That is what happened to me, suddenly as I was rewatching ‘the last Witchhunter’ something woke up. It started after I played Oblivion on the Xbox360 for the first time. An idea awoke and I placed part of this as an idea on a gaming website. The idea however never completely died and it remained within me too. You see to take the Olympians into account, there is no way that the worlds of Hecate were innocent and docile and Hecate knew that. Balance is real, it cannot be maintained in the settings we see. Balance of light is still imbalance. In one of the books books of Star Trek there was a expression “Bless the world of shadows, because when the last sunsets fades, they too will die” and that stuck with me over the decades. So what about arch mage Traven? That was the setting I had in mind at that point and the setting war re-awakened in the last Witchhunter. What if the world of Hecate is reimagined but in a more balanced way? What happens when we accept the light and the dark? As such the worlds of Meridia and Namira? In the gaming world they are on opposite sides, but what is the thought that they aren’t truly opposite, what if they are merely apart by a third. Consider a segmented pie chart, one segment light and one dark. But the Elder Scrolls doesn’t hold that as ‘real’ and shows the light as two thirds, whilst the dark side is a mere third and Namira is on the edge between the two worlds and shown as dark. But the largest dark side is ignored. So what about that so called balance? What happens if Hecate, the ancient Greek goddess associated with magic, witchcraft, crossroads, night, and the underworld becomes real in Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls? What happens when that balance is restored? Not to celebrate ‘evil’ but to celebrate the ‘reality’ of things. Without light and dark the shadows do not exist, merely what we personally conceive as light and dark. So what will we see when the larger setting is revealed? What do we do when the world of Hecate is given life renewed? Will we create a larger setting of Vampires, Werewolves and darkness? What will be the real dark places? Perhaps we get a funny side of life and the true world of politicians and false prophets will be revealed to us. It is not merely the setting of what is real, but where the true darkness is real is equally important. As such, as the designer of gaming IP I say good night to one of my my godmothers (and family member) Hecate.
If gaming is delusion and we love our games, let us say good day to the reality that beckons us and in there we might see what we cannot see in real life. It is merely a point of view to behold.
Have a great day and did you enjoy your Shawarma in Riyadh today?
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 