Polygon - Featurehttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/42931/favicon.ico2024-03-18T11:00:00-04:00https://www.polygon.com/rss/features/index.xml2024-03-18T11:00:00-04:002024-03-18T11:00:00-04:00Watching Dune during the war in Gaza
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<figcaption>Photo: Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.</figcaption>
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<p>Frank Herbert, Palestine, and the perils of messiahs</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap p-large-text" id="TZjKu3">In 1974, my aunt and uncle returned to the United States from a honeymoon world tour. Over the course of their travels, they ventured through India, Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey, before winding up in Israel, where my aunt’s sister — my mother — had recently lived for two years on a collective kibbutz<em>. </em></p>
<p id="au9ch9">Children of the late hippie generation, my aunt and uncle were seekers of spirituality and enlightenment in every form (the more exotic the better), and instinctive sympathizers with the put-upon of all nations. They were also sci-fi and fantasy nerds of the first order who loved Frank Herbert’s novel <em>Dune</em>. Its pervasive overtones of Islamic culture and spiritualism and its story of exploited native tribes fighting a jihad of liberation against their oppressors was a perfect fit for both of their interests. Shortly after returning, they conceived a daughter, and, after the prescient Bene Gesserit in Herbert’s novel, they named her Alia. </p>
<p id="Vjtpwy">Around the same time Alia was born, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 3525, condemning the state of Israel for its occupation of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Among the specific acts named by the U.N. were: “The establishment of Israeli settlements therein and the transfer of an alien population thereto”; “The evacuation, deportation, expulsion, displacement and transfer of Arab inhabitants”; and “The illegal exploitation of the natural wealth, resources and population of the occupied territories.”</p>
<p id="WvOk7V">My aunt and uncle had passed through these territories on their travels, and I have often wondered whether they thought about this when they named their daughter after a book ostensibly sympathetic to the cause of colonial liberation and an exploited population. I thought about it again while watching Denis Villeneuve’s <em>Dune: Part Two</em>, the second half of his cinematic adaptation of Herbert’s novel. That morning, at least 112 Palestinian civilians were reported to have been killed by Israeli gunfire while trying to reach aid trucks supplying food. <em>Dune</em> is a novel and a movie entangled in contradiction: a story about the sins of colonizers, told to an audience of viewers and readers largely among those doing the colonizing. And here I was: an American Jew, watching <em>Dune</em> while Gaza was in flames. </p>
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<img alt="Timothée Chalamet’s Paul and Zendaya’s Chani kiss on the top of a sand dune in Dune: Part Two. " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jiT4YXFfqPH48aFAxJcjwLLNNm4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25337658/rev_1_DUN2_T3_0026r_High_Res_JPEG.jpeg">
<cite>Image: Warner Bros.</cite>
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<p id="oVAEhz"><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/introducing-the-metaverse-crisis-in-afghanistan-stuff-the-british-stole-islamic-influence-in-dune-and-more-1.6220405/frank-herbert-s-dune-novels-were-heavily-influenced-by-middle-eastern-islamic-cultures-says-scholar-1.6221670">I am not the first to observe</a> that Herbert’s novel is deeply rooted in Islamic religion, culture, and history. The native Fremen are a kind of generalized fantasy of nomadic Bedouin: desert-dwelling spiritualists gifted in the ways of warfare and survival, caretakers of the spice (read: oil) on which the universal economy depends. The Fremen language and religious mythology that plays so vital a role in the story plucks its terminology straight from the Arabic language and religious texts: The outworlder voice of the <em>lisan al-gaib</em>, the messianic <em>Mahdi</em>, the Fremen battle cry of “Ya hya chouhada,” (“long live the fighters,” in the novel; “martyrs” in the Arabic of our world). These are more than colorful details meant to illustrate a culture; they stress a notion of the Fremen as an inherently authentic and righteous people precisely <em>because</em> of their association with Arab history. Indigenous to the land, they — like their Arab inspirations — are the rightful possessors of Herbert’s world.</p>
<p id="BESqGh">I say Arab here, rather than Palestinian, and this is perhaps inevitable. When Herbert wrote<em> Dune</em> in 1965, the notion of Palestinians as a distinct people and culture (let alone as an autonomous state) was barely conceivable to most Westerners. It was not until Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories following the Six-Day War in 1967, and the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18080054/plo-palestinian-liberation-organization-israel-conflict">resulting attention drawn to the newly formed Palestinian Liberation Organization</a>, that an awareness of Palestinian culture and Palestinian rights as distinctive really began to take hold. From 1948 until then, the Palestinian territories had been under the sovereignty of Egypt and Jordan, whose policy reflected a general view among Western nations (if not Palestinians themselves) that Palestine was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3011576">merely an outpost of a larger transnational Arab culture</a>. </p>
<p id="TEyrBu">Herbert could feel free to glamorize and exoticize his own transnational Arab-coded Fremen, refraining from identifying them with any nation or history in particular. It was a move that was simultaneously progressive, simplistic, and, yes, even <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism">orientalist</a>. Even granting the undeniable fact that Herbert was setting out to feature a white savior only to cut him down, his depiction of the Fremen — liberated, in touch with their natural environment, spiritually genuine in their uncorrupted traditions — could only have been the product of a decidedly white and Western writer. </p>
<p id="TmDQwB">Villeneuve’s films have compounded the issue, deliberately subbing out some of the book’s Islamic terminology, instead drawing from languages <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/dune-and-the-delicate-art-of-making-fictional-languages">as far afield as Mandarin Chinese</a> for the traditionally Arabic dialect of the Fremen. The jihad dramatically declared by Paul Muad’Dib at the close of the film becomes the less politically loaded “holy war.” This is no accident — the film’s co-writer, Jon Spaihts, said that the book’s exoticizing of Arabs “doesn’t work today” — and easy to see why Villeneuve would choose this path. For a white French Canadian director working in a post-9/11 cultural world, associating his native characters with a specific real-life oppressed people posed far more risks than rewards. Even two decades after the paranoia of the Bush era, the fear of being vilified as a defender of terrorists looms large. But denying a clear identity to Herbert’s allegory has the inevitable and unintended side effect of erasing a culture just at the moment when they are trying most desperately to make their voices heard.</p>
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<img alt="Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), cowled and with symbols written across her face in ink, stands in the desert, surrounded by similarly robed figures in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YiCJ8yGYicHJ53r2j9Myni1r9ts=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25317625/rev_1_DUN2_44606rv2_High_Res_JPEG.jpeg">
<cite>Image: Warner Bros.</cite>
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<p id="tSBZ0I">Even so, <em>Dune </em>and <em>Dune: Part Two</em> project a sense of Arab identity almost despite themselves, the visual connotations of ersatz-Middle Eastern deserts and flowing Bedouin-adjacent tribal robes too evocative to ignore. These are not signifiers traditionally associated with Palestine, and indeed, if Herbert had in mind any particular struggle for freedom in the region, it was a more historical one: the campaign led by T.E. Lawrence (better known in film and literature as Lawrence of Arabia) during World War I. Like <em>Dune</em>’s<em> </em>Paul Atreides, Lawrence was an outsider (in his case, a British military intelligence officer) who assumed a position of leadership in a tribal war of independence. And like Paul, Lawrence was increasingly drawn not only to the unapproachable and exotic culture of those he led, but also to a self-conscious sense of his own messianic destiny that both compelled and repulsed him.</p>
<p id="ePwPR1">For Lawrence, the Jews and Muslims of Ottoman-era Palestine were a sideshow to the larger struggle he was waging, but the seeds of conflict were already taking root. In his book <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Lawrence_in_Arabia/99NTgkPUh9AC?hl=en"><em>Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East</em></a>, the historian Scott Anderson describes the immediate tension that emerged between the native Palestinians and the newly arrived Zionist settlers claiming ownership of the territory by right of both God and history. In a moment of alarming clairvoyance, Lawrence would write, “If a Jewish state is to be created in Palestine, it will have to be done by force of arms and maintained by force of arms amid an overwhelmingly hostile population.”</p>
<p id="3tBd6U">The Jews arriving in Palestine were exerting the advantages of Western European wealth, <a href="https://www.rothschildarchive.org/family/family_interests/walter_rothschild_and_the_balfour_declaration">political connections</a>, and, indeed, whiteness to <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516586&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.routledge.com%2FThe-British-Mandate-in-Palestine-A-Centenary-Volume-1920-2020%2FCohen%2Fp%2Fbook%2F9781032174860&referrer=polygon.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.polygon.com%2F24100753%2Fdune-part-2-paul-atreides-arab-muslim-stereotypes-palestine" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">gain access to the most desirable and economically lucrative ports and farmlands</a> in the region — areas from which Palestinians <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00263206.2017.1372427">found themselves increasingly foreclosed</a>, long before the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flight#:~:text=The%20expulsion%20of%20Palestinians%20in,Arabic%20place%20names%20were%20replaced">massive displacements of 1948</a>. And tellingly, the Zionists were doing all this while neglecting to see themselves as anything other than fellow natives of the soil: an indigenous people of the Holy Land whose <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2535451">return was not only justified, but an inevitability of their collective destiny</a>.</p>
<p id="3kUEEK">This is a tendency of which <em>Dune</em>, in both novel and film, is well aware. Paul, in seeking to become Mahdi of a native people, stresses his earnest desire to be one of them, and to fight in their name alone — and he is, at first, sincere about this. But the basic fact of his foreignness — in the film, his very visible whiteness — remains. Whether he desires it or not, he is free to shake off the limitations of his adopted culture if and when it suits him to do so. Thus, he gets to experience the advantages of Fremen life (the spirituality, the arcane knowledge, the illicit thrill of righteous warfare) without being trapped by any of its consequences. This is the fantasy shared by liberal colonizers since time immemorial, be it <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2014/4/22/the-white-saviours-of-the-arabs">T.E. Lawrence</a> or <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/22/entertainment/avatar-2-way-of-water-indigenous-boycott-cec/index.html">James Cameron’s <em>Avatar</em></a>: the dream of the conqueror to wear the skin of the conquered.</p>
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<img alt="In a crowd of Fremen warriors, Chani’s blue eyes pop as she stares with suspicion or even hatred in Dune: Part Two." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wbmXdTgzKexxOx10RI-Q7qfAa8E=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25337671/rev_1_DUN2_T2_0083r_High_Res_JPEG.jpeg">
<cite>Image: Warner Bros.</cite>
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<p id="OL16F4">Villeneuve understands these narratives, their preponderance, and their effects, and his <em>Dune </em>screenplays try earnestly to give a voice to the oppressed class that can overcome the louder arguments of their oppressors. One of the most remarked-on changes he makes to Herbert’s novel concerns the character of Chani, the Fremen warrior who becomes Paul’s lover. In the novel, her part is mainly to periodically give supportive pep talks to Paul during his moments of hand-wringing. In <em>Dune: Part Two</em>, she is <a href="https://www.polygon.com/24091605/dune-2-zendaya-movie-star-best-performance">a thoroughgoing skeptic of his messianic destiny</a>. This gives a helping of agency to the movie’s most prominent non-white, and non-male, character, but it also casts a dark shadow over the notion of messianism itself. In one of the first exchanges of dialogue heard in the film, she remarks, “You want to control people? Tell them the messiah will come. Then they will wait for centuries.”</p>
<p id="EcpVxA">The film, and Herbert’s story, exist to bear out this maxim. Paul at the film’s outset is legitimately horrified by his Mahdi identity, haunted by visions of the bloodshed and starvation his actions will unleash: “A holy war,” he says. “Millions and millions of people starving to death because of me.”</p>
<p id="uHz7M9">His turn occurs when he comes to a late realization that he himself is a member of the oppressive Harkonnen bloodline. Only then does Paul begin to wield his religious authority cynically and politically. Villeneuve refuses to let us ignore this: The film’s final, climactic assault on the Harkonnen palace is shot as a chaotic, red-hued inferno, not the triumphal moment of liberation we’ve been conditioned to expect. Hans Zimmer’s musical cues are grim and foreboding. Even the harsh, bellowing vocal delivery of Timothée Chalamet’s Paul as he declares his holy war is meant to echo that of Dave Bautista’s brutish Harkonnen nephew. Fire, fear, and cynical brutishness from the top down; these are the inevitable fruits of the messianic tree.</p>
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<img alt="Timothee Chalamet stars at the camera in Fremen garb as Paul Atreides in Dune: Part Two. " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/oQ3btianRkCf2ybnXcutMKBIDUQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25337683/rev_1_DUN2_T3_0084r_High_Res_JPEG.jpeg">
<cite>Image: Warner Bros.</cite>
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<p id="wcA5hU">Without messianism, there would be no Israel. The country was founded as an ostensibly secular and socialist state <a href="https://embassies.gov.il/MFA/AboutIsrael/history/Pages/Israels%20War%20of%20Independence%20-%201947%20-%201949.aspx#:~:text=In%20human%20terms%2C%20the%20War,the%20Sinai%20Peninsula%20and%20Eilat.">following the conclusion of its war of independence in 1949</a>. And in that moment, Israel’s first president and spiritual founding father, David Ben-Gurion, explicitly tied the nation’s existence to the messianic destiny of the Jewish people — the term he used for the “ascent” of the world’s Jews to Israel was <em>aliyah</em>,<em> </em>pronounced the same as Alia. </p>
<p id="edXm0o"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/12/hamas-israel-religious-organization/676303/">Without the same faith in apocalyptic outcomes</a>, there would be no Hamas. The brutal and sudden attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, which provided the ostensible cause for Israel’s assault on Gaza, were committed precisely because they were likely to unleash cataclysmic violence <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/90836">that would upend the political order</a>. More than 30,000 Gazans — nearly all of them civilians, starved, assaulted, and terrified in their own homes — <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/29/middleeast/gaza-death-toll-30000-israel-war-hnk-intl/index.html#:~:text=More%20than%2030%2C000%20killed%20in,war%20began%2C%20health%20ministry%20says&text=Smoke%20from%20a%20bombardment%20billows,Gaza%20on%20January%2030%2C%202024.">have been killed since Israel’s attack began</a>. For Israel and Palestine, as for <em>Dune</em>’s Fremen, to follow a messiah is to walk the straightest path toward hell. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="lcpbK0">The rabbis of medieval Europe rejected the leadership of would-be messiahs, who, as they saw it, had led the Jews only down a repeated pathway of revolt, defeat, and catastrophe. They suggested instead that the messiah would not lead the Jews to their destiny, but rather follow it: that only when we ourselves had built a society worthy of the messiah’s coming would that day finally arrive. I don’t think Frank Herbert would argue with that. When all is said and done, I don’t think history would, either.</p>
https://www.polygon.com/24100753/dune-part-2-paul-atreides-arab-muslim-stereotypes-palestineZach Rabiroff2024-03-17T09:00:00-04:002024-03-17T09:00:00-04:00How 2024 became the year of open-world survival crafting games
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<img alt="Three Palworld characters fly on Pals in Palworld" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/VZDkhgjJ9etAumKjRsaXJ8QIMEI=/0x0:3840x2160/640x360/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73213015/Palworld_Screenshot_09.8.jpeg" />
<figcaption>Image: Pocketpair</figcaption>
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<p>With hits like Palworld conquering Steam, this genre is having a moment</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap p-large-text" id="kUA04f">The first big video game hit of 2024 was <a href="https://www.polygon.com/reviews/24057437/palworld-review-pokemon-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-survival"><em>Palworld</em></a>, a game everybody thought would be “Pokémon with guns” but turned out to be an open-world crafting game where you capture monsters — called “Pals” — and put them to work on your base, creating resources and tending to various areas. People came for Pokémon and stayed for the gameplay, to the tune of 19 million players reached during its initial January release period. </p>
<p id="4AWRVu">Not too long after that, we got <a href="https://www.polygon.com/24051683/enshrouded-survival-game-early-access-impressions"><em>Enshrouded</em></a>, an open-world survival crafting game now in Steam Early Access that puts players in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world and tasks them with running around gathering resources and building out a base. Then, there was the gothic <a href="https://www.polygon.com/24081032/nightingale-early-access-crafting-survival-impressions"><em>Nightingale</em></a>, followed by driving sim <a href="https://www.polygon.com/reviews/24079882/pacific-drive-review-steam-pc-playstation-5"><em>Pacific Drive</em></a>. There are even more to come, too, with <em>Lightyear </em><em>Frontier</em>, <em>Outcast - A New Beginning</em>, <a href="https://www.polygon.com/24090204/dune-awakening-survival-game-2024"><em>Dune: Awakening</em></a><em> </em>(yes, that Dune), and <a href="https://www.polygon.com/24086601/terminator-survivors-survival-game-release-date-nacon">one based in the Terminator universe</a>, to name a few. </p>
<p id="ugsAB7">The “Open World Survival Craft” game (as Steam labels it) isn’t the newest video game genre on the block. While they come in distinct flavors, games like <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2014/7/1/5843612/the-long-dark-is-about-self-reliance-in-a-hard-country-it-is-a-game"><em>The Long Dark</em></a>, <em>Rust</em>, and <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2018/5/9/17335486/conan-exiles-impressions-funcom"><em>Conan Exiles</em></a> have been keeping players occupied for years. However, it’s looking like <a href="https://www.polygon.com/gaming/23844302/video-game-release-dates-2024-new-upcoming">2024 might be the year</a> the genre hits a new high. With the lack of blockbuster games being released and many people looking for a change of pace from the usual catalog of multiplayer live service or single-player linear experiences, open-world survival crafting games might provide the answer. </p>
<p id="e9hJwM">There are a lot of unique takes and varying degrees of difficulty in this space, but the idea is always that you collect resources in the game’s world and use them to keep yourself alive, make weapons and other gadgets, build a base, or just let your creativity fly. Most importantly, the player needs to believe that they can do almost anything. That freedom will differ on a game-by-game basis, but ensuring that the player has some degree of it is key to keeping them playing for dozens — maybe even hundreds — of hours. </p>
<p id="SMPCwD">Survival and crafting games have made an excellent pairing for years now, whether it’s in nearly infinite sandboxes, like <em>Minecraft</em>, or something more structured, like <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2013/6/26/4439118/dont-starve-review-eat-to-live"><em>Don’t Starve</em></a>. However, there was a distinct moment recently that seemed to reignite the enthusiasm for these kinds of games — both for the players and developers. Three of the people I interviewed for this article brought up <a href="https://www.polygon.com/reviews/22303522/valheim-review-coffee-stain-early-access-pc"><em>Valheim</em></a>, a Viking-inspired open-world sandbox from developer Iron Gate, released in Steam Early Access in February 2021. Over its first month, it sold over 5 million copies and peaked at over 500,000 concurrent players, thanks to its robust crafting; seemingly endless, procedurally generated open world; deep lore; and fun multiplayer capabilities. Despite being three years into early access, at the time of this writing, it’s still hitting 20,000 concurrent players. </p>
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<img alt="A viking standing on the bough of a longship in Valheim. They’re sailing on a bright blue sea with the Yggdrasil in the background." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/915pBHIcS80pM5iZWscUCnpBvsA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22395033/Valheim_graded_16.png">
<cite>Image: Iron Gate Studio/Coffee Stain Publishing via Polygon</cite>
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<p id="yuVN3p">During the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of indies made by small teams exploded in popularity, and <em>Valheim</em> was just the latest to join <em>Among Us</em> and <em>Phasmophobia</em>. With a lot of games getting delayed due to the transition to working from home, and many people being stuck indoors, anything that could add variety to virtual socialization was welcome. Instead of just hopping on a Zoom call, you could log into a game like <em>Valheim </em>and <a href="https://www.polygon.com/valheim-guide/22289767/server-private-community-friends-start-join-game-select-world">explore a public or private server with friends</a>. And because it’s mostly a casual, nonlinear experience, you could do just about whatever you wanted. If you want to explore, you can; if you want to just focus on building the world’s tallest tower, go for it. </p>
<p id="dNRAlR">More importantly, <em>Valheim</em> did away with a lot of the traditional barriers to entry, like starvation, thirst, or surprise combat. Survival games are about using a lot of systems together to keep your character alive, and while people who’ve been playing for years are used to them, it’s tough for newer players to learn the basics, especially if they boot up a game that doesn’t give much in the way of a tutorial, like <em>The Long Dark </em>(unless you try its narrative mode). While none of the interviewed developers were directly <em>inspired</em> by <em>Valheim</em>, its success proved that what they were working on could be successful and had an audience. </p>
<p id="Aef8gF">“We started [making <em>Enshrouded</em>] in 2019, so quite a while ago, but [<em>Valheim</em>] came out, I think, somewhere mid-development. [...] And we were positively surprised because we had a similar direction,” Antony Christoulakis, creative director on <em>Enshrouded</em> at Keen Games, said. “It validated the general approach we took to survival, like being a little more friendly on, like, you don’t die if you don’t eat. Because if you just want to build your base, you don’t want to be bothered with these kinds of mechanics all the time.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="759soT"><q>“If people play <em>Palworld</em> for the Pokémon angle, maybe they figured out they enjoy some other games as a genre itself”</q></aside></div>
<p id="qygrXK">Since <em>Valheim</em>, there has been a wide variety of these kinds of games getting released, especially into early access. Some lean into the traditional mechanics of the survival genre, with things like complex health and wellness management that mimic the real-world survival experience. But a lot of this most recent slate cleans up the more intricate and stressful gameplay to focus on exploration, crafting, and sometimes co-op. </p>
<p id="3VTMXS">These games also provide new twists on the genre. There’s the stereotype of you waking up in the woods with no clothes, a backpack, and a stick, which then leads to you punching trees for a while. They tend to be either in fantasy or post-apocalyptic settings, and maybe there are zombies or other players who get in your way, forcing you to lose all your resources and start from scratch. Some of these newer games have these traits, but they’re either toned down or are turned on their head. <em>Nightingale</em> is an open-world survival game, but it uses “realms” — different worlds that players can unlock with random traits — instead of the classic open environment to get players exploring. </p>
<p id="SifKGe"><em>Pacific Drive</em>, an open-world crafting and driving sim, also eschews many of the classic mechanics, the big one being how little you need to care about your character. While you have a health bar, you spend most of your time crafting parts to upgrade your rundown station wagon, which will in turn make it more difficult for you to take damage and can help you get through the eerie Olympic Exclusion Zone where the game takes place. Externalizing all your efforts onto your car not only provides you with something new to take care of, but also <a href="https://www.polygon.com/gaming/24083957/games-pacific-drive-portal-stanley-parable-inanimate-objects">creates a sense of companionship</a>, adding an emotional connection that tends to be missing in games solely focused on systems. There are also a bunch of quality-of-life touches, like how you don’t need resources directly in your backpack to craft something at the workbench or how your base is already mostly built out in the form of a high-tech car garage.</p>
<p id="fT42rN">Director Seth Rosen, who also spent years working on <em>Don’t Starve</em>, said part of what tempted him to work on <em>Pacific Drive</em> was trying something new in the genre.</p>
<p id="Vsko5D">“I don’t like survival or crafting games, they’re really not my jam. So because of that, in <em>Pacific Drive</em>, it was really, really important to me that we pursue as much as we humanly possibly could of this sort of quality-of-life, ease-of-use stuff that most survival games don’t bother with,” Rosen said. “I wanted to make it as smooth a crafting and survival experience as possible.”</p>
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<img alt="Three Palworld characters fly on Pals in Palworld" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gEhubo0QFLt6YnMCqMC3sOMzn-E=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24711620/Palworld_Screenshot_09.jpeg">
<cite>Image: Pocketpair</cite>
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<p id="rPfNck"><em>Palworld </em>was a huge early 2024 hit for similar reasons. However, that popularity started with a marketing campaign that highlighted its similarities with other creature-collecting games like Pokémon (<a href="https://www.polygon.com/24047924/palworld-successful-launch-pokemon-franchise-stagnation">for better or worse</a>) rather than focusing on survival and crafting elements. Then, people realized it was a good game, according to Simon Carless, founder of GameDiscoverCo, a firm that analyzes Steam and console sales data. While the tutorial could stand to be more robust, once you get past that, the game loop is easy to understand. </p>
<p id="NZy4hw">“<em>Palworld</em>’s success is down to the developer being genuinely good at making survival craft-style games,” Carless said in an email to Polygon. “I suspect it introduced some people to this genre who hadn’t played it much before, and the gameplay loop was on point and well-constructed.”</p>
<p id="e3xPIR">“If people play <em>Palworld</em> for the Pokémon angle, maybe they figured out they enjoy some other games as a genre itself, like on the mechanics side of things,” Christoulakis echoed. </p>
<p id="rsI4GK">That isn’t to say any of these games are easy (unless you’re talking about <a href="https://www.polygon.com/fortnite/23990575/lego-fortnite-release-date-how-to-play">Lego Fortnite</a>, the ultimate easy survival game), but they can work as introductions to the genre. <em>Enshrouded</em>, now in early access, is another great option if you want an on-ramp to open-world survival crafting, thanks to how it uses familiar tropes, like waking up with no skills or memory, but walks you through a tutorial where you then go and start punching trees. But it also has a surprisingly easy-to-use settlement building system where all the pieces snap into place with each other. As you unlock more recipes, the game offers a lot of specific pieces for building just the way you want to, like blocks of various sizes. This has led to some truly astounding player-built structures that can rival any other game with building mechanics, and it doesn’t require a lot of knowledge or hundreds of hours of play. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="e2pe4Y"><q>“I think survival crafting games are [...] kind of the most literal expression of I as a player”</q></aside></div>
<p id="EcqamJ">These games have a lot in common beyond how they ease off some of the survival genre’s harshest mechanics. I previously noted that <em>Valheim</em> featured a co-op mode that gave players a new experience during the pandemic, but most of the aforementioned games (minus <em>Pacific Drive</em>) have a multiplayer mode that allows people to share game experiences and <a href="https://www.polygon.com/what-to-play/23368703/best-co-op-multiplayer-games-survival-management-sim-base-building-farm-lifestyle">work to complete tasks together</a>. There’s also flexibility to what you can do; for instance, some can go off exploring while others stay on the base. <em>Nightingale</em> is built with multiplayer as a foundation since it started as an MMO, and the developers encourage people to visit realms on other servers and share theirs with friends. (<em>Nightingale</em> was controversially online-only when it launched. Inflexion Games has since announced it would <a href="https://www.polygon.com/24081047/nightingale-inflexion-offline-mode">work on an offline mode for solo players</a>.)</p>
<p id="GWS1t0">Relatedly, a huge component of what makes the genre so appealing is freedom. Open-world games especially have varying degrees of player freedom and possible interactions, and open-world survival crafting games’ focus on systems gives players even more choices. They can focus on building fortresses in <em>Enshrouded</em> instead of doing story quests; crafting specific car upgrades in <em>Pacific Drive</em> instead of exploring new areas; building out a base instead of finding new Pals in <em>Palworld</em>. Each has a nonlinear narrative (or, in the case of something like <em>Minecraft</em>, no narrative at all), so players aren’t on a time limit. </p>
<p id="sba8zX">“While there are narrative aspects to <em>Nightingale</em> [...] it’s not a linear narrative experience. You don’t start and then we tell you where to go. You can choose to interact with NPCs, you can choose to ignore them. You’re free to do whatever you like,” Inflexion Games art director Neil Thompson said. “That sort of freedom to interact with the world that’s there and the ability as a result of that to role-play your own stories within that world — that to me is the power of the gaming medium.”</p>
<p id="ZO3XCE">The genre can lean into interactivity not just by letting players do whatever they want, but also by giving them multiple things to do. There’s a reason why Steam calls it the Open World Survival Craft genre and why there isn’t another established name: It contains at least three subgenres, along with many of the associated mechanics. There’s crafting, base building, exploration, combat, survival, and sometimes concepts like driving. If done successfully, the player won’t be overwhelmed by the sheer number of tasks because they’ll all work together to create a satisfying loop that encourages you to keep playing. </p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A cockpit view from behind the wheel of Pacific Drive’s station wagon, with several extra readouts visible. Through the windscreen we see pine forests and a lightning strike" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PLRDAzLQ8XroOftEiz03RTj_Crc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25211927/pacific_drive_1.png">
<cite>Image: Ironwood Studios/Kepler Interactive</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="gXzmQ1"><em>Pacific Drive</em> has you going out into the world to collect resources, which you can use to upgrade your car, which will help you go farther and farther each time you venture out. But the lure that keeps you exploring is what you’ll find. <em>Pacific Drive</em> is filled with “anomalies” that mess with the world and can make your drive more difficult. But it builds out the story of the Olympic Exclusion Zone and continues increasing your sense of dread as you explore more dangerous areas. It’s a large loop that combines storytelling, crafting, exploration, and survival. </p>
<p id="4wn4Ik">“The other thing that I think survival games are fundamentally about is seeing something new and saying, ‘What’s that? Let me poke it with a stick. See what happens,’” Rosen said. “So there’s this discovery, sort of puzzle box aspect to survive a good survival experience, in my opinion, where you’re constantly being faced and presented with things that are unfamiliar to you, where you don’t quite understand. And you’re having to come into contact with them and figure it out through trial and error.”</p>
<p id="gYNeYn">You don’t have to complete story quests in <em>Enshrouded</em>, but doing so will allow you to unlock NPCs that can help you build out your base, and exploration will help you find even more building items. Managing your Pals in <em>Palworld </em>will help you <a href="https://www.polygon.com/palworld-guides/24050846/best-base-locations-resources-farming">build out your base more</a>, so you’ll have time to go out and explore. If the systems are all in service to one another and the developers implement reasons to keep moving, you’ll have more reasons to play.</p>
<p id="otPiRV">“People are drawn to these games because there’s a couple of key gameplay loops at play,” Carless explained. “It’s actually a lot more complicated than that. [...] But if you get this gameplay loop correct — grind-y, but not irritatingly grind-y — the world is your oyster.”</p>
<p id="yiwUir">Carless isn’t sure if Open World Survival Craft’s success will continue, especially as more developers enter the space based on <em>Palworld</em>’s massive popularity. However, right now, these games are offering a unique experience for players that seems to encompass the wants of a lot of different audiences. Because titles like <em>Enshrouded</em> or <em>Nightingale</em> are flexible in how they want people to play and in how they present the usually challenging survival genre, they can bring in players that might not be previously familiar. They’ll also offer players multiple ways to play one game, which lets players feel like they got enough game for their money, and this variation can make a game appealing to a player’s wider friend group, too. </p>
<p id="2FAQ9v">And who knows, maybe it’ll signal the future of how we play games. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="GYLsR9">“I think survival crafting games are [...] kind of the most literal expression of I as a player, I’m interacting with these systems in a very free and undirected way, which bears no resemblance to a traditional narrative or a traditional form of media,” Thompson said. “I mean, just incredible.”</p>
<p id="8PqGcE"></p>
https://www.polygon.com/24099909/open-world-survival-crafting-games-2024Carli Velocci2024-03-15T10:30:00-04:002024-03-15T10:30:00-04:00Akira Toriyama never stopped growing up
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<img alt="Dragon Ball Z heroes Gohan, Piccolo, and Goku standing with a dragon flying behind them" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/eyv0q467T9xAYB9rBmmeHc9sKJM=/0x0:1280x720/640x360/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73209371/wall6_wallpaper_1280x800.0.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Image: Toei Animation/Crunchyroll</figcaption>
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<p>On Dragon Ball and getting older</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap p-large-text" id="x0YxjV">Before I saw <em>Dragon Ball</em> on VHS tapes in American flea markets and airing on Toonami, I saw it on TV in Guatemala, crowding around a tiny set with distant cousins I barely knew, in a language I had little command of. I learned to say Goku in Spanish before I did in English — you stress the second syllable a little more, let that last vowel ring out just a bit longer. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le8FbmDdYNg">Go-<em>khoo</em></a>. I didn’t know it at the time, but Dragon Ball — and Akira Toriyama, its creator — would follow me my whole life. </p>
<p id="tvCkX9">For an <a href="https://kotaku.com/why-black-men-love-dragon-ball-z-1820481429">entire generation</a> <a href="https://laist.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/dragon-ball-akira-toriyama-fans-mexico-latin-america-los-angeles">all over the world</a>, Akira Toriyama <em>was</em> anime. Alongside a handful of works like Naoko Takeuchi’s <em>Sailor Moon</em>, Toriyama’s <em>Dragon Ball</em> was the medium’s trailblazer, the first step for many fans’ long journey in anime, or perhaps even the destination itself. His red-hot popularity on <em>Dragon Ball</em> would peak multiple times, first as a manga, then as multiple anime series. In between all that, he would also go on to influence a third medium, working as the artist and designer for Yuji Horii’s <em>Dragon Quest</em> and its many, many sequels and spinoffs — casually creating <a href="https://www.polygon.com/gaming/24094509/akira-toriyama-dragon-quest-slime">perhaps the most iconic monster design in all of video games</a>.</p>
<p id="emoX1O">Even with the infinite space afforded by the internet, it would take a long time for even a modest accounting of Toriyama’s influence on popular culture. Toriyama’s work is foundational, lying in the bedrock of everything that came after it: His <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaLV003llhY">characters</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqQ9mtY-JmI">were</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdpGJSe44_o">namechecked</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQXdBU7ty3g">by</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttJS6zOgCDo">rappers</a>, his approach to action molded countless conflicts on page and screen, his merch ran the gamut from <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516586&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fb%2FDragon-Ball-Z-Casual-Button-Down-Shirts-for-Men%2F57990%2Fbn_860392&referrer=polygon.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.polygon.com%2Fentertainment%2F24101218%2Fgoodbye-akira-toriyama" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">clothing of dubious legitimacy</a> to a whole damn <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2018/11/1/18052566/dragon-ball-goku-macys-thanksgiving-day-parade">Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float</a>. </p>
<div class="c-wide-block"><div id="tkVCJU"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/41zctFibZnU?rel=0&start=7" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share;"></iframe></div></div></div>
<p id="Wcl0En">Akira Toriyama’s work on <em>Dragon Ball</em> started out largely for and about young boys, but then he never stopped making it. And in turn, those boys — both in his fiction and his audience — grew up. It’s worth stressing how unusual this was and still is: While shonen manga and anime are famously long-lived, its characters rarely age to the same degree, or transition into a generational epic. Son Goku, <em>Dragon Ball</em>’s protagonist, begins the story as a boy sent to Earth to conquer it for his homeworld, until a bop on the head turns him into a carefree goofball raised by a kind adoptive father. In <em>Dragon Ball Super</em>, he’s a (still quite young-looking) grandfather. While the bombast of Toriyama’s action and the nobility of his heroes stayed static, the things that happened in between those cosmic conflicts changed. Marriage, careers, family — all different arenas for his superhuman heroes to be strong. And also really, really funny.</p>
<p id="I9YoMe">From the broad comedy of his breakout manga/anime <em>Dr. Slump</em> to the toilet humor in the very first chapter of <em>Dragon Ball</em>, Toriyama displayed a love for big juvenile belly laughs that was arguably bigger than his tremendous skill and fondness for bone-breaking action. Toriyama loved a pervert, but also, like everything else in his work, the perverts too must grow up, however reluctantly. For a long stretch of my adult life, I thought I was done with Dragon Ball — nothing wrong with potty humor or endless kickass brawls, but it was time for a new wave, you know? </p>
<p id="oZxVUp">In recent years, however, I’ve found myself wandering back bit by bit, increasingly interested in what happened outside of the fights, and the later punchlines of Toriyama’s gags. The ridiculousness of men like Vegeta who can’t appreciate the warmth of the family they’ve formed and fought for or the difficulty a guy like Goku causes for everyone around him when he doesn’t balance his passion (fighting) with his responsibilities (finding a new hobby). In putting the stoic green alien Piccolo <a href="https://www.polygon.com/reviews/23191578/dragon-ball-super-super-hero-review-piccolo-gohan">in a constant comedy of manners</a> with the family of Gohan, the grown man who still looks up to him as a father figure, Dragon Ball quietly comes to grips with the limits of a masculinity modeled on strength, and grins its way to a better one built on kindness and empathy. </p>
<aside id="OgmNEt"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama dies at 68","url":"https://www.polygon.com/24094335/dragon-ball-creator-akira-toriyama-obtiturary"}]}'></div></aside><p id="NDPN7h">One of the things I’ve never really grown accustomed to about aging is the way that I’ve always expected to feel a certain way at a given age, and never do. In many ways, I’m glad not to be the person I was 10 years ago, and am fully aware of the gulf between then and now. In other ways, I feel very much the same, just more aware of my slow accrual of physical limitations. I’m not sure that dissonance will ever really go away. Dragon Ball speaks to that, I think. I’m still the young man who wants to fight every injustice I see on my own, but I’m also the older, more level-headed guy that knows that doing things together is how we make progress, that angry isn’t the only way to get things done. I will still laugh at a stupid sight gag, but I’m also fine with not finding some things funny anymore, and not looking back in shame, but appreciation for having the chance to grow. </p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Piccolo and Gohan back to back in mid-air as they fend off an assault from Gamma 1 and 2." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/nCui0nnKrBNMcME0JnzBJJKBvCA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24795488/Screen_Shot_2023_07_18_at_4.06.15_PM.png">
<cite>Image: Toei Animation/Crunchyroll</cite>
</figure>
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<p id="CyPYWb">Lately I’ve been getting into <a href="https://www.polygon.com/game/dragon-quest/12728">Dragon Quest</a>, a franchise that Toriyama primarily worked on as character designer, with Yuji Horii typically serving as writer. Despite his very different role on Dragon Quest games, the series is very simpatico with Dragon Ball — while the former prefers the comfort of fairy tales as opposed to the latter’s signature slugfests, both are tremendously concerned with the slow passage of time, and their protagonists’ growth throughout. Like every classic coming-of-age story, they’re about being thrust out of your door and into the world, about what it takes to keep going indefinitely, only to look around you and find that there are others there beside you, for a little while or for years on end. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="z2axyc">It saddens me to know that Akira Toriyama isn’t on that road with me anymore, that his journey is over so much sooner than I thought it would be. But I go on, and so do you, as does all the work Toriyama leaves behind. I could follow it around the world, hearing Goku’s name in every language. I haven’t been back to Guatemala since that time I was there as a kid, by the way. I’d love to return. I’d love to see how everyone’s grown, and see if they remember watching <em>Dragon Ball</em> with me. I have the words now. </p>
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https://www.polygon.com/entertainment/24101218/goodbye-akira-toriyamaJoshua Rivera2024-03-07T14:02:00-05:002024-03-07T14:02:00-05:00Why Spaceman’s director cast Adam Sandler in a heavy dramatic role: ‘This is about me, very much’
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<img alt="Director Johan Renck kneels in front of Adam Sandler to take a measurement with his hands, while Sandler, wearing a full spacesuit and sitting on a green chair in a greenscreen room on the set of Spaceman, grins at him" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-ky8FWi32K620d8a1nony8OWBWo=/1836x0:6641x2703/640x360/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73189773/SPMN_20210528_07868_R.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo: Jon Pack/Netflix</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Why cast a well-known comedian in such a dramatic role? Because ‘this is about me, very much’</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap p-large-text" id="nW5U5F">Watching Netflix’s cosmic philosophy movie <em>Spaceman</em>, the most obvious question is about the plot: <a href="https://www.polygon.com/24090474/adam-sandler-paul-dano-spaceman-is-hanus-real"><em>Is that giant alien space spider real, or a hallucination?</em></a> But the second most obvious question might be <em>Why is Adam Sandler starring in this movie?</em> Sandler has taken on a number of <a href="https://www.polygon.com/24080545/adam-sandler-spaceman-interview-talking-to-a-tennis-ball-netflix">increasingly high-profile dramatic roles</a> since he first surprised his fans and dodged his comedy-career typecasting with Paul Thomas Anderson’s <em>Punch-Drunk Love</em> back in 2002. But his roles have always been tinged with comedy, even if it’s dark, wry, or despairing comedy. <em>Spaceman</em> is something new: a grim story that doesn’t crack a smile as it sends Sandler into space as Czech astronaut Jakub, a man whose life, relationship, and maybe psyche are all disintegrating during a long solo journey.</p>
<p id="Nix3e9">So why did director Johan Renck see Sandler in the role? “There’s two answers to that,” he told Polygon ahead of the movie’s release. “One is that I had a general meeting with Adam in Los Angeles a few years ago, and we started talking about various things, as one does. This film came up — he had heard about it and was curious about it. And when I told him about it, he said, ‘I want to do that. That’s me, this vain, sort of narcissist guy who’s chasing his own dreams and ambitions and forgetting about the people who are important to him. That’s something I’ve gone through multiple times. So yes, let’s do it.’”</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Director Johan Renck stands on the set of Spaceman, in a colorful spaceship capsule, reaching for something above his head" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/A1-ow4DXzLtbA5V_Nab4Pt3ELw4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25321735/SPMN_20210524_07083_R.jpg">
<cite>Photo: Jon Pack/Netflix</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="7BoYIy">Sandler seeing himself in the role was a bonus, but Renck beat him to it: For him, <em>Spaceman</em> is openly a reflection on his own failings, which is the second reason he cast Sandler. “For me, making a movie which is quintessentially a self-biography — this is about me, very much,” he says. “If I was to be asked, ‘If somebody’s gonna make a movie about your life, who’s gonna play you?’ the answer would be Adam Sandler. He’s the perfect guy to play me. So it was pretty straightforward.”</p>
<p id="glEqlV">Why cast Sandler as a metaphorical version of himself? “You know, he’s handsome as hell,” Renck says. “Of course you want somebody playing you to be handsome like a motherfucker.”</p>
<p id="llidsI">But the more serious answer is that Renck has admired Sandler’s work in the past, and has identified with his characters in other movies. Sandler has often returned to a roughly similar kind of figure — the details vary, but his movie characters in dramas and comedies alike often struggle with arrogance and ego, with the difficulty of connecting to other people, and with temperaments that push other people away. They also frequently have difficulties when they’re trying to let their guards down and let other people get close to them.</p>
<p id="I2zTAC">“I think the same kind of insecurities that he’s so good at performing are something I’ve inhabited inside of me,” Renck says. “I always feel like nobody understands me, and everything I do in life is trying to figure out ways to make myself understood, to be honest. And I feel the same in terms of Adam’s processes, to some extent. When I saw <em>Punch-Drunk Love</em> for the first time, I felt like, <em>That’s literally me walking around this world, trying to fucking understand shit</em>.”</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Director Johan Renck, wearing a white T-shirt, stands on a set on his movie Spaceman, in a black space surrounded by naked wooden beams and star-like pinpoints of light" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7nhuDET7MS3-bVqH8frhpgoNpQQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25321810/SPMN_20210615_10057_R.jpg">
<cite>Photo: Larry Horricks/Netflix</cite>
</figure>
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<p id="uJNC79">The challenge of directing Sandler in <em>Spaceman </em>was getting him to abandon his usual energy and volume, and play a particularly quiet, internal version of that signature character. “I’m always looking for subtle performances,” Renck says. “I’m European, originally. I like it to be a little more low-key than big and theatrical, in terms of performances on screen. And for Adam, it became even more evidently important for me to do that, because of all the characters he’d been through earlier.”</p>
<p id="IOJ7zb">He says that figuring out how the performance should look was, in part, a question of what Jakub “deserved” to bring across his failings. “He’s arrogant, he’s dour, there’s a certain bitterness to him, even,” Renck says. “And he is pueriley naive when it comes to his own vanity and narcissism. All of those, again, are things I feel that I’ve been in some way. And they require a performance to be the opposite of flamboyant, the opposite of theatrical. He’s on a solo mission, he’s tired, he’s got cabin fever, all that. So to me, it’s just about trying to bring things down to something that has intimacy and subtleness. Adam responded to that immediately.”</p>
<p id="TQqr94">Another challenge was that <em>Spaceman </em>is a character drama where the characters are rarely in the same space — and the two leads weren’t, either. The giant space-spider Hanuš, voiced by Paul Dano, is entirely a CG creation — which Renck says gave him a lot of freedom to retool the character even after production.</p>
<p id="U2HRkw">“There’s a curse and a blessing with a CGI character, which is that you can rewrite this character into perpetuity, which is beautiful,” he says. “What happens when you shoot a film with actors — if there’s something you don’t like, you cut it or omit it from the film. But with a CGI character, you can continuously redo him.”</p>
<div class="p-fullbleed-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A figure in a spacesuit is dwarfed by cranes, cameras, and equipment in a brightly light green-and-purple high-ceilinged space on the set of Netflix’s Spaceman" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/a1vhJ3u2heClfpwBsnjJW8KIHUw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25321815/SPMN_20210527_07530_R.jpg">
<cite>Photo: Jon Pack/Netflix</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="Fcvffj">That said, since Dano and Sandler’s conversations weren’t being recorded during production, Dano was rarely on set to interact in character. “It just didn’t work out,” Renck says. “You can’t have a movie star like Paul Dano just hanging around [set] to be behind a curtain to do this kind of stuff. […] But for the efficiency of the film, and in order to make it feasible enough, we couldn’t have him there.”</p>
<p id="BaSJmy">So Sandler spent most of the movie <a href="https://www.polygon.com/24080545/adam-sandler-spaceman-interview-talking-to-a-tennis-ball-netflix">talking to a tennis ball</a> and pretending it was an alien monstrosity, with Renck or a stand-in reading Hanuš’ lines. “I was really worried about that, but it worked out tremendously well,” Renck says.</p>
<p id="4vcGNr">And in the end, he thinks that method worked out better for the movie than having both actors working together would have: “I think now that I’ve gotten to know Adam and his very humble personality, his very respectful personality — which I also saw when he was acting against Carey [Mulligan], for instance — I think it benefited him to not have to be courteous or respectful toward another actor,” Renck says. “He could just completely be free to be whoever he wanted against that tennis ball.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="Ph4ohO">“I’ve never said this to Adam, but I really think this was something he benefited from, because of his beautiful human soul. That was good for him, to be as arrogant, as not pleasant [as he had to be for this role]. I think he would have had issues with that if Paul was there, because he’s such a tremendously beautiful, nice guy.” </p>
https://www.polygon.com/24091245/spaceman-director-interview-why-adam-sandler-was-castTasha Robinson2024-03-07T11:00:00-05:002024-03-07T11:00:00-05:00What can modern TCGs learn from the long-dead Dune: Collectible Card Game?
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<img alt="A Fremen as depicted by Mark Zug in art for Dune: CCG. He’s shown here with a knife and a staff as the planet Arrakis’ twin suns sink below the horizon." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KM0gJ0qjOZkBWlJvPhUMpkmZ0Iw=/0x0:872x491/640x360/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73189049/kaldoradij.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Image: Mark Zug</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tapping into the ancestral memory of an industry</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="LCXqKR">Trading card games aren’t just popular with players. They’re also incredibly popular with executives, as they can be lucrative for publishers and distributors alike. <a href="https://www.polygon.com/mtg-magic-the-gathering"><em>Magic: The Gathering</em></a> became a $1 billion brand <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/business/magic-the-gathering-hasbro.html">for Hasbro in 2023</a>, which went quite a long way to improving its bottom line, if we’re being honest. As the company <a href="https://articles.starcitygames.com/magic-the-gathering/magic-the-gathering-to-have-two-universes-beyond-premier-sets-starting-in-2025/">increases its Universes Beyond offerings</a>, incredibly powerful tools for selling cards to people not yet comfortable playing a game of <em>Magic</em>, how can other TCGs hope to compete? What must new games like <a href="https://www.polygon.com/disney-lorcana"><em>Disney Lorcana</em></a>, <a href="https://www.polygon.com/23998857/star-wars-unlimited-tcg-deck-building-preview-han-chewy-boba-fett-decks"><em>Star Wars: Unlimited</em></a>, <a href="https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/24056086/altered-tcg-kickstarter-preview"><em>Altered</em></a>, and the more established <a href="https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/23885496/flesh-and-blood-bright-lights"><em>Flesh and Blood</em></a> do to thrive? A few possible answers may lie in the story of the 1990s-era <em>Dune: Collectible Card Game</em>.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Key art for the Dune: CCG shows a sandworm rising from the deserts of Arrakis." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GO6LTUGQ8jZjREn11DiOYiyfs28=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25321133/Dune_CCG.jpg">
<cite>Image: Wizards of the Coast</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="xygAZC">The TCG market in 1997 was not so different from today. <em>Magic: The Gathering</em> reigned supreme. Dozens of competitors and a few blatant cash grabs had all come and gone. Every new game sought either a new gimmick, a popular IP, or another way to offer something <em>Magic</em> did not. Enter the company Last Unicorn Games with <em>Dune: CCG</em>, which asked players to turn the wheels of a galaxy-spanning political machine in the hopes of being admitted to the Landsraad, the main political body of the <em>Dune </em>universe. <em>Dune: CCG </em>was built from the sand up to be a multiplayer game, not unlike <em>Magic</em>’s community-made format of choice, <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2020/5/28/21266763/magic-the-gathering-commander-origins-elder-dragon-highlander-alaska-menery">Commander</a>. Rather than always paying a straight cost in mana to play a card from their hand to the table, players could bid against one another to inflate the costs of the choicest cards. To win, players had to accumulate both favor on the political stage and the valuable resource spice from Arrakis. There was even a third resource that helped to further complicate things. </p>
<p id="o6Rkxx">Adding to the cognitive load was the fact that each player brought two different decks to the table. The House deck included most of the cards and types: generic characters, military units, events, etc. Cards in the Imperial deck represented main characters and locations from the <em>Dune</em> story. The cost of these powerful allies and unique locations could be inflated from their base price based on the bidding system, known as petitioning. As the game progressed, players developed their positions, amassed resources, and launched attacks at one another until one player emerged victorious.</p>
<p id="ogIlbt">If you know Frank Herbert’s <em>Dune</em>, you know that’s pretty spot on. So, while <em>Dune: CCG</em> succeeded in capturing the feel of the universe that inspired it, looking back it’s very much a game from a different time — a time when designers pushed the limits of what could, or perhaps should, fit within the framework laid down by <em>Magic</em>. </p>
<p id="NmTboA">But it wasn’t all bad. Let’s look back at the <em>Dune CCG</em>, and four lessons it teaches from which all modern TCGs should learn.</p>
<h2 id="4KYVwr"><strong>IP alone isn’t enough</strong></h2>
<div><div class="c-image-grid">
<div class="c-image-grid__item"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Dune, TCG, Paul Atreides" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/77Niy0HrxZpl-Va_zBASerZyR3s=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25321135/E031_Paul_Atreides.png">
<cite>Image: Wizards of the Coast</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<div class="c-image-grid__item"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Paul Atreides in House Atreides dress uniform, white with gold chevrons. He appears to be eating spice." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zmSxe0WhoBwAkl0F8ouXaReBvRQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25321136/E036_Baron_Vladimir_Harkonnen.png">
<cite>Image: Wizards of the Coast</cite>
</figure>
</div>
</div></div>
<p id="nzX2Sg">Making a <em>Dune</em> CCG meant more than putting Paul Atreides on a card. Its gameplay had to make players <a href="https://www.polygon.com/what-to-play/24080352/best-games-dune-pc-board-tabletop-list">feel immersed in the universe of <em>Dune</em></a>. This meant needing complex political and economic elements, as well as multiple avenues for player interaction. The game succeeded (perhaps too well) in all these goals, with a bidding system for bringing into play the most powerful cards, and four avenues of combat. The multiple avenues of combat and interaction allowed players to pick factions and build decks with characters and other cards fitting their play styles and the <em>Dune</em> universe.</p>
<p id="l8fKOM">In much the same way <em>Dune: CCG</em> succeeded in being true to its source material, the <a href="https://starwarsunlimited.com/"><em>Star Wars: Unlimited</em></a> TCG from Fantasy Flight Games does an excellent job making players feel like they’re part of a galaxy far, far away. The game centers around leader cards with powerful abilities representing the larger-than-life characters of the franchise, whom players construct their decks to support. The playing area is divided into two fronts of battle (ground and space) simulating the action of the movies. Whether <a href="https://www.polygon.com/23998857/star-wars-unlimited-tcg-deck-building-preview-han-chewy-boba-fett-decks">defending Echo Base with Chewbacca</a> or commanding the Imperial assault from the Death Star with Vader, you’ll agree the Force is strong with this one.</p>
<h2 id="apHKeJ"><strong>Graphic design is just as important as art</strong></h2>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Mark Zug used a classic painting — Pyle’s The Bucanneer — for this striking image of an Arrakeen smuggler." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Wv3tSSxqQTFSEqc_Y9wKaqT6OIc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25321683/remyegusku.jpg">
<cite>Image: Mark Zug</cite>
<figcaption>“The game developers had to create characters who weren’t necessarily part of Frank Herbert’s cast; this fellow is one of those — a smuggler of Arrakis. I couldn’t resist using <a class="ql-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Pyle#/media/File:Pyle_pirate_handsome.jpg" target="_blank">Howard Pyle’s painting <em>The Buccaneer</em></a> as inspiration for his pose.” - Mark Zug, on <a class="ql-link" href="http://markzug.com/" target="_blank">his personal website</a>.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="kj43XB">Conveying to players everything they needed to know on the faces of their cards was something many ’90s TCGs struggled with. Art can’t make up for poor graphic design, no matter how beautiful. <em>Dune</em> understood this. The art by Mark Zug and others was brilliant, and the graphic design of the cards conveyed a lot of information in a form that was easy to grok once players were familiar with the numerous symbols, card types, and subtypes — and boy, were there a lot of subtypes — in a style that felt appropriately <em>Dune</em>-like.</p>
<div class="p-fullbleed-block"><div class="c-image-grid">
<div class="c-image-grid__item"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A woman in a high-necked black gown with detached peasant sleeves stares at the camera. Her hand sits protectively over her womb." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0LAhtYoRnUnovUln5hC6D-TLnx4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25321684/ladyjessicaatreides.jpg">
<cite>Image: Mark Zug</cite>
<figcaption>Lady Jessica, for <em>Dune: Collectible Card Game</em>.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<div class="c-image-grid__item"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A man with purple lips, a blood-spattered knife in his hands, stands next to an obscure computational machine." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/U2qpc-VyJeAsA5q9fanSHDC6CsQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25321685/piterdevries.jpg">
<cite>Image: Mark Zug</cite>
<figcaption>Peter De Vries, for <em>Dune: Collectible Card Game</em>. </figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
</div></div>
<p id="2xtrkt">Ravensburger’s <em>Disney Lorcana</em> is a modern example of a game that delivers an attractive product in both art and design. If you’ve played any TCGs prior to <em>Lorcana</em>, it’s easy to have a sense of how the game is played just by glancing at the cards. The costs and stats are all highlighted and color-coded, and even indicate which cards may be used as resources.</p>
<h2 id="yRvbI3"><strong>Encourage interaction</strong></h2>
<div><div class="c-image-grid">
<div class="c-image-grid__item"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="An explosion triggered by a fremen destroys a bridge." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/qwm52y_iw2pCWsoYCZPF0vts9_k=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25321145/E168_Pre_Emptive_Strike.png">
<cite>Image: Wizards of the Coast</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<div class="c-image-grid__item"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Plump, ringed fingers grasp at an ornate map of the planet Dune." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_YBwEBLEWC3rvfqEXbmdhd9oP68=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25321144/E113_Unprecedented_Intercession.png">
<cite>Image: Wizards of the Coast</cite>
</figure>
</div>
</div></div>
<p id="3FHBhq">For a game with a lot of moving parts, <em>Dune: CCG</em> had an incredible amount of interaction. The petition mechanic involved all players in the playing of the most powerful cards. As the heart of the game, this made player interaction a fundamental component deeper than most other TCGs. Additionally, players wishing to thwart an opponent’s actions could play Tactics cards at almost any time, much like Instant spells in <em>Magic</em>.</p>
<p id="TbbTup">Many TCGs today avoid player interaction at fundamental levels, to the point of eliminating the ability to play cards during another player’s turn or phase. Instead, many games only allow play on a player’s turn, or opt for a back-and-forth action system, limiting players to one action or card play at a time, regardless of their resources. This rigid structure makes games of this fashion easy to learn, but it also makes gameplay feel on rails at times. Thwarting an opponent’s attack or other critical play with a well-timed Instant, Defense Reaction, or Tactic card is what gives games like <em>Magic</em>, <em>Flesh and Blood</em>, and <em>Dune</em> strategic depth other games lack. </p>
<h2 id="JTFaWK"><strong>Move beyond physical cards</strong></h2>
<div><div class="c-image-grid">
<div class="c-image-grid__item"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A Spacing Guild navigator, as depicted in the Kyle Mclaughlin Dune film, speaks through an emissary from inside its spice-filled pod." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-NHa9thfsdHkExSM62V-gSl_lT8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25321151/E231_Guild_Entourage.png">
<cite>Image: Wizards of the Coast</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<div class="c-image-grid__item"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother lies dead, the stern faces of the Fremen staring back at the viewer from the edge of the frame." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8QBsYRmN1eCul_2UBY1HpeUmeL0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25321150/E147_Litany_against_Fear.png">
<cite>Image: Wizards of the Coast</cite>
</figure>
</div>
</div></div>
<p id="bWRz5f">The tangibility of physical trading cards is both a strength and a weakness. If a TCG is popular, it can develop a robust secondary market, making cards readily available. Popularity can also be a double-edged sword. If the game is in short supply, it can lead to resellers snatching up the available product, skyrocketing prices, and strangling availability for players. If prices for singles grow, it can lead to unscrupulous individuals trying to profit by passing off counterfeits. All physical TCGs are subject to these forces, and <em>Dune: CCG</em> was not immune. The brief lifespan and small print run have led to high prices on the <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516586&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fsch%2Fi.html%3F_from%3DR40%26_nkw%3DDune%2BCCG%26_sacat%3D0%26_sop%3D16&referrer=polygon.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.polygon.com%2Ftabletop-games%2F24092287%2Fdune-ccg-lessons-for-disney-lorcana-mtg-star-wars-unlimited" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">secondary market</a> today. This is surprising given the game’s premature death and small following.</p>
<p id="Vhus1k"><em>Altered</em> is a TCG trying to sidestep the downsides associated with physical cards via proprietary technology. While physical cards will exist in booster packs, what’s more important are the unique QR codes players can scan to establish ownership. Did your chase card get lost or damaged? No worry. You can log into your account and have another copy printed and sent to you on demand. Want to foil your favorite card? Crack a foil code in a booster pack and you can upgrade it. <em>Altered</em> recently wrapped <a href="https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/24086667/altered-tcg-kickstarter-campaign-record-most-funded-tcg">the most successful TCG Kickstarter in history</a>, so the idea certainly has traction. It remains to be seen whether this will revolutionize TCGs or become the tabletop gaming equivalent of the <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/buyers-of-bored-ape-nfts-sue-after-digital-apes-turn-out-to-be-bad-investment/">Bored Ape fiasco</a>.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="Hgbyol">While <em>Dune: CCG</em> was short-lived, it was true to its source material and remains a nuanced game with strategic depth and gameplay worthy of its steep learning curve. For that reason, it maintains a devoted following. The last word on the game might best be expressed by the publishers themselves: “You don’t have to be the Kwisatz Haderach to play, but it helps.” </p>
https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/24092287/dune-ccg-lessons-for-disney-lorcana-mtg-star-wars-unlimitedPaul Comeau2024-03-05T11:00:00-05:002024-03-05T11:00:00-05:00Looking back at every Nintendo Switch controversy, doubt, and debate
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<img alt="Two pairs of hands hold Nintendo Switch OLED models as they play Super Mario Bros. Wonder while sitting side by side." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wXVyCps2MxqAW6Ug5u7tLH6ghDE=/0x283:5000x3096/640x360/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73183729/1811534869.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo: Emanuele Cremaschi/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ahead of Switch 2, let’s look back on the Nintendo Switch</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap p-large-text" id="FIs5BF">In the seven years since its release, the Nintendo Switch has become a beloved piece of hardware. Not only is it Nintendo’s best-selling console, it’s one of the most popular consoles of all time. It’s also the console that boosted Nintendo’s reputation after the poor reception of Wii U. In 2021, former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé, <a href="https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/01/reggie_admits_switch_was_a_make_or_break_product_for_nintendo_after_poor_performance_of_wii_u">looking back on the Switch</a>, said it was a “make or break” console for Nintendo.</p>
<p id="ljVir2">But behind the rose-colored glasses of the Switch’s success, Nintendo <em>has</em> faced its share of controversies. Since 2017, Nintendo’s been criticized for several issues related to the Switch console — like Joy-Con drift, the launch slate of Wii U ports, and hardware shortages. Ahead of Nintendo’s next-generation console, for which there will certainly be lots of new discourse, let’s look back at some of the controversies around the original Switch.</p>
<h2 id="c8sHkp"><strong>Nintendo Switch shortages</strong></h2>
<p id="3v1Vzq">No, I’m not talking about the Switch shortage of 2020, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/02/nintendo-switch-animal-crossing-and-coronavirus-led-to-record-sales.html">when the console suddenly became nearly impossible to find</a>. Nintendo also faced a Switch shortage upon the system’s release in 2017. People have long accused Nintendo of intentionally creating shortages of its products to hype up demand, and it was no different with the Switch. Nintendo sold <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2017/4/27/15449380/nintendo-switch-worldwide-sales-march">nearly 2.8 million consoles in its first month of sales in March 2017</a>, and said at that time it planned to have 10 million more units available by the end of that fiscal year. Nintendo vastly underestimated how many people wanted a Switch.</p>
<aside id="LWpk4Q"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Everything we know about ‘Switch 2,’ Nintendo’s next-gen console","url":"https://www.polygon.com/nintendo/23899504/nintendo-switch-2-release-date-power-name-games"}]}'></div></aside><p id="2plfEb">It became so hard to find that Nintendo had to put out a statement that this <em>wasn’t</em> intentional. Nintendo senior director of corporate communications Charlie Scibetta told Ars Technica in June 2017 that Nintendo didn’t have an intentional plan “in terms of shorting the market.” The company was making consoles as fast as it could, he said.</p>
<p id="KfxeZc">“We anticipated there was going to be demand for it, but the demand has been even higher than we thought,” <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/nintendo-switch-shortages-are-definitely-not-intentional/">Scibetta said</a>. “We had a good quantity for launch. [...] Unfortunately, we’re in a situation right now where as quick as it’s going into retail outlets it’s being snapped up. It’s a good problem to have, but we’re working very hard to try and meet demand.”</p>
<p id="8Tvkay">Former GameStop chief operations officer Tony Bartel <a href="https://seekingalpha.com/article/4057646-gamestops-gme-paul-raines-on-q4-2016-results-earnings-call-transcript">said in March 2017</a> that he expected the shortages to last the entire year. <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/29/15709232/nintendo-switch-boost">A Financial Times report from May 2017</a> suggested that Nintendo leadership was pushing to release 18 million units by March 2018, upping that earlier 10 million number. Nintendo was working hard to make sure it had enough stock for the holidays. </p>
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<img alt="The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Nintendo Switch game is seen in a store in Nice, France on May 29, 2023. (GETTY)" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tHhZIvJpHI2mcSRKbIgwWBPkCUw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25318383/1258270404.jpg">
<cite>Photo: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images</cite>
</figure>
<h2 id="ALmSkE"><strong>Too many Wii U ports</strong></h2>
<p id="3YdfVU">Around the time the Switch launched, and well into the years after, it was hard to ignore the yells of people mad that there were too many Wii U ports. People were upset for a few reasons, <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/aol2f4/what_are_your_thoughts_on_the_wii_u_ports_on/">one of which</a> was that people who owned the Wii U version would have to purchase it again to play it on Switch. (And, often, these <a href="https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/nintendo-switch-games-are-too-expensive-but-it-makes-total-sense/">games were just as expensive</a> the second time around.) For a while, people felt like there were too many Wii U ports and not enough exclusives, though the number of games released did not support that claim. Nintendo released more than a dozen games on Switch in 2017, only three of which were ports.</p>
<p id="AWzrWd">Here’s the thing: The Wii U did not sell well, which meant that there were a lot of Wii U games that people simply didn’t play; it made sense for Nintendo to port those to Nintendo Switch, just to get more games in players’ hands. Nintendo has kept porting <a href="https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Wii_U_games_ported_to_the_Nintendo_Switch_system#2017">games from Wii U to Switch</a> as the years have gone on, but it’s always felt additive rather than like it’s taking resources away from new game development. The most valid part of this controversy, though, is that people have had to pay full price to buy games a second time.</p>
<h2 id="wfW6og"><strong>Joy-Con drift and other controller issues</strong></h2>
<p id="MSS4xC">Nintendo Switch players have been battling Joy-Con drift for years now. What is Joy-Con drift? It’s when your controller activates with a false input, meaning your controller moves your character or cursor on screen without you pushing anything. It impacts the joysticks, and is <em>very</em> annoying. A lot of Switch players have had crucial moments devastated by drift. Nintendo’s never really said why Joy-Con drift happens, <a href="https://imgur.com/gallery/58bBc43#88PnO9v">but it’s speculated to be due to worn-down internal parts</a>. Nintendo knows it’s a problem: <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2020/6/30/21308085/joy-con-drift-apology-nintendo-president">Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa apologized</a> for “any trouble caused” to customers related to the Joy-Cons. </p>
<p id="wAo6rs">Nintendo Switch players filed lawsuits against Nintendo for the Joy-Con problem. The cases were <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/02/judge-tosses-joy-con-drift-class-action-because-of-switchs-pop-up-eula/">tossed out</a> or forced into arbitration. The company <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/24/20708546/joy-con-drift-fix-refunds-repairs-nintendo-switch-customer-support">does now offer free repairs</a> to impacted controllers. The big problem with the Nintendo Switch Lite is that if you’re facing Joy-Con drift, you can’t just replace your controllers. Nintendo also released an updated, OLED version of the Nintendo Switch in 2021, <a href="https://www.polygon.com/22688586/nintendo-switch-oled-joy-con-drift-controllers">but it still has Joy-Con drift</a> — something Nintendo’s said is “unavoidable” due to regular wear and tear.</p>
<p id="UQkQuX">Lastly, Nintendo was also sued by <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2017/2/9/14562382/gamevice-video">video game peripheral maker Gamevice</a>, which claimed Nintendo violated its patents on a device called the Wikipad. <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21177309/nintendo-switch-patent-gamevice-win">The courts ruled against Gamevice</a>, and Nintendo won the lawsuit <em>and</em> the United States Trade Commission investigation that spawned from it. The Gamevice device does look like the Nintendo Switch, sort of — but there are major differences that separate the two.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Nintendo Joy-Con wireless controllers for the Nintendo Switch are displayed during the debut of Allied Esports’ “PlayTime With KittyPlays” esports variety show at HyperX Esports Arena Las Vegas at Luxor Hotel and Casino on March 24, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sfOfAdS7VBqnGLmEH21m4DCQzhw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25318385/1138056559.jpg">
<cite>Photo: Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images</cite>
</figure>
<h2 id="7O4Ioa"><strong>Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack / Virtual Console</strong></h2>
<p id="mC8b3j">Nintendo Switch Online is required for people who want to play multiplayer online games on the Switch; it costs $19.99 per year, $7.99 every three months, or $3.99 per month. That hasn’t necessarily been the problem — the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack has. It’s basically the upper-tier version of the original service, offering everything the original does plus a bunch of classic video games for the price of $49.99. It also gives access to expansion content, like <em>Animal Crossing: New Horizons</em>’ Happy Home Paradise DLC. When the subscription service was released in 2021, people were immediately upset with the quality of the emulation. It wasn’t good enough to support the $30 increase in price. That, plus the fact that if you stopped the subscription you’d lose access to the DLC, made fans livid.</p>
<aside id="Em0Hlb"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Nintendo’s next-gen console is slowly coming into focus","url":"https://www.polygon.com/23633001/nintendo-switch-2-release-date-2024-backward-compatibility"}]}'></div></aside><p id="XXRvLk">It’s still not something Nintendo Switch players are thrilled with, but as games have been added, the value of it has been more apparent. To put it another way, though, <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2017/2/23/14710726/virtual-console-nintendo-switch-launch">it’s no Virtual Console</a>, which was a popular way for people to play old Nintendo games on the Wii, Wii U, and Nintendo 3DS. At launch, and for much of the Nintendo Switch’s life, the classic games archive with Nintendo Switch Online was and has been limited; there have been plenty of Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo Entertainment System games, but Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games only made it on there in 2021, while Game Boy games weren’t available until 2023. A lot of <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/stkavj/this_bears_repeating_nintendo_killing_virtual/">Nintendo fans have found it a failure</a> on both a consumer level — just let us buy these games! — and as a failure to game preservation, especially as Nintendo takes down its old eShop stores.</p>
<h2 id="aJAbti"><strong>Save data transfers and backups</strong></h2>
<p id="CwKpms">The <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2017/3/2/14790702/nintendo-switch-game-saves-backup-sd-card">Nintendo Switch didn’t have a way to back up or transfer data at launch</a>. You couldn’t (and still can’t!) put save data on a microSD card, for example. The Switch did (and does) allow for expandable storage for games using the microSD slot, but it is no use to save data, which is stored only on the hardware itself. Previously, cartridge-based games had used the cartridges themselves to save data, but that isn’t true for the Switch. If you used up your save data on the console, stuff had to be deleted.</p>
<p id="it5YWi">I’m sure it’s easy to tell why this is a problem: If you lost your Switch or it broke, you were out of luck. People were surprised to find this out ahead of the Switch’s launch, because copying save files was something easily available on the Nintendo 3DS, Wii, and Wii U. It’s something that fans were upset about because it’s been pretty easy to do elsewhere, like on PlayStation and Xbox. (Xbox backs up save data on the cloud, while PlayStation lets you pay for the cloud but freely save games to USB storage.)</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="W9haz9">Of course, that’s no longer the case. <a href="https://www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/how-to-transfer-data-nintendo-switch/">You <em>can</em> now transfer your save data to a new Nintendo Switch console</a>; <a href="https://variety.com/2019/gaming/finance/switch-update-transfer-save-data-1203190537/">Nintendo updated its console with this feature in 2019</a>. You still can’t put saves on microSD cards, though. </p>
https://www.polygon.com/24090415/nintendo-switch-controversies-debatesNicole Carpenter2024-02-26T16:08:00-05:002024-02-26T16:08:00-05:00We need to talk about the ending of All of Us Strangers
<figure>
<img alt="Adam (Andrew Scott) and Harry (Paul Mescal) sit with their heads a few inches apart in All of Us Strangers" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LAHCVHfAJB65baHG0_5TB_UhPZU=/399x0:2602x1239/640x360/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73166173/Strangers_Closeup.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Image: Searchlight Pictures/Everett Collection</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Polygon Court is in session again, as we debate conflicting takes on the movie’s finale</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap p-large-text" id="7IjjQC">Andrew Haigh’s dark love story <em>All of Us Strangers</em> arrived to Hulu on Feb. 22, after two quiet months of building up word of mouth in theaters. Debuting just before Christmas and competing with a lot of more bombastic releases, it initially reached a small audience — but it was evident that it made an impression, as critics and viewers spun out lengthy online analyses and discussions of its memorable, divisive ending.</p>
<p id="SC9Yj9">Here at Polygon, we’re united in admiring the film, but we disagree about the impact of that ending — whether it’s necessary, fair to the characters, constructive to the film, you name it. And when we have strong disagreements on Polygon’s entertainment team, we send the case to Polygon Court, as we did when we debated the <a href="https://www.polygon.com/23613387/titanic-alternate-ending-meaning">alternate ending of James Cameron’s <em>Titanic</em></a>, the <a href="https://www.polygon.com/23720275/fast-furious-movies-best-races-chases">most important part of the Fast and Furious franchise</a>, <a href="https://www.polygon.com/23521274/avatar-way-water-spider-jack-champion">the problem of Spider in <em>Avatar: The Way of Water</em></a>, and the song cut from <a href="https://www.polygon.com/23518742/muppet-christmas-carol-streaming-deleted-song-when-love-is-gone"><em>The Muppet Christmas Carol</em></a>, among other knotty pop culture cases.</p>
<p id="lJslrw">In this case, we have divergent opinions on what the end of <em>All of Us Strangers</em> accomplishes. Polygon Court is now in session.</p>
<p id="3svih2">[<strong>Ed. note:</strong> End spoilers ahead for <em>All of Us Strangers</em>.]</p>
<h2 id="Mypt6N"><strong>The ending of All of Us Strangers</strong></h2>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Adam (Andrew Scott) sits alone on a leather couch in his high-rise apartment at night, the lights of the city behind him through huge windows, in All of Us Strangers" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/C6oJ0-sphL7uxxUC4x5Qc70we2g=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25300400/AdamBacklight.jpg">
<cite>Image: Searchlight Pictures/Everett Collection</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="1Nr44X"><em>All of Us Strangers </em>is a quiet love story about a lonely, isolated screenwriter, Adam (Andrew Scott), who returns to his childhood home while working on a script, and finds his parents there, even though they died when he was a child. Over the course of the movie, he gets some much-needed closure with these ghosts, but they also gently tell him that his relationship with them is holding him back, and they leave him behind in a tearful scene.</p>
<p id="6uH2D2">At the same time all this is going on, Adam meets a neighbor, Harry (Paul Mescal), seemingly the only other person already living in his high-rise apartment building. Harry shows up at Adam’s door drunk one night, seeking company. Adam, shy and awkward, shuts him out. Later, though, they reconnect, and launch an initially tentative, then passionate relationship. Adam eventually tries to introduce Harry to his ghost-parents, which goes poorly, and Harry flees. When Adam seeks him out, visiting Harry’s apartment for the first time, he finds that Harry is dead — and has been dead since the night of that first meeting, when Adam rebuffed him, and Harry returned to his own bed and overdosed.</p>
<p id="r4dljT">In the movie’s final sequence, Adam accepts his lover as a ghost, comforts him, and curls up in bed with him. The camera slowly retreats, leaving them in darkness.</p>
<h2 id="B8Zbj9"><strong>Opening statements: The power of love</strong></h2>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Harry (Paul Mescal) tears up as he faces Adam (Andrew Scott) in All of Us Strangers" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/VfqGcbeHmffLmUvqGQ1H-2WV7Z4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25300401/MCDALOF_H4033.jpg">
<cite>Image: Searchlight Pictures/Everett Collection</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="hMnEmo"><strong>Tasha: </strong>Pete, the ending of <em>All of Us Strangers</em> had a powerful emotional effect on me. I found it stunning — the performances, the emotional tenor they bring to Adam and Harry’s relationship, the way the sequence pays off the themes that have been building throughout the movie, the use of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtdRv6GT9Zg">Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “The Power Of Love”</a> both on the soundtrack and in the lyrics Adam quotes. I loved it! So I was shocked to find out it was your least favorite part of the movie. Sum it up for me: What was your reaction to it?</p>
<p id="HyyzVK"><strong>Pete: </strong>I found it bitter and disappointing. I absolutely loved the first 80-ish minutes of the movie, gorgeously shot and acted story about the lingering power of love and being loved. But the reveal at the end about Harry’s fate felt like a cheap narrative trick. It’s unnecessarily cruel, without adding much depth or impact to what was already an incredibly powerful story.</p>
<h2 id="GlNpck"><strong>Presentation of evidence: Is the ending of All of Us Strangers justified?</strong></h2>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Adam (Andrew Scott) and Harry (Paul Mescal) dance together in a nightclub in purple spangled light in All of Us Strangers" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XcHJVfUdouVt4kvqlkPZQucwIwI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25300402/MCDALOF_H4020.jpg">
<cite>Image: Searchlight Pictures/Everett Collection</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="2boQHQ"><strong>Tasha, the case for the ending: </strong>There’s a lot to unpack there, but the part that surprises me most is the idea that Harry’s death doesn’t add depth to the story. For me, the ending turns a fairly simple, straightforward “let go of the past, embrace the future” love story into something much more thematically complicated, where we have to consider the differences between Adam’s relationship with his parents and with Harry, and what each of them says about him.</p>
<p id="grvlJR">If Adam’s relationship with his ghost-parents was holding him back, are we meant to see his relationship with his ghost-boyfriend in the same way? Is their embrace contradictory? Is it backsliding? Is it fundamentally different because he’s supporting someone who needs him, instead of the opposite? Adam didn’t create Harry’s addiction or depression, but does he bear any guilt or blame for what happened to Harry? Or is he just feeling the responsibility of taking care of someone he loves?</p>
<p id="aUE4dA">How are we meant to feel about this ending, and what it says about the movie’s themes and Adam’s state of mind? I’ve been weighing all these things ever since I first saw the movie months ago, and I guarantee that wouldn’t be true if it was just a simple tale of someone learning to move past his own past.</p>
<p id="ZSp9vw"><strong>Pete, the case against: </strong>I think these are all incredibly interesting questions, and at the end of the day, what I’ve settled on is that this narrative choice wouldn’t have felt so jarring for me if it had been established early on. Instead, as a very late twist to what you’ve seen, it comes across to me as too enamored with its own cleverness and ultimately cruel to Adam, sentencing him to a lifetime of misery and loneliness. (And as you noted, bringing the question of guilt and blame into the situation.)</p>
<p id="D33p4Y">Yes, he “has” Harry in his life, but part of the joy of being in a romantic partnership is being able to share the love of your life with other people you care for — as Adam shows by “taking” Harry out to a bar and to his parents’ house. The reveal tells us how empty their life together will actually be.</p>
<p id="xkdZ5j"><strong>Tasha, the case for the ending: </strong>I don’t see it the same way at all! It doesn’t seem like Adam has anyone in his life to introduce Harry to. The fact that they can go out to a bar and dance together proves that they aren’t limited to hiding in private, and going out with Harry frees Adam from cloistered isolation. Maybe they aren’t destined for sparkling dinner parties or group vacations with a crowd of friends, but there wasn’t any of that in Adam’s life before Harry came along, either. At least with Harry, he has <em>someone</em>.</p>
<p id="p8gjr6">I’m certainly not arguing that <em>All of Us Strangers</em>’ ending is a happy one: At absolute best, it’s bittersweet, and yes, pretty lonely. But within that tragic-romance space, there’s a melancholy power to the idea of finding someone you feel so connected to that you’re willing to give up the world for them if need be — and someone you love so much that your romance transcends death itself. </p>
<p id="gQDnhh">And I’d argue that there’s also a really significant power in a movie ending where what the audience feels about the protagonist’s situation and what the protagonist feels about it are radically different from each other. I’m thinking about the ending of one of my all-time favorite movies, <em>Brazil</em>, or more recently, <em>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</em>. In both cases, the audience is left somewhere between saddened and horrified in spite of the characters’ happiness. I see something similar going on in this ending, and I respect it as a difficult but emotionally effective thing to pull off. </p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Adam (Andrew Scott) stands alone on a subway car, hanging onto the overhead railing, looking drained and haggard in All of Us Strangers" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/G9rmbp9k0rCCDPwj6lq3CjNAuCo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25300403/MCDALOF_H4003.jpg">
<cite>Image: Searchlight Pictures/Everett Collection</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="gSKYWM"><strong>Pete, the case against:</strong> For me, part of the power of the movie is the fact that the questions you raised still linger meaningfully despite my distaste for the ending. It <em>is </em>contradictory, which is fascinating, and I think the movie frames Adam and Harry’s embrace as comfort, even if to me it is a very cold one. I’ll disagree with you on one main point: I think the movie would have been just as powerful for me had it only been about Adam moving on from his parents’ death and moving forward with Harry. </p>
<p id="mF33jo">For me, that story still had so much to say about the enduring power of love (something Haigh <a href="https://ew.com/all-of-us-strangers-ending-explained-andrew-haigh-hope-8418029">has said he wanted to communicate with the film</a>) and its ability to cross unfathomable, even metaphysical boundaries. Claire Foy and Jamie Bell’s uncontainable curiosity about their son’s life and interests hit me hard, and I felt his relationship with Harry was a wonderful counterbalance because of the generational gaps (big and small) throughout the movie, and the opportunity it presented for him to finally be happy. </p>
<p id="xND8YX"><strong>Tasha, the case for the ending: </strong>But then how would Harry have interacted with that storyline at all? Would the narrative focus just been a simple choice between the living and the dead, the past and the present?</p>
<p id="yltzSw">You said you would have preferred to know that Harry was dead earlier in the movie, but I don’t think that could have worked narratively. And the reason is what you just noted about Adam’s parents. I don’t think we could have processed Harry’s death or decided what to do with it until Adam’s arc with his parents was resolved. Their curiosity about Adam’s life and about their own deaths, their feelings about their ongoing relationship with Adam and what he needs in order to move forward — those are all priming us to understand how ghosts work in this world, and what a relationship with one would be like. (The details are pretty unique!) </p>
<p id="3O0zpk">Yes, I agree it plays as a “gotcha” kind of twist — not a gleeful one, but certainly a “You didn’t see this coming.” (I’ve thought a lot about whether there’s an argument to be made that <em>All of Us Strangers</em> is a stealth sequel to <em>The Sixth Sense</em>, which features a similar kind of ending twist, though in that world, the dead don’t know they’re dead.) </p>
<p id="ZgCY1y">But I also think it needed to be the last thing that happens in the movie, because until Adam’s wrapped his arc with his parents, he’s still a man in transition. He has to make it through that experience in order to decide how to approach Harry based on everything he’s learned — and we the audience need his relationships with his parents and with Harry to be distinct from each other, related and intertwined, but still not just simple extensions of each other. </p>
<p id="yi0f6g"><strong>Pete, the case against: </strong>One thing I struggled with after finishing the film was concern that my distaste came out of a dislike of something bad happening to a character I liked. But then I watched Hirokazu Kore-eda’s new film <em>Monster</em>, a movie I love where plenty of bad things happen to characters I like (and that includes some clever twists!). That helped reaffirm where I was coming from here, despite how jumbled my feelings about <em>All of Us Strangers </em>are.</p>
<p id="Z2S9Pk">And my feelings continue to be jumbled as we talk about it — I find myself agreeing with a lot of what you’re saying, and the difficulty the movie would have had narratively if it hadn’t positioned Harry’s death as a twist. I do think it’s possible, and in my version, rather than a choice between the living or the dead, it would be the living <em>and </em>the dead — accepting both the permanence and consequences of death, as well as the opportunity of life in the new world he has for himself. As constructed, he does choose between the living and the dead, and the choice he makes is “the dead.” But I’ll push that hypothetical rewrite onto Andrew Haigh instead, and leave that up to him to figure out.</p>
<p id="N0y1dR">Ultimately what I’m grateful for is this isn’t one of those movies where I’m left completely bewildered by other people’s responses to it. I think there are a lot of excellent things about <em>All of Us Strangers</em>, and I’m incredibly glad that people are responding to it so positively, even if I didn’t all the way through.</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Harry (Paul Mescal) and Adam (Andrew Scott) curl up together, face to face in a red-lit bed, in All of Us Strangers" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KnqGssmHijbJQgiAkFHTjN6s41k=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25300405/MCDALOF_H4010.jpg">
<cite>Image: Searchlight Pictures/Everett Collection</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="l2xly5"><strong>Tasha, the case for the ending: </strong>And I certainly understand your objections! The thing I’m left questioning the most about the movie is the narrative perversity of Adam having his dependence on two ghosts broken against his will, for his own good — and then turning around and emotionally committing to a third one.</p>
<p id="8s0RhV">That, and one more thing that does really give me pause: the way this movie unfortunately falls into the <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BuryYourGays">“bury your gays”</a> trope. It’s a longstanding, well-noted issue that queer characters disproportionately suffer tragic symbolic endings, and it’s rare to see a queer couple get an uncompromised happy ending. I’m in favor of <em>this specific</em> movie ending, but I’m not entirely comfortable with how the movie fits into the cliché.</p>
<p id="SQpXCp">Looking into the source material here — the movie is a loose adaptation of Taichi Yamada’s 1987 Japanese novel <em>Strangers</em> — this ending is very much Haigh’s radical revision of a story involving a straight relationship, and a man plagued by predatory ghosts. The Harry equivalent, a woman named Kei, even reads as vengeful and angry about the Adam equivalent refusing her early in the story — a rejection that pushed her to take her own life by repeatedly stabbing herself. There’s no question that the Adam character needs to escape her before she kills him. It’s a remarkably different story all around, which means this version of the story — and the way it falls into that frustrating old trope — is entirely Haigh’s vision. Did that aspect bother you at all?</p>
<p id="hIk5Me"><strong>Pete, the case against: </strong>That’s very interesting, and I’m glad you brought that into the conversation. I was curious about the source material, but hadn’t taken the step to look closer into it yet.</p>
<p id="b4dSPS">And yes, I’d be lying if I said the litany of stories about gay love that end in tragedy didn’t play a role here. But I was less bothered by similar decisions in other 2023 queer films (examples redacted due to spoilers), so I feel confident saying it’s not <em>just </em>that.</p>
<h2 id="s4f7qF"><strong>Closing statements: What comes from darkness</strong></h2>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Adam (Andrew Scott) stands shirtless and pensive in front of a window in his high-rise apartment in All of Us Strangers" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SVVXnPNER3AjsaoD01jEXfA9_ro=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25300406/MCDALOF_H4004.jpg">
<cite>Image: Searchlight Pictures/Everett Collection</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="W0CJWf"><strong>Tasha, the case for the ending: </strong>Ultimately, to me, the ending of <em>All of Us Strangers</em> is dark, sad, and strange, but none of those things are knocks against it — they come across as daring to me, and thoughtful. I suspect Haigh has clear answers in mind for the questions we’ve posed here, but he’s made it clear with his careful answers in interviews that he doesn’t want to give them away. He wants people to consider them for themselves, and come away from the film moved, engaged, and primed for a discussion. In that spirit, this ending absolutely worked for me. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="dkXAzu"><strong>Pete, the case against: </strong>I still have a lot of love for <em>All of Us Strangers</em>, and I’m truly glad that a beautiful, aching queer love story that has thorny elements and takes on difficult topics has been able to connect with audiences in such a strong way. I don’t have a perfect picture of what this movie looks like without the late twist, but as currently constructed, the ending just didn’t land for me, and left a sour taste in my mouth after what was otherwise a wonderful experience. And you know what? I’m okay with that. </p>
https://www.polygon.com/24080734/all-of-us-strangers-ending-explained-good-or-badTasha RobinsonPete Volk2024-02-26T11:00:00-05:002024-02-26T11:00:00-05:00Racebending challenged Last Airbender whitewashing and woke Hollywood up
<figure>
<img alt="A collage of photos from Racebending.com protests and Comic-Con appearances" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/afKzq_UmZ34W2PuXODLG28w26ng=/0x0:1920x1080/640x360/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73165191/racebending_main_1.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Graphic: Matt Patches/Polygon | Source images: Courtesy of Racebending.com</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Before fandoms embraced the word, Racebending was a coalition with a goal for change</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap p-large-text" id="VvwHsh">Mike Le was furious. Maybe sad? There was a touch of despair. On the morning of Dec. 9, 2008, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20081211001630/http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2008/12/shyamalan-casts.html">news broke</a> that M. Night Shyamalan had cast his upcoming live-action adaptation of Nickelodeon’s <em>Avatar: The Last Airbender</em>. Le, then a grad student at UCLA, was a huge fan of the animated series — but Shyamalan’s take for Paramount Pictures looked like a disaster. In his mind, <em>Avatar</em> was an explicitly Asian-inspired fantasy, an Eastern Lord of the Rings with martial arts. So why were all of Shyamalan’s actors white? </p>
<p id="8694vO">Le had felt the frustration all of his life. The big one from the past was <em>Firefly</em>, a show whose characters he loved but that at its core stole “from Asian culture without doing anything in the service of Asian people.” <em>The Last Airbender</em> pushed him over an edge. He carried the fire to a meeting of the activist group MANNA (Media Action Network for Asian Americans), where he and his girlfriend, Dariane Nabor, met another miffed <em>Avatar</em> fan, Marissa Lee, who didn’t just want to commiserate. By 2009, the three fledgling activists, along with a coalition of internet pals, launched Racebending.com, with the express intent of waging a media war.</p>
<p id="vgtQ8v">“The pie-in-the-sky dream was: Stop the presses, waste hundreds of millions of dollars, and get them to recast and reshoot,” Le says over a video call. They knew the goal was unrealistic. Still, where there’s noise, there’s discussion. “If we got enough attention, that would have an impact on how a lot of people saw not just this particular instance of whitewashing, but how they might think about that in the future.”</p>
<p id="Haa3fb">Today, you can’t swipe across a feed without bumping into a wound-up fan base — TV show groupies, a stan hive, a political cult — and the 2000s pre-social internet wasn’t too different, while spread across an archipelago of message boards and blogs. So the <em>Last Airbender</em> casting outcry could have been mistaken as everyday fan bickering — and almost was, by fans and media alike. But as time would prove, this was no proto-#ReleasetheSnyderCut. </p>
<p id="ouNeel">The clear evidence is Netflix’s new series, <a href="https://www.polygon.com/23952601/avatar-last-airbender-netflix-release-date-live-action-trailer"><em>Avatar: The Last Airbender</em></a>. The streamer <a href="https://www.polygon.com/22621432/avatar-the-last-airbender-netflix-cast-creator">announced the cast of the second live-action reinterpretation in 2021</a> by specifically citing that the show “would establish a new benchmark in representation” by booking non-white actors for key roles. For fans, it was worth a cheer. But for the folks behind Racebending.com, it was the bookend to an unlikely saga of yelling online, being questioned by the internet, getting waved off by powerful people, and then still doing something about it.</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="zt6Iua">
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Aang, Katara, and Sokka discover a forest burned down to ash by the Fire Nation in Avatar: The Last Airbender" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XrGnXFe9JgXTFVfvGm1UQgB4taU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25299661/avatar_burnt_land.jpg">
<cite>Image: Nickelodeon Animation Studio</cite>
<figcaption>Aang, Katara, and Sokka in <em>Avatar: The Last Airbender</em>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="2zoKeC">The <em>Last Airbender</em> controversy erupted months before the actual cast was announced. Much like Shyamalan’s discovery of Haley Joel Osment for <em>The Sixth Sense</em>, there was hope that the film could launch the careers of promising young stars. But the casting call for the film’s lead, Aang, included a line that sent <em>Avatar</em> fans up in arms: <a href="https://64.media.tumblr.com/dcac7741208624288b701a0c173cc147/6001615125ccef7f-5d/s500x750/80b1ea2915572362189f5f4858730c4093f435a4.jpg">“Caucasian or any other ethnicity.”</a> </p>
<p id="Ugu8Yo">The creative team ultimately went with “Caucasian” across the board. At the time, the lineup included <em>Twilight</em>’s Jackson Rathbone as Sokka; Nicola Peltz, best known at the time as the daughter of billionaire Nelson Peltz, as Katara; singer and Teen Choice Award winner Jesse McCartney as Zuko; and newcomer Noah Ringer, a 12-year-old with a black belt discovered during a casting call in Texas, as Aang.</p>
<p id="tmV4fq">When the news broke, Benjamin Wilgus was bewildered by the casting choices and, more so, the immediate discourse. The writer-cartoonist recalls the site <a href="https://fandomsecrets.dreamwidth.org/">Fandom Secrets</a>, a hub for anonymous hot takes, exploding with defensive reactions to anyone raising an eyebrow. “<em>Avatar: The Last Airbender</em> is a fantasy!” “<em>Avatar: The Last Airbender</em> does not take place in Asia!” “<em>Avatar: The Last Airbender</em> characters have blue eyes and therefore they can be white!” At the time, Wilgus was deep in the <em>Avatar</em> LiveJournal community and, coincidentally, working on a set of <em>Avatar: The Last Airbender</em> comics for Nickelodeon Magazine. He knew, from adapting the series to the page, how the artists that worked on <em>Avatar</em> drew inspiration from Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Inuit cultures to amalgamate the show’s four nations. Wilgus tried laughing through the uproar, even designing a “Avatar Racefail” bingo card so Fandom Secrets commenters could “play” at home. But the sour rhetoric got deeper and deeper under his skin.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Avatar Racefail Bingo card with lots of complaints about Avatar being race ambiguous " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/BzIytJrxzAF9F0Dz9HOEOwDTdBg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25299663/racebingo.jpg">
<cite>Image: Nickelodeon</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="c9FmA7">“I didn’t want to fuck over my colleagues, especially as they got me these jobs in the first place, but I was very mad and I was extremely 27 years old,” Wilgus says. So, in “a fever dream,” he spent a night collecting screencaps from <em>Avatar: The Last Airbender</em> that would effectively serve as a box of evidence for anyone walking into a comment debate. An increasingly anxious Wilgus <a href="https://aang-aint-white.livejournal.com/1007.html#cutid1">posted the grid</a> on a LiveJournal created just for the occasion: the aptly named “Aang Ain’t White.” The platform lit up.</p>
<p id="nuDJWy">Created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, <em>Avatar: The Last Airbender</em> looked nothing like surrounding Nickelodeon programming when it premiered in 2005. Between mythical serialized drama, fight choreography designed by martial arts professionals, and hand-drawn animation from Korean animation studio JM Animation, <em>Airbender</em>’s Eastern specificity made many wonder if the series qualified as “anime,” despite being a Western production with three white, English-speaking lead voice actors. The praise led to more critical consideration, a debate Shyamalan’s film only exacerbated: Did a tradition of <em>mukokuseki</em>, <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Mukokuseki">the Japanese trope</a> of rendering animated characters without discernible ethnicities, leave the race of <em>Airbender</em>’s characters up to interpretation? Or was the show inherently problematic in how, as <a href="https://racebending.livejournal.com/133219.html">one LiveJournaler put it</a>, “the world and its cultures do not code as Asian, but as more in the vein of white Orientalism. It’s characters putting on Asian costumes in an exotic Asian world, for white people”? </p>
<p id="Lj223k">But big-picture questions about authentic identity and Asianness didn’t deter Aang Ain’t White supporters from campaigning on what turned out to be a much simpler point: Source material be damned, an <em>ATLA</em> movie was an <em>opportunity</em> to elevate Asian or Asian American actors because of its cultural roots. Paramount Pictures cast white actors instead. Enough people agreed: That sucked and the studio was going to hear about it.</p>
<p id="DORt3y">In late 2008, Loraine Sammy, a prominent voice in fan spaces who teamed up with Aang Ain’t White early on, posted <a href="https://glockgal.livejournal.com/375625.html#cutid1">an elaborate guide to writing protest letters</a> aimed at <em>The Last Airbender</em> producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall. (“Remember, the key is to not sound like a douche,” she stated at the top of the post.)<strong> </strong>The call to action gripped Marissa Lee, who spent high school years writing politicians on behalf of Amnesty International and reading up on the history of yellowface on places like the <a href="https://angryasianman.com/">Angry Asian Man blog</a>. She was particularly inspired by the theater actors and the Actors Equity union protest of <em>Miss Saigon</em>’s use of yellowface makeup on Jonathan Pryce, who played the mixed-race pimp the Engineer. While Pryce ultimately won a Tony for his work in 1991, he quickly stepped down from the role and producers of the musical <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/theater/the-battle-of-miss-saigon-yellowface-art-and-opportunity.html">vowed to only cast actors of Asian descent</a> in future productions. <em>The Last Airbender</em>, Lee thought, might turn out to be a similar inflection point for on-screen whitewashing.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Benjamin Wilgus, Marissa Lee, and Michael Le at Comic-Con smiling and wearing Racebending.com t-shirts" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/MiyOGSVNoSZvnBrkOA-NGeq2thw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25299709/ben_marissa_mike.jpg">
<cite>Photo courtesy of Racebending</cite>
<figcaption>Benjamin Wilgus, Marissa Lee, and Mike Le at San Diego Comic-Con</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="FlhMNe">Her first job was creating basic Aang Ain’t White press kits to ship out to any media organization that might catch wind of the letter-writing campaign. And even in LiveJournal form, it was blowing up. In a blog at the time, <em>American Born Chinese</em> cartoonist Gene Luen Yang endorsed the Aang Ain’t White campaign, writing, “By giving white actors roles that are so obviously Asian — and by stating from the get-go their preference for Caucasians — they tell Asian-Americans that who we are and how we look make us inherently inadequate for American audiences, even in a movie that celebrates our culture.” (Yang would later <a href="https://geneyang.com/im-writing-the-new-avatar-the-last-airbender-comic">work with DiMartino and Konietzko on graphic novel sequels to <em>Avatar: The Last Airbender</em></a> for Dark Horse Comics, but said he skipped the<em> Last Airbender</em> film.) </p>
<p id="huYv7G">The endorsement from Yang came as <em>The Last Airbender</em> production seemed to react to Aang Ain’t White’s action. In January 2009, a Philadelphia casting call for background extras broadened language beyond “Caucasian or any other ethnicity” to a more general ask that added “dress casually or in the traditional costume of your family’s ethnic background.” <em>The Last Airbender</em>’s extras casting director Deedra Ricketts tried to clarify the ambiguous ask ahead of the auditions in <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090303100924/http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/2009/01/23/News/Try-Out.For.A.Role.For.M.Night.Shyamalan-3594896.shtml">an interview with the Daily Pennsylvanian</a>: “If you’re Korean, wear a kimono. If you’re from Belgium, wear lederhosen.”</p>
<p id="duYn2w">Then, on Feb. 2, 2009, Variety reported that <em>Slumdog Millionaire</em> actor Dev Patel would star in <em>The Last Airbender</em>, taking over the role of Zuko from Jesse McCartney. The report made no mention of the fan backlash, but Shyamalan offered an explanation for the change: “Jesse had tour dates that conflicted with a boot camp I always hold on my films, and where the actors here have to train for martial arts.” The Aang Ain’t White group was happy to hear it — and not at all satisfied, <a href="https://aang-aint-white.livejournal.com/2009/02/05/">issuing a detailed breakdown</a> two days later of why the production was in no way off the hook. At that moment, Lee and Sammy were ready to go bigger. Wilgus was happy to hand off the baton.</p>
<p id="TgEBD5">“Aang Aint White was like a kind of liminal space while folks were getting their ducks in a row,” Wilgus says. “And, I will say, one of the things that made me very uncomfortable was not only my professional association, but honestly, I’m some fucking white person. And while I felt very certain of my convictions, it definitely felt like the minute there was a group of people for whom this was personal, and their thing to not only do something about but decide what they wanted to do and what they wanted their messaging to be, I was very happy to be like, <em>Great, yes, please take all the stuff that I’ve done that’s useful to you, build your own website, have your own thing, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help</em>.”</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A screenshot of Racebending.com launch page with an Avatar Aang print logo and images of Katara and Sokka and Zuko in a blog post" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iW4Cff7Mv6wkM2mOYXeknWwPPxU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25299712/racebendingdotcomscreencap.jpg">
<cite>Image: Racebending.com</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="SPd1Jm">The first order of business: a new name. To the new stakeholders, “Aang Ain’t White” was provocative but limiting; Aang wasn’t the only whitewashed character and, as Lee puts it, people at the time were still “uncomfortable with naming whiteness.” There was also a chance, if mobilized correctly, that the conversation wouldn’t end with <em>The Last Airbender</em>. Lee is happy to take a victory lap today in her choice of “Racebending,” a nod to the <a href="https://fanlore.org/wiki/Genderfuck">“genderfuck”/”genderbend” practice</a> in fanfiction that invoked the elemental abilities of the <em>Avatar</em> world. Racebending was firmly a pejorative when Lee and Sammy launched the website in the spring of 2009, a red flag for any instance of a corporation <em>bending</em> characterization to the white identity. But, in a testament to the work that would soon be done, 14 years later, “racebending” is <a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/on-racebending-and-seeing-yourself-in-fandom-fan-service">fan nomenclature for any reimagined casting choice</a>. Today, shows like <a href="https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/15/the-black-love-interest-black-casting-through-racebending/"><em>Bridgerton</em></a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/Tarantrinn/status/1701063134470160655"><em>Interview with a Vampire</em></a> earn praise for boldly racebending a potentially faithful but homogenous cast to make space for talented people of color to shine.</p>
<p id="T5WaKn">In the months to come, the growing team at Racebending.com continued to coordinate, train, and pound away. Lee and Sammy continued to create content for the site, breaking down academic studies on Asian and Asian American representation for internet-kid reading and talking to experts ranging from racial discrimination lawyers to the NAACP who could supply them with facts to fuel the movement’s appetite. They militantly tracked casting updates and word from set. When Mike Le and Dariane Nabor joined the fray, the LiveJournalers had the front-facing extroverts they needed to take the protest to the ground. Asian American media firms offered media training, preparing Le for what would be regular appearances on TV and radio leading up to the film. He and Nabor were also motivated to take their soapboxes to the streets. At the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, the two papered the Nickelodeon booth in Racebending fliers, wrangled petition signatures, chanted on the convention floor, and even showed up to a signing with DiMartino and Konietzko in Racebending garb. But at the end of the day, the group’s loudest demonstrations were conducted in comment sections.</p>
<p id="2HJ3FA">“There wasn’t a single major article online about the movie that did not have some Racebending supporters down there, saying, <em>This is not OK, you guys should not have done this</em>,” Le says. From major newspapers to micro-geek blogs, followers of Racebending.com had their marching orders and operated with precision. <em>Polite</em> precision. “Keep your cool,” read one Racebending post. “If you come off as angry (Season 1 Zuko!), they have yet another excuse to dismiss you. Make your points calmly and confidently.” And they did. Poking around the archived internet, and having learned about the organization in the comments of UGO.com, where I worked at time, Le’s expansive claim that their commenters were everywhere is accurate. Many blistered at the aggressive nature of the campaign.</p>
<p id="5ntAA2">“Every time I post something about <em>The Last Airbender</em>, someone brings up the fact that the movie is insanely racist, that Aang and the other characters are clearly of ethnic origin, and the fact that they hired a white kid as the star is a travesty. There’s even talk of boycotting the movie,” Rob Bricken wrote in <a href="https://www.toplessrobot.com/2010/02/straightening_out_the_last_airbender_with_a_new_tr.php">a 2010 trailer write-up</a> on the now-defunct site Topless Robot. “You guys need to settle down, because there is no way that Hollywood would have ever, ever cast anyone other than a white kid as Aang. I think your heart is in the right place, and I think this is a discussion worth having, but you guys need to stop losing sleep over this.”</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="M. Night Shyamalan, Jackson Rathbone, Nicola Peltz, and Noah Ringer on set with The Last Airbender crew looking at a monitor" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UNCXTyG6VxE56JMd4ZCckGCXrj8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25299718/MCDLAAI_EC035.jpg">
<cite>Photo: Zade Rosenthal/Paramount Pictures/Everett Collection</cite>
<figcaption>M. Night Shyamalan, Jackson Rathbone, Nicola Peltz, and Noah Ringer on the set of <em>The Last Airbender</em>
</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="f6le93">Unlike the cordial letter-writing campaign, Racebending.com’s spam effort provoked responses of increasing legitimacy. The Los Angeles Times <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-may-02-la-ca-air-bender-20100502-story.html">commissioned columns</a> based on their own comment sections. Roger Ebert took on the question of the controversial casting in a June 9, 2010, edition of his <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/answer-man/can-a-man-be-a-sexaholic-slut">“Movie Answer Man” column</a>, siding with the cause. “If I’d been making <em>The Last Airbender</em>, I would probably have decided the story was so well- known to my core audience that it would be a distraction to cast those roles with white actors.” And while Le appeared on countless TV and radio broadcasts evangelizing Racebending.com’s message on whitewashing, the needle ultimately moved in his conversations with so-called “fan press.” When Shyamalan hit the press tour with <em>The Last Airbender</em>, a few geek blogs with dedicated journalists at the helm were equipped to ask the questions Racebending.com and fans of the series wanted answered.</p>
<p id="kUQ305">When pushed to comment during an early press roundtable for the film, <a href="https://gizmodo.com/shyamalan-addresses-airbenders-race-controversy-and-ans-5504967">reported by io9</a> in March 2010, Shyamalan immediately landed on <em>Avatar: The Last Airbender</em>’s third rail. “The great thing about anime is that it’s ambiguous,” he explained, saying that his daughter always saw herself in Katara growing up, but that didn’t mean Katara was Indian. So when it came time to cast <em>The Last Airbender</em>, his focus was exclusively on talent.</p>
<blockquote>
<p id="9INXGS">I was like, “I don’t care who walks through my door, whoever is best for the part. I’m going to figure it out like a chess game.” Ideally we separate the nations ethnically — ideally. I didn’t know how or what it was going to be. And it was so fluid. For example if you found a great brother, [but] he didn’t go with my favorite Katara, then we couldn’t use him. Theoretical things like that. There was an Aang that we really loved, but he was like 5’10.” There’s all kinds of issues that come to the table physically. And I had a board of all the people that I was considering, the seven or eight. There was, at one time, a Chinese Sokka and Katara, and they were over here. One of them was a better actor than the other, and so I was gathering my pros and cons.</p>
<p id="41a935">I was without an agenda, and just letting it come to the table. Noah is a photo double from the cartoon. He is spot on. I didn’t know their backgrounds, and to me Noah had a slightly mixed quality to him. So I cast the Airbenders as all mixed-race. So when you see the monks, they are all mixed. And it kind of goes with the nomadic culture and the idea that over the years, all nationalities came together.</p>
</blockquote>
<p id="vM4llK">Shyamalan capped his case for the film’s individual casting choices by looking to the future: Not only were his casting picks sound, but the plan for the theoretical Last Airbender trilogy would “more so than the show, [have] much more diverse ethnic backgrounds to it.” He promised Toph, a character who debuted in season 2 of the animated series, would be Asian in the sequel, while the Earth Kingdom would have a large Black population. “It’s not an agenda for me,” Shyamalan said of his diverse cast, “but it’s something I’m super proud of. That when my kids or any kids look at it they will see themselves.”</p>
<p id="0OPNWH">While Shyamalan’s position as one of the most well-known directors of Indian descent working in Hollywood today may have created a strange wrinkle in the race-focused dialogue around <em>The Last Airbender</em>, Lee says it never gave them pause during the campaign. “I don’t think you have to be white to enact or make a choice that could have a racist result.”</p>
<p id="XBVVZ0">(Representatives for M. Night Shyamalan did not respond to requests for additional comment.)</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="iGs8Q8">
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="XwrwSb">Shyamalan’s defense <a href="https://manaa.blogspot.com/2010/03/m-night-shyamalan-misses-point.html">landed with a thud</a>, generating even more attention for Racebending.com’s case. While no one involved with the movie ever contacted the site to talk through the issue, Le says Paramount did eventually reach out — to invite Racebending.com members and other Asian and Asian American activists to a special screening of <em>The Last Airbender</em>. “It was… a very uncomfortable experience,” he says with a wince. When Le and others arrived at the screening, two younger Paramount representatives greeted them at the door, and “one of them was drunk,” Le says, or completely off the deep end. There was no conversation about the protest, just a cordial thank-you for attending. “When the movie started, I thought we were being trolled,” he says. “I thought they were making fun of us, because… it was so bad?”</p>
<p id="PaRZEO">On July 1, 2010, <em>The Last Airbender</em> premiered in theaters. The Racebending.com street team planned on protesting the Hollywood premiere weeks before, but there wasn’t one (Paramount opted for a smaller splash in New York City). Instead, a picket line formed outside the famous Cinerama Dome on release day. They chanted, banged drums, and crossed a finish line — with the movie out, the campaign was effectively over. But there was no post-show party or popping of champagne (though they did grab dinner).</p>
<p id="5aDDmS">“We didn’t slow down,” Lee says, “because there was still work to be done.”</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="The Racebending.com protest outside the Cinerama in Los Angeles, CA with everyone holding up Avatar-related protest signs" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8MNyH5nIEOM9iJdIl5sR38kjmmI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25299732/racebending_protest.jpg">
<cite>Photo courtesy of Racebending.com</cite>
<figcaption>The Racebending.com protest of the opening day of <em>The Last Airbender</em> at the Cinerama in Los Angeles, California</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="DsVsEH">The release of <em>The Last Airbender</em> was, in a way, anticlimactic. Racebending.com didn’t defeat Goliath in a grand showdown, but Goliath didn’t triumph either. Shyamalan’s film was lambasted by critics (holding a mere 5% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of publish), came in No. 2 under the <em>Twilight</em> sequel <em>Eclipse</em>, and grossed $319 million worldwide on a reported $150 million budget. “If we do this right, it could become our Harry Potter,” Nickelodeon president Cyma Zarghami <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=3633368&page=1">proclaimed</a> in 2007 when the deal was first struck with Shyamalan to direct an Avatar trilogy. Three years later, any hope for sequels was immediately gone, although few were hoping. The Racebending team felt vindicated — and saw a future that was much clearer than the franchise’s.</p>
<p id="atQLr7">“It helped a lot that the movie was terrible,” Le says. “I think [the protest] would have been much more controversial if it had been a great movie somehow — aside from all the whitewashing. [...] But we felt like we had had some impact on the national discussion. And in the years after it, it certainly felt influential in how subsequent casting controversies were handled by Hollywood media.”</p>
<p id="Belzrw">Where Racebending.com pointed, readers would go. In the fall of 2010, the group directed its energy at Marvel Studios to address vague casting requests for its Hulu adaptation of <em>Runaways</em> and remain faithful to the Asian American identity of a key character — <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110212024457/http://www.racebending.com/v3/news/online-coverage-racebending-com-fights-for-asian-american-runaways-casting/">and Marvel quickly responded</a>. The next year, the group aligned with Hunger Games fans who hoped Katniss’ racial ambiguity in the books might lead to diverse casting choices, only to see hopes dashed when main District 11 players were white. (Heat around the conversation was strong enough that Lee recalls receiving a call from a person involved in <em>The Hunger Games</em> production hoping to quell the ire.) Warner Bros. Pictures also met with Racebending.com and other nonprofits to discuss why <a href="https://deadline.com/2011/03/akira-focuses-on-short-list-of-actors-after-getting-steve-kloves-rewrite-115939/">a proposed <em>Akira</em> adaptation announced in 2011</a>, which had names like Robert Pattinson, Andrew Garfield, Michael Fassbender, and Justin Timberlake in the mix for the leads, was such an issue for the activists. As of publication, the <em>Akira</em> movie still hasn’t happened (but Warner Bros. Pictures would produce <em>Crazy Rich Asians</em> a few years later). </p>
<p id="GAiCCV">The post-<em>Airbender</em> Racebending.com was not just out to prevent whitewashing, but educate the industry. The full-blown media operation published regular news reports, educational materials on the topic of whitewashing and representation, and held annual San Diego Comic-Con and New York Comic Con panels to promote Asian and Asian American topics. The rooms were always packed, recalled Le, and unlike the scene around <em>The Last Airbender</em>, wholly positive. </p>
<p id="fXJU7x">“I definitely wanted to keep doing the convention circuit [after the movie release] because the energy at the panels was always really positive. At the time, there was not a big Asian American space in San Diego Comic-Con or New York Comic Con. I thought it was important that there was a space for Asian Americans at that convention. [...] And I couldn’t really explain why or articulate why, but every time I was in the room, the room would be packed, and you just see the expressions on people’s faces. People would be so happy just to be there to talk about this unique experience of loving media, American media, as an Asian American fan. It’s complicated.”</p>
<p id="0U2LfR">But Racebending was always a passion project. The founders had day jobs, higher education to juggle, and lives offline. And as they grew older and drifted away from the LiveJournal fan communities that had cut their teeth, the site lost steam. Le says the COVID-19 pandemic shuttering the 2020 San Diego Comic-Con was a final blow for the organization. </p>
<p id="8WS2Xf">“I feel old saying this, but I think it’s a young person’s game,” Le says. Long broken up from Nabor and living a professional life in his 30s, the software engineer admires those who made lives out of activism — he loved it when he could give it his undivided attention. Marissa Lee tells a similar story of concentrating on family and therapy practice, drifting away from the day-to-day at Racebending.com, and losing touch with Sammy, whom she had never met in person. There was a hope that maybe a fresh generation of activist fans could take over the site, though by the time they considered finding successors, the era of actual dot-com destinations had been replaced by Twitter, Reddit, Discord, YouTube, and TikTok. At some point, no one knows exactly when, the Racebending.com domain name lapsed, only to be poached by a Google-spammer that churns out keyword content created by anonymous authors to be read by no one.</p>
<p id="dqDaWv">But the impact of the site remains. According to <a href="https://annenberg.usc.edu/research/annenberg-inclusion-initiative/raceethnicity">a February 2023 study</a> by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, the prevalence of underrepresented leads or co-leads in films has significantly increased over the last 15 years. In 2010, 11% of the 100 top-grossing movies featured an underrepresented lead or co-lead. By 2019, the average has remained closer to 30%. The Asian on-screen representation in that time period has risen from 5% to over 21%.</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="The live-action version of Aang meditating in Avatar: The Last Airbender" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2WQD0WUCLgsOW69XCjGM59j8THk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25178794/AVTR_Unit_01819.jpg">
<cite>Photo: Robert Falconer/Netflix</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="t7S6mR">Netflix’s <em>Avatar: The Last Airbender</em> aims to counter the frustration of the Shyamalan movie by appealing directly to fans of the animated series through pronounced, racially aware messaging (and hopefully a good version of the story, too). The attempt, those involved with Aang Ain’t White and Racebending.com all agree, is validating. But whether it’s good or bad is almost moot — that’s how far things have come. While the anti-racist campaigns were valuable in changing Hollywood’s tune on authentic, diverse casting, for Marissa Lee, fans are more in control of what they want to see than ever, thanks to fan works and the social internet. While she wants to see representation on screen, she isn’t waiting for studio executives to do the right thing. And it may be impossible to do now what the team did then; as Lee also notes, with exasperation, all of Racebending.com’s tactics have been co-opted by bad-faith fans who think <em>The Last Jedi</em> was as much of an injustice to Star Wars fans as <em>The Last Airbender</em> movie was to Asian and Asian American <em>ATLA </em>fans.</p>
<p id="KqQQKr">“We can’t wait for Hollywood to validate us. People on the margins, we can agitate, and shake the tree and hope that Hollywood drops some fruit, but you know, we also can be empowered to create our own stuff, our own representation. It’s just as meaningful and just as valuable,” she says.</p>
<p id="cEWhaP">As for Mike Le, previously mad online, he’ll watch with comfort. In his mind, he lives in a world in which Asian and Asian American people are “marketable” leads and worthy of casting in major motion pictures when the material offers an opportunity, even if there’s still plenty of work to be done to even the playing field. (A recent win: Universal recently cast Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen in a <a href="https://deadline.com/2024/01/donnie-yen-kung-fu-movie-1235810036/">big-screen take</a> on the <a href="https://time.com/5953090/kung-fu-cw-asian-representation/">infamously whitewashed TV series <em>Kung Fu</em></a>.)</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="JoKMzV">“When I was growing up and even up into 2008, it felt like every project that had Asian people in it, or could potentially have Asian people in it, was super high-stakes because we were jostling over breadcrumbs,” Le says. Now he feels he can actually love — or hate! — any media without a social justice cloud looming over the experience. “A lot of white people kind of take for granted that if a show comes out headlining someone of your racial background, you can be like, ‘I don’t want to watch that,’ or even say ‘That movie sucks.’ Having the freedom to be able to say that out loud is so nice.” </p>
https://www.polygon.com/24079373/avatar-last-airbender-live-action-racebendingMatt Patches2024-02-23T15:00:00-05:002024-02-23T15:00:00-05:00Spaceman gave Adam Sandler a new skill: ‘I never cried in front of a tennis ball before’
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<img alt="Jakub the astronaut (Adam Sandler) in extreme closeup, wearing his spacesuit and helmet" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/VRD1kHLozA2AS1YWIrRYbrkfwrM=/513x0:2785x1278/640x360/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73160124/Spaceman_n_00_19_04_23_R.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Image: Netflix</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sandler talks about playing his most serious role for Netflix, suppressing his urge to joke, and the dreaded CG stand-in</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap p-large-text" id="nKk0cG">After Paul Thomas Anderson’s <em>Punch-Drunk Love</em>, after Noah Baumbach’s <em>The Meyerowitz Stories (New And Selected)</em>, after Jason Reitman’s <em>Men, Women & Children </em>and <a href="https://www.polygon.com/reviews/2019/12/13/21020507/uncut-gems-review-adam-sandler-josh-benny-safdie-idina-menzel-kevin-garnett">the Safdie brothers’ <em>Uncut Gems</em></a>, film fans must be used to the idea of Adam Sandler as a comedian willing to step into dramatic roles. But they still haven’t seen him give a performance like the one he delivers in Netflix’s new science fiction movie <em>Spaceman. </em>His character, Czech astronaut Jakub Procházka, is painfully introverted, emotionally repressed, and above all, <em>quiet</em>. Sandler’s dramatic roles have mostly been about energy — sometimes restless, barely contained, often aggressive energy. Jakub is so muted and compressed, he seems like a trauma victim.</p>
<p id="Au3loz">Also, he spends more than half the movie talking to a giant alien spider voiced by Paul Dano.</p>
<p id="pprCO0">“I felt a little self-conscious,” Sandler told Polygon via Zoom, in an interview he shared with Dano. “In the beginning, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to convey! And I then I just sat and tried to feel whatever I was feeling, and just live it as much as possible […] just having as quiet a performance as I could.”</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"><div id="hRL2MX"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rNZ0xKaCdus?rel=0" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share;"></iframe></div></div></div>
<p id="ydDgXc">Sandler says the role felt like a stretch for him specifically because of that muted energy. “My instinct’s not very quiet. In real life, I’m pretty jumpy — I get going quick. Things get me heated quite quick. So [director Johan Renck] was definitely trying to control me on this one, and bring something different to the performance.”</p>
<p id="um9Gpk">The film, adapted from the 2017 novel <em>Spaceman of Bohemia</em> written by Czech author Jaroslav Kalfař, is a solemn drama in the mold of Andrei Tarkovsky’s <em>Solaris</em>, or to some degree, Christopher Nolan’s <em>Interstellar</em>. The story revolves around Jakub’s disintegrating frame of mind after eight months alone in space as he investigates a glowing cosmic phenomenon that’s become visible from Earth. Meanwhile, his wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan), heavily pregnant and going through her own breakdown back home, decides to leave Jakub, and his handlers (Isabella Rossellini among them) work to keep him from finding out. And then the giant spider appears, and Jakub worries that he’s losing his mind. </p>
<p id="XHSEKp">Amid all this emotional drama, Sandler spent the movie dangling from a wire rig to simulate zero gravity and having intimate emotional conversations with a tennis ball on a stick — the <a href="https://beforesandafters.com/2023/03/04/meet-the-true-unsung-hero-of-visual-effects-the-tennis-ball/#:~:text=Tennis%20balls%20regularly%20serve%20as,around%20interior%20and%20exterior%20sets.">standard-issue movie-set stand-in for a CG character</a> that will be added later. Dano recorded his lines separately, in a studio environment. They were added to the movie later, along with his alien character, eventually dubbed Hanuš.</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Hanuš the almost-human-sized alien spider clings to an inside wall on Jakub’s spaceship in Netflix’s Spaceman" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/l2RIR42zgoSTMtwvgc4wLbiXo_k=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25300147/Spyder.jpg">
<cite>Image: Netflix</cite>
</figure>
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<p id="Jo9UO0">It wasn’t Sandler’s first role where he had to treat a stand-in object as a living character. “In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aft-IW9fO5c&ab_channel=SonyPicturesEntertainment"><em>Jack & Jill</em></a><em> </em>[where Sandler played both title roles, thanks to digital compositing], my twin sister was a tennis ball,” he said. “I’ve had moments. But not a full movie, and not a movie where I was on wires, and not a movie where I had to cry. I never cried in front of a tennis ball before. I mean, one time at the Jewish Community Center when we lost the match. But that’s when I was 7. A long time ago.”</p>
<p id="YVAvRi">Even when delivered with self-effacing, solemn gravity, that reflexive joke still feels like the kind of Borscht Belt comedy Sandler so often brings even to his serious roles. In Sandler movies like <em>Uncut Gems </em>or Judd Apatow’s <em>Funny People</em>, humor and drama mix and complicate each other. But <em>Spaceman</em> was an exception to that rule, according to Sandler.</p>
<p id="MxDed7">“Johan was pretty adamant up top about not having any comedic instincts during this movie,” he says. “I just said, <em>Let me just be this guy, to take what I read in the script and go from there.</em> And Johan was pushing me toward that. I didn’t ever call him up and say, <em>You know, I definitely thought of a joke that might work here.</em> I just kind of said <em>Let’s let me feel what Johan wants me to feel.”</em></p>
<p id="aEKLdy">While he and Dano rarely interacted during production, though, Dano says Renck brought them together beforehand to get a sense for how their characters would interact, to develop the tone he wanted for the movie. </p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Lenka (Carey Mulligan, in a silver tiara, flowing red wig, and green ballgown) stands close to Jakub (Adam Sandler), dressed as an astronaut in a yellow flight suit, as everything around them blurs in a scene from Netflix’s Spaceman" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SYb6XS1QNsTfljioZVO6sboIBqg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25300149/SpacemanRomanceBlur.jpg">
<cite>Image: Larry Horricks/Netflix</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="RAsYY4">“We did some Zoom rehearsals, which was actually a really good way to break the ice and just slowly warm into it,” Dano told Polygon. “We would just read through the script. It is its own thing, this movie, so you kind of have to figure out what you’re walking toward together, so that when you’re imagining it, you’re making the same movie. I came by the set a few times. But Adam — I don’t think it can be undersold that he was hung up by wires, talking to a tennis ball or a stand-in. It takes a really big commitment of the imagination to let yourself go where he went.”</p>
<p id="bD1uJi">Sandler, for his part, says Dano’s interpretation of Hanuš the alien was something he hung onto throughout production, even when they were working separately. “Paul, as a person, the way he was playing it, just his voice had an impact on me,” he says. “And whoever was reading the lines with me when Paul wasn’t there was trying to exude that calmness, and that spiritual wisdom.”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="sQFsyP">Dano says both of them relied on Renck to “guide the different pieces,” in terms of making sure their separate performances felt consistent and connected. “There are a lot of trust falls that happen when you’re making a movie,” he says. “Or doing a play. Or doing anything like this, really. So you have to trust the fall.” </p>
<p id="uBcz83"><small><em>Spaceman</em></small><small> opens in limited theatrical release on Feb. 23. It will stream on Netflix starting March 1. Polygon will have more about the movie closer to the Netflix release, including an interview with Johan Renck, explaining why he wants Sandler to play him in the inevitable biopic.</small></p>
https://www.polygon.com/24080545/adam-sandler-spaceman-interview-talking-to-a-tennis-ball-netflixTasha Robinson2024-02-22T10:00:00-05:002024-02-22T10:00:00-05:00A new Tomb Raider RPG is in development, and fans can test it soon
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<img alt="A cartoony Lara Croft looms over a diverse group of explorers in cover art for Tomb Raider: Shadows of Truth" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XakzdKxv7hhHogF3dBoE9aX02_8=/0x0:3000x1688/640x360/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73156567/tomb_raider_ttrpg_cover_art.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Image: <a class="ql-link" href="https://defenestratin.carrd.co/" target="_blank">Adrien(ne) Valdes</a>/Evil Hat Productions</figcaption>
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<p>Author Rae Nedjadi and developer Fred Hicks on Evil Hat’s biggest book project of all time</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap p-large-text" id="5qsy1F">The <a href="https://www.polygon.com/24073332/tomb-raider-lara-croft-unified-design-artwork">Tomb Raider</a> franchise, as reimagined by developers at <a href="https://www.polygon.com/24072218/tomb-raider-1-3-remastered-collection-review">Crystal Dynamics</a>, will be brought to life as a new tabletop role-playing game called <a href="https://evilhat.com/tomb-raider-shadows-of-truth/"><em>Tomb Raider: Shadows of Truth</em></a>. But don’t expect anything as simple as a 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons clone. While combat and exploration are more or less settled science in the world of TTRPGs, Lara Croft’s latest effort hopes to uncover the far more precious treasures of open-ended narrative design and character development.</p>
<p id="bUZK2J">The game, which has already been in production for over a year at <a href="https://www.polygon.com/reviews/22446171/blades-in-the-dark-rpg-review-evil-hat"><em>Blades in the Dark</em></a><em> </em>publisher Evil Hat Productions, will blend two groundbreaking RPG systems: <a href="https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/22787981/powered-by-the-apocalypse-tabletop-rpg-explainer/">Powered by the Apocalypse</a> and <a href="https://bladesinthedark.com/forged-dark">Forged in the Dark</a>. The goal is to create a modern and inviting expression of the Tomb Raider universe. Polygon recently spoke to the game’s team, including Evil Hat founder Fred Hicks, Tomb Raider franchise narrative director at Crystal Dynamics John Stafford, and the game’s lead writer, the author<em> </em>of the Hellboy-inspired<em> </em><a href="https://www.polygon.com/23759900/apocalypse-keys-rpg-preview-impressions-release-date-price"><em>Apocalypse Keys</em></a>, Rae Nedjadi.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Full cover art for Tomb Raider: Shadows of Truth includes a subtitle: “Roleplaying adventures in the world of Lara Croft.”" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/N94JUONRL7vtLBHe5-hCTIY-HII=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25296205/Tomb_Raider_Cover.jpg">
<cite>Image: Evil Hat Productions</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="a6itp1">“We have this really curious thing at Evil Hat where generally anything licensed that we’ve done [...] the licensors have sought us out,” Hicks told Polygon. “This was true with <a href="https://evilhat.com/product/dresden-files-rpg-your-story/"><em>The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game</em></a> that was the inception of the company in the first place. Crystal Dynamics emailed us one day, and [...] when an opportunity like that comes knocking you take it seriously.”</p>
<p id="KHgAv2">“Meeting with them, I got a sense that they understood the franchise well, they understood how we approach storytelling, character-based storytelling,” said Stafford. “We love characters to have beginning, middles, and ends, and choices they make, and they’re mirroring that in the design. That was appealing to us, that it really marries well with how we like to tell stories.”</p>
<p id="dAnMWf">Nedjadi, a self-described Tomb Raider fanboy, clearly relished the opportunity to work on the project, a process that kicked off with an epic replay of the original video games.</p>
<p id="hSz9kU">“Lara has been several different people across the franchise,” Nedjadi told Polygon. “[But] <em>Tomb Raider </em>(2013), that was the first time I felt like, in an action-adventure game, [that] they were trying to say [something about] what would drive a person to survive and use violence in order to keep moving forward. What does that look like? It felt like they were getting better at it each and every game in that series.”</p>
<p id="mFb4x0">To mirror the nuance of Crystal Dynamics’ evolution of the character and her world, Nedjadi and their writing team — which includes Evil Hat’s Hicks and Sean Nittner, sensitivity consultant Pan Punzalan, as well as author and game designer April Kit Walsh (<a href="https://www.polygon.com/23296828/ennie-award-best-game-product-thirsty-sword-lesbians-queer-creators-gencon-2022"><em>Thirsty Sword Lesbians</em></a>) — built the core of the game around a discrete set of player actions, called moves. At the center of each move isn’t a number or a bonus to hit, but a question that — once answered — will add to a player’s growing dice pool. Those at the table will have to grapple with the answers to those questions, no matter how the dice happen to fall.</p>
<p id="Tfcz1F">“The particular design choice that Rae and April made early on was that instead of having stats, [...] every move has its own question that you ask [as you build up your dice pool],” Nittner explained. “If you’re trying to explore an area, you need to have the time to do it. But then there’s also a personal move that every character asks that [helps bring] your characters’ issues, complications, and strengths into this particular motion. You want to say yes to these things, because the more you say yes the more dice you get. So it’s that reminder to bring that element of your character in.”</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="The Changed’s moves include core moves called “awakened,” “ruined,” and “enlightened.”" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/H6IVhaCh3BzcYNzofZ9znoiWbb8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25297268/Changed_Spread.jpg">
<cite>Image: Evil Hat Productions</cite>
<figcaption>An early mockup of a playbook for The Changed, one of several templates players will use to create their own custom characters in <em>Tomb Raider: Shadows of Truth</em>.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="5Ytltz">The game is still an early draft, but the more than 200-page manuscript shared with Polygon has key elements already in place. Take the early version of the game’s Legacy class, also referred to as a playbook. A Legacy character is both “burdened and privileged by those who came before [and] a scion of great power and a history of coveting the Truth.” Like Lara, players who choose the Legacy playbook will find themselves asking questions like <em>Are you living up to your legacy?</em>, <em>Are you healing your legacy?</em>, and <em>Are you defying your legacy?</em> It’s the answers to those questions, expressed through a character’s imagined motivations and a roll of the dice, that will bring an outcome to a given situation — and add richness to the narrative being created at the table.</p>
<p id="jhDORh">“It’s that reminder to bring that element of your character in [with every action],” Nittner said. “The Reclaimer may be asking, <em>Am I reinforcing the beliefs of my people?</em> Or, if they’re playing the Rebel archetype, they could be asking, <em>Am I going against the beliefs of my people?</em> They have to constantly be thinking about how their actions correlate with the values of their [character].”</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="The Companion is described as “a shield that protect other and the safety net that catches them when they fall.” " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/oLE6zhqceMKVDa9JLLJSzZYaIEw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25297280/Companion.jpg">
<cite>Image: Evil Hat Productions</cite>
<figcaption>A mockup from an early draft of <em>Tomb Raider: Shadows of Truth</em>
</figcaption>
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<p id="JApgWI">“It’s not just inside your character, though,” added Hicks. “One of the really great things about the questions approach that Rae and the design team hit on is that you’re both doing character reflection, introspection, and externalizing it by saying how you’re answering — yes or no — to the question. There’s also a bit of world-building that’s happening collaboratively every time somebody picks up the dice because you might assert something that’s a new detail on the scene that wasn’t there before, but which flows with the direction of the answers given. And I think that keeps kind of everyone strongly engaged at the table, and it also makes sure everyone is seeing inside of the characters and building connections to the world simultaneously.”</p>
<p id="1iEeEC">While things like hit points and healing will have their place, <em>Shadows of Truth</em> states that the true downfall of a character can only come when they push themselves so far as to stumble into their Shadow Self. It’s a place that can only be reached in the most dire circumstances, and it represents a character “giving in to the darkest thoughts and tendencies that haunt” them.</p>
<p id="Tw7SBX">“The only way you can get out of it is if somebody helps you come to your senses,” Hicks said. “That’s when Jonah [Maiava] comes up to Lara and is like, <em>Sit down. We need to talk about where you’re going. It’s not the right way</em>.”</p>
<p id="qIEn6A">Repeatedly falling into the Shadow Self, whatever the reason, can also be a way to cycle characters out of a given campaign.</p>
<p id="wKbXto">“The Shadow Self method that Rae and team came up with [...] not just like one story moment — it’s an entire story arc,” said Hicks. “You rewound a bit. You didn’t fall in the spikes. You pulled it out at the last second. But it’s rattled you enough that your perspective on yourself has changed over time, and it’s only your friends who are going to be able to pull you back from that brink.”</p>
<p id="bIHt9I">“I want alternatives to death to be more interesting than death,” Hicks added.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="gULMln"><q>“I want alternatives to death to be more interesting than death”</q></aside></div>
<p id="pJ7Cdy"><em>Tomb Raider: Shadows of Truth</em> will be brought to life through a crowdfunding campaign planned for sometime in 2025. Evil Hat says the core rulebook will be bigger than anything the company has yet produced — both in page count and in the size of the volume itself, which will be much larger than the company’s now standard 6-by-9 format. But that final push can’t be accomplished without an initial playtest, which includes several adventures that Nedjadi and their team are excited to share. The first deals with the legend of the Bukunawa, a mythical serpent-like horned dragon known in the Philippines.</p>
<p id="uLtScs">“I’ve been really surprised with how well it’s been working and how enjoyable and super fun it is,” Nedjadi, who is Filipino, said. “My goal in [presenting] a post-colonial, anti-colonial design is to show other ways to have fun. Showing different perspectives. It is not my intention to be punishing, or to be judgmental. It’s really just to show a different perspective coming from a place of respect and reverence for these people, their stories, and their living history.”</p>
<p id="WYNClq">“Working with Crystal Dynamics has been really fascinating,” Nedjadi added, “because they’re really excited about us bringing in new lore. [...] Even though we’re bringing in new places, and new artifacts, and new things, I’m trying as much as possible to have it be in the spirit of Tomb Raider.”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="TB65aq">More information on <em>Tomb Raider: Shadows of Truth</em>, including details on how to participate in the upcoming playtest, will be available on <a href="https://www.tombraider.com/news/books/announcing-tomb-raider-shadows-of-truth-the-official-tabletop-roleplaying">the Tomb Raider website</a>. </p>
https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/24075225/tomb-raider-ttrpg-playtest-announcement-lara-croft-crystal-dynamics-rae-nedjadiCharlie Hall