Paris journey — paulaschulte

7/2023
ARIS JOURNEY: THE FORGOTTEN PAST
a project in collaboration with May Kim and Eunjung Park

The game Ari’s Journey: The forgotten past discusses the game genre of cyberpunk. It questions the genre in a critical playful way.
The story takes place in world after a cyberpunk world so a post apocalyptic scenario. The previous world failed out of several reasons which get roughly discussed in the introduction of the game. There are only a few survivors who live on an island. They created a very unique way of living, adapting to their environment with the knowledge they have. There is a constant ignorance of talking about the past, the only thing remembering them of the past are the ruins all over the island.
Ari, the main character of the game lives on this island a few generation after the “apocalypse”. One day Ari finds a book with horrible images of the past and she starts wondering what actually happened to the rest of the world.
So she goes on a journey to discover more about the society and their collapse. She travels from ruin to ruin and discovers more about the faults that have been made in the past. She fi nds out many people got suppressed in the past world which led them to demand change. The revolution escalated and accidently the machines which suppressed climate change were destroyed. She realises through her journey that not talking about the past and ignoring it is not the solution. It is important to learn about the past so mistakes don’t happen anymore.