aesthetics

…father’s redemption story and ends with a condemnation of overprotective motherhood is the game in microcosm. Its thematic content is the gotta hear both sides of parental abuse; men be raising their godly offspring like this, women be raising their godly offspring like this. Violence is evil, though it’s also good as hell. Things were bad before, but they’re better now, just please don’t ask me how. God of War takes the status quo of video game culture, packages it in prestige aesthetics and sells it back to us as insight. God of War tells us that we’re big boys…

…Dan Hulsman deconstructs seven tenets of musical theory using the game’s main theme, and Doc Nano charts (figuratively and visually) the frequent use of leitmotif that connects many of the game’s tracks.

Role-Playing

Although Final Fantasy VII’s aesthetics and narrative were celebrated immediately by critics and consumers alike, the finer details of its mechanical design took longer to unpack. Perhaps the most exhaustive effort to date is Patrick Holleman’s aforementioned book Reverse Design: Final Fantasy VII. Holleman uses extensive quantitative data to analyze aspects of the game such as its script, difficulty curves, character level-up systems, and map design…

…gaming. Like Walker, Anderson recounts several of the small stories that emerged from play, and much of their cons reflect Mark Brown’s on shrines and aesthetics (manual captions): the puzzles don’t build on each other, they dungeons aren’t very dungeon-y, and they all look the same. Brown’s other critique (manual captions) notes the contemporary inspirations while detailing BotW’s unique approaches to open world design.

(Danielle Riendeau even blogged about her enjoyment of Anderson’s video.)

Returning to Arlo and Anderson’s question, Skill Up finds BotW lacking(autocaptions) in Zelda-ness. They also detail how the game succeeds in the wake of…