The Savory Surprise of Eternal Strands

This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #185. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

———

Wide but shallow.

———

Two old friends of mine had a golden retriever named Gromit, devourer of soccer balls, shoe thief, reluctant cuddler. Gromit was quick to slurp, which was tricky in a city riddled with chicken bones and swamp trash. It’s hard to keep these dogs alive sometimes, as they work so diligently against their own survival, I wonder where they get it from, anyways.

One day Gromit demanded a walk, and on this walk he and his owners cruised around as they did and found their way to a park. And there was a tree in this park that drew Gromit in – to those walking him, he was simply curious, but in retrospect he was possibly playing a coy hand. Regardless, when they got close enough to the tree, Gromit leapt forward and started chowing down. By the time Gromit’s handlers caught up he was already a slice into one of the greatest gifts ever bestowed: an entire pizza, hanging from a tree like God’s perfect fruit, ripe for the taking.

Good boy Gromit got a few savory bites in, but of course he could not be allowed to eat an entire pizza from the pizza tree – one must share such bounties and also it would have made his tum tum hurt, not that he could comprehend such a thing. Gromit was pulled away at great effort, and the pizza tree’s remaining pie was left for other lucky ducks and dogs.

But almost every walk from that day forward required a swing by the pizza tree. All paths led to this park, to one perfect cheesy tree. Of course there was never another pizza in that tree, but this didn’t stop Gromit from always bending towards that spot that once surprised him so delightfully. Even if the tree had dropped another large pie, it wouldn’t have been the same. Or maybe it would have? Who can say.

But what a joy it is to just find something precious, unprompted, without even looking. I’m not out here with my metal detector, no maps or gold pans or spots marked with X, just a regular day with a sweet surprise.

I wasn’t looking for Eternal Strands, not that my fingers are glued to the pulse of gaming or anything but I have my feeds and I scan the headlines and I was not blessed with foreknowledge of this game. But one day it seemed to just descend, a videogame-ass videogame looking to do its thing and do it with style. What a pleasure, to be surprised so fully.

Eternal Strands is a game where you explore around, swing a sword and shoot a bow, blast magic and climb stuff. It’s a solid large supreme, pulling ingredients from across the history the adventure format: you got your crafting, huge maps to explore, multiple combat options, enemies so large they must be scrambled over, a crew back home that’s full of charming weirdos, etc. No single element overwhelms the entirety of Eternal Strands, and even as someone who’s so sick of crafting that I’d pick it off if I could, it’s not something you really have to focus on unless you’re working towards a specific playstyle or on a difficulty so intense you need to assess every situation accordingly.

That’s not me though. I’m just trying to hike through these beautifully drawn ruins and landscapes, and though I’m a little annoyed that my magpie instincts require hitting every sparkly box and they are so resilient for the most part, I get over this. The homies talk a lot and it’s nothing particularly exciting but neither is it leaden or boring, I am led along and intrigued enough to learn more about this world and its fibrous magical leanings and metaphors. And honestly, it’s just nice to see a chosen family figure it out and get the job done and watch each other’s backs, building that community step by step, occasionally faltering but always coming clean.

All of this effort works towards the end of excavating history of Eternal Strands and its magically sealed city, putting together the pieces of a fallen age. One of my favorite expositional bits is that magic was woven into expensive fabrics, and given the expense, magic mostly surrounded the miserly rich, so when magic had a mysterious meltdown, those thieves were at the forefront. Of course, the rest of the world fell apart from there, because it’s hard to imagine otherwise, but Eternal Strands does a lot of engaging imagination otherwise.

If you’re into this videogaming hobby, you walk among these trees every day. The most foolish among us even turn those treasures into underpaid work, but even among us jaded few, occasionally a flavorful distillation comes along to remind us that these things can still satisfy, which is the well-earned pride of Eternal Strands. We just need to be open to the universe to show us such surprises, and let it lead us to the pizza tree.

———

Levi Rubeck is a critic and poet currently living in the Boston area. Check his links at levirubeck.com.