{"id":77,"date":"2008-02-06T01:28:01","date_gmt":"2008-02-06T01:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christinagonzalez.wordpress.com\/2008\/02\/06\/dreaming-in-video-games\/"},"modified":"2008-02-06T01:28:01","modified_gmt":"2008-02-06T01:28:01","slug":"dreaming-in-video-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/2008\/02\/06\/dreaming-in-video-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Dreaming in Video Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

I woke up yesterday from a dream in which I was playing the Shalebridge Cradle level from Thief: Deadly Shadows<\/em>. Only I was in Garrett's quiet shoes moving about the Inner Cradle, past the Puppets, hoping they wouldn't get me on my mission.<\/p>\n

I think it's funny how a moment in a video game I played about four years ago can have such an impact as to come back that vividly in a distant dream. How everything from the Puppets' gait, to the humming electrical buzz that followed them were reproduced pretty authentically. <\/p>\n

If you've never played the game, Puppets are a name for the enemies in the Shalebridge Cradle, a former Medieval mental hospital-slash-orphanage. They represent the mental hospital's former patients, wearing elements of their torture at the hands of the doctors as representative of their unfortunate experiences there. They walk slowly, their heads shake unnaturally – and the lights flicker whenever they're around. Oh, and did I mention they're also followed by an electric buzz? They sport wire cages around their hands and their heads, which occasionally conduct the juice. They make a terrible shrieking noise if you get too close, followed by an attempt to pummel you. Creepily.<\/em><\/p>\n

That whole "Robbing the Cradle" sequence was amazing. One of the best examples of level design I've ever seen Kieron Gillen wrote a great article about it, available here<\/a>. I can't begin to summarize how brilliantly he covered it, but I was sort of pleased to find out I wasn't alone in having this experience:<\/p>\n

\n

"Well, when mapping a <\/span>section for this feature, I physically <\/span>screamed when one of the inmates pulled <\/span>himself from the ground unexpectedly and <\/span>lurched to attack.<\/span>" <\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I not only screamed (more than once, I think), but jumped so hard I went all the way back in my chair as to hit the wall behind me. Now that's good design. One of about three moments in all my years of gaming that a game has made me scream in fear, and easily the top one.<\/p>\n

I wouldn't call the dream a nightmare. It was fun, even if a tad scary. It's kind of like a virtual reality version of the game. This wasn't the first time I was living video games I've played in my dreams either. It's always quite memorable. VR isn't quite here yet, so I'll take this version of the experience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I woke up yesterday from a dream in which I was playing the Shalebridge Cradle level from Thief: Deadly Shadows. Only I was in Garrett's quiet shoes moving about the Inner Cradle, past the Puppets, hoping they wouldn't get me on my mission. I think it's funny how a moment in a video game I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[113,114,115,116,14],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dreams","tag-robbing-the-cradle","tag-shalebridge-cradle","tag-thief-deadly-shadows","tag-video-games"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2nVuU-1f","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}