Premature Evaluation: Garbage Day

マーシュ・デイヴィスは毎週、お腹を空かせた都会のカモメのように、悪臭を放つアーリーアクセスの山に降り立ち、しわくちゃのスペースレイダースのパケットを喉に詰まらせることなく、おいしいおやつを取り出すことを望んでいます。今週、彼は行き詰まってしまったゴミの日、名目上は同じループ期間を何度も繰り返し、謎をつなぎ合わせて一時的な刑務所から脱出することを目的としたゲームです。しかし、現在の形では、それはカラフルだが窮屈なカオスサンドボックスにすぎず、時計が真夜中になるとすぐに結果がリセットされることを知りながら、非常に破壊可能な町の漫画のような住民を殺したり傷つけたりすることができます。しかし、その永遠の現在は、より軽薄な未来に到達するための計画を示唆しているのでしょうか?

The traditional telling of Cromwell’s campaign is that he was about the worst thing to happen to Ireland - perhaps even worse than the Potato Famine or Riverdance. Famously, he slaughtered entire towns, man, woman and child, as he and his New Model Army tore up and down the country, leaving only bloodshed, famine and plague in his wake. Yet, this was always a feature of his biography that sat at odds with what little else I knew about him - a man who was otherwise seemingly fastidious in pursuing what he perceived as just, a man who, in many of the ways in which he opposed the power of both a despotic monarchy and corruption in the Church, seemed remarkably modern. His Parliament may have lambasted Christmas as a papist folly, but he also introduced a period of religious tolerance that saw Jews permitted into the country. His behaviour in Ireland was, it seemed, as aberrant as it was abhorrent, but generally accepted as undisputed fact.

Google Docs によると、これは私の 57 回目の早期評価であり、おそらく座っている方が良いでしょうが、これが最後になるでしょう。そこ、そこ。私が早期アクセス ゲームをレビューしている間に傾向を識別できたとしたら、それは、彼らが何をしているのか誰も知らないということです。開発者は自分たちが何を販売しているのか知りませんし、顧客は自分たちが何を購入しているのか知りません。そして、私も自分が何をレビューしているのかわからないことがよくあります。私は毎週 2 ~ 3 つのゲームをプレイして、次のようなゲームを見つけようとしています。たとえ大まかであっても、最も漠然とした期待であっても暫定的に評価される可能性のある製品として認識されます。却下されたゲームは、未完成 (より正確に言えば、まだ始まっていない) 状態であまりにも不定形であることが多く、それらをレビューすることは、その洞窟のような目的の欠如を無意味に怒鳴りつけることになるでしょう。確かに、必要最低限​​のアルファ、空想的な Unity Asset Store のピフル、あからさまな詐欺の境界線は確かに曖昧ですが、ほとんどの場合、これらのゲームの開発者は、顧客に何を要求するのが妥当なのか、何を要求するのが妥当なのか理解していないと思います。販売するのに倫理的なこと、あるいは自分たちのゲームが約束した未来に到達できることを人々に納得させるために何を示す必要があるのか​​。

It’s probably fair to say that, in terms of the English acting like absolute bastards abroad, a category which is not in want of examples, Ireland has built up a pretty good case over the centuries. Cromwell’s campaign led to a programme of resettlement that was devastating to the local population, and there certainly were atrocities at this time perpetrated by the mercenary armies acting under Parliamentary interests. But many of the key facts around Cromwell’s own expedition have been rather distorted by the shifting politics of the centuries following it. For one thing, this was not, as I had always thought, merely an act of English colonial expansion against a native Irish population desperate for independence. It was a messy extension of the English civil war between Parliamentarian and Royalist - that division itself further fractured by nationality and religion. Prior to Cromwell’s arrival, multiple armies had been chewing up the country for the better part of a decade, and few of these factions were interested specifically in Irish independence. The closest parallel to current day Irish nationalist interests was found in the Celtic forces, led by Eoghan Ruadh O’Neill - but, while he, a Catholic, desired a liberated Ireland to ensure his religious freedom, the intricacies of the political situation led him instead to declare allegiance to the English crown, hoping to negotiate better terms under the English monarchy than he would receive from the Puritan Parliament. In doing so he threw in his lot with forces who he would previously have seen as his antagonists - joining the international forces of the Crown to defend Irish towns against the Parliamentarians. This war was by no means a clear-cut battle between separatists and their suppressors.

ゴミの日したがって、この列の非常に正確な別名であることが多いだけでなく、その問題の典型的なものでもあります。中心となる前提は、現時点では意味のある形でゲームから完全に欠落しています。明らかにあなたを時間に閉じ込めた原子力発電所の事故は、グラウンドホッグデースタイルで、完全に Steam ストアの説明に限定されたイベントです。発電所自体はいくつかの空き部屋で構成されており、登ることのできない山々に囲まれたこの非常に小さな町の建物の多くも同様です。住人たちも同様にぼんやりしており、目的もなく右往左往しながら「何とか何とか」というフレーズだけを発している。現時点ではゲーム全体であるサンドボックス モードで見つけられる手がかりはなく、さらに、そのような手がかりが後日どのように含まれるかについても手がかりがありません。 Garbage Day は、それがどのように現状以上のものになるのか、複雑な陰謀を解き明かす可能性のある相互作用を世界にどのように播種するのかを示唆するものではありません。

This confusing international conglomeration of Irish Catholics and Protestant Royalists were bolstered by Catholic English settlers of several generations past, and Catholics fleeing England in fear of religious persecution. The fear was very well justified, but it would be a mistake to cast the influence of Rome as entirely benign, seeking mere religious tolerance. Rome was keen to recapture England as a Catholic country, militarily if necessary, and its efforts to do so posed a substantial existential threat to both Protestantism and England’s fledgling democracy. In no small way was this threat facilitated by Ireland’s geography, if not always its people: it had acted as a launch pad for the Spanish Armada within living memory, and Ireland’s coastline was busy with pirate vessels sponsored by the Confederacy of Flanders to accost all enemies of the Catholic cause and the English Crown. Its reaving was a substantial operation: by the time of Cromwell’s invasion, Wexford-based pirates now threatened shipping from the Irish sea to the Mediterranean. These were fears which informed such a swift and ruthless effort to subdue Ireland, and they were not unfounded.

とはいえ、このゲームがそのような期待に応えられないことを示唆するものは何もありません。それは素晴らしいことであり、軽薄で、そしてつい面白いものであり、たとえもっと多くの時間を費やさなければならないと感じなかったとしても、私はそれに費やしたすべての時間を楽しんできました。ローポリアニメーションには素朴なドタバタがあり、この陽気な漫画の街が物理学によって破壊される単純な喜びがあります。モデリング、彩度の高い青みがかったパレット、腹立たしいほどチッパーな音楽、峠の隙間から月が昇る様子など、美的な選択がなされたことを裏付ける、そして良い選択がなされていることを裏付ける品質があります。も、Unity Asset Store のパーツの品揃えから半ば偶然に出現するのではありません。実際の機能から切り離されてはいるものの、レジや銀行の金庫が略奪される可能性があるシステムもあります。ドーナツは注文できます。警察官は怒る可能性がありますが、現在、車に乗り降りすることで指名手配のステータスが消去される可能性があります。バグはこれだけではありません。銃を持った保安官を轢くと、同じ仲間の一人が即座に同情心を爆発させることがあります。

There were more venal interests, too, at play - albeit informed by a degree of necessity; Ireland’s land was needed to pay Parliament’s long-serving armies. And it was undoubtedly a bloody conflict that had tragic consequences for the country. There had been grotesque massacres on every side, although, confusingly, many of the key figures responsible - indeed, entire factions - switched allegiances, making it even harder to keep track of the moral high ground. But if Cromwell’s contribution to this war was decisive and ruthless it was also, according to Tom Reilly’s book, scrupulously fair - and entirely within the rules of war as they were defined at the time. Much of the supposed evidence for the massacre of civilians, he asserts, emerges only after Cromwell’s death, reported by people who were not eye-witnesses and were perhaps prone to embellish their tales with details more pleasing to the contemporary powers. To get a sense of the new politics to which these narratives appealed, it is worth remembering that the English monarchy had since been reinstated and Cromwell’s dead body exhumed and beheaded. It was not a good time to be a Cromwellian. So, too, do the reports of a bloodthirsty Englishman appeal to the later developing interests of Irish nationalism. The vagaries of politics in both England and Ireland have uniquely suppressed any appetite to debunk the claims of Cromwell’s cruelty.

午前7時に目覚めた私の最初の本能は、家を破壊し、固定されていない物理オブジェクトを投げつけて、何が壊れるかを確認することです。ここでのゲームは少し一貫性がありません。ガラスが割れたり、木製のドアが破壊されたりする可能性がありますが、バスケットボールは至近距離のショットガンの爆発に耐えることができます。しかし、人々はそうではありません。それらの破片が飛び出し、独立して転がります。残念なことに、それらをウッドチッパーに餌を与えても、特別な相互作用は生じません。実際、この段落と最後の段落で、ゲームのすべてのインタラクションをほぼカバーできたと思います。サンドボックス モードでは、さまざまな武器が家の前に置かれており、ほぼ期待どおりの機能を果たします。近接武器を使うと不法な笑いが起きるが、暴力行為をした後はすぐに警官が撃ってしまうため、状況を均衡させるためには銃を持ったほうが良いだろう。今のところ、店のカウンターをよじ登ってレジを空にすることは違反とはみなされず、また国民は不当な物的損害に対しても驚くほど寛容だ。

However, the forensic detail of Reilly’s book, with its wealth of contemporary sources, makes a pretty devastating case against this prevailing narrative. Reilly makes plain that not only are most of the sources claiming civilian massacres untrustworthy in the extreme, but he scours every contemporary account and primary source and finds barely anything to corroborate stories of civilian death. Even Cromwell’s enemies report no such atrocities in the immediate aftermath of Cromwell’s various successful sieges - and they would have every reason to propagate this narrative. In some cases, Reilly discovers that those who were later reported to have died at Parliamentary hands somehow live on in the minutes of local council meetings for years afterwards. Not that Cromwell was exactly soft - in the first instance of a siege, he demands surrender and makes it clear he will offer no quarter if his terms are rejected. And they are rejected, the walls fall beneath Cromwell’s cannon and the besieged forces are not spared, but slaughtered almost to a man. This may not have been against the rules of warfare at the time, but it is nonetheless shocking. Yet shock was its purpose. Cromwell knew Parliament could not long afford a war, and to that end he hoped a decisive and merciless rout would break the spirit of his foe, hasten the conflict’s close and prevent, as he frequently liked to say, “a further effusion of blood”.

30分も経つと、ピケットフェンスを突破したり、ドーナツの小売業者を銃撃したりする楽しみのほとんどを使い果たしたように感じたので、私は脱出方法を探しました。山道は砂漠へと続いています。サボテンは最もうまく分解できますが、私の車は地形をうまく処理できず、滑ったり、滑ったり、時には頂点に引っ掛かったり、ひっくり返ったりすることがわかりました。私は砂丘の向こうに見える灯台に向かって進んでいきましたが、車は代わりに湾の水に突っ込んでしまいました。幸いなことに、溺れることは不可能のようで、私は濁った多角形の棚をゆっくりよじ登って水面に出ることができました。夕暮れが近づいています。日がリセットされるまで、灯台に到着するまでの時間はわずか数分しかありません。よじ登って回りますが、中に入る道はありません。

Furthermore, Cromwell - in this communication as in later ones - also makes plain that no civilians were to be harmed, nor their property ransacked, so long as they did not take up arms against him. There’s every reason to believe he was true to his word: only days before his first supposed massacre, Cromwell had hung a number of his own soldiers who had stolen a chicken from a local woman. He was quite clear in his declarations to his own highly-disciplined forces that the native populace was not to be molested, under pain of death, but instead generously compensated for whatever intrusion the New Model Army made upon them. As the campaign drew to a close, and victory became more certain, Cromwell proved lenient in both his terms of surrender and his offering of quarter. In some instances, he shows tremendous patience. Reading his letters is a delight - the exchange between Cromwell and the governor of Wexford is a masterclass in polite menace and dry wit. The governor, playing for time and overplaying his hand, asks for exceedingly unlikely terms - Cromwell is marvellously withering, dismissing the demand that all hostility end while negotiations are laboriously spun out: “I consider that your houses are better than our tents, so I shall not consent to that”. But Cromwell nonetheless does allow the governor many further chances, presumably again being reluctant to cause a further “effusion of blood”. After receiving an exasperating letter in which the governor relates an excuse for his various delays, Cromwell replies: “Sir, You might have spared your trouble in the account you gave me [...] These are your own concernments, and it behoves you to improve them.”

このコラムを書き始める前は、クリス・リビングストン以前は RPS の早期アクセス ビートを歩き、「The Lighthouse Customer」というタイトルで執筆していました。それは私がこれまで聞いたことのないフレーズだったので、グレアムに説明してもらわなければなりませんでした。炭鉱のカナリアのように、灯台の顧客は他の人に前方の危険を警告するかもしれません。初期の形のなさと未知の運命という点で早期アクセスに典型的なゲームの最後のレビューとして、私は灯台にドアさえないことに気づきました。

ゴミの日Steam から £11 で入手できますが、これほど薄いものとしてはかなりの高額です。 2016 年 1 月 22 日にビルド ID 940948 のバージョンをプレイしました。

Though Cromwell was amenable to surrender, the situation at Wexford got out of control. It seems a Royalist commander of the town’s external fort decided to surrender unexpectedly, and unbeknownst to Cromwell, who at the time was writing yet another letter to the governor. Once the fort’s cannon were turned upon the town wall, the defenders abandoned their positions, and the Parliamentary forces - not waiting for Cromwell’s command, seized the advantage and began to storm the town. The result was the demolition of many of the buildings - which Cromwell seems to regret only because he’d wanted to capture it intact - and the drowning of many of those alarmed defenders who tried to flee by boat, piling on until the vessels capsized. This, of all the sieges described in Tom Reilly’s book, looks to be the one in which civilian deaths were most likely to have occurred, albeit without premeditation and against the explicit instruction of Cromwell himself. Nonetheless, Reilly maintains that most if not all townsfolk left in the town at this stage were likely to have been armed and prepared to fight; the commander of the Royalist forces had long since issued an instruction to evacuate all people non-essential to the town’s defence. And again, no contemporary sources describe civilian deaths - even though a larger number of defending soldiers were this time spared and so would have had the chance to pass on such accounts of atrocity.

昨年はこのコラムを読んでいただきありがとうございました。今日は皆さんとてもいい表情をしています。

None of this makes Cromwell an angel, but Reilly’s book convincingly acquits him of being a devil - and, in the context of his times, makes him out to be a better man than most. I find Reilly’s investigation fascinating, not just because of the detail it brings to Cromwell’s remarkable life, but because it demonstrates how entirely the lens of history can be distorted, how regimes will dig up the past and mutilate it for the purposes of their present convenience. It might make you wonder what other dearly held beliefs are also waiting to be reappraised and overturned. Though, given the vast knowledge RPS commenters have shown in response to these alt-texts, it’s likely you already have a suggestion or two...