Whereas formalized learning has never been my forte, I really enjoy informal learning and exploration. If Steam offered advanced degrees, I would have one by now. I’ve learned an enormous amount from video games, and this week I went down a completely delightful and unexpected rabbit hole with a game based on a high-selling but somehow little-known Ken Follet novel called “The Pillars of the Earth.” It was on my Steam wish list and went on sale for a whopping 90% off, so there was no choice but for me to purchase it. And it’s been amazing! I’m through the first “book” and started on the second section last night. It’s a very unusual game experience and it led me to go look up the book and read more about it. Ken Follet wrote an amazing preface for a later edition of “The Pillars of the Earth”, where he describes the long and fraught journey he had writing this novel, and the resistance he faced from his publishers and advisors because it was outside of his usual thriller genre. It’s a historical novel about the cathedral-builders in medieval England, inspired by his great passion for Gothic architecture. I love his preface. It’s very honest and cranky and describes an unlikely success story in all of its messy, chaotic glory. “The Pillars of the Earth” has turned out to be Ken Follet’s most steadily-selling book of all of his novels—not the most popular in terms of huge spikes in sales, but the one with the most staying power and with the most consistent sales world-wide.
I don’t know the history of how they came to create a game based on the book, but it’s been a fascinating experience. It’s one of those “choice” games where purportedly the decisions you make affect the outcome. In turn, you play as a humble monk, a young child who was raised in the woods by his outlaw mother, and the daughter of a disposed earl. Let me tell you, monks, humble or not, were getting up to some real shenanigans in medieval England. Taking a fearless moral game inventory, so far I have started a war, covered up for my brother’s involvement in treason, and burned down a cathedral. (I had my reasons, and anyway that cathedral was in severe disrepair and was about to collapse at any minute. I probably saved lives by burning it down.) As soon as I finish the game, I am going to read the novel in full. I’m really excited about it. Also, I want to do some research on bona-fide bad ass Empress Matilda, the daughter of King Henry 1, who considered herself the rightful heir to the throne and fought tooth and nail her entire life against enormous odds to claim her rightful place.
Enjoy this game trailer. It gives you a little taste of the game’s emotional depth.
--Kristen McHenry
3 comments:
Fun to read!
I enjoyed your post, you write very well. But I think you should use a responsive theme for better experience. Waiting for your next post.
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Ach, I wish I could convey my love of mathematics to you! But I guess you're right: it's a thing to be done wholeheartedly or not at all. (Did I know that you also went to a not-school? Maybe. My mind is such a sieve, these days.) You write so beautifully and clearly that I would have expected you to have breezed through academia easily: maybe you snagged on realizing that you didn't actually understand things. If you let that stop you, school becomes much more difficult. I never had that problem, alas! Which meant that I was absurdly successful at school and rather pathetic at life. Life occasionally requires that you actually understand things.
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