We took things a little far from earth with our astral contemplations last time, so I thought this time would be better served by taking things back down to terra firma. Afterall, one doesn't need to go too far away from home in order to be fraught with adventure (At least that's what we should telling ourselves during this quarantine) so I decided to weigh up three alternate worlds from video games to figure out the positives and negatives of living there. Once again, this analysis focuses on how a normal NPC character could live in this fictional world and whenever applicable I do find it helps to be knowledgeable about the source material in order to pick a relatively strife free moment. However for these three I find that last point to be not entirely necessary.
When thinking about a world that is not just on Earth but also conceptually similar to our own, one can hardly get closer than Grand Theft Auto's America. Excluding the storyline of Grand Theft Auto 2, because that game would have us all living in a Cyperpunk-ian dystopia approximately 7 years ago, Grand Theft Auto's world is largely the same to our own. There is a functional reason for this, and that's because much of GTA's setting serves as the palette for the Rockstar team to paint their sardonic and irreverent commentary upon our current world. In that sense one could conclude that the GTA world exists as little more than a setup for a punchline and cannot be looked upon as a true simulated world, but anyone who's taken the time to play through a game will know that too much effort goes into crafting these worlds for us to just write them off with a clear conscience; so I'll treat them with the bare dignity of acknowledging their world as inhabitable.
When I said that GTA's America was close to our own I wasn't kidding, almost every game's landmass is created to be a direct parallel to a real world space. Liberty City is New York, Vice City is Miami, Las Venturas is Las Vegas, San Fierro is San Francisco and Los Santos is Los Angeles. For the sake of this choice, however, I've decided to focus purely on the games that were released in the HD-era and thus that only leaves me with Liberty City or Los Santos. Now personally I'd rather eat a landmine than go to New York, (No offence if you're from NYC, it's just not the city for me) so that leaves me with LS. This also means I don't have to go into the background of events that shaped the city, such as the LS riots depicted in San Andreas, because nothing outside of GTA V and IV is technically canon anymore. (Yay, no background section!)
On the sides of positives, Los Santos is known for the fact that most non violent crimes are no longer illegal for some unexplained reason. I'm talking about J-walking, going through red lights, driving tanks down the street, as long as you're not hurting anyone you're pretty much free to do whatever. Additionally, if any violent crime does occur near you, you can rest assured in the fact that this fight will be resolved by the authorities due to the fact that the police in the LSPD easily outnumber the amount of pedestrians ten to one. In fact, this place is probably a police state when I think about it, but as a simple NPC I probably won't be thinking about it. Aside from that you can safely enjoy all of the same shallow wonders of tinsel town just as you can in the real LA. (That's gotta be fun for someone, right?)
Now onto the negatives, oh boy. For one, your life is always in danger as Los Santos' criminal underbelly is really more of an overbelly and it dominates every single aspect of your life. These types constantly speed around the city in fast cars and don't just disregard the safety of human life as sometimes actively attempt to run them over. In shootouts you'll probably end up as collateral damage for the criminals or the insanely over-zealous police force and it's almost the customary LS greeting to get carjacked at least once in your time there. Every single businessman or politician is involved in some scheme to screw over the every day man; i.e. you. The state has employed a private military force to serve as a resident army for the state, which should ring just about every alarm bell ever. And the economy is due for a recession due to the fact that three bank robbers will soon hit the federal reserve for an eye-watering $200 million dollars. So maybe book your vacation somewhere else.
Moving away from the bright streets of Los Santos, let's instead dive into the seedy dark alleys of... Los Angeles? That is, 'Vampire: The Masquerade's' Los Angeles, and as it turns out, this is quite the interesting place to be. Now FYI I should preface this by saying that I'm basing all of my information on this world upon my time playing the 'Bloodlines' videogame, rather than playing the boardgame source material. (Again, I lack the friends to play a boardgame.) But from how I understand it the world of V:TM operates with 7 vampire clans which each imbue their members with certain hereditary powers to help them through the night. You have the warrior Brujah, the bestial Gangrel, the schizophrenic Malkavian, the magical Tremere, the alluring Toreador and the aristocratic Venture. Oh, and the butt ugly Nosferatu that are so disgusting that they have to live in the sewers for risk of exposing the vampires. All clans live under a mostly unspoken set of rules known as 'The Masquerade' whereupon everyone is expected to disguise the existence of their order to the outside world under pain of death.
In V:TMB the vampires of the city have mostly lived free from all the hyper-vigilance that some other parts have been forced under, and those of the city have enjoyed their freedoms whilst prowling the nights in peace. (And nibbling on the odd neck where appropriate.) This comes under scrutiny once the Venture-run 'Camarilla' start setting up shop in LA and begin imposing their rules upon the residents, claiming that their authority is helping keep vampire kind safe. As it turns out, however, their 'rules' amount to little more than common sense for most other kindred (That's their word for 'vampire') and this is clearly just a poor excuse for a power grab. Sooner or later all the city's vampire populace is caught up in this power struggle and everyone has to start picking sides.
On the positive side of things, you get to be a freakin' vampire! On a base level this means you'll have abnormal strength, strange magical abilities, inhuman speed and immortality to the mix. You'll also be inducted into your 'clan' of vampires to ensure you don't have to spend your nights preying on the shadows alone, you can team up with peeps. You have a genuine excuse to sleep through the day and wake up at night. You can quit your job, you don't need to feed yourself anyway: you're immortal! And whenever you want you can pull a Tom Cruise and hang out in the Cinema throughout the years to thematically showcase the subtle passing of time through the evolution of cinema technology to the audience... Wait, what were we talking about again?
On the side of the negatives, you have just about everything you can expect to be a negative about being a vampire. You die if you go into the sun, you have an aversion to holy instruments and you now live in a world brimming with varieties of horrific supernatural monsters who wouldn't think twice about chewing you up and spitting you down a gutter somewhere. You also usually don't get to pick your clan, so you could end up a the world's most shy Toreador or least confrontational Brujah. You'll also find yourself dragged into a land dispute against the free vampires of LA and the Camarilla, ever aware that picking the either side could get you killed. And then there's all the issues that come along with immortality like loosing all drive to pursue anything in life, having to come to terms with losing all your none vampire friends over and over (You'll get over it after the first century, guaranteed) and facing the moral quandary of possessing the cure to practically any disease but having to reserve it for fear of breaking 'the Masquerade'. (I wonder if vampires would be susceptible to the Coronavirus? Probably not, but it'd sure give them a tough time.)
Finally we come to one of my favourite games of all time and, by default, one of my favourite game worlds of all time. To the northern stretches of Tamriel upon those shores first touched by the men of Atmora, I talk of the snowy tundras of Skyrim. As the home of the Nords, Skyrim has a reputation for producing hardheaded meat mountains, but that's just the kind of person you need to be to survive her harsh climates. In ancient history, Skyrim was home of the first men and so is essentially the ancestral home to all humans on the land of Tamriel. This was also the land in which the dragon's of old subjugated man and the place where Tiber Septim first received his title of Talos before embarking to conquer and unite the lands under The Empire. Essentially, Skyrim is the ancestral home of just about everybody, regardless of race, and don't you milk drinking Imperials forget it!
Before the events of Skyrim (the game) quite a lot has happened with the geopolitical situation around Tamriel. The fascist Elven 'Aldmeri Dominion' was revived and conducted a brutal war against the Empire, eventually conquering the Imperial territories; The god-king Talos was banished from the pantheon, demoting the divines to a number of 8; and the High King of Skyrim was recently slain by a rebel upstart looking to seize the throne before launching a war against the Dominion. In a few days that will all be slightly undermined, however, by the resurrection of Alduin 'The world Eater': a primordial dragon from the subjugation days who's destiny it is to, take a guess, eat the world and end all life. (So this isn't exactly the chillest of years that Skyrim has ever had.)
On the side of the positive, Skyrim is a magical, mythical Nordic wonderland of cool. You'll live in a world writhe with ancient magics, exotic races, strange creatures and more living history than you can shake a stick at. Skyrim in particular is also a frontier for freedom amidst the tyranny that has infected the rest of the Tamrielic kingdoms. The land is vast and beautiful, the people keep mostly to themselves and don't waste your time telling you about the thrilling time they met a mudcrab the otherday (damn Imperials!) and due to the odd way that income works in this world, you can easily make a good living for yourself without putting yourself in danger by doing just about anything other than farming. (Farming is literally the worst profession in Skyrim) Once you are ready to settle down, Skyrim is brimming with opportunity for you to do so and just about every major settlement that you touch down in will be a new adventure in of itself.
On the other side, this is probably one of the most dangerous provinces to live in. Due to that 'freedom' I mentioned earlier, Skyrim is top priority for being the next country that The Dominion conquer so you can expect a great war anyday now. But before then there is the very active civil war that is raging across the land and dragging just about anyone who seems able into it. (So fake a limp or something.) Then there is the little issue of Alduin coming back and bringing his Dragon pals back to life with him, meaning even the skies aren't safe from danger. All that is just exacerbating factors to pile on top of the fact that Skyrim itself is dangerous normally. Bandits stalk the roads in the day, Undead stalk them at night. Giants roam the land with half a mind to squash anything that gets 'too close'. Sabertooth tigers roam the northern tundras, giant Frostbite Spiders populate the central domains and Spriggans dominate the southern forests. Wherever you go you are in danger the moment you leave the city, and thanks to the war and the dragons you aren't safe inside those cities either. Basically Skyrim is the land that you will die in, but at least you'll have a magical time before being whisked away to Sovngarde.
So there we have it, three more worlds that it would both be awesome to live in whilst simultaneously sucking. I suppose a more intellectual fellow might comment on how such an exercise really puts our current world into some sort of perspective, but it's 3:00 AM in the morning over here and I don't feel like being all 'introspective'. (Or would that be 'Extrospective'? Is that even a word?) Either way, I hope you enjoyed my injecting of a little bit of reality into some of my favourite game worlds and maybe that got you to think somewhat more critically about the worlds you explore. And who knows, I may even think up three more next week. (But no promises.)
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