#game analysis

[humblefryingpan]

The "Amy likes spiders" poem in doki doki literature club (Natsuki's second poem) just makes me think of being closeted with internalized homophobia and I think it works really well for her

There's the poem if you haven't seen it!

(This is just me analyzing the poem and it's probably my longest post yet. I've been overanalyzing all the poems but this is the only one I've typed out atm lol)

It specifically makes me think of four things - Yuri liking different things and her disliking her for it, Natsuki being so far in the closet that she'll take any excuse to avoid the pretty girl™, Natsuki's self projection onto "Amy" and most importantly internalized homophobia, like I said earlier

It generally makes me think natsuri but I'll get to that later. So if we go from the internalized homophobia + closeted perspective (more like raised homophobic and doesn't know she's gay but ykwim), it reads as "a girl I know is a lesbian and Im meant to hate her for it. She's pretty and she makes me feel things but I can't be friends with her because she's a lesbian"

'The narrator' (Natsuki) heard a rumor that a girl, "Amy" (the lesbian), apparently likes 'spiders' (girls) and is repulsed. And that's why she isn't friends with her.

"Amy" sings the narrator's favorite love song, her voice is cute and it's making her heart pound. But she still likes 'spiders', so she can't be her friend.

She hurts her leg and "Amy" helped her get to the nurse. She tried to avoid touching her because her hands might be gross due to touching 'spiders', so she still can't be her friend.

"Amy" is very popular, but "she probably talks about spiders" (being gay). "What if her friends start to like spiders too?" (This entire verse rlly speaks for itself)

The next verse is shortest and even more repetitive than the rest of the poem (to emphasize her point) "it doesn't matter if she has other hobbies, it doesn't matter is she keeps it private, it doesn't matter if it doesn't hurt anyone" because to the narrator - she can't be "Amy's" friend, no matter how bad she wants to, because she's always going to be a 'spider lover' (lesbian) and she won't be able to ignore that.

And then the final nail to seal shut the door to the closet - "it's gross, she's gross, the world is better off without spider lovers. And I'm gonna tell everyone" because she needs everyone to know she hates 'spider lovers' to make sure no one knows she is also one. It's so gross because she was taught it was and now she can't stop thinking it's gross, no matter how nice/pretty/kind "Amy" is.

Onto the natsuri part so if you don't like that ship feel free to skip the rest of this (if you're still here lol)

Yuri and Natsuki like such different things (creepy and complex vs cute and simple) and they reach the point where they've argued so much that Natsuki doesn't want to admit she doesn't dislike Yuri. Even if she likes her poems, she'd never tell her because she feels like she can't at this point.

Natsuki couldn't see past their differences for a while, when she finally does, she's too embarrassed to apologize and too uncomfortable to befriend her without apologizing.

Nearly every verse of the poem will talk about how great the girl is. How she has a cute voice, she helped her, she has lots of friends, she makes her heart pound. But every verse she will still come back to "but she likes spiders. That's why I'm not friends with her". It feels like her gradually warming up to Yuri but still reminding herself that she can't be her friend, they're too different, Yuri likes creepy things (Yuri probably does like spiders so that's a bit more literal but it's also that spiders seem to symbolise everything she likes that Natsuki doesn't) and she couldn't be friends with someone so different.

And lastly, Natsuki's self projection (this is what the meaning is said to be in-game), meaning "Amy" is Natsuki herself. Natsuki likes manga and her friends won't believe it counts as literature. Her manga is the spider in this interpretation, she doesn't want people to judge her based on what she likes. She's had to be so defensive about what she likes, she may even judge herself for liking it at this point. She doesn't want people to judge people by their interests.

I keep seeing people say that Amy is a real person but that's one of the only interpretations that makes no sense to me. Because Natsuki may be a bit judgemental but even she wouldn't make an entire poem about disliking her classmate's love of spiders. She said herself that anyone that agrees with the narrator in the poem is a bad person. It's far more likely that "Amy" is a made up idea, she's barely even shown as a person. She's seemingly meant to be symbolic of Natsuki's flaws and insecurities, whatever you perceive those insecurities to be.

Portraying Amy as an actual person kinda cheapens the poem, at least in my opinion, because she was talking about how people should be given a chance no matter what (or who) they like and if Amy was a person it wouldn't make sense

[affectionatecorpse]

Okay so I see some people are debating what the monster from Still Wakes the Deep is. I'm inspired by the support from my Death Angel post, so I'm gonna try giving an analysis. Now science is not my strong suit, I'm much better at zoology, but here we go.

Of course, spoilers ahead!

So, the entity comes to light in act one. While Caz is being yelled at by his power drunk boss, Rennick, a worker going by the name Gibbo calls up to say there's an issue with the drill, something highlighted earlier by another worker. Rennick orders the drilling anyway, and thus begins the nightmare, as the drill seems to unearth and awaken a destructive parasite out for revenge. But I don't think that's as deep as it goes, pun intended.

Let's say, the creature is a parasite. A form of near sentient bacteria, though take that description with a grain of salt, I'm no scientist. Parasites simply cannot live on their own. That's an objective fact. They need a host. They exist within another for survival and breeding purposes, and multiply and spread through the body of another.

Parasites, bacteria and even fungi can live underground for years, and have been discovered to do so. Ancient lifeforms have been discovered just under the surface of earth, let alone deep underneath the ground and in the bottom of our oceans, one of the most complex and diverse biomes that our current science has barely scratched the surface of. It's highly likely this creature is a self replicating bacteria or parasite that was unearthed by the drill, and took up new hosts to survive in this change of environment.

But not every host worked. You can see half transformed, mutilated bodies everywhere, and some that haven't even changed at all. These bodies could not support the parasite and shortly died.

However, a few select hosts DID end up surviving; Gibbo, Muir, Rennick, Addair and Trots. It's unclear what sets these people apart from the others, and I don't know enough about this topic to claim an answer. But I certainly do think these folks died soon into the transformation, and are not fully conscious in the body. They frequently repeat terms and phrases, and never say anything you might expect from an entity possessing them, implying it's borrowing words and sentences that have been said by the host before, in other circumstances.

The entity plays with Caz's memories and definitely the others' too, though not all of them good. It wouldn't be a surprise to realise that's where it's getting information about it's host, as it reads the memories inside the brain to learn faces, names, and even the host's personality. Which makes me wonder, does it even realise what it looks like? Does the creature itself actually realise it's a parasite? Or does it completely and fully believe it is the person it's connected itself to? It almost downloads their personality and tries to pretend like everything is completely normal.

Let's talk about arguably the best monster (in my opinion), Muir. Muir moves about the area he frequently worked as what I assume was an engineer. He roams the familiar ground, almost unsure of why he's by himself. He often calls out to his coworkers, wondering out loud why they're treating him like he's different. Sure, this could be the real Muir's consciousness slipping in and out of the seams, but it's highly unlikely he would still be alive. Much like the zombie fungus, as it's often called, the host is not alive when the fungus is controlling it, and is merely a puppet. If the spiders it was corrupting could talk, I daresay, they'd be acting like them. Taking their place in the world, even if they don't realise it.

But every animal needs to eat. And eventually, that body is going to run out of tasty, tasty neurons. Like I said earlier, a parasite needs to spread. It'll breed, then spread to another to keep it's species alive. By infiltrating a 'pack' of animals, it will take anything to spread to the others. Which is exactly what the parasite does whenever it sees another human. Either that, or it will consume them, theoretically to feed the host so it stays alive, while keeping those tasty, tasty neurons for itself. You can almost see this process with Innes, as the elevator ascends without him, and you just faintly see Muir doing something in the distance. Likely consuming him for nutrients, as he was not connected to the parasite yet.

Next, there's Addair.

Addair, much like Muir, patrols familiar ground. Even though Addair himself wasn't even in that area when the drill struck. Now Muir was actively in that familiar space in the beginning, and it's safe to assume that's his place of transformation. But Addair was eating in the cafeteria when the incident happened, not deep down in the engine. Did he go down when the impact happened, while Caz was unconscious? Maybe. But the lights were fine then, and the engine wasn't the problem, so he didn't need a reason to. Plus, he doesn't seem like the type to be work dedicated, more inconvenience dedicated. Considering what I said about the parasite (badly) taking their place in society, did it go to his place of work after detecting that as his 'natural environment', per se?

Plus, unlike Muir, who greets the situation with quotes of confusion, fear and anxiety, Addair is instantly aggressive. Even an asshole like Addair is likely to panic if conscious in this situation, so the nervousness was Gibbo and Muir exclusive. But Addair and Rennick become immediately angry upon seeing Caz, as they actively disliked him in life, and so the parasite processes him as a foe to it's host. I thought that was neat.

Now another take I have admittedly heard from several other people, but I thought was worth mentioning. The monsters are incredibly similar to sea creatures. Which means this underwater bacteria was possibly leaking out already, and transforming our animals, not enough to completely corrupt them, but enough to twist their bodies. Think of the appearances of deep, deep sea creatures, such as the anglerfish. Isn't it possible this parasite was responsible for their uncanny appearance, in this universe? Muir especially looks like a spider crab, or perhaps even a bigfin squid.

Which again, is a deep sea creature. Rennick also reminds me of a blobfish once removed from the pressure of the deep sea. Addair seems very jellyfish-like, but may be something else very... tick-like. And even Trots gives me major merfolk vibes, with how untouched his torso is in comparison to his lower half.

This parasite could have been feeding off the neurons and breeding through our very ecosystem as the ground slowly gave away above it. The drill unearthing the source likely gave it a burst of control as so much energy was released at once, hence why it was so fast to literally spiral out of control.

But Scotland, by all means, is not the only place in the world connected to the ocean. Sure, they destroyed this batch, but other forms of this parasite live on elsewhere on earth. And the explosion may not have even destroyed it. It definitely would've destroyed the host bodies, yes, but certain bacterias can survive impressive damage, even heat hot enough to burn off human flesh. We'd best hope this is not one of those bacterias.

I didn't really get as far with this observation as I did with other horror studies, but I had fun nonetheless! Like I said, I'm really better with zoology (hence the sudden enthusiasm when I started on sea creatures), but I loved Still Wakes the Deep SO much that I just wanted to write down my thoughts. If you have any other theories, feel free to add them!

Also if I used your pictures/gifs and you would like me to add credit, I am so so sorry, I will absolutely add that as soon as you say so, I just got most of these off Google and couldn't find most the original sources. So yeah if you'd like me to add your name and mention, or you want me to remove it in general, feel free to just say and I'll add it, I don't bite I promise. Well... I won't bite YOU.

Sorry sorry, had to make a zombie reference--

[blurredfloweryblood]

You see the characters in a one dimensional way because that's the point! They are all people with aspirations, struggles and pain! You don't get to see that because the point of the game is teaching you just how dehumanized it is!! You are all going up and down but the result is the same! You are all going another day, and another, and another!

Nobody cares! People that work for giant companies like Pony Express are doomed! Those companies dehumanize you and convince you that there is no other way to live! They will never learn your name! They don't give a shit about you! Fucking mouthwash is ridiculous and it doesn't matter! If the cargo ship doesn't arrive, all of them will be fired!!! They will never be found when there are hundreds of other ships getting to their destination!!! They never had a chance in the first place!!!

But you can humanize them. You can try. It's a cry and a warning. Please care. Please look at the dead pixel. Please, take responsibility, otherwise, it will hurt and kill us all.

[anthurak]

Something I’ve come to appreciate in video games recently is when a game about some special place needing to be saved by a newcomer who just showed up doesn’t actually have everything go to hell before the protagonist shows up or within a few minutes of them arriving.

To use the example that really made me appreciate this trope, I actually really like how in Psychonauts, Raz/the-player gets to experience Camp Whispering Rock as more or less normal for a while before Oleander’s big ‘steal a bunch of kid brains and stick them in an army of psychic-death-tanks to take over the world’ plan gets revealed, Lilli gets kidnapped by the giant, hulking traumatized lungfish and everything really goes bad.

Like I feel that most games would have all that stuff happen within the first five or ten minutes or so, but with Psychonauts, somewhere between a third and a full half of a playthrough can potentially take place before night falls and everything really goes bad.

Just to give an example, look at how much the game restricts your movement around Whispering Rock in the early game, or rather doesn’t actually restrict it. I think it’s easy to imagine a version of the game which blocks off the different areas of the camp until that area’s relevant mission became available. But no, the only real roadblock to exploration the player faces in the early game is the first mind level. Once Raz completes Basic Braining, the entire rest of the camp becomes open to explore at your leisure.

Heck, the game even encourages exploration by being deliberately vague on where exactly Sasha Nein’s secret lab is. And with the combination of the game both explaining how PSI-Challenge Markers work right in the tutorial and teasing you with a ‘New Psychic Power When You Reach Level 10’ whenever you level up, and a lot of those Markers and Cards being accessible even before you unlock Levitation, the game is already nudging you to go out and explore the camp. And that’s not even mentioning the Scavenger Hunt items.

Or how while the game does direct you to Ford Cruller after the first Brain Tumbler experiment, it’s entirely possible, even likely, that you’ve ALREADY met Ford thanks to simply dropping into one of the fast-travel stumps while exploring.

I mean, consider this; it’s entirely feasible and without too much trouble for Raz to have Pyrokinesis before he even learns PSI-Blast from Sasha. And to have Pyrokinesis, Telekinesis and Invisibility by the time he fights the Blueprint Tank at the end of the Brain Tumbler Experiment. Heck, if you’re really going the grindy-route, basically ALL the collectables in camp, save for one scavenger hunt item, can be acquired before nightfall.

And personally, I really like that you can do this.

Because it feels like Raz/the player gets the chance to experience Camp Whispering Rock as a camp in a more relaxed, easy-going state before night falls, Oleander’s plot is fully revealed and everything becomes a lot more urgent and dangerous. Instead of being thrust into the meat of the action right off the bat, Raz gets the chance to explore and learn and basically do the stuff he actually WANTED to when he came to Whispering Rock.

Thematically, it fits really well with just how driven Raz is to become a Psychonaut, as well as the limited time he seems to have before his dad comes to pick him up. Why wouldn’t he throw himself into exploring, learning and generally doing everything he can at Whispering Rock with what little time he had?

And it also fits nicely with the rest of the game as well. It makes the first third/half of the game feel like Raz is actually learning to become a Psychonaut, and the battle against Linda, breaking into the asylum and rescuing Lili, Sasha and Mia feel Raz is putting everything learned in the first third/half of the game into practice.

Or how Ford’s faith and confidence in Raz’s abilities start making a lot more sense if Raz has both picked up and become reasonably proficient in FIVE psychic powers in what was basically an afternoon.

Honestly I wish we could see this sort of thing in more games with this sort of ‘hero arrives at a super special place and has to save it from destruction’ premise. Just let the protag/player explore and experience the place in a more casual, relaxed manner before everything goes to shit. Like give them a reason to get invested and CARE about this place so it feels all the better to actually save it.

[blackblooms]

I just really wanted to talk about VS yourself from the Hit Single Real mod of Friday Night Funkin.

It does a great job of communicating the essentials of its story through the way the song is presented. At first, boyfriend is meant by a creepy figure, which players would assume is some kind of evil doppelganger, but as the song progresses, you start to connect with yourself and eventually come to understand what he really wants as the song reaches its climax. Everyone of course talks about the amazing vocal part, but i think an underrated part of the songs are those brief but very hype segments where Yourself and Boyfriend begin singing and moving in sync. It's an obvious fit for the mirror imagery but i think it's also a great way to symbolize Yourself and Boyfriend managing to connect for a moment. Knowing the lore of Yourself definitely adds to the experience, but i think the essential part of the story is perfectly communicated through the song itself. Simply someone reaching out to an alternate version of themselves, seeking to find a voice that can empathize and relate to his pain and allow him to feel understood...

[canonically47]

i don’t like how almost the entire fandom is on jimmy’s ass but loves curly. while jimmy undoubtedly did worse things, curly PROTECTED HIM. you cannot stand there at your computer and type straight-faced about how ‘jimmy is a horrible monster!! ...but curly could treat anya sooooo well’ like HUH??? this game is NOT about how jimmy is the worst person alive ever WITHOUT also the message of curly being AT LEAST half as bad.

because HE KNEW. and i think this is also beautifully represented through his design. he chose to turn a blind eye to anya’s struggles, HE CHOSE TO NOT SEE, and then, after the crash, he found himself with one eye constantly open, FORCED TO SEE. and by god did he see. he saw, first-hand, how protecting his absolute bastard of a friend led to the death of the entire crew and their prolonged sufferring. i saw one person suggest that the scene in which swansea kills daisuke could be from curly’s POV since it aligns perfectly with the hallway and the look he would get of the scene.

so curly, who once always protected his friend and turned a blind eye to his misdemeanors, is now forced to see these terrible events unfold firsthand. because guess what? it’s about half of curly’s fault for these events jimmy creates. because he could have prevented so much if only he wasn’t part of this toxic culture of males protecting each others from the consequences of their own actions.

now before i get any angry comments or reblogs: i do not despise curly. i do not even despise jimmy as a character. i condemn their actions 110%, ESPECIALLY jimmy’s - but i think they’re such deep and shockingly real, raw depictions of humans that not only could, but DO exist. as concepts and characters, i admire wrong organ for their bravery to create them into existence - and i hate them as people. again, they are representatives of the toxic culture males have in which they protect each other (“my buddy couldn’t have raped/SA’d/etc her because i know him and he wouldn’t do that!!” etc etc.) and it is so upsetting but so necessarry to witness this. i just wish the fandom would be willing to witness it fully, not just go “FUCK JIMMY” “so sorry you had to draw jimmy” while simultaneously pushing out curly x reader or saying shit like “curly just wanted everyone to be happy :(” “curly would treat anya better” etc etc.

this is such a raw and real story once again ruined by a fandom whose minds are rotted by hehe hot man, toxic yaoi, and amatonormativity. and yea that sounds funny when you read it but so many of the messages of the game are ignored in favor of all the above. i’m tired of it!!!

TL;DR: i condemn both jimmy AND curly’s actions and i think that you guys should not give curly a pass for protecting jimmy. if you’re going to call jimmy a horrible fucked-up monster, acknowledge that curly enabled him time and time again.

[grandwitchbird]

Veilguard is generally a well designed and well written game. I’m clear on what I think about DA as a whole, but it’s easily the best actual game in the franchise.

People are picking up, however, on a real critical flaw and mostly failing to locate the flaw while getting distracted by nonsense. It’s a flaw present in every DA game if you dig enough. Let’s talk about story bosses.

This is a tricky thing in arpgs. RGG and CDPR try to ensure that story bosses are densely interwoven into the world in a way that works thematically.

Adam Smasher would have been a problem in any universe; he’s just enabled and enshrined by this one. Hansen points us right back to the military industrial complex, the ghost of which we’ve spent the entire game wrestling with. Literally. All of that directs us right back to the systems in place in our cyberpunk world. It points us at our own motivations as V and interrogates our love of the power fantasy as a player.

In an RGG game, when you run down a corridor towards a boss, it’s a gauntlet. It’s there for fun and also to highlight the legendary clash that’s about to happen with reference to the Yakuza films the series started as an homage to. The boss may wait at the end or jump you, depending on their personality and goals. There will be mini bosses along the way because you’re generally fighting hierarchical organizations.

In Veilguard, our enemies wait at the end of a corridor. They’re powerful and don’t need to come to us. Ok good start, also a nod to ME. Occasionally you’re lucky and get story ‘minibosses’ that interrogate that very idea. The first warden is here to flesh out everyone’s motives and challenge us as the player. Sometimes you’re very lucky and the boss is Johanna Hezenkoss and she’s exclusively here to have clear motives that flesh out Emmrich’s arc and to cause problems because it’s fun. Most of the time, you get Aelia or whatserface Aelia 2.0 in Lucanis’s arc. Or the others I don’t remember after playing the game 5 times. Anaris? What did he even want? No I don’t mean power. What was under that? What was his motivation? Because I can explain the power-hunger in every Yakuza shithead or nationalist asshat I’ve fought in an RGG game. But Veilguard, like all of DA is avoiding real discussions of power and psychology and ~implications~.

I’m not a forgetful person. I’m meticulous and have the true blue autistic pattern recognition. I genuinely can’t say what made Aelia and Aelia 2.0 anything other than cosplay tyrants. Not without projecting onto the text or stretching it to breaking point by leaning hard on one specific short story.* Dragon guy and other antaam guy came out of literally nowhere. Mail order villains those two.

Even with our big bads, we get mere hints and gestures. Everyone is impressed with whatsisface doing a bad imitation of Bowie’s lines in Labyrinth. He’s a spirit of tyranny though. What does that mean. What makes the tyrants work in this world. And why are we cribbing from the Goblin King while carefully editing out the sucker punch?

We know the answer in the real world and can project that onto the game. But it’s not in the game. Not in a way the text doesn’t flinch from. And this is something people are picking up on. It’s also not been in any of the other games sorry to say. So this isn’t new. Veilguard just isn’t hiding behind obfuscating design choices and allusions to better stories. It’s still making those allusions (see gif above) but it’s a more honest text re: its limitations.

As with everything. The Mourn Watch and Grey Wardens stand heads and shoulders above the rest of the faction/companion-based conflicts. Their bosses have clear psychologies, motivations, and represent coherent and grounded goals (in hilariously disparate ways) Solas, likewise, has us/Rook as a mirror and his needs/wants and the conflict between those needs/wants are forefront and incredibly well developed. It’s not all bad. It’s actually quite good.

But when people flounder at surface details looking for the ‘problems’ with the writing. This is what’s getting missed. The problem is never ‘plot hole’ or ‘bad lore’. It’s something in the structure and conflict and motivation. And I’m afraid to say it’s old news with DA (Loghain is fine but the entire end of origins is an asspull. Don’t @ me). This game is much stronger than the others on that front. That would still be true if we had only Solas. We also got Johanna fingerguns Hezenkoss and the entire Grey Warden plot. I, for one, am counting that a win.

*the extended media is a critical weakness of the franchise. Referencing your own EU is not the same as entering a dialogue with an existing subgenre populated by works from diverse sources.

[hackfixation]

Some Symbolism in the official Release Date Trailer I just noticed and others might have too:

An orange glow hums on Jimmy's face before fading into the sunset display.

"I see it so clearly"

The camera is focused on the sunset and slowly we fade into curly's eye as the words above are spoken. He is lying in the bed, staring up at the ceiling unable to move.

I personally believe there isn't any other way to interpret this scene:

Curly finally seeing Jimmy for who he is now.

"through the crack in the wall"

Daisuke is show walking into a dark hall or maybe a vent? considering the texture used seems similar to the ones in the vent scene. If the words above are curly speaking, this could be him discussing how he witnessed Daisuke severly injured but never saw him die. Knowing, somehow, that Jimmy did this because Swansea would never let anyone in that vent.

"behind god's back"

Swansea is outside the graveyard, looking in while slowly lowering his axe. He's preparing himself. Curly could have seen heard Swansea run in to the med bay and find Anya dead. That reaction could be him having seen Jimmy run past. Curly watched Swansea take in what the hell happen before running in. Curly knew Jimmy had the gun.

One of them was heading to their grave.

"hell colored electric and constant"

This is the scene with Anya in the cockpit and Poelle looming in the background. Curly is not only empathizing with Anya's pain in this moment but recognizing that none of them would be in this situation if not for the Pony Express placing them in this environment. He is wishing he could've done more for her, potentially grieving.

"were already here."

The full group together. Curly lingering as a presence in the background, as he watches the person he once was haunt the narrative and the person his friend is destroying lives.

I believe this is us experiencing Curly finally losing any existential or religious hope. His idea of humanity finally snapping.

Curly had to either watch or listen to them all die and could do nothing to stop it

[starscreamingg]

Detroit Become Human and why does this game decide that the problem in society is individual people treating androids poorly because those androids are choking them out of the workforce and NOT the corporations and governments who deliberately designed the androids to do this

[goblincow]

GREEN MILK | #008 | save vs despair — mörk borg: a holistic retrospective

:// A little over a month & 14,000 edited & well-considered words later, SAVE VS DESPAIR is complete to read in its entirety.

If you have any interest in TTRPGs or ever wondered what Mörk Borg's whole deal is – this is for you.

I approached it as a writing exercise & design analysis to understand what's so special about this game and art object, and I'm really proud of both this piece and what I learned for my own practice.

If you're invested in the TTRPG scene I'd appreciate it if you shared this with anyone who might enjoy it.

Our artform deserves as much high-quality analysis as we can cultivate, and the fact that I stumbled into writing what is currently the most thorough analysis I could find (which still has huge gaps in its perspective & approach) of one of the most successful games to emerge from the scene in recent years indicates that there is a need to encourage more writing like this.

In a perpetually collapsing digital infrastructure where so much of our design writing is ephemeral and lost to time (I've heard ancient tales of The Forge & Google+ eras, Discord is an unreferencable void & I really hope someone wiser than me is archiving all these podcasts) I hope that longer form writing might represent an opportunity for the ideas we have now to still be accessible (in one form or another) in years to come.

—

Too much patting myself on the back? Maybe.

But it's good writing and I think you'll get something out of it.

Personally I learned that cross posting on multiple platforms is exactly as fun as it sounds (I thought the whole point of starting a newsletter was to avoid this crap in the first place) and by the end of the month I just wasn't posting the illustrations I was making or sharing the last 2 (?) individual parts here as they went up after burning myself out on instagram.

So for the sake of my poor microwaved brain, if any of this interests you:

[gobbogoo]

Fallout 4: Great Ideas, TERRIBLE Teamwork

Ever since Fallout 4 released, I've been unable to ignore its gaping narrative flaws. I can forget bad writing, but missed opportunities? Those cling to my brain like tumours.

If you look closely, you'll realize Fallout 4's writers weren't BAD, they just failed to coordinate to a frankly spectacular degree.

To start off small, you've got stuff like Kelogg's ghost speaking through Nick Valentine, only to then never show up again. This is especially bizarre when so much time is spent exploring his character AFTER you've killed him. One writer put a LOT of effort into ensuring we quite literally know Kelogg better than our own son... only for others to not follow up on that AT ALL.

Now, let's look at The Institute. HEAPS of neat ideas, there:

You've got the existential/ethical quandary of Bladerunner androids, the thrill of hunting down a nebulous organization with eyes everywhere, the intrigue of a secret robot doppelgänger conspiracy! Then you finally get there, and your OWN SON greets you! He shows you this clean utopia of human advancement that perfectly contrasts the horrible wasteland above, and makes you wonder if the Institute really IS the best hope for humanity...

...and THEN someone goes "oh also we've been turning people into Super Mutants and releasing them onto the surface for reasons that ARE NEVER EXPLAINED!"

Those Bladerunner androids that could be used to pose all sorts of existential/ethical quandaries? Nah they're basically just enslaved humans. That doppelgänger conspiracy that necessitated the creation of androids? Completely irrelevant. Also they're isolationists who want to leave the surface alone, despite that contradicting literally everything they've been doing.

Again, you can see the EXACT division between different writers here. One person was trying to create an evil faction like the Legion or Enclave, another was trying to create a neutral, morally grey faction like Mr. House. The plot is caught between these warring visions and is subsequently shot to death in the confusion.

And all I can do is sit there and imagine what could've been.

[fae-that-rambles]

OMORI AND STORYTELLING THROUGH CHARACTER DESIGN

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I think it’s a very fun detail to over analyze.

SPOILERS AHEAD‼️‼️‼️

HEADSPACE

Upon first meeting the headspace gang Omori and Basil stand out very sharply. Omori with his lack of color, and Basil with the unique color of his hair and eyes. The two are clear foils; Omori is silent and keeps himself as far from focus as possible- While Basil is the group glue and focus before and after his disappearance.

Through the character designs and personalities, we are primed to connect and focus on Basil rather than Omori. Basil is pastel colored, a pacifist and a lover. Omori’s vacant eyes and silent knife-wielding nature are less inviting. Very often with RPG horrors, silent protagonists are overlooked in favor of supporting cast. Omori actively uses this as an aspect of its story. We’re supposed to focus on Basil- Sunny is supposed to focus on Basil

THE HORROR

This all lends to our first bait and switch- and our first of Basil’s complex role in the narrative.

Basil is our first glimpse into the horror themes of Omori- and this actively betrays the players trust. Again- Basil was our lovable safe character- We are primed to trust him. Then everything goes wrong (Sounds familiar).

The red eyes are obviously unsettling- again, betraying our trust by subverting the innocence of Basil’s appearance.

Furthering this! With Basil’s disappearance arrives Stranger

A shadowed figure resembling Basil leaving bloody footprints- Basil’s design has been completely subverted into something known and comforting- to a Stranger.

Omori and Stranger are an inverse of Omori and Basil’s design foils. Omori is white with black accents and eyes. Stranger is a full black silhouette with glowing white eyes. And they are of course just as much personality foils. Omori is danger and escapism under an innocent mask. Stranger is a frightening and cryptic individual who only aims to help Sunny. The bloody footprints are foreboding and unsettling- But they’re guides helping Sunny.

Adding on to this, Stranger and Omori’s design’s aren’t foils in the way of being opposites- they’re foils in the way of being compliments. They’re reflections of black and white- two sides of the same coin.

REAL WORLD BASIL

The introduction of real world Basil once again subverts previous expectations- I think for both the audience and Sunny. Setup as foils- opposites throughout the entirety of headspace, the Real World Basil and Sunny could not be more similar design wise. Their outfits are near identical; and their pale frail physiques are the same- even down to the height.

Despite everything set up in Headspace- Basil is by far the character most similar to us in Faraway town. As much as Sunny tries to deny it in his mind- he and Basil were heavily shaped by their shared history. They’re not opposites. Both have become reclusive in the days since Mari’s death, they both lost connections with the group, and both are riddled with guilt, fear, and self loathing. Sunny tries so hard to sever his connections to Basil in his mind, they’re in the exact same position.

Through the final fight with Basil, all of Sunny and Basil’s parallels are put to light. Both in the same clothes, living with the same crippling fear of what they both went to together. Both of their Somethings heightening their fear and crippling any rationality. Basil’s weapon- garden shears are an easy parallel to Omori’s knife.

Their only major design difference is their eyes and hair. Sunny’s eyes still their empty black (or sharp red when stressed out) and Basil’s an eerie glowing blue. Even if they’ve developed in the same circumstances, the two have reacted very differently because of their personalities. Sunny avoidant and stoic, Basil desperate and erratic. Once again, the two are complimentary foils. No matter what form Basil takes, he and Sunny are tied together as reflections of one another, and the shared experiences that molded them.

BONUS- HIKKIKOMORI

In the Hikkikomori route you fight Stranger instead of Real life Basil. The Hikkikomori route illustrates a complete refusal from Sunny to acknowledge the truth of the incident, and this means erasing Basil as a person. Destroying every one of these parallels I’ve discussed.

Basil and Stranger lose their depth. Basil is resigned to the picnic basket with Mari and kept out of the way. He’s lost his right to focus and autonomy, rather staying a shallow memory vague enough to protect Sunny’s repression.

Stranger is treated as an enemy. He is solely Omori’s opponent and will be eliminated as such. All of Basil’s complexity wiped away with his death. Leaving that cardboard cutout- Headspace Basil.

Furthermore, the fight with Stranger (obviously) has direct parallels to the final fight with Basil. Basil and Sunny wear their identical clothes and fight as two parallels. Stranger and Omori are black and white enemies, as Omori refuses to acknowledge Basil’s connection and similarities to Sunny. He refuses the complexity Stranger represents.

[noel-levine-fan]

i couldn't stop thinking about how these CGs seem to mirror each other. claire has the exact same smile

(context: first two are a scene from noel's route where he's reflecting on how claire saved him, second two are from bonus stage when they're navigating the fantasy space at the end)

[tlbodine]

Ratshaker Review & Analysis

Ratshaker is an indie horror game released by Sunscorched Studios on October 31. Like many small indie horror games, it's earned a small bit of virality thanks to Markiplier and other let's players. The central mechanic coupled with the short play time, unsettling story, and mysterious atmosphere makes it catnip for streamers, which is probably a necessity for survival in the modern gaming ecosystem.

Anyway, Ratshaker came to me courtesy of @comicreliefmorlock, who heard about it and instantly realized it would be up my alley. And it certainly is.

I'm going to walk through and provide commentary and analysis in this post, but if you've got a spare $3, go throw it at the creator on Steam. They deserve a couple bucks for an entertaining hour or so of thought-provoking gameplay!

Now....let's go shake some rats.

You awaken in an endless field, rat in hand. You cannot move. But you can shake the rat by holding down the left mouse button and shaking, and doing so fills up the "ratshaker meter" up above, so it's pretty clear what you're supposed to do.

These first few minutes of the game, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was a Cookie Clicker novelty. The rat screams in the most ridiculous fashion when shaken. The pitch and tenor changes, and maybe you experiment -- shake faster, shake slower, stop and start again, just to see what happens. We're all having fun here.

And then the voice starts up in the background. A low, rasping growl that instructs you: shake the rat. With ratshaking, you are in control. Feel the satisfaction....

So you shake the rat some more. The rat laughs hysterically. The growling voice continues to encourage you, with increasing intensity, to shake, shake, shake the rat.

The shake meter fills. A music cue makes it clear that something has changed. Letters appear, instructing you to keep going even as the meter drains. The voice in the back of your mind has become a litany, a chant. Shake the rat, shake it, shake it....keep. shaking.

You may or may not notice that the environment is changing around you. A building has appeared on the horizon. Ashes are fluttering up around you. The field continues to sway. You keep shaking the rat.

And then, once more, something changes. You stop. The voice in your head has turned accusatory. Listen to the rat, it instructs you. It's because of what you DID.

The rat speaks to you. The voice in your head becomes louder, more insistent, more accusatory. The things that appear should be obvious to you. You know what you did.

You shake, shake, shake the rat, and then you are instructed to squeeze, and instead of his laughter and screams the rat makes gagging, choking sounds and for the first time you think, maybe, the cruelty simulator is a little much, maybe this isn't as funny as it seemed to be.

But then the rat yields, and promises that the answers you seek are just over the hill, in the newly uncovered farmhouse on the horizon, and of course you're going to go and explore that, of COURSE you are.

You approach the house and see the floating ash...or are they flies? Or are they -- look closer -- little rats with angel wings? It's hard to say for sure, just a trick of your eyes. But the rat instructs that this is where it happened. That you must go inside and "find it."

Abandon hope, ye who enter here -- well. It's clear enough then that we're taking a tour of a private hell, and the rat is our Virgil, guiding us through. (Because of what you did, the voice in our head reminds us.)

You must squeeze the rat to interact with objects in the game. You must shake the rat to fill the meter so that you can squeeze. There is no way to proceed without continuing to be complicit in the cruelty. But then, you already knew that.

When you first enter the house, it's move-in day. You can tell by the boxes piled up in the corners, the unfinished furniture. But you step inside and explore and familiarize yourself with the layout of the house. You'll be looping through it a lot, so you'd best remember all the doors.

Yes, I said looping. Yes, this is another PT clone. Let's just get that out of the way now. Like PT, Ratshaker is built on an endless loop of domestic scenery that becomes more unsettling with each iteration, environmental storytelling that builds up to a narrative. It's not the first game to copy this technique and it won't be the last, but at least you've got a rat with you to keep you company.

You turn on the TV in the living room and are treated to an infomercial. Are you tired of pesky pests that just won't leave you alone? Ratshaking is for you!

After the video finishes, there's a scrap of photograph to collect, and it becomes clear what the on-screen directive to FIND IT was all about.

All the rules of the game are clear now. You shake the rat and squeeze the rat to interact with the world, and you interact in order to uncover pieces of the photograph, and once the photograph is complete then you'll get to go through the locked door. Got all that? Great.

So just to reiterate, what you want to do is go down into the basement through the door with the blood stain and the unmarked VHS tape and the box of rat poison. That is where you want to go, and never mind how much you don't want to go down there. We have a hell loop to work through.

Oh yeah, by the way. Interacting with the wrong things can kill you. Then you'll have to start the loop over from the beginning. You won't realize that at first and you'll waste a lot of time unable to proceed because you didn't think to backtrack and repeat your actions from the last loop. You're welcome.

(by the way, the game is designed to play in one sitting, so there is no save feature as far as I can tell. Proceed accordingly).

Anyway, when you revisit the home, there's now a quantity of beer bottles on the table. The cozy fire has been put out and the disarray of pillows suggest that you've probably been sleeping out here. You also stepped over a quantity of newspapers on your way here. The natural assumption is an old cliche that persists because it's often true: you've lost your job, started drinking, and your wife has rejected you as a result. We're all thinking that, right?

You can't go through the door to the basement without another photo piece so you turn down the hall and, ah yes, a glowing red room, and the echoing, insistent cry of a baby. You know this is going to be bad before you even step inside.

Here we are, then. A crib, with an unsettling massive stain beneath. Rats pour in from overhead, teeming over the crib and running through the room, and all the while the crying just keeps on an endless loop.

But you know how to make it stop.

You shake the rat. You squeeze the rat.

You get your photo piece, and the screaming is done. Never mind the red haze that floats up in front of you. Never mind the rats still pouring from the ceiling. It's all okay.

The basement door is open again.

You walk through the basement and hear an awful wet choking sound. You see a strange, misshapen red figure on the stairs, no bigger than a child, but when you approach it dissolves into a spray of red mist. You keep walking, down a hallway of rat traps and beer bottles that shatter on your approach, and find now a room of static and fuzz and the floating detritus of your ruined life, and ahead of you is a door and a directive: FIND HER.

Just walk past the floating naked corpses. Pretend you don't see them. It's fine. Everything is fine.

At this point, do we suppose that the child died of neglect, screaming in his crib while his father drank himself into a stupor? Do we think the rats got him? Or do we suspect that the father shook the baby (shake the rat, squeeze the rat)? Either way, I think it's pretty clear that the father directly or indirectly contributed to the death of the child, and his marriage and his life have fallen apart as a result. We can agree on that, yeah?

But there are three corpses in the hallway. What are we to make of those?

That infernal, blazing, broken television and a whole mess of unmarked VHS tapes scattered over the floor might give us a clue.

You wander down the hall and find that it's overgrown with flesh, big pulsing gobbets of meat and long stringy tendrils and you think, what the hell, I didn't know this was also an Amnesia knock-off.

You step inside the bathroom and, because you've played PT, you brace yourself for a squalling fetus in the sink, but no, there's just a frying pan, and an...excuse me, is that a corpse in the bathtub?

(You can also explode the toilet and make turds fly out, which is...probably not necessary, but is kind of funny, and you need some levity right about now. The only humor left to you is the cheerful voice of your ever-present, long-suffering rat guide. Let's give him a little reassuring squeeze. Just a little shake, for old time's sake.)

Hey, there used to be a bedroom here, didn't there? It's empty now, abandoned. You go where the closet had been and find another corridor of meat, and at the end is another television, this one playing what certainly seems to be a snuff film.

Like...it's kind of hard to tell because it's all grainy and pixelated and keeps jumping from frame to frame, but that certainly seems to be a black-and-white image of a woman who's naked and bound in a dingy location, right? It's not just me seeing this? Maybe I've watched Videodrome too many times, but that sure seems like what we're seeing here.

If you interact with the television at this stage, it explodes, stabbing your rat with a glass shard, and the voice in your head chides you: you killed the rat. you killed it, and now it's dead.

Alternatively, you can back away and go to the kitchen. When you interact with the stove, it catches fire and explodes. Just before you die, the game instructs you to stop running.

(that would certainly explain all the falling ash in the game. Perhaps you are in hell now because you've killed yourself with the oven? Suicide by gas leak? or maybe that was an accident.)

Anyway, if you duck around the corner before the snuff TV explodes, you can instead find your way to this doorway at the opposite end of that hall:

Follow the very long path down into the basement and now you'll emerge to find that your house has become a prison, with cage bars erected to create a maze. It's also nearly impossible to see anything right now, especially if you're playing this in the middle of the day like I am, oop.

In the cages, you find bathtubs and big barrels of...poison? Acid?

This really is starting to look like some kind of body disposal factory, isn't it?

Stained mattress on the floor and overflowing bucket giving off real Barbarian vibes...

Well. The good news is we found the way out and our next photo piece. The bad news is to get it we need to pluck it out of the slimy, globby hand of the horrifying fleshy aberration growing out of the wall.

But hey, at least the rat works as a glowstick!

One photo piece left. I think it's pretty clear what this picture is turning out to be, but let's enter the flesh door and see this through to the end.

(I should mention here that, intermittently, you keep seeing visions of the raw, red, disfigured meat child. If you bump into him, your rat will begin to choke, and you'll need to shake him vigorously to keep him alive. Also, this entire time, there's a hellish soundscape of screaming and groaning and a baby crying. Just. To keep that in mind.)

Anyway. We emerge into another maze, this one a series of concentric cages. Like Theseus and the Minotaur, we must enter the center of the labyrinth to find our salvation.

Just kidding that's not salvation. That's a bed covered in plastic sheeting that someone has been strapped into and imprisoned! My mistake.

You make it through the maze and enter a corridor lined with all the paintings you've seen elsewhere in the house at various times. This is my favorite touch in the game. They're pixelated, so they're hard to identify, but if you pay attention you can spot Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan, Saturn Devouring His Son, and several other religious works on the theme. I can't identify all of them (and some of them I recognize but can't place) but they certainly suggest a story about parents killing their children and regretting it, among other things.

If anybody has a lead on identifying all of these paintings, hit me up in the comments. I'd love a complete list.

Anyway! Onward!

There's one last door to open, so you'd better gear up to shake the rat one last time. Then give him a good, hard squeeze.

The rat tells you there's no going back. It's time to face the truth. He also speculates whether she knew what was happening under her own floor boards (the basement?)

Collect your final photo from the corpse on the floor and then head back into the basement.

Down in the basement, now we have endless rows of racks and storage tubs, and a fridge that explodes into a blinding fire, demanding, Face Us.

Back away from that and keep searching. There's more maze to navigate down here.

At last, you find it. The rat tells you to look at what you've done.

"What started with vows of love ended wrapped in plastic, becoming food for the rats. You are the wife-shaker," he intones, and a wrapped corpse rises from the floor and approaches with the game's only real jump-scare, which is also the spoiler you see in the thumbnail of about a million YouTube play-throughs.

Credits roll. The game resets to the beginning. The loop of your eternal torment begins once more.

(note: if you go through the motions of once more shaking the rat into submission, but then approach the barn building instead of the house, you can get a hidden achievement. I won't spoil it for you but it's quite funny.)

So What Does It All Mean?

Okay so, first off - I believe Ratshaker was built during a 48-hour game jam, so it's entirely possible it's not that deep. But that's no fun. What we do around here is overthink things, so that's what we're gonna do ;)

Anyway. Textually, what we know for certain is that the player character killed his wife. That much is confirmed by the ending. The other pieces are a bit more speculative, but I'll do my best to piece it all together.

In the beginning, you're in a new home. Soon after, we see at least the suggestion of marital trouble - the late-night TV infomercials, the pillows on the couch, the collection of beer bottles. Then the horror in the nursery. Seems that the dad has either directly or indirectly caused the death of his infant (either by way or neglect or shaking him) and things fall further apart from there, ultimately culminating in his murder of his wife and, we assume, his own suicide, either in the bathtub or blowing up the house with gas (or potentially both). What we are playing is clearly the character re-living his crimes again and again in hell -- he can't undo what he's done.

Okay, so far so good, but what about the VHS tapes? What about the mattress in the basement and the cages and the glowing refrigerator? What was that the rat said about the wife knowing what was happening below the floorboards of her own house?

I think there are two possible explanations.

The first, more straightforward theory is that the player character is in fact a serial killer, and he's trying to have his cake and eat it too -- he has his wife and family upstairs, but his murder operation downstairs. In this hypothesis, he's the one producing the snuff film we view on the VHS (hence the TVs that keep exploding in hellfire). The quantity of bodies attracts vermin, who then kill his child, and he kills his wife soon after when she starts to realize what's happening. This explanation is quite similar to the films The Night House and Barbarian.

I think this explanation is supported by the text, but doesn't wholly jive with the amount of guilt the player character appears to be grappling with.

Alternative, more cerebral hypothesis is that the player character's child dies of neglect and/or accidental death by baby shaking (as supported by paintings like Ivan the Terrible, which depicts a father who kills his son and then immediately regrets it). The player character, who's already presumably experienced job loss and alcoholism and marital rejection, falls down a pornography addiction rabbit hole (all of those VHS tapes!) watching more and more extreme videos and fantasies. "Ratshaking" in this interpretation is both reference to the murders but also to masturbation. Ultimately, he kills his wife, either to enact the fantasy or accidentally when she confronts him, and hides her body down in the basement. But now the house is overrun with vermin, who repeatedly taunt him with his guilt, until he ultimately tries to dispose of the evidence and kill himself (hence the gas explosion). This is more similar to The Tell-Tale Heart and Stephen King's 1922.

I think there are other valid interpretations that exist somewhere between these options, or to either side of them, but overall I think that's roughly what the game is about.

In overall execution, Ratshaker is quite competent. It stands on the shoulders of plenty of other indie games before it, but the rat-shaking mechanic is new and, of course, the prime attraction. It's simultaneously funny and dark, and it's something that will get people talking about it.

I don't blame the game for being yet another "you killed your wife and now you feel guilty about it" story, but at the same time, I am fascinated and a little weary that this has become the stock plot of seemingly every indie horror game, from PT to Layers of Fear to Serena. How many stories about Very Troubled Men Facing Eternal Torment for Violently Destroying Their Families And Then Regretting It do we really need? Is that such a popular story framework because it's been done before and people are just copying those early successes, or does it say something deeper about the patriarchy?

I have written in the past about The Horrors of Disenfranchised Men and that one horror movie men can't seem to stop making. This is not quite that, but it lives in the same neighborhood, you know? Down the block and across the street.

I've also written before about the Horror History of Rats, and their tendency to be used as a trope for revealing hidden crimes. You may think you've gotten away with something, but the rats will always reveal the truth.

So, there you have it.

Your experience with Ratshaker may be a little different - you might experience things in a different order or find things I didn't - so let me know YOUR thoughts on this game!

[strunmah-mah]

So I saw this interesting post discussing the bashing of otome heroines, and the person i saw it from had some tags comparing the OBSCURA and Touchstarved mc's and the different fan response to them. Which go me thinking, but reposing to it there felt like it would have derailed that post, some I'm putting my thoughts here instead.

Basically the tags were an observation that OBSCURA's mc gets treated as their own character (Vesper) whose popularity is comparable to that of all the different love interests. Meanwhile Touchstarved's fandom doesn't seem to rally around one singular MC with everyone having own OC instead. This despite the fact that their both gender neutral blank slates you never even really see.

I'd noticed that too and got thinking of why that is, so here's my theory.

Name. Notice that I referred to OBSCURA's mc as Vesper, but didn't give a name to Touchstarved's mc? When asking what your name is OBSCURA auto suggests a name. There's a not insignificant number of people that when given an auto suggested name won't go to the effort of changing it. (ex My first time playing a Legend of Zelda game it didn't even occur to me to change Link's name despite it definitely being an option.) And despite still being a reader insert just the act of giving them name makes Vesper feel like a more defined then Touchstarved unnamed MC does.

Origins. Vesper is Vesper. Who they were before the start of OBSCURA doesn't really matter, no matter what you might hc they were like before the start of the story, they still enter the mountain with the skill set no matter what. Touchstarved's mc is deliberately fluid. They have three different possible backgrounds and which one you pick does effect the mc's skill set. Make your own oc is literally built into the game.

Presentation of information. Touchstarved is very upfront about their mc's motivations. You are cursed. It's very isolating and has caused you to hurt others unintentionally. You are looking for a cure. What your curse is is never really a question. That's a very different experience from playing OBSCURA. The games hook is "people don't go under the mountain unless they have a good reason, unfortunately you have a great reason" it does not say the reason, it's a great hook. So you play the game, you go under the mountain and you find out what you're looking for is . . . blue moon ichor. You have no context for what that is, it's not initially explained, but it makes people pity you. It's not until you meet one of the LI's that it's revealed you want the ichor. You only only learn about Vesper's motivations as they chose to reveal that information to others. It's an interesting story telling choice. For me, it was more engaging to have Vesper being just as much of a mystery as everything else, than Touchstarved approach of giving that information upfront, but it comes at a cost. The MC's are both supposed to be self inserts, but hiding that information puts distance you and Vesper again making them feel more like their own character than a self insert.

Choice. Atleast as far the demos go Vesper's choices matter more. Your choices change who you meet, if you get a partner to help you face the future, or if you fail to achieve your goal chapter one. The Touchstarved mc makes choices too, it gives you slightly different dialog and you then you move on with your day. The TS MC is a vehicle to meet that game's LI's, your choices change what side of them you get to see. In Obscura your choices affect Vesper first and fore most, which again gives Vesper a stronger sense of character.

Just to be clear, I don't want this to sound like me dunking on RedSpringStudios and say they can't make good characters. Boy can they! All five of their love interests are full of character and intrigue. It's like I said in point two, the "build your own oc" approach seems very purposeful. It's a fan response they've encouraged, even releasing bio templates that match the official bios of all the LI's. This is what they wanted.

What amuses me is that RottenRaccons did not seem to realize what they had done. They seem very surprised but pleased by how much fans are latching onto Vesper as their own character.

[sareisnot]

Lord Gwyn: The Perfect Anticlimax

"Dark Souls is a hard game"

To anyone who's even a little bit familiar with the franchise, this is an obnoxiously obvious statement. The game has held the title of THE "hard game" for so long, that not only has the statement "X is the Dark Souls of Y" become a cliche, but so has every subsequent mocking subversion of that comparison. To even acknowledge its obviousness, as I did, is territory so well-worn, that I'm at risk of falling through, into the hackneyed void. But it's still worth mentioning. It's a well-earned reputation. Not only is Dark Souls, on a purely technical level, difficult to beat, but its entire identity is based around its difficulty, if the name of the "Prepare to Die" edition is any indication. Its world is a punishing one, seeking to beat the player character down at every single opportunity, until they can't stand to move another step forward, lest they get thwacked by a swinging axe, skewered by a demon, swept off a cliff, or obliterated by a dragon with teeth where its torso should be. It's a game that crushes you down, intending to make very clear just how easy your character can die, and, importantly, just how unimportant your death will be. To these bosses, these titans, these near-gods, you are nothing but an annoyance. Many of these fights feel like climactic struggles against an ancient, near-unbeatable foe, who existed long before you were born, and has a pretty solid chance of existing after you've expired. When you enter the arena of Ornstein and Smough, the music swells, and the two knights flex the skills that they're going to use to kill you over and over again. Many of the game's bosses, try to tap into that sense of scale, of importance, of grandiosity, each of their respective battles feeling like they could easily be the final one.

Then, after a long struggle, you make it to the end.

The game's final boss is Gwyn, a towering figure who's been hinted at throughout the game, through dialogue and item descriptions. Even if you didn't pay much attention to the little pieces of lore that the game hands you, you're able to put together that he's a pretty important guy: the mighty Lord of Cinder. The buildup to his fight hints at an even larger presence than the other bosses. You travel beneath Firelink Shrine, your home base for most of the game, where you find a massive expanse of land, cold and dark, a mysterious coliseum-like structure looming in the distance, which is impossibly large, even so far away. As you get closer, ghosts of old knights appear to attack you. They are easily dispatched, but still a shock. The structure towers over you, emphasizing just how much space is needed to house this mythologically strong figure, and the power that he holds. You enter, and find…….a hollowed old man. He's slightly taller than you, dressed in robes, and wielding a flaming greatsword, but he's nowhere near the scale of other bosses. However, he rushes at you all the same. When you begin the duel, it feels different from the others. There is no dramatic, sweeping music. All you get is a somber piano, like something that would play during a funeral, rather than a climactic duel. It feels like Gwyn's theme is actively pitying him. Granted, it's appropriate for the fight. All Gwyn can do is swing is flaming blade, which you can avoid with ease. There's been some easier bosses, but at least they didn't feel like they WANTED to die. Besides, this isn't the fragile Moonlight Butterfly, or the starting Asylum Demon, this is the final boss! He should be challenging you! Putting all the skills you've learned to the test! He's a fucking King! Why isn't he stronger? Fighting Gwyn after you've fought everyone else feels like walking into the home of an old, dilapidated hoarder, and kicking him while he's down. If you've been practicing your parrying, its like doing the same, except with cleats. He just seems………tired. As pathetically destitute as you were at the start. He might as well just keel over when you walk in the door. You beat him, naturally, and then the game just kinda….ends. If you got the ending I did, you just exit the area, look at all the nice snake friends you just made, and then roll credits. For all the work you've put into getting here, and all the struggles you've had to overcome, it feels like a severe anticlimax, like the game is playing a prank on you.

But if you know anything about the setting of Dark Souls, you'd know that there's really no other way this could end.

"The world of Dark Souls is dying"

This is a phrase that, while not as oft repeated as the above, is also pretty common knowledge at this point. Lodran, the game's setting, is a desolate place, long past its glory years. Once a powerful kingdom, teeming with life and magic, it is now in ruin, every citizen either dead, hollowed, or left to survive amongst the numerous deadly creatures that now roam the land. Everyone who's still around at the start of the game is either destined for misery, or already there (Unless you're Andre. He seems to be doing pretty well, all things considered). Somewhere around the time Lordran has reached the end of its life cycle, is when the player character enters the story, albeit with a rather unenviable role. Your job is to essentially be the world's janitor, cleaning out the world's former main characters, most of whom are insane, and all of whom are well past their useful days (or, if you have the DLC, you get to see Artorias right as he passes this point). Unfortunately, most of them would like to keep being alive, so they're going to make that difficult for you, by turning you into red mist until you stop trying to kill them. Even the grandiose presentation some of them have can't entirely hide the fact that this is a rather sad state of affairs for everyone, especially for those who haven't really done anything wrong (I nearly cried at having to kill Sif, and I will never fight Priscilla). Fortunately, some of these bastards contributed to the world's current bleakness, so killing them provides at least a twinge of catharsis, albeit one that will certainly be gone by the time you move onto the next bastard. The goal of this whole clean-up process, is to prepare the world to either continue with the age of fire with you as the catalyst, hopefully without those brutes who were clogging the power vacuums, or plunge the world into a new age of darkness, now that it has been cleansed of its polluting influences.

The only mean to either of these ends, is to kill Gwyn, the Lord of Cinder, former ruler of Lordran, and one of the primary reasons that this world is such a goddamn mess. To sum up his actions without getting too deep into the lore's intricacies; Gwyn knew that his kingdom was destined to fall, due to the world's oncoming transition from the age of fire into the age of shadow. This transition was represented by the dwindling light of the first flame, the lifeblood of the kingdom. After utterly failing to rekindle it, Gwyn entered a final gambit to prolong the life of his empire, linking himself with the first flame, but burning himself, and many of his knights, away in the process. This left him as a hollow, doomed to languish in his kiln, until another unfortunate soul took his place, linking the flame to further prolong the changeover. In doing this, Gwyn went against the natural laws of his world, which didn't react well to having its transitionary cycle interrupted. The world fell into a sharp decline, becoming a desolate, unhappy place, festering with demons and monsters (many of whom were the result of the last time someone tried to rekindle the first flame), making life hell for anyone unlucky enough to still be around afterwards. Gwyn wanted to prolong the inevitable, prevent the death of his kingdom, and continue its prosperity, so he sacrificed everything. His realm has persisted, but in a state of undeath, having stuck around long past its natural expiration date, just like him. Gwyn's story can be properly summarized as what happens when someone is psychotically obsessed with preserving their power, even when that preservation only serves to make the world a substantially worse place. Gwyn, in his hollow state, is a symbol of Lordran's persistent deterioration.

None of this information is directly handed to the player. Some bits are alluded to through snippets of dialogue and item descriptions, and the opening cutscene depicts one of the major inciting events of the narrative, but for the most part, it's a sprawling, multi-phased story, that is dolled out non-linearly, and piecemeal.

Now, with that context, let's cast a new lens on that fight…

After delving underneath Firelink Shrine for the final time, you come upon a desolate landscape, the Kiln of the First Flame looming in the distance. It's clearly well past its glory days, looking decrepit and sad. It is home of the world's lifeblood, but in name only. Now, it holds the last remnant of an age long past. As you approach, the spirits of old knights come to attack you, but they aren't much of a challenge, being just shadows of their former selves. They're victims, really; their loyalty has bound them to a sorry task, but they're in the way, and they weren't really living much of a life anyway. When you get closer to the kiln, it feels impossibly large, but also cold, and surprisingly dark, for something that's supposed to house an eternal flame. When you can see more details, it becomes clear just how long it's been falling into ruin. It feels abandoned, but you know its not. After all, you're here to end the life of its only resident. You enter, and find…. Lord Gwyn, a king who destroyed himself and cast the world into ruin, just to hold on to a formerly prosperous time. Lord Gwyn, whose refusal to let the fire die is the reason why you had to struggle through this entire journey. Lord Gwyn, whose death will mark the end of a era, no matter what you do afterwards. He charges at you, barely even conscious anymore, having been locked in this tomb for unknowable amounts of time. But he can't really fight you, at least not well. His strength isn't nearly what it used to be, now that he's a hollow, tired and worn-down, just like you were at the start. He's a pitiable figure, and the music knows. That sorrowful piano fades in, almost like something that would play at a funeral. But this isn't a funeral. This is a mercy killing. Spiritually, Gwyn died a long time ago. You're just putting his body to rest. When he's finally dispatched, it feels like an anticlimax. But of course it is. Gwyn is the embodiment of the world you've spent so much time exploring. Lordran has been denied a proper climax for so long, because he extended the story long past where it should have ended. He's been waiting to be killed for ages now. It feels only right that Gwyn be an easy, anticlimactic boss, because how could such a destitute figure be anything else?

"Dark Souls is a hard game for a reason"

The above statement is a simplified summation of why Dark Souls is one of my favorite games that I’ve ever played. It's set in a dying, hostile world, that's been brought to ruin by the violation of its natural laws. Thus, the game is insistent on making the player struggle at every turn, to make them feel just as downtrodden as the world they explore. Lord Gwyn is a example of just how thoroughly holding onto power can corrupt someone, leaving them as a husk, the scraps of their former glory existing only the in the memory of the people who are still forced to cope with the consequences of their selfish actions. Thus, his boss fight is an intentionally easy anticlimax, to emphasize just how far he's fallen, to the point that he can't even put up a good point. It's the themes of his character, perfectly melding with the gameplay. It's a perfect encapsulation of the game's best quality, how the experience of playing the game, reflects the themes and tone of its story. The reasons why the fight with Gwyn is the perfect anticlimax, and why Dark Souls is a near-perfect game, are one and the same.