Stations of the Cross

In Christian practice, this is a series of fourteen images from the Crucifixion that the worshipper visits in order, praying before each, recreating the Passion with their own journey.

The term got re-purposed in modified form as part of the critical language of Fan Fiction. There are at least a thousand fan-written stories that re-tell Harry Potter's first year at Hogwarts. Even though each is different, with a different focus, different endings, different characters, even wildly different settings, the cantus firmus of the original novel is still back there. And thus, even if the story is set in 1950 and "Harry" is a girl, a ward of Dick Tracey, and from the Moon*, she'll still be unwrapping chocolate frogs with Ron on the Hogwart's Express.

The big difference being that not all of the familiar incidents and characters show up. This is more a statistical tendency towards a relatively small number of popular items from the original canon. So it is a little more like one of those churches with multiple saints in their own individual niches and you can Chinese Menu which ones you visit.

A similar effect is in alternate history, where W.W.I. may have kept going into the early 40's and Bismark II is a nuclear-powered hovercraft....but Winston Churchill is (somehow) still PM (and Adolph gets a brief appearance in the text; even though he's a well-established portrait painter in Free Austria, you still have to visit that station.)

Video Games would seem a strange place for this effect. Even in the most linear game, however, you can as player establish a different internal life for your character. I can play Tomb Raider 2013, for instance, as a scared kid or as a roaring arc of revenge. The results are basically the same and the cutscenes are, alas, the same, but there are nuances in how the actual play unfolds.

A game like Skyrim is very, very open to different paths.



In Skyrim, there is a Main Campaign and a whole bunch of side quests. And there's also stuff to do, like explore, gather herbs, hunt, learn smithing, run a farm. You can (many do) play for hours without ever touching on any of the scripted content.

You can also pick and chose. The episodes of the Main Campaign must be completed in order, but there's no time limit. You can go away to fight the Thieve's Guild or become Arch-Mage of the College of Winterhold for a few months and come back...the dragons will still be waiting.

These form the stations. Not just the memorable incidents of the Main Campaign (the flight from Helgen, the summons of the Greybeards) but also the other accomplishments and memorable incidents from the longer side quests (meeting Torvald, adopting an orphan, making one hundred iron daggers).

Not only can multiple people play this game and have unique experiences -- sharing only these Stations of the Cross as they come across them -- but one person can play the game multiple times, again each time with a unique experience.

And that means even coming at the well-known, well-worn incidents again and again, there is still new insight and new delight. Meeting Ulfric Stormcloak for the second time is a lot different if you meet him as a young dark-elf mage, or as a sturdy Nord who already beat-down the only other known Dragonborn in dragon-to-dragon combat.



And, yeah, there went a few more hours. I've been working a late-night install (we have to start after the offices clear out) and it took a bit of work to flip my biological clock around.



* Free Plot Bunny!  I would totally read an H.P. fanfic in which Moon Maid (or Honeymoon) went to Hogwarts, and Voldemort joined Pruneface and Flattop and the other wackaloons in Tracey's Rogues Gallery.