does give me some perspective.
I’ve loved the music of Saint Etienne for years. The club-friendly rhythms, the oh-so-catchy melodies, Sarah Cracknell’s exquisite voice… it all just works for me. So any day there’s a new Saint Etienne song is a very good day as far as I’m concerned. “Tonight” is the first single from the trio's first album since 2005’s Tales From Turnpike House.
The 80’s influence is still there, but muted, and Philip Ekström’s crooning, soaring vocals won’t be mistaken for anyone else’s. Those expecting the group to go full-on Balearic à la their producer’s former project might be disappointed, but most folks will probably just count it as yet another lovely cut from the always-consistent Mary Onettes. As for myself, it’s definitely growing on me, but it’s not quite the departure I was expecting from a collaboration with Lissvik. I’m still looking forward, though, to seeing how the partnership shakes out over the course of the full EP.
Love Forever will be released on February 28, 2012.
So science is bearing out what we already know. When having an aesthetic experience, the self-conscious parts of the brain are literally shut down, turned off. When they open back up, the aesthetic experience disappears, becomes an object for your remembering self to look at, discuss, inspect.
You cannot be both aware of yourself and absorbed in a work of art—whether or not the work of art is good is not important for this discussion; the test subjects in Malach’s study were watching The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Self-consciousness then is an an-aesthetic. I know it’s a stretch to call what the boys at the dance were doing an aesthetic experience. They were just boys, as they say, being boys. But the girls at the dance were self-conscious, and could not fully enjoy the music because of it.
[...]
[W]hen we are lost in a work of art, and our souls are open to it and fully alive, the question of whether or not we are happy is meaningless.
The newly released video for Carlos Forster’s “Family Tree” combines footage from old surfing movies that Forster watched as a kid with footage of his own kids. The result is a pretty psychedelic yet affecting visual accompaniment for the song, which was written before Forster’s first son was born and, in Forster’s words, “was written about my excitement and anticipation about his being born as well as my anxiety and sadness surrounding how I imagined things would change and the loss (of youth and low responsibility) I would suffer and have to come to terms with.”
I’ve learned that Hollywood studio chiefs individually and as a group are drawing a line in the sand on the piracy issue with the Obama re-election campaign and refusing to give any more donations. The blowup came after President Obama on Saturday dashed moguls’ hopes that he would remain on the sidelines in the dispute over the U.S. House Of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act and the U.S. Senate’s Protect IP Act. In a posting on the White House web site, three of the Obama administration’s top officials for Internet and intellectual property matters said that they share many of the concerns that the Internet community has about the Hollywood-supported bills… Hollywood moguls told me they “didn’t know it was going to be as over the top as it was” and took this as a declaration of war. “We just feel very let down by the administration and Obama for not supporting us,” one studio chief explained to me. “At least let him remain neutral and not go against it until we can get the legislation right. But Obama went against it. I’m personally not going to support him anymore and not give a dime anymore,” another movie mogul who’s also a well-known Obama supporter told me this week.
Can’t say I’m too surprised by this, given Hollywood’s lobbying reach and its love for Obama (in the past, at least). Here’s hoping that Obama stays strong and doesn't kowtow under pressure.
In the last week or so, the video for Jeff Bethke’s poem “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” has been blowing up. As I post this entry, the video has over 14.7 million views and over 255,000 “Likes”. This provocatively titled video has clearly struck a chord with many people. And there's reason to applaud for the video, i.e., Bethke clearly and forcefully talks about people’s need for Jesus. Even so, there’s more about the video that leaves me… unsettled.
Before I go any further, I want to make it clear that by discussing, and even criticizing his video, I am not trying to impugn Bethke’s faith, motives, etc., in any way whatsoever. Nor is it my intention to simply make some snarky comments. Unfortunately, as I've read other critiques of the video, people seem all too willing to throw unnecessary jabs at Bethke in the midst of otherwise thoughtful commentary. This is something I want to avoid. Not only does such a tactic distract from an honest discussion, but it’s disrespectful to a brother in Christ. In other words, I hope the spirit of this post is similar to Kevin DeYoung, who wrote a solid critique of the video and has since engaged with Bethke.
If I had to boil down my issues with the video to one thing, it would be Bethke’s use of the word “religion”. In this day and age, “religion” is a term that is both highly charged and very malleable. As such, the mere mention of it tends to put people on edge, particularly because it can mean so many things to so many people — which doesn’t exactly help Bethke’s case here.
When Bethke says “religion”, is he referring to, as Dictionary.com defines it, “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs”? Is he referring to a specific religion (i.e., Christianity), or to a specific strand or tradition within a specific religion? Is he referring to a certain organized, hierarchical power structure and its attendant rituals and traditions? Or is he, as many of his fans and defenders say, simply referring to hypocrisy, legalism, and self-righteousness? And if that’s the case, then why not use those terms instead of “religion”? Or is he using “religion” precisely because it’s such an emotionally charged term, and therefore, he was able to easily maximize the impact of his words?
The confusion doesn't lessen with a closer reading of Bethke’s poem (read Bethke’s transcript). For example, Bethke says “I love the [C]hurch, I love the Bible”, but is the Church not a religious institution? Or does he mean something else by “[C]hurch”? And of course, as others have pointed out, we wouldn’t have the Bible as we know it today without the work of a religious institution, so one could argue that the Bible is itself a religious product (which I don’t think is a bad thing). Later, he says “Religion is man searching for God, Christianity is God searching for man”, but what is Christianity if not a religion?
By now, you might be rolling your eyes and thinking that I’m simply quibbling over semantics… and that's precisely what I’m doing. Why we use the words we use, and what we mean by them, is so very important, and even moreso with charged words like “religion” and “church”. (And if our usage can cause confusion within the Church, think of the confusion amongst peopleoutside of the Church.)
But let’s assume that, by “religion”, Bethke is really talking about hypocrisy, etc. (I think this is plausible given the part of the poem where he openly discusses his own sin.) If so, then he seems quite content with throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Religion becomes synonymous with hypocrisy, legalism, self-righteousness, and a host of other bad things, and so Christians ought to get rid of the whole thing and be done with it.
In doing so, Bethke seems to be espousing a certain trend that has become rather popular in the modern Church, at least here in America. This trend has several aspects, including:
A general distrust of any sort of strongly hierarchical Church body, hence the rise of non-denominational churches that — proudly, in some cases — claim their independence from any central authority to be foundational to their identity.
An ambivalence regarding Church history that results in both a myopic view of the early Church and a sense that modern Christians have nothing to learn from those that came before them.
An emphasis on Christianity as a personal and individual relationship. As such, my walk with Christ is my walk with Christ, i.e., a highly individualistic experience that doesn’t really need to be judged, evaluated, or called into account by an authority.
A low view of ritual and tradition that sees such things as stodgy, boring, and restrictive. Instead, an emphasis is placed on emotionally engaging worship experiences (e.g., seeker sensitive churches, upbeat contemporary worship music).
I’m not trying to put words in Bethke’s mouth, and yet when I read his words, that is the sentiment that I detect. I hear it, too, when people say “I'm spiritual but not religious”, when they say they're a “follower of Christ” but not a Christian, and when they define their Christian faith as a “relationship, not a religion”. There’s this notion that “religion” is somehow a dirty word and a concept to be avoided. Admittedly, it’s a word that has a lot of baggage associated with it, but I don’t think that’s any reason for giving up on it.
My question is this: If we, as Christians, ditch the concept of religion, what are we left with? “Jesus” is the likely response. But what does that even mean, exactly, given the reality that when Jesus came to Earth, died on the cross, and rose from the dead, He didn’t merely set in a motion a plan to redeem the lives of individual human beings. He also came to establish a Church — a collective of believers with its own doctrine that adheres to a unique set of sayings and observes a unique set of rituals and traditions. In short, Jesus did, for all intents and purposes, establish a religion… and it was a Good Thing.
For reasons that will remain ultimately mysterious this side of eternity, Jesus saw fit to entrust this religion to broken, fallible, selfish, and deeply sinful human beings. Not surprisingly, we have made a royal mess of things. And yet, just as the Fall doesn’t diminish the image of God that exists within each of us, so too do our foibles and mistakes fail to obscure entirely the goodness in the religion, and the Church, that Jesus instituted. Does that mean that we don’t need to reevaluate and reform the ways in which we observe, promote, and spread this religion? Of course not. Does that mean that we should turn a blind eye to legalism, hypocrisy, and self-righteousness? God forbid.
But just as we shouldn’t turn a blind eye to legalism, etc., we also shouldn’t shrink away from words that we feel have become unpleasant, or use them as placeholders for truly distressing terms. We shouldn’t engage in semantic games to make our belief system more palatable and presentable. We shouldn’t throw out over-simplifications that cloud the issue, nor should we present false dichotomies that make for nice sentiments but ultimately come across as nonsensical… especially to those that we may be trying to reach.
Though I’m not a fan of Bethke’s video, there is a sense in which I’m glad that it’s become so popular: it has caused people to begin talking about our terminology, about the words we use to describe our religion. It’s a shame that Christians have come to perceive religion as something antithetical to Jesus, and that they feel the need to water down their language so as to not offend or put off others (though our speech should always be seasoned with grace and humility). It’s a shame that the word “religion” is so easily associated with hypocrisy, legalism, etc., rather than the life-giving Gospel of Jesus Christ. And Christians have certainly done a lot to bring about this sad state of semantic affairs. But as my friend Chad puts it, “misuse of a word is not straightforwardly an argument for its nonuse, much less for its abuse, but for its right use.”
A fascinating paradox has been at work in the heart of lovesliescrushing’s music for two decades now. On the one hand, their music is loud, overwhelming, and crushing (npi) with its nigh-infinite layers of overdriven and effects-laden guitars. At times, it’s almost painful to listen to on Ghost Colored Halo, particularly on such songs as “Tiger Hunts Alone” with its dulcimer-like tones and feverish swirls of sound, or “Darklit and Crow” and its gloomy, subterranean guitar pulses.
On the other hand, the music, for all of its intensity and density, is never as harsh and eardrum-rupturing as it feels like it should be. Perhaps Melissa Arpin-Duimstra’s wordless vocals, though airy and disembodied, still have enough mass to somehow blunt Scott Cortez‘ guitar avalanches. Or perhaps there’s some sort of mutual annhilation going on in the midst of those guitar layers that sets off a chain reaction, softening their edge.
In any case, the paradox means that, even though lovesliescrushing have hardly deviated from the formula they began with on Bloweyelashwish, their music continues to fascinate with each new release. And though their songs’ density never really changes, Ghost Colored Halo’s final two tracks prove the duo simply aren't all about abusing eardrums with their amped-up shoegazer sound.
“The Wounds That Won’t Heal” is a rather mellow piece by lovesliescrushing standards. Cortez’ sonics, while still dense, hold back from smothering the listener: instead, they swirl around like stormclouds on the horizon with the result being a strangely calm, contemplative space in the midst of potential chaos.
“Ghost Colored” closes the album on an almost spiritual note: Arpin-Duimstra angelic sighs begin tentatively, but by song’s end, have a choral sense about them that gives the song a cathedral-like air. Meanwhile, Cortez’ guitar — or rather, his array of guitar pedals — doesn’t so much crush the listener as push before them, clearing away the weight and darkness of the EP’s earlier material. Together, the duo’s sounds grow brighter and more hopeful, as if emerging from some abyss or long arctic night.
Wired’s Geek Dad is a little distressed over the influence that Disney princesses might be having on his three daughters, and has found some respite in the films of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli.
Being a parent of girls, I have an almost primal reaction to the Walt Disney princess industrial complex. The sight of a Jasmine costume marketed to my 5-year-old can cause me to break out in hives. It isn’t so much the bare midriff, although I think that does have an influence on how my 5-year-old perceives and relates to her body. My frustration comes from the quality of the stories themselves. The stories of the Disney princess industrial complex follow a formula which sells massive amounts of princess swag but can be highly problematic in what it teaches young girls about their worth and value.
My 5-year-old is just now finishing her education about the difference between real and pretend. Kindergarten seems to help. I cringe when she plays dress-up and pretends to be one of the princesses from the Disney canon. It just creeps me out, like I am watching my child pretend to play Britney or Lindsey or their apprentice Miley, all three of which got their start as child stars with Disney.
Which is why I am grateful my geek instincts led me to be a somewhat early adopter of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli anime. I have been hooked since I first saw Spirited Away, and I have found his work to provide a needed vaccine for my girls against the creeping illness of princess-itis.
I thought his comments re. the portrayal of families in Studio Ghibli films vs. their portrayal in Disney movies was quite interesting:
Miyazaki’s films have their share of untrustworthy families. Chihiro’s parents certainly are not wise. They are shown to be self-centered and greedy at the beginning of the film. Chihiro’s quality as a person and resilience in a crisis are shown to exist in contrast to their failings, but this kind of dysfunction is an exception for Miyazaki. Howl’s Moving Castle would be the other example of a dysfunctional family that comes to mind. In most cases, whether present or not, parents provide a positive influence on their children in Miyazaki films. Films in this genre include: Ponyo, My Neighbor Totoro, A Whisper of the Heart, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Castle in the Sky, Naussica and Porco Rosso. If you want your kids to grow up respecting your influence in their life and appreciating you as a parent, you might find these films to be better stories to feed them than Disney’s.
Eurogamer’s Rich Stanton believes that the “Are video games art?” debate is pointless because any attempts to come up with an objective definition of “art” itself are ultimately pointless.
…the idea of art as something that can be defined objectively began to crumble almost 100 years ago when Marcel Duchamp exhibited a urinal titled ‘Fountain’. My favourite example of this is an exhibition held in 1958 by Yves Klein where the Parisian gallery was left entirely empty. Not because I like the idea of attending, but because it’s fun watching defenders of art fit it into their schema - clearly, Klein’s exhibition is a special type of nothing.
I’m not here to bash modern art - I love all this stuff. But it’s important to distinguish our appreciation of any work from a term that is meaningless. Art is a word that denotes exclusivity, but in the current day its meaning can only ever be inclusive. What is art? Art is what any single person considers to be art. There is no such thing as an objective definition, because all that anyone can ever truly know of something is their own experience. When the only possible judgements are subjective, a belief in the existence of a category of things that are ‘art’ is absurd.
Yet the term still has power. The history of art when we’re talking of literature or music or painting is an invented one - those works deemed by this or that critic to be worthy of exalted status. The canon in any medium is the product of remarkably few minds. I think this is why games writers were drawn to Ebert’s remarks. It is often a navel-gazing profession, and one whose practitioners agonise over the question of their own importance.
People want to feel special, like their impressions and understanding of a work somehow mean more. Not only does this make the traditionally weighty topic of art appealing, but as a subject it binds criticism into a reassuring loop of self-aggrandisement. The only reason Ebert's remarks acquired any traction whatsoever is because he is seen as an embodiment of taste - a Real Critic who knows about Real Art.
You might have noticed that websites you frequently visit look a little different today. In my most recent article for Christ and Pop Culture, I explain the reasons behind what some are calling the biggest Internet protest to date.
Please take a few minutes to contact your congressman or congresswoman and tell them to vote against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). Fighting online piracy is a good thing, but these two bills are not the methods we should be using to fight it.
GameInformer recently interviewed BioWare’s Casey Hudson regarding the upcoming Mass Effect 3 and its gameplay/narrative balance, melancholy tone, and different gameplay modes.
To me it kind of speaks to – there’s always this debate going on in the game industry about narrative versus focusing on just gameplay. Some people say it’s the gameplay that’s most important and narrative always comes second. Certainly gameplay in Mass Effect is great, but I think the whole arc of the series – assuming that everything plays out in Mass Effect 3 – is something you can point to as proof that narrative in games can be really meaningful and important. This is not an experience you could have had in any other medium, in any other way and felt this connected.
I think gameplay is certainly key, but the way I would look at it is that the reason you care about gameplay – whether it’s the inventory system or combat or exploration or whatever – the reason you care about it is the narrative. Arguably, you don’t need a great narrative. Great gameplay can still make for a fun experience. But what we see in Mass Effect and the way people respond to it is that – for example, when you’re modding weapons, you think differently when you’re giving that weapon to a squad member that is your love interest, that you just had a conversation with and you think she likes you. That makes giving her that weapon have a little bit of a different meaning versus putting it all on the stats and numbers.
Another thing that stuck out to me in what I’ve played of Mass Effect 3 so far is the tone. The Mass Effect series has always had a sort of darker, sci-fi, gritty feeling, but this game strikes me as not just dark but sad and very somber.
I guess one caveat is that the stuff that we show typically at this point is not the stuff that people remember our games for. It’s not what people will remember Mass Effect 3 for. We’ve got missions for people to play, but I think afterward what people will remember it for is the emotional experience and the fun that they had with exploring their own ship and walking around it and coming across conversations with unique characters – these little things that you get to do. There’s also the emotional journey of the story. Those are the things that I’m most excited for people to try out.
Mass Effect 3 will be released March 6, 2012, and I can hardly wait.
Redefine’s list of the best album cover art of 2011 is more than just a collection of pretty pictures. They’ve also interviewed the musicians and artists involved to get the stories, inspirations, etc. behind the artwork.
This in-depth feature highlights how well-executed album artwork can go beyond genre lines to expand into territories of philosophical, thematic, and conceptual significance. The amount of time and effort that goes into planning and executing album cover artwork is rarely acknowledged — but as you’ll see from the thoughtful responses shared by musicians and artists, perhaps now more than ever, album artwork is an extension of the musical product itself.
My favorite album artwork from last year tended towards the cryptic, enigmatic, and mysterious, e.g., Balam Acab's Wander / Wonder or A Second of June’s Psychodrama (which isn’t on Redefine’s list). Actually, that could probably describe my favorite artwork from any year.
