Wizards and Weight Watchers
I am skulking in the shadows, lurking in a back alley of a particularly unsavory city. I am a bold and brave adventurer, wellspring-armed and heavily scarred. I concern nothing. Adoring citizens shout my name as I make my way through town, regarding me with a fuse of awe and reverence. But I am not existence heroic at this import. I am not on a call for, fighting an evil foe or even upgrading my gear for the next run into. In this instant, as the sun slowly arcs across the brightening sky, I am waiting impatiently for the tomato-like vendor to open up his stall then that I can buy some celery. Because in addition to being superhuman and unstoppable, I am likewise very, really overweight.
There are many shipway to heal yourself in Fable 2, so much as sleeping in a bed Beaver State quaffing a potion, but the easiest fashio is to plainly rust something. All sorts of comestibles are at your disposal – everything from pie to fish to tofu to beer – and all of it leave refill your wellness saloon to some extent. Arsenic a general rule of thumb, the tastier the meal, the better you feel later gobbling information technology down. A crispy Daucus carota sativa bequeath clear you a mere smattering of hit points, while munching on a pie will have you punt to fighting shape in no time. My fighter, being the type to melt down headlong into danger, has inhaled more than her average ploughshare of pies and as a result is looking rather doughy around her midriff. Which is wherefore I'm wait in this alley like a freak trying to score her next fix: The nearby produce shillyshally is one of the few in all of Albion that sells celery, which will serve slim my character down to a more acceptable size.
Not acceptable by the game's standards, head you. This extra ponderousness doesn't foreclose her from swinging her steel with wild desolate, or even from breaking countless hearts as she strolls through town. She's a wonder, a force of nature, a heroine of truly large proportions (both figuratively and literally). The game couldn't care to a lesser extent that she's summation-sized. Merely I do.
From a gamer's perspective, I prize the automobile mechanic that wolfing down healing items in Parable 2 has consequences. You involve look no farther than Pac-World to know that bellying up to the digital buffet has long been a staple fibre of videogames. Cherries, icecream, chicken, apples, sushi, chocolate, curry, cake – you name it, we've stuffed IT in our virtual maws with nary a thought for organic process value or calorie calculate. And why not? Videogame food is magical – how other can you explain that eating IT can cure hummer holes and disorganised castanets? In the world of gaming, you can slicker death, carry an total armory's worth of guns and ammo on your somebody and eat until your sides break open without ever gaining an ounce.
Except in Fable 2, that is, where indulging in pie might save your liveliness, just at a cost to your waistline. Campaign and effect is actually a paint part of the game's contrive. Choices have consequences: If you're the sort of individual who rescues villagers, you'll earn a halo and a saintly glow, but if you sacrifice them to a dark God instead, you'll maturate horns and drag flies. Wear overmuch war paint and your spouse will notic you less attractive; lose overly many times in battle, and you'll wind up plastered in hideous scars. Not that the game is going for realism, exactly. I'm pretty positive that if even all my sword-swing and Balverine-murder didn't keep ME slim down and trim, existence forced to schlep backbone and forth across Albion on foot would. Still, I respect that the secret plan is trying to ready me consider the consequences of my actions, even if in a lighthearted way.
Logically, analytically, I cotton on – simply I'm still stuck with my tubbo of a hero ready and waiting for a vegetable stall to open. Because while I'll deal with the scars my adventures have drive upon Maine, I'm not going to stay fat if I can help it. Perhaps it's vain to seat so much importance happening how good my fighter looks in her corset and thigh-high boots, but I am unapologetic. If I'm going to atomic number 4 heroic, I want to look for the part, and a muffin top definitely does not fit into that picture.
I tin can see the merchandiser finally making his way up the Hill toward his stall, slowly slow one hoof after the other, sighing at the thought of another perennial day shilling his limp, watery wares. I might flavor fellow feeling for him if I didn't have problems of my own. My conscience chooses this moment to remind me that I didn't have to eat every last those infernal pies to heal myself. I could've eaten healthier food, taken potions, gotten a good night's sleep at any one of my many houses or even just been more careful in battle. But potions are expensive, apples don't allow for nearly enough off points and a good night's sleep is hard to come by in the middle of a fight. Eating pie is just and then leisurely and convenient – and also, what mighty warrior eats tofu?
My wiser self smiles at how brashly Allegory 2 handles food, but my some other ego, the one that's slightly foolish and maybe just a bit dour, feels misused. I've been indiscriminately feeding my way of life finished games for decades, and now I'm expected to pay attention to calorie substance? When I'm a whisker's width away from pushful up daisies, I'm purported to intermit and reflect on the nutritional value of my healing options? Am I very being asked to pay attention to the food pyramid while I'm out saving the world? Seriously?
Only when you want your character to stay slim and trimness comes the swift and knowing reply from my know-it-every last conscience. Plosive giving in to pangs of digital dressing table, and you can eat whatsoever you want without pause or regret. And therein lies the rub: I'm non being forced to do anything. I can static be an all-powerful Heron, rich on the far side measure, with a spouse in all town; I can, in fact, be a champion in every single way the brave measures success. I'll just be fat. If I can't untaped therewith, well, information technology's not the crippled's flaw, now is it?
Maybe non Fable 2's fault, no, but perhaps vindicatory about every other game that's featured a hero with abs of sword and lungs of cast-iron. Part of the fantasy – that one where you're strong enough, clever enough and intrepid enough to save the day – is that you're also perfect, and fair operating theatre non, we've been taught that "perfect" means having a hyper-idealized organic structure. Perhaps I should applaud Fable 2 for doing its part to remind me that champions toilet make out in any size or shape and that heroism knows no weight limit. I for sure don't hold people in real life to the same standards I do my avatars.
But that's the whole stop: Videogames aren't supposed to embody real world. They exist to let us escape the bonds of mean existence and be something more than, something better than what we really are. And yet here I am taking a give way from adventuring to continue the strict requirements of my bloody dieting. Something, someplace, has bygone awry.
Games are escape, certainly, but roughly aspects of real life story are easier to scat than others. Not that I have time to ponder the deeper implications of that conundrum sportsmanlike now. The vendor has finally shown up, the root-like kiosk is open, and I have celery to rust.
Susan Arendt has been known to broil some seriously delicious lemon macadamia cookies in between bouts of videogame adventuring.
https://www.escapistmagazine.com/wizards-and-weight-watchers/
Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/wizards-and-weight-watchers/