I was just listening to "Limbs, Heads and Smoking Craters," one of the best songs from the Myth 2 soundtrack and thinking pretty much exactly what the first post in this thread said. Well actually it wasn't quite that. I wasn't thinking "Myth is so amazing, I would even call it a masterful and beautiful work of art up there with some of the best writing and music I know of," (mediums which are used far more often to convey some kind of emotional resonance - most games are just for fucking around, especially now: tony hawk this and carmageddon that and starwars-batman-spiderman500thegame that and lets not forget WORLDWARIICALLTOTHEBROTHERSOFHONOURANDDUTY 5,999,210!). I definately get a lot out of myth. I doubt I'll ever forget it, the same way I'd never forget a really great and moving film or novel. "Haunts a person for life" is a good phrase to describe this. I identify with the sense of perpetual loss that is present in the first game, although I also like the second one (but not as much).
However, I was not thinking, "Why wasn't Myth more popular at the time, or is it not popular now?" I pretty much started playing Myth TFL when it came out in 1997 and it was fairly popular, though never on Starcraft-like-levels (and let me take a minute to say that while Blizzard is a good company, I can't stand Starcraft, it's one of the most overrated games ever made period. Try Total Annihilation, which was released around the same time but which was far superior in every goddamn way and then some, for a REAL RTS). But to get back to the topic, the reason I was not thinking that, is that I have long since accepted that most people, in every medium and art/entertainment form, and more and more so with games over the years as the industry has become more mainstream, are going to like, popularize, and shove in my face, absolute shit. I realize that taste is relative, so a nice way to put it is that my taste will always be irreconcilably different than the common person's. But that doesn't stop me from bitterly ranting about the stupidity of the masses and saying they are goddamn morons who like shit and spend money on it, thereby spurring on the infinite, unstoppable and all-consuming waves of cultural sludge which will one day consume the world.
Kind of like Balor himself, whom I've had many drinks to over the years.
/rant.
