Cruel 2 B Kind: Santa Monica

Jane-and-Ian's game Cruel 2 B Kind is coming to Santa Monica - sign up here, LA types. I'm going to be in London, boo!

On an entirely unrelated note, God of War 2 is what's been keeping me quiet. That and visits from relatives, plus looming trip to the UK. God of War 2 is like playing 300, to the point where I yelled yesterday, shush I can't hear my movie! by mistake. My movie. Weird.

GoW2 is not really comparable to a movie. The graphics are PlayStation 2 standard. Great textures, blocky outlines. Bad hair. That kind of thing. The acting is pretty average, although the voiceovers aren't half bad at all. This bit from the walkthrough made me chuckle:

**USELESS NOTE: In case you're wondering why the voice of Atlas sounds 
familiar, that's because he's voiced by Michael Clarke Duncan.

It also makes me realise I know far too little about Greek and Roman mythology, because I wonder whether the references to Lakhesis and Chronos et al are mythologically correct.. or not. Is it pure fiction, or is it based on an epic I'm not familiar with?

Makes me think how easy it would be to make the Odyssey into a videogame, and how easy it would be (although not cheap) to make it good.

Comments

[bob]

I've not played GoW2, but from what I've heard, it's very much a comic-book style remixing of Greek myth. (The idea of stealing/transfering powers isn't very Greek, for example.) There isn't any real canon for Greek myths, since every city-state and colony had its own variations of the gods and their stories, but generally speaking:

Lakhesis (Lachesis) is one of the fates, and as such, she's more of a personification than a real character. She doesn't do much beyond sitting around with her sisters, spinning life-threads and deciding the fates of mortals.
Kronos (Cronus) really only figures in the pre-Olympian myths. He's father to the (central) gods, and devours them to avoid his predicted fate of being defeated by one of his children. His son Zeus, of course, avoids being eaten, and comes back to force his father to disgorge his siblings. After being defeated, Cronus doesn't crop up in the stories, as you'd imagine. Historically, Cronus was probably worshipped before Zeus, and the mythic narratives symbolically reflect the supplanting of one religious tradition by another. (Cronus doesn't show up in later Roman myths, but was conflated with the god Saturn, who is quite different.)

Hasn't there been an Odyssey-based game or two over the years? Seems to me there was at least one RPG made in the '80s... definitely rich territory to mine for a game.

[Dragon]

Cronos doesn't show up in later myths because he was slain by Zeus and his stomach cut open to free Zeus' siblings whom the titan ate whole. Then Zeus cut off his dangly bits and threw them into the sea and lo, Aphrodite, goddess of love and jiggy jiggy was born.

If the Odyssey was going to be made into a game, I imagine it would be a text adventure like the Hobbit.

"You are in Circe's cave. To the south is the entrance to the cave.
> S
You cannot go S. The sea blocks your way.
> Wait
You wait. Time Passes.
> Wait
You wait. Time Passes."

Carry on like that for the first 9 years and then you get to the interesting bit where it becomes more like "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

"You are in the Cyclops Cave. You see a log, a fire, some sheep, some rope, a towel and a small fish. The Cyclops is asleep across the entrance of the cave to the west.
> W
You go west. The Cyclops wakes up and eats you. You have completed 0.5% of The Odyssey. Game Over."

[nntt]

Very very very very little in the God of War series is based on any "real" myths. They basically throw names from mythology around without bringing in much of the stories behind them. Yes, Cronos ate his kids but Rhea spirited Zeus away so he could come back and beat down his dad, etc. But any attention to accuracy takes a seat way in the background.

That being said, it's one of the best games I've ever played, and I got over my urge to nitpick about ten minutes into the first game once I realized they weren't really trying to be true to the body of mythology we know of.

A minor correction to Bob's post: Lakhesis doesn't spin the threads, she "measures" them. Clotho was the spinner and Atropos the one with the giant pair of shears. :)

[bob]

"Cronos doesn't show up in later myths because he was slain by Zeus and his stomach cut open ... Aphrodite...was born."
In some versions of the story, Cronus is simply made to vomit up his children. His fate varies from version to version, but getting cut up isn't necessarily the end of a god; even in some of the stories where he gets sliced up, he ends up quietly hanging out with the other Titans. After all, in some stories, Zeus gets his head split in twain (to "give birth" to Athena), and he's fine afterwards, and in some stories, Prometheus is sentenced to perpetually having his liver torn out by an eagle. (I've read at least three or four completely different Aphrodite origins myths, as well.) This is a problem with a game attempting to be mythologically (or religiously) correct- it will always contradict some traditions...

"A minor correction to Bob's post: Lakhesis doesn't spin the threads, she "measures" them. Clotho was the spinner and Atropos the one with the giant pair of shears."
Yeah, sorry, I was speaking collectively of the three. ;)