Percival, call me by your name
Those who see the cup will be with the Lord and enjoy eternal blessings.
Although the Holy Grail is not mentioned in the Bible, in later myths, the Holy Grail represents the invincible divine power. According to legend, after Jesus was resurrected, he gave the Holy Grail to Joseph, who collected his body after his crucifixion. After Joseph died, the fate of the Holy Grail changed like driftwood. The legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table revolves around the search for the Holy Grail. King Arthur's knights of the round table are numerous, of which I only remember the name of Galahad, because in some stories he is the only knight who can successfully hold the Holy Grail. The novel of "Ready Player One" is narrated from the perspective of the protagonist Wade. Wade's novel opens with a self-reported name in the "Oasis" game called Parzival (Parzival), which was chosen to honor King Arthur's Holy Grail Knight. Salute to Percival. When the heroine Samantha met Wade for the first time in the game, Wade introduced himself as Percival with his game identity, and the heroine immediately responded that Percival was King Arthur's squire. Like the Knights of the Round Table looking for the Holy Grail, Wade, the male protagonist of "Ready Player One", is looking for easter eggs in the "Oasis" game.
When "Ready Player One" author Ernest Cline chose the game code name for the protagonist Wade, why didn't he choose the name of Galahad, but the name of Percival? After some searching, it was found that according to legend, after Galahad found the Holy Grail, he was very excited and asked the angel to take him to heaven. Witnessed by Percival and another knight, Galahad flew away from the world. . The German musician Wagner in the 19th century created a three-act opera "Parsifal" based on the long narrative poem "Parsifal" written by the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach in the 13th century. The name Parzival has been slightly changed because the Persian word Fal Parsi, which is similar to Parzival, means pure fool. In Wagner's opera, Parsifal, who was raised by his mother, did not understand etiquette and was called a fool in the eyes of others, but this fool successfully overcame the difficulties and temptations along the way, and helped the king to recapture from the hands of the wizards. The holy spear snatched by a meter. In Wolfram von Eschenbach's long narrative poem with Percival as the protagonist, Percival, after being estranged from God for a period of time, was re-inspired and began to search for the Holy Grail. He finally wanted to find it, and his name appeared on the Holy Grail. . Wolfram von Eschenbach's story also highlights that Percival's true love for his wife inspired his heroic search for the Holy Grail. In the Christian story system, the name Percival has undertones of search, steadfastness and loyalty.
The expanding universe, the arrow of time and Maxwell's demon
Halliday and Morrow are high school classmates in the novel, both as teenagers in the 1980s. Both of them were teenage geeks who were keen on video games and programming, but the contradiction between the superb programming level and the extremely lack of offline interpersonal skills was particularly prominent in Halliday. The girl Kira gave Halliday a nickname: Anok (anorak), the word in English means obsessed with niche interests. Halliday embraced the nickname, making Arnock his screen name.
Immediately after Halliday and Morrow dropped out of high school, they founded the game company GSS, which launched a number of game products. With the upgrade of programming technology, the update of product thinking and the maturity of marketing methods, the pair launched "Oasis", which is an open source game that does not limit the number of online players. Players can use the virtual world created by other games or their own code. , The virtual character is copied into the oasis. "Oasis" has been popular all over the world since its inception, just like the rapid expansion of the new universe, and the virtual world added by players in the oasis has exploded. After a certain period of development, the universe is still expanding, but the expansion rate slows down. Similarly, after the market growth period, the market share of "Oasis" continues to rise, but the growth rate of the new world in the game and the growth rate of new game players are at slow down. According to the second law of heat, a closed system moves from order to disorder, showing an increase in entropy, and entropy is the degree of chaos in the system. The expansion of the universe and the continuous increase of the virtual world in the oasis are all phenomena of entropy increase.
By the 2020s, Halliday and Morrow had parted ways over an unknown disagreement, and Halliday had acquired Morrow's entire stake in GSS. After another 20 years, Halliday was at the end of his life, and he made a five-minute video called "Arnock's Invitation." The video is filled with elements of popular video games in the 1980s, and Halliday also introduces the story of the world's first game egg: programmer Warren Robinett when he created the "Adventure" game in the 1980s. , hide their name in it, and players who have completed certain operations will see the name of the game author on the screen. Halliday used this story to announce in the video that he also buried three keys as easter eggs in the game "Oasis", found all the keys, found the door locks corresponding to all the keys and opened the door, that is, the person who successfully completed six Players in this challenge will inherit all their property.
Halliday's last words detonated the ambition of Nolan, the head of the network service operating company IOI. He wanted to find Halliday's easter egg, own the ownership of "Oasis", and transform the oasis utopia into a hierarchical dystopia, a wealthy player's paradise. Paradise, that is to say, Nolan wants to establish order, solidify order, and reduce entropy in "Oasis" . In the 19th century, physicist Maxwell imagined a monster that would break the second law of heat and make the hot part hotter and the cold part colder, instead of transferring heat from hot to cold objects. The closed system shows a state of entropy reduction because of the existence of Maxwell's demon, and Nolan is the obsessive looking for Maxwell's demon.
Halliday completed a thousand-page book "Anorak's Almanac" during his lifetime, which recorded his views on various cultural products such as novels, movies, video games, etc., especially the cultural products of the 1980s. Halliday put this book on his official website for egg hunters to download at will. In the movie, Halliday built a digital library for his own experiences and psychological cognition in the oasis, and egg hunters flocked to search for clues about the easter eggs. For the sake of narrative rhythm and story structure, Warren Robinett's easter egg story appears at the end of the film, echoing the discussion of playing games purely out of interest.
Halliday: Get out of the way, let me sing the eighties
first round
In the novel, in the future world where the energy crisis continues to deteriorate, Wade, who lost both parents, lives in his aunt's house. The aunt cannot give Wade more spiritual care, nor can he improve his material life. Wade still needs to receive the high sugar distributed by the government. High-starch relief meals to get by, an unhealthy diet made Wade fat. Out of shape and ill-fitting shabby clothes made Wade encounter discrimination and bullying by classmates in the real campus. By the time Wade was in sixth grade, the government, which was short of education finances, encouraged students to transfer their enrollment and credits to the public schools in the Oasis game. Unable to be bullied in the real school and not suitable for the Darwinian exercise of the jungle in the real school, Wade decided to enroll in the virtual school and obtained the admission certificate.
Halliday created the universe with games. There are different planets in the Oasis game, and players carry out different tasks on different planets. If players want to shuttle between different planets, they must bear the transportation cost of long-distance transportation. In the oasis, the virtual school that Wade enrolled in is not on the planet he lives in, and the admission voucher just covers the cost of interstellar travel, so taking the opportunity of admission, Wade realized interstellar travel for the first time in the game, come Arrive at the planet Ludus where the school is located.
The arrow of physical time cannot be reversed forward, which is also an increase in entropy. In the 2040s, high school student Wade took Latin as an elective at school because his idol Halliday also learned Latin in middle school. Wade and Halliday, one in the future world and the other in the modern world, learned a language that died in the torrent of history. This is a kind of psychological nostalgia, and the arrow of their psychological time is reversed.
The first time high school student Wade had a clue about Halliday's Easter eggs, he found that some letters in some words in the electronic version of "Arnock Chronicle" had scratches. A text message: The copper key awaits explorers in a tomb filled with horrors, but you have much to learn if you hope to earn a place among the high scorers.). The text clues Halliday left reminded Wade of Tomb of Horrors, a revision of the 1980s hit Dungeons & Dragons edition name.
In Latin class, when the teacher mentioned discere in Latin for "learn", Wade suddenly wondered if Halliday would hide the brass key in the Ludus planet, which is full of schools. Ludus is Latin in Latin. It means school, and Wade looked up the dictionary and found that the word has the meaning of game in Latin. In order to verify his conjecture, Wade compared the topographic map of the forest where the dungeon is located in the game "Dungeons and Dragons" with the topographic map of all the forests on Ludus star, and found that the topography of a place on Ludus star was the same as that in the game. The terrain where the dungeon is located is the same.
Wade goes to the dungeon, where he encounters a talking dead bone, and the dead bone invites Wade and himself to have a race in front of the cabinet game machine, the racing tools are ostrich and stork. Wade wins the race and gets the brass key from the Bone Man, the brass key is engraved with the words: What you seek lies hidden in the trash on the deepest level of Daggorath). The word Daggorath comes from Tolkien's fantasy novel "The Lord of the Rings". Tolkien, a linguist, created different virtual languages for the elves of different races in "Lord of the Rings", one of which is Sindarin. (sindarin). In Sindarin, the word dagorath means battle. Based on this suspicion, Halliday's engraved on the brass key has a double g, and Wade believes that the clue left by Halliday on the key is a reference to the game Dungeons of Dagorrath. )". Wade went to the old home where Halliday grew up, which was copied in the oasis, and played "Dungeon of Fighting" on Halliday's old computer. After the successful clearance, the computer screen displayed: The player has opened the first fan door. At this time, a door appeared on the wall of Halliday's old house. Wade inserted the brass key into the keyhole, and a star was waiting for Wade. Wade gets a hint for the second key here: The captain conceals the jade key in a dilapidated building, but when you've collected all the loot, you can whistle (The captain conceals the jade key in a dwelling long neglected, but you can only blow the whistle once the trophies are all collected.).
Second pass
After Wade cracked Halliday's first easter egg, many businesses found him, hoping to launch a joint product named Percival with him, and Wade thus had a financial source, enough to support the transportation cost of interstellar travel.
The word "loot" in the second emerald key's tooltip reminds Wade of Halliday's five Game Designer of the Year awards in the early 2000s, and five replicas of the trophies on Archaide. A video game museum occupies the entire surface of the Archaide star. Wade discovered a "Happy Hour Pizza" on the basement floor of the museum. Halliday's hometown used to have such a shop, and Halliday will visit this shop. The memories are recorded in the yearbook. There is a coin-operated cabinet game machine in this pizza shop at the museum, and Wade, who suspects that the game machine has a mystery, begins the challenge. The rules of the game are very simple. Players eat certain things to gain experience points, and be attacked by monsters to reduce experience points. Wade successfully cleared the customs, but he didn't get anything about the emerald key. When he couldn't do anything, he received a message from an online friend, which included the package cover of the game "Zork". A soldier with a sword in one hand to protect the treasure, and the background is a house with doors and windows sealed. This picture reminds Wade that the "abandoned building" in the emerald key prompt message may be related to the "Zork" game. So Wade went to the Frobozz star, which replicated the virtual world of "Zork", and this planet was next to the Archaide star. Wade found a storage room in the building here, and found a whistle in the storage room. The whistle turned into an emerald key. The engraving on the key indicates the location of the lock corresponding to the key: participate in the challenge and continue to search (Continue your quest by taking the test).
What challenge do you take part in? Next to the key is the tinfoil that serves as the key wrap. The tinfoil reminds Wade of Halliday's favorite sci-fi movie "Blade Runner" released in the 1980s, which has a unicorn folded from tinfoil. beast. This movie tells the story of a human killer who uses special equipment to identify replicators that look similar to humans, and kill the replicators. Wade travels to the Blade Runner-themed planet Axrenox in the Oasis to find a second door that can be opened by the Emerald Key.
Wade found the clone identifier Voight Kampff in a building on the Axrenox star. He took out the emerald key, and the machine showed a keyhole that did not exist. Insert the key into the keyhole, and Wade entered. A new space that houses a cabinet game console. Wade played the battle game "Black Tiger" on the game console. After successfully clearing the level, the third crystal key was displayed on the screen. The background image of the key was a glowing red star.
The third level
To find out the secret of the third crystal key, it is necessary to decipher the hint of the red star map. After a search of memory, Wade remembered that Halliday's Canadian band Rush had released an album in the 1970s called "2112," which featured a red star on the cover. The song of the same name tells a fantasy story set in the year 2112, in a future where self-expression and creativity are suppressed, and the priests in the temple of Syrinx clamp down on the expression of people's thoughts.
After recalling the lyrics, Wade identified the passage that most likely implied the crystal key: "We are the priests of the temple, the computer is embedded in the wall. We are the priest of the temple, the gift of life is embedded in the wall (We are the priests of the Temples of Syrinx. Our great computers fill the hallowed halls. We are the priests of the Temples of Syrinx. All the gifts of life are held within our walls.).”
There is a Syrinx star in the oasis, and Wade found an electric guitar with an image of King Arthur in the walls of the temple there. Anyone who knows a little about the story of King Arthur knows that King Arthur's sword was invincible, but the sword was sealed in boulders before it belonged to Arthur (in other versions of the story of the sword, King Arthur rowed across the lake in a boat, the lake god He raised the sword from the water and handed it to King Arthur), and only King Arthur has enough strength to draw the sword and move the sword. The English name of King Arthur's sword is exlibur. Netizens in the Chinese world have created a nickname for the sword according to the English pronunciation of the sword. :ex curry sticks. King Arthur's gesture on the electric guitar is self-explanatory: the player who sees the electric guitar should remove the electric guitar and use it, just as King Arthur pulls the sword in the stone. After plucking the guitar, the message displayed on the stone where the guitar was originally placed was: The third door cannot be opened by a single key. Afterwards, the electric guitar turned into a crystal key with the English letter A engraved on the key, and the icon of A was on Arnock's black robe and the door of Arnock Castle, so Wade went to where Arnock Castle was located. planet.
Everyone guessed that the location of Arnock's castle was buried with the core secrets of the easter eggs, including the villain IOI company. IOI had already planned for a rainy day and used a shield to create a semi-circular protective cover to isolate the castle of Arnoke. Non-IOI company The player of the game cannot get close to the castle.
Wade sent a group message to all Oasis players, calling on everyone to jointly attack the protective shield set up by IOI at Arnock Castle. Players gathered in the scene to respond to Wade's call and came from all directions. After a fierce battle, the protective shield of Arnock Castle was blown up. Except for Wade, all the players present, including the game operator of IOI Company, were all killed. Wade arrives at the heart of the castle: Arnock, Halliday's office. The challenge of the last level is to log in to the computer on the desk with the correct username. After many attempts to no avail, Wade logs in with the oasis username Leucosia of Kira, the high school girl who gave Halliday the nickname of Arnock. , success (the reason why I thought of using Kira's oasis username is because Wade learned before that Kira is an obsession that Halliday can't achieve, and Kira and Morrow's marriage is the pair of Halliday and Morrow. The fuse of partner breaking up). After that, a cabin appeared. Wade opened the cabin with a crystal key, and Halliday was waiting here. During the conversation, the two completed the transfer of ownership of the "Oasis" game. Wade's next step is to enable the highest authority in the game and resurrect his fallen comrades.
In Ernest Cline's novel, readers see holograms of elements of 1980s pop culture. In the virtual game, the villain Nolan did not find a Maxwell demon that could help him rebuild order and reduce entropy in the oasis. Wade found the Holy Grail, and the oasis is still a paradise for ordinary players. In the reality outside the fictional games of fiction, the energy crisis remains the same.
end
The story framework of "Ready Player One" is not complicated. The goal is achieved when the goal is set, the adventure is close to the goal, and the strength matches the goal. The protagonist experiences the test of life and death on the way to achieve the goal. Recognizing the insignificance of oneself in the majesty, after realizing the insignificance of oneself, there is no resentment of the trapped beasts. This is the story of Wade, and it is also the story of King Arthur finding the Divine Sword and drawing it out, and King Arthur's Knight of the Round Table, Percival, who traveled through mountains and rivers to find the Holy Grail and bring it back.
Ernest Cline, the author of the novel "Ready Player One", does not have a complicated way of promoting the storyline. He gets hints, often pictures or character hints, and finds entertainment products in the knowledge inventory that almost exactly match the graphic information to decipher hints, and gain new insights after deciphering. Prompt, re-crack, loop. Following the inherent story framework and the logic of plot advancement, changing the prompt content can lead to new story sections. The clearance prompts of the three levels in the novel are different from those in the movie, so the content of the three clearance stories in the novel is different from the content of the clearance stories in the movie. The first level is a driving race; the second level in the novel is a battle fighting game, and the second level in the movie is to solve the puzzle by dancing into the set of the movie "The Shining"; the third level in both the novel and the movie is played In Arnock Castle, but the way the protagonist enters the core area of the castle is different. In the novel, the protagonist plays the guitar and guesses the user name of the login computer. In the movie, the protagonist does not need to pay attention to the score in the last game. Just put in.
A high school student once told me that in the school language class, the teacher introduced a composition method called red thread beading. The red line is the theme idea of the article, and the beads are the details of the article. Under the guidance of the theme idea line, according to a certain order, different beads, that is, different details, can be coherently connected to form a well-defined article. . The novel "Ready Player One" can be said to be the culmination of the red thread beading method. The novel uses the main line of solving puzzles according to prompts to string together the explosive products in popular culture in the 1980s. Later writers used the method of threading beads to present games, movies, books, and songs of a certain period, which were all out of the norm. If Ernest Cline used the trick of stringing beads with red threads in his new novel, no matter how wonderful the details were, the unconventional and unconventional beads could not make up for the aesthetic fatigue brought to readers by the routine of the main line. Very much looking forward to Ernest Cline's next work to see if he subverts himself or repeats himself.
After talking about the storytelling method of the novel, and then returning to the plot of the novel, there are two points in the novel that particularly impressed me. The first is that the story is set in 2045, when the energy crisis broke out. Therefore, in the author's imagination, 30 years later, today's hot shale gas revolution or clean energy revolution has not yet achieved a substantial breakthrough. The second point in the book that caught my attention is that in 2045, when the world is on the verge of collapse due to the energy crisis, governments with budget deficits are struggling to function, and public schools, to be precise, public schools set up in a virtual world with public finances Latin courses are still retained in the Middle East, however, for a future world mired in an energy crisis, Latin is completely useless. Perhaps in the context of the gradual apocalypse, the thinking and discussion of "practical value" is of little value.
In Ernest Cline's novel, set in 2045, sociocultural elements of the past, present and future alternate. I am reminded of a poem by American writer TS Eliot: “ Time present and time passed are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past.”).
Physical time moves forward, psychological time turns around, and people in time strive to move forward as best they can.
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