Kontextmaschine

6th December 2022

Post reblogged from Baconmancer with 737 notes

Note, if you will, the following:
The Exalted Plains, from Dragon Age: Inquisition (note the dramatic mesas rising above the fog):
The Titanic Plains, from Risk of Rain 2:
The Plains of Erathell, from Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
The “plains” biome, in Minecraft:
Now, let us compare the example of other locations with “plain” or “plains” in their name.
The Great Plains of North America:
The Wallachian Plain in Europe:
The West Siberian Plain in Asia:
Hmm. Something about those video game locations seems off. Could it be, oh, I don’t know, plains are supposed to be fucking flat? Could that be, in fact, what the word “plain” signifies?? Terrain lacking dramatic changes in elevation over short distances??? From the Latin planus, meaning “level” or “even”??!?! Could it be that if you have a zone in your video game with the relief profile of the fucking moon, as if it had been pelted with meteorites for four billion years and never had so much as a drop of water or breath of wind fall on it, that maybe you should not call it a plain?? That there are dozens, if not hundreds, of RPGs and open-world video games that have all sorts of environments that are engineered to both cleverly guide the player around, prevent them from stumbling out-of-bounds, and to resemble real-world locations, without naming themselves after things they clearly are not?
Don’t toss me in a desert and call it a water level. Don’t put me in a cave and talk about how bright the sun is shining. And don’t drop me in a fucking canyon and call it a plain!

If you are trying to think up a plains-adjacent-but-got-other-stuff-going-on landform, check out dual lands

Tagged: geography