Hello everyone, I want to touch on the topic of philosophy in games.
Since I don’t know how well you are familiar with such a concept as philosophy, it’s worth starting from the very beginning. I’ll tell you what philosophy is, and then we’ll talk about it in the game itself.
And so, firstly, I am not saying that I know the truth, but this will not stop me from philosophizing, some may mistakenly think that a philosophy teacher is necessarily a philosopher, but this is not so.
Tell me if the literature teacher is a writer or a poet? Is an architect a builder?? Or a film critic, director? Sometimes, very rarely, but usually not.
And in order to direct your thoughts in the right direction, you will have to delve even deeper into this term.
Word "philosophy» of Greek origin and consists of two parts. "Philia" translates as "Love", "Sofia" — How "wisdom». So philosophy literally means the love of wisdom.
But the words sage and philosophy are not synonymous.
And to put it even simpler, sage knows everything.
Philosopher, seeks to find out.
While digging on the Internet about this topic, I came across an interesting quote.
Pythagoras, in a conversation with King Leontes, uttered words that later became popular: “I’m not a sage, but only a philosopher».
And here, I have a very serious question, what I said earlier sounds beautiful and logical. But where is the confirmation that this is true?? That Pythagoras actually said this expression to the king, where is the evidence?? Or maybe there was no such conversation, and this quote was put forward only to show the mind of Pythagoras and distinguish between such concepts as a sage and a philosopher?
In philosophy, it is customary to examine metaphysical questions, from the Greek "meta", which translates as “for, after" And physics, what does “nature, what surrounds us"The word metaphysics will be translated literally as, what comes after nature. I hope I explained it simply enough.
Philosophy also intersects well with economics, judge for yourself. Economics answers the questions of how to do better, how to increase well-being, how to distribute resources.
Answering these questions, we will be guided by a philosophy that will answer the questions of what is good or bad for us? What is the meaning of this activity? Why do we need this?
For example, does he take good care https://casinovibes.uk/mobile-app/ of the weak and sick?? If society says yes, okay. Economics will tell you how to allocate resources to achieve this.
It is in this vein that my further conversation about the gothic game will go, about the moral issues of the main character and the player, about what the developers of this game wanted to tell us, why we still play gothic, because we know the plot. what is the meaning of life? Oh no, I’ll probably speculate on this question somewhere else..
Let’s talk about who the main character of the game is and why he doesn’t have a name? Agree, there is no direct answer to these questions, and perhaps even the developers themselves did not put any meaning into this, because it is worth asking one question so that the need for knowledge disappears, FOR WHAT? Why create a past for a character that won’t be used in the game?.
But the human mind requires answers, and you can find a bunch of videos about who our nameless one was, an alchemist’s student, a former military man, an ordinary peasant. In general, it’s great that people are trying to find an answer, but in the end they can only give out false truths without evidence.
But this question can be answered without lying, the truth is that only the one who came up with the nameless one can do this, that is, the developers, no matter what they say about it, it will be the truth, because this is not your world, you are just an observer in it, and they are the creators.
Even if they say, in plain text, that the nameless one has no past, you will not be able to dispute it
Even if we are guided by our logic that every person has a past, that means the nameless one must have one too. I’ll tell you, it’s not necessary, it even fits into the game’s lore, if you remember that the nameless chosen one of Enos, then Enos could simply have created him out of nothing.
Why doesn’t the nameless one have a regular name?? Why didn’t the developers give him any name?. Of course, we can say that this is an imaginary world and the developers themselves decide what is in it and what is not, even if there is no logic in it.
But here everything is not so simple, the name can be absolutely anyone, anyone and anything. And when the character’s name is unknown, you can call him absolutely any name, including your own, which means you will be projecting your own character onto the character.
Perhaps the developers wanted to show us that you yourself will decide the fate of the main character, because you are him. The developers beautifully hid the name of the main character from us, and when they address him by name or talk about him, it remains behind the scenes, a beautiful move that forces us to act out not a prepared scenario, but to improvise and take into account our own moral choices.
And if they touch on the issue of morality, good and evil. Good or evil main character? Let’s do it this way, if we are guided by the fact that evil is something that causes people to die not a natural death, something that causes people to be oppressed and disadvantaged in some way. Then the main character fights evil (in this sense), but does this make him good?? After all, the path of the main character to the end of the game can be characterized as how the end justifies the means. Is killing a villain a good deed?? although murder itself is by definition immoral. Probably, here everyone should distinguish for himself the concepts of good and evil. But I will say that when playing gothic, we have to choose between two evils. Which one is smaller, choose for yourself.
Which side would you take?? What would guide you when choosing who to join??
Or to Swamp Camp? Because you didn’t like either side or you just like the swamp and don’t want to do anything?
You have no other choice in the game, you will lose if you don’t choose a side. But which way is the lesser evil? It’s hard to make a choice when you don’t know the consequences; if you choose the wrong side, you will oppress yourself for the action you have committed and try to quickly forget it, or get busy and do it differently. I’m guilty of this myself.
Of course, if you are guided by whoever is stronger, then I will go to him. It’s better to be on the winning side. Winners are not judged, losers are not remembered. The choice will be obvious. If you are guided by this logic, then your motto in life is: the end justifies the means. And I think this is bad, this is sooooo bad, but not always.
By the way, if we forget about evil itself, in the form of a sleeping person, is creating a dome for prisoners a good idea?? I did not find information why the sleeper increased the size of the barrier, but the question is different: could the barrier let people out before the intervention of the sleeper. I will think so, otherwise what free person would agree to work there??
But was there a need for a prison from which it was impossible to escape?? I’m sure you’ll tell me, of course, what’s the point of prison?. Whoever answered this way did not see the main question, which was is prison necessary, not what she is.
I understand the king’s decision to use unpaid prison labor to achieve his goal, but is it good and profitable?? There is a war going on, and the main strategic position lies with the prisoners, those people whom the kingdom expelled and forced to work as slaves, it could be a fatal mistake to put the conditions of victory on the shoulders of the prisoners. Who will work harder, a patriot of his country or a prisoner who will gladly raise a sword against his masters?? By the way, when the barrier changed its structure, they did just that, they were no longer imprisoned under their dome, and the king became dependent on them.
This coin has two sides, someone had to be on the battlefield, and from the initial considerations that there should be patriots of their country on the battlefield, and prisoners humping them under threat of death, sounds sensible and logical. And really, don’t issue weapons to criminals and murderers.
But is it right? Is it right to punish a person without giving him a chance at redemption? Robar 2nd could use prisoners as cannon fodder, besides, there would be prisoners who would want to atone for their guilt and would go into battle without fear of dying, because there is nothing more to lose, they would fight much more fiercely than any soldier of Robar 2nd. Of course, there would be a lot of robberies and immoral acts with such people, but in war all means are fair, right?? History will be written by those who won, otherwise at what cost it was given, you can hide it in the future and rule the country that defeated evil.
The Gothic plot, of course, is not about this, but tell me that it is better to lose or win at any cost? The word lose, in this case, will mean that it is as if you never existed, neither as a state, nor as a nation, nor as a person, nor even as an individual.
Let’s now return to the question of good and evil, we consider demons such as the sleeper to be exceptionally evil. But they hardly consider themselves that way? Trying to understand the impossible, why the demons needed all this, I increasingly remember one expression. The meaning is as follows:
That people in their understanding are just bees who simply live their lives. And only the beekeeper (in our case the demon) knows that in fact, they collect honey for him. But the bees will never understand this, because the beekeeper goes beyond their scope of thinking.
We can only guess about the true purposes of their existence, and the more beautifully the developers hide the truth from us, the stronger the desire to solve the riddle.
I would also like to talk about something more understandable like altruism, which means the willingness to selflessly act for the benefit of others, regardless of one’s personal interests. Oddly enough, in Gothic there are characters with this quality, well, at least the main character. I think you can name these characters without me. Diego, Milten, Lester, Horn.
It is clear that the developers have built this quality into them, but is it a coincidence?? I would like to wonder what the developers wanted to show us with this game? The fact that they know how to program and create games? Or tell the story of a nameless man who starts from the bottom and becomes the savior of prisoners? It’s unlikely, as I said earlier, some characters have a quality of altruism that can teach us to help others and make new friends,
The world of Gothic is far from friendly, we have to learn the issue of trust in other people, many will simply want to beat us up and rob us, and in some situations we ourselves can be in the role of a murderer and robber, or commit an act of altruism and see how people react,
This is not just a game where we go around and kill monsters, it can help us socialize in society, help us make the right decisions in life, helps us draw the line between lesser and greater evils. Even if you play an evil character, this will not mean that you will learn to do bad things to others, on the contrary, you will understand that it is better not to do this and remember this.
By the way, initially the main character is an egoist, a complete contradiction of altruism, not having time to get behind the barrier, he immediately wants to get out of it and is ready to do anything to do this, he doesn’t even care that he will free all the prisoners who can go kill and rob.
Imagine a situation, three game developers were asked one question, why are you working??