Cass Aleatory's Nonfiction Blog

This paper aims to offer an interpretative analysis of one of the storylines in Electronic Arts’ and Bioware’s hit MMORPG game, Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR). SWTOR’s Knights of The Fallen Empire storyline utilizes a combination of player choice and thematic elements concerning destiny, fate, and free will to offer a metacommentary on the mechanism and implications of choice in games. This is achieved in a number of different ways. First, characters with opposing beliefs on these issues discuss them in settings in which the player may weigh in. Then, certain characters with advanced awareness provide their thoughts. Finally, these characters indirectly discuss the unique relationship that player choice shares with the hardcoded version of destiny found in video game stories. SWTOR was first released in 2011 by Electronic Arts and Bioware. The game was developed primarily at Bioware’s studio in Austin, Texas, however, teams and individuals from other areas (such as Bioware’s stud...

This essay analyzes a late sequence in the original release of Fritz Lang’s  Metropolis . A Marxist analysis of this sequence reveals a surprising codependency between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, represented by Johann Fredersen and the workers respectively. Marx himself may not agree with this portrayal, but Althusser’s ideas concerning the lasting power and reproductive needs of a capitalist system bring the interclass relationships in  Metropolis  into focus.  This point in  Metropolis  finds us in the midst of the workers’ revolution. While the workers have been destroying the machines, Maria, Freder Fredersen, and one of Freder’s petit bourgeois allies have been saving their children. The sequence opens with a long shot of the children running up and embracing their three saviors. The main purpose of this shot is to show the compassion of Freder and Maria, as Lang is preparing Freder to assume the mantle of the mediator in a few short minutes. ...