When we made Breath of Death VII: The Beginning back in early 2010, we were just trying to learn how to make an fun RPG. I remember how pleased I was when we managed to reach milestones like “Screen correctly scrolls” and “Party members follow leader in snake-like fashion.” We certainly weren’t striving to create high art. However, that hasn’t stopped one individual from writing a rather interesting analysis of the game that compares Breath of Death VII to T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. You can read his article here.
I rather enjoyed the article if for no other reason than that it makes us sound far more intelligent and pretentious than we actually are. Maybe now all the cool games-as-art indie developers will let us into their club. 🙂
Zeboyd!!! I’m back… Just finished BoD VII and I must say that was the most creative design of a retro RPG battle system I’ve seen (in my many years of playing video games)… I understand you got the idea from another RPG from the past (name eludes me at the moment)… Either way it was refreshing to play thru… Not a pretty or detailed game by any lengths, but it is the one thing I remember most about my childhood RPGs… It was fun!!! 🙂 About to start on CSTW next!
Those milestones really are fulfilling. Building an RPG in XNA is one of the most fun things I have ever done.
That is a really fun article, and not even entirely off base. Death of the artist silliness aside it’s an interesting viewpoint even if it doesn’t take it very far.
Thanks for the link.
I remember an interview with Martin Scorsese talking about how all he ever does is to try to make his movies as good as possible, that he waits for the critics to tell him what he’s doing. True artists, when making something that personally speaks to them, make art incidentally, by the merit of their perspectives and personalities. Being interested in great themes isn’t pretentious, pretension is being up-front and heavy handed and didactic about those themes.
In short, both halves of Zeboyd are artists, whether you two like it or not, and there’s no pretension to be found here!
Cool article, I wish I’d read it when I first found BoD VII, I searched high and low for BoD I-VI for days after finishing it.