{"id":4803,"date":"2016-06-17T14:41:44","date_gmt":"2016-06-17T18:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/?p=4803"},"modified":"2016-06-25T15:00:04","modified_gmt":"2016-06-25T19:00:04","slug":"another-video-game-takes-on-the-classics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/2016\/06\/17\/another-video-game-takes-on-the-classics\/","title":{"rendered":"Another video game takes on the classics"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Apotheon<\/a>

Apotheon screenshot.<\/p><\/div>\n

Guest post by Core House<\/a> RA, Brianna Randolph<\/strong><\/a> (CAS ’17)<\/em><\/p>\n

When you take Core, you scrutinize every line in the works of Emily Dickinson, Homer, and Nietzsche, as you analyze and critique their viewpoints on life. After that kind\u00a0training, it’s only natural that you when leave Core, you notice\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>more. All sorts of details\u00a0outside the worlds of philosophy and literature catch your eye…. such as video games that seem\u00a0directly influenced by works we read in Core!<\/p>\n

The game is called Apotheon<\/em><\/a>, available on\u00a0PC and PS4. In style and point-of-view, it resembles standards like\u00a0Legend of Zelda<\/em> and\u00a0Donkey Kong<\/em>, but in terms of plot it is more like Keats\u2019 \u201cOde to A Grecian Urn.\u201d<\/p>\n

(A quick recap if CC 202 was too long ago for you: In that famous sonnet, Keats ponders the figures on a\u00a0piece of<\/span>\u00a0ancient Greek\u00a0pottery, expressing wonderment over their immortality as they seem alive but forever frozen in time, mid-action.)<\/p>\n

In Apotheon<\/em>, seemingly painted figures defy Keats\u2019 observations and run, fight, jump, and battle against a clay-like watercolor background, like the art on a\u00a0Grecian urn come to life. The main protagonist is Nikandreos: a Greek solider drafted to destroy Olympus in a crusade for Hera. In an article describing the game<\/a>, Somerville writer John Brownlee explains:<\/p>\n

The game’s biggest design innovation is its art style, which matches the ruddy silhouetted look of black-figure and red-figure art that took over Greek pottery between the late sixth century and early fourth century BC. In addition to the Elgin marbles and other sculptures, this is the style that we in the 21st century consider synonymous with ancient Greece. Yet when we look at them in museums, what we see, more often than not, are just a bunch of dusty old pots. We forget that to the ancient Greeks, these vases would have been experienced with the same sort of excitement as we experience video games now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More and more<\/a> we’re seeing video\u00a0games<\/a> based on philosophical or classic texts<\/a>. Just last week, alum Tom Farndon<\/a> (Core \u201910, CAS \u201912) stopped by the Core office to\u00a0say hello to the staff and give updates on his life four years post-graduation. During our conversation, he made reference to the\u00a0action-packed, visceral game called Dante\u2019s Inferno<\/em>, based\u00a0(very loosely) on the Divine Comedy! And I do mean “very”\u00a0loosely; the protagonist Dante — who in the books was an average man going through a middle-life crisis in the middle of a forest\u00a0— is\u00a0in the game Dante transformed into a beefy young crusader, decked in armor and a bearing a cross that glows with the force of his piety.\u00a0Despite these departures from the source material, during\u00a0gameplay the rugged voiceover murmurs quotes directly from the translated Italian (as in this trailer<\/a>). This pairing of word to action\u00a0gives the players a sense of \u201cacting out\u201d the feelings and emotions Dante conveyed in his prose.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s exciting to see the modern entertainment world, with all its technological complexity, making good use of the eternally relevant (if sometimes dusty!) classics that are the heart of the Core.<\/p>\n

Thank you to Prof. Hamill for bringing this game to our attention.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest post by Core House RA, Brianna Randolph (CAS ’17) When you take Core, you scrutinize every line in the works of Emily Dickinson, Homer, and Nietzsche, as you analyze and critique their viewpoints on life. After that kind\u00a0training, it’s only natural that you when leave Core, you notice\u00a0more. All sorts of details\u00a0outside the worlds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":438,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[244,6590],"tags":[48731,3717,3917,48664],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4803"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/438"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4805,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4803\/revisions\/4805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}