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An analysis of Hollowbody

Spoilers.

Hollowbody tells the timeless tale of how far you can go for the one you love. We play as Mica who is on a mission to find her missing partner, Sasha. Hollowbody is set in a dystopian future where a suspected bioterrorism attack has left most of England in a financial and economic ruin. A handful of 'selected' individuals live in a walled city safe from the perils outside.

Many living in the city still fight for justice for the ones they lost. Sasha was one of them. In one of their ventures outside the city walls, Sasha and a group of other activists encounter something abhorrent and go radio silent.

Two weeks later, Mica sets out on a journey outside the walls to find Sasha. However, her ship receives an unknown transmission to self terminate and it crashes right outside the city walls.

Mica pulls herself together and sets out on foot to find her missing partner. In her journey she finds out more about what happened to the world outside. How a corporation takes over a little town slowly. Trapping people in their houses, evicting people when they pleased, killing people in dozens, the parks had dead bodies piled up. Many who were trapped decided to end their lives. It is unclear but probable that the corporation was experimenting on people with bioweapons.

Throughout her journey Mica finds someone calling her on payphones. The voice on the other side would know her. It knows where she is, who she is and who she is looking for. This is the first sign of her starting to lose her mind.

Her quest would take her to a sewer underneath a church, where she goes on a pointless quest to find beating hearts needed to unlock a gate tied together by intestines. Once she's at the end, the tunnels spiral into an unending maze of turns. When she finally makes it out, nothing is there. Her psychosis is getting stronger.

The strongest indication of Mica's spiral into psychosis and her demise is when she reaches the subway station. To proceed further, she has to get a subway ticket to Charon Crossing.

She needed to get this ticket with two gold coins.

Charon's obol is well known from Greek literature. Charon ferries the dead to afterlife and he needs two gold coins as fee, which he takes from the mouth of the dead. This is clearly symbiosing how Mica is venturing deep to her own demise.

Mica goes deeper and finally finds the source of it all. A giant mass of organic substance formed in the shape of tree trunk. She also finds Sasha there, barely alive.

At this point we don't know what's real and what's a result of Mica's psychosis. The organic substance ceases hostility towards Mica and tries to help her. Mica calls Tax for help and tells him to 'follow the light'. She then lies down with Sasha and waits for Tax.

In the next few minutes, Sasha's face becomes less and less recognizable.

I think it's safe to say that Mica is dead or is dying because of exposure to the organic substance and most of the events which happen later in the game is happening inside her head. It's reminiscent of Jacob's Ladder, at the verge of death reality melds with your subconscious mind, making you see what you want to see.

We do not know if Mica actually finds Sasha at the end or if it is her mind consoling her one last time before she meets her eventual demise. Once Mica left the safe walls of the city, the organic substance lured her to itself, showing her what she wanted to see. It was never explained what the organic substance was, maybe it was a result of the experiments the corporation was performing on the citizens of the small town? It is left for interpretation.

Hollowbody is horror at its finest. I absolutely enjoyed my time with it. The world was fleshed out and the lore was excellent.

[illbewritinghere]

Thoughts on Still Wakes the Deep

On the surface, Still Wakes the Deep is a horror game about surviving a Lovecraftian entity. Underneath, it speaks the story of Caz, who is striving to make amends with his family yet continually falling short.

SPOILER AHEAD

The events take place in an oil rig in the late 70s. An unfortunate incident happens where the oil rig drills into something unfamiliar. They accidentally released an entity which slowly starts taking over the oil rig. Crewmates who came in contact with the entity turned into grotesque lumps of meat hellbent into consuming others. The scariest part is that even though the consumed crewmates appeared dead, they still have parts of their consciousness intact. They called out to their fellow crewmates for help while brutally killing them.

Caz seems to be a very lucky soul as he managed to survive this onslaught. He got in touch with the remaining survivors and no matter how much they tried to escape, all their plans failed. Eventually, Caz began to lose his grip on sanity, he started hearing his wife speak to him. Events from the past, some real and some imaginary, echoed in his mind. Caz knew these voices were all in his head, and that the entity was gradually taking over his sanity.

Towards the end Caz realized escape was no longer an option. To prevent the entity from reaching shore, he had to destroy the rig, even if it meant sacrificing his own life. He would never see his family again, yet he knew this was the sacrifice he needed to keep them safe.

In the end, he blows up the oil rig taking himself and the entity with him. Whatever happened on the oil rig remained a mystery to the world. The news would report an unfortunate accident, but the world would never know the truth.

The game started with him trying to be the better man but failing. It ended with him making the right choice, despite knowing it would cost him the chance to ever see his family again.

I absolutely loved the story. People compare this game to John Carpenter's The Thing but to me it felt more like Annihilation. We never got to know what the entity was, what was its intention, why it transformed people into grotesque lumps of meat. Some things are beyond our understanding. The concept of why is very human, some things do not have a why, they just are.

[illbewritinghere]

Thoughts on Indika

I love media with themes of nuns, I remember watching Sister Death with my wife and enjoying it. I have to say I picked up Indika just by looking at the cover art, I had no prior knowledge about the game. Looking at the trailer I assumed it to a Monty Python-esque escapades of a Nun. It is, but it is so much more than that.

The Story (spoilers)

The story takes place in 19th to early 20th century Russia and is about a girl named Indika. She lived with her father who ran a bike shop. When she was 15 she met a gypsy boy, they became friends and soon they fell in love. The boy asked Indika to run away with her to the city where they can start a new life. Indika reluctantly agreed and the boy convinced her to let him steal money from her father's store. However, the boy gets caught stealing by the father. He drags him out of the store in front of Indika and asks her if she knows the boy. Indika was just a child and seemed to be scared of her burly and mean looking father, out of fright she said she didn't know him and her father shot and killed the boy right infrot of Indika.

This snapped something in her. Watching the love of her life killed in front of her own eyes by her father. She felt tremendous guilt, maybe if she had said she knows the boy her father would not have killed the boy. She did not want to accept her fault and blamed it on the devil. Ever since then, she started to hear the devil in her head, and blamed every bad thing she did on the devil. Her father after realizing this, sent her to a Nunnery to become a nun.

Fast forward maybe ten years later, the game starts with Indika performing the everyday chores of a Nun. She is disliked among her peers even though she is very polite to everyone. Probably because the orthodox people she is around do not like the fact that she has the devil residing inside her head.

One day she was tasked with delivering a letter for which she had to travel to another town. Things take turn for the worse however when Indika was cornered by a person who tried to rape her. Fortunately she was saved by an escaped convict, Illya. She felt indebted and helped Illya escape the authorities.

On her journey, she finds out Illya has a decomposing arm which he refuses to amputate. Illya is a religious man and he believes that in a farway land there is a rumor of something called the Kudets which performs miracles in front of your very own eyes. Indika decided to follow him to find the Kudets because she believes that it could also help her rid the devil from inside her.

Through out her journey, we get to see the human side of Indika, she seems to question her faith while still blindly following it, she shows sexual attraction towards Illya but still abstaining from it. Every time she would think of questioning her faith, we'll hear the devil talking and Indika would shut the voice up by conforming to her beliefs.

Things took an unfortunate turn however when the decomposing arm of Illya got progressively worse and Indika had to cut it off to save him. Once Illya realized that Indika cut his arm off, he was furious and decided to go find the Kudets alone. He believed he was special and the Kudets would allow God to perform a miracle and heal his arm. Because of this he thought Indika was jealous and did not want him to witness the miracle, even though she only tried to save his life.

They eventually reunited and finally managed to find the Kudets. It was a jeweled crown in a cathedral. The priest would not let them near it and in a scuffle he was shot and killed by one of his own guards. Illya ran away with the Kudets and Indika was captured by one of the guards.

She was taken to the gallows where was going to hanged for the murder of a priest. In an effort to save herself she decided to pay the jailer for her release with a sexual favor. When she was getting raped she spoke to the devil in her head who made her realize that god and the devil are only with her own mind, one cannot exist without the other. She managed to trap the jailer by throwing a cupboard on top of him and escape.

In the finale she reunites with Illya who seemed to have been wandering the streets as a lost cause. He sold the Kudets to a pawn shop as it did not perform a miracle. Indika visited the pawn shop and prayed to the Kudets herself in a effort to rid her of the devil but by that time she had already realized that it was all in her head. At the end when she looked at the mirror, she did not see the devil, rather she saw her own reflection.

Thoughts

Indika tells the story a young girl who did not have a direction in life. Just like every child she was not religious but was made to be one. She suffered from schizophrenia but people made her believe it was the devil whispering to her. Throughout her journey there were many events which made her question her faith but she never strayed from her path as she wanted to be a good nun. In the finale, when she stops seeing herself as the devil in her own reflection, the game leaves it for the player to determine if the Kudets actually rid her of the devil, or she realized that it's all a charade and stopped having faith.

[illbewritinghere]

Akira Toriyama

Early 90's, a small town in India. My mother bought me a pencil box for school. Unlike the girls who got pink ones with Barbie princesses on them, mine had burly characters with yellow spiky hair and fierce expressions. I grew up watching 80's American cartoons and the art style on the pencil box was nothing like anything I had ever seen before. As a kid, I was blown away.

Every year, when the new school session started, my mother would shop for a bigger school uniform and replace any pencil boxes or lunch boxes I had broken. I would beg her to get me the ones with the same characters, but in different poses. I had no idea who or what they were, they just looked awesome. I used to fill the back of my school notebooks with my attempts to draw them myself. It was the only thing I could draw well.

In the late 90s, as the internet became more popular here, a few internet cafes opened up near my home. I visited them often. That was when I discovered where these characters came from. Dragon Ball Z. It was not long before our cable operator started airing it. It instantly became my favorite TV show. I would hurry back from school to watch it.

As I grew older, I learned more about it. I saw how much of a cultural icon it was in Japan, how much impact it had on the animation industry. I decided to learn more about the person who created it, Akira Toriyama. Of course, I had to find out more about him. He had made such an impression on me growing up. I found out about his other works, played the games he was involved in, read the DBZ mangas.

Without me realizing it, Akira Toriyama had a huge impact on me growing up. I'm in my mid-30s now and Goku is still the only character I can draw.

Thank you, Akira Toriyama, may you rest in peace.

[illbewritinghere]

Thoughts on Martha is Dead

Full Spoilers Ahead

This is a game which made me introspect a lot. A lot into how fragile the mind is, how an event can change your perception of reality, making your mind hide from the truth and create it's own false safe space where you start living a lie.

Martha is Dead tells the story of a young girl, Giulia, who is incarcerated in a mental asylum. You, the player, have come to visit her and listen to her story. The game then lets you play as her where you relive the events leading to her admission in the metal asylum.

As you keep progressing through the game, you realize that not everything is how it seems, and by the end it will be evident that the entire story is how Giulia wants to remember it.

If you're reading this you have probably already played the game and are looking for interpretations on what actually happened. Here's my thoughts on this.

There was no one called Martha in Giuilia's family. She was the only child. Her mother was abusive and her constant beating and torturing led her mind to create a separate personality who was mute and deaf, Martha. Giulia believed Martha to be her twin sister who her mother loved. As Giulia grew older she met Lapo and they fell in love. Lapo knew about Giulia's condition, this is evident from the letter Giulia carries. One day Giulia finds out she got pregnant but she believes it was Martha who got pregnant, not her. From here the story gets convoluting as her mind shrouds her sense of truth with another layer of made up incident.

Giulia thinks Martha drowned in the lake and her mother is the one who killed her. Giulia then starts pretending to be mute to take Martha's place so people would start loving and caring for her mistaking her to be Martha.

What really happened is revealed by the end of the game where Giulia records her mother at gun point. She reveals everything to Giulia but when she starts revealing that Martha was only a childhood fiction of Giulia, she shoots her. Giulia's mind has reclused itself so deep that it has hidden everything that can harm Giulia, or break her sense of made up reality. No matter how much Giulia wants to remember, her mind stops her, in her own words, 'it's like pulling out your own teeth by your own hands'.

Martha is Dead is a great game which tells a sad story about mental illness. Before when people could ask for help. Before when people took it as seriously as we do now. Giulia had to go through so much ever since she was a child, her mind did everything to protect her from emotional trauma but eventually snapping. It makes you think how complex the mind is, and also how fragile it is. Imagining your mind creating a sense of false reality which you think is true but not others is a very frightening thought. I'm glad the game came out uncensored, it tells a story which needs to be told.

[illbewritinghere]

Thoughts on The Medium

It all ends in me

I played a lot of games during the pandemic, but nothing left a lasting impression apart from three; Amnesia: Rebirth, Katana Zero and finally, The Medium, which was so good that it made me write my thoughts here, after almost a year. The story is convoluting at best and you have put the pieces together using various notes and echoes found throughout the game.

Impressions

The Medium satisfied a deep craving in me for something which had been suppressed for so long that I had long forgotten about. Early 2000s psychological horror. Games with rudimentary camera angles which focus more on exploration and surreal environments to drive the horror rather than monsters or body horror. Games that don't simply narrate you their stories, rather lets you unearth them by introspecting as you play. Games with symbolism which subconsciously define what's going on.

Premise

We play as Marianne, an orphan who has been moving from one foster home to another. This is because she has a supernatural ability to speak with dead spirits who're lost in purgatory, or as the game calls it, the spirit world. She finally finds a foster parent who accepts her for what she is, Jack. The game starts with Marianne performing the last rites for Jack, when she receives a phone call from an unknown number saying she's the only one who can help. Marianne, though reluctant but curious, travels to where the caller asked her to come and progresses to uncover truth about herself.

Symbolism

The inspiration from Silent Hill can be seen in a lot of place, although this game lacks combat, the similarities can be seen  in the symbolism it uses with monsters, the soundtrack and the art style. The game shows us that beyond our realm is a spirit world, where souls lost in purgatory are trapped eternally. Marianne has the ability to travel to this spirit world to free lost souls and to talk to them. The spirit world is heavily inspired from the art style of Polish painter Beksinski and is rendered beautifully. It is nothing like I have ever seen in any other form of media before. I have to travel into spoiler territory if I want to write about this, this part can be skipped if you want to experience it for yourself. The titular demon hunting you, The Maw, is born from the years of sexual torment endured by ~10 year old  Lilianne. Her spirit has split into two, the first one is an innocent little playful girl but the other one is demon who feeds on the souls of living beings and is powerful enough to project himself into the real world. The player does not know this fact at the start of the game but the hints are there. The Maw has wings on his back which resembles that of a butterfly or a moth, this can be related to Lilianne being interested in butterflies when she was young. When The Maw hunts Marianne, it threatens hear sexually with threats such as it wants to wear her skin, pretty little skin suit, this can be related to Lilianne's sexual torment. The Maw is hunting for the perfect host to enter the real world and it has found that in Marianne.

Another beast we get to see in the game is The Hound, which is the spirit representation of Henry. Henry was a cold and heartless KGB agent and his spirit self was a beast which resembled half human and half dog. Just like a guard dog, it guarded the innocent child self of Henry as a watch dog, threating any invader.

Lastly, I wanted to bring up the symbolism with Richard's spirit self. Richard's spirit self is a towering creature with long tentacles like appendages which slithers around. The tentacles depicts phallic symbolism associated with Richard molesting Lilianne when she was a child and his huge gargantuan self must be what Lilianne perceived when she was a child. She must have seen Richard towering over her when he did his heinous acts.

Conclusion

I don't want to write the entire story of the game here because I believe it is best experienced when played. The story is narrated piece by piece and it is satisfying to reveal it by putting the pieces together. The Medium was a fantastic game to experience and is very well going to be one of the most memorable games I will ever play.

[illbewritinghere]

The Subtle Charm of Deus Ex: Invisible War

We do not speak of Deus Ex Invisible War. 

This is what you will be hearing most of the people who have played the franchise say. I’m one of the rare few people who actually love the game. So much that I decided to replay it, after more than two years. However, I’m not writing here the love of my game, rather how it makes me feel that I keep coming back to it.

DX:IW has always felt very bleak and dreary to me. The world feels very lonely, the nights gloomy and then there’s always the impending threats from opposing factions. Impending threats to the magnitude of entire city of Chicago getting decimated at the start of the game.

The events of Deus Ex triggers a social and economical depression. Something which was so significant that ‘The Collapse’ is something you hear every other person say. It leads to a massive divide among the rich and the poor. The Illuminati rises to power by forming two groups with opposing ideas and beliefs.

It’s certain that we cannot rid the world of religion. Mankind is curious and begs for a higher power. Religion is something which will always stay with us. Even if we find the answers to the all the unanswered questions in the universe, religion will not go away. Here is where the Order Church comes in. Overseen by the Illuminati from the shadows, The Order unifies all the religion to one. In hindsight, it’s a very brilliant move and even in real life, this is what should ideally happen. Although it’d take something as catastrophic as the The Collapse to trigger it.

Air traffic is non existent in the post-collapse world. Instead of commercial flights, there are only chartered flights. Weapons utilize universal ammo where one type of ammo can fit multiple weapons. The arms industry is led by Mako Ballistics with zero competition. There is a universal police system called the SSC with units deployed throughout the world.

The society in DX:IW feels like it has reached it’s peak, it is utopian but with the feeling that something is wrong. Can mankind progress after this? It feels like we have formed the perfect government but still poverty and suffering continues to exist.

The only solution the game sees is society being ruled by an all-power all-seeing AI. At the end of the game, if you choose the Helios ending, JC Denton infuses the world with biomods enabling him to oversee each and every single person in the world. A post-human civilization where privacy ceases to exist. DX:IW shows JC Denton as a metaphor for God. When you see JC frozen in stasis, he is not stored in some pod, rather he is frozen inside a glass monolith surrounded by white light. As a ruler, he does what a hypothetical God is supposed to do. Just like a benevolent God, he is overseeing. Unlike the other factions who wanted to seize power, he does not want to eliminate any of them, like he says in game ‘I have no enemies, merely topographies of ignorance ’

I like to believe that mankind reaches it’s peak after choosing the Helios ending. Throughout history we have seen the countless murders, genocides, pain and suffering. The old answers to tyranny are inadequate. The world needs a benevolent ruler who is free from all the flaws of mankind. Once it has that, we can only have limitless progress.

[illbewritinghere]

Sigh

I can’t get into it and it makes me sad. 

I’ve had recurring dreams. Sprinting around the Covenant’s mausoleum, running towards the farm house, traveling back in time to get the Scythe of the Celt. I couldn't stop thinking about Undying. 

So much that I decided to buy it on GOG. I already had the pirated copy but I realized that I had never bought the game. Even though I’m going through an immense financial crisis, I decided to buy it. I didn’t start the game immediately as I was not finished with my second Deus Ex Revision run.

Playing Revision felt like a chore. I couldn’t stop thinking about Undying. I kept reading articles on it, watching various YouTube videos about it, reading more about Clive Barker. I just couldn’t wait for Revision to get over so I could start playing Undying. I wanted to experience it again, walking inside the Covenant Estate, the mausoleum, Oneiros.

Every day I’d build up the hype for my play through. I even read the 60 pages Covenant Album short novel. I just couldn’t wait. Eventually it was time to start the game.

I couldn’t get into it.

There are so many things I can nitpick about. The poor character models, the awkward placements of letters and diaries, but I knew about that. I’ve played the game several times before so why can’t I get into it? It’s not entirely off putting, there are some fun aspects to the game, like fighting the howlers. Taking them out with the revolver is very satisfying. Even fighting the never ending barrage of reanimated skeletons and those sand throwing Onerios beasts kept me on the edge, but not enough to keep me glued to the game.

I don’t know what it is. Have I just played enough games from my childhood? Even my last playthrough of Revision wasn’t as nostalgic as it used to be.

I guess I keep playing these games because they remind me of those long gone times. Playing them feels like an escape. It should make me feel like I’m back in those time. It doesn’t anymore. Have I played them so many times that the nostalgia factor has lost it’s charm? Playing in my old house’s pooja room where the old computer used to be, hoping mom wouldn’t catch me and send me off to study. I miss those times. I miss not living alone. I don’t even know where I’m going at with this. I’m just going to end it here.

[illbewritinghere]

Thoughts on Black Mirror 2017

Hands down the best looking adventure game I’ve ever played. Before I even start talking about the story, I want to emphasize on how the graphics look amazing for a 3D adventure game. Other 3D adventure games like Syberia, Mobeius or Cognition doesn’t even come close.

Ok so let’s get started. The original Black Mirror triliogy was a series I had always read about ever since I started playing adventure games. I picked up the trilogy on Steam a couple of years back and although I didn’t enjoy them a lot, they were interesting and I even wrote about the first part here (http://illbeventingherethankyou.tumblr.com/post/138395658004/thoughts-on-black-mirror)

The reboot came as a surprise and not long after it’s announcement, the game came out on Steam. Picked it up immediately. My first impressions of the game was nice. I liked the visuals, the voice acting but the characters were unfamiliar. I was under the impression that it’d be a reboot but I was not expecting completely new characters. The new characters and story wasn’t bad though, I quite enjoyed it. It got a little confusing keeping up with the protagonist’s relatives’ names though. Maybe it’s only me but it was a little hard to keep track of who was who as you never see the characters, only hear of their names through other NPCs.

Like the original Black Mirror, the story follows a curse which haunts the Gordon family. In ancient times, the Gordons used a spell from the Druids to turn away the Romans, a spell which they could not control. However the curse was that the Gordon bloodline would be cursed to madness till the last survivng Gordon. Have to say the Gordon bloodline was quite resiliant. Even after a bloodline ending curse, they’ve managed to survive till the 1920s! 

You play as David Gordon. Growing up in India, you were away from the curse and the manor because your father wanted to shield you from the curse. You were however brought back to the manor once your father died to claim his inheritance, the Back Mirror castle.

Once you return you eventually find out about the curse as you start experiencing strange things. You started watching past memories and surreal things which explaining to others would get you called a madman. You start digging deep and find out that your cousin brother is trying to bring back the spirit of your grand father. Bringing him back would grant you both immense power of the Druids. You manage to stop him and watch the old wing of the castle crumble to dust.

That was the jist of the story. The journey is an interesting one which you should experience yourself.

Black Mirror is the modern route of Adventure Games. The game is trying to appeal to both modern gamers and fans of traditional point and click games. Personally I feel the game has done a great job of modernizing adventure games while keeping the original feel intact. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining how the developers have killed the franchise with their attempt to modernize the game, but I think they just need to take off their nostalgia goggles.

[illbewritinghere]

Thoughts on Evil Within

I love survival horror. No I'm not talking your generic zombie shooters, but the ones where resources are scarce and there's always an impending feel of dread. Where you don't feel like a gun totting super human rather someone who's underpowered against enemies.

Few such games which I can list from the top of my head are Silent Hill, Dead Space and Resident Evil. This niche genre isn't very popular among the general gaming masses so you're treated to such survival horror games once every few years.

One game which grabbed my attention was The Evil Within 2. It's the sequel no one asked for, except maybe a handful of people. I loved the first game but the sequel announcement caught me by surprise. I did not see it coming.

The Evil Within 1 came out in 2013. I played it when it as soon as it came out and I could only faintly recollect the story, I decided to replay it to gear up for the sequel. I have very fond memories of the game. It took survival horror back to it's roots. Pure Japanese horror, unreal environments, limited resources and the player controlled like a rock. The hard controls gave a sense of fear and helplessness .Winning even the slightest skirmish gave such immense feeling of satisfaction and relief. I loved the game. I loved the story, the game play, the character design and the spookiness. The game fits my definition of survival horror perfectly. The characters were memorable, I had haunting memories of Laura and The Keeper.

Finally the sequel came out. I didn't pre order it or buy it on launch day. Initially I had decided to buy it on sale but I'm not a very patient man. After taking a day to download, I finally booted it up. The game started with a very underwhelming title screen. Guess my expectations were too high after playing the first game. I played the game religiously for three days and after clocking in around 20 hours on steam, the credits rolled. And here are my thoughts.

I've heard a lot of feedback saying the sequel is better in every aspect but I disagree with that. I even find it surprising myself that I disagree. It's rare that I find sequels less appealing than the first game but it is so in this case. The first Evil Within felt like a true Japanese horror experience but I couldn't get that feeling in the sequel. The gameplay felt redundant as well. I hated the crafting system they introduced. All I did was scour for resources and it got really tiring. It was not fun at all.

The story was interesting though, I was sceptical initially. It's such a coincidence that all the important characters from the Evil Within series are from Sebastian's family. Sebastian was the guy who escaped STEM in the first game and it's his daughter who's the only suitable candidate to be the core for STEM in the second game. Coincidence? Actually no. As you keep playing you realize the story of Evil Within does not revolve around the main protagonist, rather his daughter. After around half the game, the story made more sense. Everything was explained and everything came around closing the circle. 

I did not like a few things however, such as how they didn't explain the unkillable ghost which randomly appeared and make everything freeze around her. She knew Sebastian by name and was certainly someone important. Throughout the game I was hoping it'd be explained who she is but the game completely forgot about her by the end. Boo.

The characters were interesting and memorable. Myra’s STEM version, covered in wax, was really cool. Obscura had an interesting design too and my god that laughing coagulation of zombies, those were the most memorable characters I found from the game.

What the game didn't do well was introduce the main antagonist. You only find out who he is after you finish half the game. Throughout you’re under the impression that you’re chasing some demented artist but ultimately he turned out to be a pawn for the actual bad guy. I found that to be pretty lame. Would have been nice to have one antagonist through so the game could have built up that animosity between the characters. Just a personal thought.

Overall I enjoyed the game. I don’t think I’ll replay it mainly because of the crafting system. I will, however, replay the first game when I feel the time is right.

[illbewritinghere]

Thoughts on Submerged

So I sat down one lazy afternoon and decided to play Submerged. It has been sitting in my steam library quite a while now ever since I bought the game on sale, dirt cheap. I finished the game in one go.

I had played the game earlier when I bought it but I couldn’t get into it back then. There was no challenge, you cannot die, all you have to do is scale buildings and collect supply drops. I found it tiresome and started playing some other game. It was only today, after 2 months of buying this game, that I realized how beautiful this game is.

PC Gamer’s headline of the game’s review says ‘Submerged tells 3 stories without saying a single word’. Rightfully so. The game narrates the story of Miku and Taku. Why they left their home to come to this destroyed city, what happened to the city that made it a concrete graveyard and the story which we actually play.

Submerged is the type of game I can play on a day off. When I have nothing to do. When I’m alone in my room and without any distractions. Only then can I see the true beauty of this game. The design aesthetics are gorgeous. The city is a sunken ruin. It’s like the middle of the ocean but only a few towers peeking their roof out of it. There are vines all over the water and the building’s ruins have weed and plant growth all over them. Some even have trees growing on top of them. This is a little absurd but the beauty lies within it’s absurdity. It looks surreal and fascinating. It makes you wonder what happened to the city and the people that lived there.

Throughout the game Miku encounters several creatures. They look like your everyday ocean dwelling animals except they have this weird green-turquoise growth on top of them. It could be a disease but I doubt it. There are no living people in the city except from you and your brother but there are these humanoid like creatures who are always in the shadows and hide from you as soon as your even close to approaching them.

Playing the game, it’s not hard to theorize that humanity has ended and there are only a few living humans remaining in this word. We have lost all culture and knowledge and have started anew. Hence the language Taku speaks is incomprehensible to us. Also she makes notes of landmarks she sees throughout her exploration and she makes everyday object sound so alien. Like, she sees this status of a horse and notes it down as an obdurate animal. She could have noted it down as a horse statue, or something along the line but rather she chose quite an alien title for it. I love games which are cryptic and lets the players decide what it’s trying to say. Games like these fascinate me and leaves me thinking about it even after I finish the game.

Also, not to mention the driving force in the game, love. The bond between a brother and his sister. Mankind has ended and we do not have any previous knowledge from our past but love transcends it all. It is not something which has to be taught from generation to generation but rather comes inherently. Miku’s brother was injured by their insane father so she takes him far away from their home to look after him. Every time Miku ventures out to the ruins to get supplies for her brother, she comes back with more growth over her body, which seems to be killing her. She disregards it and puts her brother’s well being over her. This seemed really beautiful to me. I know this thing about love is something which is obvious but we take it for granted in our everyday life and never really think about it.

The game was a little short, around 4 to 5 hours in length but it was sufficient. It would have been nice to have a better ending sequence but I’m not complaining. I had a good time playing this game and it was a nice and warming experience.

[illbewritinghere]

demotivated and jaded

[illbewritinghere]

Thoughts on Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

I don’t even know where to start. My most played Steam game yet I’m so disappointed by it. The gameplay and graphics are fantastic. Absolutely amazing. However the goddamn technical snags are so bad it makes me want to NOT play the game. Insane 15 min loading time which changing districts, that fucking crash which made me lose my DLC’s praxis and not to mention the random stutters which are so unexpected.

Even the story is so fragmented. I’m not gonna say it’s bad, it could be good but I cannot fucking tell as there’s so little of it. It feels like so much has happened since the events of Human Revolution and Mankind Divided only tells like 30% of it. Even it’s not conclusive. The game ends in a cliffhanger. The new characters have little to no backstory. I get that. Just like the Tyrants in HR but at least their origins and their motivations were explained in the novel! But not here. You barely get to know the people you encounter in MD.

Jensen has no drive or motivation to do what he’s doing. He’s doing it just because durr-good-guy. In the last game he was motivated by Megan. He never said it but you could tell by his dialogues. The story was so well written. But not here. Jensen is doing his job with TF29 but he’s a double agent along side the Juggernauts. Why tho? What’s his motivation? 

I also didn’t like the whole mechanical apartheid angle. This has been explained really well in the Escapist’s review of MD. I don’t completely disagree with the mechanical apartheid thing, I just feel there’s too much of it. And ever NPC you talk to has nothing else to say apart from something racist. Everyone’s lives revolves around augmentations. No one has anything else to say. It feels very fake. It takes out the immersion. 

I absolutely hated that they didn’t close Jensen’s story with Megan in MD. I was really looking forward to see Megan in MD but she’s not there! I remember the last thing Adam says to her in HR, ‘We’re not done here Megan’. I was hoping for a closure in MD but there’s none. It’s fucking disappointing. I want to think that there’d be some sort of conclusion between then in the next sequel but with the road Squeenix is taking, I’d be lucky to. Instead they’re just going to dish out like a tenth of the story in the next game and end it with a fucking cliffhanger again.

[illbewritinghere]

Thoughts on SOMA

It’s been a year since SOMA came out. I remember I was following it’s development since quite a few months ever since it was teased. I had barely any idea of what the game was gonna be about. All I knew back then was that it was going to be a sci fi horror game just like Amnesia but it was so much more than that.

When I was younger, whenever I’d beat any game with a good story, like Clive Barker’s Undying or Deus Ex, I would be in a very contemplating state. I’d keep thinking about the game I beat throughout the rest of the day, analyzing the story, thinking about what the characters would do next and all that. But as I grew older I couldn’t feel like that anymore. More like I didn’t have the luxury to. With age came responsibilities and I just don’t have the time anymore. There’s so much more on my mind now.

However, the feeling was rekindled when I beat SOMA. I can’t remember the last time I was so engrossed in the story as much as I was when I beat SOMA. The game makes you question your existence and I believe it was after finishing the game I became so nihilistic.

I’ve discussed the story with so many of my friends, I think I even told my mom. It’s such a fascinating concept. I don’t feel like writing about the story as I’ve discussed it so many times before, I just don’t have the drive to write about it. Anyway, after beating the game, I wanted more. I read Dick’ novels which dealt with the same thematic concepts. I was completely engrossed. I think I played the game two more times after that, just to experience the characters again. Oh man the characters! I need to talk about the characters too. They’re so well done! The character development is amazing. You can never tell what goes on in Catherine’s head. Was she really helping you all the time or if she had an ulterior motive? I don’t think I’ve seen such a complex character in any video game ever. You actually *feel* like you’re Simon. One day you’re in your apartment, casually doing your stuff, the next moment you’re in some abandoned facility. You feel as baffled as the protagonist himself.

SOMA was an amazing game and it’ll always have that special place in my heart. I love games with good stories. Stories which make you think. Which makes you want to discuss it with other people. To compare your analysis with other. Stories which deluges you completely. SOMA was all of that. It’s been a year and there hasn’t been a game which gripped me as much as SOMA did.

[illbewritinghere]

Thoughts on Fragments of Him

Fragments of Him is a game about depression and coping with losing the ones you love. I picked this game up without knowing what to expect. I had seen a couple of screenshots and I was fascinated by the artsy - bleak and grim look. Also the game looked like it focused heavily on story narrative. I went in blind.

The game centers around our protagonist, Will, and his friends and family. The game starts off by introducing him and the people around his life. What their relationship is with Will and how important Will is to them. Will dies in a car accident and then game narrates how everyone around him deals with that.

I was a little shocked to see that Will was gay and he lived with his boyfriend. Not that I’m against it, it just took me by surprise. The game tackles gay love very subtly. I don’t think I’ve heard of any other game where gay relationship plays a pivotal role. Two out of three characters from the game take this in a very normal fashion, as it should be, however Will’s grandmother showed a bit of orthodoxy towards it. She was always proud of him and wanted him to become the ideal man in her image. However, once she found out that Will was gay, she was taken aback. This is not what she expected the ideal man to be. She was heartbroken and angry. She almost stopped talking to Will after that but never showed her disappointment. She realizes her misjudgment of Will one day when she was gardening and twisted her ankle. She fell on the ground and couldn’t move. Then Will came to help her and carried her inside the house. At that moment she realizes that she had let her disappointment shroud her judgement of Will. She failed to see every other way in how Will excelled at being the ‘ideal man’ because she was too disappointed at his sexual orientation. If you think about it, it’s such a trivial aspect. There are so many factors which determine the quality of a person. Letting his sexual orientation decide every other factor is plain naive at best. Will’s grandmother realized that once Will took care of her when she was in pain. I found this part of the story pretty interesting.

Then there’s the story of Will’s ex girlfriend who was madly in love with him. It was almost poetic. I found it very unrealistic but it made for an interesting story. Will’s girlfriend loved him a lot. She loved him so much that she knew it was not going to last forever, as weird as it sounds. When she found out about the spark between Will and Harry, Will’s boyfriend, she was the one who made Will ask Harry out. She was okay with Will dating two person at the same time for a while, but eventually she decided to let Will go. It was a little sad but that was the right thing to do. She was never jealous of Harry because she loved Will so much, she only wanted him to be happy. It’s almost like the script from a bollywood movie.

Talking about the gameplay, there is none. You can even watch a lets play of the entire thing and be done with it. It’s mainly an interactive narrative. Now let’s talk about the aesthetics, my favorite part of the game. The entire game takes place as 'fragments’ of memories. The scenes are in grayscale and you click on objects and the narrative starts. I liked this bit, there are always memories attached to everyday objects around you. You can look at anything around you and have some sort of memories attached to it, for instance, I use my mouse everyday but even that has some memories to it, I bought it when I was broke and needed one desperately. I couldn’t afford one of those RAT gaming mice so I decided to get a cheapo one instead. I remember where I bought it from and walking back home from the store. It’s almost 3 years old but I still have faint memories of it. That’s how the game works, faint memories attached to everyday objects loosely stringed together. Another cool aspect is that the characters have no eyes. I found this very interesting as it fits the fragments-of-memories theme well. The characters are just another objects from the memory and they show no emotions, rightfully so.

There is a little decision based gameplay involved. When the game starts, you play as Will going to work. Getting ready in the morning and then walking towards your car. You take several decisions along the way, you can decide whether to wish your partner goodbye, to say nothing or to say I love you. You can decide to take the stairs or the elevator. You can decide to look out the window or just walk towards the parking. Once you do all that, you get in the car and drive towards your inevitable demise. That’s the prologue. Then almost at the end of the game, you’re back at the scene. However, this time around you cannot take any decisions. The decisions you take at the beginning of the game are locked. You would want to choose differently, knowing that Will is going to die, but you cannot. You’d want to do any little thing possible to avoid Will from getting in the car. Maybe if you take some decisions differently, Will would not die in the car crash, however you cannot. The game makes you feel helpless. It makes you think that about the things that are meant to be. Fate, as they call it. That was also another cool aspect which I really liked.

Overall, it’s a fairly short journey. I liked the visual aesthetics and the deeper meanings hidden in the narrative. I didn’t find the game to be a tear-jerker like most of the reviews online are saying, as it was quite hard for me to get emotionally invested in the characters. However the story was very thought provoking. 'Always cherish the ones you love’ the game says something along that line in the credits. Better call my mom.

[illbewritinghere]

The tragedy of Adam Jensen

I started another play through of Deus Ex Human Revolution last week. I’m at that part where you visit Detroit for the second time and I just finished the sub mission where you conclude searching for your past. It always moves me, that mission, it’s so depressing. Seeing as Deus Ex is my favorite game, I decided to write a bit about it.

Throughout the game, you keep discovering things about your past and your childhood. You’re in the dark, just like Adam. Shrouded from your past. As the game progresses you keep discovering heart breaking things about yourself. 

Almost at the beginning of the game, you realize that you were adopted. The people you grew up with were never your real parents and this is something which you discover by accident while trying to do your job. You keep digging more into it and later at almost the end of the game, you finally discover a name ‘Mitchell Walters’. She was apparently your ‘Guardian Angel’ and was responsible for taking care of you when you were an infant.

You find out where this woman lives and you pay her a visit. When you finally meet her, it’s heart breaking. She’s an old lady who’s gone senile. She doesn’t even remember you and mistakes you for some food deliver guy. You decided to talk to her and man, the conversation between Adam and Mitchell is so depressing.

Adam was brought up in White Helix Labs as an experiment. The experiment had something to do with gene therapy, it sounded like survival of the fittest. From what I made out from the story I believe the experiment was to find the most suitable DNA which can be made compatible with augmentations. Mitchell described a scene with a lot of babies in cribs being inoculated. While most didn’t make it, Adam survived. He was special. Adam’s real parents worked in the White Helix Labs and they were against this unethical practice. One night they set fire to the labs when all the cribs were empty but unfortunately died in it. Adam was saved by Mitchell and she took care of him until Adam was adopted by his foster parents.

The whole story is gut wrenching. After Mitchell finishes her story, Adam says ‘Miss Walters, my..Adam’s real parents, who were they?’ But it was too late. Miss Walter’s dementia did it’s work and she completely forgets what she was talking about. Adam never really finds out who his real parents were.

Before Adam leaves, Mitchell said that even though Adam’s parents died, they didn’t die for nothing. They stopped the scientists from experimenting on Adam and that he was saved. However she doesn’t know that her victory didn’t last forever. After Adam was left for dead, he was saved by Sarif but Sarif went too far with the augmentations. Sarif knew Adam was special and he took the chance to augmenting him as much as he could. He experimented on him. 

With major global events happening and the lives of almost the entire human population at stake, this might seem like such a trivial problem to worry about, but it means so much to Adam. Adam Jensen life is like a sad poetry. He loses the love of his life, he thought she died but she had been abducted and was alive the entire time. What’s sad is that she never made any effort to escape her abductors. She was forced to do research there and she gladly did that because she loves her work more than any thing else. Adam lost his dog too the 6 months he was in the hospital. He was lied to by the people he trusted the most. But still he lives on. 

I hear a lot of people complaining how Adam Jensen character is super grim-dark and generic. What they don’t realize is how painful Adam’s past is. 

I look up to his character, amidst all the adversity and painful history, he still lives on. He still has a heart. Like Brent Radford said, ‘A robot with a heart of gold’

[illbewritinghere]

Thoughts on Life is Strange

“We played hide and seek in waterfalls, we were younger, we were younger”

I’ve known about this game ever since it came out but I’ve been putting it off, mainly because I was under the impression it’s just high school drama involving lesbian lovers. This week a friend asked me to play it, I didn’t expect him to recommend it to me as he doesn’t usually play these kind of games and that really piqued my interest. Decided to give it a whirl as my internet hasn’t been working at home since the last few days and I thought it’ll be a good way to kill time in the weekend.

Finished the game a few hours ago and I’m so emotionally devastated right now. The story actually is about high school drama but it’s so much more deeper than that. I don’t want to write a review as it’s just an interactive movie game like any Tellate game, instead I’m going to analyze the story and talk about that.

The story involves around a young art student named Max and her best friend Chloe. Max grew up with Chloe and they were really tight. They played pretend-pirates together, their families were close, they were basically inseparable. However Max moved to another town and stopped seeing Chloe. For five years they didn’t see each other. The five years while Max was away, Chloe’s dad died in a car accident, her mother married another guy but he was really strict and mean to Chloe, Chloe became friends with another girl named Rachel but sadly Rachel vanished without a trace after a few years (she was actually murdered). Chloe’s life was miserable. She turned into an anarchist, dropped out of college and became a rebel. Max later moved back for higher studies and met Chloe again. The moment they met it was like nothing has changed. They bonded instantly like no time had passed. Oh and also, Max discovers that she has the power to rewind time. She finds that out when she tried to save Chloe from getting shot by a high school bully in the college’s bathroom.

Together they decided to find out where Rachel had vanished off to. Throughout the game there were many instances where Chloe was about to die but Max saves her using her powers. She even tries to go back in time to prevent Chloe’s dad from getting in the accident, however the consequence was Chloe being in an accident leaving her paralyzed. The more Max messed with time, the more she realized she can’t change it. She can only delay the inevitable and fate will have it’s way. If someone’s fate is decided, she can’t change that. She kept trying to change Chloe’s but every time she did, the universe found other ways of having it’s way.

My interpretation is that Max got her powers from Rachel’s spirit somehow to bring justice to her killers. Throughout the game you can see a doe guiding her, I believe that’s Rachel’s spirit showing Max the way. Finally at the end of the game you bring justice to Rachel’s murderer but in doing so Chloe gets shot. But Max can’t let that happen to her best friend so she rewinds time again and again to do the exact sequence of things required to bring justice to the murderer and not get Chloe shot. She eventually manages to save Chloe but that led to a giant tornado heading towards the town to wipe it out in it’s entirety. This was clairvoyance. Max had been getting this vision of the tornado ever since she got her powers. The universe will have it’s way. If Chloe was destined to die then she has to. Even if that meant everyone else dying along with her.

You can then either decide to go back in time and not save Chloe from getting shot in that bathroom where you met her after 5 years, or run away with her and let everyone die in the town. Even though I personally chose the run away with Chloe option, I feel letting her die is the canon ending and that is just really sad.

I felt a strong sense of connection with this game, it was very relatable. I also had a friend with whom I grew up with. We played together with GI Joes, had sleepover parties, played shit loads of video games, did all sort of cool shit together, just like Max and Chloe. But we got separated after we both moved for higher studies and now we live in different towns. Shit is so different now, when we were kids were fucking inseparable. But now, neither of us have the time to even talk to each other. We do occasionally meet, once or twice every 6 months or so, but it not the same. It would be nice to have rewind powers just like Max. Although I wouldn’t use them to change my destiny, I would just use them to go back 20 years in the past and hang out with him again as a kid.