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fate-hates-faraday · 7 years ago

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Close Your Eyes: The Host

Mostly because I’m planning a story, I decided to go back over CYE and pay attention to its characters, particularly Marshmallow Monk and the Host.

Marshmallow Monk is surprisingly straightforward in a sense. Where they come from, what they are, that’s a mystery. What they do and why, and their overall feelings, while tweakable by the player, is still fairly clear: they are a murderer to help their sister, and they are loyal to her, somewhat blind to their own nature, willing to go forth to survive, and childlike/childish in some aspects. Also afraid of heights.

The Host, though, is another story entirely. Not helping is the role he plays in not one, but three different games (I won’t count his appearance in Take the Dream IX, because I feel that’s more of a cameo than an example of his nature) and his goals remaining ambiguous in each game.

tl;dr:

To all people, the Host presents as affable and focused on his ‘game’ at a basic level. He is also, however, brutally honest in his opinions about people’s lives, and is not above trolling them. He may desire to genuinely help people while letting them fall victim to their true natures, or he just may want a ‘challenge’ in working with people and ensnaring them.

The Host’s true goals and his method of picking contestants is unknown. His standards for these contestants is also unknown.

Not everyone who meets him is a contestant. He can manifest due to being summoned for a deal. The limits of these deals are unknown, although of the two deals known, one involved future sight, and the other seemed to involve manipulating the afterlife of the person (or three people. It’s not clear).

The Host’s abilities are not clear. Potential possibilities include reality warping, the formation of a pocket dimension under his control, or teleportation/clairvoyance/immortality/manipulation of perception. Regardless of the answer, the Host is incredibly dangerous.

Whatever the Host is, he is NOT human.

As for the extended take, I’m going to start with his very first game, Close Your Eyes. For any followers who just decided to read this, Close Your Eyes is a free RPGMaker horror game following the adventure of one small creature known as Marshmallow Monk, who escapes their own execution and runs into a subway station to hide. It becomes rapidly clear, however, that the station is something else entirely, and what lies at the end of this road may be even worse than death.

The Host is the first character we actually meet - standing onstage, introducing himself and announcing his ‘contestant’, Marshmallow Monk (let’s call them MM from now on). We don’t see a similar-looking stage until well into the game and far from the station’s entrance. This raises a number of questions. Is this opening scene happening in a pocket dimension at the same time as the execution? Is the station a part of it? Come to think of it, how is the host related to the station? Is the Host the one choosing the contestants and directing the station to them, or does the station collect these people and the Host just rolls with it? The two are clearly linked, as the Host is able to quiz MM in the station and hear their answers despite not having a visible presence. Further lending credence to this is the sheer number of outright BIZARRE locations you will meet the Host at as you continue the game, with no evidence of how he could’ve arrived before you.

Now, the Host is not nice. He wants something from you - to close your eyes, whatever that means - and he gets mad when you don’t play along the way he wants you to, his voice deepening and making fewer jokes. However, he never lies to MM and seems to be trying to make MM recognize their situation. He points out the obvious issues MM’s sister had, keeps asking if you know where you are or where you’re going and, in a first ending, half-hysterically asks “YOU STILL HAVEN’T FIGURED IT OUT YET?” (This ending, incidentally, provides some of the least information about MM and what’s going on). Another ending has him remark, “Everything has happened, and is going to happen”, which suggests he’s aware of every outcome the game can have - so perhaps he knows, at one point, he will succeed.

Most of the harm that befalls MM is not from the Host - rather, he tries to give advice. For example, he mentions he doesn’t trust the sister; if you choose to stay with her, you get a second ending where MM doesn’t escape their execution. The exception is a third ending where MM shoots the Host in the head - wherein not only does the Host laugh it off, MM is teleported into a small bathroom with a monstrous Host coming out of the darkness and MM desperately aware of their inability to flee. As I said, the Host is not nice.

That all said, though, there’s a fourth ending where you’re given the option to not murder someone and instead realize all the awful things you’ve done. If you pick that ending, the Host claims you aren’t really sorry at all - but you’re still “exactly what we’ve been looking for”and drags MM off to god-knows-where. What does he want? A killer with a conscience and sense of guilt? Someone who has nothing left for them? I don’t really know. The Intermission and Close Your Eyes 2 will be out eventually, and maybe they’ll shed some light on his motivations?

Next game I’ll discuss is the paid DLC for CYE: Girl Graveyard, a difficult maze sort of game that rapidly descends into hell. Most of the game isn’t important - the Host makes no appearance after all. The only detail that needs to be known is that the protagonist killed her best friend and in turn was killed by her boyfriend (who she’d been trying to seduce).

At the end, the girl has a monologue where she talks about ancient forces manipulating people to this day and a legend: The Face. The Smiling One. The Grinning Demon.

Yeah, look at the picture of the Host and you tell me if you don’t think it’s him.

Anyways, following a “tough and painful ritual”, you can make a deal with this being. The protagonist’s grandmother apparently made a deal with him, able to see the future in return for talking with him and, at the end, allowing him to take her away. The protagonist goes on to say how she plans to also make a deal so she and her best friend’s boyfriend can be together forever. Judging by the game, she made the deal and the Host followed through. She just didn’t tell him HOW she wanted it done and so even in death is left to suffer.

After giving this some thought, I wondered if maybe MM and their sister made a deal with the Host, and that’s how MM became a contestant. She brought up a book and a need for sacrifice, which was likely why MM was killing people. However, looking at Red Haze brings that into doubt.

Minor disclaimer: as of this writing, I haven’t finished Red Haze and have been trying to avoid spoilers mostly. Things may be inaccurate. Nonetheless: Red Haze follows the story of a teenager named Rockette who arrives at a dilapidated apartment building seeking drugs from someone called Auntie G. She’s rough around the edges, to say the least, and very capable of mistreating one of the few NPCs you can interact with. During your exploration of the building, you’ll come across a ‘construction worker’ - in fact, obviously the Host. It takes two meetings before the Host brings Rockette into his ‘game’ (complete with a contestant podium) and, based on her outfit, will start talking about some very significant character flaws of hers. On the fourth game, he goes into her backstory a little, says she’s too ‘easy’ for him and he’s not here to fix her problems, and points out she can fix this on her own.

The apartment building doesn’t seem to be the equivalent of the station in CYE - it’s acknowledged as existing independently of the protagonist - and the Host is confined to appearing in one room. His powers may be limited - or maybe he just isn’t that interested in Rockette and therefore doesn’t see the need to flex his powers. However, this casts an interesting light on his treatment of Rockette. He encourages her to show up for the game and, though his analysis of her is downright cruel at times, it’s never indicated that he’s mistaken: Rockette really does have these issues, driven by her addiction, that she needs to confront and deal with at some point. While he tells her she’s too easy for him, he also points out that, while it may not feel like it, she has choices and she can turn things around if she recognizes that fact. Rockette doesn’t seem to realize who or what he is, so it’s doubtful she actively summoned him to the building, so he’s not here because she called him. Did he see a prospective contestant but turn her away when it was clear her problems were fixable without his work? Was he just scouting the area and decided to have some fun? Is he in the habit of seeking out people who aren’t entirely gone and giving them a kick in the rear to try to fix their own issues?

Regardless, he never refers to Rockette as a contestant, nor does he ever offer her a deal, so his role in Red Haze is much different from that in Close Your Eyes or Girl Graveyard - and yet the character feels consistent across all three, so it’s hard to just chalk it up to bad writing or something like that. Without knowledge of his goals, it’s hard to explain the differences in his roles. Without knowledge of his abilities, it’s hard to even determine what the scope of his goals could even be. Doing this analysis just raised further questions about the Host’s nature. In conclusion, to quote a friend:

“This lore is deep as fuck, yo.”

#close your eyes #the host #close your eyes (game)#red haze #the host (close your eyes)#marshmallow monk #spoilers #who are you green man #what are you

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