LOST WORLDS OF ANDROMEDA
The paper offers a reading of Mass Effect: Andromeda (BioWare, 2017) vis-à-vis lost world romance (also dubbed “lost race romance”, or “imperial romance”), a late-Victorian era novelistic genre originating from H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines and serving as a major tool for British Empire...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Wydawnictwa AGH
2021-06-01
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| Series: | Studia Humanistyczne AGH |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.bg.agh.edu.pl/STUDIA/2021.20.2/human.2021.20.2.23.pdf |
| Summary: | The paper offers a reading of Mass Effect: Andromeda (BioWare, 2017) vis-à-vis lost world romance (also dubbed
“lost race romance”, or “imperial romance”), a late-Victorian era novelistic genre originating from H. Rider
Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines and serving as a major tool for British Empire propaganda and a source of
early science-fiction conventions. We claim that the narrative failure of this ill-received game stems from its
adherence to the rigid principles and forceful themes of the genre and the colonial and imperial imaginary
informing it. Our analysis aims at highlighting the way 19th-century novelistic convention can be remediated
as contemporary digital games, and to expose the link between the imperial imaginary and the ways in which
open-world digital games are structured, on both the narrative and gameplay levels, even when they do not
directly refer to the historical colonial legacy. |
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| ISSN: | 2084-3364 2084-3364 |