{"id":84,"date":"2021-11-27T11:34:34","date_gmt":"2021-11-27T11:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/?p=84"},"modified":"2022-02-01T08:46:08","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T08:46:08","slug":"the-future-at-the-end-of-the-line-the-nostalgia-of-syberia-and-the-last-express","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/nostalgia\/the-future-at-the-end-of-the-line-the-nostalgia-of-syberia-and-the-last-express\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future at the End of the Line: The Nostalgia of Syberia and The Last Express"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":363,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nostalgia","tag-stefan-ionescu-ambrosie"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v18.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/nostalgia\/the-future-at-the-end-of-the-line-the-nostalgia-of-syberia-and-the-last-express\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Future at the End of the Line: The Nostalgia of Syberia and The Last Express - Kajet presents: The Future of\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/nostalgia\/the-future-at-the-end-of-the-line-the-nostalgia-of-syberia-and-the-last-express\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Kajet presents: The Future of\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-11-27T11:34:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-02-01T08:46:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/IMAGE2.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"3580\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"2700\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"kd_Admin\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/\",\"name\":\"Kajet presents: The Future of\",\"description\":\"The Future Of ... 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All I see are static snowglobes of pure memory, like winter in Moldavia, abandoned factories, and the stately and decrepit manor houses that punctuate the landscape. They have the flatness of a GIF, just an infinite loop that gets more uncanny with each revisitation. Beyond that, a void.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">I wasn\u2019t alone in this. Other people\u2019s memories of these places were just as flat, and eerily disconnected from what we might think of as history with a capital H. Folks couldn\u2019t string together a coherent narrative that explained away the decay. All I knew was that my hometown and its environs seemed like relics of a lost world before I was even born. I did not experience the Fall, only its stale afterparty, and the urge to recover those memories that I saw as my birthright would haunt me well into adulthood.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">In those halcyon days, video games acted as a stopgap. Knowledge of what it took for everything to turn to ruin came only later, but the inchoate notions I had formed as a kid glued to his PC were what informed the daydreams about the outside world. Reading up on my country\u2019s history and its economic upheavals dispelled the mist and sobered me up, albeit to the detriment of my imagination. Since then, virtual spaces like City 17<sup>2<\/sup><\/span><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> started hitting a bit too close to home with its bleak representation of a post-socialist landscape.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Most of the games I played also reflected a preoccupation with lost worlds. This was the adventure game boom of the 1990s and early aughts, capitalising on a still-fresh influence from the Indiana Jones franchise. That or Agatha Christie\u2019s quaint world of murder and mystery. My computer back then couldn\u2019t support the latest games, so all I could do was indulge in a <\/span><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">pass\u00e9<\/span><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> genre that had more in common with nineteenth-century novels than its peers. From the comfort of my Soviet-style apartment block, with the screen as my crystal ball, I took the plunge and by chance stumbled upon something extraordinary.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">I was twelve or perhaps thirteen when my friend at the time gave me one of those freebie CD-ROMs that LEVEL<sup>3<\/sup><\/span><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> used to give out every now and then. He told me that this game had made him cry, a curious statement that I had never heard before. I can still see the design on the CD: a couple of heads looking wistfully in the distance with a steampunk-looking train as their backdrop. I popped it inside my laptop and was instantly greeted by a menu replicating the CD cover and playing music somewhere between Debussy and Shostakovich. <\/span><\/p>\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 2,\r\n      \"col\": 2,\r\n      \"colspan\": 8,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 2,\r\n      \"relid\": 4,\r\n      \"frameOverflow\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"text\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"<p class=\\\"_Source\\\">1 <span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Gaston Bachelard, <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The Poetics of Space<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> (London: Penguin Books, 2014), 31.<br \/><\/span>2 <span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Dystopian city in Valve\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Half Life 2<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">.<br \/>3 Gaming magazine sold in Romania between 1997 and 2013. Originally from the Czech Republic.<\/span><\/p>\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 3,\r\n      \"col\": 2,\r\n      \"colspan\": 8,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 2,\r\n      \"relid\": 6,\r\n      \"frameOverflow\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"img\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barbatumbrela.png\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 4,\r\n      \"col\": 1,\r\n      \"colspan\": 4,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 1,\r\n      \"relid\": 3905,\r\n      \"attid\": 359,\r\n      \"sizes\": {\r\n        \"full\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barbatumbrela.png\",\r\n        \"_1024\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barbatumbrela-1024x1374.png\",\r\n        \"_768\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barbatumbrela-768x1031.png\",\r\n        \"_512\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barbatumbrela-512x687.png\",\r\n        \"_265\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barbatumbrela-265x356.png\"\r\n      },\r\n      \"w\": 1231,\r\n      \"h\": 1652,\r\n      \"ar\": 1.3419983753046303,\r\n      \"alt\": \"\",\r\n      \"frameOverflow\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"img\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/femeieumbrela.png\",\r\n      \"align\": \"middle\",\r\n      \"row\": 4,\r\n      \"col\": 7,\r\n      \"colspan\": 4,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 2,\r\n      \"relid\": 1600,\r\n      \"attid\": 361,\r\n      \"sizes\": {\r\n        \"full\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/femeieumbrela.png\",\r\n        \"_1920\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/femeieumbrela-1920x1665.png\",\r\n        \"_1280\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/femeieumbrela-1280x1110.png\",\r\n        \"_1024\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/femeieumbrela-1024x888.png\",\r\n        \"_768\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/femeieumbrela-768x666.png\",\r\n        \"_512\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/femeieumbrela-512x444.png\",\r\n        \"_265\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/femeieumbrela-265x230.png\"\r\n      },\r\n      \"w\": 2333,\r\n      \"h\": 2023,\r\n      \"ar\": 0.8671238748392628,\r\n      \"alt\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"text\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"<p class=\\\"_DefaultQ\\\"><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Syberia<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> was unlike any other adventure game I had played. There was nothing wacky or funny about this adventure; the first-ever cutscene was a funeral march. The game\u2019s protagonist, an American lawyer aptly named Kate Walker, shows up to search for the deceased\u2019s long-lost brother and initiate a corporate takeover of their estate, a toy factory in a fictional French village. The brother, Hans, is now an old man hidden away in a spa resort and obsessed with woolly mammoths ever since a childhood incident in a cave strewn with rock paintings. This incident stunted his mental development and sparked a life-long dream of finding the last remaining mammoths. Kate Walker, despite being in the throes of a crumbling marriage and beholden to the legal obligations that brought her there in the first place, decides to embark on a mysterious train journey with Hans to the end of the line: the lost world of Syberia, home of the last woolly mammoths.<\/span><\/p><p class=\\\"_DefaultQ\\\"><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The story shouldn\u2019t have worked as well as it did. Part of its emotional appeal for me was the journey and the way it progressed. As Hans\u2019 beautifully-crafted wind-up train made its way east to its prelapsarian destination, time itself seemed to cave in. With each pit stop, the architecture slowly morphed from Art Nouveau to something more primaeval, as though modernism\u2019s flirtation with \u2018primitive\u2019 art was reaching its logical consummation. The last stop before the formless landscape of the mammoths appeared to be a Siberian Yupik village, where Kate Walker watches as Hans undergoes the final preparations needed in order to commune with these creatures of myth.<\/span><\/p><p class=\\\"_DefaultQ\\\"><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The ending did make me tear up. It was the first time that had ever happened to me with a video game. Days and even weeks later I would think back to the train ride and the cosy feeling of escorting an old man to his dying wish. In real life too, trains somehow enhance reverie. Inside, as Michel de Certeau put it, \u201cthere is the immobility of an order. Here rest and dreams reign supreme.\u201d<sup>4<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 5,\r\n      \"col\": 2,\r\n      \"colspan\": 8,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 2,\r\n      \"relid\": 7,\r\n      \"frameOverflow\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"text\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"<p class=\\\"_Source\\\">4 <span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Michel De Certeau, <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The Practice of Everyday Life<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), 111.<\/span><\/p>\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 6,\r\n      \"col\": 7,\r\n      \"colspan\": 3,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 7,\r\n      \"relid\": 9,\r\n      \"frameOverflow\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"img\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/tren.png\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 7,\r\n      \"col\": 3,\r\n      \"colspan\": 6,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 3,\r\n      \"relid\": 3673,\r\n      \"attid\": 365,\r\n      \"sizes\": {\r\n        \"full\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/tren.png\",\r\n        \"_2560\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/tren-2560x1655.png\",\r\n        \"_1920\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/tren-1920x1241.png\",\r\n        \"_1280\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/tren-1280x828.png\",\r\n        \"_1024\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/tren-1024x662.png\",\r\n        \"_768\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/tren-768x497.png\",\r\n        \"_512\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/tren-512x331.png\",\r\n        \"_265\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/tren-265x171.png\"\r\n      },\r\n      \"w\": 2611,\r\n      \"h\": 1688,\r\n      \"ar\": 0.6464955955572578,\r\n      \"alt\": \"\",\r\n      \"frameOverflow\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"text\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"<p class=\\\"_DefaultQ\\\"><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">A train is also a heterotopia, essentially a deviation from the normal paradigm outside, exempt from its rules, and in it Kate Walker, the wayfaring stranger in a strange land, acts as the quintessential outsider whose unprejudiced gaze allows us to see this world anew even while it decays before our eyes. The non-specific places she visits have \u201csomething of the uncertain charm of the waste lands, the yards and building sites, the station platforms and waiting rooms where travellers break step, of all the chance meeting places where fugitive feelings occur of the possibility of continuing adventure, the feeling that all there is to do is to \u2018see what happens.\u2019\u201d<sup>5<\/sup><\/span><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> Swept away as if compelled by what lies at the end of the line, Kate Walker gets to experience an East whose uncertain charm is the stuff of burning nostalgia.<\/span><\/p>\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 8,\r\n      \"col\": 2,\r\n      \"colspan\": 8,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 2,\r\n      \"relid\": 8,\r\n      \"frameOverflow\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"text\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"<p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Many years later, I would come upon a travel log detailing a different kind of voyage to the East, one undertaken more than a century ago and more out of scientific curiosity than phenomenological daydreaming. English explorer Harry de Windt charted a course through the Balkans and then north towards Ukraine and European Russia in order to experience \u2018savage Europe\u2019 and write the travelogue bearing the same name. In Bucharest, de Windt remarked that \u201cthe first things that strike a stranger here are the brightness and gaiety of the streets and lavish display of wealth, not only in the daily life of the people but in public and private buildings, hotels, and shops,\u201d as well as the startling notion that one \u201cwill have to pay Monte Carlo prices for everything\u2026 be it a<\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> rivi\u00e8re<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> of diamonds or a mutton chop\u201d in what is \u201ccertainly the most immoral city in the world.\u201d Here, contrary to Saint Petersburg where \u201cMidas squanders his millions within four walls,\u201d the ostentatious living is out in the open, practically in one\u2019s face.<sup>6<\/sup><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Reading these kinds of outsider perspectives can render the familiar alien; it takes you out of the everyday reckoning with your surroundings. Easy nostalgia is then complicated by a legacy not readily apparent, particularly when the usual romanticising of said era<sup>7<\/sup><\/span><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> does not include visions of libertinism and wanton expenditure reminiscent of the Weimar Republic. Australian writer Gerald Murnane even observed that \u201cthe people of pre-war Romania were credited with a fondness for sexual perversions.\u201d<sup>8<\/sup><\/span><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> As wary as I am of any exotic othering coming from a Western gaze, I remain convinced that the ruins of home are physically, even erotically, charged with past revelry and merry-making. A party must have once raged here with the intensity of a thousand suns before the eventual dying of the light. And perhaps the soot is our only witness.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">This obsession with bygone worlds that spell danger and glamour is something that, at first glance, might appear diametrically opposed to the softer nostalgia of <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Syberia<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">, and yet it features much of the same elements. There is almost always a foreigner flung far from the comfort zone of the West into an incomprehensible world of Eastern arcana and backwater modernism, whose main task becomes making sense of the strangeness all around them. But whereas <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Syberia<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">\u2019s quasi-fictional universe had already experienced a Fall, and Kate Walker is simply there to see it go out with a whimper, I remember another game from my teenage years where the world does go out with a bang. Jordan Mechner\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The Last Express<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> presented me with a different American pilgrim on a foolhardy journey onboard a train, a passage as infuriating and nail-biting as <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Syberia<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">\u2019s was sweet and melancholy.<\/span><\/p>\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 9,\r\n      \"col\": 2,\r\n      \"colspan\": 8,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 2,\r\n      \"relid\": 10,\r\n      \"frameOverflow\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"text\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"<p class=\\\"_Source\\\">5 <span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Marc Aug\u00e9, <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> (London: Verso Books, 1997), 3.<br \/>6 <\/span><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Harry De Windt, <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Through Savage Europe <\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">(London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907), 248-251.<\/span><\/p>\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 10,\r\n      \"col\": 1,\r\n      \"colspan\": 4,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 1,\r\n      \"relid\": 11\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"text\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"<p class=\\\"_Source\\\"><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">7 Courtesy of the Romanian conservative right.<br \/><\/span><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">8 Gerald Murnane, <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Stream System<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> (New York: Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux, 2018), 113.<\/span><\/p>\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 10,\r\n      \"col\": 5,\r\n      \"colspan\": 4,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 0,\r\n      \"relid\": 12\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"img\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Untitled-1.png\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 11,\r\n      \"col\": 0,\r\n      \"colspan\": 12,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 0,\r\n      \"relid\": 2064,\r\n      \"attid\": 366,\r\n      \"sizes\": {\r\n        \"full\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Untitled-1.png\",\r\n        \"_2560\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Untitled-1-2560x1877.png\",\r\n        \"_1920\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Untitled-1-1920x1408.png\",\r\n        \"_1280\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Untitled-1-1280x938.png\",\r\n        \"_1024\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Untitled-1-1024x751.png\",\r\n        \"_768\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Untitled-1-768x563.png\",\r\n        \"_512\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Untitled-1-512x375.png\",\r\n        \"_265\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Untitled-1-265x194.png\"\r\n      },\r\n      \"w\": 2698,\r\n      \"h\": 1978,\r\n      \"ar\": 0.7331356560415122,\r\n      \"alt\": \"\",\r\n      \"frameOverflow\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"img\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barbat.png\",\r\n      \"align\": \"middle\",\r\n      \"row\": 12,\r\n      \"col\": 0,\r\n      \"colspan\": 2,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 0,\r\n      \"relid\": 3218,\r\n      \"attid\": 358,\r\n      \"sizes\": {\r\n        \"full\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barbat.png\",\r\n        \"_2560\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barbat-2560x1877.png\",\r\n        \"_1920\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barbat-1920x1408.png\",\r\n        \"_1280\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barbat-1280x938.png\",\r\n        \"_1024\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barbat-1024x751.png\",\r\n        \"_768\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barbat-768x563.png\",\r\n        \"_512\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barbat-512x375.png\",\r\n        \"_265\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barbat-265x194.png\"\r\n      },\r\n      \"w\": 2698,\r\n      \"h\": 1978,\r\n      \"ar\": 0.7331356560415122,\r\n      \"alt\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"text\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"<p class=\\\"_DefaultQ\\\"><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The story in <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The Last Express<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> takes place solely inside the eponymous train, its murder mystery getting more and more dangerous as it progresses through the Balkans. Robert Cath is investigating the murder of his friend Tyler Whitney onboard the mythical Orient Express in the last few days before the start of the Great War. The inevitable tensions inside the train are compounded by the diversity of its passengers, a veritable microcosm of pre-WWI Europe, from the German industrialist with a keen eye for profit and the changing tides, to the conflicted Russian anarchist plotting to murder an aristocratic countryman while still being in love with the old man\u2019s daughter. There is even a neutral \u2018faction\u2019 in the game: a French bourgeois family. Pre-war Europe is all aboard and heading towards certain destruction, though only for a while, their world seems unchanged in its banality.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p class=\\\"_DefaultQ\\\"><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Here the train metaphor is particularly effective, albeit a tired one. It was to be the main theme behind Bong Joon-ho\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Snowpiercer<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> (2013) and even there the message felt heavy-handed: humanity is all in this together, we are on one track but in many different compartments. The movie\u2019s simplicity doesn\u2019t detract from the fact that we actually <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">are<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> in this together. Like a train, history can spiral out of control and bring on the dissolution of an old order, bringing to mind Virginia Woolf\u2019s verdict that \u201con or about December 1910 human nature changed... All human relations shifted: those between masters and servants, husbands and wives, parents and children. And when human relations change there is at the same time a change in religion, conduct, politics, and literature.\u201d<sup>9<\/sup><\/span><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> As a great event is about to unfold that would lead to the rest of the 20th century, a \u2018lost generation\u2019 is born: Americans like Robert Cath or Kate Walker, adrift among the seemingly timeless hierarchies of the Old World.<\/span><\/p><p class=\\\"_DefaultQ\\\"><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">In the game, however, time does not stand still. Reflecting the creator\u2019s obsession with time-manipulation (Jordan Mechner was also the brains behind <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Prince of Persia: Sands of Time<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">), <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The Last Express<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">\u2019 clock is always running in the background, giving a real sense of urgency to the events in the game. An encounter missed at 4 o\u2019clock sharp is lost forever. A crucial conversation might be happening in a different compartment but you\u2019d never know it. The feeling of being roped into circumstances beyond your control, something which the train metaphor neatly encapsulates as the game rushes to its literally explosive finale, is a low-level panic necessary to make yourself useful at the right place, at the right time. Soon enough, you will learn how to have time on your side, even when History gets derailed.<\/span><\/p>\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 12,\r\n      \"col\": 2,\r\n      \"colspan\": 8,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 0,\r\n      \"relid\": 156,\r\n      \"frameOverflow\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"text\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"<p class=\\\"_Source\\\">9 <span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Virginia Woolf, <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Collected Essays<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">: <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Volume 1 <\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">(London: Hogarth Press, 1966), 321.<\/span><\/p>\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 13,\r\n      \"col\": 6,\r\n      \"colspan\": 2,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 6,\r\n      \"relid\": 13\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"img\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/IMAGE-5-1.png\",\r\n      \"align\": \"middle\",\r\n      \"row\": 14,\r\n      \"col\": 0,\r\n      \"colspan\": 12,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 0,\r\n      \"relid\": 2296,\r\n      \"attid\": 362,\r\n      \"sizes\": {\r\n        \"full\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/IMAGE-5-1.png\",\r\n        \"_2560\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/IMAGE-5-1-2560x1902.png\",\r\n        \"_1920\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/IMAGE-5-1-1920x1426.png\",\r\n        \"_1280\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/IMAGE-5-1-1280x951.png\",\r\n        \"_1024\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/IMAGE-5-1-1024x761.png\",\r\n        \"_768\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/IMAGE-5-1-768x570.png\",\r\n        \"_512\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/IMAGE-5-1-512x380.png\",\r\n        \"_265\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/IMAGE-5-1-265x197.png\"\r\n      },\r\n      \"w\": 2683,\r\n      \"h\": 1993,\r\n      \"ar\": 0.7428251956764815,\r\n      \"alt\": \"\",\r\n      \"frameOverflow\": \"right\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"text\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"<p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Like<\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> Syberia<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">, the idea of inevitable progress is reflected in <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The Last Express<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">\u2019 allusions to Modernism. Through rotoscoping with a limited colour spectrum, the game\u2019s style comes to resemble a Toulouse Lautrec poster, an important forerunner of Modernism in art. The decision to slow down the frame rate to one every few seconds cements this painterly effect, and yet, tellingly, everything speeds up when something exciting is about to happen. This mix of stillness and fluid motion in a way pays homage to the world of dreams and memory that I had built up as a child. The mind\u2019s eye is never just a movie, and thus reminiscing feels more like a painting than a film-reel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Modernism\u2019s injunction, to <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">make it new<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">, is sure to elicit nostalgia in a world where <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">everything solid melts into air<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">. In my head the achievements of modernism were great because they were never self-reflexive; they reached out, at times overreached, but always felt genuine. Ultimately, in a paradoxical way, this desire to break with tradition became its own tradition;<sup>10<\/sup><\/span><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> the new became a past for us to contemplate. I realise now that it was a nostalgia for a metanarrative that I felt, an overarching storyline capable of propelling the human spirit to exciting new climes, however much it chafed with received wisdom (i.e., the complicated legacy of that most notorious of metanarratives, Marxism, in Romanian society). <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Syberia<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> and <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The Last Express<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> came at the right time for a personal reassessment of the frosty psychogeography of Moldavia, where more than any other place I have sensed, like W. G. Sebald, that \u201cthe iniquity of oblivion blindly scatters her poppyseed and when wretchedness falls upon us one summer's day like snow, all we wish for is to be forgotten.\u201d<sup>11<\/sup><\/span><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> But there is a sense in which the wastelands of<\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> Syberia<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> and the soon-to-be-wastelands in <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The Last Express<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> do not necessarily elicit despair at the state of the world; personally, they presented me with hope with their notion that there could ever have even <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">been<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> a Golden Age. It is these two games\u2019 biggest challenge to entropy.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The notion of a Golden Age need not be rife with retrograde connotations. It is not a kind of restorative nostalgia that <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Syberia<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> or <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The Last Express<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> evoke, which, according to Svetlana Boym, is the kind of<\/span><\/p>\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 15,\r\n      \"col\": 2,\r\n      \"colspan\": 8,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 2,\r\n      \"relid\": 162,\r\n      \"frameOverflow\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"img\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/fata.png\",\r\n      \"align\": \"middle\",\r\n      \"row\": 15,\r\n      \"col\": 10,\r\n      \"colspan\": 2,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 0,\r\n      \"relid\": 2528,\r\n      \"attid\": 360,\r\n      \"sizes\": {\r\n        \"full\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/fata.png\",\r\n        \"_2560\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/fata-2560x1902.png\",\r\n        \"_1920\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/fata-1920x1426.png\",\r\n        \"_1280\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/fata-1280x951.png\",\r\n        \"_1024\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/fata-1024x761.png\",\r\n        \"_768\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/fata-768x570.png\",\r\n        \"_512\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/fata-512x380.png\",\r\n        \"_265\": \"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/fata-265x197.png\"\r\n      },\r\n      \"w\": 2683,\r\n      \"h\": 1993,\r\n      \"ar\": 0.7428251956764815,\r\n      \"alt\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"text\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"<p class=\\\"_DefaultQ\\\"><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">megalomaniacal imagination that recreates the past as a time of mythical giants. It does not propel historical reflection or individual longing but rather shapes a totalising nostalgia for eternal grandeur. Megalomania often covers up sites of destruction and calls for rebirth, not reconstruction.<span><sup>12<\/sup><\/span><\/span><\/p>\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 16,\r\n      \"col\": 3,\r\n      \"colspan\": 6,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 3,\r\n      \"relid\": 163,\r\n      \"frameOverflow\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"text\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"<p class=\\\"_Source\\\"><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">10 Matei C\u0103linescu, <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Faces of Modernity<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> (Toronto, ON: Fitzhenry and Whiteside Limited, 1977), 67.<br \/><\/span><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">11 Winfried Georg Sebald, <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The Rings of Saturn<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> (Cambridge, MA: New Directions, 2016), 24.<\/span><br \/>12 <span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Svetlana Boym, <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The Future of Nostalgia<\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2016), 100.<\/span><\/p>\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 17,\r\n      \"col\": 7,\r\n      \"colspan\": 2,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 7,\r\n      \"relid\": 165\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"text\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"<p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Instead, beyond the obvious images of prosperity and leaps forward in the arts and sciences that such a term evokes, a Golden Age also presents itself, crucially, as a state of mind. It is present in each of us in incipient form in our daily lives, with names like salad days, halcyon days, red-letter days, etc. These moments are the sparks that come out of nowhere in our fluctuating emotional states, which cannot even be traced to personal victories we may claim. Because we are so atomised nowadays, we do not realise the extent to which happiness is actually collective, and not an individual affair as we have been taught through decades of neoliberal dogma.<sup>13<\/sup><\/span><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> Experiencing a Golden Age collectively: this was what my nostalgia was mainlining, though I could not put my finger on it until a global cataclysm knocked on my door and yours.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The ruins of Modernism, present both on my way to school and in the games I played, are not simply the reminder of \u2018good times\u2019 that were had, never to come again. The clich\u00e9 that one can feel nostalgia for times they didn\u2019t experience speaks volumes, since it is here that aesthetic contemplation can lead directly into ethics. The doomed spaces of my youth are practically seared into my retina, and impact the way I envision hope for a future we find hard to believe in anymore. Nostalgia for a metanarrative of boundless striving for the new can act as a catalyst; thinking ahead may hurt right now, but looking back to a less cynical era can fuel the kind of daydreaming that leads to action.<\/span><\/p>\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 18,\r\n      \"col\": 2,\r\n      \"colspan\": 8,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 2,\r\n      \"relid\": 164,\r\n      \"frameOverflow\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"text\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"<p class=\\\"_Source\\\">13 <span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">See Marcello Tar\u00ec\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">There is No Unhappy Revolution <\/span><\/i><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">(Brooklyn, NY: Common Notions, 2021).<\/span><\/p>\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 19,\r\n      \"col\": 2,\r\n      \"colspan\": 8,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 2,\r\n      \"relid\": 166,\r\n      \"frameOverflow\": \"\"\r\n    },\r\n    {\r\n      \"type\": \"text\",\r\n      \"cont\": \"<p class=\\\"_DefaultQ\\\"><strong>\u0218tefan Ionescu Ambrosie<\/strong><span>\u00a0was born in Bac\u0103u, Romania. He is a graduate of Rijksuniversiteit Groningen\u2019s MA in North American Studies. He lives in Barcelona.<\/span><\/p>\",\r\n      \"align\": \"top\",\r\n      \"row\": 20,\r\n      \"col\": 3,\r\n      \"colspan\": 6,\r\n      \"offsetx\": 0,\r\n      \"offsety\": 0,\r\n      \"spaceabove\": 0,\r\n      \"spacebelow\": 0,\r\n      \"yvel\": 1,\r\n      \"push\": 3,\r\n      \"relid\": 14,\r\n      \"frameOverflow\": \"\"\r\n    }\r\n  ]\r\n}","phonegrid":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kajetjournal.com\/thefutureof\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}