Article 4- “All Hope Abandon”

This piece by Eric Eve was a pretty neat article to read, particularly because he went so in depth with the interactive fiction game that he created.  I think that the idea of interactive fiction is really neat, but perhaps a little dated.  I got pretty frustrated with the game when I played the sample version, just because you get to points where you just don’t know what else you can do to move forward.  When you are playing a videogame that you can see, your options are much more straightforward.  I suppose that if someone who really enjoyed interactive fiction were playing that they might enjoy the challenge rather than be discouraged by it, but that wasn’t my reaction.  Eve did make some good points that can be applicable to any game, such as when he is discussing detail in scenery (or any object) that is in a game.  He mentions that “it is better if a discription of the wallpaper is provided in response to “X WALLPAPER” even if the “not important” message is used in response to any other command involving the wallpaper; this kind of detail can make the difference between immersion in the story world and the feeling that, after all, you are merely interacting with a computer program”.  Little things such as that really do make a big difference, particularly in interactive fiction because you can only imagine what the game is trying to present.  It would be like reading a book that doesn’t give you the description of the main character or the location; you would probably feel like it is harder to relate to the book.

The actual game that Eve created is a nice addition to the interactive religious game world.  He actually incorporates a unique feature called “Think About” that allows the player to get more information on things unfamiliar to them, such as certain words or references.  This feature builds in an enormous amount of extra religious information and really allows for a player to play a game while learning new facts.  The way that Eve incorporates intertextuality is also impressive, particularly because of his reference to biblical texts while doing so.  He mentions that “for the most part ‘All Hope Abandon’ uses biblical texts (and other texts) allusively, occasionally quoting them, sometimes representing aspects of them more or less closely.  This is similar to the way in which many New Testament texts make use of the Old Testament”.  That idea is neat because there is certainly an overlap of text in the bible, and for Eve to recognize and implement that into his game is compelling.  Overall “All Hope Abandon” was a cool interactive fiction game to play and I really enjoyed Eve’s own analysis of the game and the way he incorporated religious information into the play. 

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