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robhainesauthor · 7 years

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Treasure: The Moment

This is a reprint from Unwinnable Weekly #55 (29 July 2015), available to buy here.

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The lock clicks.

Music swells in heroic anticipation, the payoff for progress or exploration or epic achievement, for defeating some terrifying denizen of a palatial ruin or delving into the most secret depths of a trap-strewn dungeon. With the excitement of a child on Christmas morning, you lift the lid and peer inside, hoping for a glimpse of wealth beyond your wildest dreams.

The treasure chest is a videogaming staple, the simplest of mechanics to deliver a smorgasbord of itemry into your hands. Press A. Get Potion. Repeat. It's the wrapping paper around your present, a tantalising veil which offers a momentary sense of wonder at what could be hidden within, before you tear it open and discard the remnants in a flurry of overzealous enthusiasm. So entranced are you by the promise of wealth yet unattained that you pay scant attention to the wrapper, each treasure chest merely punctuation for your continuing adventures, an uptick in your fortunes clothed in the trappings of sacrament.

Despite its apparent simplicity, there's more to a satisfying treasure chest than just its contents: the sound of hinges, the weighty clunk of aged metal, the gleam of gold seeping out as you crack the lid are all integral facets of the experience. The act of opening a chest is ritual, an expectation of reward with conventions and traditions laid down in the game mechanics: Rainbow Islands' chests fountain fruit and cake unhygienically across the room - an iconic exuberance more recently employed by Henry Hatsworth and Shovel Knight, amongst others - instigating a panicked dash to snatch up your prizes before the arcade's incessant pacing drives you to the next stage. Diablo and its various imitators take a more functional approach, treasure chests popping like overripe pimples at the slightest provocation to spew coins and irreplaceable magical armaments across the floor with a distinct lack of ceremony, as if that precious moment of anticipation is nothing more than a pesky interruption in your rush to accumulate MOAR TREASUR.

The Legend of Zelda has swung the opposite direction over its various iterations. While A Link to the Past relied on a single frame of animation and a brief rising-scale musical motif before presenting you with your ill-gotten gains, more recent titles in the series increasingly linger on that anticipation at the expense of pace. Tension builds with a rolling, rising, accelerating scale as Link drags himself over the lip of the chest, surveys its gleaming contents and at last reaches deep inside to pull out yet another ancient mystical artifact essential to your quest, before triumphantly brandishing it towards the camera with heroic fanfare, seeking your perusal and approval in equal measure.

These rites frame your interactions with the reward systems of the game; after all, you've conquered the risk, so what else is left? The only question once you've performed the appropriate genuflections is whether you are rewarded with a triviality - a handful of loose change, a health potion, a common drop - or a treasure of genuine value. Secret of Mana's chests inexplicably flee from you, growing legs and sprinting across the room before they can be cornered and plundered, their contents varying wildly from the most miserly of consumables to an infinitesimal chance of the most powerful crafting materials in the game. While Skyrim rewards you with suitably imposing treasure chests hidden behind its most dangerous and epic encounters, they tend to be so stuffed with a mishmash of grave goods that the only reasonable recourse is to Take All then spend ten minutes sitting on the floor, rummaging through your bags, throwing out books and wheels of cheese until you've discarded enough junk to be able to walk again. It's an emergent ritual of your own making, a seeming accident of game design which turns the treasure chest's satisfying punctuation into an extended awkward silence.

Ultimately the treasure chest is a cliche, a quirk of functionality inspired by tales of pirate booty and Count of Monte Cristo-esque treasure hoards. It seems unlikely that there has ever been a profusion of treasure chests in any real-life location to the same density as found in most videogames, but attempts to break away from the cliche often feel disingenuous. Final Fantasy VIII replaces the vast majority of its chests with Draw Points, ephemeral spinny tokens which ding at your touch and grant you a miserly handful of magic spell uses - which you most likely already have an excess of - while many modern games with RPG elements have replaced treasure chests entirely with rummaging through cupboards and trashcans. The Bioshock series in particularly relies heavily on this conceit, despite the mechanics of scavenging ammo and chocolate bars from someone's bins being functionally identical to the cliche but for the added incongruity of roleplaying a half-starved squirrel thrown haphazardly into the mix.

No matter how satisfying your interaction, how skewed or incongruous, the basic interaction remains the same. Press A. Get Money. Get Power. Get All The Good Things You Deserve As Reward For Your Hard-Won Progress. You can rest easy knowing you just have to Press A, and your life will improve. Magic spear or magic helmet. One rupee or a hundred, a steady advancement towards wealth and power.

And then, down in the dark, tangled in the deathtraps and deceits of Sen's Fortress, you are betrayed. In place of mystical artifacts and piles of forgotten gold lie cruel teeth and grasping hands and death. Your ritual is shattered, your expectation of just reward ripped from you and consumed even as you respawn, older, wiser, more afraid. Warm anticipation is replaced by cold dread, forever lodged in your maw as you inch towards your promised reward, hoping that this time the promise is true. Oh god, let it be true...

While the concept of mimics - chest monsters lurking in the dark, waiting for some greedy adventurer to devour - has been around for decades, Dark Souls is notable for its terrifying execution. Sen's Fortress is a nightmarish maze of swinging axes, arrow traps and rolling boulders, which perfectly primes your expectation of reward when you overcome the worst of its excesses. After all, every treasure chest thus far in this notoriously difficult game has been a reward, a brief moment to luxuriate in success before forging on to new horrors. Which is why this particular mimic is seared so intensely into your psyche when you reach down to claim your prize, and it savages you, uncoiling grossly slender limbs just in case you survive your mauling long enough to back away in horror, your escape route obstructed by those same traps which lured you in with promises of fair recompense for your bravery.

Whether or not you survive that first encounter, its repercussions are felt all the rest of your days. That cold dread wasn't just adrenaline, shock, the instant of betrayal. It becomes your stock reaction, replacing the joy you felt at the sight of another treasure chest in the gloom. Instead of rising scales and heroic bravado, you tiptoe closer, your weapon held at arms length as if guarding you from the possibility of being betrayed again. Every chest is poked and prodded to ensure it's an inanimate wooden box and not a savage animal lusting for your flesh.

Press A. Pray You Aren't Torn Asunder.

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#treasure #unwinnable #mimic #dark souls #videogames

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