Bedlam and Schizophrenia
In the beginning of Slouching
Towards Bedlam the gamer is given a variety of choices. The gamer
can chose to examine a desk blotter, a sandlewood box, a desk drawer, a
phonograph with the sounds of a man, or a black box on wheels. It seems that
there is a particular procedure that one must follow in the game. You have to
"get your bearings". Then one has to investigate the situation and
the surroundings and then you must act upon the situation at hand.
When I came upon the phonograph, I
pictured the tin cylinders as storage rather than "games". I didn't
get that far into the game even though I played it for about an hour.
I was able to examine the office, the lobby, some archives and rooms from the
Panopticon.
In Cleve's archives,
it explains that he has small burns on palms and inner forearms that should
heal quickly. He is 23 and earlier in the game is suspected that he was a
little crazy. Apparently, he was arrested for
disturbing the peace. The doctors diagnosed him with disassociative disorder,
acute schizophrenia with paranoid tendencies yet didn't seem harmful to himself
or others.
That is as far as I could get in an
hour. It took me forever to find out information about Cleve. I'm assuming that
he will refuse to talk for the rest of his life. From what I understood from
the game, Cleve is paranoid about something. Maybe he is paranoid about the
future and time and how he is stuck in time. I don't know. I wish I could've
gotten further in the game then what I did.
To go along with what Jackie wrote, the creator/author of this game did
a wonderful job blending suspense, literature, time travel, and science-fiction
into a game. I personally didn't enjoy this game as much as I thought I was
because everyone in class said they enjoyed it; however, I don't really like IF
games to begin with so I think I dislike every game I play.
There were so many options that the game was a little overwhelming. I didn't get far either, but I sure explored a lot of items. I know that the Triage was important. All I figured out to do with it was turn the device on. The manual didn't help much either. I figured the main character was crazy when I came upon those weird /" "\ conversations.
I am interested to see how this all fits together. We should all work together to find at least one of the game's endings afer everyone has posted their blogs. I want to know how the time travel and Cleve fit in with the "cold moving in" that I discovered when I killed people (see my blog). It is kind of annoying because I still feel overwhelmed by the game even with the thought of all the other people in class playing it at the same time. Maybe that is the point though, to overwhelm the user. All these questions about the game are making me dazed and sick though. I need closure for this game!
I need closure as well.
I know that we all ended the game in different ways with different stories and scenarios so that would be interesting to see where everyone got to in the game.
Let me first just say that I love how you always end with how you dont like the IF games, therefore you did not like this game. haha! I am kind of there with you. But yeah I struggled with this game too but it sounds like you got a lot more information about Cleve than I did! Well done for not liking IF games:)