Omelas, a game
35 years ago, Ursula K. LeGuin, whom I consider the cosmic counter-balance of Ayn Rand, wrote a very short, very beautiful story entitled, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.
Omelas is a story about Utopia. Not a strictly structured tale, but more a conversation with LeGuin herself, the story progresses as she describes the happiness of the people of Omelas. The composition of their world, the bits about them that make them happy. The things that they cherish and love. LeGuin makes a point of showing that it’s not a puritanical Utopia, but a Utopia founded upon the “Just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive”
Ever since I read this clear-headed, balanced rendition of Utopia years ago, its four pages lost amidst a sea of “Greatest 20th Century Short Stories”, I’ve used it as a ward against my chums’ fascination with Rand’s libertarian ranting. Omelas has kept my soul clean and clear of any extremist Utopian taint.
When Corvus Elrod first made known this month’s Blogs of the Round Table (BoRT) topic I hemmed and hawed over what to write. How to conceptualize a favorite piece of fiction as if it were a game first. The audacity of it! The utter hubris of re-visualizing the work of a master. And how compelling! I’ve been wanting to jump into the BoRT project since I first found out about it last September, but through a confluence of events I’ve managed to put it off until now. Still, I flipped back and forth on what to push through that looking-glass.
After reading some amazing and notable BoRT entries, I was even more intimidated. But I learned some valuable lessons. I learned that it’s probably best to pick something short. Something with a clear, thematic core. I learned from Michael “Sparky” Clarkson’s post “Downward Spiral”, an envisioning of E.E. Cummings “l(a”, that a piece short and powerful could perpetuate a avalanche of game mechanics.
At first I thought to do Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game”, but never got really excited by that. Then I thought to translate a poem, but Michael cornered the market and I wanted to contribute something original. Thankfully, after playing Bioshock, discussing Rand’s inanity, and trying to read “Anthem”, I remembered The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.
This is a game of bright colors, cartoony cell-shaded characters, in the design spirit of Wind Waker, Okami and Paper Mario, The Thousand Year Door. The bubbly visual and aural elements make to make you feel happy, cheerful and safe.
Omelas starts with The Train Ride. Your character, a child of 11 or so, customized by you at the beginning, preferably in outlandish colors and clothing, is sitting on a train, traveling to the distant city of Omelas from your home in the rural outskirts. There is no free-movement here, other than to look around, out the window or at the other passengers in their festival clothes. It’s time for The Festival of Summer and this is the first time you’ve been allowed to go by yourself, albeit you’re meeting your cousin at the station. After a few minutes riding the train gazing enrapt out at the beauty of the countryside, you arrive at the Omelas Train Station.
The Train Station is the most handsome building in the city. After taking in the majesty of the structure, your cousin finds you and asks you to help him/her decorate your uncle’s ship with flags for the festival. You agree, of course, and set out for the harbor.
The basic mechanic of this game is the typical Zelda-esque adventure-game. You help out to decorate the city. First you cover your uncle’s ship in bright, colorful flags and get awarded “Omelas” points. You have to accumulate enough Omelas to attend the much vaunted Horse Race that is the highlight of the festival.
After finishing your uncle’s ship you have the option of decorating others or going off to explore the rest of the city. There are lots of little side missions that all help you accumulate “Omelas” and they all consist of helping people decorate the city. There’s one mission where you help paint the roofs of the buildings red and the walls with garish colors and designs. Things of this nature.
Once you have enough “Omelas” to participate you head toward The Green Fields. Once there you enter the race and gain access to a field of horses. Using your “Omelas” you essentially befriend a horse and agree to race with each other (the more Omelas, the faster the horse). You can make some practice runs, groom your horse (more Omelas) and talk to the others. Once the race is ready to begin, you and your horse head to the starting line. At the line, sitting in the dust, is a small bacchanalian child playing pan pipes. The child sits, “wholly rapt in the sweet, thin magice of the tune”. No one talks to him. He finishes, the race begins.
The Horse Race is raucous and beautiful. It takes places across the entire city. Through all the winding, colorful streets. The crowd are like a green meadow, grass and flowers swaying in the wind. Literally. Visually the images of the crowd change as the race progresses and their faces blend with the faces of meadow flowers until you find yourself racing amidst small rolling hills and a myriad branching paths, and you lose your way. Shortly after you come across a small cave, set into the side of a hill, bereft of sign or decoration. Your horse, tired, refuses to go further, and sits to rest. Curiosity gets the better of you and you enter. Revealed is a barely lit tunnel descending on a shallow slope. At the end is a dark, heavy door.
As LeGuin says,
“A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from a
cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads, stand near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits haunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes - the child has no understanding of time or interval – sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there. One of them may come and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked, the eyes disappear. The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother’s voice, sometimes speaks. “I will be good,” it says. “Please let me out. I will be good!” They never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, “eh-haa, eh-haa,” and it speaks less and less often. It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.
They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.”
There is a similarity of design between the “Omelas” points and the cloud of “excrement” the child sits in. The shock is palpable.
Can you save this child? Can you give some of your collected “Omelas” to ease its suffering? Should you?
You now have a choice.
I’m ending this here. I don’t want to layout exactly what happens when you do make your choice. Just as I didn’t detail the exact dynamics/mechanics of the game. If you bear in mind all the Zelda/Mario/Nintendo adventure games you’ve ever played you know how this game works. The emotional impact is what I think would make this game stand out. It’s what made the story stand out to me. Everything has a price, not always pleasant. Even if you have enough Omelas.
text of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
other Round Table entries
