Last evening, i was looking over the shoulder of my son, who was playing some new campaign on a Lego Star Wars site. And by doing this i honestly recognize that i was attracted by the dynamics of the games, the well chosen colors of the bits and pieces that composed the actors and scenery of the game, and ultimately by the subliminal attraction that was poured to the gamer either visual or audio. Now don't get me wrong. I wasn't payed by Lego or other subsidiary to write this post.
At the moment i watched my son playing the game and after that hearing his desperate cravings for the toys themselves, i was amazed by the way the toy industry changed and evolved through the years. In my youth, we had only three colors for the bikes we could purchase, red, yellow and blue. And they were available in two or three dimensions and sizes. Now you can even paint your own bike as you please or, if you are lazy, you can order a custom paint job to be done for you. Of course we had some sort of lego like toys but the pieces that composed them were several times bigger and made out of wood. And the builds were limited to houses or square figures.
As far as i remember, there were no negative idols in any game we had. In fact to be politically correct, we had negative persons in the books we read at that time, with the shapes of gargoyles or witches, but they always were killed until the story ended. The details about these kind of evil characters were scarce. No clear description was made and all of their evilness was summarized in a few words like ugly, bad, with deformities. Compared with the bio's and detailed profiles of the current evil characters, wow, that's a change. You can even start loving those characters, despite the fact that their role is to be bad.
In my youth, the leading character was filled with good qualities, he or she were beautiful, with a sharp mind, with good behavior. Now Leading characters can be ugly, have evil thoughts and plans to destroy or rule a world or a galaxy, can have bad habits like farting or other otherwise inappropriate behavior. The world of characters evolved with the passage of time and now we have also evil heroes on the menu.
And the cars. Wow! now you can have one ranging from a simple tractor painted exactly like their real counterparts from CATERPILLAR, with moving elements, sliding windows, to fancy top Porsche like copies with the same accessories available. Compared with the communist impersonation of the "citty citty bang bang " like car we had, painted only blue, on which the only moving parts were the wheels and the pedals we used to power the car, the current toy cars are amazing. Even i would like to have one.
I don't know if i like this change. From my point of view, it's ok for my son to distinguish from playing the bad and the good. It's ok for him to have a choice over which hero he want's to be. But i do not think i like very much to have bad guys on the same menu presented or trowed into his face. Surprisingly enough, my son likes very much Anakin Skywalker and implicitly Darth Vader. And when i asked him why does he likes a good person turned bad he simply said:
Because, i feel for sure that Darth Vader will be good again. It's written in his heart. And at some point he will figure this out and stop doing evil. He was lured into this unfortunate chain of events that turned him bad.But, i can almost feel it, he will be back to the good side someday.
PS: After the last Lego Star Wars game, in secret i promised to my son that i will put some cash aside to buy two helmets from Star Wars. I will be a Clone Warrior and he will be Anakin - DarthVader. We will play in the back yard with our already bought light-sabers. I like the stories he makes with and about adventures between the stars.Why? Because in his stories, the good guys always win.
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