My life as a pretend video game writer part one

I was reading Lautreamont's "The Songs of Maldoror" today (and for the past week or so) and realized that Maldoror would make a great character for a game. Think Milton's tragic Satan mixed with the libertine figure of Sade, but then painted like an expressionist painting. He despises the world that he cannot relate to, wants to spit in the face of infinity. Oh, and he has sex with sharks.

I hear kids all the time complaining about how two-dimensional all JRPG characters are.

"Yeah, Tifa's really two-dimensional. So was the story in Final Fantasy XIII."

The life of the JRPG character is quite tragic. You get maybe a few minutes of dialogue (maybe a few hours if you're in a Tetsuya Takahashi game) to get all your character development in, and chances are, if you're not a pretty boy like Cloud, no one even cares; that's why Dante's Inferno wasn't a JRPG about the actual poem. So you have about five minutes to get in EVERYTHING. In the old days, most of your dialogue was spent being sexist (like in Lufia II) for laughs, I guess. JRPG characters have come a long way since then, so do not let your college professor tell you otherwise. Today's stories are becoming more complex and their characters are, too, though some, or most, complain about movie-like games (and then ironically love to death "games" like Heavy Rain). 

I like my games full of metaphysics and modern themes (apparently people only relate to POST MODERN themes, like in Braid blah blah blah). Will people complain about all the text in my games? Of course. Kids hate reading. That's why the last time someone checked out Maldoror was in 1977. And even that was probably in error.

"Wait a minute...this isn't the right book. I wanted Catcher in the Rye!"

Anyway, before I drown myself in related tangents, I just want to say that if games like SCMRPG and Xenogears are ever respected as something literary, we need to start making more literary games. Games based on old books that are actually based on old books and not just on a public domain name. Oh, and I know that kids play games to get away from reading. I don't want to ruin Bejeweled or Guitar Hero. That stuff is sacred.

Besides, Maldoror is clearly not for kids. He represents everything vile in the human condition. The ultimate anti-hero, more nihilistic than a hundred Kefkas (what's the big deal about Kefka anyway?). Why aren't these games being made right now? Because they won't sell? Because kids don't like to read? So what? Someone out there will care. Hell, we'll eventually have 400 level English courses about the video game narrative soon enough.

I don't know; I'm just a rambling old man, clutching to my copy of Paradise Lost as millions of Minecraft fans burn me in effigy. And that image makes me laugh out loud.