We are used to video games giving us longer and longer experiences, immediate, action and fabulous gameplay from the first minute so that we never get bored. That’s the key: we don’t tolerate boredom as soon as we pick up a controller. We need to ride around Hyrule, kill monsters, solve puzzles, create portals, control the weather. We can’t stand the idea of just wandering. To exist. And that’s what ‘The Longing’ does, a game based on… living.
Let’s wait and see
400 days. Not one more, not one less. That’s what you’re told at the beginning of ‘The Longing’ that you’ll have to wait for something to happen again in the game and awaken a sleeping king who has to regain his powers. In the meantime, you’ll wander through the hundreds of cavern doors at an abnormally slow pace. Languid. Boring, you might say. And therein lies your big find.
This game demands everything from you. Your patience, your time, your desire to discover little by little all its secrets. Because of course: it has them. A book here, a color to draw there, a stalactite that is about to fall, a path that can be revealed if you wait long enough. Unlike other games, the four hundred days do not pass quickly, nor do you have ways to speed up time (not without mods, at least). They run in real time. So, why hurry?
Although at first you may think that ‘The Longing’ is like ‘Seinfeld‘, a game that is not about anything, the truth is that if you are patient you will discover not only several alternative endings to the one that the plot itself poses, but it really allows you to discover who you are as a player, make you think about how the current entertainment has accustomed us to a delirious pace and what happens when the jingling keys are taken away from a baby used to play with them continuously.
Is it tedious? Yes. Are you going to play all 400 hours? No. Is it worth it to see how far you can go, to imagine new ways to get out of there, to play with your own boredom? Of course it is. ‘The Longing’ is not an experience for everyone, but it’s certainly one you should try to understand yourself. It’s no small thing.
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