King Arthur (and Friends)

It comes as no surprise that this ubiquitous character from English folklore has been in his share of video games, the most recent of which is a little indie title by the name of Pendragon.  Mechanics-wise, there's bits of board gaming classics like chess, checkers, shogi and "go" all sprinkled in.  Each encounter has it's own checkerboard layout and pieces.  Added to this is a layer of narrative in the form of character dialogues and descriptive texts that feel lifted out of Le Morte d'Arthur (thankfully without the unconventional spelling).

Chronologically, Pendragon takes place shortly before and during the battle of Camlann.  Arthur is making his last great hurrah against Mordred and players can be one of many different acquaintances of the king coming to his aid in this final climatic battle.  From a writing standpoint, this is a clever way to tackle the fiction since one of the biggest challenges is making sense of the convoluted mythology.  Even something as iconic as Excalibur has a very muddled history.  It was pulled from a stone when Arthur was just a boy squire, right?  Or was it given to him later by the Lady of the Lake?  In some versions of the tales there's another magical sword called "Calibrun" that was broken in a battle against King Pellinore (or was it Lancelot?).  Arthur had some other magical items in his panoply.  These include a dagger called "Carnwennan" and a shield called "Pridwen."  He also had a spear called "Rhongomyniad" which in later texts is simply referred to as "Ron" (possibly because its such a hard name to spell let alone pronounce!).  Interestingly, Arthur's spear is mentioned in one of the campfire stories the player can choose to hear over the course of the game.  Oddly enough there's virtually no mention of what specific magical properties any of these weapons have anywhere.  Ironically, the scabbard for Excalibur does magically protect its wearer from bleeding out when injured, but enough about objects.  What about characters?  Well, they aren't much better.  Let's look at an example.

In modern version of the legend, Mordred is Arthur's bastard son, born of incest and rotten to the core.  However in earlier versions of the story, he was simply Arthur's nephew and legitimate offspring of King Lot.  Even if we assume Mordred's father is Arthur, it's not clear which of the high king's three half-sisters is the mother.  In Pendragon they opt that it is not Morgana le Fay, but rather one of the other sister (which might be confusing to people with only a passing knowledge of the lore).  Considering all this, it's easy to see why J.R.R. Tolkien decided to reimagine English folklore from scratch.  Miyazaki Hidetaka took a similar approach when adapting Arthurian characters into Demon's Souls and Dark Souls.  Still, it's nice to see someone who is willing to dive into the original material and carve a compelling tale out of it.

I wonder, though, if there isn't an opportunity to embrace the inconsistencies by letting the player choose there version of events.  In Pendragon the player is presented at various times with two different responses their character can give.  Perhaps such a system could be be used to create a player cannon.  Considering the minimalist approach and presentation, it wouldn't require a large team of developers in order to expand the scope of Pendragon to include the entire Arthurian legend.  Maybe that would make a good sequel of sorts for the once and future king.