Gaming Questions
Feb. 22nd, 2026 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynling(1) What’s the scariest moment you’ve experienced in a game?
(2) What’s your favorite urban legend about a secret area in a game?
(3) Do you play any collectible card games?
(1) I’ve had a number of deep-dread scary moments in real life, but I tend to be amused by horror in video games. The Silent Hill games are like going to an aquarium for me, just a garden of delights around every corner. To be fair, a lot of video game horror boils down to “what if you weren’t a cisgender man” or “what if you were disabled,” which is very silly.
If I had to pick a milestone, though, I’d say that it’s when I finally started understanding the lore behind Hollow Knight, specifically what was going on with the Pale King.
Essentially, the god-king of a land overtaken by a madness-inducing contagion has the ability (like the character you play) to see and act out the “future,” returning to a save point every time he dies. Over the course of many cycles, the Pale King became more and more unhinged in his attempts to stave off the contagion, and he eventually did something truly unthinkable merely to contain it. And it didn’t even work.
I consider myself a friend to any and all monsters, and I’m a joyful connoisseur of jumpscares, but existential horror fucks me up.
(2) I didn’t initially believe the rumors about being able to recruit Daryl if you allowed the Zone Easter to swallow your entire party in Final Fantasy VI, but they turned out to be true! (Well, sort of.)
By the time Final Fantasy VII was released, I was fairly well inoculated against internet rumors, so I never really bought into stories about how you could find a clone of Aeris if you triggered the appearance of a secret staircase behind a statue in Midgar (for example). I appreciate that there was a time when those stories existed, though.
(3) I think collectible card games are neat, but I never had the money to get into them as a kid, unfortunately.
In general, I never really developed the habit of collecting things, as I tend to be an “enjoy something and then pass it on” type of person. My automatic reaction when someone tells me that they admire something I own is to give it to them, which probably isn’t conducive to being competitive at collectible card games at a level that would be fun for other players.
That being said, I love when other people talk about their card game collections. And it must be said that I’m not immune to downloading JPEGs of my favorite characters, which is sort of like collecting cards when you think about it.
(2) What’s your favorite urban legend about a secret area in a game?
(3) Do you play any collectible card games?
(1) I’ve had a number of deep-dread scary moments in real life, but I tend to be amused by horror in video games. The Silent Hill games are like going to an aquarium for me, just a garden of delights around every corner. To be fair, a lot of video game horror boils down to “what if you weren’t a cisgender man” or “what if you were disabled,” which is very silly.
If I had to pick a milestone, though, I’d say that it’s when I finally started understanding the lore behind Hollow Knight, specifically what was going on with the Pale King.
Essentially, the god-king of a land overtaken by a madness-inducing contagion has the ability (like the character you play) to see and act out the “future,” returning to a save point every time he dies. Over the course of many cycles, the Pale King became more and more unhinged in his attempts to stave off the contagion, and he eventually did something truly unthinkable merely to contain it. And it didn’t even work.
I consider myself a friend to any and all monsters, and I’m a joyful connoisseur of jumpscares, but existential horror fucks me up.
(2) I didn’t initially believe the rumors about being able to recruit Daryl if you allowed the Zone Easter to swallow your entire party in Final Fantasy VI, but they turned out to be true! (Well, sort of.)
By the time Final Fantasy VII was released, I was fairly well inoculated against internet rumors, so I never really bought into stories about how you could find a clone of Aeris if you triggered the appearance of a secret staircase behind a statue in Midgar (for example). I appreciate that there was a time when those stories existed, though.
(3) I think collectible card games are neat, but I never had the money to get into them as a kid, unfortunately.
In general, I never really developed the habit of collecting things, as I tend to be an “enjoy something and then pass it on” type of person. My automatic reaction when someone tells me that they admire something I own is to give it to them, which probably isn’t conducive to being competitive at collectible card games at a level that would be fun for other players.
That being said, I love when other people talk about their card game collections. And it must be said that I’m not immune to downloading JPEGs of my favorite characters, which is sort of like collecting cards when you think about it.
