I’d like to clarify my thesis. Trinity isn’t about history; it’s of history.
Here We Go AGAIN
You have to be tired of reading this. I’m tired of writing it! It’s been a long time since my last post. It’s been even longer since I started this series. Over a year, in fact. As a writer who used to manage a post or more a week, this is a dramatic plunge in terms of output.
I’ve talked about this here and on the podcast: one thing I’ve struggled with is the critical reception of Trinity. I don’t want to be perceived as the sort of edgy media critic who puts down popular things, possibly driven by weird or less-than-rigorous motives. I’ve tried to work through that by assessing critical receptions to Trinity over the years (part one and part two) in order to identify key critical issues and shifts in perceptions over the years.
Does this mean I hate Trinity? Or dislike it? I’d say my personal opinion is complex, but my final assessment is that it is one of Infocom’s greatest games. Those reasons are entirely literary. That is, Moriarty’s prose style, use of motifs, symbolism, dramatic irony, paradox, and rich intertextuality make it unique among all Infocom games. I’ve had a hard time entering this discourse as an author who considers things like critical reception and paratext because of what I perceive as an ongoing insistence that Trinity is about history. I ultimately don’t accept that history is primarily what makes Trinity compelling or unique as a text. I haven’t felt like refuting that in any kind of vigorous way, because I think that’s a popular opinion and I don’t feel like swimming upstream. That’s been a mistake; that’s why I’m still talking about Trinity, haltingly, a year later. I should just come out and say it.
I don’t think Trinity is about history in the same way that I don’t think my desk is about wood. It isn’t wood for wood’s sake; it’s the place where my monitor and keyboard go.
Knowing something about Niels Bohr–as only one example–doesn’t elucidate the themes of Trinity. Knowing about Bohr might be interesting or enjoyable as a general fact–I certainly think so–but that won’t teach us about fate, absurdity, or the cosmic injustice of man’s scientific power as it is dramatized in Trinity, a computer game written by Brian Moriarty and published by Infocom in 1986. I really don’t think it does. Sure, a lot of historical facts turn up in the browsie, “The Illustrated Story of the Atom Bomb,” but I experience that as a critique–possibly even a mockery–of historical narratives.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of readers disagree. From the very beginning, Infocom and Moriarty emphasized historical research as something that set Trinity apart as something special. I think that makes it special, too, because it fosters a more vivid dramatization of Trinity‘s themes. Some well-regarded critics may have given the impression that talking about Trinity‘s building materials (such as history) is the same as talking about Trinity as a finished text. I don’t think they actually believe this in a strict sense, but a curious onlooker in the midst of a literature review couldn’t be blamed for getting that impression.
It is a relief to have said it directly: I don’t think Trinity is about history. Rather, it is of history.
Also…
I’ve implied as much on the podcast: I dislike the endgame of Trinity. Now, if history makes a game great, then the ending must be great. It’s a faithful map of the Trinity site. We can spy Robert Oppenheimer through a pair of binoculars! I’m impressed with the care with which this final region has been recreated. My impression is that some critics believe its historicity is a rich signifier. I disagree. As I’ve already implied on the podcast, I think this massive efficiency puzzle stifles exploration (in a place where exploring makes sense) and seems at odds with the “magic” of the game. I recognize that I will have to make my case, and so I will. I hope you will find it plausible, when the time comes.
What of the Themes, Then?
Ultimately, I think Trinity‘s concerns are cosmic: it isn’t so much about humans or people as it is about humanity. I’ve started writing about that, and I need to keep going. I don’t think it’s coincidence that so many of Trinity‘s problems involve animals. I wrote about the Dolphin, because I think it is a distillation of a rather dark vision of humanity’s relationship with creation, but episodes with the skink and lemming elaborate further. There are so may other animals: bees, birds, a snake. The roadrunner. What can be made of this?
There has been a lot of talk about the ending. Does the paradox make sense (so far as a paradox can, anyway)? Is the Wabewalker a tragic hero? Jimmy Maher went so far as to name Nietzsche in his assessment. What does one make of that? As I have said here and elsewhere, I am more of a Kierkegaard person. Perhaps the situation calls for Camus, rather than either of them. We shall see!
Clearing the Plate
I’ve said this a few times: last year, I released a parser game that some people have liked. That’s changed my relationship with interactive fiction in some pretty dramatic ways. One of the things I wanted to do as an author was to help people who, like me, are new to Inform, a programming language specifically made for authoring text adventure games. It was my experience that a lot of documentation and/or advice wasn’t right-sized for me; I didn’t understand it.
That’s taken up a lot of my time! I hear from new authors fairly often, and it’s a very rewarding feeling that I get from this work. There’s also the matter of the games I want to write myself. I have three works in progress right now. Two might interest the Zork fans out there, while the third is a more experimental piece.
But I’m tabling all that. This is what I’m working on! I completed a new playthrough of Trinity last night. My interpretation of its text hasn’t changed, which is for the best at this late date, but I do feel new clarity and motivation when it comes to this series. Until it’s completed, I won’t be doing any other interactive fiction work, be it making games or writing about making games. This is it. What’s to come?
- Gold Machine: The Cosmic Injustice of Scientific Overreach. What is humanity’s relationship with the rest of the earth? Although this language is religious, I mean it in a secular sense: how does humanity exist in creation? Is it special, is it afforded special moral allowances? How or why? If humanity salted the fields of the entire earth, what would be the saddest thing about that? It may be that Trinity has a rather misanthropic answer for its players. We have to unpack that for ourselves.
- Gold Machine: Understanding the ending of Trinity. It’s inescapable that we engage with Jimmy Maher’s assertions that the Wabewalker is tragic and that the time loop established by the events of the game may be grounded in philosophical tradition. After all, Maher has written more about Trinity than anyone else. Ignoring his work would be strange enough to warrant analysis. As I’ve already implied, I feel led elsewhere by the text, but these distinctions are ultimately fruit from similar trees. I absolutely do believe that Trinity emerges from established literary and philosophical traditions, but I must name those texts and make my case. For now, I’ll say that I see more Yossarian, Strangelove, and Camus’s Sisyphus than I do Rennaissance England or ancient Greece.
- Podcast: “The Missing ‘Magic’ of a Narrative Game”. In a previous episode, I discussed Graham Nelson’s The Craft of the Adventure as a tool for assessing adventure game design. This time, I will zero in on the concept of a game’s “magic” as defined by Nelson while introducing my own thoughts regarding what might be considered a player/game contract regarding mechanics in isolation as well as within the context of a “promise” made by the game’s world or lore. For the purposes of this discussion, Vampire: The Masquerade Swansong will be discussed. In addition to the audio episode, some gameplay with commentary will be made available.
- Podcast: “Like Suspended, but Without the Robots”. What is the “magic” of Trinity‘s game world, and does the New Mexico endgame deliver on the promise it makes? Pulling the camera back: what is it like, mechanically, to play Trinity? I have said in the past that it is Infocom’s highest expression of the Zorkian “cave game” design. Why would I say that, and why aren’t contemporary critics saying the same thing? For all the exasperated grief heaped upon the first three commercial Zork games, it may be productive to produce a tally of unwinnable states in Trinity for comparison’s sake. Zooming back in: a consideration of whether or not Trinity is what we thought it was.
Podcasts will be released with transcripts. If there remain outstanding thoughts or questions, I’ll write one last post to address them.
The list is in order, more or less. I have already started work on a post about humanity’s arc toward power without wisdom, and I expect to finish it by Wednesday at the latest. You know, I’ve played through Trinity three times since Gold Machine started. Even though it (and some of the discourse surrounding it) can frustrate me sometimes, each playthrough has deepened my appreciation of its literary and intertextual qualities. There’s nothing else like it in the Infocom catalog, and I’m eager to write about its themes as I experience them.
Next
After the people have gone, all we have left is humanity.