The Longest Journey Coin

The pieces I make are mostly inspired in things I know and like and love. I like to choose designs, images or words not just by my capacity to give them an interesting development, but because of the meaning they have for me. Internal jokes, details you start to notice after rewatching many times your favorite show, beloved characters that sometimes are not the main hero, things I want to be remembered.

Sometimes I can make things at commision, like Mother's Day gifts or objects with an specific purpose. I try to provide an interesting approach as far as the person gives me the liberty to do it,but I'm more than happy to try to be the closest to the original idea of the commissioner as possible. In this case is what they want it to mean what matters.

One of the last I made the past year cannot be placed in any of these "categories". It's not something I had experienced neither something I'm completely unrelated to. 

Available on Etsy

The Longest Journey is a long and complex videogame than I never played. But I live with someone who did, and got surprised and challenged and amazed and confused by it. He loves it and I have witnessed that love growing through the years. I remember to be sitted next to each other seeing him playing to show me some of the most beautiful parts and characters, trying to explain me the argument, making me aware of the importance of the game for him. I do. I love that he loves it, so even knowing almost nothing I made that coin. I cannot explain too much about it, but he can.

This is what Engler told me about the game:

The longest Journey is one of those series that has a right to be called seminal, the scope of the first game is massive, and it truly delivers on the promise of its title, is a long and fascinating Journey through out the worlds of Stark and Arcadia, the first being a world of science, with strokes of modern dystopias, all-encompassing corporations and near future technologies; the latter is a magic world with wizards, dragons, pirates and a talking crow. 

It also gave birth to not one but two of the best characters in videogame history: April Ryan, the protagonist of the first game; and Zoë Castillo, the protagonist of the second one “Dreamfall”.

Both characters are young women who embark on their respective journeys full of self-doubt and lack of purpose. They never quite become the saving heroine, instead they act out of commitment to the people they love. Throughout the games they second guess many decisions, fully aware that blind courage doesn’t guaranty victory, will and perseverance alone are not the formula for success, a trope so endlessly used by fiction, particularly that directed to young adults.

Both women are fully realized as human beings, they have desires, passions, etc; most importantly, they have opinions: about music, art, politics, sex, food; they fail their friends, sometimes they don’t have the chance to make up, they suffer and push through the suffering, sometimes grandiose, sometimes intimal, always becoming stronger and kinder at the same time at the end of the struggle.

And about the coin:

“The Talisman of the Balance”, from the cult classic videogame series “The Longest Journey”.

Stark is ruled by science and pragmatism, Arcadia is full of magic and mysticism. The one who bears the Talisman of the Balance is the Sentinel of The Divide, to keep harmony between the parallel worlds and the conflicting nature of every sentient being.

 Thank you!