Video games and "cathedrals of fire": the eye-widening wonder of Sword of the Sea
Do you remember the first time you gazed upon Liurnia of the Lakes in Elden Ring? I do. That was when the titanic scale of FromSoftware’s magnum opus hit me: pools of glinting water stretched as far as the eye could see; mist curled around endless rock formations. Such was the sheer massiveness of the space, I felt as if I was being swallowed whole by it, experiencing a kind of horizontal vertigo. Momentarily, I felt the need to step back, to root myself in safe and familiar ground. But the pull of this virtual world was undeniable: it beckoned.
Impressive 3D vistas can evoke many feelings in us: a sense of the sublime; dread even. The writer Steven Poole identifies another emotion. “The jewel in the crown of what videogames offer is the aesthetic emotion of wonder,” he opined in his 2000 book, Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution. He was writing during the ascendancy of 3D games, the likes of Resident Evil and Tomb Raider presenting players with interlocking meshes of geometry – complex representations of space – to get lost in. “Such videogames at their best build awe-inspiring spaces from immaterial light,” Poole continued before unleashing an all-timer metaphor of games writing. “They are cathedrals of fire.”
Why is my mind on Poole’s 25-year-old book? Because “cathedral of fire” is precisely how I’d describe what I’m seeing in Sword of the Sea, the latest game from Matt Nava’s studio, Giant Squid. Nava, if you’re not aware, was the art director on Journey, that gem of a game whose sand dunes glinted with Gustav Klimt-esque flecks of gold. Having turned his focus to seascapes in Abzû and forests in The Pathless, Nava is back rendering deserts with virtuoso aplomb: great orange-burned landscapes whose particles shimmer and sparkle in the pristine sunshine. Only now the desert moves more vigorously, roiling like an ocean. And I’m gliding across it on a hoverboard, pulling grab tricks as I get air from each cresting sandy wave.
