The Representation of Physical Books and Bookish Places in Video Games
The Last of Us Part II
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8864455 |
|---|---|
| Authors | L Millard Rosenberg (0000-0003-0610-3644, Independent Scholar, Münster, Germany, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 103 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 690-705 |
| Publication date | 2022-07-04 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | English Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-838X • E-ISSN: 1744-4217 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/0013838x.2022.2087035 |
| OpenAlex | W4292266999 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
For more than a decade now, video games have rivalled more traditional modes of complex narratives in storytelling, like novels and films. Interestingly, there is no shortage of representations of physical books or bookish places in such games. Though sometimes these elements can be seen simply as decoration, they can add insight into the story of the game. A recent example is The Last of Us Part II (2020), a PlayStation game that tells the story of two women in a pandemic world ravaged by a parasitic fungal infection. The story focuses on the themes of hate and revenge with nods to Greek mythology and other classics. This article demonstrates how the game uses books and bookish spaces not merely as an aesthetic backdrop within a postapocalyptic world, but rather as an important layer to the complex narrative by using the symbolic value of the book as a material object
Aesthetics · Art · Economic shortage · Linguistics · Literature · Media studies · Multimedia · Mythology · Narrative · Object (grammar · Political science · Representation (politics · Sociology · Storytelling · Value (mathematics · Video game · Visual arts · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Innovative Human-Technology Interaction · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism · History · Law · Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
|---|