Unfortunately, it has been one of those weeks, so the following is a touched-up reprint of something from my long-neglected Live Journal. Hopefully next week will be better.
As a giant nerd, I can't help but notice how often Pandora's Box has appeared in videogames recently. I also can't help but notice how much the myth has to be changed, if not wholesale ignored, in order to cram the thing into a game. So to start out, here's the original story.
After Prometheus created mankind and taught them long division, Hephaestus created Pandora as part of Zeus' overly-elaborate scheme to punish mankind. A less passive-aggressive god might have sent an earthquake or a plague or a tidal wave, but Zeus realized that jacking up our species now and forever "take-a panache". He therefore set the following events into motion:
1.) Hephaestus creates Pandora.
2.) Gods shower Pandora with extravagant gifts, spoiling her stupid. Included in these is a box (okay, Wikipedia douche, it was a jar. But the important bit is that it was a thing that holds stuff) into which each of them has placed something horrible; it was kind of like in movies when a kitchen crew spits on a steak before sending it back out to the customer who complained about it. Anyway, Zeus tells her never to open it.
3.) Prometheus warns his brother Epimetheus not to accept any gifts from Zeus.
4.) Zeus sends Pandora and her Cursed Thing of Holding to Epimetheus, kind of like a gift.
5.) Epimetheus goes, "Oh, hell yeah!" and marries Pandora.
6.) Pandora gets curious about the Cursed Thing of Holding and opens it, releasing Greed, Vanity, Slander, Lying, Envy, and Pining into the world. Luckily she manages to get the lid back on before Hope gets out. Whew! That was close.
7.) Hilarity ensues.
With plans like that, Zeus may have been the first Bond villain, as well as the only successful one. Pandora's Box, like my high school yearbooks, is best left unopened. However, it has already been opened. Logically, it can cause no more harm to us, other than possibly getting Hope all over the place.
"Not so," say the makers of videogames. "We can milk that bitch out."
So we have this:
According to God of War, opening Pandora's Box turns you into a giant. And then you fight Ares, who has inexplicably grown back-spinies which shoot fireballs. But the important thing is that it makes you bigger. Why does the Ark of Misery do this? Who the hell knows? But we must remember that this is a game in which there are waaaaaaay more than three Gorgons and Satyrs are masters of the bo staff.
What's next? Madness!
Devil May Cry 4 contains a weapon called "Pandora" which features 666 different shit-stomping configurations of increasingly implausible bad-assitude. The game also settles that whole box-vs.-jar debate once and for all by making Pandora a suitcase. And, simultaneously, a can.
Granted, this is not the literal Cursed Thing of Holding; it's more of a tribute. Surely, if in the myth Pandora had taken the lid off and been blasted in the face by a Neon Death Ray, the story would lose all meaning but become about a thousand times more awesome.
This brings me to my final, most recent example of what happens when videogame developers can't leave Pandora's Box alone (funny how many levels that works on): Legendary.
According to this game, Pandora's Box contains legions of werewolves, gryphons, and minotaurs, all of which are begging for a shotgun blast to the face. I don't know what else to say about that, other than "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!" It also bears mentioning that at the beginning of the game, Pandora's Box is in a museum.
My point with all of this is not that these are bad games, or that the ideas are stupid (except for the whole Pandora's-Box-in-a-museum-thing; that's downright criminal). I'm just wondering why Pandora's Box is showing up so often and doing so many different things, especially considering that the original myth is about as boring as they get. It would be like if they decided to start making games about Thor's codpiece (but not Thor), in which the codpiece can fire lasers, grant wishes, and be removed to open doors by reflecting light into crystals. Or if the Sword of Damocles was a lightsaber.
Game developers don't read this blog, do they? I may have just unleashed great evils upon the world. Kind of fitting, in a way.
-Evan
**EDIT: I have replaced the non-working videos with working ones.
