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From: Matthew Murray <i9717029@wsunix.wsu.edu>
Subject: Re: Trinity Ending 
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Date: Wed, 27 Dec 1995 06:37:15 GMT
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On 26 Dec 1995, Carl Muckenhoupt wrote:

> Trinity is about sacrifices.  A lot of what you do is unpleasant and 
> destructive, but, the player reasons, worthwhile because you're 
> preventing greater destruction.  Specific examples:  Killing the skink of 
> course, blowing up the cottage and its mysterious Book of Hours, 
> desecrating the grave of Wabewalker, saving the lemming from death only 
> to feed it to a snake, even little things like being stung by the bee 
> and having the screwdriver fall painfully on your foot.  And for what?

	Good point.  Also, these are NOT unreasonable assumptions made by 
any player of this game.  I know that a lot of this stuff crossed my mind 
when I first played the game.

> Well, to save the world, of course.  You're out there to prevent 
> nuclear war.  Viewed this way, a few animals and some unusual scenery are 
> acceptible losses.  Right?

	Same as above.

> Wrong.  It doesn't work.  The best you can do is break even.  There's
> probably an allegory for the arms race in this somewhere, but all I'm 
> going to say is that is fits the recurring theme: of choosing the lesser 
> of two evils, of destroying for the sake of a questionable higher goal.

	That is a very interesting point.  Whether or not spending the 
time to look for a complete allegory to the arms race is a good use of 
time or not, given its current state (grin), is an entirely different 
question (though, at the time of this game's release, probably NOT an 
invalid one), I think that the irony demonstrated by this game, not only 
in this particular instance, but in others (such as the recurrence of the 
phrase "All prams lead to Kensington Gardens." which figures prominently 
into the structure of the game, and eventually becomes the game's moral, 
explanation, or, if you prefer, excuse) is really one of its finest 
features.  Even though the game itself is masterfully designed in a 
number of ways (the complexity of the puzzles, and the design of the 
universe in which the toadstools exist as extensions of the nuclear 
explosion in this universe, for instance, almost seem to predict games 
like Curses and Theatre, which, at this point, are still many years 
away), the questions it asks and answers (or, perhaps more appropriately, 
the questions it doesn't answer) are really what make Trinity the 
memorable experience it is.  One of Infocom's most complex and 
thought-provoking works, I completely understand why, today, over seven 
years after it first appeared, it's still sparking all this discussion.
	My particular opinion of its ending, though, is much simpler, and 
doesn't require the immense attention to depth and detail that most other 
people have been assigning to it.  (Note that I am NOT saying those are 
not valid arguments, for I believe they are all very valid, but they really 
don't enter into my theory of why the ending works.)  In terms of time 
travel mechanics, the ending for this game is really the only ending.  A 
game that treated time travel less responsibly might have given it a 
gooey, happy ending, but one could not happen were time travel of this 
sort possible, nor should it be expected, given the dark and serious tone 
of the game from its very inception.  The voice at the end of the game 
says it all--everything happened this way because it had to happen.  The 
character in the story DID pay the ultimate price for the life and 
security that we now enjoy, but there is no other way the story could 
have ended.  If they had ended it "happily," it would have been 
surprisingly less satisfying, less valid, and diminshed the rest of the 
game considerably.  When I first reached the ending, I was surprised at 
first, but after some reflection, I did see how this ending is the only 
one that really could happen, and maintain both the fabric of time travel 
and the universe in which the game takes place.
	As a sort of side note, it is often interesting to see how one 
simple sentence, or perhaps even a phrase, as innocuous and minor as it 
may seem, may indeed be completely necessary within the game.  I, for 
one, believe that the game itself, especially the ending, would not work, 
or be acceptable had the phrase "All prams lead to Kensington Gardens." 
not been included.  Though it seems to be just a throwaway line, both in 
the comic book in the documentation, in the end, it becomes the game 
itself, and were that line not included, and not used as it is in the 
story, I don't think the game would have worked on even the most 
fundamental level.  In many ways, the game does come to a complete close 
(or a circle), which probably wouldn't be possible were it not for those 
words on the perambulator.
	Any thoughts?

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    Matthew A. Murray - mmurray@wsu.edu - http://www.wsu.edu:8000/~i9717029
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