This week on the Moving Pixels Podcast we look at the brilliantly animated, Norse, giant-slaying adventure, Jotun.
This is a game born of Norse mythology. Those stories are inscribed in the worlds you visit. It isn’t just a source for the developer to mine enemy types from, but a presentation of an ethos of that world view. As Nick notes in the podcast he was expecting for a long time for victory to mean Thora would be granted life once again. But that isn’t the Norse way of thinking, if you cannot live well, then it’s about dying well.
As a game, it is one you have to feel to understand. We can and do talk about the surrounding material, yet, all of that, in the end, connects to the feeling garnered when played. I felt it worked enough to put it on my top 10 games of 2015.
Stay and listen after the music. My ending quote spawned a small discussion about the game’s use of language and the representation of phonetics.
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“Sigra Jotunanna og sanna sjálfur að guðanna!” – Defeat the Jotun and prove yourself to the Gods!