Before you can contemplate how you arrived here, however, the familiar voice runs across the screen: "Hold on. The door won't open just yet. First, tell me more about yourself."
Uncertain, you walk up to the first person you see. A young girl with a yellow dress, perhaps hoping that she'll talk to you like a normal person. Approaching her, she then responds to your presence with a question: "What's most important to you?"
Among the given options are being number one, friendship, and my prized possessions.
Being the sentimental one you are, you pick "Friendship," to which she replies "Is friendship such a big deal?"
Looking around, you see the other two people and sense a pretty particular trend. And twice again, you answer their questions:
What do you want outta life?
- To see rare sights
- To broaden my horizons (he responds: "To broaden your horizons, huh?")
- To be strong
What are you so afraid of?
- Getting old
- Being different (he responds: "Being different? Is that really so scary?")
- Being indecisive
When you have spoken to each person, the voice returns, summarizing your choices, and finally saying: "Your adventure begins at midday. Keep a steady pace and you'll come through fine."
And once more... you are given a choice to agree with the voice, or second guess yourself. Ready to move on with the quest, you agree. "Sounds good."
"The day you will open the door is both far off and very near."
Analysis:
Even more than the other entry, this particular portion gives off an even more similar sense to The Romance of the Rose. At first sight, everything appears to be good and we appear to be in the "real world," finally. There are other characters, the sky is sunny, and nothing seems out of the ordinary. Oh, except for the voice of the reliable hermit that continues to come out from nowhere. Not to mention the fact that these other characters are asking you such odd, personal-like questions. The dreamlike quality is somehow still there, though more subtly than before. This scene also resembles that of Sir Orfeo, where he walks through the Fairy King's garden and/or realm, and yet all around are people who were supposed to be dead, but were not. The strange supernatural quality in both works (Kingdom Hearts and Sir Orfeo) goes completely unnoticed by the characters, and you are forced to accept it the way it is.
So far, we've seen ourselves and our character sit in this version of a liminal space, where our hero sits on a border of ambiguity, unsure of where all these questions and choices will lead. This differs the most from the rest of the texts that we have read - there are clearly choices the hero must make, but even those choices don't seem to quite have any direct result so far, or at least not one that is visible to the hero.
This very idea is what puts video games in a unique perspective - the choices we make may not influence the hero in any way that one can see directly. Such choices may and probably affect the mechanics of the game, none of which is truly visible to any average gamer unless having done prior research before. But in that sense, the questions and choices we face hold even more mystery and anticipation because of that - we are unsure how our choices will affect us in the future. Much like how knights/questers would often feel in facing "real-life" choices.
Expectations: Supernatural, Hermit
Terms: Liminal Space
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