Говорит Москва

Через день в «Известиях» появилась большая редакционная статья «Навстречу Дню открытых убийств». В ней очень мало говорилось о сути мероприятия, а повторялся обычный набор: «Растущее благосостояние — семимильными шагами — подлинный демократизм — только в нашей стране все помыслы — впервые в истории — зримые черты — буржуазная пресса… Еще сообщалось, что нельзя будет причинять ущерб народному достоянию, а потому запрещаются поджоги и взрывы. Кроме того, Указ не распространялся на заключенных. Ну, вот. Статью эту читали от корки до корки, никто по-прежнему ничего не понял, но все почему-то успокоились. Вероятно, самый стиль статьи — привычно-торжественный, буднично-высокопарный — внес успокоение. Ничего особенного: «День артиллерии», «День советской печати», «День открытых убийств»… Транспорт работает, милицию трогать не велено — значит порядок будет. Все вошло в свою колею.
Так прошло недели полторы. И вот началось нечто такое, что трудно даже определить словом. Какое-то беспокойство, брожение, какое-то странное состояние. Нет, не подобрать выражения! В общем, все как-то засуетились, забегали. В метро, в кино, на улицах появились люда, которые подходили к другим и заискивающе улыбаясь, начинали разговор о своих болезнях, о рыбной ловле, о качестве капроновых чулок — словом, о чем угодно. И если их не обрывали сразу и выслушивали, они долго жали собеседнику руку, благодарно и проникновенно глядя в глаза. А другие — особенно молодежь — стали крикливыми, нахальными, всяк выпендривался на свой лад; больше обычного пели на улицах и орали стихи, преимущественно Есенина. Да, кстати насчет стихов. «Литература и жизнь» дала подборку стихотворений о предстоящем событии — Безыменского, Михалкова, Софронова и других. Сейчас, к сожалению, я не смог достать этот номер, сколько не пытался, но кусок из софроновского стихотворения помню наизусть:

Гудели станки Ростсельмаша,
Фабричные пели гудки,
Великая партия наша
Троцкистов брала за грудки.
Мне было в ту пору семнадцать,
От зрелости был я далек,
Я в людях не мог разобраться,
Удар соразмерить не мог.
И, может, я пел тогда громче,
Но не был спокоен и смел:
Того, пожалев, не прикончил,
Другого добить не сумел…

В совершенно астрономическом количестве появились анекдоты; Володька Маргулис бегал от одного приятеля к другому и, захлебываясь, рассказывал их. Он же, выложив мне как-то весь свой запас, сообщил о том, что Игорь на каком-то собрании у себя в академии высказался в том смысле, что 10 августа есть результат мудрой политики нашей партии, что Указ еще раз свидетельствует о развертывании творческой инициативы народных масс — ну, и так далее, в обычном духе.

Юлий Даниэль, Говорит Москва, 1962.

moscows_speaking

Женщина в песках

Чтобы не расстраиваться, он с тех пор не читал газет. Достаточно было потерпеть неделю — и читать уже почти не хотелось. А через месяц он вообще забыл об их существовании. Когда-то он видел репродукцию гравюры, которая называлась «Ад одиночества», и она его поразила. Там был изображён человек в странной позе, плывущий по небу. Его широко открытые глаза полны страха. Всё пространство вокруг заполнено полупризрачными тенями покойников. Ему трудно пробираться сквозь их толпу. Покойники, жестикулируя, отталкивая друг друга, что-то беспрерывно говорят человеку. Почему же это «Ад одиночества»? Он тогда подумал, что перепутано название. Но теперь понял, что одиночество — это неутолённая жажда мечты.
Именно поэтому грызут ногти, не находя успокоения в биении сердца. Курят табак, не в состоянии удовлетвориться ритмом мышления. Нервно дрожат, не находя удовлетворения в половом акте. И дыхание, и ходьба, и перистальтика кишечника, и ежедневное расписание, и воскресенье, наступающее каждый седьмой день, и школьные экзамены, повторяющиеся каждые четыре месяца, — всё это не только не успокаивало его, но, напротив, толкало на все новое и новое повторение. Вскоре количество выкуриваемых сигарет увеличилось, ему снились кошмарные сны, в которых он вместе с какой-то женщиной, у которой были грязные ногти, всё время искал укромные, укрытые от посторонних глаз уголки. И когда в конце концов он обнаружил симптомы отравления, то сразу же обратился мыслями к небесам, поддерживаемым простым цикличным эллиптическим движением, к песчаным дюнам, где господствуют волны длиной в одну восьмую миллиметра.
Он испытывал некоторое удовольствие от нескончаемой борьбы с песком, от своей ежедневной работы, превращённой им в урок, но нельзя сказать, что это было чистое самоистязание. Он бы не удивился, найдя в том путь к выздоровлению.
Но однажды утром вместе с продуктами, которые доставлялись регулярно, к нему попал журнал карикатур. Журнал как журнал, ничего особенного. Обложка порвана, весь он захватан грязными пальцами — не иначе добыли его у какого-нибудь старьёвщика. И хотя вид у журнала неприглядный, само его появление можно было расценивать как заботу о нём жителей деревни. Больше всего он был озадачен тем, что, читая журнал, катался от смеха по полу, бил ногами, точно у него начались конвульсии.
Карикатуры были самые дурацкие. Бессмысленные, вульгарные, плохо выполненные — спроси у него, что в них забавного, он не смог бы ответить. Удачной была лишь одна карикатура, изображавшая лошадь, у которой подкосились ноги, и она упала, когда на неё взобрался огромный мужчина. Морда у лошади действительно была смешная. Но всё равно, разве в его положении можно смеяться? Постыдился бы. Приспособляться можно до определённого предела. Причем это должно быть средством, но ни в коем случае не целью. Одно дело разглагольствовать о зимней спячке, а другое — превратиться в крота и убить в себе всякое желание выйти на свет.
Правда, если вдуматься, нет никакой надежды, что представится случай когда-либо каким-либо способом выбраться отсюда. Но ведь не исключено, что можно привыкнуть просто к ожиданию, лишённому всякой цели, а когда кончится время зимней спячки, окажется, что свет ослепил тебя и ты не можешь выйти наружу. Говорят ведь: нищий три дня — нищий навсегда… Внутренняя ржавчина появляется удивительно быстро… Он глубоко задумался, но стоило вспомнить уморительную морду лошади, как снова им овладел дурацкий смех. Женщина под лампой, как всегда поглощённая кропотливым нанизыванием бус, подняла голову и простодушно улыбнулась. Мужчина, не в состоянии вынести собственное предательство, отбросил журнал и вышел. Над ямой клубился молочный туман. Остатки ночи — разбросанные клочки теней… клочки, сверкающие, как раскалённая металлическая нить… плывущие клочки, превратившиеся в блестящие капельки пара… И это сказочное сочетание теней будило мечту, предела которой не было. Он смотрел и не мог насмотреться. Каждое мгновение было наполнено всё новыми и новыми открытиями. Здесь было всё — и образы, существовавшие в действительности, и фантастические образы, которых он никогда не видел.

Кобо Абэ, Женщина в песках, 1962. Перевод – Владимир Сергеевич Гривнин

Кобо Абэ - Женщина в песках

Бессильные мира сего

Стоявший человек сказал с удивлением:
– Глупость какая-то… – он помолчал и добавил: – И вообще занятие глупое. Взрослый, умный человек, политик, а занимается глупостями. – Он снова помолчал. – А может быть, он никакой не умный? Может быть, все только считают, что он умный, а на самом деле – глупец?
И он засмеялся – тихо, весело и неожиданно, словно засмеялся вдруг известный всему миру портрет. И так же неожиданно снова помрачнел.
– А как вы думаете, советские марки у него в коллекции есть?
– Думаю, что есть, товарищ Сталин. Думаю, что у него очень хорошая коллекция советских марок.
– Все советские марки у него есть?
– Думаю, что нет, товарищ Сталин. Думаю, всех советских марок ни у кого на свете нет.
– Почему?
– Существуют редкости, которых всего пять-шесть штук известно, и даже меньше.
– Это хорошо. Это очень хорошо. Задача ваша определяется. Надо собрать полную коллекцию советских марок, и мы преподнесем ее господину Рузвельту. Как вы думаете, он будет доволен?
– Он будет в восторге, товарищ Сталин. Но это невозможно.
– Почему?
– Невозможно собрать полную коллекцию…
– Считайте, что это партийное поручение, товарищ Епанчин. Надо собрать. Срок – один месяц. Мы думаем, этого будет достаточно. Обратитесь к товарищу Берия. Он в курсе и поможет.
– Слушаюсь, товарищ Сталин, – сказал маленький человечек Епанчин, обмирая от ужаса.
…Но независимо от этого ужаса, мысль его уже заработала привычно. Консульский полтинник придется отдать свой, подумал он озабоченно. И ошибку цвета «70 руб.» без зубцов… Где взять перевертку Леваневского с маленьким «ф»?.. Она была у Гурвиц-Когана, он ее продал – кому? Должен знать. Знает. И скажет. Не мне скажет, органам скажет… Товарищу Берия скажет, подумал он с внезапным ожесточением, удивившим его самого: он почувствовал себя сильным и большим, как это бывало с ним иногда во сне…
Вот так, или примерно так, состоялся его единственный и последний в жизни звездный час. Так, или примерно так, он рассказывал об этом сыну своему – маленькому, плаксивому, капризному, но умненькому Тельману Ивановичу.

Борис Натанович Стругацкий, Бессильные мира сего, 2003.

74520_Bessilnye_mira_sego.indd

Бессильные мира сего

Current music: Allie X - Weird World

Автор: Борис Натанович Стругацкий
Год первого издания: 2003
Язык: русский

Первое, что неизбежно бросается в глаза, – язык. Вопиющая демонстрация не только отсутствия стиля, но и понимания, что у крутых писателей такая штука есть, и, следовательно, самому мэтру тоже полагается её иметь в наличии. После уже нельзя перепутать, кто из братьев был лингвистом, а кто не слишком успешным астрономом.

Старые питерские диалектизмы наподобие рукомойника или парадных употребляют в речи все: от утончённого эницклопедиста до понаехавших искателей приключений и бандитов на стрелках. Вдобавок бросаются литературными цитатами практически все сколько-нибудь важные для повествования персоны, включая совсем нетолерантным языком описанного юношу с синдромом Дауна. Заурядное слово обычный неизменно приобретает излишнюю приставку свое-, руками помавают, а не размахивают; инъекции же делаются шприцом, а не шприцем. Текст пестрит редкими словами, часто также в устаревших к моменту выхода формах: аггел, драбант, такыр, джезва, гагат, гармидер, ишиасный, – мне не так часто приходится лезть в словарь при прочтении художественных произведений на неродных языках. И тут же после подобных изысков Борис Стругацкий роняет стиль чем-то вроде «закаканца» или «таковских».

Аналогично неуклюже обошёлся он и с обсценной лексикой. Сначала персонаж замечает, что его собеседник, несмотря на неинтеллигентный вид, изъясняется без мата, и до конца абзаца писатель этот самый мат воспроизводит, в стыдливой форме, с пропущенной буквой, как ламер на форумах первой половины 2000-х с дарёного компьютера. А до конца страницы из уст ещё менее интеллигентного свидетеля разговора в худших привычках Евгения Петросяна мат заменяется нелепой подстановкой – очумело-сибанутый.

Ничуть не лучше литературная техника. Первую половину вообще не покидает ощущение, что в копии книги что-то испорчено. То ли порядок глав перепутан, то ли выдраны страницы… Не складывается набор предложений в цельную структуру, и лишь во второй архитектор этой словесной конструкции, как бы спохватившись, начинает наспех стягивать сюжет грубой ниткой.

Автор постоянно набрасывает кучу имён, перемежает их прозвищами в реальности невозможными. При местами нарочитой экзотизации в подборе не чувствуется труда ни один из этих псевдонимов сделать по-настоящему запоминающимся. Плюс неуклюжее советское, как бы дружеское панибратство, которое сейчас вызывает только ассоциацию с баяном старого башорга: “А меня Вовой называют только педерасты”. И Вадима с Василием или Валерием перепутать немудрено, тем более что имена не связываются с описаниями внешности хотя бы. И даже чуждый, должный по замыслу стоять особняком Стэн с таким же успехом мог быть Тайлером или Бренданом. Но этого было мало: Димкой из какого-то неразгаданного мной побудительного мотива называют не Дмитрия, а того самого Вадима. Причём это никак в тексте не обыграно, чтобы быть кличкой (второй к тому же), и повторяется подмена недостаточно часто, чтобы быть очевидной. Есть подозрение, что имя было изменено в процессе написания и просто пропущено при вычитке. Или же это какая-то не понятая мной внутренняя шутка-маркер шестидесятнической тусовки, обречённая устареть вместе с уходом самой этой субкультуры.

Мою претензию можно было бы счесть капризом, если бы изрядная часть книги не являла собой одну большую пародию на загадку о зебре. Как зовут человека по прозвищу Аятолла, если сыщик пьёт джин, еврей занимается политикой, а владелец черепахи живёт в старинном доме с высокими потолками?

Да и вообще гражданин Витицкий увлекается накручиванием интриги, без меры приправляя свою литературную стряпню спецслужбами, ориенталистской околорелигиозной мистикой, персонажами античной мифологии. Даже про излюбленную самоцитату, инопланетян-прогрессоров, не забыл. И буквально ничего не находит к финалу разрешения. Как обрывки телеграмм и писем, коллекционируемые одним из действующих лиц, они не ведут никуда, оставляя больше вопросов, чем предлагая ответов.

Лирические отступления, высыпающие ещё порцию имён и прозвищ, вызывают в памяти монологи моего деда, где после трёх-четырёх рюмок смешивались в неожиданных пропорциях реальность и байки со службы, современность и 1970-е, разнообразные родственники и легендарно-мифические фигуры уровня Мир Джафара Багирова, который представал чекистом и приобретал черты сходства с Лаврентием Берией, хотя во время сколько-нибудь осознанной жизни моего предка был уже только первым республиканским секретарём партии. Здесь тоже будут и совсем фантастическая лаборатория, как в крипипасте про русский эксперимент со сном, и узнаваемые образы вполне реально существовавших деятелей питерской общественно-политической жизни вроде Анатолия Собчака или Бориса Вишневского, и вышедшие из несмешных анекдотов новые русские с прикрытием бандюков-пехотинцев, и апокрифическое изложение подлинных забав номенклатурных сынков.

Рано постаревший человек не стесняясь демонстрирует с неуклюжестью ребусника Синицкого  “мониторы компьютерных приставок”, наивную веру в какие-то выборы, сквозняк в заставленной стеллажами кладовке, с неуклюжестью школьника-отличника – воткнутые англицизмы и строки внежанровых песенок. Выдают также представления об объёмах крутившейся вокруг антагонистов ликвидной наличности в сторону её приуменьшения (в уже вполне чудесную эпоху от схемы с авизо до истории с коробками из-под копировальной техники, залоговых аукционов, “консолидации активов” в терминологии Константина Сонина). Корректуре роман, если и подвергался, то чересчур застенчивой. Я даже заметил пару явно пропущенных запятых и одну орфографическую ошибку.

Субъективное восприятие портит неизжитая потребность в верховенстве лидера, пусть даже ошибающегося, но единственного способного вынести финальный вердикт. Даже у попсового конъюнктурщика Сергея Лукьяненко в “Дозорах” его фантазия на тему незримой холодной войны  предполагает не только два одноранговых полюса силы, но и скрытые серой пеленой вершины между ними, а также диких одиночек, выбравших отказ от игры. А здесь единственный сэнсэй, который любя жестит, чтобы, дескать, победить в человеке обезьяну. И совесть этого пожилого мальчиша-хороша, как водится, неспокойна о методах, которыми хочет достичь благо человечества, но со скрипом приносит в жертву других, будучи неспособен пожертвовать ценным для себя.

И тоскует он по человеку воспитанному, не счастливому, не гармоничному, не бесстрашно плывущему в море живого бытийного хаоса. Нет, хочет он человека воспитанного, удобного. Хочет точно видеть заранее предопределённое и, конечно же, не бессмысленное будущее. Отчасти это можно принять в качестве демонстрации, почему совок калечит навсегда, и даже плохо вписавшаяся в него интеллигенция не может с помощью эго победить в себе согласие с чьей-то над собой властью. Вот уж кто был бессилен… И не зря в получившемся калейдоскопе персонажей отсутствует в повествовании женская перспектива. Не зря центральный герой боится инь, соглашаясь не знать, что происходит за тёмной завесой на другой стороне. Согласен по-восьмомартовски умиляться (хотя чаще по-стариковски ханжески уничижает «сосуды для сброса излишков жизнедеятельности наслаждающегося организма»), с опаской почитать, даже восхищаться женщиной, но не понять. И без отхода от патриархального мышления пространство выбора сокращается до способов навязать миру своё представление о том, каким ему лучше быть.

Сюжетных откровений я тоже не обнаружил. Здесь и единоборство бобра с ослом, подаваемое под видом философской проблемы. И клише “мы такие разные, но всё-таки мы вместе”. Команда супергероев с утрированными способностями необъяснимой природы глубоко вторична идейно и при локализации приобретает запах лестничных пролётов – “В сей парадной соседи давно не живут, но порою приходят мочиться”. Кстати, с туалетной темой тоже не всё благополучно… Я даже не поленился посчитать: какашки и какать встречаются в тексте в разных формах восемь раз. К ним в довесок тут и там «императивные позывы» и «необходимо сходить». Наболело? Потраченное на описание собственного хобби время тоже использовано скорее для личного удовольствия писателя, чем ради произведения эффекта на читателя.

В активе остаётся пара метких наблюдений о трансформирующем воздействии чрезвычайной власти, унизительности старости и болезни (учитывая подмеченное выше, явно не без личного опыта). Основная же проблема, удовлетворение достаточным, левитация над толпой без полётов в стратосферу, при всей на беглый взгляд занимательности за пределами парадигмы коммунистического прогрессорства не кажется чересчур существенной. Куда больше меня заинтересовало вплетение личных драм, трагедий и приключений в ткань мировой истории. Кстати, и образ коллекционера этих обрывков чужих жизней вышел самым живым из всех персонажей. Ядозуб – тот, в кого меньше всего хочется верить, но чьё существование в наименьшей степени противоречило бы материальной действительности, как она есть. Однако эта ветвь так и не зацвела.

Несмотря на получившийся поток критики, сумма не так уж плоха, скорее она  разочаровывающая. Эта поздняя работа способна увлечь неискушённого околополитическими интригами читателя, который к тому же может потреблять культурный продукт не отвлекаясь в процессе на словари и поисковики.

Оценка: 5

From Bacteria to Bach and Back

Artifacts already exist—and many more are under development—with competences so far superior to any human competence that they will usurp our authority as experts, an authority that has been unquestioned since the dawn of the age of intelligent design. And when we cede hegemony to these artifacts, it will be for very good reasons, both practical and moral. Already it would be criminally negligent for me to embark with passengers on a transatlantic sailboat cruise without equipping the boat with several GPS systems. Celestial navigation by sextant, compass, chronometer, and Nautical Almanac is as quaint a vestige of obsolete competence as sharpening a scythe or driving a team of oxen. Those who delight in such skills can indulge in them, using the Internet to find one another, and we celestial navigators can prudently bring our old-fashioned gear along, and practice with it, on the off chance that we will need a backup system. But we have no right to jeopardize lives by shunning the available high-tech gadgets.

We all still learn the multiplication table up to 12×12 and how to use it for larger numbers (don’t we?), and we can do long division problems with pencil and paper, but few know how to execute an algorithm for extracting a square root. So what? Don’t waste your effort and brain cells on tasks you can order by pressing a few keys or just asking Google or Siri. The standard response to the worriers is that when educating our children, we do need to teach them the principles of all the methods we ourselves are still adept at using, and for this comprehension a certain minimal level of actual experience with the methods is practically valuable, but we can (probably) get the principles to sink in without subjecting our children to old-fashioned drudgery. This seems to make good sense, but how far does it generalize?

Consider medical education. Watson is just one of many computer-based systems that are beginning to outperform the best diagnosticians and specialists on their own turf. Would you be willing to indulge your favorite doctor in her desire to be an old-fashioned “intuitive” reader of symptoms instead of relying on a computer-based system that had been proven to be a hundred times more reliable at finding rare, low-visibility diagnoses than any specialist? Your health insurance advisor will oblige you to submit to the tests, and conscientious doctors will see that they must squelch their yearnings to be diagnostic heroes and submit to the greater authority of the machines whose buttons they push. What does this imply about how to train doctors? Will we be encouraged to jettison huge chunks of traditional medical education—anatomy, physiology, biochemistry—along with the ability to do long division and read a map? Use it or lose it is the rule of thumb cited at this point, and it has many positive instances. Can your children read road maps as easily as you do or have they become dependent on GPS to guide them? How concerned should we be that we are dumbing ourselves down by our growing reliance on intelligent machines?

So far, there is a fairly sharp boundary between machines that enhance our “peripheral” intellectual powers (of perception, algorithmic calculation, and memory) and machines that at least purport to replace our “central” intellectual powers of comprehension (including imagination), planning, and decision-making. Hand calculators; GPS systems; Pixar’s computer graphics systems for interpolating frames, calculating shadows, adjusting textures and so forth; and PCR and CRISPR in genetics are all quite clearly on the peripheral side of the boundary, even though they accomplish tasks that required substantial expertise not so long ago. We can expect that boundary to shrink, routinizing more and more cognitive tasks, which will be fine so long as we know where the boundary currently is. The real danger, I think, is not that machines more intelligent than we are will usurp our role as captains of our destinies, but that we will over-estimate the comprehension of our latest thinking tools, prematurely ceding authority to them far beyond their competence.

Daniel Clement Dennett III, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds, 2017.

Daniel Clement Dennett III, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds, 2017

An involution milestone

Current music: Дельфин - 925

If twenty years ago someone told me web browsers in the future won’t be able to save pages for browsing offline, I wouldn’t believe such degradation is possible. Yet here we are, and again, I seem to be the only one who notices that fact and cares. Today, I tried to save this article on The Washington Post.

None of the current browsers (I’ve tried Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Vivaldi, and Pale Moon) was able to save it with all the assets, pictures, styles, fonts and markup (either as a single mhtml archive, html file with external resources, or pdf). The best of them (namely Opera and Vivaldi) could only save text and markup. I understand why such a technical problem occurs. I know how it could be redone to work properly. If browsers wouldn’t send a new HTTPS request to the remote server the time you press the “Save as” button and write its response anew and instead save the already assembled complete page from the temporary Internet files on the client’s computer, the problem wouldn’t exist.

Nobody from the new generation of coders, which made the stereotypical image of an IT guy cool with sleek fashionable laptops, gamification of the workspace, and mobile, active, sporty lifestyle instead of the old one that depicted a crowd of extremely thin or extremely fat nerds with bad eyesight tied to their bulky desktops and huge monitors with cables everywhere, seems competent enough to see that despite them earning 20 maybe 30 times more than I do. Nobody from the corporate management seems to care as long as the market share and sales KPI are met. Nobody from the user base seems to have noticed after they moved the said “Save as” button deeper into the submenus.

When was the last time you saved a web page? What are you going to do when the content you consume becomes unreachable or tainted? How fast will you conform to the new world view and behavioral patterns offered (and probably slightly enforced) to you? Doesn’t it affect your self-worth right now if you actually aren’t afraid to think about it?

More on the global situation in the fifth episode of Show Up and Tell

Video blog

Current music: Lebanon Hanover - Better Than Going Under

This blog hasn’t been very lively since the beginning of our generation’s very own armageddon. I do still have plans for new reviews. It’s just all that terrible senseless war going on, all the doom-scrolling, all news and analytics confirming there is no hope for sentient life on planet Earth, and the collapse of regular economic practices and mundane habits … It was hard enough to survive, keep earning sustenance, stay as sane as possible… Being held hostage in Russia adds a couple more things to that: one also has to avoid random repressions and keep one’s hands and conscience clean from soiling with complicity.

Now, I feel the need to express myself somehow, to speak my mind. I want to talk about things that are swarming in my head while I live my life, not only when I occasionally find time and motivation to explore game worlds. So, here is my new one-man talk show called Show Up and Tell, where I’m going to talk weekly (that is the goal) about things that were interesting or important for me during that week, things I was thinking about. Sometimes, though, I may also not only show up but also show you some of my artifacts if I find any plausible connection to the topic. Other than that, this whole thing could be a podcast if podcast platforms weren’t further limiting the potential audience. The format is as simple and minimalistic as it gets: one man, at least 5 minutes (so far, it’s been taking me around half an hour to stop), no script, one take, 720p camera on a laptop, poor, mistake-ridden English by a non-native speaker who hasn’t had any speaking practice lately. Can you miss that? I’m sure nobody can. So push the play button! You are, of course, free to correct me, argue, ask questions, and offer topics in comments. Feedback is welcomed. Comments settings are as liberal as YouTube allows.

Berlin Diary

After a year and a half of actual total war German morale is still good. Let us admit the fact. There is no popular enthusiasm for the war. There never was. And after eight years of deprivation caused by Nazi preparation for war, the people are weary and fatigued. They crave peace. They are disappointed, depressed, disillusioned that peace did not come this fall, as promised. Yet as the war goes into its second long, dark winter, public morale is fairly high. How explain the contradiction? Keep in mind three things:
First, that the millennium-old longing of Germans for political unification has been fulfilled. Hitler achieved it, where all others in the past – the Habsburgs, the Hohenzollerns, Bismarck – failed. Few people outside this country realize how this unification has knitted the German nation together, given the people self-confidence and a sense of historical mission, and made them forget their personal dislike of the Nazi regime, its leaders, and the barbaric things it has done. Also – coupled with the rebirth of the army and air force and the totalitarian reorganization of industry, trade, and agriculture on a scale never before realized in this world—it makes the German feel strong. For most Germans this is an end in itself, for to be strong in their scheme of life is to be all. It is the emergence of the primitive, tribal instinct of the early German pagans of the vast forests of the North to whom brute strength was not only the means but the end of life. It is this primitive racial instinct of “blood and soil” which the Nazis have reawakened in the German soul more successfully than any of their modern predecessors and which has shown that the influence of Christianity and western civilization on German life and culture was only a thin veneer.
Second, morale is good because the German people feel they have this summer revenged the terrible defeat of 1918 and have achieved a string of military victories which has at last ensured their place in the sun – domination today of Europe, tomorrow perhaps of the world. And German character is such that the German must either dominate or be dominated. He understands no other relation between human beings on this earth. The golden mean of the Greeks which the Western world has achieved to some extent is a concept beyond his comprehension. Moreover, the great mass of workers, peasants, and petty tradesmen – as well as the big industrialists – are conscious that if Hitler succeeds with his New Order, as they are confident now he will, it will mean more of the milk and honey of this world for them. That it will of necessity be obtained at the expense of other peoples – Czechs, Poles, Scandinavians, French – does not bother the German in the least. On this he has no moral scruples whatsoever.
Third, one of the prime springs which push the German people along in full support of a war for which they have no enthusiasm, and which they would end tomorrow if they could, is their growing fear of the consequences of defeat. Slowly but surely they are beginning to realize the frightful magnitude of the seeds of wrath which their high-booted troops and Gestapo men have sown in Europe since the conquest of Austria. They are beginning to see that a victory with the Nazi regime, however much many of them may dislike it, is better than another German defeat, which this time, if it ever comes about, will make Versailles seem like a peace of sweet reason and destroy not only the nation but the Germans as a people. More than one German of late has confided to me his fears. If Germany loses, they see the embittered peoples of Europe whom they have brutally enslaved, whose cities they have ruthlessly destroyed, whose women and children, many of them, in such places as Warsaw, Rotterdam, and London, they have coldbloodedly slain, storming in angry, revengeful hordes over their beautiful, orderly land, dynamiting it to destruction, and leaving those whom they do not butcher to starve and die in an utter wasteland.
No, these people, ground down and cheated though they may be by the most unscrupulous gang of rulers modern Europe has yet seen, will go a long, long way in this war. Only a dawning realization some day that they can’t win coupled with Allied assurances that to give up the struggle will not mean their destruction will make them falter before one side or the other is destroyed.
We who have been so close to this German scene, who have seen with our own eyes the tramping Nazi boots over Europe and heard with our own ears Hitler’s hysterical tirades of hate, have found it difficult to keep a sense of historical perspective. I suppose the reasons why Germany has embarked on a career of unbridled conquest do go deeper than the mere fact, all-important though it is, that a small band of unprincipled, tough gangsters have seized control of this land, corrupted its whole people, and driven it on its present course. The roots go deeper, I admit, though whether the plant would have flowered as it has without Hitler, I seriously doubt.
One root is the strange, contradictory character of the German people. It is not correct to say, as many of our liberals at home have said, that Nazism is a form of rule and life unnatural to the German people and forced upon them against their wish by a few fanatic derelicts of the last war. It is true that the Nazi Party never polled a majority vote in Germany in a free election, though it came very close. But for the last three or four years the Nazi regime has expressed something very deep in the German nature and in that respect it has been representative of the people it rules. The Germans as a people lack the balance achieved, say, by the Greeks, the Romans, the French, the British, and the Americans. They are continually torn by inner contradictions which make them uncertain, unsatisfied, frustrated, and which force them from one extreme to the other. The Weimar Republic was so extreme in its liberal democracy that the Germans couldn’t work it. And now they have turned to the extremes of tyranny because democracy and liberalism forced them to live as individuals, to think and make decisions as free men, and in the chaos of the twentieth century this was too much of a strain for them. Almost joyfully, almost masochistically, they have turned to an authoritarianism which releases them from the strain of individual decision and choice and thought and allows them what to a German is a luxury – letting someone else make the decisions and take the risks, in return for which they gladly give their own obedience. The average German craves security. He likes to live in a groove. And he will give up his independence and freedom – at least at this stage of his development – if his rulers provide this.
The German has two characters. As an individual he will give his rationed bread to feed the squirrels in the Tiergarten on a Sunday morning. He can be a kind and considerate person. But as a unit in the Germanic mass he can persecute Jews, torture and murder his fellow men in a concentration camp, massacre women and children by bombing and bombardment, overrun without the slightest justification the lands of other peoples, cut them down if they protest, and enslave them.
It must also be noted down that Hitler’s frenzy for bloody conquest is by no means exclusive to him in Germany. The urge to expansion, the hunger for land and space, for what the Germans call Lebensraum, has lain long in the soul of the people. Some of Germany’s best minds have expressed it in their writings. Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Treitschke fired the German people with it in the last century. But our century has not lacked for successors, though they are little known outside this country. Karl Haushofer has poured books from the presses dinning into the ears of the Germans the maxim that if their nation is to be great and lasting, it must have more Lebensraum. Books of his such as Macht und Erde (Power and Earth) and Weltpolitik von Heute (World Politics of Today) have profoundly influenced not only the Nazi leaders but a great mass of people. So has Hans Grimm’s Volk ohne Raum (People without Space), a novel which has sold nearly a half-million copies in this country despite its length of some thousand pages. And so has Moeller van den Bruck’s The Third Reich, written eleven years before Hitler founded the Third Reich.
All these writings emphasized that Germany was entitled by the laws of history and nature to a space more adequate to its mission in life. That this space would have to be taken from others, mostly from Slavs who had settled on it when the Germans themselves were little more than rough tribesmen, made no difference. It is this basic feeling in almost all Germans that the “lesser breed” of Europeans are not entitled to absolute rights of their own, to a piece of land to till and live on, to the very towns and cities they have built up with their own sweat and toil, if a German covets them, which is in part responsible for the present state of Europe.
It is the evil genius of Adolf Hitler that has aroused this basic feeling and given it tangible expression. It is due to this remarkable and terrifying man alone that the German dream now stands such a fair chance of coming true. First Germans and then the world grossly underestimated him. It was an appalling error, as first the Germans and now the world are finding out. Today, so far as the vast majority of his fellow countrymen are concerned, he has reached a pinnacle never before achieved by a German ruler. He has become – even before his death – a myth, a legend, almost a god, with that quality of divinity which the Japanese people ascribe to their Emperor. To many Germans he is a figure remote, unreal, hardly human. For them he has become infallible. They say, as many peoples down through history have said of their respective gods: “He is always right.”
Notwithstanding many reports to the contrary which float abroad, he is the sole and absolute boss of Germany today, brooking no interference from anyone and rarely asking and almost never heeding suggestions from his intimidated lieutenants. The men around him are all loyal, all afraid, and none of them are his friends. He has no friends, and since the murder of Röhm in the 1934 purge there has not been a single one of his followers who addressed him with the familiar Du. Göring, Goebbels, Hess, and all the others address him in only one way: “Mein Führer.” He leads a lonely, closely guarded life, and since the beginning of the war his very whereabouts are carefully kept from the public and the outside world by Himmler.
Nowadays he rarely dines with his chief aides, preferring the easier company of his party cronies of the early “fighting” days, men like Wilhelm Brückner, his adjutant, Hess, his first private secretary – the only man in the world he fully trusts – and Max Amann, his top sergeant during the World War, whom he has made czar of the highly remunerative Nazi publishing house, the Eher Verlag. The really big shots in the Nazi world, Göring, Goebbels, Ribbentrop, Ley, and the heads of the armed services, see Hitler either at appointments during the day, or after dinner in the evening, when he often invites them to see a private showing of a film. Hitler has a passion for movies—including the products of Hollywood. (Two of his favourites were It Happened One Night and Gone with the Wind.)
Hermann Göring is very definitely the Number Two man in Germany and the only Nazi who could carry on the present regime were Hitler to pass on. The fat, bemedalled Reichsmarschall enjoys a popularity among the masses second only to Hitler’s – but for opposite reasons. Where Hitler is distant, legendary, nebulous, an enigma as a human being, Göring is a salty, earthy, lusty man of flesh and blood. The Germans like him because they understand him. He has the faults and virtues of the average man, and the people admire him for both. He has a child’s love for uniforms and medals. So have they. He has a passion for good food and drink in Gargantuan quantities. They too. He loves display—palaces, marble halls, great banqueting rooms, gay costumes, servants in livery. They love them too. And despite the efforts of Goebbels to stir up popular criticism of his rival, they display no envy, no resentment of the fantastic, mediæval – and very expensive – personal life he leads. It is the sort of life they would lead themselves, perhaps, if they had the chance.

William Lawrence Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941, 1941

berlin_diary

Праздника не будет

Current music: Крематорий - Танцуют водолазы

Режиссёр: Marco Risi
Год: 1998
Страна: Италия

С новым несчастьем!

Фильм, получивший в российском переводе название «Праздника не будет», снят по мотивам рассказа малоизвестного за пределами Италии писателя Никколо Амманити, который скорее стоило бы перевести как «Последний новый год человечества». Примечателен он не только участием в нём актрисы первой величины и перевоплощением попсовой певицы 60-х, 70-х годов Ивы Дзаникки, но и попыткой изобразить всенародное зимнее торжество без вымученного умиления.

Праздник сохраняет масштаб и объединяет общей темой и богатых обитателей комфортабельных апартаментов (чтобы это подчеркнуть нам показывают, как героиня Моники Беллуччи проходит по всем комнатам и зажигает свет в поисках мужа), и людей более низких социальных слоёв. Ему оказываются подвержены и те, кто служат в эту ночь, и даже те, кого это время застало бесконечно далеко от легкомысленных утех. Он проникает везде, как размытый, зыбкий свет ночного города до массового внедрения LED-ламп.

кадр из фильма Праздника не будет 1998 Моника Беллуччи кадр из фильма Праздника не будет 1998
После короткого знакомства со всеми действующими лицами начинаешь улавливать, что именно связало несколько непохожих жизней воедино, – ожидание. Только не подумайте, что это ожидание рождественского чуда с бубенчиками, переливающимися огнями и допустимой перед аудиторией любого возраста песней по рецепту Голливуда. Такие мысли отбивает ещё трешевая вступительная сценка с дорожным происшествием, будто вырванная не то из дешёвого ужастика, не то из недокрученного артхауса. Да и рождество с присущим ему мистицизмом уже прошло. У светского нового года другой стиль. И ожидание для каждого своё. У кого-то уверенное и нетерпеливое, а в другом случае смутное и перемешанное со страхом. Бандиты у дома поджидают совсем не так, как хозяйка ждёт гостей к чинному традиционному ужину. Но можете не сомневаться, всем достанется через край.

Под грохот петард разыгрывается череда нелепых драм. На первый взгляд вполне настоящие страдания людей. Внезапная супружеская измена, сын-наркоман, явно компрометирующий перед застольной компанией; безысходное одиночество напротив равнодушного шумного ящика с пошлыми подвижными картинками. Каждый из этих сюжетов по отдельности способен привлечь эмпатию, достойную при мастерском исполнении номинации на золотую пальмовую ветвь. Но то ли будучи сцепленными временем и местом они переступают грань циркового гротеска, то ли что-то в самих этих людях препятствует эмпатии, а может, это именно сцена, на которую они выведены, подготавливает к чему-то вроде банановой кожуры.

Некоторые художественные приёмы тоже напоминают второсортный хоррор. Гротескные эмоции, крики, игрушечные спецэффекты, которые даже не пытаются имитировать реальность, порой просто клоунада. При постановке кадров и в операторской работе тоже узнаваемы приёмы характерные для других жанров. Например, макро пронзившего жертву снаряда каждый наверняка встречал в боевике. А резкий уход настоящего мира куда-то в сторону с переключением внимания на продукт воображения, возможно, попадался в фэнтази или устрашающей мистике.

кадр из фильма Праздника не будет 1998 кадр из фильма Праздника не будет 1998
Режиссёр Марко Ризи не прочь вспомнить про мораль и продемонстрировать своё мнение в этой области. В «Последнем новом году» можно разглядеть наказание людей за неумеренные страсти. Есть также хмурый взгляд в сторону телевидения, обесценивающего в равной мере и радость долгожданной календарной даты и кровавую трагедию. Но эти мелкие нравоучительные штрихи не портят картины. Они терпимы, как нелюбимый салат среди изобилия блюд и закусок на щедром пиршестве.

Юмор пусть и не изыскан, но разнообразен. В отдельных сценах он ненавязчивый и лёгкий, как тёмные колготки на ногах красавицы Моники. Тогда улыбка рождается из какой-то мелочи: интонации фразы, жеста, внешнего вида. Если не иметь подобающего настроения или отвлекаться, легко не заметить. Что, впрочем, не беда, поскольку чаще эксплуатируются обычные приёмы комедии положений, когда лобовое столкновение несовместимого порождает курьёзные причинно-следственные связи. Ну, и не совсем напрасно в различных источниках «Праздника не будет» позиционируется как чёрная комедия. Садистской изобретательности в способах причинения вреда здесь нет, но магия кино и атмосфера нетрезвого веселья делают смешным то, чем другие вызывают слёзы сопереживания. И несмотря на то, что в ломающем стереотипы фильме в конце все, разумеется, умерли, едва ли он способен огорчить.

Привередливому зрителю может не хватить динамики. Первая половина фильма менее насыщенна значимыми событиями, чем вторая. Выбор длительности конкретных сцен тоже не всегда очевиден и, возможно, смотрибельность выиграла бы от несколько иного монтажа. С другой стороны тем отчётливее выделяется апогей.

кадр из фильма Праздника не будет 1998 кадр из фильма Праздника не будет 1998
Однозначный минус – необязательный эпилог, снятый на какой-то территории, даже отдалённо не  напоминающей окрестности жилого комплекса, основной декорации не случившегося счастья «и всего доброго». Ради повторения широко известного наблюдения о том, что дуракам везёт, по-моему, не стоило смазывать эффект от самоценного финала.

Можно порекомендовать для небольшой предновогодней компании, пресыщенной как приторным семейным волшебством, так и геройскими похождениями крепкого Брюса Уиллиса, и вместе с тем не испытывающей ностальгии по непережитому всвязи с неджентльменскими приключениями Ивана Васильевича на третьей улице строителей под песни о старом. Возможно, вам и не понравится, но новизну опыта и выход за рамки шаблона я гарантирую.

Оценка: 6

Might and Magic Book Two: Gates to Another World

Current music: Qntal - Palästinalied

Platform: PC
Year: 1989
Developer: New World Computing

The origins of the land

Where does a classic Western role-playing game start? If you were hasteful to say it begins with choosing what role you’re going to play you were somewhat wrong. The same way a theater doesn’t start with raising of the stage curtains but with an usher, a hanger in a cloakroom, and a lobby, RPGs require some kind of presentation before the adventures take off. It must draw a background that created our hero or heroes to be. Nowadays it’s usually done by spectacular videos taking place before any menus, buttons, and other elements of the game mechanics. In 1989, where I want to guide you to, things were different.

скриншот игры Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 скриншот игры Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989

Before turning on your computer and running an exe file you had to attentively read a manual. In many cases, it double-purposed as a way of copy protection. Afterall manual consisted not only of brief, comprehensive instruction on gameplay and controls but also included several pages of text about the setting and the preceding events. Without spending time on reading, a person simply had no chance to know what he or she was supposed to do and couldn’t make any meaningful progress in a game.

The prologue tells us about Corak the Mysterious, high priest, the most talented mage, and accomplished warrior. Excerpts from his monograph describe the creation of the world from nothingness and a four centuries long war between natural elements that came to life. Migrants from other dimensions started populating the habitat formed as a result of that conflict. The elemental lords, powerful rulers of that world, initially saw no threat in small mortal beings, and when they finally decided to get rid of them, it was too late. They already managed to build cities, taught themselves crafts and magic. Their best minds came up with the artifact that helped the chosen hero to banish the elementals. The hero, named Kalohn, became a king and reigned for a long time until the ruler of the elemental plane of water created the first and the mightiest dragon. Kalohn fell in battle against him. King’s daughter handled the power with less success, while other dragons were growing in numbers. An ecological disaster struck the battlefield. Now there was chaos and decay. The law gave way to brute force. Civilization was balancing on the brink of total collapse.

скриншот игры Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 скриншот игры Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989

Not so long before the arrival of our team of glory and thrill seekers Corak the Mysterious had vanished. Prior to his disappearance Corak had shared with the trusted apprentice some concerns about the coming of some fugitive wrongdoer from another reality. He also had foretold the champion who could save everybody from the apocalyptic wave of destruction. For the next two weeks, he was locking himself in the library for long hours. Every time he was coming out Corak looked and behaved in some new strange way. After another such vigil, which lasted even longer than usual, he stepped out shouting that he could not prevent the impending end of the world. He then tried to cast an unknown spell and disappeared into a white flash of light. One more week later one of the local lords visited his study. Strange sounds were coming from there, and then it turned out the aristocrat with some of the high priest’s machines had also disappeared. The last element of the mystery that needs to be unraveled was a letter from the missing aristocrat with assurances that everything is fine with him, and an invitation to visit his castle. Now it’s showtime…

Freedom of choice

The ability to take your party from the first game as if you were just continuing the story was marketed as a big feature. However, that’s where we face the usual difference between the promises commercials make and the harsh reality of life. Veterans of past adventures come into the brave new world without any previously acquired equipment. All their stats get the value of 20 while the level is lowered to sixth and age is reversed to raging youth. In fact, all that is left from your feats are names, classes, sexes, and alignments. You can use it as a small bonus to ease the beginning of the game but the difference stops being noticeable as you travel the roads and paths of the area called CRON. Also, I see no reason to limit yourself with what the older version of the role-playing game system had to offer if Gates to Another World has two new playable classes. Though I must beforehand warn all those who aren’t going to stop at reading the review and viewing the screenshots. You should not import a party from the older game even just out of curiosity if you already have newly created characters. All of them with all their long leveling up will be overwritten without a note of warning.

game screenshot Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989

The character generator also speaks in favor of beginning from the scratch. It became friendlier because now it allows swapping stats. Let’s say a player wanted a paladin and got a good set of combat parameters but intellect happened to be higher than personality. He just swaps those two while keeping very lucky numbers on might, speed, and endurance. By the way, classic three dice roll borrowed from Dungeons & Dragons here have added one imaginary side to each dice, so every stat varies from 3 to 21.

As I said before, ninjas and barbarians have joined the old six classes (knight, paladin, archer, cleric, sorcerer, and robber). The idea with ninjas is clear. You get a robber who devotes more time to melee combat than lock picking and stealth. That class is more problematic at the beginning but it becomes more rewarding later when the skill gap in disarming traps gradually closes. However, I found a bug that allows anybody to safely open chests even with the deadliest protection. As usual, you search for treasures after a successful fight, find a chest, select Find Trap option in the menu but instead of selecting a character who should try to find and disarm a trap you then press Esc on a keyboard. Then again you go with Find Trap and now anybody, even a cleric, for example, can get the contents without any trouble.

game screenshot Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989

On contrary, I’m not sure what good is a barbarian who can’t absorb damage as effectively as a knight due to limitations in armor that class can wear. Having more hitpoints probably plays in barbarians’ favor but it is likely to become a factor near the ending when magical attacks create bigger problems than physical ones. By that time knights and archers greatly surpass them in damage dealt thanks to class unique artifacts.

Natural spellcasters start with four spells known to them out of seven on the first level. However, unlike the first “book”, all other magic doesn’t automatically open to clerics and sorcerers with every two levels of a character. They will only get three spells for each level of magic for free. Of course, free stuff is not necessarily the most useful. You’ll have to find everything else in quests or buy from temples and guilds. Mixed classes gain access to supernatural powers in the same way, but with a delay.

game screenshot Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989

There are nine levels of magic instead of seven now, though each one offers fewer options. All in all total number of usable spells is almost the same. The biggest changes for clerics were the addition of non-combat spells connected to the story and the protection from different types of damage merging into one. Sorcerers have lost several abilities of questionable value like hypnosis or striking fear to their enemies while getting instead additional spells that ease exploration and travel. In particular, here we meet well-known among all the fans of the series Wizard Eye for the first time. Also, they are less restricted in means of dealing the damage. Other classes are limited to the seventh level of magic and below.

There also happened to be a change in gaining hitpoints through the training. In the first game, the number you were getting with each level-up was random. Now it fully depends on the quality of training facilities, one for each town. For example, a barbarian from my party was getting 12 HP per training session in Middlegate, but 19 HP in Atlantium. However, the latter did cost five times more for each visit. Characters don’t age with level-up anymore, though different classes still grow at a different pace. It’s not very noticeable at the beginning but, after the sixth level, the gap becomes apparent with barbarians, knights, robbers, and clerics getting ahead of paladins, archers, ninjas, and sorcerers.

Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC game screnshot 1989 Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC game screnshot 1989

While keeping the foundation, the role-playing system gets more features. In addition to primary parameters, characters can get secondary skills like navigation or cartography. Some of those skills give an unnecessary but nonetheless nice bonus to a single parameter. You can freely choose whatever pleases you more. Some others are immensely important for effective movement through the game world. They also play role in getting and successfully completing quests. It is technically possible to play without them but it will be much more difficult. There are no racial or class-based limits to what skills you can choose. An evil half-orc barbarian may well be a crusader and a feeble gnome sorcerer has all the means to become an athlete. Still, there is no development in skills. You will most likely learn all of them during the first 10% of playtime and then forget about it. The only exception to that is thievery but it is class-related. All ninjas and robbers have it and advance through time without any impact from a player.

For the first time in Might & Magic series, there are mercenaries whom you can hire to aid your party. They get paid daily based on their level and role in battles (nobody likes to absorb all the damage in the front row). With such hirelings, the maximum number of participants in melee battle on the player’s side can increase from six to eight. It’s worth noting that within this hard limit you can have as many mercantile death dealers as you want. It is even possible to go out on some quest with a team consisting of mercenaries only. However, they will refuse to rest because there won’t be anybody around to pay for the next day of service. So the only rules regarding the party personnel are that you aren’t allowed to have at any moment more than six main characters and more than eight total with the “freelancers”. Hirelings pay for their training themselves. There is also a huge pro for employing magic classes because they know all the spells from the beginning even those they can’t cast yet. Yes, my sagacious friends, even Lloyd’s Beacon and Holy Word.

Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC game screnshot 1989 Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC game screnshot 1989

Alignments don’t cause conflicts among the party members. I noticed that character’s alignment only affected the ability to equip some items and, maybe, slightly changed the probability of different monsters attacking a certain character with all other things being equal. My mixed good and neutral group accepted two evil mercenaries without any objections. Well, they’ve actually never said a word acting as fragments of the player’s own consciousness being split and mixed into the game world rather than as independent agents in the story.

However, equipment restrictions are completely random to the point of idiocy so they give you enough trouble as it is. A neutral paladin may well wear an iron helm enchanted to +3 to armor class. But the very same helm with +5 to AC (including further improvements with the corresponding spell) suddenly comes into a  disagreement with character’s values and ideas about good and evil. The more often you find powerful magical weapons you can’t use due to that the more irritation builds up close to the ending.

All they that take the sword

All that may be interesting and all but why does a role-playing game need advanced, deepened game mechanics? To interact with the game world of course. And inevitably for such an ancient RPG battles to the death become the predominant way of interaction with it. The tactical movements of opponents during the combat that were removed in the Macintosh port of the original game are still present in the sequel on PC. Though it is not used as often anymore. Certain monsters can call up reinforcements. The maximum number of opponents in single combat was raised to 250. It does sound impressive, doesn’t it? Well, in reality, this aspect of battles got worse. In Book One, the maximum was just 15 but all the enemies could fight at the same time if not in melee then with ranged weapons and magic from the distance. In Gates to Another World, only the first 10 actually do something meaningful. The rest just stand there and wait for their turn. They can’t attack, use spells, or even run away. That standby reserve is not accessible to heroes under your control. The arrows of the most masterful snipers can’t reach them and even the strongest sorcery of mass destruction unable to harm them. The only positive exception to that is the cleric spell of the highest level, Holy Word, that destroys all the undead creatures no matter where they stand. By the way, there is one inaccuracy with it. Contrary to the game manual the use of this spell does not age a caster.

Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC game screnshot 1989 Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC game screnshot 1989

Now I must go back to the fundamental difference between the statements in a commercial advertisement and the real qualities of a product which open to you only after the purchase was made and the ad had done its job. Here we have a case when you can honestly print an impressive higher number on the cover yet really have a noticeable regression. Besides, such massive fights are just tedious. The whole process of taking out the hoard of some goblins that individually don’t offer any resistance to a minimally adapted party is monotonous. It doesn’t bring new elements to the gameplay. It gives you no new experiences like Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven did. I had to keep myself from bashing the keyboard in such minutes (seconds are not enough because of everything I have described) without even looking at the screen because my brain was desperately crying for some load to process.

After you leave any area monsters respawn in all squares with fixed encounters even if all the enemies were destroyed. Besides that, if the script didn’t specify the exact numbers and types of monsters, they become stronger depending on your party’s level. Just like that, I was able to explore most of the dungeon beneath the town where adventures begun with first level characters while scattering bloody pieces of wild rats all over and banishing walking skeletons from the world of the living. After leveling up even walking into that dungeon becomes problematic because now I had to face jugglers dealing the damage to the entire party and armed soldiers. So all the crawling around for three days, earning money for quality training seemingly weakens you instead of strengthening. Not the most pleasant outcome. And people were bashing Oblivion…

Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC game screnshot 1989 Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC game screnshot 1989

On the other hand… it helped the game to keep me focused and concentrated when closer to ending I discovered dungeons I previously missed that were more suitable for an inexperienced group. Likely the same thing happened to other players because the world of Might and Magic 2 is truly open from the very beginning. Nobody guides your direction of search nor does someone lead you from easiest targets to progressively more difficult ones. It is completely possible to go where you are not ready to go yet and be ruthlessly destroyed without a word of warning in the first five minutes.

The positioning of enemy groups is extremely sloppy. More so it doesn’t follow the theme of the location. For example, there are barbarians, generic soldiers, and white knights serving as guards inside the castle that greets you with the sign “no humans allowed” and has hordes of undead and demons populating its lower levels. So when you meet creatures that are immune to physical attack in an area where the magic doesn’t work you end up stunned with uncertainty. Was it a glaring mistake or was it sophisticated mockery aiming to prolong the already outstanding gameplay time by a couple of hours? In both cases, it feels bad. Any potential ambiguity disappears when you try to fight your way to treasures through the hardest dungeons only to be stopped by some unknown force when you were already anticipating a sweet loot literally before the last step to it, simply because you have characters of a certain race or class in the party. As a rule, the artifact behind such barrier can only be used by them…

Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC game screnshot 1989 Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC game screnshot 1989

Most of the monsters that inhabit these lands, such as orcs, zombies, or dragons, are well known to anyone even though their special abilities aren’t always obvious. However, you can find few truly original fruits of fantasy, for example, resistant to magic and sleep-inducing brain-eaters, that look very different from either illithids from Dungeons & Dragons bestiary or creatures described by Howard Lovecraft.

The direction of progress

Graphics is where Might and Magic Book Two certainly shines in comparison to the first game. Non-hostile NPCs and services got their own pictures, though not every last one of them. A typical inn owner or a blacksmith has a collective visual image now but unique ones like a travel agent or a neurosurgeon don’t have it. Still, important scenes developing the storyline are presented in text only. There are no animated sequences for that, no static frames even. But the enemies weren’t only naturally placed into the landscape instead of levitating in the black void of the original game, they also were tastefully animated. Although there are still not enough animations for everyone, for example, necromancers and druids look the same. A similar story is with everything else. Walls became nicer and more detailed but every town has the same ones. Both horned devils and chaste maidens in white robes go about their daily business past the same blue stones covered in moss. Unlike the first Might and Magic, the graphics weren’t just copied from the technologically obsolete Apple II platform that saw the release a year earlier but were redrawn to use the entire available color palette of EGA video cards.

There is just one visual blooper. In a castle, while taking a walk through long corridors you can see the sky changing colors according to a current time of day. To me, it feels a bit weirder than the possibility to encounter a mounted patrol in said corridors.

Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC game screnshot 1989 Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC game screnshot 1989

Noticeable yet less consistent progress towards comfort was made in user interface and control mechanics. For instance, the options screen not only allows to choose the speed of in-game text or to turn sounds off or on but also to set the frequency of random encounters. However, the most important new feature I want to thank developers for is automapping that turns on with learning the secondary skill of cartography. The map appears by simply pressing the M key and works even in pitch-black darkness where you can‘t see normally. It’s hard to understand to those who’ve never had the experience of navigating sterile minimalistic labyrinths where one passage is indistinguishable from neighboring ones. If you missed the opportunity to play something like that you’ll have to believe my words. It felt nothing lesser than a revolution comparable to first analog sticks on gamepads or hardware-accelerated texture filtering on 3D objects.

Nevertheless moving through the desert is a tricky task even with cartography and navigation skills because the white arrow that marks your current position and the direction you’re facing is not visible in yellowish-white sand. So you’ll have to use the old-fashioned mastery of orienteering with only coordinates at hands.

Ecumene consists of the same 20 sectors seamlessly sewn together. All of them are 16×16 squares and each field may contain something of interest. Comparing to the previous game the bigger part of adventures takes place in towns, castles, multi-level caverns, and other unsafe places giving players 36 more squares to explore. Add to that elemental planes and travel in some strange mix of time and space, when well-known places reveal new properties, and it becomes a truly huge world which can take you 200-250 hours to honestly complete without guides and cheats.

Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC game screnshot 1989 Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC game screnshot 1989

It would be too good to be true without one particularly annoying thing. Sometimes in order to see some messages including important ones related to the main questline you must not only be present on a specific tile but also be facing a certain direction. Because of that I spent quite a lot of time revisiting the locations I had already explored.

The game map wraps on both axes. In other words, if you come from some point and keep going straight in one direction you’ll get back to the same spot. Though the logic of the world seemingly was finished before the addition of that feature and would fit a simple rectangle with hard borders better. Due to that if your group moves from the easternmost part of the land to the east it will immediately turn up on the westernmost part jumping from icy wasteland to hot desert in one step.

Cluebook is not the sole source of knowledge about the parameters of acquired weapons and armor anymore. An expert at the blacksmith for a good coin will describe not only the goods they have for sale but also magical artifacts, potions, and robber tools. It’s expensive and inconvenient but nevertheless, it’s an important improvement. Speaking of shops, there is nothing easier than selling a key quest item. That happened to me by accident once.

There was a constant lack of space in the inventory. Every character, as in the first game, is able to equip up to six items and six more can be stored in the backpack. So, at the first glance, you notice the maximum number of free slots increased from 36 to 48 but the same happened to the quantity of miscellaneous objects that potentially come in handy who knows where. Therefore your routine trips back to towns in order to sell accumulated loot happen more often. You can’t just give up on income and throw stuff off because at no stage of the game money will stop mattering. In the beginning the price of training that doubles in a couple of level-ups scares. Then it becomes clear that the mercenaries’ cost is many times higher. Even with a “salary cap” at 50000 gold per day for a single worker in the field of pain and destruction the expenses can become problematic with no attention to money. And there are other, less obvious, but no less financially demanding ways to spend the riches.

Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC game screnshot 1989 Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC game screnshot 1989

In combat, in a variety of catacombs full of traps, or outside in the wilderness, where snowstorms, earthquakes, and boiling lava can harm you, the health of the entire party is displayed at all times. For that developers had to sacrifice the length of names. The Secret of the Inner Sanctum did fit my nickname on the screen while the sequel didn’t.

However, the more you comprehend the depth and variety that the world of CRON offers, which was at the time one of the most complex and detailed, the more lack of any information about changes happening around annoys you. The status of each character at any given moment is defined by 24 variables. If you take a drink from some magical spring or touch some unidentified object these variables can change. But the game won’t tell you which ones precisely, by what amount, and for how long. Perhaps Van Caneghem himself was keeping pieces of paper with sets of characters’ parameters close to the keyboard as he was accustomed to since playing tabletop D&D and tracked the changes by comparing them to what was currently on the screen. I had to just take screenshots of the character status screen where all the numbers are displayed, before and after the interaction, and look for the differences. Though even that approach doesn’t work well in all situations. And neither of two seems convenient to me, so it only adds up some dull routine to the already long list of chores like manual mapping, recording all the information, memorizing spells and properties of items.

Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot

The sound is the technology that remained in its infancy in Might and Magic Book Two. There is no music except the one you hear on the title screen and that’s a pity. Wandering through ancient minimalistic catacombs becomes so much more memorable when the soundtrack resonates with your mood. Phantasy Star can confirm. Outside of encounters, there is absolutely nothing to hear except short repetitive sounds of movement to another field and collision with a solid barrier. Next to that, even the poor short loops that indicate victory in a battle or finding loot aren’t that terribly jarring. Having at least something is better than complete auditory deprivation. Also, the adequate saving feature is still missing. You can only save stats and inventories of characters in each of five inns.

Distinctive features

Here nobody forces the storyline on you. Heroes under the player’s control never say a word. You won’t get into a situation for which you’ve never had a model of behavior in your head, like meeting an old githzerai lady who begs for a merciful kill. Might and Magic 2 doesn’t offer anything outside of well-known mass culture tropes. Nevertheless, when people speak about Gates to Another World being too focused on battle tactics they oversimplify it. At least the numbers of non-playable characters, puzzles, quest objects have increased since the original game as has the amount of text.

It simply uses other tools to immerse one into the experience than people would have expected in five years after the release, not to mention in thirty-plus years. The whole thing works thanks to the open world that is there for you to discover, to look for something interesting to do in on your own. It is really an outstanding feeling that by touching the keyboard you actually have a world at the fingertips when you found the clue to start the quest yourself, when you were thinking about the solution and finally found it without any help. No high-budget, professionally written, voiced by Hollywood actors, and looking like the best examples of cinematography scene between the walks where you’re led by the hand from point A to point B can give that. Might and Magic II would be boring to watch in a stream, but a player who is ready to get carried away and who won’t give up when facing difficulties will be rewarded. Princess Lamanda and the person with not quite obvious gender identity who happened to be an apprentice of the character that ties both “books” together are more memorable than carefully modeled and animated companions from AAA action that you finished in one evening despite having no voice acting and not taking part in a theatrical act of Chekhovian magnitude.

Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot

There are relatively many side quests though in terms of depth and variety they have little to amaze you. Most of them are solved in one action. Kill the monster! So you kill it. Find an object! You go and find it exterminating various fauna specimen on the way. Puzzles elevate this straightforward concept. Somewhere you stumble upon the information about the very existence of a puzzle. It doesn’t happen automatically because there is no journal or some formal invitation “Quest received! Accept? Yes / No” as RPGs back then didn’t have those. Then during the mapping of the territory, you bump into the solution or a hint that leads to the solution. Finally, after some thought process, you come up with an idea of where and how to use it. It happens naturally. Data comes to you the same way it does when you notice tiny bits of changes in the reality around, clues, motivations, and reasons to act on the way home from a daily job or to a grocery. It is entirely a player’s choice to react on them or not. Few quests, such as making a donation in all the temples or tasting each and every meal in the world, also unobtrusively strengthen the motivation to discover new facets of Cron.

I can’t avoid giving special recognition to cryptographic brain teasers. For those who have no idea how far we’ve gone mentally from the 80s, or, due to annoying ads of Fortnite, League of Legends, or indistinguishable mobile entertainment apps, perceive computer games as something objectionable and idle that generally leads to intellectual degradation and is predominantly appealing to young fragile minds, I will give an example without naming specific details and throwing obvious spoilers. During the adventure, you pass by a meaningless, seemingly incoherent sequence of symbols. It is expected that at some point you will notice them and make a decision that it’s not just part of the scenery, but something important. Most likely that will happen when you encounter another similar inscription, and another one, and one more… Then you begin to purposefully look for them guessing to put it all together into a single text block that looks like a randomly mixed set of letters and punctuation marks. Desperate attempts to recall university lectures on cryptography and try to find some simple cipher like Caesar’s shift last for hours and bring no result, because at no stage does it become known to you how many parts there are, and whether you have seen all of them. Later another piece accidentally comes across. Cerebral convolutions struggle with the problem again. Something begins to loom but the whole picture doesn’t come together despite all the efforts. Again you find a fragment and again you meditate on the letters until your eyes hurt. Eureka! After the cipher is defeated the genuine message vaguely explains about some dude who lives seclusively in his hut somewhere in the wasteland. He, it says, will give a hint. And with that hint, you go to such and such unusual pool, and it will be awesome… if you then pass the test. It, of course, doesn’t specify where the named pool is located. Got it? All that trouble was to just get a hint where to get a hint in order to pass the test who knows where.

Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot

With the current market shaped by DLCs, loot boxes casino and gameplay mechanics where “pay to win” model has defeated “press X to win” model for good, nobody has to overcome such difficulties even for easter eggs. While here it was quite naturally built into the gameplay and became the essential part of the whole experience that is required to reach the good ending. The game shows no intention to adapt to any paying customer and accept his skill level, no matter how inept and dense he may be. On the contrary, it challenges the player, dares him to overcome hard obstacles, and, as a result, makes him more skillful than before. Moreover, success can’t be achieved by perseverance and mindless grinding alone, you have to actually strain the neurons of the brain.

It’s still possible to repeat most of the quests an unlimited number of times, collecting experience and treasures to no end. And while the combat ones maintain some balance, the fact that the whole party can repeatedly receive rewards for a once solved riddle inflicts a devastating blow to it. I found a way to gain experience points indefinitely without obstacles and complications when my group was as low as eighth level. And if you take into account there are leprechauns who randomly destroy items, including unique ones that are critical to the storyline, it becomes obvious that the need to repeat some missions was an intentional decision. So if Van Caneghem was aware that people would replay some of the quests why didn’t he think about the disbalance that other could create? This point seems to me to be a clear mistake in game design.

Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot

The need to change the party roster along the way was an unorthodox decision by New World Computing that had turned into a really professional team that used more than ten people to create the PC version. In Secret of the Inner Sanctum you could theoretically change the set of characters for each playing session but why would you do that if a balanced group that gets all the experience is more effective? But now there are unique promotion quests for every class that don’t allow others on board during the completion.

I desperately tried to avoid splitting the party but it turned out that class-specific quests were necessary to complete the game and there was no way around it. And even after that, there was no alternative to breaking the well-knit team in accordance with the storyline at least one more time. As if it weren’t the heroes on a mission to save the world but simply a bunch of random thrill-seekers hanging out in a tavern and occasionally, in different combinations, making forays for the next artifact or someone’s head as a mean of personal enrichment. This doesn’t help to immerse into the story and, although it bears a closer resemblance to the life we all know, the roleplaying element, the feeling of being in other reality suffers from this. What’s good for Jagged Alliance and X-COM is not welcomed in the universe of might and magic.

Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot

A bit of light humor has been added for the sake of variety and to liven up the world. For example, in the house of the very first quest giver, there is a locked room called skeleton closet. You will never guess what could be found there. And in the depths of one of the toughest dungeons, an NPC says he doesn’t believe in death of lord Elvis. The game doesn’t shy away from a little trolling. The residents’ committee of Atlantium offers to send you to Middlegate just for 25 gold in order to keep the town beautiful.

I would like to point out the sloppiness of the chronology as one of the lore’s shortcomings. The history of the world with the development of civilization, the emergence of towns, and other epoch-making leaps like that in less than a century seem to be dated so solely for the convenience of balancing mathematical formulas in which aging and bad ending after the deadline are possible.

Total sum

The main advantage of Might and Magic 2: Gates to Another World is that despite all the mentioned difficulties I’ve never felt that typical resentment and dull hopelessness which quite often go hand-in-hand with rogue-like games. For those titles, a random world seed that is theoretically impossible to beat may be a completely trivial thing. Well, you just die, get reborn, repeat, not a big deal. Aum in every field and let’s keep the samsara wheel spinning after the reincarnation. Gates to Another World is different. The hand of demiurge can be felt in every small detail, and the proportion of mental sticks and carrots was selected in such a way that the difficulty of monsters and puzzles doesn’t outweigh the desire to see what lies beyond the next turn of castle catacombs. It works so well that even the obviously tipped balance of variables of this realm didn’t turn out to be fatal to the gameplay. Here and there you get small bonuses like an unexpected reward for efforts or a little joke. As a result, the main goal for a long, challenging game is achieved. You never lose faith in your own ability to complete it.

Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot

When you solve a riddle on your own, when you level up and finally defeat that scary beast which you had met long before and which, without any chances, had kept sweeping away the whole group in a single round, you really feel on top of this artificial world where only your will matters. In this sense, the silent figurines consisting of abstract numbers merge into a truly multifaceted, complex personality that possesses an undoubted agency and therefore is alive – your own.

Summing up, it can be said with confidence that it is here, where the characteristic features of the series began to appear: mercenaries, special skills of the characters, battles with endless hordes of fantasy creatures at once, the world which is as open to exploration as possible without anybody leading the player on a leash along the predetermined route. It’s clear that Van Caneghem was no longer engaging in a retelling of the founders of the genre, Ultima and Wizardry, but instead began to experiment with his ideas which would later lead the series to its peak.

Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot Might and Magic Book Two Gates to Another World PC 1989 game screenshot

Altogether, this was a big bold step forward but, like with a toddler who has not yet fully learned to walk, the direction of movement did not quite meet the desired course and a foot landing on a solid surface was not yet able to reliably hold the entire body weight which is why it was waving and tilting dangerously in search for stability. Much of the way to a user-friendly, well-thought, and polished interface that wouldn’t pose a challenge to overcome in addition to enemies was still ahead. And many of described shortcomings don’t allow me to rate the game higher, even though so far this is the strongest candidate for the title of the best RPG from the 80s of all that I’ve played.

Rating: 6.5

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