Category: Journal

From the Ashes goes miles for immersion and it rocks! Mainly, the latest expansion to Frontiers of Pandora does everything right that the base game does wrong and which I criticised before. By providing a more immersive and serious narrative, the game feels more enjoyable, real and intensive as well. As a result, even retrospectively, it elevates and sort of fixes the plot of the base game too, as the narrative provides the missing consequences and ties up the loose ends. With the new ending we even get a glimpse at the possible future of the story as well. In short, the expansion and its narrative are a welcome return to the roots.

Reading, if you think about it, is a strange human activity. An endeavour to experience something that is not really happening to us, at least not at that moment. Or to get to know a mind of another. It is an action to learn, to immerse, to feel, to get lost and to fantasise.

Lately I have been playing Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (2023), and I have to say that gameplay-wise, regarding the mechanisms, systems and player experience, the game totally delivers a complex and enjoyable experience of what James Cameron’s Pandora could be like. However, the story and the writing is so mediocre that it ruins the immersion on many different levels. The unnecessary jokes and forceful insertion of contemporary problems (that are meaningless in the grand scheme of things) make the game too un-serious and while it has its moments, the narrative is wasted on the audience by not being able to convey its complex reflection about the problematized themes of this otherwise wonderful video game. And this is a tendency that can be observed generally in the case of other games as well. However, Frontiers of Pandora is a great case-study of this trend of consumerization and commercialization and their effects on gameplay, narrative and player experience.

Historically and geographically, today’s United Kingdom and, particularly, England, exist on the land that once belonged to the Roman Empire and thus it was once known as the province of Britannia and was also known as Roman Britain. In popular media, Romans and their culture and history are often represented. For example, there are films, books, music and video games made to retell or idealise the story, ideology, society, culture, religion, achievements or even just a tiny historical part of Rome. As it is established by many authors, for example, Robert Philips argues that history is always part of the formation of the national identity (2003, 5), and Roman Britain is part of England’s past. Therefore, the question of this essay is that how are the Roman times still relevant in today’s British culture?

A Seminar Paper written for the East and West in the Antiquity seminar at the University of Szeged, during the Fall of 2023.

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS” (Orwell 2008, 90). George Orwell, who was also in service of the Indian Imperial Police from 1922–1927 and then in 1936 worked for the Left Book Club, where his job was to write about unemployment and the worsening economic situation in the north of England, saw it clearly that despite the rising liberal ideas equality is very far from the ethnicities of the British Isles (Blakeley 1993, 233). Therefore, based on this observation, the aim of this essay is to shed some light upon the various aspects that led to both to Irish independence and the Troubles, which drive the politics of today and the relationship between the British and the Irish. Namely, I put emphasis on the discrimination from both sides, the rising national consciousness and the social rift.

Initially, when I was preparing for one of my presentations this semester, I intentionally chose The Hamletmachine by Heiner Müller, because it seemed the most intriguing and engaging that can be strong enough to even conjure physical and embodied reactions from my audience. This proved useful in the representation of the abject by Julia Kristeva and also provided a display for the constitution of the subject. Moreover, for me the most interesting part is the introduction of the machine into this equation that can take various positions, such as an abject or as a part of the subject, not just being an object.

A criticism addressed to modern media, especially concerning fantasy narratives. I wrote this article and criticism, because I love and care about the genre. I want it to thrive, adapt and improve, which can only be achieved through constructive criticism from which we can build.

During the ancient days, if you were working for yourself then you were a free man, up for your own advancement and betterment; however, if you were working for others that was always seen as servitude, you were a slave – a dependant.

History is a narrative, our retelling of reality, of events. And it is a simulacrum, because it is only our relationship between reality and also the retelling of our experiences; thus it is not a direct link to reality, but only a simulation of it.

In short: it is a step of the translation process. Regarding films, series or video games, this step tends to be categorised as a separate process or activity. However, it is still translation, but with an additional focus on the target culture. For example, it is one thing to translate symbols, metonymy, metaphors or allegory from one language to another, it is a totally different thing to carry over the feelings and the hidden meanings behind them. Mostly, symbolism is very different between cultures and may totally mean opposite things. As a result, it is an important step in translation, for this ensures that the true meaning is conveyed.