This Week's Guest: Enrique Quintero
This week's guest has seen the end of the world. Enrique's favorite game growing up gave players a choice about who they could save before an impending apocalypse -- and of course, you can't save everyone. It was a dark obsession for a little kid, but playing through the end of the world got him through some tough times as a kid -- and even tougher times as an adult.
This Week's Recommendation: Fragments of Him
I'm so grateful to all my Sewers of Paris guests who open up and share their pasts -- I know it's not always an easy thing to do, especially when the past hurts.
For my recommendation this week, take a look at the game Fragments of Him. At least, I think it's a game -- Fragments of Him is one of those genre-bending experiences that pokes at the rules at what's a game, what's art, what's a story, and what's a presentation. I played it a few months ago with my partner, and though there are no puzzles to solve or enemies to shoot, I still found myself immersed in whatever it is you want to call it.
In the ... game, you navigate through the memories of the people who loved and lost someone they cared for, reflecting with melancholy on the ways that their lives intersected. The whole thing is about two hours long, and very somber. Your experience, and indeed everyone's experience, will be different, layered with whatever history with with loss and grief you bring. I found myself grateful to be playing it alongside someone I loved, and grateful that he was there to share it with me. But it was also a reminder that even though none of us will be around forever, those around us will go on after we're gone. Death and loss and grief aren't an end -- they're just steps in a process that loops continuously, and always has been, and always will.
Clips of Stuff We Talked About
Music
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/