Or at least make it interesting lol
"An alien force that doesn't understand individuality, communicates via assimilation"
"A parasitic fungus that mutates the host but only gains sapience at a critical mass and is horrified at what its form of living takes from its former hosts."
or something
"Atom based universe was instigated with fatal design flaws. It's incoprehensible alien makers return many aeons later with 1.1a "string theory" -patch but can't distribute it to all matter at once due to the rate that universe is expanding so it's deployed as self replicating assimilation clouds."
i have something like this in my game, technically. it's a sort of computational matrix. it doesn't spread across the terrain, but will slowly colonize animals and turn them into crystal. it's fairly reversible, and the change doesn't make things evil, it just changes how they work.
And if it -must- be evil, or at least a force that must be opposed, maybe thats where a scifi writer would put its attention; a culture within the matrix that converts creatures without consent and refuses to revert them. Maybe they get help from other cultures.
right, exactly. and situating it as a matter of culture places it in the context of other cultures, so you get opportunist collaborators, etc.. it's so much more interesting. fascist body alteration is spooky, but the problem is actually fascism, not body alteration.
I feel like after we've gone through the fads of "enemies are from a country at war with the US" and the following "enemies are zombies", this is just the latest fad of "flexible enemy design space that won't get us yelled at for being insensitive or boring"
like the idea that a body can be evil isn't a human universal! that's interesting. or that "sin" can be spread through contact, that parts of the world can become evil...
(There are partial answers to this which, while not “spoilers” per say, will be better expressed by the game itself rather than squeezing these thoughts into bsky character limits 😅)
it seems like it's doing something very different than the usual "sea of goopy stuff spreads and corrupts the world" idea. (also the first drawing here is amazing btw.)
I've seen some strong stuff in tabletop rpgs with this. Bodily changes, mutations, or powers being a normal part of everyday people's reality. Not something to fix.
There are so many tropes that just get reused over and over as cheap crutches. There's "the corruption", but there's also the prophesied chosen one, the ancient long dead race that is behind everything, the even bigger bad behind the bad that you're already fighting, and so on.
Goopy purple corruption is, I think, a metaphor for internet echo chambers and people’s refusal to see other points of view. It’s everything we hate about modern society. So yes, it needs to go.
In fact, in M&L: Brothership AND LoZ: Echoes of Wisdom, it’s pretty much exactly that. It’s not even subtle. One game is about building connections, the other is about healing rifts. I’d say it’s annoying, but frankly, maybe people need to be hammered in the head with the idea of it.
Man I’m playing botw again and I forgot how goofy the premise that “ganon is just so angry that he got goopy and gooped alllll over hyrule” is. It’s the same goop from Mario sunshine, even.
Ah it’s a lava-like environmental hazard, used to set up some challenges where you have to navigate around it to climb towers and such. The castle and castle towns are chock full of it. Also the dungeons.
Makes a weird noise, bubbles gloopily a little, sometimes spawns Bubbles, the floaty skull guys. It doesn’t kill you straight away to touch it like lava rivers but it does a lot of damage very fast. The bosses of the dungeons and also ganon are made of it oozing out of the sheikah technology.
i love cosmological dualism and gnostic mythos but at a certain point "the fight between light and darkness" is literally just children's fantasy and indulging in it is arresting intellectual development
i think gnostic or Manichean dualism is so interesting from a historical perspective! particularly as a lens for understanding various current belief systems which end up organically emerging from Christian beliefs or adjacent.
but yes, as a moral guide, it breaks in so many terrible ways.
wow. i've been thinking about this in relation to path of exile 2. (hyperbole, but) in the first game Corruption was little spirals in the sand, and in the sequel it's like... it's like... "the corruption"
it’s implied, since they were added when the beast was added to the game, alongside introducing the idea of what the virtue gems really really are, etc.
every unique enemy draws some kind of power from the beast… somehow… the vague poetic sort of feeling makes it exciting to me
Ah! I guess I never noticed that change at the time, as I was caught up in some hectic life events.
I’m hoping we get an interesting campaign conclusion in PoE 2, and that the endgame moves beyond the current corruption stuff. The Atlas storyline in PoE 1 has been such a cool thing
I thought corruption in PoE's story was Divinity, but without the god to control it(Well, thaumaturgy as a whole, but it comes from research of gems, which come directly from the beast feeding on the sleeping gods and then spitting out divinity)
no, you have a small part flipped. corruption is waste created by the beast while it consumes divine power. it’s like magic poop. nightmare is vague and used by different characters to reference both the power of the beast and the harnessing of corruption, plus other stuff
i think they added them around the "the awakening" update (introduction of Act 4). they're underneath where almost every boss in the game spawns. sometimes they're cut into the ground or drawn in chalk. they're one of my favorite little things. the influence of "the beast"...!
Ok ok wait though i feel like a malevolent frequency infecting people by making its signal more effective through a poem is slightly better than a "the corruption"
Yes please, this is the most widespread in-your-face video game trope I keep seeing in almost every game, with just a different name and key color each time.
I wanted to explore this in my cyberscape rpg about AI's in a future internet. Viral AI are outcast from 'society'. All code eventually mutates and degrades, so some AI protect their code, refusing to alter it, or 'consume' other code that isn't religiously tested by The Order and made safe to merge
Virality can offer power at the cost of disability, accepting that it brings you closer to end of the line. But the story explores the nuance of 'corruption' not being inherently evil, and how religious purity itself can do long term harm. Further dynamics are explored in the Carnivorous AI group.
that sounds really interesting. it's more akin to mutation or disability or willingness to change / be impermanent than a notion of being contaminated by sin.
Exactly! I see the 'core society' framing it as purity vs impurity, but being able to merge/split code (albeit while running and in use, making it a delicate process) they are functionally transformative beings with no defined shape. The city's 'stability' is a lie of comfort/safety.
Not all mutation is bad, evolution and growth, change and development depend on mutation to improve, but the core society has demonised it and is driven by fear to seek absolute stability and stasis, which turns out to be causing bigger problems in the system.
I worry about this in my own writing/game, I've got evil goop and it does corrupt beings/people, but I think I'm alright because it's a metaphor for capitalism.
i think if you have doubts it doesn't have enough depth, probably there's part of you with something useful to say about pulling it in your desired direction.
Been thinking about this in a story I've got bouncing around in my head. The antagonistic force is sort of an "evil for evils sake" sort of thing so it does have that "what if x, but evil?" feel, but the backstory is that people are willing them into existence, like if boogeyman stories came true.
You just murdered so many of the games I love in one tweet. I don't know what it says about my tastes.
I am also tired of the concept of inter-dimensional "tears/portals" that may or may not be random or simply being caused by...you guessed it...a mysterious evil entity! 🤯
i love a lot of media with "the corruption" in it too, eg later Alien media (if not the first film).
you're right, and it's wild to think about how different that scenario is when compared to something like Flatland or the folklore around "the green children of Woolpit".
Comments
"An alien force that doesn't understand individuality, communicates via assimilation"
"A parasitic fungus that mutates the host but only gains sapience at a critical mass and is horrified at what its form of living takes from its former hosts."
or something
Or not! So much you can do!
the so-called antagonist is a celestial being that causes various transformations/mutations/hallucinations
But the same goes for dragons, the so-called protagonists
What makes the dragon form of Kaitsen (left) different from the gift of Myriad (right)?
The world IS poisoned but it’s the humans who did it 🤣
The demons/dragons/whatever are there to protect the planet (albeit though manipulation and body horror LOL)
Please make it stop.
please have an interesting thought about bodies that isn't "what if they were evil". i promise there is so much more there to explore.
but yes, as a moral guide, it breaks in so many terrible ways.
every unique enemy draws some kind of power from the beast… somehow… the vague poetic sort of feeling makes it exciting to me
I remember when 2.0 dropped, was a super fun time in the game! So much cool new stuff
it was…!
I’m hoping we get an interesting campaign conclusion in PoE 2, and that the endgame moves beyond the current corruption stuff. The Atlas storyline in PoE 1 has been such a cool thing
Maybe I'm confusing it with the term "Nightmare"
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qo28dRNVwre0jpyD5Ul8TlL92RyzzYDnYOJn8AUtppw/edit?usp=sharing
note that I absolutely love Control, but I must admit it completely has that trope
Ultimately it's just a reason to create enemies for an FPS though, so idk how much can even be conveyed to the player...
I am also tired of the concept of inter-dimensional "tears/portals" that may or may not be random or simply being caused by...you guessed it...a mysterious evil entity! 🤯
you're right, and it's wild to think about how different that scenario is when compared to something like Flatland or the folklore around "the green children of Woolpit".
My goodness am I basic lmao. ✌️