Galatea
- February 28th, 2006
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This was originally written for Dr. Scott Rettberg‘s Intro To New Media Studies class.
This paper was written about Emily Short’s Galatea
Galatea is one of the most interesting pieces of interactive fiction I have ever played. This interactive fiction retells the story of a sculptor named Pygmalion, who falls in love with a statue that comes to life. The statue, here named Galatea, is interactive and offers her views on a variety of subjects. She also expresses anger and annoyance depending on her mood. There is a decent amount of depth to the character.
Story wise, this piece of interactive fiction does a good job. I really like the idea of taking an earlier myth and recreating it for modern times. In Galatea this is done effectively. The plot in Galatea is pretty simple. The reader interacts with the statue. No one ever leaves the one room the story takes place in.
The character of Galatea develops as the story goes on. Depending on her mood, when I asked her a question she would answer differently. When the class viewed this story we seemed to make a good amount of progress with getting Galatea to answer our prompts. Sometimes she got upset, but for the most part we made progress. When I played through this last night I only got as far as asking her if she was in love and she answered:
>ask galatea about love
“Were you in love with him?”
She turns so that she is looking at you straight on — level gaze, smoky eyes, brows pale and washed out in the light. Not her most beautiful angle, which might be why she avoids it.
“I know I loved him,” she answers. “And there was a time when I might even have said that he loved me, too. Things seemed simpler before I began to move, before I woke up. I didn’t realize that you could loathe your own creation.”
“So now you know. That’s all there is — my one and only secret.” She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “All the rest of my life’s just circumstance.”
“So far,” you reply. And she smiles again, this time for real.
*** The End ***
This time around she gave up her “one and only secret” right away. I restarted and after politely opening with a “hello” I proceeded to ask her about love immediately. She replied:
>ask galatea about love
“What do you know about love?” (As long as you’re catechizing her, you might as well be thorough.)
“That it makes people behave like idiots,” she replies harshly. “That it takes more than it gives.”
Depending on the time and previous discussion she answered differently. The reader’s interaction with Galatea changes how she answers. Seemingly, this doesn’t just involve the current conversation but is an amalgamation of the entire discussion.
The dialog is complex and interesting. Galatea has opinions about a variety of things and reacts different depending on, as stated above, the collective conversation you have had with her. Asking the same question at different points in the text receives a different answer. I also tried to ask the same question (the one about love) twice in a row and got a different answer each time.
The biggest way I can think of that Galatea functions differently than other interactive fictions is that it takes place in one room. Most pieces of interactive fiction take place in complex and decently large worlds or cities. Galatea, for the reasons noted above, is no less complex despite it’s spacial limitations.
As a game, Galatea has no real puzzles to solve. There are a variety of ways to finish the story, and finding all of them would be interesting. I looked around in the game and could not find anything about scores other than when you finish a game. For example, I started a new game and decided to leave the room right away:
>leave
You turn away, suddenly tired of this exhibit.
“Bored so soon?” she asks, in a flat voice.
You turn and look at her one last time. “I have other things to do,” you say. “And even your creator would admit that you’re — shall we say a bit rough around the edges?”
She doesn’t have any response to that. You head off to get yourself another glass of champagne.
*** The End ***
Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game or QUIT?
Unless finishing the game can be counted as a “score” there is no mention of scoring at all. There is no clock anywhere in the game, but when I didn’t reply quick enough to the first prompt I quoted above about love, Galatea filled that in for me and ended the game. I was able to get that same response later in another sitting after a series of other questions, so it isn’t just native to a delayed response.
As a game, this functions differently than other interactive fictions because the only “goal” seems to be to converse with Galatea and finish the game or leave. Despite the lack of “goals” Galatea is complex enough that there is as much to do with the game as there is in other pieces of interactive fiction.
