[Playing…] Titan Souls

hSome time ago J.R.R. Tolkien surprised the scholars of his time with a literature that transfigured the most popular conceptions that his time conceived about myth. The birth of an Elven language gave literature new horizons, the Silmarilion (a book of astonishing mythological complexity) redirected the canon and the public loved this new mythologized form of literature. This conception of the facts motivated this ancient writer to explore the forms of his mythology: an essential element of his explorations were these languages ​​that his mind easily manufactured. Tolkien worked on distant English grammar, High German and its derivatives, he was knowledgeable in Latin, he translated Beowulf and part of the Scandinavian Eddas worked on by Snorri, but his most important contribution to the way of narrating will always be this mystical creation of languages.

Acid Nerve proposed in 2015 a Tolkinean exploration of a universe; an exploration that, like what happened in the past, encourages new forms of myth from a language unknown to those who interact with it. FromSoftware, ICO Team can be considered their precursors, but each of these greats deviated down their own narrative path; Titan Souls It is the path of Acid Nerve, it is a game that conceives itself as one of these strange languages ​​and highlights it as a cornerstone because Titan Souls It is a text with characters foreign to ours, a text that wants to tell us everything but means nothing to us. This alienation that we suffer will be a perennial element of the plot, the plot thread is carved in 16-bit stone, letter by letter the plot dictates to us an order that seems random but that we know hides a certain coherence covered in mystery.

Our role is constituted by a young man without a name, nothing shows a reason for being there, on the other hand we cannot see a moral orientation of the character, therefore Hero or Villain are completely futile labels; We could well be both. Titan Souls It takes place in a desolate universe, it has more of past ruins with remains of magic than of great capitals civilized by technology, although not knowing the rest of the world this is nothing more than another comment. In the game the titans wait completely hidden, the people are either very far away or do not exist and the character is –titan hunter– he tells us little with his silence. Some critics have justified thinking about an extraction of the soul with the death of each Titan, I do not contradict this hypothesis but I perceive it to be cold; A more human look allows us to glimpse a certain mercy when killing each of these beings with only one arrow. It is, so to speak, a ritual act since they must all fall before the same arrow propelled by the same bow in the hands of the same hunter who wanders alone (if we can call him that since we see a Hunter of colossal size in the plot).

This is where I think that mysterious language is everything in the game How do we know that this ancient calligraphy does not mean some tragedy that is happening but that is hidden from us due to ignorance? Could it be that these strange characters seek to protect me from this conscious execution? Or on the other hand, will my mission be so hard that a reading of my objectives is not allowed?

Reflection on the imaginary, this is Titan Souls. Many times when we do not understand something we act on instinct and this game achieves this effect, it is a look at the player's reality, at his moral and intellectual position in the situations he imagines. This is where a simple analysis of the gameplay leaves us with a void, we can devour one and the other on countless web pages but there is always the feeling that beyond the words there is something that is bordered by assigning a classification to certain characteristics, it is true, Titan Souls has wasted potential but observing this experimental progress in the hands of an indie game enlightens me about what is coming in the video game, we begin to see deeper stories and a player who seeks his place in history, we do not intend to be treated like children: this indecipherable language, this difficulty, its mystery, it does not disrespect me, rather it makes me feel part of the universe, part of a universe that seeks the death of these unique beings that represent my spirits for transgressing my own limits.

In the end, Titan Souls It is a whole experience where we ignore and how supposed subjects to know We find that we are beyond everything we know because without knowing we are that hunter, that unique arrow, that bow, that ignored will...