Twin Peaks becomes Silent Hill, when he lets himself be wrapped in the fog. But also Thimbleweed Park when the horror is not taking over but the outrè of the characters who live in these American provinces separated for 27 years and little else.
The stylistic figure of the real adults is to change our vocabulary. After Shakespeare the doubt will inevitably be huge. A piece where the fourth wall comes less is Pirandellian. It is inevitable, because when someone or something thus enters arrogance in our imagination ends up influencing it. Clones and covers are born, derivative works and quotes.
And it was inevitable that the same thing happened with David Lynch, and that “Lynchiano” would also become a term for Oxford Dictionary.
Nominally David Lynch and video games met only in that “Third Place” between the reality and the dreamlike that Sony’s marketing represented as PlayStation 2. But the stylistic figure of the real greats is to change our vocabulary. And inevitably Lynch has ended up conditioning that of those who make video games.
THE FOUNDATION
The image of Lynch in our heads is so strong that it is often very little to evoke it. With Control Remedy rather than from Eraserhead’s mind he draws on the atmospheres of The X-Files, but pushing us to look for the truth within the Oldest House rather than “the outside”. “Life confuses us, he confuses me, many times. In life there are not always the right answers at hand. I feel that in art not everything must have necessarily explained to you, until it is well done. ” A certain influence Lynchiana is there, Sam Lake does not hide it in the same interview from which these words are taken. But above all it concerns the director’s attitude to not consider having to explain the intentions behind the images, to use them to convey a concept or an emotion even at the cost that the logical sense is affected. The intertwining in its form is more important than the fabula in its substance, history becomes almost an accessory. The “Third Place” where Lake makes love with David Lynch more brazenly is Alan Wake. The second chapter in particular does very little to hide it since its embryonic phases. Even before having a title, his code name was “Big Fish”, recalling the title of the director’s autobiography, “Catching the Big Fish”. Oh my God, “Autobiography”. Perhaps it is more a treatise on meditation and ideas, on the need to descend into deeper waters if and when you feel the need to hunt the biggest ones.
Imagine going to the office and be “forced” to watch Twin Peaks.
And from this point of view who knows how much Hideo Kojima was immersed before returning to the surface – a bit like Sam Porter Bridges does before resurrecting – with Death Stranding hanging on the smoker. It would seem a random logical leap, a lynciata inside a piece dedicated to other Lynciate, but fortunately Kojma is the polar opposite of Lynch and where Mulholland Drive’s dad explains nothing of Metal Gear needs to do it in a didactic way.
But what does Kojima have to do with it? Well, sit down …
Precisely for this reason of Hideo we know life, death and miracles, including the anecdote for which he kept so much that everyone in Kojima Production knew Lynch’s work to project the first episode of the third season of Twin Peaks in the office, giving hats with the company logo to the participants. Just in that third place for which Sony had called David behind Hideo camera published one of his most surreal experiences. Perhaps his only job where as in Lynch the narration goes into the background, it is more important to capture a mood, transmit to those in front of the screen the existential restlessness of Raiden. Raiden who feels he no longer having a place in the world. Raiden who is experiencing a simulation that at some point begins to collapse revealing himself such. Raiden who in the end is forced to wake up from this dream to discover that reality is even less logical.
LYNCH’S AWAKENING
Link wakes up on a beach, twenty thousand alloys away from Hyrule. Or from any other classic element of The Legend of Zelda, because in Link’s Awakening they do neither the princess, nor triforza and not even Ganon. Koholint is an 8-bit approximation of that Twin Peaks that has recently stopped aired, for the same admission of Takashi Tezuka. Tezuka wants a different Zelda, more dreamlike and traits surreal, so much so that during the development the team (which is basically the same team of A Link to the Past, one of the most Zelda in the whole series) often has the impression of stars developing a parody of the series rather than a new chapter. And Link’s Awakening returns a grotesque feeling even once the cartridge in the Game Boy or Switch is inserted. It is almost as if we were playing a dream, the same that link in the game fiction is experiencing, and the presence of characters who should not be there like categnacci and plants Piranha creates this dissonant yet likely mood that we experience during the Rem phase.
Chiara quote to Super Mario 64
Something from Link’s Awakening will also remain awake once. Even in the following chapters, the size of the small village on the lines of the island of Koholint will claim its space, giving space to suspicious or in any case absurd characters. It is only a distant echo of what is the most experimental chapter of the series to date, so far that we would hardly be able to connect the Calbarico village of Breath of the Wild to Lynch. It is a bit as if this ascendant ended up diligent over time, and after all it is in fact like this: Link’s Awakening is from 1993, and probably at the time it was also easier to evade the control of the Nintendo Executive by inserting the characters like Mario with an extravagant characters or Kirby in a game not them. Mario Kart took 8 chapters before having the same courage.
THE DAVID PARABLE
An experimental Zelda. The lineup of undoubtedly creative software house, but hardly kissed by the general public. The less appreciated Metal Gear Solid of the exalogy – because it also counts Peace Walker. Lynch’s shadow lights up where you take risks. It is not stuff for those triple-a that we call that because as conceived to be a safe investment, borrowing the label from Piazza Affari. It is material for unscrupulous, and therefore it is natural that you find its size in indie. The Stanley Parable is absolutely large fish, Stanley’s office will be a liminal space for those who have faced the labyrinth of the control ashtray (it would be more right to say otherwise, but again, weave beat Fabula).
The “Lynchian spectrum” in video games ranges from Gilbert to … SUDA51?!
Ron Gilbert’s Thimbleweed Park is in all respects another Reduction in Pixel of Twin Peaks. It could be objected that the tip-and-clussles adventures in La Lucas Art have always played with the absurd and grotesque, but in the specific case of Thimbleweed the influence becomes more concrete since the setting and it is Gilbert himself who talks about it openly before the game launch. “What we wanted to do with Thimbleweed Park was to have this small and quiet city on the surface, but below there are a lot of strange people and bizarre things.” Lynch cannot be done without breathing in Lorelei and the laser Eyes, and not surprisingly all the various videogame comparisons that are associated with the title fall within the Lynchian spectrum, including parallels with Suda51 – which is usually more traced back to Tarantino , probably because in the collective memory its most recall title is still no More Heroes.
Who has never talked to a slice of pizza late at night?
Or perhaps because as in the case of control in the end because the autofire walk with us, as in the prequel of Twin Peaks, very little is enough. An imprint so strong that we just need to glimpse the sign left by a finger on a mirror to think of her, even when rationality would like to bring that sign back to other bodies.
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