Happy Monday, folks! Welcome one and all to the Weekly Video Games Thread!

Ooh, this prompt was a pain to figure out. See, initially I was thinking about Cranky Kong, since he’s in the movie. But I didn’t wanna do that. Then I was like “well, Cranky’s an old man, so maybe a prompt about our favorite older characters? But I didn’t wanna do that either. Then it very quickly went through several alterations and revisions (“I can’t do a think on aging; didn’t I already do a prompt on in-game time?”), and I finally have “a” prompt.

And here it is: what are your favorite depictions of a mostly unseen but clearly substantial ancient culture or society or event that exists in the background of a game? You remember that summer where you got really, really into Dark Souls lore? And you kept obsessing over who was the secret identity of X and what was boss Y like a billion years ago before their mind was lost to the Darksign? That’s what I’m talking about. Stuff that exists solely to pad out the backstory or add a bit of color to the plot. This stuff, mostly, doesn’t matter at all. It generally shouldn’t, because the gameplay and what’s more material needs to come first. But it’s cool, right?

Like, this is all over The Legend of Zelda, and its importance has always varied pretty wildly. A lot of the time, it really does just exist to add flavor to the beautiful world of Hyrule. Which is fine, because this stuff should always serve the game and not the reverse. Other times, it has some greater impact; apparently we’re gonna be learning at least a bit about the ancient “Zonai” people from Breath of the Wild in a month. But it’s fun to play the games, see something, maybe get a bit of information on it that seems so odd, and just imagine what it was like back in those days.

I guess you can boil this down to “what’s your favorite flavor text about an ancient civilization or event in a game?” And if you’re just wanting to talk about what you played this weekend, please do instead! Or do both. Both is good.