I have no experience of this, so I can’t really comment. I don’t remember using the internet for much before 2004 or so.
I don’t know, that sounds backwards to me. Halo is mellower in this regard, it’s Marathon with the sadism and the 24,000 eggs cracked to make an omelette > and so on.
What really surprised me was finding out that the Bungie AIs are made from humans >, which lines up with Kurzweil transhumanism. Which also might be the Gheritt White connection with Durandal, incidentally. It’s just weird to me more than anything. The Halo games were definitely a thing for me, and I’d never really considered the politics of Bungie I guess.
Oh right, I beat Infinity some time ago. I knew what was coming, with the Jjaro station and the ending message and all that, but it was cool to finally get there myself. I’d read about this stuff, I don’t know, 11 years ago and I got there at last, so that was a nice finality. Also, Tycho’s last rant surprised me, so that was cool.
hm, to clarify i wasn’t meaning any of those things in isolation, more just the combination of all that stuff together. i think of peter thiel naming his surveillance tech ‘palantir’, for example
As in, you’re connecting the geek mindset displayed in '90s Bungie with the reactionism of some of tech like Peter Thiel?
I can believe that they grew out of similar places and that '90s Thiel would be similar to '90s Bungie. I don’t think they necessarily end up in the same place, though. Our resident classicists have reacted to the uptake of Greek culture by a) referencing it less casually, since it is now more politicized than ever, and b) mocking the practitioners by discussing the true beliefs of these very different cultures.
In reaction to Assassin’s Creed Origins reveals at E3, several people in my office mentioned that they felt uncomfortable playing as Spartans when they’d rather play as Athenians. I believe they are reacting entirely within current cultural contexts and I mentioned that they’re both so different than our culture that it’s not really worth assigning good guys and bad guys. It’s very rare for people to have direct knowledge of these assumed firmament instead of off-hand cultural associations.
As in, you’re connecting the geek mindset displayed in '90s Bungie with the reactionism of some of tech like Peter Thiel?
I was mostly thinking about Bungie, and I guess Jason Jones specifically, not really about anything broader. Like I said before, I was playing Super Mario World in the early 90s. The Thiel thing was an example of a combo that reads ‘neoreactionary’ to me, not really a comment on tech.
I can believe that they grew out of similar places and that '90s Thiel would be similar to '90s Bungie. I don’t think they necessarily end up in the same place, though. Our resident classicists have reacted to the uptake of Greek culture by a) referencing it less casually, since it is now more politicized than ever, and b) mocking the practitioners by discussing the true beliefs of these very different cultures.
The last game I’ve played of theirs was Reach which was, geez, almost a decade ago. So I don’t really know where they ended up in that regard.
And yeah, I wasn’t only thinking of the Greek classicism, I don’t know much recent on that either. Just that in addition to the other political right stuff. Military focus with all the hierarchies. Kind of a vague religious conservatism. A few scientists or soldiers living on hundreds of years as singularity AIs, and so on.
ehhh i mean i think a lot of people who read history have a problem with assassin’s creed, from what i hear. i think those games are best enjoyed as pulp, i’m guessing it would get irritating if you know more about the stuff it’s covering
you, a plebe: I would much rather play as Inventors of Democracy the Athenians than the militaristic Spartans!
me, head aureate with wisdom: I think you’d find many aspects of classical Athenian culture just as distasteful as the fascistic Spartans, I mean just compare their relative attitudes re: the rights and freedoms of women! and it’s not like Athenians didn’t have slaves themselves! ubisoft probably chose to have their leads be of Spartan lineage because it was the only classical Greek city-state that could sorta plausibly produce a murderlady for the setting and furthermore I]oph-&%$(%&(YQEY$(Y(&#EU(RYQ
a lot of the game is a reworking of M2. even with refreshing myself on that game’s plotline, the cues Infinity were giving out were too obscure for me running through the game in 2018. i never would have thought, “oh yeah that’s a wiremap of M2’s first level i’m being shown here so that means this timeline is gonna progress the same unless something changes”, those volunteers writeups were what gave me more context, too late in my case.
i do think my image of Infinity as an amazing narrative was overblown. it’s kind of a farmed out level pack for M2 with a cool story framework to it. the real cool parts i already knew through the internet before playing it, but i enjoyed the ride fwiw
i’d recommend looking what up levels have the secret exits to the failure levels, they’re cool to find and this game already had more mazerunning than i could stomach, i never would have looked for them if they could be anywhere.
i’d also turn on autosaving with cheats.lua >, i wouldn’t have tried a lot of the risky jumps with grenades and all that without it