Be Here Now

Terraria has me in sort of a headlock lately, and you should take that as a pretentious double entendre. Now a full week after I'm finished with my "required" playtime, I find myself, if even for 15 minutes in the morning before work, taking quick trips to the Underworld in my hellavator or building mud huts for hapless NPCs. Even when I'm wandering around as aimlessly as the Guide character and doing practically nothing to the point of boredom, I just keep getting pulled in to this randomly-generated place Godfather III style.

Naturally, then, it's on my mind quite a bit during the times I'm not playing it, which isn't so uncommon, I suppose. But I rarely ponder about the uses of meteorite or safest ways to kill Archdemons. Strangely enough, I usually sit and think about nothing, the concept of "nothing," and how my character in the game (you may call him Booyachaka, thank you) really has nothing at all to do. This is what makes me so stupid for Terraria. Booyachaka doesn't have to build, kill, farm, dig, explore, or anything else if I don't want him to. He just has to be.

Terraria, much like Minecraft from what I assume (since I've never played it) is different from other "sandbox" games that promote their freedom because they are, in every way, totally free. In Grand Theft Auto, you are still limited to the blockades of buildings and to a lesser extent gravity. While you can choose from just about any perceivable way you can imagine to get from point A to point B on the map, the player still must navigate through the streets of whatever faux-American city it's set in to to arrive there. Do something bad and cops will try to stop you, so enemies are generally always afoot. In Terraria, though, these obstacles can be completely taken away with a little bit of ingenuity and a teensy bit of sweat. No mission structure is there to guide you toward further tasks, and most of those tasks are fairly nebulous without doing a fair bit of external homework on the game. The point of it all is to simply exist in the world, have your way with it, and then maybe do it again in another randomly-generated Terraria. In fact, I'm finding it more of a God Game than what I used to call a sandbox. My whims can obliterate the entire world and reduce it to a pool of lava. Or, I can unlock hardmode and make surgical strikes on its bosses. Hell, I can even stop enemies from spawning with enough work. Or I don't have to do any of it. This is a feeling wholly unique to video games, and not many games really conjure them. It is nothing. It is to be.