I'm (Almost) Speechless · 3:51am Oct 7th, 2014
So, before I get into the heavy matters of this post, I'd like to get a brief announcement out of the way. First, sorry I have been offline the last few days. My charging cable decided I wasn't paying it enough and went on strike. Also, just to let you know, I'm going to be hella busy most of this week due to homecoming preparations with my fraternity. Now that that's out of the way...
So, those of you who have known The Pirate King long know that I have several hobbies, and two of the highest prioritized ones are history and video games. Well, one of the YouTube channels I subscribe to specializes in game analysis, Extra Credits. If you're a gamer, work in or want to work in game design, or just want to learn more about the industry, I'd highly suggest checking them out.
Anyways, they have recently started another series called Extra History, where they focus on analyzing important events in world history. As you can imagine, I am psyched like crazy for this series, especially since their first series of videos was on the Roman Punic Wars, one of my favorite points of ancient history, and their current series is on World War I, one of my favorite points of modern history. I'm just gonna leave the three episodes on World War I here in case you all are interested. Again, I highly recommend you watch them for entertainment value, even if you're not a history buff.
If you watched the videos, then you may have noticed there's a neat little somber piano tune that plays over the ending credits of each video. The haunting melody got me interested in what precisely the song itself was. Turns out it is a little ditty contemporary with the time of The Great War itself named In Flanders Fields. Here, just take a listen to it.
Cool song, right? But it goes deeper. I did some background and it turns out the song actually was written after a poem of the same name whose words were meant to accompany the melody. Here's the two in concert with each other. Be sure to listen closely to the lyrics this time.
That is some deep stuff, right? Well, it plays even closer to the feels than that. After hearing such a truly beautiful poem with a fitting musical accompaniment, I knew I had to research further. It turns out the song was written by a famous Canadian officer named John McCrae. McCrae was somewhat of a renaissance man, having been an adept physician, a prolific poet, and a Lieutenant General in service to her majesty during the war.
Here's the real kicker. The inspiration of the poem came from McCrae's experiences while in France. One of his close friends and a former student, Lt. Alexis Helmer, was killed in action. McCrae, present at the burial, wrote the poem in memoriam and dedication to the loss of his dear friend in the back of an ambulance on his ride back, May 3, 1915. The poem would become prophetic of his own death three years later in the war of Pneumonia and remains an adamant legacy of an already remarkable man.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are few written things that have ever moved me emotionally to the point of physically crying, but after hearing the full story of the poem and listening again, I couldn't help but shed tears. This is precisely what I needed to hear, on multiple levels. I needed to be reminded of why we write, and why I started so long ago. I needed to be reminded of why this life is precious and why all human life is priceless. It's because of moments like this. It's these brief glimpses of the greatest times of sorrow and the greatest times of hope that poetry and literature exist for. They remind us of the truly remarkable parts of humanity. sorrow, love, grief, joy, loneliness, brotherhood- these are the things that make life and the art it creates beautiful. This is what humanity is.
At any rate, I just wanted to share that with you all. Sorry if this went too deep or pretentious for your tastes.
History and video games are also a couple high ranking hobbies of mine and Kaiju are top top priority.
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You? Kaiju? I'd have never guessed.
2513470 You'd be surprised with the coincidences especially number six ( which I think is funny ).
2513470 Wow when you send a blog post you makes sure that whoever reads has plenty to be entertained... lol. I think history and video games are great. Video games about history even better.
2513467 Love the Godzilla pick man reminds me of when I was little growing. I was a huge monster brawl fan. Gamera and Godzilla where my heroes.
The 7 unluckiest people in the world in case you're interested
2513479 Oh wow thanks and I'm a huge kaiju fan and Gamera's 50th anniversary is coming up next year.
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Damn. I usually say history repeats itself, but that's just freaky.
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Thanks. I usually try to be thorough when writing things like this, especially since this was a more serious subject than just an update on stuff.
I also agree video games about history are awesome. One of the biggest draws I have for the Assassin's Creed franchise is how well researched and accurate the settings are, especially in keeping with my theme that history is always best taught as a dynamic narrative rather than just names and dates.
2513506 True that... I also like that it couples the fact the action seems more life like because of it. But that is simply my opinion.
2513506 I know right! and I think assassins creed is almost 100 percent historicallt accurate except with the war going on between the assassins and templars
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Actually, I'd say there are really only two times that the game shatters my immersion in it, and one of those is the action. At the point where I'm taking out entire battalions of British Regulars with none but my hidden blade and tomahawk, I feel like there's a jarring break in realism. Granted the only reason it is noticeable is because the rest of the games are so meticulously accurate and if the combat was realistic the game would be insanely difficult and rather dull, so I can let it off the hook for that.
As for the second one, read on.
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100% may be a bit of an overstatement. Above I said that the combat imbalance takes me out of it a bit, but the thing that kicks me out of the story every now and then further and with more longevity to resynchronize- pun totally intended- is how the later games have a tendency to shove important people, places, and events into the plot beyond the suspension of disbelief.
The first two games and debatably Brotherhood were really good about sticking to a streamlined plot where the historical stuff was significant but more of a backdrop to the story of Altair/Ezio. However, as the series went on, the games got more into shoehorning every important figure and happening of the time period into the main character's path as allies, enemies, or macguffins even if it didn't seem to have much relation or impact to the story. The good news is that at least the peak of them pulling that (ACIII) is behind us and Black Flag was much better about keeping the historical figures and content relevant to the plot and not vice versa.
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Check out my most recent blog post if you can guys
Yay, another fan of Extra History!