Climbing is something you can do in Video Games. This was inspired by Real Life, where you can also climb.
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Climbing in video games is like clipping out of bounds but im not out of bounds- im Skyrim horsing my way up a slope that i am vastly underleveled to climb and im doing it for hours at a time.
climbing in video games is my personal "digging a big hole for no reason". i looooooove when a game has an object in the sky connected to the ground by like a string or smth. i WILL find a way up! thinking about how i downloaded tower of fantasy and climbed all the way up to this giant fuck ass tower in the sky just to see if i could find some sort of loading zone that allowed me to get inside. i could not but i DID manage to get all the way up there and take some screenshots, and then i promptly deleted the game.
the beauty of climbing in video games is that you have to do what the game devs didn't think was possible. something No one wanted you to do or asked you to do. the more empty the top of the mountain is, the better the climb.
i enjoyed legends arceus for this reason. the game was fun but i loved how vast and empty and ugly the game was. aesthetically it felt like i was just in a giant pit of mud. Something about climbing to the top to see the repeating textures form tessellated patterns across the ocean, well, it actually felt magical. it's clear they dont want me here and out of bounds is 3 steps to the left but im standing here anyways.
games that are about climbing don't give this vibe which is why i am glad many botw clones DO have climbing. the more of an afterthought the climbing is- the less required it is to complete a game or to navigate through the levels- the more enjoyment i get out of it.
im playing pokopia rn and unsurprisingly ive spent most of my time just. climbing. there isn't BOTW style climbing in the game, it's more similar to minecraft climbing, where you have to scale the terrain using the breaking and placing of blocks. of course, it would be easy to climb up all the way to the build limit by just placing blocks in one tall pillar- but that ruins the fun. in minecraft and in this game i have some self imposed limits which make climbing more interesting. for one, i cannot destroy the terrain, but instead make my stairs blend in naturally. climbing then again becomes a task that takes a long time, as i do everything in my power to avoid destroying or placing blocks. pokopia rewards climbing with flat vast plains on top of the mountains. something about this always tickles me. seeing the outline of things right outside proper render distance, so shadows aren't loaded in- the simulation breaking at the edges. something about it feels so mysterious and completely unintended. it reminds me a lot of the minecraft nether roof.
this also reminds me a bit of what it was like playing donkey kong bananza. i would spend hours just trying to remove every part of destructible terrain. the developers certainly intended for the game to be played that way, after all, in a game that makes it all too easy to destroy and extremely difficult to build, of course they expect for you to demolish everything- but the ephemeralness of the whole ordeal is what made it compelling to me. if you closed the game, if you saved, if you did anything that would force the game to refresh- everything would be lost. the terrain would reset and whatever you were working on would be deleted. thats what made it compelling to me in the first place. and i think that the fragile nature is what makes the climb compelling- one bad fall and you have to start it all over again- but then, why are you even climbing to begin with? the game doesn't reward you for doing this, it's not particularly impressive, in fact, the likelihood that i would even take a screenshot or video to share my "achievement" is low at best. it's a goal that exists purely because I enjoy the *process* of completing the goal.
isnt this feeling the exact reason for the existence of the cozy game genre? isn't it the reason why people keep coming back to skyrim or GTA or red dead? something about just participating in a process, doing something that only makes sense to your muddled half awake brain- that's the dream. that's the reason why you play games to relax in the first place.
its almost 1am which is late for me. and I've been sick for the last 2 days so my brain is fuzzy. and ive been playing pokopia (which came out 2 days ago) for about the entire 48 hours straight. so i don't make much sense right now. i hope i was able to get my feelings across.
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— some guy, upon being asked about their feelings on botw style climbing mechanics
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