Fellow writer Josh Garibay and I had the chance to attend the Sony Santa Monica Studios God of War III media event on Wednesday night. It was a full 3 hour event that lasted from 7-10 p.m. and it was a night filled with entertainment such as music, dancers, suspense, mingling with developers, and of course, hands on time with the final installment of Kratos’ epic trilogy. It started off with the both of us sitting in a big open room filled with multiple HD televisions with the God of War III title screen on every one of them. We took our seat and fired up the game.
The room was packed within 10 minutes with attendees and developers alike while various rock artists played over the speakers. An hour into the event the live band came onstage and began playing. The band was Metric. And it did NOT fit the mood of the event. It was way too calm and in my opinion, not that good. It got even worse when they brought put the next musical guest who was a DJ whose name I didn’t catch. Never before have I seen so many Metallica songs butchered by techno. Painful.
While we sat and played our game enjoying our time, a woman only identified as “Pandora” came around and passed out fortunes and sayings that told about curiosity. Now all this time behind us sat a silver box latched shut. Part way through the event, Pandora danced on and around this box. Of course curiosity ensnared us throughout the entire 3 hours. We wanted to know what was in there. 5 minutes before the event was to end, it still had not been opened, so we decided to ask about it. The man at the table behind us told us to open it so Josh did. Inside were 3 blinking lights.
Josh and I took 1 each and left the third, thinking it had to be linked to the curiosity sayings and might be worth a prize. The men we talked to turned out to be top designers for the Killzone team. They had no idea what the lights were for either. While Josh went up front to find out more about these mysterious blinking lights, I waited behind while the whole event was being wrapped up. I spotted Pandora approaching the box cleaning up so I went up and asked her about them.
Turns out the lights meant nothing and were just a part of the show. She was sweet and kind about the whole thing and asked kindly if we would return them. Of course we did and when she noticed our slight disappointment she left us with parting words of “Pandora would be proud that you opened the box.”
All in all it was a fun night and although we left empty handed, we still enjoyed the time we had at this once in a lifetime event. We even lived our very own tale of Pandora’s Box and learned that curiosity is not always rewarded.
