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Wait, What Is "The Magic Flute" About?, December 10, 2022Adapted from an IFCOMP22 Review
I’ve always had a soft spot for opera, but it's always been very tightly bounded spot. The music is just really vital - soaring and complex and dynamic. But man GOING to the opera is a LOT. There are minimalist productions to be sure but straight-up classical opera? Costumes and set design are hat on hat on hat on hat - pageantry for its own sake. The audience too, maybe the last place in the world you can see capes worn unironically. Maybe it is ur-cosplay? And then there’s been one or two productions that have decided either to sing in English or provide electronic scrolling subtitles. Hoo boy does that take the shine off in a hurry. When you don’t understand the words, the vocals are a featured instrument, weaving into and above the orchestra and engaging directly with what makes us human. When you understand it though? Swelling, compelling music in service of “What does the gypsy boy want? The gypsy girl the gypsy girl the gypsy gi…iiirl.” For cryin’ out loud opera, you were better when I didn’t know.
Obviously I mention this because Prism evoked imperfectly analogous feelings. The most prominent feature of this work is its language. Like opera it can be by turns deeply satisfying or so over the top as to be kitsch. I grabbed a bunch of quotes, examples of both, on my playthrough, too many to incorporate here. Let’s use an early one [annotated]:
"The thought strikes you in perfect time with the dry-storm lightning above. [I mean, no, that didn’t happen. Perfect time? Statistically, what are the odds?] It works into your chest like truth [ooh, that’s a nice phrase] as electricity strikes from rotating hexagonal clouds above into the humming cylindrical basin at your back [wait, what are you describing here? I understand those shapes but not in that context]. "
The overriding atmosphere here is poetically over-written, except when the poetry resonates just perfectly. The problem is, when it is perfect, it kind of draws attention to itself. When it’s not it ALSO draws attention to itself, and also the fact that it’s not perfect.
Now all this poetry is pressed into service, not by philosophers or y’know poets, but by hard-scrabble street dwellers. This is not a fatal choice, but certainly a challenging one. It clashes with the stark practicality of their day to day struggle in a way that is never truly resolved. You could forgive the poetic narration matching the protagonists’ voice, if you assume their inner voice is also the narrator. But everyone in the world talks like that, except the beings that talk MORE that way. There are beings whose alienness is conveyed in a very specific, kind of cool but nearly impenetrable patois. It is alternately admirable and confounding. And unfortunately showy, as the protagonist by turns seems to converse just fine (like dialogue with adults from Peanuts), then call them out as POEM TALKERS. Mr. Kettle, maybe don’t throw that particular stink at Mr. Pot.
There is some impressive world building in the first half of the game. I want to say in spite of itself, but really no, the over-descriptive poetry is every bit a core element of the city as the neighborhoods, buildings and infrastructure that are lovingly described throughout. As a setting it is nicely conceived: physically specific but also impressionistically singular through the language used to describe it. Like Scorcese’s New York but fantasy, if that doesn’t feel like too much of an overreach. Looking back, this is the most prominent achievement of the game, and its biggest Spark.
I have just described the first half of the narrative I experienced, which comprised more than 3/4 of the playtime. At the turn - probably not coincidentally when I chose to leave the city - suddenly what had been an almost meditative, expansive, exploratory, quasi-open-world experience contracted to a limited-choice rushed plot on rails and almost no setting. The pace and interactivity shifted gears with an audible thunk. Ok, that’s crazy, clearly I didn’t hear anything. I think the style is leaching into me. If the language made it a struggle to Engage the work in the first half, this shift really made it a lost cause. And yet, the story still found a last sentence that was so nicely resonant I couldn’t just dismiss it either.
It appears, based on the options I didn’t take, to have many narrative paths to explore. That’s always nice in IF. Not sure whether I’ll explore more later, or just let that final sentence ring.
Played: 11/4/22
Playtime: 1hr, 1 ending
Artistic/Technical rankings: Sparks of Joy/Notable
Would Play Again? Not ruling it out, with the right mood
Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless