History is every day.
The last time I played Assassin's Creed Valhalla (no colon in that title, apparently) was as historical as the Norse raids into England. But what separates me from the supposed setting of this game? It seems that, more than the natural erosion of memory and artifact that time alone would bring, there is a barrier being formed between me and that which came before. There is a mythological veil being placed over my eyes, not blocking my vision completely but blotting it out, replacing what is there with tall tales and improbable stories. This veil is more effective than any blindfold. The veil acknowledges the light that bleeds through. It frames it. It melds it into any shape it pleases. It picks pieces from museums and places them into strange hands. It bleeds together a thousand years of art and architecture into a uchronic fairy tale.
What could the world be?
History tells us: anything.
The veil disagrees.
To the veil, the world is. It's order is right. It's shape is righteous.
There is no wonder. There is no curiosity. There is no joy. There is only to be the dour politics of a reality game show. The Danelaw might as well have been a series of Big Brother alliances.
Are the events of England in the 800s so sacred as to demand their emotional preservation?
Perhaps not, but
history is every day.

What is modern warfare? Call of Duty understands, even if it's players -- the impressionable young Americans that will inevitably be it's core audience -- only come away knowing less than before. Warfare in the modern era is about information. The powers that be know that if they shower people with enough incorrect information through the lens of Marvel's Avengers then enough will either believe it or believe enough of it to not have any real idea what's going on in the world.

The style is slick and gritty. The night-vision levels have the aesthetic of military snuff films. It wants you to think you're looking behind the curtain of the terrible things you see in the news. When you're pulling the trigger on a mother and crying child in some forgotten basement in St. Petersburg to torture a terrorist, when you're doing a no-knock raid in London where Muslim women maniacally pull assault rifles on you, it draws to mind the "no hesitation" line of police training targets featuring pregnant women and children, the assertion that War Has Come Home, and that your neighbors, hiding behind the veil of innocence, are the real enemy.

The Middle Eastern country that hosts this year's Islamic shooting gallery is entirely fictional, and does it matter? Would Call of Duty appropriately enhancely interrogate a real history? The game, which is set in 2019, features flashbacks to "20 years ago". In this funhouse timeline we see Soviets invading Urzikstan (in the year 1999), which is described as being Northwest of Georgia, and Southwest of Russia, conveniently overlaying and replacing the very real Abkhazia. Thankfully for US military censors, the Russians end up committing the same crimes that the real life Americans would, and for bad reasons instead of our very good ones.

So much of the game is spent morally laundering the horrors of what our military and intelligence agencies do that it's kind of all there is to talk about. This game is one of many recent huge media properties that star the heroic CIA. They do fucked up things, but its a fucked up world, man. Someones gotta be the wolf to guide the sheep. That's the thesis of this entry. Someones gotta do fucked up crimes, there's no debating it, so it's either us or them. The masses have no idea how bad things really are, it's only our elite operators -- who are really good guys, completely morally incorruptible, trust us -- who get to know what's going on. The things you hear about in the news? Listen kid, that aint the half of it. You really think our guys are out there committing terror attacks, torturing people, kidnapping women and children, sponsoring and funding militant right wing theocratic terrorists, destroying infrastructure, committing political assassinations, killing millions through starvation and famine, and then working with media giants to make sure that, whether you're gaming, watching TV, or scrolling Netflix, everything you see is trying, desperately, to make sure that when you think of the Central Intelligence Agency your first thought is of Captain America?

Now that's Modern Warfare.

I had a long-winded and dense few paragraphs written to give context to understand all the specific intricacies and plot developments but honestly, that's very boring and mostly irrelevant. What is relevant is that the world is doomed. Furthermore, it has been doomed by people in close cultural - and physical - proximity. Maybe even by people we love. A previous generation has well and truly failed the future. Are we able to stop? What disgusting lengths will we go to to avoid having to sit down for a second and consider the actual consequences of our continuing? What moral ground do we have to stand on when someone takes issue with this?
I have seen a great deal of writing calling this "suffering porn". The violence is indeed gross and unceremonious, and after a while you become desensitized to the guttural screams and desperate flailing and gain a comfortability with what is happening. That does not make it any less wrong. At the end when you are beating to a bloody stump a character you have now spent more time with and likely empathized with more than Ellie, for reasons not even remotely justifiable, you finally snap out of this comfort. Every punch is a new abhorrent crime, but every one has the potential to be the last. We do not have to be bound to the sins of our fathers. The functioning of this violent machine we find ourselves in requires active participation. Whoever constructed it is long dead, but we're still pushing the buttons.

The back half of the game is the true jewel. Abby, the surprise main character, shows the possibility for optimism to triumph in a world without hope. Given every opportunity to succumb to cynicism and cruelty, she instead finds purpose in helping a young trans boy, Lev, flee the death cult he was born into towards safety. Not a violent quest to kill some dangerous faraway leader, not some homesteading fantasy, but accompanying a refugee.

To stop beating around the bush; we are on a path of destruction. We've torn apart the Middle East out of rabid vengeance for an act that, upon two decades examination, was more our own fault than anyone else. In our conquest we've tapped the Earth for fuel that will burn us all off of it. We want the people we love to be able to engage in the same reckless consumption as us, cost to the world be damned. We are enthralled in a social machine manufacturing our own death. We can keep it functioning until everything we recognize is gone, fully desensitized to the suffering our gluttony has, is, and will cause to people - real people, people who love, cry, laugh and dream - or we can become conscious of the material function we all play in each others lives.

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To speak of the game itself, as I know capital G gamers are quite fearful of metaphor and subtext, it is a wonderful experience. The dirt and grime are paired with moments of truly transcendent beauty. The astronaut scene, the quiet moments where you can pluck away at a lonely guitar, practically any scene with Abby and Owen. The brief moments of extreme violence are appropriately tense and frightening. Some highlights are the sewers (don't let the fact that it's a sewer level in a video game dissuade you), the suburbs packed with hunting dogs, and the forest at night. It's a proper stealth game this time, and the tight windows for quiet progression combined with your relative fragility makes every encounter a mad scramble.

When I heard there was going to be a sequel my expectations were low. I loved the first one and was wary that a sequel wouldn't have much new to say. Thankfully, I was very wrong. It relies on having played the first one for the fullest effect, for sure, yet it is telling a vastly different story, only ever retreading old ground to dig it up and plant something new.

I used to be a lore guy.
I used to get so caught up in the specifics of details interlocking and having causal relationships to each other. Skyrim has none of that. Instead it has vibes. It's all vibes. When I was younger I tried to dig too deep and was resentful of what wasn't there. I'd kit it out with a billion mods and try to make it something it wasn't. Some games that could loosely be thrown in the same genre - New Vegas, Disco Elysium, Baldur's Gate, are novels with added dimension. Their art is text; the game around them is just their interface. In this realm, Skyrim cannot compare. But why would it? It's not literature, it's a virtual diorama. It's a gorgeous landscape accompanied by the beautiful soundtrack of Soule that, somehow, no matter the angle, is always serene and mystical.
I convinced myself I despised it, yet every few years I boot it up and go for a lovely little stroll around a familiar old countryside. There's a reason this has become such a totemic piece of culture.