ORSON SCOTT CARD’S “Shadow Complex”
If you’ve been playing it, you already know that Shadow Complex is a well-executed Metroidvania game, with plenty of secrets and upgrades to keep you scouring the map for hours. But did you also know that its developers “collaborated from the beginning” with Orson Scott Card? It’s true!
If you don’t know who Orson Scott Card is, he achieved fame selling elementary school bully-killing fantasies to high school nerds who had been bullied in elementary school. Since then, he’s spent most of his time writing increasingly elaborate, fictional justifications for enforced heterosexual marriage and procreation (part of fighting what he terms the “bugger war”).
How can you tell an Orson Scott Card game story, from a typical game story? I’ve helpfully included the full story of Shadow Complex (spoiler alert!) below, with Card’s contributions in red.
A shadowy, left-wing, paramilitary group is hiding in the United States. On the day it plans to emerge and take over the country, only a lone, masculine hero can stop it: YOU. Can you kill enough dudes and blow up enough shit to stop the coup? (Yes.)
Not what you expected? Me either– because the only justifiable reason for overthrowing the government is to stop men from marrying each other.