Think I missed this thread the first time. Around the 16th was super busy for me.
Important background: I'm autistic, and video games are one of the very few things I've made friends on as a result of not being able to hold a conversation about things that I'm not very interested in.
Before I move onto anything else, I'd like to offer some words of hope for you. I'm not sure if I've told you before (I really need to start keeping track of this), but in the case that I didn't or have just forgotten about it, so am I. It's something I'm very prideful of, and more importantly the focus of my career plan and what I want to do for others during my lifetime. I'm still in college, and am far from an expert in our line of work yet, but I can say this. Video games are actually a very common outlet for our community, and it's estimated that the average autistic plays twice the amount of video games as the average "normal" person. (I wish I could remember where I found this from, this isn't just some stat I pulled out of my back pocket.)
In any case, I'm so glad to see people like you or myself find that niche we've been looking for all these years. On the spectrum, we react to things differently. We may not pick up social cues as easily as others, and we may struggle to fit into smaller groups that we wish to be a part of. But... you know what? That's okay. What this community of ours that I wish to be a motivational figure for lacks in "normal" qualities, we make up for it in our fierce, undying love for ourselves and for other people. One must be willing to put their hardships beside him or herself and be open to the idea that the world we live in is indeed very accepting, and that behind the mask of the world's negativity lies something truly special.
Most of my older personal stuff is going to relate back to pokemon, so I've probably mentioned it somewhere else on this site. So here's something more recent. It was the fall of 2018, and I felt my entire social life was at risk. As I mentioned before, gaming was the only thing I understood how to talk with my peers about. Which meant that losing interest in gaming as a whole would have left me with nothing to talk about. It felt dangerously close. So many of my favourite series were undergoing drastic changes that I personally was not a fan of the direction. Pokemon was dropping all of its complexity for Let's Go, Zelda was taking the focus away from the dungeons in BotW, Mario had surprisingly little interesting platforming with the core movement in Odyssey, Smash was emphasizing big names over interesting bits of history and returning characters that bluntly I didn't mind staying cut. Even my main tabletop game at the time (Pathfinder 1e, if you're familiar with it) was going through an edition change that discarded what drew me to the system.
But there was still hope. An as-yet unreleased game in a long-running series that promised to keep to the classic style I had come to love, even if I had only been introduced to that style recently. That game was Megaman 11. Both the title theme and Fuse Man's theme (used in the reveal trailer) I associate with the idea that things can still look up as a result.
Now for a much weirder example stemming from the same context, albeit slightly later. If you were expecting anything in a science fantasy universe that someone would feel a personal connection with, it probably wouldn't be one of the eldritch abominations. But, here we are. Take the previous story, and fast forward to summer of the next year. My confidence is shaken even harder due to my main series of Pokemon going even deeper into problem territory (Dexit was 'announced' on my graduation day...) so I'm searching around for new games with a slight amount of desperation. I blame the changes to my main tabletop RPG on them being too interested in progressing a story over making a game, so I decide to take a look at tabletop wargames under the logic that they're not designed to have a story come up at all during gameplay. I happened to find Warhammer. While still actively averse to going deep into the story, I still decided to go and read the TvTropes article out of curiosity. Here's what I found:
Making crazy plans was the reason I played pokemon. It was the reason I played Pathfinder. It was the reason I play the board games I do, and the reason why my family that plays those board games with me is aware that leaving me to my own devices is less likely to actually result in me winning than forcing me to engage with a state where I have nothing to think about except winning. It was the reason why I rejected a moving story and went to a game whose tagline was 'Only War' in the first place. I understood that description of one of the setting's unknowable gods of Chaos all too well. I still didn't want to interact with character motivations, but this didn't feel like one. It felt like a player motivation, one that I had as well.
I'd be surprised if you haven't; Smogon is a Pokémon oriented community, after all. I actually find myself in the situation you were in back in 2018 in the present day, here in 2021 going into the new year. The great thing about people like us is that I'd like to think we can connect more easily than our usual attempts at social behavior, wouldn't you say? The way things are playing out for me right now is that I'm a sophomore in college and, while I'm doing all I can to convince myself the world is a good place, I have also convinced myself that one of my last remaining hobbies after high school band and junior high soccer is on the brink of extinction. I just can't get myself to detach from my usual list of comfort games like Mario Kart or in Smogon's case, Pokémon. Branching out into other genres has always been monstrously difficult for me, as I'm sure it's been for you too. Newer games having their list of problems like annoying updates and rushed content doesn't help matters either. Based on your post, I'd be willing to guess that the Breath of the Wild sequel has been on your mind for quite some time, right up there with other games you've mentioned in your posts like the tabletop RPGs. In that case, do you mind if I ask you a question? Have you ever noticed any patterns with the games you do enjoy? Genres, art style, music, gameplay, anything.
There's countless numbers of these things from games, that I can think of:
Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask , the entrance to the clock tower, was extremely moving to me to this day, and it's hard to say why exactly. The obvious thing is the music, with the theme being an alternative version of the "Song of Healing" , from later in the game. To me though, it wasn't as simple as "healing", because at that point in the game Link lost something, namely his humanity. At that point playing it, I was at a point in my life where the loss I felt was of innocence. Just seeing just how massive and hulking and apathetic the whole world was and feeling overwhelmed by it. You can go back there, and hear the music any time, but what I got out of it was the words of the Happy Mask Salesman, "Believe in yourself, believe in your strengths." Trust me, I came back to that shit a few times, no cap.
Another moment is from Dark Souls, just being in Firelink Shrine, but especially because it was at the beginning of the game. The music fits for the start of a challenging, but inherently uncertain journey. That's exactly what it was for me, as I tried to play it with as little outside assistance as possible, and I'm not particularly good at that sort of game. But again, it's the fit with where I was in my life that made that Firelink Shrine piece stick out to me. I had finished my education, but in a way had failed to achieve my goals, and my future was every bit as uncertain and potentially tortuous as the beginning of that game for a noob like me. Just for me, as I could find a bit of solace in the moments I spent in that game world, the respite the Firelink Shrine provided in game was what made repetitive failure bearable.
I think it is key that an artist generating atmosphere is a big part of what makes these things memorable, and although there are some methods to this, there is also an element of luck. Things sometimes need to come together in a particular way for yourself as an individual, for you to get that "kick", which brings you back to a place, and solidifies the emotional connection for a particular work.
Hehe. While we're on the subject of dungeon games... yeah, I'm not the most equipped to either Zelda or Dark Souls, but I figured this would let me add on to my initial response to your post. I think what touches you the most out of games like there are the artists' ability to create an environment that's rewarding, challenging, and comforting all at the same time. Atmospheric touches from a game's OST or its setting can go a long way to help a person feel at ease, and provide a person like yourself with that kind of mental outlet that you may not have had otherwise. That's the beauty of things like that fire shrine of yours.
Again, I've barely ever played Dark Souls. I played one time and didn't know how to equip a freaking shield. But we don't talk about that. To someone else, that shrine might just be some boring earlygame checkpoint that you visit one or two times and never come back. But for you, something about the shrine reminded you of your past, and that in turn reminds you of how far you've come since that part of your life. Or what about the beautiful setting of Majora's Mask, a game known for being a mix of horrifying and beautiful? I'm sure that salesman's words were able to help you, right alongside a song that quite literally implies healing.
Hopefully I've managed to cover what I wanted to say originally. Failure in the past can be very difficult to come back from, but through even the most obscure means, we can all be healed, and continue on to heal others and make the world a better place. I do not see a person like yourself suffering in failure for much longer, if at all. Any failure you may face is only there to remind you of the happiness you'll feel later in life. Remember, it's all about the journey, not the destination. And even if you have to stop by that clock tower or that shrine a few times each to compose yourself, we all know that deep down, you are primed for success, and that great things are in store for your life. I don't know exactly what your goals are, but there's little doubt in my mind that you have the skill set to reach them. Just think of your life like one of these dungeons: full of challenges, but incredibly satisfying to complete. :D
