The playground rumor and its association with the video game date back to the late 90s and early 2000s. These time periods were full of speculation about games that could not be meaningfully verified easily despite internet access becoming more widespread - your L is real, your Mews under the Truck, your obtainable Ashbringers. In spite of my fascination for this period of time, I wasn't really around for it, so I didn't get to engage much with it. By the time that I was playing video games and discussing them, the internet was much more centralized and games were being documented much more quickly. Verifying information in a game was as simple as looking it up in most cases.
This leads me into Graal Online. Graal Online is kind of a terrible game and I'm frankly not sure what attracted me to play it when I was 12. It's an MMO that's incredibly listless, spaces full of people but not quite doing anything. In this way, it is masterful as a strange, digital ecosystem. I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of it all is. It's just a large, strange, aimless world that reuses a lot of assets from A Link to the Past. But what sticks out to me the most about it is the simple fact that when I played it, I had no idea what would happen.
There is a safety net with any game that, if something I don't know the answer to occurs, I can simply look it up. It's a bad habit of mine and it's ruined the mystery and magic of so many experiences. With Graal Online, that safety net was never present when I played it. The documentation surrounding this game is just awful - but that's what makes it so special. Without knowing what would happen, just seeing what was in the world and trying to figure out what would do what - I felt the wonder that so many people describe when they play La-Mulana. Or Breath of the Wild. Simply because I couldn't look up the solution when I got frustrated, or even look up if what I was doing would do anything for me. Graal Online gives equal purpose to all things in it. It could ALL be important. There is no way of knowing.
I felt like a kid spreading playground rumors when I told my little sister about the clockwork bird we read about. Or the hammer that was supposed to be in the game, but we never found. Or the magic map between two barrels we had no means of accessing. It was a phenomena that I'd love to feel again.
This leads me into Graal Online. Graal Online is kind of a terrible game and I'm frankly not sure what attracted me to play it when I was 12. It's an MMO that's incredibly listless, spaces full of people but not quite doing anything. In this way, it is masterful as a strange, digital ecosystem. I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of it all is. It's just a large, strange, aimless world that reuses a lot of assets from A Link to the Past. But what sticks out to me the most about it is the simple fact that when I played it, I had no idea what would happen.
There is a safety net with any game that, if something I don't know the answer to occurs, I can simply look it up. It's a bad habit of mine and it's ruined the mystery and magic of so many experiences. With Graal Online, that safety net was never present when I played it. The documentation surrounding this game is just awful - but that's what makes it so special. Without knowing what would happen, just seeing what was in the world and trying to figure out what would do what - I felt the wonder that so many people describe when they play La-Mulana. Or Breath of the Wild. Simply because I couldn't look up the solution when I got frustrated, or even look up if what I was doing would do anything for me. Graal Online gives equal purpose to all things in it. It could ALL be important. There is no way of knowing.
I felt like a kid spreading playground rumors when I told my little sister about the clockwork bird we read about. Or the hammer that was supposed to be in the game, but we never found. Or the magic map between two barrels we had no means of accessing. It was a phenomena that I'd love to feel again.
MeowPewterMeow
1 year ago