In the world of high speed internet and technology, amongst the rush of day-to-day adult life, it’s hard to find time to fully relax- or rather, it’s hard to find time in our busy schedules to express our creativity or embrace our fantasies. It appears that our prime time to ponder what we want to create or dream up is when we were kids.
Photo by Adam Valstar on Unsplash
When I was a child, I spent hours every day playing on my Nintendo DS: fighting strange creatures in New Super Mario World, creating a community in Animal Crossing: Wild World, or exploring the beauty of Kingdom Hearts on my Playstation 2. In those moments I felt like I was as adventurous or daring as the main characters I’d play in those games. I felt alive, in every sense of the word.
However, I never really stopped playing video games and embracing that interest until I started college. This was when my time dedicated to those vibrant yet bleak worlds was diminished and lost amongst other hobbies of my childhood. I started to feel ordinary, or just like a typical young adult with dooming responsibilities lined up. Not that the video game playing was dictating my identity as a person, but I felt like my expressions of dreams or hopes were slowly slipping away from me.
So, I decided the summer after my sophomore year of college that I would fully re-immerse myself into a few video games I played when I was younger, along with new ones to see if there was a change. I delved back into the game Dishonored on Xbox 360, which is played in the perspective of Corvo Attano, the Lord Protector of Dunwall, who attempts to avenge his queen’s murder by means of assassin-like exploration and killer (literally) methods of destruction. I felt rejuvenated revisiting this classic game, reminding myself of the storyline I fell in love with. Meanwhile, I received Fallout 4 for Xbox One as a present from my mother. Side note: yes, I have both the Xbox One and Xbox 360- as horrible as that may seem, there’s an even more absurd amount of consoles my family owns since we’re such a video game-obsessed household.
Photo by Emma Camacho
I think Fallout 4 needs its own section of discussion in this article because it’s beyond the realms of any video game I’ve ever played. Fallout 4, is one of the best virtual experiences of pure imagination and perfection I have ever felt in my lifetime. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the franchise, or even video games in general, this series centers upon a common concept of a post-apocalyptic world along with the strange creatures and hierarchies that develop following a nuclear catastrophe. Each Fallout game takes on a different storyline, a different world with new characters and facets yet share the same post-apocalyptic background.
This addition to the series, however, is beautiful in its attention to graphical detail, starting from the very process of creating your character; you are able to change the skin tone to any shade you can think of, add unique scars or cuts on the character’s face, and specifically modify literally every little feature on your character to stretch or minimize. You start off as a vault dweller who is immediately rushed into gameplay following an intimate, horrific event. You eventually leave the vault to rediscover this broken, rugged, abandoned and unfamiliar Earth right above. This game has it all. It has ghouls, raider gangs lurking about, demonic worshipping humans, human robots called synths, life sized scorpions infested with radiation, super mutants, and of course, death claws. You can be whoever you want in this game, you can be lawful good (a D&D reference) and try not to kill if it’s unnecessary or be the abominable thief who evades any good deed. You can explore this enormous map and encounter thousands of missions and characters; the limits of this game are too far to even think about.
Another revival in my video game life has actually been incorporated into my relationship recently. My boyfriend and I, this past summer, began to enter into tournaments for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate together and spend weekends playing Minecraft. Our bond has grown even stronger because of this, despite the four years of dating we had before this newfound activity. Sharing a world with others is such a great feeling, too. When you play video games with your friends or family, the experience of creating together brings you closer, and offers a new level of companionship with whoever you play with.
Based on the extent of my explanation on Fallout 4 and my continuous commitment to video game time, the results were so clear; without video games in my life, I was bottling up my passion to create and explore, live outside the lines and, essentially, feel free. As a woman, sharing my love for video games isn’t easy considering it’s an underdeveloped and oppressed hobby for women. As an adult, it’s still difficult to designate time to settle down into a storyline. Playing video games isn’t just about passing the time or relaxing, it’s about expanding your imagination and subsiding the stress of the outside world by creating your own. Of course, there are times where video games shouldn’t be the only thing you turn to when you have serious problems going on in your life, but it’s a great stress reliever and a reminder of the sweet, child-like moments you can relive and reinvent for your adult self. Take my advice and try out a game or two, and allow yourself to really escape into that world like you would into a book or TV show. Be the one in control of your fantasies, for the sake of your inner child.