A thought on Mystic Ark
I've had this playthrough of Mystic Ark on in the background while doing various things on the computer, and rewatching the game has gotten me thinking about the origin of the game's worlds and how it ties into the plot's figurine business...
So the protagonist is the child of the goddess we see in the hub world, which consists of various bits & pieces of a manor home strewn about the ruins of an island. The protag accesses various other worlds through interacting with rather mundane everyday objects found in the home - through a toy ship, they go to a world of cat pirates; through a squash, they enter a land modeled after "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater," where the citizens live in giant fruits. The huge crisis that precipitates the story is that the protagonist's dark half - which Goddess Mom severed from her child His Dark Materials-style and stuffed in a pocket-dimension mansion, where it grew into an insane monster - has been going around to the various worlds and kidnapping their citizens, turning them into "figurines" and bringing them back to the hub world, scattering them about the hub house. A short way into the proceedings (and way before the villain or its role in the kidnappings is introduced), the hero also gains the ability to turn living creatures - well, monsters - into figurines.
So: Would this indicate that the worlds of Mystic Ark are actually the creations of a child-god gone wild, inspired (like most childhood rainy-day adventures) by using a kid's imagination and making up stories about the objects in his or her home (a music box topped with wooden figures, a storybook)? This would explain why the worlds draw heavily from traditional child's verses & fairytale imagery, and how some of them rather dramatically lose their narrative cohesion as they proceed ("there was this world of windmills where there was a giant, and the giant's snoring made all the windmills turn, but the giant was a ROBOT, and he was actually controlled by ALIEN CLONES FROM OUTER SPACE!!" etc.). By turning the residents of the worlds into figurines, the hero's dark half, and the hero his/herself, is merely reverting them to their original form: the toys of a child, dolls to be pushed around and populate a story rendered from his/her mind.
The thing that throws a wrench into matters is the attract sequence, where we see the hub-world island creating itself from a seeming void. As mentioned, though, the island is somewhat in ruins, and its structures kind of pieced together. Is it possible that the goddess is recreating the island instead, and with its incomplete structure suggesting that she couldn't manage to restore it completely? After escaping, it's likely that George Stark there would lash out at should by rights should have been its home.
Just some thoughts.
.
So the protagonist is the child of the goddess we see in the hub world, which consists of various bits & pieces of a manor home strewn about the ruins of an island. The protag accesses various other worlds through interacting with rather mundane everyday objects found in the home - through a toy ship, they go to a world of cat pirates; through a squash, they enter a land modeled after "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater," where the citizens live in giant fruits. The huge crisis that precipitates the story is that the protagonist's dark half - which Goddess Mom severed from her child His Dark Materials-style and stuffed in a pocket-dimension mansion, where it grew into an insane monster - has been going around to the various worlds and kidnapping their citizens, turning them into "figurines" and bringing them back to the hub world, scattering them about the hub house. A short way into the proceedings (and way before the villain or its role in the kidnappings is introduced), the hero also gains the ability to turn living creatures - well, monsters - into figurines.
So: Would this indicate that the worlds of Mystic Ark are actually the creations of a child-god gone wild, inspired (like most childhood rainy-day adventures) by using a kid's imagination and making up stories about the objects in his or her home (a music box topped with wooden figures, a storybook)? This would explain why the worlds draw heavily from traditional child's verses & fairytale imagery, and how some of them rather dramatically lose their narrative cohesion as they proceed ("there was this world of windmills where there was a giant, and the giant's snoring made all the windmills turn, but the giant was a ROBOT, and he was actually controlled by ALIEN CLONES FROM OUTER SPACE!!" etc.). By turning the residents of the worlds into figurines, the hero's dark half, and the hero his/herself, is merely reverting them to their original form: the toys of a child, dolls to be pushed around and populate a story rendered from his/her mind.
The thing that throws a wrench into matters is the attract sequence, where we see the hub-world island creating itself from a seeming void. As mentioned, though, the island is somewhat in ruins, and its structures kind of pieced together. Is it possible that the goddess is recreating the island instead, and with its incomplete structure suggesting that she couldn't manage to restore it completely? After escaping, it's likely that George Stark there would lash out at should by rights should have been its home.
Just some thoughts.
.