[Blue Chairs] spoiler-heavy review of part of it
Zimri
Comp since 2000, but I saw this review of "Blue Chairs":
>A hybrid of So Far and Photopia, Blue Chairs features both the empty
>surrealism of the first and the emotional manipulativeness of the second.
>What it doesn't feature are So Far's clever puzzles and Photopia's coherent
>storytelling. Oh, and Britney-dissing is *so* fresh and original.
<6tImd.122089$dP1.4...@newsc.telia.net>
I disagree with this assessment. I don't think Blue Chairs was a waste of
time. I do however think it was flawed.
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"Blue Chairs" assumes a canon of work, as so much IF does and maybe should;
and yeah, much of it was Plotkin / Cadre work. Not just "So Far" and
"Photopia" either: The desert scene took on aspects of "Shade" and
"Shrapnel"; and the game's beginning and structure reminded me here and
there of "I-0" and, again, "Shade". It's not just Plotkin / Cadre, though;
there are also, I think, some references to "The Trip" and "Rameses" from
Comp2k. (But some may argue that those two were themselves derivative.) I
suspect the author also liked "Little Blue Men". And there were whiffs of
"Hitchhiker's Guide" and of "Enchanter"'s prologue, from the Infocom era.
I happen to like surrealism and (earned) emotional manipulation in my IF.
And Chris Klimas wrote "Blue Chairs"'s text so well that he could, I think,
oust Plotkin and Cadre from the top two one day. But probably not on their
own terms and certainly not at the same time. Plotkin's and Cadre's styles
are too different from one another and from Klimas's own.
This game came close to making me care for the characters in it, but...
I hope Mr Klimas forgives me for what follows:
1. Dante and Beatrice - look, that was too obvious. Beatrice would have
sufficed to get the point across; Dante is overkill.
2. The attic didn't make it clear enough that it was too dark to do any
searching in, nor that I needed anything extra to do the searching. At least
this puzzle was optional.
3. Not sure about using narcotics to start on the Vision Quest (tm). There
are Vision Quest novels that manage just fine without getting the narrator
whacked out of his gourd, e.g. Phantom Tollbooth and, perhaps, Narnia.
4. I got through the dance routine by dumb luck (stopping for awhile and
pushing "L" or "Z" here and there). I kept restarting just to see if I'd
done something by accident. Apparently I was supposed to STOP DANCING. There
should have been text letting me know that I was calming down.
5. The signs in the desert weren't clear. I got the first and third signs in
the wrong order because Mr Book Guy looked to be dreaming too.
6. I quit at the minimart scene. It was too large, empty, and alienating.
Typing directional signs over and over, especially when the room
descriptions are so bland, isn't all that fun. Take a cue from "Trinity" -
its big, sprawling wilderness was fun to go exploring in. Your verbal skills
are good enough to do this. (Or maybe it should just be cut short.)
7. I've been through the walkthrough; I notice that one puzzle revolves
around reading the back of a piece of paper. Is that fair?
I'd call it a pretty good first attempt, but a cursory ruffle through the
Google archives tells me that he's written "Mercy" before this. I dunno,
maybe a good first-attempt-after-a-six-year-hiatus?
Klimas is good - and I mean *really* good - at romance and tragedy; he's not
so good at surrealism or at open-ended IF. Here he tried to match Plotkin at
surrealism and Cadre at open-ended storytelling. He didn't succeed at it.
This game would have been a five-Kleenex tearduct emergency if he'd written
a similar love story with more conventional scenes.
I do hope he doesn't wait until 2010 before giving us another game. (Or
story.)
--
zimriel sbc dot
at global net
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http://pages.sbcglobal.net/zimriel/
*new improved shorter .sig*
Michael Chapman Martin
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> 7. I've been through the walkthrough; I notice that one puzzle revolves
> around reading the back of a piece of paper. Is that fair?
If you quit at the minimart, you didn't get to this. But it's not a puzzle.
However, it ties in, very neatly, to the "@&^# all y'all, I'm going home"
ending you get by refusing the drug.
It's an Easter Egg, really. And a very cool one.
Combined with the paragraph at the beginning, it might even count as an
answer to Paul O'Brian's problem with the ending.
--Michael
lemonalle
>for awhile and pushing "L" or "Z" here and there). I kept
>restarting just to see if I'd done something by accident.
>Apparently I was supposed to STOP DANCING.
While you are dancing, you are given directional clues as to the position
of the pole, which is your goal. Most of them are East, I think.
I am wondering in what ways you thought the author failed in terms of
surrealism. I find the effort to be highly successful and many others
have pointed out that the effect is true to the experience (of a drug
trip), so much so that they actually felt that they were in that state
themselves.
Zimri
news:eb850dba3f28e963...@localhost.talkaboutgaming.com...
> >4. I got through the dance routine by dumb luck (stopping
>>for awhile and pushing "L" or "Z" here and there). I kept
>>restarting just to see if I'd done something by accident.
>>Apparently I was supposed to STOP DANCING.
>
> While you are dancing, you are given directional clues as to the position
> of the pole, which is your goal. Most of them are East, I think.
They were more or less random, and yeah I got *directional* cues, but that
wasn't my point. My point was that there weren't any *personal* cues that
let me know that I was on the right track by slowing down (like in
"Bureaucracy": "your blood pressure just went up / down").
> I am wondering in what ways you thought the author failed in terms of
> surrealism. I find the effort to be highly successful and many others
> have pointed out that the effect is true to the experience (of a drug
> trip), so much so that they actually felt that they were in that state
> themselves.
I expect it *was* true to the experience, ... but it also has to be
entertaining. Parts of drug tripping can be damn boring when one has run out
of stuff to do. (c.f. Doogie Howser in "Harold and Kumar" when they leave
him alone too long.) "Trinity" and "So Far" managed to keep my interest. The
scene behind the mini-mart in "Blue Chairs" had me shifting in my seat,
wanting pizza, wanting lollipopschewinggumpacifiers, feeling
thirstythirstythirsty. WhatamIsupposedtodo!?!!?
... See my point?
Joao Mendes
"Zimri" <zim...@SBCspammlesforglobal.net> wrote in message
news:bsTmd.35043$Al3....@newssvr30.news.prodigy.com...
>
> 1. Dante and Beatrice
Other reviewers have commented on this, but I didn't get the reference.
Could someone expand on it?
Cheers,
J.
Sidney Merk
news:41a0c2ee$0$6452$a729...@news.telepac.pt...
> Other reviewers have commented on this, but I didn't get the reference.
> Could someone expand on it?
I didn't get it either, but it's from the Divine Comedy.
---- Mike.
Eric Eve
news:41a0c2ee$0$6452$a729...@news.telepac.pt...
The allusion is to Dante Alighieri. In the third book of the Divine
Comedy, the Paradiso, Beatrice acts as Dante's guide; in real life
she was a woman Dante fancied from afar (but who died, relatively
young, making her available for Dante's allegory of the afterlife).
Dante apparently first met Beatrice when he was nine and she was
eight and seems to have been smitten with her from that moment on;
even after her death in 1290 she remained his ideal love-object.
There is little, however, to suggest that his feelings towards her
were ever reciprocated (she married another man - a banker - in
1287).
According to Dorothy Sayers' introduction to her translation of the
Inferno, "Beatrice remains in the story what she was in real life:
the Florentine girl whom Dante loved from the first moment that he
saw her, and in whom he seemed (as is sometimes the case with
lovers) to see Heaven's glory walking the earth bodily... Beatrice
thus represents for evey man that person - or, more generally, that
experience of the Not-self - which, by arousing his adoring love,
has become for him the God-bearing image, the revelation of the
image of God."
Although I couldn't see the Dante Alighieri allusion actually taken
much further (except, perhaps, very vaguely in the two endings I
found), the allusion at the start was sufficient to make me feel
that Beatrice was someone *really* important to me (I mean, the PC),
and that, now I had the chance, I really *had* to find her.
-- Eric
hakim
> "Joao Mendes" <joao-...@netcabo.pt.invalid> wrote in message
> news:41a0c2ee$0$6452$a729...@news.telepac.pt...
> > Hullo, :)
> >
> > "Zimri" <zim...@SBCspammlesforglobal.net> wrote in message
> > news:bsTmd.35043$Al3....@newssvr30.news.prodigy.com...
> >>
> >> 1. Dante and Beatrice
> >
> > Other reviewers have commented on this, but I didn't get the
> > reference.
> > Could someone expand on it?
>
> The allusion is to Dante Alighieri. In the third book of the Divine
> Comedy, the Paradiso, Beatrice acts as Dante's guide; in real life
> she was a woman Dante fancied from afar (but who died, relatively
> young, making her available for Dante's allegory of the afterlife).
> Although I couldn't see the Dante Alighieri allusion actually taken
Look at the "Vita Nuova" (the New Life). This little book is all
about Beatrice, her death, and Dante's commitment to her memory.
(Actually, the main thing that I can remember from college is that
it had lots of references to the number 23).
But above and beyond that, Blue Chairs plays with the same theme
of loss, but I think that it rejects it by opening up the
possibility, in some of the endings, of moving on.
--
osfameron