Let's hear it for the mules: those videogame characters we make in role-playing games solely to help us manage our inventory systems.
If I had to choose a videogame archnemesis, it wouldn’t be a boss or an enemy. It would be a completely benign figure in the ecosystem of game design conventions: the inventory system. Alternately both friend and foe to the RPG completionist, the limitations it imposes on the tools and necessities we can carry in a game are often more of a curse than a blessing. It doesn’t give us enough space to hold everything we want, just what we need. And sometimes not even that.
Of course, there are all sorts of problems with using a mule. It can be time-consuming and unreliable, and there’s always a chance something could disappear. There’s also something to be said about having some limits on what you can drag along with you in the game. Weight management can be a fun strategic consideration. Myinventory is also an illustration of how difficult finding a single weapon in a sea of hundreds can be.
But a mule, for better or worse, doesn’t ask me to let go. While the items I store often represent a sense of safety, reflecting my need to feel prepared for any occasion, my mules buy me some time. They let me put off the process of assessing the value of each gun or piece of armor and cherish the forgotten and unused. Through them, everything I collect can receive the love it deserves.
And so, I want to celebrate mules. They’re that wonderful person created to hold your purse during a fight. They are the placeholders you create for RPG-class specific loot but by neglect become pack animals, potential unfulfilled. They’re the reason you can keep that one special gun for that one particular fight. And in the end, they let you hold on to the hope of making every Legendary drop count. Let’s hear it for the mules.
Holly Green is the assistant editor of Paste Games and a reporter and semiprofessional photographer. She is also the author of Fry Scores: An Unofficial Guide To Video Game Grub. You can find her work at Gamasutra, Polygon, Unwinnable, and other videogame news publications.
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