Origin Stories

With a Terrible Fate

In Episode 2 of With a Terrible Fate's new podcast, we explore the structure of origin stories in video games: where does the concept of the origin story come from, how can it help us to understand our favorite games differently, and how can the special interactive nature of video games tell alarmingly nuanced origin stories unavailable to other media?

Also on the agenda: studying the ways in which we talk about players and avatars in video games; a peek into the academic study of video-game storytelling; how video games can disrespect your time; what the PS3 and PS Vita stores tell us about the future of gaming libraries.

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• 00:03:53 Main Story (spoilers for The Last of Us and The Last of Us: Left Behind)
  • Background on Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey"
  • The storytelling of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
  • "Breath of the Wild: The Hero Who Never Was"
  • "Critical Review: The Quandary of Responsibility in Breath of the Wild"
• Side Quests
  • 00:39:54 "Ordinary language" in player-avatar relations
    • "The Role of the Player in Video-Game Fictions"
  • 00:56:14 Why Stefan quit Assassin's Creed: Valhalla
    • Analyzing the use of aliens in Assassin's Creed vs. Majora's Mask
    • "On Nier: Ought a Game's World to be Fun to Explore?"
  • 01:07:58 The Ethics and Implications of Digital Stores Shutting Down

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