66: The Lexicon of Latin

[The Escapist Staff]

"Myth resonates in a lot of successful works by people who have internalized it. Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge is an awesome example. Christian is drawn into the Bohemian world by Toulouse-Lautrec and a narcoleptic Argentinean. Now, this is very entertaining and engaging on the surface level, but it also really works well on the symbolic, mythical level: The dwarf is small physically because his power is not of the physical world, and the narcoleptic spends more time in the subconscious world of dreams than he does in this one." Shannon Drake talks gods, heroes and mythology with Perpetual's Stieg Hedlund.

The Lexicon of Latin

 

[Bongo Bill]

This reminds me in many ways of my own attempt to make a mythologically-themed game.... And in fact, I should wonder if one of us didn't accidentally plagiarize the other somewhere along the way, except that he's an established professional with credentials a millarium long, and I've only just gotten my feet wet. I'll just hope nobody notices.

Mythology in games, eh? I'm quite surprised at how little it's shown up. Oh, sure, there's plenty of pseudo-mythology, with gods' names borrowed from whatever civilization you want your RPG to feel like, or just because the name sounded cool.... There's things like God of War, which I'm not entirely sure is fully worthy of claiming to be based in Greek mythology.... But it's true, there haven't been very many explicity mythological games. And that's a shame, since mythology is, and probably will always be, a ripe field for storytelling with ample rooms to slip games into.