#but honestly the game handles the baggage really beautifully in ways i adore

[flagellant]

The more I think about Wildmender the more I grow invested in it. It's a fascinating interpretation of terra nil and solarpunk since so often the genre is fundamentally rooted in settler-colonialist philosophy, and even games which are intended to be the opposite of that--terra nil comes to mind as the obvious one--just end up actually revealing a different side of the factorio problem, because terra nil is an incredible impersonal restoration of ecological systems. Terra Nil acknowledges climate destruction on a global catastrophic scale and it accepts the responsibility to fix that, but it isn't shown as a human act, nor does it really allow itself the realism of just how terrifyingly impossible the task is to try and literally fix the entire world. Its game structure is supposed to be the anti-factorio but its puzzle structures focusing on efficiency and robotic engineering patterns of rewilding end up feeling more like a dialogue than an inversion. It's trying to say that the idea of humanity as fundamentally destructive is wrong while it doesn't actually ever address the human element.

And then there's fucking Wildmender. A game where you are a single human child in a world of endless wasteland and death, where the only other things are ghosts who remember a halcyon era and the hubris that ended it, wraiths which are consumed by their own greed and destruction of the land for their cursed immortality, and a couple god statues. The entire map is just ceaseless grief, filled with the literal dessicated remains of all the biodiversity that came before the countless disasters. And it's a big fucking map.

And then...the game gives you a shovel and a sickle and a mirror that shows the wraiths what twisted reflections they've become.

And the game says, "The entire world is waiting to be better, and the only way to do that is by doing it yourself, long and hard and hopeless as it seems."

I cannot emphasize enough how overwhelming the task you're handed. There is not a single speck of life left in the world. You are given a shovel and a water bottle and just...expected to do something about it. To look at the literal endless wastes and think you can heal it.

This is what Wildmender cherishes that Terra Nil denies: This is an impossible task for you alone. But it has to be done...and you can actually do it. The way you can turn sand into soil and dig irrigation channels is beautiful. Every single scrap of land that you reclaim is something you had to do on purpose. You had to do it yourself. You had to actively choose how to do it.

And the game makes the reward of even just getting a bit more water into the sand feel like victory. Your starting oasis turns from soil into lush and beautiful meadows--sure, technically instantaneously by doing magic on a specific type of plant. But it took me 4-5 hours before I got there. You have to travel so far into the desert to learn how to grow grass again, and then you realize that this endless hostile wasteland is a fraction of the map you're given. And you look at this sudden profusion of meadowy grassland surrounding your spring and despite how sudden it feels you remember how big the world is. You made more progress in a minute than you did in 5 hours and it's not even a speck on the map. How the fuck is this gonna happen?

And the answer is by accepting that it's going to take a long fucking time and a lot of hard work.

That's how it's gonna happen. Get to work.

[lil-meringue]

Okay, let’s talk The Last of Us part 2 (spoiler warning)

This is going to be more my problems with the game/my response to common complaints than what I loved, but saying that, I did fucking love this game, it really lived up to my expectations. So my first problem with the game is that Joel dies real fast, I love Joel and I would’ve loved to have seen more of him, maybe they could’ve made the game longer and have him die half way through or maybe cut some of Abbys POV so we can see more of Joel but I definitely didn’t think we saw enough of him before he passed. I will say this though I understand that he had to die, I always assumed he would, maybe not that early but definitely that he would, a comment I see aloooooot is that they disrespected his character...they didn’t. Just because a character dies in a brutal fashion, or is killed by a new character/a character that you didn’t like or dies too early doesn’t mean he wasn’t respected. Joels memory was given the A+ treatment, every single flashback was goddamn poetry and probably the best part of the game, especially considering he is a bad guy. I’m sorry to say that but he’s done some fucked up shit, which was discussed heavily in the game that alot of people seem to be ignoring/dismissing.

My next complaint/response is Abby, personally I liked her, maybe I didn’t love her but I definitely liked her, I liked playing as her and I definitely felt for her, what Joel did was bad, sure he did it for Ellie but goddamn it was bad, you don’t exactly get a good look at how bad it is because you’re playing as Joel when it’s happening, but if the hospital massacre was a cutscene or tlou was a movie, that section would be fucking tyrannical, I sorta wished Abby was actually there hiding so we got to see Joel at his worst from one his victims eyes. While I did like her, she had far too much fkn time, honestly there was more her than Ellie which frankly is annoying, also she was in some cases unlikable, they could have made her character a little more fun and likeable and less hard and emotionless, I mean look at Ellie and Joel, both essentially fucking monsters who have torn people who are in their way limb from limb but we had no trouble liking them. Sure they didn’t have the baggage of killing a beloved character but thats even more of a testament to her unlikability, they should’ve tried even harder with her personality, maybe even made her guilty for Joels death, had it haunt her, maybe she fights against the idea of torturing him, she could’ve been apologetic to Ellie and also just make her more happy and fun loving, I know it’s a dark game but you’ve got the guitar loving dad who wants to see his surrogate daughter smile, and the girl who loves puns and dinosaurs and who blushes when Dina looks at her, give Abby a little more character so we can actually love her. I also think @giveamadeuschohisownmovie put it best saying Abby should’ve been Marlenes daughter or at least connected to Marlene instead of choosing an unnamed character and giving him a name and two scenes to flesh him out, if you replaced most of Abbys POV with a bunch of flashbacks of her and Marlene, making you feel for her, seeing how close they were it probably would’ve felt more sympathetic.

In conclusion I loved this game, I adored Ellies section in the first half, I really enjoyed playing as Abby, I thought Levs story was really well handled and honestly the ending had me, I can’t understand how people couldn’t like that ending, Ellie chose revenge instead of moving on, she lost her gf, her child and her ability to play guitar, the last thing connecting her to her father but she didn’t kill Abby, she chose to let her go because if she had killed her she wouldn’t have been any different, she would’ve done the same thing to Lev that Abby did to her, she would’ve been the thing she spent a year trying to kill, the thing she’s been dreaming about for months. If a story doesn’t have a happy ending it doesn’t mean it’s bad, hell there are a crazy amount of stories with even worse endings that are still masterpieces. When I described it to a friend when I finished it I called it “depressingly beautiful” cause that’s what it is, a story handled with care and detail that hurts your heart but it isn’t disrespectful, personally I think everyone has the right to dislike this story, but you really shouldn’t say it’s a bad story, it just isn’t. Personally I don’t like The Godfather or any of the Back to the Future movies but I know they’re good, I like a bunch of stories that I admit are absolute horse shit but I still love them. This story was written with care and the team cared more about making a beautifully written story than giving characters a happy ending, as they should. If you dislike it because of the story then that’s up to you, more power to you, but I will say this if you disliked it because of a trans character, a gay relationship being the focus or Abby having muscles you honestly don’t deserve an opinion.