Anonymous asked:
kalematsuba answered:
anon, you just pointed out one of my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE things about the game - all the small, subtle details that you notice the more times you play it. and, as someone who’s played the game easily more than a hundred times, i’ve got a lot of favorite parts.
its incredible to me, the attention to detail in this game. the way lester interacts with this world he’s been dropped into gives you such enormous insight to his personality and traits without him speaking a single word. Buddy has a ton of such moments too. Their interactions with eachother speak volumes with no dialogue. it’ll always astound me, the sheer amount of story, world building, character insight and atmosphere that is jam packed into this approx. hour long game. By one single developer. all this stuff is so easily overlooked by people in the action of the game, but eric chahi put it in anyway. Its difficult to articulate into words how much respect i have for it.
But you asked what some of my favorite small moments are, and so i’ll divulge a few!
(these are gifs i have made, btw. some are the original graphics and some are the remaster.)
first up will be the lever pull you mentioned. oh my gosh is it ever one of my favorite moments in the game.
this is just the cutest thing ever. like, eric could have easily made lester just pull the lever effortlessly as a matter of gameplay necessity, but no. there’s personality here. there’s like, this weight and realness to it. it really drives home the concept of lester being in a world that’s actually too big for his puny human body. you can see him try to pull it with one arm first, and then upon realizing that he isnt strong enough, he uses his entire body weight to pull the lever, and even stumbling a bit once its pulled. it really gives the player so much context to how big and heavy it really is, and how small and frankly not physically strong lester is. there’s a cinematic element here. this was something that no other game did at the time. stuff like this just takes a whole lot of thoughtfulness, and in games that was not common at all.
when lester uses the special teleporter after buddy.
look at this. look at this boy’s lovably awkward body language here. i love how he was given this moment of “not sure how this works exactly but ..uh.. ok here goes”. he even doesn’t get it quite right the first time and tries again!
i feel like so many games (and any media for that matter) that take place in otherwordly settings seem to forget that their human protagonist isnt exactly all knowing and is going to be unsure of things. they forget to separate the human experience from the alien one. eric doesn’t, and he nails it. this just makes lester seem incredibly human. its moments like these that really let you know that he’s his own character that’s not necessarily meant for the player to fully project themselves onto, but he’s still incredibly relatable. it also lets you know that lester is very perceptive, quick learning and smart and is willing to take chances with new things. it doesnt feel forced or too convenient.
lester will not shoot someone who is unarmed/not a threat.
this part of the game is incredibly overlooked as just “part of the puzzle/gameplay” but. think about it. if you kill this poor guy, youre boned. you can’t progress.
i feel like this was put here deliberately to show that lester will not kill anyone who is not an actual threat to his own life. again, it runs so seamlessly into the gameplay that the player does not feel like theyre being FORCED into making the pacifist choice, here, but still punishes them if they don’t. it just seems like the natural inclination. AS IT SHOULD BE.
i cant stress enough how important it is to me that lester is, in these moments, painted as a guy just trying to survive, and not a trigger happy violent shoot man like most protags in action games. it humanizes him yet again, and it gives a very “living being” element to the aliens as well. there’s WAY more i could go on about in terms of the context of the aliens and how much world building there is for them, but that’ll be another post i think.
one more for now - when lester is picked up by the guard and uses.. clever means to get him to let go
this is easily one of the most iconic scenes in the game. probably because it has this lighthearted comedic element to it - again, something that’s very very cinematic in approach, and was completely unheard of in games at the time. these moments were the alternative to cutscenes that rip the player out of the gameplay. the sudden loss of control of lester here adds to his helplessness in the situation, and the player’s inclination to press buttons pretty much perfectly reflects lester’s reaction. its frankly masterful genius in my opinion.
of course, we can’t ignore the elephant in the room of lester obviously realizing that there’s something there on that guard to kick. lmao. again, while being sort of a “dirty joke”, it really does add yet another moment of humanization to both lester AND the aliens. you kinda start to realize here that these big scary alien dudes have some humanlike vulnerabilities. i find it exceedingly interesting that this was included in the game. again, something very very overlooked by most action games of the time and even now. it creates something more complex than lester just being the “good guy” and the guards being the “bad guys”.
and i mean. lester doing his dramatic roll to grab his gun after getting out of that guard’s grip. what a huge nerd. you just know this scrawny string bean scientist saw that shit in a movie or something. again, just. another moment where we catch a glimpse of lester’s personality. but, we also see that he’s not totally helpless or weak either - throughout the game we see what lester lacks in strength, he makes up for in dexterity, and what he lacks in bravery, he makes up for in resourcefulness.
i just. i love lester so dang much. he’s such a good, solid character.
(which is why it kind of irks me real bad when a vast majority of players totally ignore this in order to fully project themselves onto him as if he is them… as gamers tend to do.
i find too many older “fans” of another world are too busy always praising this game’s technical achievements and completely overlook its creative ones. so i’m here to pick up that slack. lol)
i sincerely apologize for this post being so long, but that isnt even a fraction of all the moments of the game i absolutely adore. that was mostly the moments that show lester’s side of things - but there are so many more. i’ll probably make more posts about it if anyone’s curious. lmao.
thanks for indulging me on this, anon. everyone knows by now i can’t shut the fuck up about this game so i’m so happy when people enable me. rofl
