What’s Your Story – Vetinari

From The Adventure Gamer


Answers: Vetinari
Introduction and Captions: TBD

Time to introduce someone who’s recently been commenting on our Nippon Safes, Inc. posts – Vetinari!

Si non confectus, non reficiat

Vetinari has admitted to commenting once before, anonymously, on a post on the Cyborg Missed Classic.


My home country is…

Italy, home of Super Mario and the Fettuccine Alfredo (not really).

In kindergarten I was taught that Italy looked like a boot kicking a football… by a teacher who’d clearly never seen a football.

My age is…

42, the answer to life the universe and everything. Even if this should have given me some sort of wisdom about the mystery of our existence, I cannot in good faith say that I feel very much smarter than I was one year ago (or even ten years ago, for that matter).

The first adventure game I played was…

“Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders” on my Commodore 64, in 1988. It blew me away, and I’ve been a rabid adventure gamer since then. I played almost every graphic adventure and text adventure that was available, at least up to the turn of the millennium. After that I relented a little bit, but I still play some newer adventure now and then, and also replay some old classics. Recently I played “Unavowed” and “Technobabylon”, as well as “Day of the Tentacle” (for the n-th time).

Perhaps when we reach our 1993 games, Vetinari will play along and make it (n+1) playthroughs.

My favourite adventure game is…

“Grim Fandango” without a doubt. I even called my two cats Manny and Meche since I am such a great fan. It has all: incredible atmosphere, good puzzles, and a wonderful redemption story.

Funny thing is, when it came out I didn’t play it and wasn’t interested in it, because it felt such a big departure from the previous Lucasarts games with its 3d environment and strange interface. One of my college friends had it and while discussing good adventure games that we hadn’t played, I agreed to lend her my copy of “Broken Sword” and she lent me “Grim Fandango”, even if I wasn’t that keen to try it. Needless to say, I played a little bit and got hooked immediately.

My second favourite adventure game of all time is “Planescape Torment” (which according to me is more of an adventure than an RPG, at least if played “right”), and the third is “Shadow of Memories/Shadow of Destiny” by Junko Kawano, which could be the only really outstanding game about time travel ever made, even if not without its faults.

Thinking about it, I now notice that all of my favourite games are about protagonists that start the game already dead. There could be something to be said about it, but maybe I’ll just leave it to that.

Don’t cry for me – I’m already dead.

When I’m not playing games I like to…

I’m an avid boardgamer, and that is the hobby that occupies most of my free time, at least in recent years. Other hobbies: playing guitar, reading (my nickname comes from a famous series of fantasy books – guess what) and watching movies (I am a little bit of a cinéphile).

I like my games in (a box, digital format)…

I don’t like boxes, they take up space and I am not swayed by the nostalgia factor enough to keep them around. I very much prefer the digital format.

The thing I miss about old games is…

Well, I continue to play old games with emulators, so this is really a moot point. But probably what the new games lack, at least from my perspective, is the feeling of immersion, the idea that you could lose yourself inside the world of the games for hours at end.
Maybe it is more of a factor because when you get older you have less free time, and so you don’t have the possibility to really “get into” the gaming world like you used to do when you were young. But that is true for all the things that you did when you were a kid, because of responsibilities and all that. Man, I feel dejected right now.

The best thing about modern games is…

Better graphics, better music, things like that. New games are also more forgiving and try to ease the player into the gameplay a little bit more, so they are less frustrating. This however tends to result in easier games, which can feel a little hollow. Well, you can’t have everything.

The one TV show I never miss is…

Right now, none. Streaming and similar services make it so that I very rarely (if ever) watch regular tv.

The series that I most recently watched are “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”.
Some of the ones in the past that I followed quite fondly would be for example “Life on Mars” (the UK version, the US one is awful) and “Leverage”.

Probably not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

If I could see any band live it would be…

I suppose that I couldn’t choose to travel back in time and see a band which is not performing anymore…

In that case, I really am a great fan of They Might Be Giants, but sadly they tour very rarely in Europe, and never did a gig in Italy, so, yes, it would be Them.

My favourite movie is…

“The Sting”. I can quote the dialogues almost verbatim. It is a great example of what Hollywood can do to make a great entertainment movie which is anyway not dumb and has a great story.

In general anyway I am a bit of a movie buff and I have an expansive DVD collection with movies from the 1920s to the present day.

Excellent choice!

One interesting thing about me is…

I speak (more or less fluently) four languages, but none of them (not even Italian which is my mother tongue) I learned at school.


Original URL: https://advgamer.blogspot.com/2019/06/whats-your-story-vetinari.html