Unmitigated Reason

What purpose does Reason serve? Is it Reason's aim to define the world or simply to observe and report?

In vogue today is the battle-line drawn distinctly and firmly between the camps of ideological intellect. There are those who state that reason satisfies only a single role, which is to observe and report--to catalog and analyze data which is readily available--and those who claim that the world is askew, that it is a distorted image, a wave-length containing only noise; that if taken directly the world means nothing and, therefore, it is reason's job to clarify and define that noise.

It happens to be a very bizarre division between two equally embedded applications of realism. On the one hand we have the obvious: the world is real. On the other we have the inherent: our perception makes the world real. The question is thus posed: if we cannot perceive the world, does it remain real?

Imagine that tomorrow you awake from a deep, perfect slumber, roll out of bed and find that none of your senses are active or responsive. You cannot see, hear, smell, touch, or taste. There is no pain and there is no pleasure. Though your mind is awake and functioning, you cannot, in any discernible way, find the world beyond. Is the world still there?! Are you still standing on a hard-wood floor in a heritage home, smelling the freshly brewed coffee composed of imported Columbian beans? (They always say you should write what you know.) Or was the reality you inhabited the day before simply a construct of your incalculable imagination; a mere figment of neurochemistry?

I recall a quantum-mechanics theory posed by some theoretical physicist, alternative philosopher, or, for all I know, a certifiable crackpot: that matter only coalesces into the formation of measurable bodies when actively observed--that when we aren't looking, the trillions of particles that form our body dance between dimensions. In other words, the universe is an immeasurably great hard-drive that only stores reference to matter, not matter itself. When you call up, let's say, 'stone.mat' the universe calls all of the particles required for a stone to be observed and holds them together for the moment, or collection of moments, that you, the operator of this grand machine, perceives the stone, and when you look away, the particles instantly begin to phase into and out of other dimensions. (Within the confines of this quantum-mechanics theory, it is possible that when you look at your friend, he will suddenly coalesce into a composition of particles taken from billions of unobserved, collections of matter from all four dimensions.) His theory, in effect, postulates that reality requires it be perceived.

Which is it? That the world is always there awaiting our notice, or that the world is only there when we notice? Another way of saying it might be: is reality open to interpretation? Here is the grand and sardonic comedy: we, as mortal men, cannot answer this question. It is safely and assuredly beyond us. I implore you to try.

Now I'll offer a third directive: God. God solves the equation as such: the world is real because he infinitely observes it. Here both forms of thought are addressed: the world is real and the world is only real because we define it. Or, to slightly rephrase: The world is real because He defines it.

Finally we return to the initial question: why reason? Are we burdened with and tirelessly attracted to the application of intellect, logic, and reason because it is our job to prop up reality with our collective definition, or is reality an external constant that we are permitted to explore and understand? Reason is our privilege and pleasure, not our responsibility. The world is there for us to observe and enjoy, not to define. In every instance where you diligently apply your mind to the task of reasoning out and applying intellect to the resolution of some mystery or problem, resist the temptation to proclaim definition. Do not say "I conclude that reality must be such, because I have reasoned it to be." Instead, humbly and joyfully report: "Look what reality is!"

Unmitigated Review - Paul

The timing was damn-near perfect, really. We had returned home from PAX Prime 2011 only a day or two previous, when we decided to sit down with alcohol in hand, in various forms and quantities, to watch a "funny, easy movie." Sometimes you don't want the convoluted plot-structures that are so succulent on all other occasions. Sometimes you don't want to think. You just want to laugh, see big explosions, and some bare-breasted babes. We--our PAX crew, exhausted and loopy from the convention--decided on Paul, and were immediately gratified to see Simon Pegg and Nick Frost stumbling around the San Diego ComicCon. It could only have been better if we'd actually gone to ComicCon.

Slouched back in our chairs, gulping down our beers and harder counter-parts, we settled in for some good laughs.

I need to say up front, Paul delivered. The laughs were fairly constant, though the intensity of each bout varied. Sometimes we couldn't help but bust a gut, sometimes it was just an obligatory chuckle. They were constant though. I have to give the movie that much credit.

However... It wasn't very long before this other side of the movie started to creep in. With the introduction of Kristin Wiig's character, Ruth, the one-eyed, evangelical, bible-thumper who is afraid of her overbearing, Lord's Mercy, Fire and Brimstone father, it became obvious that something other than laughs was afoot.

There's a moment when Kristin Wiig gets into an argument with Paul, who is hiding in the bathroom of the camper the crew is holed up in. I can't quote the argument verbatim, but the gist of it was, for no reason I can remember, they begin arguing about science vs religion. It comes to a head when Kristin Wiig is rambling off the highly abbreviated, although mostly complete list of arguments against the mainstream doctrine of Evolution. Just as she gets to Intelligent Design and Irreducible Complexity, Paul, voiced by Seth Rogan, blows up and yells something along the lines of "Oh ya?! Then how do you explain me!" He then bursts out from the bathroom and Kristin Wiig faints.

As soon as it all happened I cringed and thought to myself, "Really? ....really?" Did this movie really just go from a laid back comedy about an alien on earth, to a propaganda film?

I say propaganda for a reason. Not because I cast my lot one way or the other on the topic of Evolution, Intelligent Design, or all the rest of it. I'm a "truth, in whatever form," guy, so please don't disregard my critique of Paul as the ravings of a "pissed off opponent of Evolution." I say propaganda because that's what it is. As soon as you layer political, religious, or scientific dogma, in any form, behind what is otherwise a light-hearted movie, you've turned it into an exercise in hidden, or for that matter, blaringly obvious agenda.

And, really, I wouldn't be working on this review if that first scene in the camper was the only instance of the debate. But it wasn't. The argument against God and for Science (evolution,) propped up a half dozen or more times throughout the film. The final, mostly predictable scene that I won't spoil for you, actually ends with Ruth's father, having just observed one of Paul's amazing feats, booming "Miracle! It's a miracle!" In response Paul says, "You just can't get through to some people."

I'll cite a direct example from the movie. This is actual dialog, copied from a script review at http://www.tv-calling.com/paul-script-review/.

RUTH How can he be from another world? There is only one world. Out world, created by God the Father.

PAUL sits down next to GRAHAM. RUTH whimpers.

PAUL Look, if it makes you feel any better, my existence only disproves the notion of the Abrahamic, Jude-Christian God, as well as all single earth theologies. Science still hasn't categorically ruled out the notion of divinity, even though evolutionary biology suggests the non-existence of a creator by probability alone.

RUTH How could that possible make me feel any better?

PAUL Jesus Christ, I was just trying to be nice!

Was that little 'joke' necessary? Were any of the stabs and jabs at Christianity and other proponents of ideas like Intelligent Design or Irreducible Complexity necessary? Did they help the movie? Did they make the laughs bigger or better? Did a comedy about an alien trapped on earth, being helped by two nerds on a tour of UFO hot-spots in America, really benefit from the injection of a chunk of dialog like that?

For some people, hells yes. A better example of "Preaching the Choir," would be hard to find. Everyone out there who loves to spit in the face of Christians, everyone who loves to crap all over any alternate theories to Evolution, proclaiming everyone who even talks about them as "uneducated bible-thumpers," were probably laughing themselves silly. I'd bet good money on it.

Let's reverse the roles here. Can you imagine how fast and how loudly a movie would be lambasted and ridiculed by the media, and the majority of the viewing audience, if there were occasional jabs at evolutionary theory with off-hand lines of dialog like, "She actually believes this all came about randomly!" followed by the two characters snickering at how deficient and brain-washed the target of their ridicule was? Imagine if there was actually a line of spoken dialog that was the antithesis of what I used as an example above. Just picture a character, in a blockbuster movie, saying out-loud "... my existence only disproves the modern version of evolutionary theory , as well as the array of supporting scientific principles, such as the Big Bang." We'd never hear the end of it. The backlash would last years.

By the end of the movie, after being bombarded with purposed dialog, I reviewed what I'd just watched, really thinking about it. Upon reflection I noticed that, really, the movie was kind of empty to begin with. It felt a little hollow. The plot structure was generic and by the numbers. All the non-religion jokes were on the forced side, including the obligatory "two male nerds spend all their time together, so they must be gay," compounded by the ubiquitous hillbillies who call the two main characters "faggots."


Even the crux of the movie, when Simon and Nick decide to help Paul was on the this-is-too-easy side. I believe Paul just turned on the puppy eyes and begged with a single line of dialog, then against all better judgment Simon agrees. The antagonists were comically ineffectual, not to the characters, but as the driving force of the movie. The entire supporting cast of characters were blatant archetypes. It just all felt like it had been manufactured to make the pill easier to swallow. Like Simon Pegg and Nick Frost sat down with the question "How do we talk about Evolution without people noticing we're talking about it?" Then they wrote the script for Paul.

It could have been a really funny movie. It could have been another of the Pegg/Frost classics, like Hot Fuzz or Shaun of the Dead. I'm deeply disappointed that they had to make it their 'movie with an agenda.'

Hellboy - blending simplicity with complexity

Though you've likely seen the movie, or movies--which, I have to admit, are masterworks in their own right, due to the genius of Guillermo Del Toro--you've likely never read the actual comics. Most people don't read comics. It's an odd thing. If you're here, reading this humble blogspot, there's an above 0% chance that you happen to be some brand of nerd. Movie nerd, gaming nerd; maybe you're an internet nerd, whose quest is to visit every web page in creation. And yet, though a nerd you must be, you probably don't read comics.

It's a crying shame. Especially with the likes of Hellboy out there: a sweet morsel of visual and literary artistry, awaiting your fervent ingestion.

Hellboy is a dark, brooding mythology, ripe with reference and careful design. Every single page, every frame, is filled with some form of profundity. The writing is bang on, both for its simplicity and for its weight. Every character feels real. The instances where a character's sole job is to be the talking head for the sake of exposition are few and far between, if even non-existent. The artistry is precise in its design and implementation, devoid of unnecessary flash or pomp, while being rich and profound.

Mike Mignola talks at great length in the afterwords of the collections that I own, about his love of legend and mythology, and the result is obvious: every single moment in Hellboy, the expanded universe of the B.P.R.D., and the other collected works compiled under the banner of Mignola and Hellboy, are heavily laden with credible lore. Much of Hellboy's world is taken from the pages of cultural history from regions all over the world. Ukrainian wives-tales about a spectral demon that preys on young boys who stay out past dark; a mansion in Turkey where a baron dabbled in dark arts and black magic and was rumored to kidnap virgin girls to bleed their life-force for his spells; Vampires holding power as dukes and barons during Russia's feudal era. (I made all those up, because I can't remember specific lore from the comics...) Etcetera, etcetera.

Effectively, though all parts included are fiction, it is a strange and highly attractive mixture of grounded, 'factual-fiction' --that the stories usually include some scrap of truth, and have been told for generations--and the pure fiction of Mignola's world.

What struck me as terribly interesting when I first began to really dissect the elements that endeared me immediately and permanently to the Hellboy world is that Mignola has managed to craft a world where the two disparate methods of storytelling can exist hand in hand without conflict. The action packed BAM, POW, THWOP of comic books, where the villains are the embodiment of evil and the good guys always win, and the richly textured, nuanced use of lore and mythology, intertwine perfectly. Though we follow Hellboy punching and shooting his way through baddies and then beating the final boss in a superhero brawl, those baddies happen to be the animated corpses of long-dead nobility, and the final boss is a blood thirsty baroness who has fed her dark power with the souls of the peasantry for a thousand years.


Contrary to what the movies suggest, Hellboy is dark and melancholy. People die. Often. Mignola's world is not the world of Batman or Superman where the villains are sent away to prison, only to once again escape to provide another plot-line. Nor is it the fanciful world of Marvel where everyone just gets knocked out or smacked around a little, civilians, thugs, and nameless baddies included. In Hellboy, people die. They suffer terrible deaths at the hands of the ghastly horrors that Mignola has summoned from the myths of yore.

The underpinning story-arch of the series, which itself is that all important character-arch that defines good storytelling, is about Hellboy discovering who he truly is, what his purpose in the world is, and what that might mean for... well... everyone. From book one on, talk of Hellboy being a demigod whose sole purpose is to bring about the destruction of Earth and all its peoples so perfectly contextualizes all of the moments that the movies spent too much time on: the good humor and care-free nature of Hellboy; his joviality and constant disregard for danger.


Though the title character is easily the focus, the supporting cast is incredible. To date, I have not found a character I am more obsessed with in a very primal way, than Lobster Johnson, who only appears a handful of times in all of the Hellboy I have read so far. I wish I could break my way into the psyche of Mignola to steal from him whatever genius he possesses for character creation. Not a single face or name is wasted. Characters that exist only to die a few pages later are still better written than any facade of a human being that Michael Bay has included in his movies. And I can't begin to tell you how important it is to my geek-brain that just about every character has some secret origin, some mysterious past that builds into each of them that ticking time-bomb plot device: when the truth is revealed, how much will the character change?

Though many other artists are brought on board to flesh out the imagery of some of the later issues and much of the expanded universe, the core books are practically a one-man effort. Mignola's distinct and incredible style leaps off of every page, while simultaneously embedding a depth to every frame. The only way I can think to describe it, is that he draws the world of Hellboy as if he were inscribing an ancient spell, a terrible binding used to summon demons from the hereafter.


Sharp, bold lines; intense, constant shadowing, comingled with persistent and intelligent use of ambiguity for the sake of leaving a thing to the imagination--leaving a face entirely blank, as in, only a flesh-colored silhouette, or defining only the focus of a location--draws you deeply into each moment. Between those moments, Mignola practices what is easily my favorite nuance in all of media: he will have two or three small frames, roughly a quarter of the size of a normal comic frame, filled only with the close-up of some piece of the location. A tribal mask on the wall; a stack of books covered in the wax of a spent-candle; the bones of some long dead creature in the corner of the stone room; a specific section of the mural painted on the wall.


None of the visual asides are necessarily important. Not in the way a normal close up would be. These are not the close inspections of some critical element or action. It's almost as though Mignola is following the eyes of his characters, seeing the room in that quick, stuttered, meaningful way that you would if you were right there. That pile of bones, that broken vase, that half-charred old tome, are the pieces of a place that define it, in the same way your stack of empty beer cans, movie poster, or half-spilled box of cables define a place as your own.


The rest, I think, I'm going to leave up to you. Though I'm going to compile my own little compendium of suggestions for comic and novel reading soon, I wanted to give Hellboy a standalone post. Mignola's masterwork stands, quite easily, shoulder to shoulder with the masterpieces of the graphic novel realm, such as Gaiman's Sandman or Moore's Watchman and V for Vendetta. Every minute you spend investing your eye-time in Hellboy will be worth its weight in gold-pressed latinum. I guarantee it.

Unmitigated Review - Black Swan

Wow. That's really where I have to start. I'm going to lay bare my enthusiasm for this movie right here, at sentence one. Wearing my affection on my sleeve. The movie was incredible; Natalie Portman needs to win all acting awards, and Darren Aronofsky needs to stop producing such sleek, precise drama that invades my soul, sets up residence, and digs in for the long haul, because I need my soul for other things!

I've heard a complaint from a couple people who attempted to watch the movie but wound up either fast-forwarding through all the "inactivity," or just plain turned it off. They complained that "nothing happens. It's boring." To be perfectly honest, I understand their gripe. The first hour of the movie isn't exactly a riveting action-adventure. It is a slow but gradual exercise in, like I stated, precise drama. I'm not really sure why I'm using that term. It jumped up into my brain when I was trying to think of how to best describe what Aronofsky does.

I'll try to break it down. Aronofsky, like two of my favorite authors, Patrick Rothfuss and Neil Gaiman, has an incredible ability to have nothing happen at no point, because something is always happening. To qualify: a climax is a moment when all things come to a head. There is a definitive whumpf that occurs. The story leans back, then steps hard into a thorough punch right into your thorax, crushing all the air out of your body. It's a moment in a story that causes you to reel, to wince under the pressure, the ferocity of that moment. The moment has to change everything; adjust the whole picture.

An easy example: when Darth Vadar proclaims, "I am your father." Emotionally speaking, much of the story up until that point was just build up. Set up; foreshadowing; preparation. The moment, in contrast to all others, was profound.

Aronofsky, like Gaiman and Rothfuss, manage to pack almost every single scene with a game-changing element; every scene is the climax. The onslaught of punches to the gut is so steady that you actually become immune to the effect of each blow. The result is that you feel like nothing is happening, that it's boring. That's what I call precise drama. Each moment, each frame, every scene, every facial expression and line of dialog, it's all important. No filler. Nothing sits in between two significant moments, because they're all significant.


However... Another point has to be made. Black Swan and Arnofksy's previous work, The Wrestler, both share a commonality that might prove vexing to a standard audience: they are both almost exclusively Character Arcs. I think it might be safe to argue that there was no definable story in either movie. The plot structure of Black Swan is actually incredibly simple: beautiful girl dancer tries out for part in ballet, gets part, suffers anxiety about keeping part. End. In fact, you could further simplify: girl is a dancer. The same can be said of The Wrestler. Mickey Rourke plays a guy who is an aging, former professional wrestler. End of story.

Yet both films are enthralling. Why? Because they are both exquisite exercises in the execution of a character arc. I have to admit, I find it perfectly ironic that in my previous blogpost, the review of The Man From Nowhere, my fundamental issue with the movie was a severe lack of character arc.

What Aronofsky proves is that drama is only compelling if we care about the characters, by taking it all the way to the extreme: he discards everything but the implicit drama found in a character arc. Then he executes so perfectly, delving so comfortably into the psyche of the characters he thrusts before our hungry, all-consuming eyes, that nothing else is needed. Ergo, I have nothing but respect for him and his blatant talent.


It need also be mentioned that, truly, what Aronofsky does is only possible if the actor/actress is capable. I was going to say talented enough, skilled enough, of the right caliber, but all of those would have been insufficient terms. World class skill, nearly unmatched talent, might not mean you are capable of achieving the task.

Natalie Portman proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she is magnificently capable of being the only thing happening for 108 minutes. One hundred and eight enthralling minutes, I should add. As previously stated: she needs to win all acting awards, ever.

Fantastic movie, worth your immediate and undivided attention. Seek this out as soon as you can allot a two hour block of time where all you're doing is reveling in the combined power of Aronofsky and Portman.

Unmitigated Review - The Man From Nowhere

Before I say anything, I have to make it very clear that I am a fan of Korean cinema. A big fan. I can honestly say that one of, if not my favorite working director is Chan-wook Park, who is responsible for such greats as Oldboy, Thirst, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, and a movie I often forget he was responsible for, Joint Security Area. Whatever's happening over there in South Korea, I dig it. I have deeply enjoyed a number of films from the south half of that peninsula--Memories of Murder, The Good The Bad and the Weird, Mother, and many more. Therefore, please do not disregard any of the gripes I'm about to voice as the uneducated ramblings of someone who "just doesn't understand."

When I read Massawyrm's review of The Man From Nowhere, I was very excited. A South-Korean remake of the Tony Scott movie Man on Fire?! I couldn't frakkin' wait. Man on Fire is easily one of my favorite Denzel Washington and Tony Scott films. Watching Denzel obliterate those bad-guys, blowing them away with shotguns, blowing them up in their own cars, and just generally wrecking every one of those guy's entire day, was one of the more satisfying excursions into the realm of an honorable man dealing out righteous death on behalf of a true innocent.

The Man From Nowhere hits all the same beats, and well. But... It just doesn't hit them as well. It's like the difference between the E chord played by John Lee Hooker or BB King, compared to, say, Green Day or Weezer. It's like Julie London's version of Cry Me a River compared to any other cover of that jazz classic. Not always does the content count towards the profundity. More often it is the delivery; the execution. "If it aint got that swing, it don't mean a thing."



The same goes for The Man From Nowhere. A certain vital element is lacking. There's just something missing, something not there, and it makes it really hard to invest yourself in it. I tried. Believe me I tried. I wanted to love the crap out of the movie.

Upon reflection and careful consideration, I think I'm forced to say that the movie was just too... Asian, for my tastes. I offer that near-blunder of a statement because, like all of the posts I've dedicated to this space so far, I think there's an important discussion hiding inside this review--a vigilant infantryman, holed up inside a concealed fox-hole, waiting until the overwhelming enemy passes by so that he can leap out use the element of surprise to take more down with him than he would have otherwise.

What do I mean by "too Asian"? After watching movies from every oriental nation--Thailand, China, South-Korea, Japan, etc--I've pinned down a very specific, and therefore, I think, largely intentional method of character development and portrayal that we just don't see here in North America. A stale, monotone, stoic indifference; an unwavering adherence to largely one-dimensional character traits. Maybe it comes from traditional theatre, or ancient story-telling traditions. I don't know. But the end result, the visible product, is that you have characters who are assigned a single, immutable persona.

If a villain is assigned the playfully-arrogant, cynically-indifferent trait, than he displays it in every scene. Once a stoic, silent, brooding protagonist, always a stoic, silent, brooding protagonist. There's never an obvious character arc. There's no development. The result is inhuman characters, replaced by single function, single purpose automatons; unchanging, unwavering adherents to their predefined emotional range, which, of course, is only one item long.

I find it absolutely impossible to care about or relate to these caricatures, these walking one-trick wonders. And, of course, without the ability to care about the characters, I find it very difficult, if not equally impossible, to care about what's happening to them.

Therein lies the only--and I have to stress, only--failure of The Man From Nowhere. Every other facet of the film is transcendent. Every department was on the ball. Every set-piece, every frame (cinematography phrase,) every fight or action sequence, delivers in droves. They're all a joy to optically ingest.

I just wish the film had a more profound emotional punch...

Elegance in Simplistic Gaming - Machinarium

A little while ago I played through a game available on Steam called Machinarium. At first I was struck by the wondrous art style and aesthetic execution: a brilliant blend of matte-paintings used as backdrops for beautifully crafted, mechanical character designs, all moving about in that faux-3d, where by simple perspective trickery you can have a 2d character on a 2d background, appear to move in three dimensions. The sound design matched the simplistic, eccentric world, and the musical score offered the perfect blend of ambiance and thematic drive--you felt the world through the choral hum, broken up by electrical hisses and robotic pops.

I was taken. Enthralled from moment one. It was damn easy to fall completely in love with the game, even before I'd begun solving the puzzles.

And the puzzles? They're of the sort where you don't have to be a fan of point-and-click adventure games in order to enjoy them. They're just complex enough that you usually can't see the solution laying there, visible and bare, so obvious that completing the puzzle isn't satisfying, while not so complex that at every distinct room or area you're pounding your head against your desk and alt+tab'ing to look up a walkthrough.

But then, as I reached the third or fourth section, (maybe farther, I'm not sure,) little hints began to appear, motioning in the direction of the story that anchored the brilliant design elements and the balanced puzzles together, while offering you morsels of motivation through latent curiosity. You see a big, tough looking robot and his dumb looking partner, know they're up to know good, and then wonder what's really going on. Why were you dumped out in the scrap yard, and who are these big galoots that look meaner than the rest of the robots?

It was here that Machinarium finally secured my complete and unwavering approval and affection. It managed to tell me a story without ever relying on exposition. In the classic, simplistic fashion that games used to employ so long ago, the important stuff was placed out in the fore, as obviously as possible, and interpretation of it was left entirely to you. It reminds me of the intro to a game that I simply can't think of, but might have been a riff on the Megaman 2 intro anyway: a slow and steady pan all the way up a skyscraper, where at the top, was a ruffian holding a damsel in distress. Elegant, simple, brilliant. In less than thirty seconds all the motivation you could ever need as a gamer was right there on screen. It wasn't explained, in fact I don't think there was even any dialog or text. A mean looking dude holding a frightened girl was the only thing you needed to know. That sucka was goin' down. Plain and simple.

That simple, elegant method of storytelling was there in all its simplicity, scene to scene, in Machinarium. From time to time the main character would have what appeared to be a day-dream or a memory, of himself and another bot, who appeared to be female, doing quaint things--flying a kite, skipping stones across a pond, or playing a prank on a shop vendor. Those little dreams/memories would always end with the big, rough galoots ruining it in some cruel, bully kind of way. Without ever coming out and expressly stating "This is the story. This is what is happening," the game managed to have a compelling depth to it.


I miss that method of storytelling--simple, inferred narratives. Too many games today take the easy way out, or the safe approach: wearing exposition on its sleeve. Everything is explicitly defined; nothing is left open to interpretation, or vague enough as to be mysterious or interesting. It is never, at any point, a question of who is the bad guy and who isn't. The bad guys usually have glowing, red targets over their heads, or are busily killing innocents and burning down orphanages when you arrive on the scene. The lack of nuance these days is boring; its tedious.

The problem with explicit storytelling, I think, is not that it is explicit. It is perhaps that when you make the point of explaining all elements, your explanations must be incredible; they must be so well-crafted and astonishing, that your audience is slavering and rabid to discover the next, important element. However, sloppy or disinteresting, explicit storytelling can be worse than limited to no storytelling at all. I would rather wonder at the motivation behind Bowser kidnapping the Princess, than be told it's because she's an intregal part of an ancient prophesy that foretells the destruction of the Koopa empire--or some other unnecessarily convoluted and unsatisfying reason.

In an effort to bring this post to a close before I surpass a thousand words, I'm going to end here: get yourself a copy of Machinarium and enjoy. It's a fantastic little diversion from your day, and a marvelous foray into a beautiful world and elegant game design. It has my highest recommendation.