Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.In a corner of London\u2019s National Gallery hangs a small, shadowy canvas by Francisco de Goya. \u201cA Scene from \u2018The Forcibly Bewitched\u2019\u201d shows a priest desperately refilling an oil lamp in the form of a giant, skeletal ram. As painted donkeys dance on the darkened wall behind, his hand covers his mouth in terror. He has been told he will die if the light goes out.Goya\u2019s painting provided the unlikely inspiration behind stealth adventure game The Stone of Madness. There is the sinister, supernatural aesthetic of its 18th-century Pyrenean monastery setting, which the developers drew directly from the Spanish painter\u2019s style. And there is the game\u2019s protagonist, Father Alfredo Martin, a tortured soul whom we must guide around the monastery\u2019s cloisters and corridors hunting \u2014 oil lamp in hand \u2014 for clues about the disturbing goings-on there.Forget bucolic visions of monks brewing beer and devoting themselves to quiet prayer \u2014 this isn\u2019t that kind of monastery. Father Alfredo has been imprisoned in its cells amid a spate of kidnappings, interrogations and deaths as higher-ups search for a mysterious stone said to cure all ailments. It\u2019s up to you to help the poor priest find the truth and make it out alive.Luckily, you\u2019re not alone in this quest. Four other characters, all with their own faculties and faiblesses, are on hand to help. There\u2019s a well-to-do lady named Leonora who can\u2019t stand to be around fire; Eduardo, a hulk of a man who happens to be afraid of the dark; Agnes, elder stateswoman and dispenser of magic and gossip; and Amelia, a kleptomaniac child terrified of gargoyles. Their eccentricities determine where they will and won\u2019t go, and how they interact with the array of monks, nuns, guards and patients who call the monastery home.The Stone of Madness is a stealth game at heart: the isometric perspective, convenient crates to hide behind and the guards\u2019 narrow cones of vision are tropes of the genre. What sets your abbatial adventures apart is having to rely on multiple characters at a time to achieve your goals: distracting a guard with Eduardo, knocking them out with Leonora, all the while flicking a switch with Father Alfredo, say. It takes time to get into the rhythm of cycling between the characters and ensuring they\u2019re all in the right place at the right time.\u00a0When it works, it\u2019s an intricate dance around a detailed historical diorama, one whose scope ingeniously scales with the abilities you unlock for the characters. But when it doesn\u2019t \u2014 because animations interrupt your flow, or visual elements glitch out, or menus refuse to function properly \u2014 the spell is suddenly broken. It doesn\u2019t help that the dialogue desperately lacks nuance, and characters often seem to be speaking more for the benefit of the player than to one another.\u00a0There are times when it feels as though The Stone of Madness wants to break out from its medium and just present a set of images as unique and intriguing as Goya\u2019s. And it almost does \u2014 until the artificialities of cutscenes, menus and prompts get in the way of the theatre that it wants you to act out. But none of these features are prerequisites for a game: animations can be toned down, cutscenes cut and menus streamlined. And you\u2019ll likely wish, treading the flagstones of this fascinating monastery, that they were.\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606Available on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X\/S and Nintendo Switch\u00a0now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.In a corner of London\u2019s National Gallery hangs a small, shadowy canvas by Francisco de Goya. \u201cA Scene from \u2018The Forcibly Bewitched\u2019\u201d shows a priest desperately<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":184096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-184095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184095"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184097,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184095\/revisions\/184097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}