Blueprint:Home — The Mysterious Island
by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief
Raise your hand if you love the adventure genre.
I know everyone has different tastes, but seriously, how can anyone not love adventure? Of all the genres, it’s the one that stays the closest to Joseph Campbell, and that’s never a bad thing. Adventure — a sense of wonder, a sense of discovery — is ultimately, to me, what life is all about.
Where has all the color gone from popular entertainment? Is it just me, or does it seem like pop culture threw away most of the palette except for blacks, greys, whites, washed-out blues and olive drab? It seems like everyone’s in a rush to portray modern myths as dark and gritty, because heaven forbid anyone should have any fun. No, we can’t have that. If people look like they’re having a good time, the hipsters will tear it to shreds on teh internets!
I’m bleeping sick of it.
Sure, some of the adventure stories of yesteryear can look quite corny at times. The original Star Trek (and the first season of The Next Generation) certainly had some facepalm moments. The BBC Narnia adaptations were made for roughly the same amount of money a typical American spends on lunch. Return of the Jedi ended with a teddy-bear luau. seaQuest DSV had enough plot holes to cause a rupture in spacetime itself. Films like Krull are, at times, almost painful to watch.
Tell ya what, though: I’d sure as hell go back and rewatch any of those projects rather than sit through the superbly-produced Battlestar Galactica remake, which had me wanting to commit suicide after nearly every episode.
Jareth sees you trying to look dark and “edgy.” Jareth is not impressed.
(Let’s not even speculate on how they’d frak up Neverending Story or Labyrinth if they tried to remake them today. Good god, no.)
It’s not much better in video games. Oh, joy, another gritty first-person shooter that gives me motion sickness. And is Kratos ripping an elephant’s brain out the only way to introduce kids to Greek mythology?
Yeah, I’m opinionated. But you know what? I miss video games that conveyed a real sense of adventure. Who here remembers the old Ultima games? How about the original Bard’s Tale trilogy? Wizardry. Might & Magic. Spirit of Excalibur. Myst. The 7th Guest. Obsidian. Zork. The list goes on. Games that gave you that thrill of discovery.
Real-world ruins fascinate me. Newgrange. Skara Brae. Nan Madol. Machu Picchu. Baalbek. Pompeii. Rapa Nui. Too many to recount here. But these places set fire to the imagination. For anyone who read Jules Verne, for instance, it’s hard to not look at some place like the Kerguelen Islands — the last remnant of a submerged continent — and wonder what was once there. Indeed, Verne’s L’Île mystérieuse has always held a special place for me, particularly now that I actually live on a remote outer island in the middle of the Pacific.
Kauai’s an interesting place. There are ruins here — terraced gardens, for instance — which date back more than a thousand years. And, even older than that, there’s archaeological evidence of another culture — the Menehune — which was significantly more advanced and lived here prior to being supplanted by Polynesians from the Marquesas. It’s a remarkable place — an island which, depending on whom you talk to, feels like it’s alive. It is said that the island either accepts you or rejects you, and if it accepts you, it keeps a piece of you there, and you’re never quite whole unless you return.
The reason why I’m going into all of this is because of nDreams’ new Blueprint:Home experience.
This game provides a unique challenge: what the hell to build? It occurred to me very quickly that the real fun wasn’t in trying to just build something generic, like a house; the size of the footprint nDreams gives us to work with suggests that a lot more can be done. And that’s when I flashed back on the old Bard’s Tale Construction Set.
Did anyone here ever use that program? It was a fantastic world-builder game, particularly for the time, and it was tremendous fun to try to recreate Skara Brae. As soon as I got my hands on Blueprint, I realized that this was the real strength of the experience: building rudimentary video game levels.
The video you’re about to watch is a bit of an experimental art-house project. The idea behind it: what if you arrived at an unknown island and found the ruins of an ancient civilization there? And if you dared to explore deeper, you found a portal to another world?
Now, keep in mind, I’m not a great filmmaker — and this was done for literally no money. There are far better machinimists in Home. But I do have two resources I can use. The first is…well, me. Since I don’t hide behind a fake identity in Home, there’s no problem with putting my ugly mug on camera — which, for the purposes of this story, was necessary. Second, I live in one of the most jaw-droppingly beautiful places on the planet, which just so happens to have some ruins I could run around in for filming.
If I’ve pulled this off, it’s a hopefully entertaining look at what a mysterious village, created in Blueprint:Home, would look like if it was abandoned and fell into disrepair. Hope you enjoy.
August 13th, 2012 by NorseGamer | 4 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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Nice vid, amazing how much you gotta put in for a few minuets of screen time eh!
Picking up on your point of discovery in games though, I think the problem is saturation. One of the most influential moments in my gaming history was finding the Zora Kingdom’s entrance behind the waterfall at the top of the river. After spending a good 30mins jumping over the currents, dodging flying rocks and balancing across thin log bridges I reached the source of the river. A high, impassible waterfall, clouded in water vapor and highlighted by the dancing fireflies. On the natural stone bridge that held me close to the fall lay the royal Hyrulian Crest etched into a stone plate, but what did it mean?
After using my magical Ocarina to play the Royal tune I watched in awe as the waterfall parted to reveal a deep cave entrance…
Loved that game. Still do. Why can’t I get that same awe and wonder from my adventure games? Can it be that none of them are as good as OoT? No, it’s just a case of there being too many out there that can give me that now. The last game to actually give me that real sense of wonder and discovery was Skyrim. I’m not sure how many people have found what I have since no one talks about it, but deep under the earth of Skyrim’s land is a massive, beautifully dark and dangerous place that’s only illuminated by gigantic mushrooms that emit an eery glow. It’s where the blind, twisted elves called the Falmer live, and it’s amazing. The birth place of soul gems and precious metals. A trip here will either result in massive riches, or gruesome death!
Adventure in games isn’t dead yet, but it’s definitely becoming its own City of Gold.
Nice article, and machinima Norse. Well done.
Very effective. Really good blend. I know getting the angle to be the same from one shot to the next is one of the hardest things a film maker can do.
Nice film Norse!
What a great video!I really like the blending of Home and Hawaii,it works so well!lol @ Krull!Haven’t thought of that for years!Think I was 12 when i saw that in the theaters with a friend who actually walked out after the first 10 minutes!…awesome article!