I’ve taken a short break from posting about Piracy is Liberation in order to be able to spend more time on actually drawing the new book.
Today I took a break from that as well in order to make some fan art for the upcoming SIS (Stockholms International Seriefestival):
COMPETITION:
If you are the first to identify which comic pages are surrounding the dog, I’ll give you a gift. Email me with book title and page numberor part of the dialogue from the page (since I don’t normally use pagination) for all of them*. And let me know which one of my books you need as reward and I will send it to you. *I say all of them, but one of these pages is from the upcoming book so it’s enough to identify it as the unpublished one. Important: contact me by e-mail (see the contact page). No other means of contact counts.
Anyway, maybe I’ll see you in Stockholm, May 20-22? I’ll be there with Hybriden (CBK/Tusen Serier/Wormgod).
And with that, I’m back at the drawing table again (I mean not ALL the time, but as much as I’m able in between everything else I need to do). It’s hard to finish a book when I’m constantly adding pages to it, but I’m at least more than halfway done by now…
If you’re new to the world of Piracy is Liberation, here’s a short description of what you get in these four books:
Cyberpunk stories in a future where Capitalism is the only religion, where only sinners disobey and nobody loves a sinner. Pirate is one of those sinners, downloading illegal information straight into his mind to get high. When he gets caught while trying to free Information, he has to use all his skills as a 4-dimensional hacker to break them out of digital prison. One year later, he’s part of a group trying to free sections of the City from the clutches of brainwashing television, riot cops and the Priests and Masters who control everything. Meanwhile, Erica toils away as a Slave in the factory. But what’s the dark secret behind the cogs and wheels and levers of her machine? What hides in the desert that no one knows exists? And what of the Drivers and their upcoming strike? Political theory, filtered through autobiography masked as fiction, in the form of cyberpunk postapocalypse.
It’s a great way to get a substantial sample (266 pages) if you want to try it out before buying the books, or if you just want to read it for its own sake. Or if you prefer to read on a tablet (if this proves popular enough I’ll probably do digital versions of the rest of the books as well).
Digital comics often cost much more than I think is reasonable, so I set the price for this at 60 sek (about 6€/$6.35), which is what one and a half book would cost on paper, and now you get four! There’s also the option to pay more if you think my price is too low.
If you want it for free, books 001 and 002 are still available at ThePirateBay, so that’s also an option. Just don’t forget to share!
The two girls whose story will be the main focus of Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy that I mentioned in my latest post aren’t completely new to the series.
You’ve seen them before, for the first time in book 002: Infotrip for a few pages.
They were the ones being given the Basic information for the revolution discs at a café. In that chapter (Communications, subchapter 3: Conversation) they mostly served as a way to show the effects of that book’s events on some random people in the general society. That scene also turned out to be a bit anachronistic, since it actually took place during book 005: Free Section in the chapter Outside, where we got to see it in the background and from another perspective.
I think I had, even back then, some thought of maybe returning to them at a later point. Which turned out to be correct. Not going to spoil any of their story in the new book just yet, but here are two of the new pages…
My normal process for shorter comics used to be to have an idea and then to simply start drawing and see what happened, writing script as I went along. That worked fine and made it more interesting also for myself since I wasn’t sure how each story would end.
Then, when I started making Piracy is Liberation, I fels the need to do it a bit more properly. I started writing scripts with dialogue, voice-over and (still pretty loose) image descriptions. The script would sometimes change as the drawing process went along, because I still needed room for things to be a dynamic during the work.
This spread from Piracy is Liberation 002: Infotrip is two of the very few pages where I actually did a sketch before inking it.
Now, with Piracy is Liberation 012, I’m somewhere in betweeen those tactics.
I’ve been collecting notes for the last 10 years, writing down scenes, bits of dialogue and over-arching ideas for the upcoming books. Or actually for the rest of the series, which is now planned as 11 more books. Which is a number liable to change because, as I said, I like to keep it dynamic. I’m deliberately still keeping the details of last few books vague, even for myself. After putting all these notes in order and making a rough sketch of what goes into which book, I started to tie them together, but still not writing out all of the dialogue/voice-over. More like a collection of scenes that I flesh out as I go along.
Much of the dialogue, I write more or less one or a few pages at a time as I draw them. Most of the voice-over is still just notes that I will turn into full text later, as I finish the pages in Photoshop.
Another difference, which is probably very much connected to this new strategy, is that I’m drawing digitally, in Procreate. That means that it’s much easier both to erase and modify things while drawing and that I actually often do sketches, which is pretty new for me. I still keep them very vague and loose, because I want to keep the feeling of the linework. I always thought my lines got more interesting and personal when they’re spontaneous. So I want to keep that while still getting the advantage of sketching.
Here’s an examples from book 012 where I didn’t sketch but drew directly, old-school style. Step by step (panel structure/dialogue/line art/halftone & other effects/black fields/detail fixes):
Go to my Instagram to see more video capture like this one in the near future:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cbx4rBtOO5Z/
And here’s one where I did sketch. You can see how loose it is, and how closely(?) I ended up following it:
So far, it feels like this process suits me well. At also gives the story space to evolve as it goes. For example, book 012 will have a main storyline focusing on two girls who were at first only meant to be there for a scene or two, to give the over-all events a bit more flavor. Now their story goes on to fill about 50 of the book’s maybe 150 pages (both of these numbers may very well go up before it’s all done).
More on these two characters in the next post, coming up on Tuseday…
Once more, it’s my turn to be main editor for an issue of CBA. I’ve been watching the internet these last years and seen a trend towrds what seems to be the complete annihilation of language and communication. We’ve gone from algorithms that mostly expose us to what we’re already interested in, or agree with, to a situation where we’re separated in socal circles, each with their own language. Their own common references, presuppositions about what the world looks like and even meaning of words. These circles are often colored by ideologies that put their own spin on things in order to win political points in the competition for the people’s hearts and minds.
From flat-Earthers to people who believe that Hitler was a socialist. From antivaxxers to people who believe that Putin is a socialist. From people who believe that nothing is racism unless the person who performs it describe themself as a racist to people who believe that the only relevant racism is the one against whites. Ok, most of the above often belong to the same group. But one of the fascinating things is that within these circles, it’s often enough to write a bunch of words that don’t even need to form coherent sentences, and others will make their interpretations of those words. It’s enough to use some specific words that signal where you stand, and based on that people will draw their conclusions.
This misuse of language is, paradoxically(?), often used in those nationalist circles who claim to want to defend their culture and language against their perceived enemies. It would be funny if they weren’t so many.
Anyway. From these phenomena came the theme from this volume: POLITICAL GLOSSOLALIA – THE EROSION OF MEANING
I can’t say I have a clear image of what comics and texts I expect people to submit on that theme, but it’s going to be interesting nonetheless. So here it is, the call for submissions for: CBA vol 58: POLITICAL GLOSSOLALIA – THE EROSION OF MEANING Main Editor: Mattias Elftorp Deadline: Jun 15
How do we talk when words that used to mean certain things have become so vague that they can be freely appropriated by anyone, for any purpose? And what’s up with the currently so prevalent flirting with war, fascism and the dehumanization of anyone who doesn’t fit into the unspoken and conveniently unspecified national identity? Objective truth (if there ever was such a thing) and even language itself seems to be sacrificed on the altar of rhetoric and propaganda. What are the consequences when you can string any random, misspelled words together and people will make their own connections and decide to aggressively either agree or disagree, wholeheartedly even though the sentence actually makes no sense?
Bring your own spin on this. From alternate history to experiments with glossolalia to explorations of nationalism of the illiterate, what take is something only you would think of?
—SUBMISSION GUIDELINES— Please read and follow these guidelines: Number of pages: We prefer comics that are about 5-30 pages, but any number is welcome. Format: 20 x 26 cm Color: Color / Black and white Language: English File format: .TIF Resolution: 1200 dpi line art or 300 dpi CMYK Length (texts): A good size for a text is ca 7500 characters (including spaces), but it can also be longer or shorter. Bleed: 5mm. Think you know how to handle bleed? Read this to make sure you know what we mean. Within this space, there are no limits.
Delivery: We prefer download links that do NOT require us to login anywhere (wetransfer usually works fine, for example). Request: Please don’t use Comic Sans. We don’t like it and will ask you to change to another font. And again; Please check our guidelines for bleed. Please send us high-resolution files from the start. Include a short bio*, with one URL (if you have a website or similar).
Please ask us if you are unsure about formats, resolution, bleed, etc. We prefer stupid questions to bad files. And there are no stupid questions! Normally, we also organize a release exhibition showcasing sample pages from the new issue. Please let us know if you’re NOT ok with us using your works for that purpose. It’s part of our marketing and it usually takes place in a physical exhibition space, although these days we’re more likely to make a digital exhibition online at the Hybriden website.
*Your bio should be approximately 500-700 characters in length. It should read more as an entertaining and informative bio and less as a CV. What you want to say about yourself is up to you, but it’s generally more interesting for our readers to know about your interests, who you are and what else you’ve published rather than where you’ve studied. We may edit it if needed to fit our format. Send comics, questions, etc to: submissions(a)cbkcomics(.)com
Unfortunately we cannot guarantee you any payment for participating (although these last few years we’ve had more financing so we have been able to pay at least something, i.e. when all the expenses have been paid we will share the surplus amongst the participants). If we publish your submission you will receive 10 free copies of the issue. That’s all we can promise at this date. Hopefully you will find being in CBA an enjoyable experience. Naturally, copyright for your material will stay in your hands.
Also note that we are constantly overworked and there’s a great risk that we won’t get in touch in case your submission doesn’t make it into the current volume (we WILL, however, let you know if we do publish your submission, and if you don’t get into this one we might keep your comic for a future issue). We are sorry for this and will try to catch up as soon as things clear up (optimistically in 2025)…
Feel free to invite people to the Facebook event or share this call for submissions blogpost!
First drawings of the gang. Maybe not the first appearances in the book, but I started the process by drawing a group picture spread out over a couple pages to make sure the group of main characters were present, and for myself to get reacquainted with them again.
I present to you: the anarchists of Piracy is Liberation:
It hasn’t been 10 years between the events of books 011 and 012, but some time has passed and especially the kids have had a chance to grow a bit. And get named, in Tomorrow’s case, while the oldest guy still sems to go by his kind of derogatory nickname. That happens sometimes, nicknames just stick, but they change meaning and become more synonymous with the person they’re stuck to rather than their original meaning. Or it’s just lazy writing because I couldn’t think of a better name for him? Probably a bit of both…
A few months ago, I finally started working on Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy, about 10 years after book 011 came out. I collected all my notes for the rest of the story and decided what to use in which book. I have a pretty good idea about what at least the next few books will be about. I’ve been drawing whenever I got some free time (in between Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, trying to make a living and just the other stuff that need doing in general), so at the moment I have maybe 80 pages more or less drawn and I felt it was time to start showing some stuff.
As I go along, I’ll be writing a bit about my process and about what the story will be about, but I’ll start with this promo pic I made for an ad recently, kind of like a still-image trailer:
I’ll be posting some samples now and then on Instagram (@elftorp) and here in the blog. Probably not as regularly as I should, but I’ll at least try to keep it up. So follow me if you want to stay updated.
Just found out that comics creator Nina von Rüdiger passed away.
We hadn’t had much contact now for years, but there were a few years, about fifteen years ago, when we talked a lot. Later she started using her real name, but back then she went by rama as her artist name.
We had lots of exchange about Japanese movies, manga/anime and kung fu movies, but also about our own respective comics.
I got to read a (still unpublished, I believe) translation of her first book, Vesi Oli Mustaa, which later evolved into her and Johanna Koljonen‘s Oblivion High.
She helped me formulate some stuff about Swedish self-rightousness that was quite fundamental for when I was taking my comic Arg Kanin (Angry Animals) to the next level. It’s what I think of to get back on track whenever I lack focus on an Arg Kanin strip.
Her comment that it’s never too late to start learning kung fu has also been a good comfort, though I still haven’t started and probably won’t.
She also made a piece for the gallery section (and almost drew a chapter, if there had been time) for Piracy is Liberation 007: Spiders pt 1.
We only met once or twice irl, and most of our conversations were in the chat function of social media I don’t think even exists anymore. It somehow feels like it should seem a bit shallow to think of a person in terms of what movies and comics we talked about, but that’s what we had and it’s something that stays with me, not only in terms of her influence on my own works. And there are still some movies I can’t think about without connecting them to conversations I had with her, or because she was the one suggesting I should watch them. Right now, I especially think of Yojiro Takita‘s Okuribito (Departures). Probably the best film I’ve seen about saying goodbye.
The following message was found in the ruins of the Earth civilization that ended with the Sixth Mass Extinction. Converted from what was called “the internet”, an archaic means of communication that was widespread at the time, this archaeological find is included in the collection “Earth; how did it all end? Clues and ruminations”:
Did you know that COVID-19 isn’t actually contagious the way we’ve been lead to believe? The virus is in fact spread through vaccinations. Which means this is a plan that’s been prepared and slowly implemented during much of the 20th century. It’s easy to figure out because that’s the period during which most of the now afflicted got their vaccinations as children. Whoever did this against humanity have enormous resources, based on the fact that they’ve managed to do this globally and over such an amount of time, not to speak of the meticulous planning necessary to activate it just now, in 2019/2020 when 5G technology created the right amount of background radiation for the latent virus to be activated.
So who has resources on that level? There is at least one organisation who, for centuries and on a global scale, has managed to trick most of humanity into believing that the Earth is a globe, in spite of the overwhelming evidence proving it’s actually flat. The name of that organisation is NASA. It is quite possible, even probable, that they are agents of the reptile race living in the hollow places beneath the surface of the flat Earth. Reptiles who disguise themselves as the political, financial and cultural elites of the world, controlling our lives for generation after generation, possibly for millennia. They get their powers from the blood of human children, sexually violated in Satanic rituals. Power they use to control our destiny and, sometimes, to turn frogs gay for some reason.
If you’ve ever felt that your life didn’t turn out the way you had envisioned, that’s them. If you’re wondering why there is war, poverty and starvation, that’s them. Some people would say that the fault lies in systems of economy, such as Capitalism, but it’s more realistic to assume those theories are planted by the reptiles themselves as a way of diverting our attention from the real truth. We know that Capitalism is the best way for humans to fulfill their potential, through competition and with profit as the driving force. It is after all what human nature dictates, and not at all like the hunger for power that drives the lizards and fuels their conspiracies to keep us down.
The probable origin of these reptiles is Nibiru, the tenth planet, which will soon return to what is commonly called the solar system, passing close to the Earth as it has done before on its long, elliptical orbit around the sun.
The “Sun”, however, is actually a lamp moving according to pre-set patterns across the sky, a few hundred meters (or possibly kilometers) above ground. That’s why they don’t want you to stare directly into it, because they’re afraid you might see it for what it really is.
That the pandemic broke out when it did might very well be because so many people started to find out about the truth, in spite of corrupt institutions like the education system or the old-school news media. We lost those struggles a long time ago, but the internet has given us a new weapon. The US military, who developed the internet, is an institution that has somehow managed to resist for a long time, but it has now also been infiltrated, another victim of the Gay Agenda. However, through various YouTube channels, chatrooms and other social media, we’ve been able to wake up a lot of people to what’s going on behind our backs.
Leading the brave resistance from his golden throne is Donald Trump, a man of the people who got rich by being chosen by God as the defender of freedom, decency and humanity itself, his riches trickling down to save the rest of us. He’s leading a movement of underdogs against hordes of traitorous politicians, fake news media and the Cultural Marxist elites, supported by antifascists who are themselves more or less nazis. After all, Hitler was a socialist or it wouldn’t be in the name of his ideology. Already in the 1980s, the fake news channels could sense Trump’s coming ascension, the great threat to the status quo, the manliest of men and most intelligent of smartbrains. Since back then, they’ve run an ongoing smear campaign, portraying him as a supervillain in the news as well as in movies produced by a Hollywood run by communists, liberals and other factions of the left, not to mention the satanists. He even had to develop his own brand of glossolalia to get past their censors, a language that is clearly understood by those who are sufficiently developed but sounds like gibberish to anyone else. That’s how he could move below the radar and grab the presidential power by the pussy with his great big hands.
As soon as the election scandal in the US has been solved and he is returned to the seat of power [something that may already have happened as you read this], he will surely save us from both the “pandemic” and the reptiles, queers, blacks and socialists. Then we will finally be free from our shackles of forced ignorance and cancel culture.
Not to mention the Jews who not only run the world by owning banks and corporations but also by instigating the invasion of the West by muslims who are slowly replacing white Europeans who should rightfully rule the world through their superior genes that are now being bred out of existence. Within possibly as little as 20 years, muslims will have completely replaced the whites, ruling through sharia, taking out ham from school lunches and possibly meat in general, leaving only halal-slaughtered vegan food and vegetable-based beer to further weaken the male population. Soy products have already killed the testosterone in so many men that soon, maybe as soon as 2030, half the planetary population will be gender-neutral trans people.
Transsexuals, a phenomenon that doesn’t exist in nature (just look at the seals, have you ever seen a male seal dressed in female clothes? Didn’t think so), are men who go through “corrective” surgery in order to infiltrate girls’ locker rooms. Our only hope in that arena may be that their perversions are at odds with the feminists who want to murder all men. With any luck they will kill each other, but more realistic prognoses say that they will band together along with the pedophile Satanists to crush normal society.
The problem is that women can’t use swords. In stark contrast to the indoctrination spread through various TV series, it is physically impossible for females to use that kind of weaponry. A sword might weigh as much as a few kilos, so it takes a man’s superior musculature and mental strength to lift and do any damage with it. This is why feminists developed other, more devious methods. They’ve completely taken over previously apolitical franchises like Star Wars and Marvel and replaced all the main characters with female, over-powered versions. These stories which used to be neutral tales of relatable heroism have now been turned into completely unrealistic depictions of dystopian worlds where women rule everything. Which is of course also what they are trying to do in real life.
But there is hope. There are clues throughout popular culture to open our eyes and expose the true enemy, the reptiles of the Illuminati. You may see hand signals or zoomed-in eyes in music videos, or phrases in movies that get a new meaning when taken out of context. These are either signs from cultural resistance fighters or subliminal messages from the Illuminati themselves, so watch out! Some of these artists are part of the agenda, so if you’re not sure that someone is already on the right side of history, you better stay away or you risk becoming another victim of their brainwash.
There are also resistance cells under the indirect leadership of brave men like Zack Snyder and others who are inexhaustibly exposing cases of infiltration by the agenda. It’s a constant struggle, like when they replaced Snyder with Joss Whedon in order to destroy the Justice League movie. However, that was a fight they didn’t win, as armies of online freedom fighters not only managed to get The Snyder Cut released but are also spreading awareness of multiple cases where women and people of color have taken over. They’ve bravely alerted us when previously great superhero comics turned bad because of shoehorned agendas, or when video games have abandoned the true fans who made game culture great. White boys are now completely left without any cultural safe spaces and are probably the most forgotten group in media culture as well as society in general.
This is how white men was turned into the endangered species they are today, with hardly any power or influence left in society. Now, after the Police have suddenly, out of the blue, been criticized and can no longer do their job properly because their hands are tied by red tape, we stand almost completely without protection. It’s what countless action movies have warned us about, but they were made by white men so no one listened, of course. Almost 90% of non-whites commit more or less all crime, so what are we to do when the Police are no longer allowed to execute the enemy on the streets, even if they catch someone driving a car or refusing to obey every single order? Unjustified or not, orders are orders and should be obeyed or law enforcement risks losing all legitimacy.
By the way, did you know that there were also white slaves and black people were responsible for almost all slavery in history, until Trump abolished it by separating invading Mexican families and also terrorism? So there is no reason at all to complain about racism because it doesn’t exist anymore and who are the real racists anyway? Except reverse racism against white people, which is real, but we’re not allowed to talk about that.
There are many more examples, but now you can hopefully see clearly how it’s all connected and how we must all do our best to make sure that incels can finally sleep with all the girls they want, for equality. As George Orwell said in the alt-right bible, 1984: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a pink boot stamping on the white man’s face—forever”. Be like Neo in The Matrix: take the red pill so you can see the truth: men are men and women are immigrants and it’s all cultural Marxism.
Although the exact circumstances surrounding the fall of human civilization on Earth remain unclear, this is one of the few remaining documents from the era. Scholars believe it to be a good representation of the everyday concerns of the time and may contain crucial clues as to why the collapse happened. Note that these clues may be found more in the existence of the text rather than its contents.
I chose to publish this text in its complete form here, because I can. CBA vol 53 also includes a comic I made, but if you want to read that you’ll have to get the book (link in the beginning of this post). I’ll just give you a small sample here:
I should also mention that the After the Ends of the World concept is something I’ve worked further with in the books with the same name, by me and Susanne Johansson. Current day issues looked at from a future where they were the reason everything collapsed. Part humor, part warning signal… Both books 1 and 2 are available from Hybriden (and from the regular internet bookstores in Sweden).
So. Games I played in 2020/2021. Looking back, it seems I’ve pretty consistently been playing third person story-based action games, with a few exceptions. I know there are lots of other kinds of games, these are just the ones I tend to enjoy the most.
It’s also hard to choose still pictures of gameplay. By that, I mean it’s hard to show actual gameplay. Most of the pics I chose, as you can see, are of the main character posing in front of a nice background. I tried to screenshot some fighting or some other action, but they hardly ever work, and I finally figured out that it’s because those images can never capture the feeling you get while playing, so they always end up a bit disappointing. So now you know why there are so many posing pics, as you read on about what games I played in 2020/2021:
Let’s start by getting The Last of Us pt II out of the way, since I already wrote about it. It’s still one of the absolute best games I’ve ever played.
The Witcher 3 feels highly overrated. Not that it’s a bad game, or at least the story is ok, I just never got into it. I played the main story + side quests until I got to Skellige, so I gave it a good try. In the end I just mostly enjoyed Gwent, the in-game card game.
Death Stranding (which I’ve mentioned before) is a weird game. As is normal for Hideo Kojima, who also created classics like the Metal Gear games and more or less invented game mechanics like stealth, it feels like something new and special. I just don’t know what I really think about it. I did enjoy playing it and I love how he made the act of carrying things in a game feel more concrete than ever, even to the point where most of the game revolves around it. I also like the story and world-building that is based on creating unity rather than conflict. Even though conflict is of course a part of it, just as with Metal Gear you can more or less go through the whole game without killing anyone, and the main quest is about reuniting a devastated United Cities of America.
Which is my biggest problem with it. Even if it’s set in a future where the USA we know is long forgotten, it’s kind of nostalgic for an idealized version of it and it kind of feels unfair to its many victims (internationally and among its own citizens). At the same time, there are some moments in the story that are both touching and epic. I don’t know…
Ghost of Tsushima. Here’s what I thought about it after my first play-through: I do prefer my samurai fiction a bit more class conscious and less nationalist than this one is. But it’s not the first story I’ve seen/played/etc where you need to close your eyes to certain things in order to enjoy them, and when you do that, this is a great game. Probably my favorite Assassin’s Creed game (without actually being one, but it feels a lot like it could have been) so far. My problems with it are small superficial ones. I know they had Japanese consultants to get the historical settings right, but there are a few things I think they tweaked to make it work better as a game in 2020. Here are a few of them: First, the female characters should probably be much more submissive in their behavior, at least in scenes where they are supposed to behave accordning to the norms of the time. I’m glad they didn’t go that route, however, because that would have felt weird and even in 2020 it’s refreshing to see so many of the secondary characters being women. And who knows, maybe other contemporary depictions of the time period have been colored by the time in which they were made and its preconceptions of what the old days were like (also, this is set about 400 years earlier than most samurai fiction). So this is more something I noted rather than something I have a problem with.
Second, as I said I’d have preferred a more class-conscious story. The main character is a samurai, which is similar to a knight in medieval Europe, and in this case an actual feudal lord, but he never behaves like one. Or rather, he behaves like the idealized version of a knight, with some Japanese-feeling surface-level flavoring. I don’t think that’s very accurate, just as I don’t think the idealized knights in many Western depictions are accurate. The samurai code that Jin lives by doesn’t feel at all like (as far as I know) bushido. In part, maybe, but not in the core. It’s ok that he deviates from the norms of the time, but if so, I’d have liked it to be acknowledged. Of course we see the story through the eyes of the main character, so if he has a false image of what a samurai stands for, that’s one thing. But it is never really contrasted against other, probably more common, versions. I can kind of live with this one as well, but it makes me feel like something’s missing.
Third, the Mongols. Ok, it’s an invading force and they start off by killing most everyone the main character knows, but it still would have been nice with a bit more nuance. I know the open world game structure demands an enemy force that can be present all over the map and who is always the enemy etc, so it’s understandable from a gameplay perspective, but that could also have worked with a rival Japanese lord or something that didn’t encourage that nationalist sentiment. In the end, this is also something I can live with if the gameplay experience is good enough. Kind of how I could live with the “make the UCA great again like in the pre-apocalypse that we don’t really know what it was like” thing in Death Stranding. But it does disturb me that the Mongols seem to be evil at least in part because they are foreigners. I should probably mention what I base these opinions on. Am I Japanese? No. Am I a historian? Nope. I’ve just seen lots of samurai cinema and read a bunch of manga in the genre, especially the ones by Goseki Kojima (Lone Wolf and Cub, Samurai Executioner, Path of the Assassin) which are all to my knowledge pretty well-researched in their depictions of ancient Japan and samurai culture. Granted, the game is set a few hundred years earlier than those as well, so who knows, I may not know what I’m talking about at all?
At least the brush-stroke sequences between chapters look amazing.
Anyway… Even though the above mentioned elements of the story and world-building could have been done better, I’ve really enjoyed playing the game. The combat system makes for enjoyable fighting, the environments are beautiful and the map is sufficiently filled with things to do. The structure is very well-made for an open world game so it’s up there among the games in the genre that I’ve liked the most. By genre in this case I mean open world, I don’t have that many other samurai games to compare it with. I’d say Sekiro is definitely a better samurai game, but Ghost of Tsushima still makes the top 5 list (have I even played more than 3?).
And then, over time, it seems I’ve changed my mind. So here’s what I’m thinking now, after trying to play it again, about a year later when they’ve released a story expansion and fixed some things, like the Japanese lip-synch: The things that disturbed me the first time feel much worse now. The gameplay is still mostly smooth, but I have a bigger problem with all the cultural retcons/clichés. Which means that I started playing it from the beginning just to try it and I couldn’t stop until I finished the first chapter of the story, BUT I had to set it to Japanese speach without subtitles so I could no longer understand what they were saying. That made it much more enjoyable. Too bad I can’t do the same with the new story content, because for some reason I still don’t want to miss the story…
Sekiro: Shadows die twice, on the other hand, is great! I finally finished it after having been stuck on the final boss for so long that I had to restart and play the whole game from the beginning. This game doesn’t even pretend to be historically accurate but the feel of it is that it still manages better than Ghost of Tsushima. Not that they really should be compared to each other.
It’s made by From Software and has that special level design where the whole game feels like an interconnected open world. Even if it isn’t completely open, you can, and sometimes need to, move around in areas you’ve already been. It’s also and there’s a progression in time so that after finishing a certain boss the levels change with new story elements. Some parts are blocked off, some parts are ruined by invading new enemies or otherwise changed, some NPCs are dead.
There are also areas that are set in a different time, which is acknowledged by Wolf, the main character as it’s kind of a flashback but it’s not how he remembers it. His ability to resurrect after being killed is also woven into the story, as is an area that is set outside of normal reality in some kind of divine realm. Compared to earlier From Software games, Sekiro feels much more free in that you have more options for movement by jumping, stealthing or using a grappling hook to get around. I’m not going into the technical details with the fighting system which is based on posture instead of stamina and so very satisfying. This game has a special place in my heart.
So does Bloodborne, my first From Software game. I went back to this game after a few years and I finished it. And then I restarted it and finshed it again, along with the DLC, and then I finished it once more to get all three endings. And it truly is an amazing game. Some games don’t really age well, and a (at the time) 5 year old game could eaily feel old, clunky and outdated, but this one definitely holds its own against the competition. The story is great in all its subtlety. The ambience in the game is very well presented through sound, lighting, music and design. Gameplay just feels better and better the more you play and get better at it and discover nuances in what you can do. The world design and worldbuilding are both crafted with great care, attention to detail and intricacy, just as I’ve come to expect from From Software after playing this, Sekiro and a bit of Dark Souls III (which I am yet to finish as I write this, but I may go back to it at some point). I seldom play a game more than once. Playing it more than twice is even more rare, but after finishing this for the third time I almost started over again. It’s one of the great [old] ones.
Dark Souls and Bloodborne started a whole genre, often called soulsborne, or souls-like, but it started with Demon’s Souls, which is now remade by Bluepoint (who also made the PS4 remakes of The Last of Us and Uncharted) for the PS5. I never played the PS3 version so I can’t compare them, but the new one is great and I definitely see how it was a start of something. These games are known to be hard, but to a large extent that can be remedied by grinding for XP (or the equivalent souls or blood) so you can level up, and also just learning how to beat them. That was very much the case for this one.
Right after finishing it I started a new game + to get the second ending and then a new game ++ to get the platinum trophy, which I failed at due to broken (or misunderstood?) game mechanics. Now I feel that I’m done with it, but it was highly enjoyable while it lasted. It’s very good-looking and a very rewarding feeling as you get better at it.
I also played some other souls-like games, such as Hellpoint, Mortal Shell and Hollow Knight. Hellpoint is the one of the three that mostly resemble the From Software games. Similar fighting, similar level design with shortcuts and save-points, similar subtle storytelling, but this one is set in space on an occult/futuristic space station.
Hollow Knight is different in that it’s a 2D platform game, but it still fits into the genre in many of the same respects that Hellpoint also does. The fighting as very precise, for lack of a better word. Most boss fights are pretty hard, some are extremely difficult. You have to be prepared to die a lot and when you do you need to find the ghost of your previous life to get your stuff back or they’re lost forever. The subtle storytelling gets pretty dark sometimes but the art style compensates by being cutely cartoonish and there are some sequences that feel more quiet and almost solemn. I finished the main and DLC stories but skipped some of the tournament-style extra boss fights. Looking forward to the sequel if/when it ever comes out.
Mortal Shell is the one of these that feels the most unique. It does some interesting things with the fighting system, and also with character builds. Instead of leveling up your character, you switch between different bodies with differing attributes and abilities. So you can find one that suits your playstyle or you can experiment or switch depending on what fits the situation you’re in. Or you can play the game just in your basic form, without a body, which makes you extremely killable but also much more agile. The leverl design feels a bit like it’s based on opening shortcuts but it’s more just about learning how the areas are interconnected.
Also, the game doesn’t tell you what any of the things you find do, so you have to use them to find out, and all of them aren’t necessarily good for you. There are also lots of other functions in the game that it doesn’t tell you about so you need to happen upon them (or check the game’s wiki). All this opens up opportunities to experiment with combination tactics and makes you want to explore more parts of the game than just the world you run around in. I also like the mood, music and personality of the game, reminiscent of Hellblade in its bleak black metal-ishness…
Spider-man is the only game based on a Marvel comic that I even felt interested in playing, mostly because it felt like it had a story, that it had a respect for the source material and that it seemed fun to play. So it did, and so it is.
As is the sequel, Spider-man: Miles Morales, starring the character from the Ultimate Spider-man alternate timeline comics. They’re both set in the same New York City, except it’s winter in the Miles Morales game. Not sure what else to say, except they both got the feeling of web-swinging around the Manhattan skyscrapers right. There is a system for fast-travel by taking the subway, but I hardly ever used it.
Both games can feel a bit hectic at times, with nearly constant things to do that pop up beside the main story, but most of it is fun, if a bit repetitive. And it really lives up the the cliché that the city feels like a character of is own.
Another series of open world games is the Mafia trilogy. Mafia III was one of the first bigger games I played on the PS4, and now I’ve also played through the first two in the series. The mafia genre isn’t normally my cup of tea, with exceptions of course, but the genre in itself doesn’t attract me, but I like these. At least the first and third ones, mostly because the main character in Mafia II is the least sympathetic. Mafia III was a huge leap forward in quality, probably because I find it more interesting to follow a character trying to find his way around a racist Vietnam war era alt-New Orleans than a prohibition era alt-New York…
Little Nightmares II came out, as a stand-alone sequel that maintains the same creepyness that was in the first one, but expands the world and takes the storytelling to another level. Not that the first one was lacking in any way, especially with the DLC that I had missed for some reason. Both games are well worth a play-though or two. Pretty short, good-looking games with a few twists and turns that make them much more than what you might expect from most 2D platformers. Maybe these count as 2,5D? Anyway, good stuff!
Gris fals into the category of smaller games that deal with the symbolic representation of psychological processes and emotional trauma, similar to Rime. This is 2D, pretty straightforward gameplay that does much with small means. Very stylized in its art style which looks like it’s all made more or less in pencil and aquarelle, and clever in its utilization of the limits it puts on itself, if that makes any sense?
As you progress through the game, you get more abilities and the world gradually goes from very sparse grays to adding more colors, making the world feel increasingly vibrant. Sometimes, the form can create a completely different yet complimentary sense than the content, so to me this is a feel-good game about depression…
Superhot is a slow motion first person action game. With some variations, the basics is that the enemies and the world moves only when you do, so you can plan and execute your moves and choreograph your own John Woo-style action scenes. I first tried and fell in love with the second game in the series, which is Superhot VR, and now the third one is out, called Superhot: Mind Control Delete. As that title suggests, these games are full of cybernerd wordplay and a story that is both meta and more interesting than it first seems, but never fully explained. Superhot VR kept me warm during a winter when my apartment was pretty cold at times. Even if it feels like you hardly move because it’s mostly slo-mo, you can still work up a sweat dodging bullets and shooting red guys, or cleaving bullets in mid-air with a katana. I haven’t even finished Mind Control Delete yet, because it got too intense (which I don’t mean in a bad way).
Observer (or >observer_) is a Polish cyberpunk game starring Rutger Hauer as a disillusioned cop. Most of it takes place in one building where you walk around talking to tenants, looking for your missing son. It’s a dystopic future run by a huge tech corporation. Most people are augmented somehow, except a few weird purity cultists, which is a problem since there’s a digital plague going around. Just after arriving in the building there’s a quarantine lock-down, but it’s unclear if there’s an actual outbreak or just a malfunction. Both seem about equally plausible.
You have to take pills regularly or your vision becomes distorted because there’s some problem with your implants, and there seems to be some kind of monster murdering people in the building. So as the investigation goes along, you come across several persons who are either dead or dying. You hack into their brains to try to sort out what’s happened and piece together a bigger picture. These sequences are filled with abstractions, dream logic and, as the rest of the game, the horror of living in an extremely segregated class-based society where you have to make do because it’s near impossible to change your position. So it’s almost like it’s set in out world, as is often the case with cyberpunk. Just with more misery and technology (which is in need of repair but left as it is because no one can afford to fix it). I started playing this a few years back but made the mistake of always trying to play it when I was too tired, so I had to stop because nothing made much sense. Now that I came back to it and made sure not to play it in my sleep, I had a much better experience. Truly cyberpunk without being so derivative that it loses its own expression.
I used to believe that first person shooters weren’t my thing, but Deathloop proved me wrong. Probably mostly because of its set up. The story is that you live through the same day over and over and you need to kill 7 persons to break the loop, while a mysterious woman is trying to stop you from doing just that. There are 4 areas on the island you’re on, so you need to manipulate events to get all these 7 people to the same space at the same time, because if the day ends it all resets, and only you and the woman can remember the previous loops. Except you start with amnesia so you have to spend the first few loops just trying to figure out what’s even going on. So the premise and story are interesting, but it’s also aesthetically special. All the NPCs on the island think every loop is the first day, but it’s been going on since the 1960s, so they’re all dolled up in their best 60s outfits, prepared for an eternity of the same decadent day over and over, where they can do whatever they want because even if they die they’re just going to come back again when the day resets. They just hadn’t counted on not remembering the loops. So no one really knows how long it’s been going on.
This was probably the hardest game to find fitting images for, I just couldn’t find a good way to represent the feel of it. So I had to settle for the title image and a couple of background pics.
Oh, and it’s also a multiverse and you can play as the mysterious woman, invading other players to try to prevent them from breaking the loop.
Lastly, I’ve started playing the tabletop RPG Werewolf: The Apocalypse again, something I hadn’t done since the 1900s, but now we’ve been at it for over a year. Lately we’ve been mixing it up, so we all play at least two parallel characters and not just sticking to Werewolf (I play a Gurahl (werebear) and a Virtual Adepts mage). I’ve always liked White Wolf‘s World of Darkness RPGs and their focus on collectively telling stories rather than the actual game mechanics. So our sessions are a way of building a campfire narrative, a tale that we tell together over a long period of time and something to keep out the encroaching miseries of day to day life.
So I leave you with this portrait of my main character, and that’s all for this 2022 new year’s account of what I’ve used over the last two years to enhance and escape the consensus reality that some people seem so intent on destroying for the rest of us.
I’m not always sure if I write these for you or for myself or whatever, but since you’re reading this, I guess it was for you. So I hope you’ve enjoyed these rants and recommendations!
