This week to replace a faulty valve the Rolling Stones announced on the weekend that they're postponing the tour of North America and Canada and the executive producer of blue planet live is defending the way sea turtle hatchlings were released on a beach on Sunday night's program after one was seen being smashed by Siegel Robert Webb says it was unfortunate but it's not for them to interfere now with the sport much fruitcake Everton are investigating an alleged incident involving the England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford after a video on social media appears to shame involved in a fight in the street in some talent on Sunday nights Arsenal picked up that 10th consecutively came victory that best winning one at home in nearly 11 years to move up Tottenham and Manchester United in 3rd place that Newcastle to know that goes came from our Ramsay and Alexander lock is that Ramsey was substituted in the 2nd half with lots of paid to be a muscle problem you know Emery said after was the team doctor told him it is a small injury Button's players are reportedly refusing to train for 48 hours after the wages of the club stuff weren't paid on time for the 2nd consecutive months the players are also yet be paid last month's wages were late following uncertainty over a takeover both in 2nd from bottom in the championship 5 points from safety in India of top the international Test rankings for the 3rd year in a row they stood by their 1st ever series triumph in Australia Virat Kohli team finished 8 points clear of New Zealand in 2nd England finished down 5th this is B.B.C. Radio 5 Live on digital the B.B.C. Sound small stream can come up with a look at the weather shall is in Scotland will continue to move southeast drought the night with some rain in Wales also moving eastward say for England later a cool start to the day with heavy showers expected for most with a possibility of hail and funda the air. The. On AM and F.M. Are in the U.K. On digital and online I'm Roger Sharpe were up all night never having played in an orchestra I have no idea of the stresses professional musicians are under financially it's probably a better gig to play a West End show and be a successful session musician than it has to be at the top your craft and have a settled job in one of our national archives shows the musician's union supporting a new campaign calling for mental health support for classical musicians. Are going to suffer orchestras told the P.A. That musicians react to the lack of control over their schedule the unsociable hours and the demand to be the best all times of a free that deals bit of a blow to my Jilly Cooper view of the orchestra as a bit of a bonkers song when playing. April may be the cruelest month as T.S. Eliot would have it but it's now only $29.00 days until the start of me a months of love for Geoffrey Chaucer May was the knots choices pour in the legend of good women begins with a bit of a confession were made comes he writes his up tonight at walking in the meadow hearing the birds and watching the flowers spring up Farewell my book he writes my studies Charles's joy of life captured our guest Turner's imagination choices 1st female biographer has a lot to say about the women and choices life including as fun loving daughter Elizabeth but entered as the author of Chaucer a European life and I asked by a charter who was born in London around 1342 and seemed to know everything just had the lot to be born in the right place at the right time I think that's one of the things that has really led to his enduring appeal because whatever you're interested in you can find it in choices work he writes in this extraordinary range of different genres he can you can read romance he wrote scientific tracks he translated love poetry he wrote short poems he wrote the board poems he wrote Saints lives and what's tended to happen is that in different eras different things have been popular so in the 15th century everyone liked tales which later on people started they were quite boring people like the serious tiles in the Saints lives and in the 20th century everyone loved the ones which involve people doing farts out of windows and Jerez in trees and. You know this is kind of a there's a choice of every one of every era. But I think you also said was he just in the right place at the right time yeah and I think one of the really interesting things about Cho say is that yes of course he was he was able to take advantage of the fact that he lived at a time where this explosion in literature where the mercantile class is growing and he was born just before the play cat and the plague for those who survived. I caused quite a lot of social mobility so it was a time of social change because this was an era when the still the same amount of work to do but as fewer people to do it people could be paid more and have slightly better lives so it's a time where the mercantile class is expanding and it's a very it's a very exciting international kind of time but then sure also occupies a really special position so in terms of being the right man at the right time he managed to straddle the mercantile world on the courtly world so his father was a vegan which means that he he was a wine merchant and I don't see the young Geoffrey Chaucer grew up in London in the docks in a very international and exciting world so at this time in the 14th century in London you could buy spices that had been traded all the way from Indonesia spices that today you can only buy in those international islands in which they were grown it was extraordinarily International and exciting and then somehow probably through his father who had quote connections Chaucer ends up getting a position in a royal household moved over to the court now the thing that really changed choices poetry and English poetry was choices ability to read Italian poetry and he was able to do that because of these 2 worlds that he lived in very few people could speak Italian he probably knew Italian because of this mercantile upbringing because there were lots and lots of Italians so that you know I mean he is as you've said he straddles these worlds he's on the one hand he's commercial you know he's grown up in this very wealthy merchant household on the other he he deals with people at court he's really a fantastic networker isn't his and i'm these multi-lingual and he goes everywhere I mean in those in those days he goes absolutely everywhere Yeah people are often really surprised when I tell them that he went to Italy at least twice he went to Nevada. Which is now in northern Spain he repeatedly went to France and he went of course all over parts of England as well and those experiences were also I mean really diverse and exciting so when he was in France he was taken prisoner and held as a prisoner of war in the 100 Years War and had to be ransomed when he was in the Valar it was invaded when he was in Italy he was negotiating with these tyrants that is Conti on one of his trips on another one of his trips he went to Florence and almost certainly So all it's by people such as JI auto So saw these early experiments in perspective and was really able to be at the cutting edge of what we might think of as Rene saw all the time I wonder if he was really a kind of 14th century tastemaker Was he somebody you who would go out and see all these great things happening at the forefront of art for example with JATO and then come back and and say I've just seen this I've got to tell you about it I'm sure he did of course he didn't have the kind of access to big audiences that you get 100 years later once print has arrived in Ireland so at this time I think I think he undoubtedly is telling people about things and you can see that he just has this urge to write he's never getting paid for his writing he's writing because he must tell stories and he is not making any money off it as you know we've got no evidence he ever made a penny from his writing so he's one of these infuriating people that has always has a day to day job and then in his spare time a mystery things like writing accounts retails rights like an absolute bird you know loot he's multi-lingual he if he wanted to could write and courtly French or Italian and yet he chooses to write in English the language of the people why does he decide to do that. So I think there's a whole number of reasons so one important reason is that in writing in English he's following an international trend so rather than being some kind of little England nationalist he's actually copying what the Tuscan poets are doing so he's been to Italy and he's started to read these extraordinary poems by Dante The Divine Comedy and by the catchier say things such as the to Cameron which is a tale collection like the country tales as a title collection and these poets were trying to to bring literature to a broad range of people and choice or I think decides to do that in English so you can reach people of more social classes if you're writing you have an ocular in English and also you've got greater access to women you know more women are going to be able to read anguish than can read Latin in particular but also French to a certain extent and I think Chaucer is trying to see what he can do with English she's a very experimental poet so he looks at the kinds of things that other poets are doing and one of the really key things he does in terms of thinking about poetry is he developed something called the I AM BACK pentameter which you know sounds like an obscure partic term to some people but it's that the building block of English poetry the dumb to the the the yeah exactly he's got it that's the main thing yeah unstressed stress 10 syllables in the line 5 stresses and that's the line that Shakespeare goes on to to use and the poets use for hundreds and hundreds of years until he develops this from having been influenced by reading Italian poetry and the kinds of things that that doing with with Patrick form and she also also borrows a lot of words coins a lot of words clearly enjoys playing with language one of my favorite favorite words of choice is that he was so new fangled that he coined the word newfangled. You said that he's playing with stress that's really tricky isn't it because if you're if the poetic tradition but you're writing it and there's. Really French then all the stresses in French poetry are wholly different yet completely and so when he's 1st write his poems which are for him or for an audience who are used to hearing courtly French verse it's a particular post by people such as my show and a great French poet Joyce is writing similar kinds of poet she says 1st long poem is called The Book of the Dutchesse and it said allergy for the death of the Duchess of Lancaster and it's very similar to my shows poems because it's in English and so suddenly there's this different kind of poetry the court's not used to hearing what we call Accenture will slap it vis a vis with those kinds of accidents and it's really different and it's hard for us to imagine and tell us a little bit more about his public he writes it now you've said doesn't it doesn't mean money for but you know you must want people to read it so how is it being read as a big copy then is it being read and in court circles as of being read more widely than that in his lifetime Yeah so certainly more widely than court circles so we've got evidence for instance of a copy of one of his poems being used to pay a debt in the $39000.00 in Souther could buy in and in an in keeping kind of environment just south of the river. Try that I have a big Yeah yeah I have a poem for my fair but so so his audience tended to be that what we would think of as a kind of up a middling kind of kind of group of people there were a lot of the people who were reading him there on the fringes of the court that's gripes the merchants that innkeepers that those kinds of people so no certainly not the peasantry but also not the people at the very top of the hierarchy we don't have evidence of the very top royals reading choices part she generally reading in French though of course they might have read some English but we don't really know so it's slightly lower down the hierarchy that are reading choices poetry and then it becomes more and more popular after his death as well in the 15th century. In his own lifetime it was probably partly being read out loud to groups of people and then also being circulated he probably circulated copies to his friends and sometimes he addresses poems to his friends and it seems as if he is sending them bits of the country tiles or other poems with other but without the short dresses that he's writing to them people always say write from your own experience and Tolstoy for example write brilliant battle scenes because he actually being a soldier and in the same way we are here who has who writes about being in prison because he's been a prisoner as you say was actually taken prisoner. And he had to be ransomed back yeah I mean I think that there is a problem with thinking you could only write from your own experience because I think those resources sometimes making imaginative leaps so that there are times when he's writing about what he himself has indeed experienced but he's also steeped in a very literary kind of world where he's also often writing really imaginatively and writing about other literary taxed as well but I think that it's it's very hard not to make not to make those connections particularly as you say when he has been himself imprisoned when you look at that something like the Knight's Tale while this is a tale which has many literary sources and it's about people being imprisoned he also puts in lots of details that make it clearly quite resonant with the war in which he himself has fought with a 100 Years' War in France or details about the effects on civilians about the the ravaging of the countryside the very relevant to that war he writes about ransom culture which is not in in the sources which he's using and not in a not a classical trope but was very very important in the 100 Years War and as he said he himself was ransomed So let's lots of details which clearly do relate to his own life and his life was so extraordinary you know the kinds of experiences that he had that he was constantly experience. Saying not only that will but also he was he was living in an apartment over the walls of the city of London when the peasants revolt happened so when the rebels came invaded London and London has not been invaded since then since 881 when they got in he was actually living above the walls and that's also a lovely image because you know one of the chapters of my book I called it thresholds because chill so is he is often a threshold poet looking both ways so at that time in his life he was living on the walls looking into the city and out to the rest of the world and he was also working on the waterfront of the Thames so again on the boundary of the city but looking out to the river and on the river boat succumbing bringing products from all over the world and also has this extraordinary ability to look both ways and to weigh things up so he very rarely comes down clearly with any political position or in any one side of the question and you know I mean so many people maybe it seems a particularly right now see things in very black and white kind of to I'm sure is all about the shades of gray in all kinds of situations I thought but reading about it was a time of great political instability wasn't to the new say that 2 important parliamentary innovations happened during that time one was the creation of the post of the speaker Yeah on the other words the creation or the institution of impeachment where our kings minister could be impeached if they weren't doing their job yeah yeah it's so interesting about what happened at that time isn't it so so 1376 the so-called good Parliament was when these things happened so this was at this time the king was senile and his advisors were in control during that parliament the king's all eldest son the Black Prince da eat leaving a child of his at so who became which the 2nd became king just again later when he was only 10 years old so there were all kinds of political. Problems parliament was in up parole and said the Commons an English Parliament was already very unusual in having a coalmines that actually had power not just advisory power which was more commonly what you got in continental assemblies but they actually have power to withhold on taxation so the Commons decided to intervene and they decided to intervene in parliament by saying that they would speak as warned so instead of allowing the Lords to do a kind of divide and rule policy they elected one person he said I speak for this whole group and the Lords really didn't like that at all and the people they were accusing they were trying to impeach that that they would only if someone brought brought charges to them as an individual but the Commons refused and they stayed firm and said no we will only speak Wharton and it's a really clever thing to do because it then means that the speaker can say well I'm not speaking on my own account don't blame me I'm speaking for everyone here don't look me up yeah exactly I'm just I'm just the message Barack I'm sure see uses the exact words that were used in those parliament so from that parliament the single approach to station started to be used Web speaker would protest this and putting my words under correction of others I protest that I shouldn't be held accountable for them and this is what you see a lot of the narrator's doing in the country tiles the choice if it's a blame of not made it there are some retail see if you don't like them just look at you know read a different one because it's not my style I'd go to repeat what other people have said you know don't blame me say that blame of not me in the mill is pro log and I think he is getting these some of these ideas very directly from the good Parliament which really completely alter its parliamentary procedure and a big part of it was about these these lower voices intervening and not allowing more US to craft it voices to have their way no choice himself such as an M.P. 10 years later and a parliament in the 1380s he also often writes parliament scenes into his poetry and wrote a poem called The Parliament of file. The Parliament of so he's very interested in Parliament and I think it really did affect his his ability to develop these more more plebeian more to more to voices who assert their right to speak and that's really at the heart of what choicer is interested in the idea that lots of people should have the right to speak not just a few important people not just people whose fathers were important. Of course rights very powerful women characters and it's really tempting to say that's because the women in his own life were very powerful in starting with his wife who's kind of a. Setting superwoman. Type so his wife always had her own job her own money people are often very surprised by that as well I think in the 14th century a woman like that quite a high class woman who you know seemed to marry a bit beneath her really. But then Jeffrey was clearly a very attractive man in all kinds of ways simmered beneath her but then kept on always had her own job even if she had children and she tended to be a lady in waiting for for John of Gaunt's wife in particular her own sister was the long to mistress of John of course the choice the family got a lot of. A lot of help that way because John of course was the son of a king most important man in the kingdom he had this long term affair with choice a sister in law had 4 children with her and eventually married her had their children retrospective legitimated which is a thing or thing and they were the both line but later on became the with the ancestors of the Tudor line later on so very interesting family choice wife but you know if we're thinking about the powerful women in choices life we can go back to before his wife to his 1st employer so choices 1st employer was a woman called Elizabeth to birth a great Anglo-Irish R.S. Countess of Ulster who. Read Lionel another one of the sons of event with the 3rd and the 1st time we see the young Jeffrey in any documentary record it's in the household accounts of Elizabeth de Burgh and when he steps off the page he steps off the page not as a middle aged patriarch in a pub telling stories father of English literature nothing like that he steps off the page as a fashionable teenager So Elizabeth to this older woman was buying him clothes and these clothes was so revealing and so fashionable that contemporary commentators thought that they might be causing the plague because off a scandalous white as they were they were showing off a shapely car for their I think it was worse than that I'm afraid your room was. So shapely thing yeah so big so so they were these very tight leggings and very short 2 necks and contemporary commentators talk about the fact that these chicks are so short and these 2 colored leggings a laced so tightly in provocatively that they leave very little to the imagination and some contemporary clothes that that they thought that God was punishing England's full allowing people to go around so scandalously dressed and that was why that the plague returns to England in the 13th sixties and of course the plague and then. London London is being rebuilt and kind of cleaned out after that go with the plague Yeah so I mean the plague is I often try to imagine and fail to imagine completely the kinds of effects that have because in recorded history there's never been anything dramatic before or since it is something that wiped out maybe about a 3rd of the population of Europe huge swathes of Asia just this extraordinary seismic event until says family 2 he and his parents survived all their extended family wiped out so in the 1st the 1st time the play came the late thirty's forty's when choice was about 6 and his family inherited a lot from it. And I think you know that's that's another trauma to think about what's it like to do well out of out of such a terrible terrible event. Do well financially but not psychologically and then it's again in the sixty's and when she returns to London in the early 13th seventies when he becomes the customs official when he returns London has been going through this extraordinary pill parried of building and in particular people were adding extra stories to the house as an extra rooms and people are increasingly interested in that domestic space and having will previously in particular so we see people starting to build extra bedrooms and private living rooms being more interested in separating space and something that's happening quite experimentally at this time as people try to see how much do they want to live in public how much do they want to have a more private life and we see a lot of interest in buying domestic comfort to do so in choices taxi often actually refers to people having things such as cushions and that's a detail is easy to miss because it initially didn't seem very interesting to us maybe but in fact it tells you a lot about people's disposable income and how how interested they were being kind of comfortable domestic in Terry is at this time and Chaucer is a younger man when he worked in a great household he was living completely in public so his early jobs he's not being paid a salary he's being paid in food and some went to sleep and clothes these scandalous clothes and he's not able to choose how he lives when he eats where he sleeps he's sleeping in public with with a load of other people and then later in life he has his own rooms his own apartment he's able to retreat to that but I think while we in the 21st century often have a a default sense that privacy is good to privacy is is really important choices all the problems of privacy as well and in one of his poems there's a kind of choice or avatar says the House of fame as an avatar in a cold Jeffrey so it's not exactly true. It was very like choice because this person is called Jeffrey Wright and goes back to his rooms at night from his work and the guy to figure in that poem birthrates him and say as to when you leave work you just go back to your room and you see that deaf dumb as a stone not able to think this is why you've got writer's block is a poem about having writer's block and trying to find something to write about and this guy to figure out who's quite comic shouts at him and say that your problem is you're just going and being on your road you need to go to the doorway the threshold again go to the doorway and listen to what your neighbors have to say because that's why you'll find inspiration and at the end of this poem we see a kind of explosion of contemporary stories so early on in the poem he goes through stories written by people such as Virgil and all of it you know chill so loves those stories that are really important to him but in this poem they're not enough the not enough to give him inspiration and then later on at the end of the poem he starts listening to stories by people such as shipmen and partners ordinary people and his inspiration comes out of a mix of the 2 so it comes out of both reading old tax and listening to the contemporary new tax you know both of those things are really important to him and I think that's that's a really really important aspect of choices because throughout that poem he's really suspicious of the idea of an old Dad cannon and the idea that that's all we should read and he say actually read new things as well and today of course Chaucer has become the head of that old dad canon and some people think well you know should we be reading him now he I think would be the 1st to say well don't only read Chaucer I mean still read him he's great but also you know you do a range of things and choices tax today I went through all kinds of contemporary literature I mean you mentioned Elliot's April is the cruelest month so from earlier in the 20th century to that was a direct that was directly inspired by the 1st line of choices general prologue of the country Taylor. That set going right across time and right up to the present day you've got all kinds of poets and writers who are inspired by choices so his text on it's old and fossilized they're actually still really dynamic so you've got Morton poets such as the Nigerian British poet patients like Barbie who's written telling tales a whole version of the country tiles you've got this project here called the refugee tales project where a whole group of writers and refugees have written new versions of the country tales of traversing and they've they've done walks traversing the country tiles walk in telling stories about migrants and detainees and things so Charles is inspiring all kinds of new creative work and it's I think choice is tax the still really alive and that's a really important way to think about them a lot of story if you please about Chaucer is the best to go in which I love the story about his daughter who gets sent to a very ritzy nunnery like it's a privilege or something yeah yeah well and just as daughter said no one's ever really been interested in her at all before we just had this record about Elizabeth chills and I looked into this nunnery and you can still go visit the church which I did so it's called and Helen's Bishopsgate is right in the city of London at the shot. And the nunnery itself isn't that but the church is still there which is quite I mean I found very interesting to go visit these actual places and retrace the footsteps but when I did research into the nunnery. So just shortly after choices daughter was that it was kind of investigated and then the Dean wrote this letter to the nuns basically telling them they've got to stop having so many parties they've got to still be dancing so much as Jenny dances have parties at suitable times no the other times they should be so many strangers coming in and out all the time they should sleep in the dormitories the prior arrests shouldn't go to places which of causing scandal and that's not elaborated on she should sleep in her dorm all these slightly cryptic things but it was obviously a very fun place and that doesn't mean they weren't religious not because you can be religious fun but also when you think about the kind of options that were open to Madge evil women and what marriage and childbirth was like in that that kind of air or you know anywhere where you don't have access to modern medicine it's lots of quite unappealing things about it where you go into a nunnery especially one of these very rich prestigious nunneries you've got time to read books you've got time to eat all kinds of lovely food and you look at the records of the kind of food that they had they had fakes they had these big libraries these very rich nunneries the women in charge the prior S's in charge were business women who were leasing out huge amounts of land leasing out all kinds of properties including sometimes brothels and toughens and all kinds of places you know they were they were women of the world in all kinds of ways and so I think choice is door to going that was very likely a way for her to keep having like a life of the mind which was of course married women could have but it was often hard just to have in those days. Meaghan Turner was talking about her book Chaucer a European life is just after 3. Home digital B.B.C. Sounds Slosberg the moment this is B.B.C. Radio 5 Live Rianne and Fitzgerald has B.B.C. News M.P.'s have failed to decide what to do next about Bracks itself to none of the alternatives to Terry's amaze deal put them in the Commons got a majority the prime minister will meet with her cabinet later to decide the government's next steps one of the options puts a parliament came from Nick bones he's since quit the Conservative Party he told the Commons that he'd given everything to try to find a compromise police in north west London have started a murder investigation after a man believed to be in his twenty's was stabbed to death area offices Kuta Grafton road in Kentish Town at around $830.00 and police in Los Angeles looking for a man over the killing of Nipsey Hussle the rapper was shot dead outside his own clothing shop hours after tweeting that having strong enemies is a blessing and that with a sport mask Brooky Everton are investigating an alleged incident involving the England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford after a video on social media appears to shame involved in a fight in the street in some villain on Sunday night's arsenal of picked up that 10th consecutively came victory that best winning one at home in nearly 11 years to move above Tottenham and Manchester United into their place that Newcastle to know that goes came from our Ramsay and Alexander Locke is that Ramsey was substituted in the 2nd half with what appeared to be a muscle problem in our Emery said after was the team doctor told him it is a small injury buttons players are reportedly refusing to train for 48 hours after the wages of the club staff weren't paid on time for the 2nd consecutive months the players are also yet to be paid last month's wages were late following uncertainty over a takeover both 2nd from bottom in the championship 5 points from safety and in. The of top the international Test rankings for the 3rd year in a row based it by the 1st of a series triumph in Australia. Team finished 8 points clear of New Zealand in 2nd England finished down 5th the 1st phone use in the past large school this is B.B.C. 5 Live up all night with Roger Sharpe. For this week's edition of game on Adam rusher and as friends head back to war torn feudal Japan. I know this is going on and I'm out of Moscow this week we're going to be considering the pleasures of something which sounds a little like this. All . The more new cool. Little. Swished. Eeks about the Hugo what it can you shoot your nose. Juke cuts and. Well that's secure oak shadows died twice and with me to talk about it is Edwin Evans Thirlwell who looted it for you're a gamer Hello Ed with Hello I have to ask you a question at the outset it when do you play a musical instrument Oh. Not currently and I kind of I think I learned piano a bit in the past but give us a since I've had chalk fame on the piano but I wouldn't say that I played yeah right but you have that kind of muscle memory of playing a piano. And of and of a kind of musicality you look at poetry as well you're interested you're studying poetry is that right yes I think I see where you're going with. Ask me whether playing I mean instrument makes you better read from software you know something to the facts of the basically headed me off of the past there and when you have you have indeed I mean I find these games I have to be absolutely honest very very difficult I find there are the games Dark Souls and blood borne by sickly not to my taste they are incredible things to look out they have some fascinating ideas now I know they command and a lot of attention from a lot of games journalists that I find the mechanically with these hands which I'm waving in front of my friend for no good reason difficult to execute and I just wondered that you were sort of somebody who appreciates tempo and pacing and the kind of. There's kind of a musicality to these things I think it's certainly I mean the height of difficulty in promise of was going to is the boss fight and those are questions of patterns as they are in many other games it's about recognizing the specific high combination of both being chapter and working out where you have the opportunities are going to get ahead in yourself and you can be a question of kind of memorizing the temporary I mean you can have plays with these things again and again and again you know you go from kind of thinking are this thing is unstoppable to or think you are maybe Actually I do this there's no so I can get within spitting distance of basing it. Because of my you know 1020 repetitions over long it takes you you could almost sort of play with your eyes closed by the end of it so he worked out every pattern they all had a certain kind of order to them because it was very good at Circa telegraphing what's the character's going to do with what he might be an intake of breath it might be a chemical weapon and so there is this kind of like you know yeah this can musicality to him as you say which show you can a century kind of connect memory it makes it sound like there is no unconsidered moment in playing this guy especially comes the calm you get the feeling you were in a realm from software have put you in a place where they have considered the very fine details of every encounter they encourage an attentiveness that you don't get in or games because basically they I mean not just in the boss fights just in general exploration you're often punished for or king without care I care in the classic one in the original Dark Souls as there's a particular bit on the ground quite later on in the game. When you see a sort of a skeleton warrior in front of you and you're walking a kind of along a ledge and you run out to attack them because they've got their back turned and you think Yes OK No an easy victory here and as you round the corner another skeleton just kicks you in the side of the head not your cliff and it's that that's the kind of the. That's Dark Souls exploration of the nut shell and that's very much you know how they approach things so yeah they have a loss I mean they're very considered world to have a huge amount of detail in all sorts of ways and there's all sorts of narrative kind of clues you can gather and put together into a have a picture of the history of the realm and then there are very intricate kind of backdrops in a very you know the visuals are extremely complex but but also it's just there's this caution that you're encouraged to undertake which means that you know for every kind of foot you move you're thinking you know very hard indeed in of again you don't really did as much as I mean other blockbusters because there's just less punishment stonier when you explore you draw a parallel in your review with the division where you talk about the fact that you are as a player character basically chewing your way through hordes of the dispossessed in order to get the drop loot for you and you make the point very forcefully in the in the review that basically the adversaries there have been dehumanized they have they are wearing masks you don't really ever engage with them is into these and the other then things get lit up with a red Halo the top of them and you can fire a weapon at them this one security really makes you look absolutely into the face of the people who fight is the unit unusual is that you know this awful framing you get where you want basically you before finishing blow and you're kind of the camera sort of zooms in a bit as actually and you see the can of the and the gaping face of this person you're killing just in the kind of the right half of the screen each time and it is a very powerful effect with regard to what I said about the division but I think the thing that's I don't I don't want to say that for instance it's unethical in itself to kill representation of living beings because that would be absurd like I mean he shouldn't be going to punished for killing fiction but I think the thing that sets. Secure a side in a game of vision is just that it is more honest within itself about the iniquity of what you're doing when the trouble with a lot of games is that stay have you kill essential as a means of God grass and often they have you kill an awful lot because they're built around these can huge repetitive encounters with hundreds upon hundreds of creatures or people them but then they try to star you this kind of savior of the realm in the souls games and in Lebanon in secure Oh you are very much not only do you want you can be a positive force but it's not like your kind of just treat it as a positive agent to begin with but on the contrary you are presenting your styled as an extremely sort of evil creature and I think that's more I appreciate that more just simply because it's more consistent but it's not it's not so much that it's I wanted to kind of like tell me off a kind of doing committing acts of violence within the game it's just that actually I wanted to reflect what I'm doing violent things in how the you know in the narrative and in the characterization So how does it drive you forward then one what does it offer you to become or take on this individual who has these abilities and we get a fake arm later on in the in the game which allows us to do various different things at spitting feathers and so on and so forth how does it draw you forward in a narrative sense because it must do that otherwise why play well some insecurity is a more traditional in its approach to narrative I think than some of problems other games has kind of more explicit can scenes a more kinetic out objective I mean you're kind of your your mission as a character is basically to save your your lot is this kind of young boy who curio who in the prologue is usurped by a rival Samurai and some spirit your way to this kind of Castle on the top of the world. It's interesting what you say about the crowd went there being the need for an explicit marriage it was you know kind of like something to really give you the motivation to move through because actually a lot of the games they leave you the guy leave you alone in these huge worlds and what draws you want to this is just you have the cheek recognize some of the connect the weirdness on the ground your surroundings really someone you don't really play them to get to be the plot objective in as much as there is one you play because you are curious about some landscape you're in now and secure a starts you off in a kind of like a dilapidated temple as it's called at the bottom of this kind of township on the outskirts of this huge fortress and as you sort of set out from it you can see on the horizon the and huge shapes of these places you'll explore later in the games those in the media it's incentive you're you're you're thinking I want to get inside that I want to you know understand what that is the last time I saw this sort of sword fighting explodes in for Ana which is an interesting game but attempts to emulate sword fighting doesn't quite pull it off because it doesn't really address this idea of getting your opponent off balance or drawing them in and faking them around it representation of sword fighting actually very difficult isn't it and it's very easy to use foreign combat you know you can you can do that you see it done and that's the that's the 2 with exceptional grace they are very very good shooters but this idea of hand to hand that's actually read would communicate in games that. You have for I like for on a I think corners or you know apart from the fact that it's A and M. S. And some of those menus released it was the last time I played I think it's a really nicely executed really stupid but fun kind of medieval fighting going but the I mean the what you refer to you need to discuss what we are going to capturing the experience of sort writing then he doesn't do that secure another where games do. Is threat resents the effects of just punishment on your ability to fight I mean basically if you've got 100 percent health in for all of those years when you have 5 percent of your health you can still jump around and you know land heavy swings and all those things just the same whereas in Soul series you had up because of the effects of stamina and because of the effect of the potter system in security. When you take a bit of beating and you can have blocks to many hits you feel even forced into a corner it really affects your ability to fight you can sort of like. Just immediately snap out of the funk if you know you're going to whip so we aggressively becomes harder and harder for you to you know physically engage with the other character as you you know you know get put more and more on the back foot fighting games when I come around I don't really do that because they're all papar better appeal is the ability to kind of pull off this last 2nd reversal when you are you know on the point of you know cut down so yeah this question I'll see how it deals with difficulty then because there's been a lot of interest of excitement on Twitter and various other places about how for how difficult secure actually is and this idea that there is no difficulty slider I'm just presented with this game at this difficulty and and what do I do and you get the you've got to get good and then there's a sample surely I can have something which is slightly less relentless but I suppose from what you're saying relentlessness is key to this experience isn't it well I think it's well it's I mean the question difficulty comes up every time a soul's gamers All-Star game is release because they are very hard and I think that's they are I mean there are definitely well. It's a complex answer on the one hand it IS FROM has the right to make the artistic statement they want to make and part of the artistic statement they want to make is challenging it's not just there because they want they want to make it difficult for people to play it's there because it fills a narrative function within the universe and it's to the purpose that you are you have this sense of constant threat and what you're always about to be overwhelmed me that's that's part of the kind of the experience the kind of the portrayal of desolation and desperation they want to create unfortunately that difficulty tends to be abstracted from macro narrative context and just turned into an exercises of kind of getting go he said it becomes the sort of stick with which mortality plays beats. You know or less less talented or less interested ordinary people just have less time or and also people who perhaps have disabilities and a can of them to play it just becomes a way of keeping those people out of the experience which is extremely toxic and you know exclusive and yeah he's obviously resisted and I think there are ways that some props up where could you create a kind of I want to create and also introduce options that make it more accessible to many people and I think it could be for instance you have just a selection of characters and the kind of have this already in 1st dongles you have a selection of characters you choose at the outset some of whom are designed for players who want a tougher experience. Or something with the players who are just starting and that's not entirely an unusual gambit for a game and I think it would work perfectly fine for an assault on experience. So yeah I mean I think um yeah it's a topic that comes up every time from software releases and it and I think people really so hearing people it will are you talking about all of that some that you have is it's a complicated one but they've established a house style of established a 1000000 kind of established player base and now they're releasing a guy. Very squarely for that based on the insecurity Yeah but equally. Going like you have all commercial sense like I mean if you're just preaching to the converted every time then you're not going to know what you're going to grow commercially but also you're losing opportunities to develop your art to to kind of you know to understand what you do differently and bring in new voices and have them talk about what they're doing. So from their point you know I think it's absolutely we actually benefit them to think about how they could expand their work I mean security has been received as an extremely tough game even by their standards and I don't think that's entirely fair I think it has a different style but certainly record like a think more about that and also I mean the other point is that. All these games are teaching mechanisms that they're all designed to start the design to somebody who was in a position of rows of ignorance to start with and then gradually build up some kind of expertise so in that sense they are designed around accessibility it's just that some they tend to start you off at a pretty high level in terms of the kind of you know sort of caution they ask you to display and your kind of need a reflex is they want you to have so you're thinking about it and you know for instance is entirely consistent with what they're already doing one thing they do not make any concessions to the fact even the only levels that you have just pick the game up seems to me they are they're willing to be relentless willing to be tough right from the outset really early on you know you are not going to get an easy ride through this game but saying that to you really clearly from those 1st encounters and then there's also the other side of it is that they are secretly quite open ended games. And so if you like hitting a brick wall quite a lot of time there's actually somewhere else you can go where you can at the very least you know kind of explore a bit let off some steam you know see a different part of the world maybe run into another tough battle but when your you feel slightly more able to. You know enough survive. So I mean I think a lot people see them as this sort of like a conveyor belt me growing their experience where you are going to go through that last point no matter whether you know what are you want to do and you have no choice but to be a character or whatever and there are characters within the world that you have to he wants to advance the story to hear exceeded in areas but they're all. Was going as a branching to some extent so you know I think the kind of people you hear these kind of horror stories on Twitter about you know people kind of dying 100 times trying to be X. Was a boss and that's not actually the whole the experience is normal all in a curiosity I'm 6 weeks exploring and you know and I get more negative even at times than you know when when just one of the characters you encounter is the sculptor is the guy who gives you this prosthetic arm and you describe in the in the review he makes spend his time. Obsessively come of it carving Buddha's each face contorted by rage and reflecting a colossal karmic debt and. That's that's very odd thing to put into a game which is sort of theoretically set in a kind of a age of strife Japan isn't it also rather beautifully talked about no fee would be can be incomplete without its crop of dropped swords one of one thing with Japan in this game and where does the sculptor fit into that oh well I mean to be honest I am not an expert on that period I don't know much about the single coup I think it's the single Who here on ASH I pronounce it even nearer to Pam I didn't don't know much about Buddhism so probably not that they're supposed to talk to him about that but you can certainly I mean their previous games have been. Sort of notionally fantasy combined motifs from Japan from Europe from a bunch of different sort of market actual traditions religious traditions so you can sort of extrapolate from those into secure Oh about the kinds of themes that are being put across in the you know those themes tend to balk around. In a quest for immortality that if you have to be. Sort of disease people looking at life corrupted people term term peace people people think a lot is from within by their own desire to live forever that's kind of a quite a staple of from was work. And then there's this kind of a tag an ist is always this sort of. Undying Specter who is there to not to save the world change it and that's kind of the key distinction it's like you're you're sort of I mean there's the definition of the word apocalypse which. I'm not going to chapter and verse on the etymology but it's essentially it's like the pockets actually means change rather than end and that's kind of the sort of positive agent within these games that sort of positive you are you want your somebody who's come to purge a sick place that has become stuck in its own history in its own time. Time of day is quite important security plays out in a sort of endless sums there although it doesn't mention a sort of tip over into something else you're there to kind of free it up going to get the wheels moving again which usually involves destroying all of the people and creatures who are kind of can keels within it and refusing to let the realm change so that's just the rushing scene that relates to Buddhism and to Japanese history I really couldn't talk in a depth but I am. Yeah and there's this idea that you use will come to understand that you might have to take the sculptor's places some point in the future that's what he tells you. To contact the sculptor is the sort of. This guy that he can't rescue you out of the prologue of your defeated by the some you know a lot and. You wake up and he's attached his prosthetic arm to your your left what you do you lose your left arm during the prologue and so give you this arm which he then great in the course of the game with new tools that you bring to him and he also serves as that I had 3 of Lord of the world he'll tell you about certain characters if you bring him certain momentums. Antietam he's he's your sort of mentor but yeah but in a start you off by saying are you know everybody or I I carve because he's surrounded by all of these good Atlas he's carved in his temple. Is wroth follows you know was really angry. I wonder how do you tell you because it turns out that if you you make a practice of killing a bunch of people you create a massive sort of spiritual. Short fall for yourself and you have to see him he's obviously somebody who was you know had his own bloody history and is trying to purge a point carving these idols of what he hopes is a peaceful figure but obviously that's all going wrong Graham so so yeah but you don't have to kind of meet his fate if you are a tent here if you follow up certain stories within the well your tie. Say to be that you don't see what's right in front of you look to the side this is like the maps you know there are ways around problems there are things you need to explore in the world which on that simply the object all the blockage which is in front of you this is a way of MS a different way of moving through this world that's right yeah and there's also people you meet out in the world who remain secure I was a bit more forgiving I think them the other forms of games that are there to Staples but there are other staples as some so you have characters who you'll meet and you might not even notice I'm not going to talk to most of the budget ocean in these crush you sharing spaces you'll see and you go over and you talk to them and they'll say something very cryptic and you will i was another but there's actually a story there that's kind of threading through the world much as yours is you know ways you can change it right ways you can change the fates of those characters as the conquest they are or if you work out what exactly is they want or need to work out how to get it to them and they might be due to your item or it might be that need to be introduced to somebody or told something. So that's the other kind of like you know again that's just getting away from the car the meat grinder side of of security and as it's portrayed that's something else you might discover if you are calm and you just explore arm sticking your head into the lion's mouth again and again so where do people start with from software and when do they start here do they start with blood borne they start with Dark Souls What do you think Earth I mean are the obvious answers just play them in the order in which they were released because then you can sort of trace the designing thinking more I mean demon souls as the very 1st. Dark Souls is I think probably still the finest work just simply because of the the particular nature of its world as this amazing. Kind of course our European you thought was ice landscape which is effectively this huge cylinder like another. Because of a tower a hole which used to start in the military you can travel downward onto the base of the world the foundations or you can ascend and you can also seems to be the psalmist and the ground of the gods and that structure I think is just without equal in any game really. Blood borne is another probably my 2nd favorite Very games and that is a completely different sort of. Narrative backdrop it's much more cosmic horror it's kind of Lovecraft here and it's sort of hideous tentacle beasts from other dimensions corroding surface of all reality. So I'd say you are also introduces a much faster more ferocious star a comma so I guess I would say start with Dark Souls and then played Lowball and then see how you feel about the others but yeah they're all worth playing I mean even Dark Souls 2 which is kind of regarded as the a run to the literals is an amazing game so yeah wonderful Edwin thank you very much for coming on for forgiveness with rules about security shadows die twice it is BAFTA week so I will ask you this question are we going to see this come in the after wards next year do you think it will be a huge history to put into its is an amazing game of them complex but in this in my view so yeah absolutely M. Xit stuff nomination. That's where we leave the base. 5 Live in local radio. Thanks to Roger but all the same. How are you good morning welcome to. Its a M Y A With this. They say is B.B.C. Essay. Is B.B.C.'s a US soldier. For the next couple of hours. Putting in the news this morning and. 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