LogFAQs > #969393928

#1: Chicory: A Colorful Tale

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/4/9/AAA-H0AAD4FV.jpg

Hey, mind if I ramble for a bit?

The crushing irony is not lost on me that I've had to restart this writeup multiple times because I wasn't happy with how it was turning out. Chicory: A Colorful Tale is a game about a lot of things; overcoming imposter syndrome, the acquisition of prestige and the burden of expectations, the vicious cycle of burnout and depression and the way they feed into each other. But it's also a game that's very literally, and not just metaphorically, about making art. And I know there's a little Chicory sitting on my shoulder, going, "No! You're not supposed to do this! I warned you of the perils of perfectionism and feeling like your work doesn't live up to your own standards! You just need to write!"

If only it were that easy, Chicory. Since I'm trying to write blurbs about these games that do them actual justice, I guess I can think of this as something of an attempt at art, even if it's for a small audience, and probably mostly only for myself, and so it's fitting that this would be the last game I talk about, and also the most challenging one to talk about. I really want to get this one right; it's genuinely important to me that whatever I write here properly conveys the profound impact this game has had on me. So here I am on my third attempt, and I've pivoted to making it about the writing process itself this time. Much like Chicory itself, it's a long and winding journey and I'm not really sure where I'll end up at the end of it; I don't even know if this will be the attempt I'm happy with. If you're reading it now, I guess it was a success. If not, knowing me, attempt 4 is likely to be a rambling shitpost.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/5/0/AAA-H0AAD4FW.jpg

See, I didn't even really want to write this list at all until Chicory happened to me. I was gonna do like, maybe a little quickie top 10 list of 2021 or something, which at the time would've been like... all ten games I played that year or so. You know, it's just something everyone kinda does, and I've got to mix my own dumbass opinions into the dumbass opinion slurry we're making. But I did have a couple of games I knew I wanted to knock off right away before I did that, and that was this game, and Inscryption. I actually wanted to play Inscryption first, because I expected it to be more up my alley; it was good! Not great, but good. Probably would have made the list. Then I played Chicory, the game I had slightly fewer expectations for, and now here I am. The ENTIRETY of this list is basically one big shrine built in dedication to putting Chicory: A Colorful Tale at the very top of it. I NEEDED to talk about this game, and for one reason or another, I NEEDED for it to matter. So I played a bunch more games, I added 2020 into the mix, and I wrote this list.

There's two major reasons why I want to write a list like this; or put more accurately, there's two major demons I am trying to exorcise in doing so. The first demon is my obsession with rankings and lists. If I told you how much I ACTUALLY obsessed over this particular ranking, and how much I think about the other rankings I've done over the years, you'd probably be a little bit worried about me, but let's just say that thinking about it occupies a lot of the empty parts of the day. Putting the list to paper and actually committing to writing all the things I want to say about the items in the ranking puts this part of my brain at ease; I'll be able to stop thinking about this particular ranking and the games within it, my task completed, and the demon will stop bothering me for a little bit. At least, of course, until there's another ranking to be done, and there certainly will be (there already is; I've neglected my SGDQ list in order to focus on finishing this one). Once I've finished this writeup to my satisfaction, I will be able to close this chapter.

The other demon, the far more persistent and difficult to vanquish, is the demon that makes it hard for me to write. I've enjoyed writing since I was a kid; I've always had a firm command of the english language and a whole lot of shit I wanted to use it to say. I don't really fancy myself a 'writer' in the Hollywood sense of it; I'm not a starving artist who's trying to finally write that damn novel and I just need a 90-minute romcom plot to achieve self-actualization. I just like writing, as a side thing. Not necessarily stories; most of it's stuff like this, although the big project I'm trying to push out of my head right now is a pen-and-paper rpg that I want to create, which I know is both ambitious but also entirely within my wheelhouse to do if I can get started on it.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/5/1/AAA-H0AAD4FX.jpg

The problem with writing, something that's haunted me since childhood, is that I find it so difficult to just... do. I'm good at it, but it doesn't come naturally. Ever since I was a kid, any time I needed to write an essay, I'd spend hours staring at a blank word document and get absolutely nowhere, struck with paralysis; the moment I'd try to type even a single word my brain would beg and plead with me to do something, anything else, to think about anything else, just not this, please, I don't want to write, I want to do anything but that. And even now as I'm writing this paragraph, I'm struggling with that battle, and once again the weight of irony is bearing down on my shoulders. There's ten other tabs open on my PC right now, and it would be really easy for me to take that mouse pointer and click on another one of them and push the task of finishing this writeup to future me, some mythical future me with better ideas and more motivation. Future me can never bear the weight of the expectations placed by past me, of course, and she desperately resents past me for not having taken care of it earlier, which leads to her kicking the can down the road to another future me who's even more annoyed and resentful than before. It feels like there's never a good time to start, never a good time to continue, and certainly never a good time to finish what I started, if I even managed to start it in the first place.