#i dunno. perhaps she’s from what the game could’ve been. y’know. had the scrybes collaborated and cared for each other’s aspects

[qrovidcore]

well since i was asked for it (tags from this post, ty @x-i-l-verify​) and i’m too deep in hyperfixation mode to shut the fuck up......

i will try to keep this short lol. anyway, spoilers:

so unfortunately i can’t seem to find the exact post that kicked off this entire train of thought right now, but there’s been a lot of theorizing about the scrybes as being representative of different aspects of game design over in the inscryption subreddit, and i..... may have accidentally developed an entire reading of this game hinged around this idea??

fundamentally, i think, inscryption is a game about games, in the same vein as, say, undertale and oneshot are. more specifically, the plot of inscryption hinges on the philosophies behind What, Exactly, makes a good game? and each scrybe essentially acts out the aspect they represent.

p03 represents the mechanics of a game. i feel like the running thing with them, in their act 2 fight and as how they are as a gm throughout act 3, is the challenge of understanding fully just How the game works, the fun found in the challenge of strategy and leveraging the rules, and if there’s an expression of care present with them it’s found in the love you feel for something you’re driven to get inside of and Understand.

and this is the lens through which we see everything in act 3. it’s about p03, and the love of mechanics, and presenting the player with a Good game based on that philosophy, but it’s also about the aspects of the other scrybes, and what’s missing without them now that we know what the game should have been. and i think the uberbot fights really get at this, both through how p03 misunderstands what the other scrybes fundamentally are, and through the things so essential to each scrybe that they cannot be overwritten even as they are pushed out of the game, and how the love of each for their aspect is filtered through p03′s love of theirs.

grimora, as i was saying, represents lore. i more or less covered her so i won’t spend much more time here, but it’s interesting to see how what is presented as love of the individual cards, the sentimentality of writing them epitaphs and returning them to our hand transformed but there (grimora and the idea of transformative work as an expression of care, anyone?), is now repackaged as love of data. how big is your file? how old? it doesn’t feel like her. grimora doesn’t ask about stats. that’s p03′s thing, seeping through in the representation. but fundamentally she Is the archivist, the one who records the lore because she loves it, and there’s that sort of love of Knowing something that’s a common thread between her and p03 that becomes apparent when she’s filtered through them like this. and it becomes the love of information. give me your oldest file, and i will make it into a card, and you will not want to let it die. it’s the part of her that’s there no matter what.

leshy is the love of story, of narrative. the thesis of act 1, of the building rouguelike loops, of the way his game is presented, is that your decisions may feel difficult, or horrible, or weighty, but ultimately through those choices you have been setting yourself up for success all along. even in supposed failure, you’re helping yourself. it’s a collaborative narrative, the story of how the player wins, because that’s what a good game should do. it should tell a story with you. it should tell you you matter. and it’s there in act 2 as well, the act of making a new card from your first three plays and combining them to give you something stronger. telling you the story of how your choices mattered. and,,, honestly, the whole point is that leshy and p03 have so little in common, that they hold no love for the others’ aspect, but the game is not complete without either of them. and the photograher is the perfect filtering of that idea of narrative and choice through the lens of mechanics. it’s not leshy. he’s not there, and what is there is what p03 misunderstands of him. but the thing that remains is that your choices set you up for success, though this time in the form of strategy, of capturing your best moves and resetting to them to get you out of a bind. because your choices matter, and this is the fundamentally leshy thing that cannot be removed, and the shared thread of care between story and mechanics that comes out in filtering one through the other.

i’ve been working off of the idea of magnificus as representing art, but i’ll be honest i pulled my 69/69 oroborous on this poor tree and 2-shot him back in act 2, so i have a lot less to say about that. (and SHIT is it a testament to how goddamn good this game is, that i regret doing that so much because now i’ve missed out on a big chance to learn about him and about what he means to the game). that being said, i definitely am internally poking at magnificus’ associations with art as a transformative work and as an essential component of making a game complete – hello painting over the cards to give them stronger sigils? again, i deeply regret 2-shotting this fight. i am a Fool. THAT BEING SAID, OH BOY WAS THE UNFINISHED BOSS MY FAVORITE FIGHT IN THE WHOLE GAME SO FAR. PICKING THE RULES!!!!!! STACKING THEM!!!!!! HAVING TO ACCOUNT FOR ALL THE EXTRA MECHANICS YOU’VE PUT IN AND JUST THE SHEER POSSIBILITY OF WHAT THAT FIGHT CAN BE!!!!!!! THE WAY NO TWO PEOPLE ARE GOING TO HAVE THE SAME FIGHT BECAUSE OF THAT!!!!!!! IT’S SO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and it’s magnificus’ love of creation and p03’s love of the rules and just what you can do with them to make a game fun and interesting combined and it’s SUCH A GOOD FIGHT!!!!!!!!!! and man, hey, somebody on this site once pitched p03 as representing creation and art through a digital medium, as opposed to the other scrybes and their associations with traditional art forms, and this does SO much for that!!! and while we’re talking inscryption as a game about Creating Games, having a boss fight ABOUT GAME DESIGN IS SO FUCKING COOL AND ALSO games ARE an art form!!!!! video games are an art form!!!!! what magnificus does is art, but what p03 does is art too, and there’s so much CREATIVITY that has to go into building a game that is fun to play mechanically and is atmospheric and engaging enough to hook players in. it’s all art, and they’re both artists in their own way, and this fight is the essence of what games Can Be as a medium and i love it so so much.

.. so much for keeping this short. i’ll see myself out. yeah.