Alt-Media: The Consumer - Pt A

Despite this blog, for me, being about Movies & TV, I have written a handful posts about video games (yes, that's the Tag, not just the posts about video games proper). But I don't believe I have covered much of other media. I read at a snail's pace, and usually only when commuting. My days of actually sitting in a corner and reading are gone the way of That Guy, and reading before bed causes immediate zzzzz's. I am also not that properly versed with podcasts, them being (in my old man voice) a rather new media that The Kids are listening to. But, given the Ken't description of this blog being about us sharing consumption habits with each other, why not a mixed media post?

Far Cry 5, Ubisoft - video game

This is a re-play. I play(ed) all the Far Cry games as they come out, often taking a few days to ... watch it download. Yah, before I updated my Internet, I constantly forgot that pretty much every game ends up downloading an update, that on my old speed, took pretty much an entire afternoon. But THIS one, took about 20 minutes. Not even sure why they include games on the disks at all, if the bulk of it comes from the cloud.

Anywayz, in each game you are set down a path towards a choice -- defeat the Bad Guy or admit he had a point. I always choice the former, but because I have played this game before, I am curious how I will choose this time round. You see, this game, came with a quick-on-the-heels mini-sequel, which takes place in a post-apocalypse world, because the Bad Guy.... was right?

But I am getting ahead of myself. Five takes place in the US proper, in an isolated county in Montana where a doomsday cult called the 'Project at Eden's Gate', led by charismatic Joseph Seed, and supported by his two brothers, and a sister, emerges from the background to take control of the county. The game pretty much hand waves away Internet and Phone connectivity, cutting the area off from the rest of the country.

The game begins with you as a rookie deputy sent in to support a US Marshall who has a warrant for Joseph Seed. But the cult won't let him be taken and the helicopter crashes, every one else being captured but you. The powder keg is ignited and the cult start very publicly & violently taking the county, and it is up to you to build up a resistance against them.

This game was done in 2017-18, during the height of Trump's rise to power. Its very much influenced by right-wing politics and conservative populism. This is redneck country and even the people you are working beside are likely Republicans, which slyly works in your favour, as this is a FPS game so an abundance of guns, BIG guns, is required. But as the game would have it, there is a difference between the conservative "value system" and downright evil of the PEG-gies, as the locals call the cult. Everywhere you go in the game are the set pieces of capital E Evil, as locals, and their dogs, are slaughtered so the cult can take what was theirs. And not just murder & mayhem, as the cult also traffics in a narcotic made from flowers, called The Bliss, which causes very very strong mind alteration, as they dose everyone and everything with it. Its very clear that Joseph Seed and his cult have to fall.

But as with previous games, it also seeds (pun intended) the game with hints that Seed may be forward thinking, that something much much worse than who is president (Trump) is coming upon the country. And he is heaping the worst of the worst upon people to prepare them for it. As the game ends, it does happen -- a limited nuclear exchange. I cannot recall whether you know it was instigated by him, or just that he truly did foresee it, in a drug induced, possibly god-given vision. Whatever the reason, he was right -- the world did end.

Alas, our world is not going the quick route to such Evil. We are chipping away at the foundations of decency, at least here in North America. Trump may no longer be president, but his followers, some would say his cult, are still standing strong, and dismantling 50 years of progressive improvement to North American lifestyles. But as I constantly say, its not just what they actively do, but that they have encouraged it to be considered acceptable, and so all the rest of the fucking lunatics come crawling out of the woodwork. Racist crime is up, sexual crime is up, mass shootings are a daily event now and the Internet's loudest voice is a cess pool.

So, why did I play this game in such a climate? For one, less than savoury reason -- so I could shoot some evil motherfuckers in the face with an automatic weapon. Come on, did you expect me to say otherwise? I have commented before on my fondness for violence, in cinematic/fictional veins at least, and I think that as long as I hold it down to a game controller, I am OK. But yeah, call it what you will, but some mental release in this fucked up world, along side my own stresses, and this is ... release.

Horizon Forbidden West, Guerilla Games - video game

Prior to the above game, as I had been out of the console loop for some months, I played a newer game, which was a sequel to something I played a few years ago. It is just as violent, in its own way, but is set in a distant post-apocalypse world dominated by machines that appear as animals, and a number of human factions living amidst the ruins of a world destroyed by an evil AI. Most of the violence is against the machines; not entirely, but most.

This is a beautiful game, visually and setting. You play Aloy, a young woman who in the first game, discovered she was a clone of a woman from a previous age who tried to save the world, but couldn't, and instead left a powerful AI (GAIA) behind to foster the planet into a rebuilding era, via the machines that replaced the lost animal life. Alas, a signal of unknown origin begins corrupting the machines, forcing Aloy to investigate her origins and save the planet, as her predecessor tried so long ago. All through the game, you travel and fight through a world taken back by nature, the ruins of our old world covered in the green and growth. Despite hostile machines and violent humans, there is beauty everywhere.

The first game ended with her defeating an evil rival AI to GAIA. But the signal that activated it is still unknown, and into the Forbidden West she travels seeking its source, before it can once again corrupt machines and the environment, bringing about the proper end of the world. She meets other tribes of people, already mixed up in a civil war, and has to gain trust of the many different cultures, so they can come together, to defeat the new enemy, the source of the original signal.

This is a violent game, like all "shooters", but it retains its beautiful primitive-ism. Her primary weapons are bow & spear, but supplemented by an holographic augmented reality tool that lets her see the Old World as it was, connecting with databases and logs, providing history and exposition. All the while, Aloy is still struggling with what she is, a clone born of no mother, but of a machine. She stands apart from all other people in what she can do and what she is, but uses that to rise above expectations and belief systems.

Its an inspiring game.

Of note, Lance Reddick passed away while I was playing the game, so seeing (hearing?) him appear again mid-game came with a certain bitter-sweetness.

Kaiju Perseveration Society, John Scalzi - e-book

Scalzi wrote this novella, as I learned in the author's note, because The Pause derailed his attempt to write a much darker, more serious book. Eventually, even post-COVID, he had to admit to his editor that the promised book would not be coming. But this one came along instead, and with ease.

Its a short, adventure story about a young woman who is laid off from her UberEats type company, just as the pandemic kicks off, and just before the shithead CEO sells his company to UberEats. She ends up as a driver for said company, because any money is some money. But that is interrupted by a job offer from a college acquaintance, an offer to Lift Things. But its not what the job that matters, but where. She will go to an parallel universe, another Earth where kaiju actually exist and dominate, to join a team that studies them, and she will be grunt labour.

Much of the book is purely devoted to the fun of world building such a world. For example, this universe is the universe that spawned a very real Godzilla back in the 40s, during the US's nuclear bomb testing. Such nuclear events weaken the veil between universes, and in this instance, to the kaiju universe, allowing one such lizardy monster to pass over and cause havoc. The KPS was established to keep this from happening again, and to foster the whole 'so mind-blowing it cannot be real' belief system that hides it from the public.

And I love this, though in glancing at a Reddit thread about the novel, not many other people did. 

Lock In, John Scalzi - e-book

I have been doing Google Surveys for a couple of years, garnering 10 cents here and there, until I have enough to buy an e-book. Noticing I had not spent it in a while, I grabbed these two Scalzi books in one shot, reading them one after the other. The former was a one-shot popcorn read, the latter is the first in a series, a noir style crime novel set in a world with a very distinct difference. There was a different pandemic than the one we had, one that left the majority of the people in coma like states, but still very much alive and aware inside their bodies. They are paralysed entirely, but lucid -- locked in. The novel takes place decades later, after technologies have arisen to deal with the after effects of the disease, that like ours, can be controlled but will never really go away.

One such technology is "threeps", as in C3POs, a pop culture nickname for the humanoid robots that people with Haden's (the disease) can pilot. People pilot such devices from their beds, and are able to live lives much like others. The main character of this novel is a rookie FBI agent investigating the death and possible murder via an offshot of this technology, but where the "threep" is replaced by a human who caught the disease but did not become locked-in; they are called Integrators and the wealthy make use of them in limited fashion. 

Its another Scalzi novel about world building, familiar structures & beats (noir) and the exploration of ideas, and their impact on the world. Are Haden's suffers victims, or just a new aspect of humanity? Do they need to be cured, because they rely on a technology, or can they just be as they are? The novel starts as laws protecting & funding the support of people with the condition are being struck down, leaving a much more capitalistic era to come, one that can be exploited and profited from. Its fun to ponder the questions while also just dealing with a murder mystery, but I am not yet quite sure if fun enough to pick up more in the series.