the things you start to see once you start to see things

A lot of games have what’s called a new game plus. Generally this is an option to play through the quest a second time with some or all of your items, abilities, and attributes carried over from the first playthrough. Enemies are usually stronger and some of them may show up in different areas or have new attacks or they may throw you a bit of a curveball in some other way, but it’s typically the same world. Things may be tougher but you’re tougher, too. Apply what you’ve learned and reap the benefits of all the skills and strength you’ve acquired.
I do not understand the new game plus. Don’t get me wrong, I see the appeal of it. You’re better and faster and stronger. It feels good. What I mean that I don’t see any meaning in it. The initial hero’s quest, the uncertainty and exploration, the confrontation of the unknown and the struggle with oneself to overcome the challenges laid before you, this I understand. But my life has never felt like a new game plus. Perhaps people who advance higher and higher in their chosen professional field live new game plus lives, where the challenges they face get a bit tougher but also increasingly familiar and where the things they’ve learned before apply to the problems they face now. But this has never been my life.
The second quest, though, as it was done by the original The Legend of Zelda, is different. You finish the game, and then you can play it again, but none of your items carry over. You aren’t any stronger. And so many of your assumptions only get in the way.
In the second quest, you discover that the world is not what you thought it was. Dungeons aren’t located in the same places. Their layouts are different. The items you find in them are different. You have been plunged right back into the unknown from which you thought you had just so heroically struggled to emerge. You have so much to unlearn, and to learn again.
Now this makes sense to me.
Second Quest, the perfectly titled new graphic novel by Tevis Thompson and David Hellman, is not set in the universe of the Zelda games but it is an interrogation of the underlying assumptions that hold that world (and by extension, any world, certainly our world) together.
It is about the things you start to see, once you start to see things.

Once you start to see through the stories we’re told about good and evil and violence…

…about race and culture…

…about gender.

Like the second quest that inspired its name, Second Quest is about plunging into the unknown. You think the hard part is over, that things are stable, that you’ve got things figured out.
Then everything changes. You see the world anew. You can’t rely on the things you thought you knew, and you realize that it’s all only just beginning.


***
You can read more about Second Quest here on the official site.
Notes
mistyruins liked this semigiantjimmy reblogged this from radicalhelmet
auz liked this
discovergames-blog liked this
isaackuo liked this
lobbamattos liked this
radicalhelmet reblogged this from plainclothesnerd
krisoyo liked this
johnshoe liked this
eyepool liked this
hamofawe liked this
trilobiter liked this
theraindropstheraindrops liked this
davidhellman reblogged this from carolynpetit and added:
I loved this insightful piece about our graphic novel Second Quest and the “new game
feitclub reblogged this from carolynpetit and added:
this book is out… *clicks link* today! tomorrow maybe? Time zones are hard. Very interested, regardless.
consolecommunism liked this
feitclub liked this
wardnpendragn reblogged this from carolynpetit
smallswingshoes reblogged this from carolynpetit
smallswingshoes liked this
missingrache liked this
nonhoration liked this
carolynpetit posted this