PERSPECTIVE

Trigger Happy

Shoot first, ask questions later

STEVEN POOLE

Illustration konsume.me

James Boswell’s Life Of Samuel Johnson (1791) recounts how he and the great man once emerged from Church arguing about Berkeley’s doctrine of philosophical idealism, according to which physical matter does not exist but is only an invention of the human mind. “I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it,” Boswell recalls. “I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, ‘I refute it thus’.”

So runs the most famous starring role of a rock in literature, though others might put in a word for the philosopher’s stone (JK Rowling), or the stone that had the sword in it (TH White). Normally, though, rocks are relegated to supporting roles, even when edifices are not actually built on them. The rocks of Asteroids exist only as glowing outlines to be shot into pieces. The rocks of Tomb Raider or The Last Of Us are anonymous, fungible impediments, blobs of hollow polystyrene set dressing sharing a handful of repeating textures, not to be focused on too much as you scramble over and past them. Occasionally a videogame character, such as Gonguron or Link himself, will eat rocks, but we assume one rock tastes much like another. And since Kojima’s Death Stranding, games have been involved in a new technical arms race to portray the most detailed rocks ever seen in videogames, yet the rocks still don’t do anything except sort of lie there. Will no one acknowledge the beauty and individuality of a single rock?