this is due to be an underwhelming post. major spoilers.
how do you talk about a game that didn't really make you feel anything? am I dissociating? am I missing something? am I just numb?
some part of this is expectations I had set by the fanaticism this game has inspired in the people around me. I habitually get put off by noisy positivity around media, even when it’s from people who I can mostly relate to the taste of, and thus I have to exert some extra effort to not sour on the prospect of a game with this much of a reputation. I was optimistic! not intensely, but I was looking forward to playing this. but nothing connected.
I don’t even know what to bring up. the way it treats motherhood like a religion? one that it’s too afraid to fully depart from, one that it’s clearly ashamed of the potential trauma and toxicity of, but one that it will give a wan smile and go “but what’re ya gonna do” when you suggest changes?
I felt strongly about two scenes in this game.
the first, when watcher plunged a shard of her assistant into her mother’s back, closing the circle opened in the first moments of the game displaying the same instant. iris falling to the ground in shock, the devotion of her offspring shattered in front of her again. she has been talked about with reverence and caution, as if she could smite anyone with a stray thought, when the only time she posed a real threat was when she was holding a knife. serves her right, I thought. pierced by a piece of herself she thought she was superior to.
the second, when, as memories flooded through the sisters at the end of the game, one featured iris asking her own mother for advice on being a parent. her mother’s response is an exhalation subtitled as (softly triumphant). a moment of smugness, an exhaustingly maternal reply reeking of “I knew you need me” among the ruins of civilization. the last two people to survive the apocalypse, a mother and child, and she still feels full of herself in the ashes. “did you ever regret having a child?” iris asks. “foolish question,” her mom replies.
the disdain I felt in that moment is what will remain with me from this game. it’s the strongest emotion I felt here.
two acts of violence stain the player’s avatars here, neither of which manifest a path forward with the material changes they bring. instead, the deus ex machina following you around (that only avoids being called one because they’ve been enabling the entire game’s conceit) lets you pick what to inherit when you step forward into the future.
we don’t need divine intervention to decide what to bring with us when we leave home and build a new life. our roots may help us grow, but we can survive being uprooted.
may my apple fall further from the tree than the tears you will shed over me.