Guards Guards Do You Want to Live Forever Ask Me Again in 500 Years Terry Pratchett
I n November 2001, Terry Pratchett was in Chester, famed for its Roman ruins and well-preserved medieval architecture. Staying at a hotel in the city centre, Pratchett opened the window of his room, and looked beyond the historic skyline. "I realised I could drib downwardly on to a roof," he wrote later. "And from then on there was a vista of roofs, leads and ledges leading all the way to the stop of the street and beyond; there were even little doors and inviting attic windows …
At that place is a line intermission, and and then he adds. "I'yard going to accept to finish playing this game."
Pratchett was non because a new career equally a cat burglar. He was reflecting on his favourite video game – Thief 2: The Metal Age. Released in March 2000, Thief II was the sequel to 1998's Thief: The Dark Project, a pioneering stealth game set in a gothic fantasy earth. In both games, players donned the cowl of Garrett, a breviloquent chief thief partly inspired by Raymond Chandler's PI Philip Marlowe. Thief charged players with breaking into medieval mansions, rooftop apartments, banks, cathedrals even police stations, stealing every bit much coin and valuables as they could while avoiding patrols of sword-wielding guards.
Pratchett's human relationship with video games is well documented. Always technologically savvy, he was an early on adopter of PC gaming, and enjoyed everything from Doom to Deus Ex and Call of Duty. He even helped to create a mod (an unofficial add-on) for The Elder Scrolls Iv: Oblivion, writing lines of dialogue for a grapheme. But Pratchett held a particular affection for Thief. He played all three games in the series, and oftentimes contributed to a Usenet newsgroup named alt.games.thief-nighttime-project.
That newsgroup, analogous to a modern forum, has long since been deactivated, but its posts survive in a Google groups archive. Combined, they provide a fascinating record of Pratchett's evolving relationship with both the Thief series and video games in general.
Pratchett offset appears on the forum in August 2001. Similar then many players who go involved in online communities, he posted because he was stuck. In a mail service titled: "Assistance! Spotted Every time" he requests assistance with Thief Ii'due south eighth mission Trace the Courier, in which players must follow a Lieutenant of the Urban center Spotter every bit she carries a secret message to an unknown recipient. "Any I do, the game ends on the basis that I've been spotted – even if, every bit I head up the slope, I go invisible. Can anyone help, please?" Pratchett wrote.
But he before long begins to share his own thoughts on the game. In a post titled: "Favourite Thief Two Mission", he chooses Life of the Party, an expansive level wherein Garrett gatecrashes an extravagant reception hosted inside a vast, mechanised tower, infiltrating the structure via the city's rooftops. "Life of the Political party before you become to the tower seemed to me what [Thief] should all be near," he wrote. "High in a higher place the city in a world of your own, exploring every opportunity, with no other goal than 'nick anything you find', and the sounds of the Watch are floating upwards from beneath …"
Pratchett liked that Thief II was a game that you lot could terminate without killing anyone, which appealed to his personal morals. "I get edgy in games that require killing equally an objective," he wrote in July 2002. "Only being able to hide from guards who announced to have amazing vigil sometimes is a talent in itself." He besides liked that Thief II permit yous solve its problems at your own pace, and in your own way. "I remember a game goes wrong when y'all commencement to fight the programmer rather than the game," he observes. "The Thief games are proficient in this respect – in that location are plenty of problems, simply they tin can exist solved by forethought, care, cunning, lateral thinking or running similar hell."
There was shared lineage between Thief's nameless metropolis and Pratchett'due south own piece of work in the Discworld novels. Both accept popular fantasy tropes and recontextualise them into a more homo earth, unafraid to explore the weirder edges of fantasy. Thief'southward bumbling, grumbling guards share sure traits with Pratchett's own motley crew of city watchmen. Pratchett was fascinated by Thief's rich and distinctive temper. "I wonder what the quintessential 'Thief' quality is? The sense of 'being there'? The feeling of costless exploration?'" he pondered in 2003. "THE Thief moment was me dreamily roping my mode from beam to beam across that big hall in the Bank, while below me the guards patrolled. No other game has offered that, although Deus Ex had its moments."
Posting under his ain name, Pratchett'south presence on the forums did non go unnoticed by the wider community. "Having Terry involved was a very cool feel," says David Geelan, an associate professor at Australia'south Griffith University, and a correspondent to the alt.games Thief forum during the aforementioned period every bit Pratchett. "This was an early example of an author I was a big fan of engaging with something else I loved." This sentiment is shared by another user, Mika Latokartano. "Beingness a big fan of Discworld novels, it was naturally smashing to see him on the forums and to be able to substitution a few words with a world-famous author."
It'south worth pausing at this point to ask: how did the community know this was the existent Terry Pratchett, and not some impostor masquerading as the writer for a jape? Geelan points out that Pratchett didn't make a large deal out of his identity, and his purpose on the forums appeared earnest. Geelan believed he could "recognise [Pratchett'south] 'vocalization' from both the novels and the various interviews with him I'd read and seen." The most compelling evidence, yet, is the email attached to that particular usenet account - tpratchett@unseen.demon.co.united kingdom – an account fans had used to send emails to Pratchett since the early on 90s.
"I tried to be absurd and simply be a fellow gamer and not behave like a fan," Geelan says. Nonetheless, the community sometimes couldn't help simply wonder nigh the relationship between Discworld and Thief. Pratchett addressed their questions patiently but definitively. When one community fellow member asked whether Pratchett had spotted any references to Discworld in Thief, he answered: "I've been conscientious not to wait for DW references. At that place're quite a few similarities between the metropolis and Ankh-Morpork merely that is because they're cartoon on the same full general tradition."
When another user asked whether any of Thief had inspired Ankh-Morpork, Pratchett was a bear on more than sarcastic. "Well, sure. From now on I'll definitely set my books in a quasi-medieval city with anachronistic modern touches, like a constabulary force, and I'll definitely accept these guys who wearable blackness and sneak around the rooftops)". That said, Pratchett makes minor nods to Thief in some later on Discworld novels, such every bit Dark Picket. In July 2002, months before the book's launch, Pratchett mentions a "moment" that is "just a reference for taffers" (a slang insult used by Thief's guards). "A corridor, ane lamp out, barely any shadow … you'll meet," he teases.
Thief Two was Pratchett's commencement experience with the series, and his favourite. He chosen The Dark Project "Tomb Raider with edged weapons". The tertiary game, Deadly Shadows, didn't come out until 2004. "I sure hope T3 takes subsequently T2," he wrote in Dec 2001. "The 'genius' of the Thief world is in levels like The Bank, or Life of the Political party – proper honest thieving." Deadly Shadows didn't quite live up to Pratchett's expectations, only he praised the game's most famous mission – Robbing the Cradle – for its intense atmosphere and cunning employ of horror. "I've always said I play Thief for the immersion, but on that 1 I came closer to drowning," he wrote well-nigh the infamous orphanage-turned-insane-asylum. "Insofar as it does exactly the job it sets out to do, this is a wonderful level."
Exterior Thief Ii, Pratchett's favourite Thief experiences were delivered by Fan Missions, or FMs. Thief has a pocket-sized merely dedicated community which, over the years, has created hundreds of custom maps for the game. Many of these are enormously ambitious, and Pratchett often praises the talent on show in FMs such as Durant, Lord Alan's Fortress, and Calendra'due south Legacy. "I tin can't help being amazed again at the quality of and then many FMs." he wrote in July 2003. "I recently played through T2, and some original missions paled by comparison."
Framed. Photograph: Square Enix
Pratchett continued posting until the finish of 2006. Past this point, he'd been introduced to Elder Scrolls Iv: Oblivion, a fantasy RPG that featured stealth systems similar to Thief, only in a much larger world to explore. Ironically, information technology was a user of the Thief forums who put Pratchett on to Oblivion. In April 2006, Mika Latokartano asked Pratchett: "Have you tried Oblivion yet?", to which he responded: "No, but it'due south now been ordered." Two days subsequently, Pratchett posted again, writing "Aaargh! What have you done to me? Bought the game on your recommendation, and now I see my life slipping away."
Pratchett'due south posts on the alt.games Thief forum are a unique record. Non just do they prove in item an artist's heartfelt affection for another type of art, they likewise represent a style of interaction between a creator and fans that is far less viable in the age of mass social media. Geelan, who around this time also frequented a cyberpunk forum visited by William Gibson, notes that "authors could react more directly with the few hundred or couple of thousand people who might have been on a web forum or usenet group in the mid 90s, than with the millions or tens of millions who would desire that contact now."
On the alt.games newsgroup, Pratchett may have been posting as a famous writer, merely he was also posting as a fan, with all the unabashed enthusiasm, obsession with small details, and debates that entailed. Thief established common ground between him and the rest of the community, allowing them to talk on level terms, and share in the devious delights the game offered. Zippo demonstrates this better than a post he fabricated in June 2002, titled "Back in the night". "Brothers and sisters, I hay-ave sinned," Pratchett began. "I forsook the true path, and took the way of Medal of Honour, Render to Castle Wolfenstein and fifty-fifty of Alien five. Predator ii, for the new games motorcar hither was peak of the line.
"And so I reloaded T2 the other night, and how prissy and calm it all is. But me, the night, the occasional jingle of a primal, and the thwop of blackjack on helmet. Here's to stealth gaming. I'chiliad back."
flemingyestanters.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2021/dec/09/terry-pratchett-thief-video-game-forum
0 Response to "Guards Guards Do You Want to Live Forever Ask Me Again in 500 Years Terry Pratchett"
Postar um comentário