heaven, hell, heaven again

If Andrei Rublev becomes praying through film, teaching us how to bear the cruelty of its passages, The Last Guardian feels like a harsh meditation in which kindness is a piecemeal revelation as the only way to get through. Not as explicitly as an introspection you can hear from the person whose faith is challenged over and over, but even more confidently lies in the power of experience.

The game almost doesn't speak about any monument you're in contact with to the point that dialogues, most of them, feel very redundant because we are not supposed to get too much in the realm of representation. In one way or another, the game named and thought its narrative elements to steal imagination from our control, and that's why dream-like seems to be the proper way to describe it.

Honestly, I believe the unarticulated emotional vibrancy of this game is almost too much, and sometimes it needs the cliche appeal to distract us from the weight of nest's atmosphere. In the last segments (what we usually call a "Final Boss") the space almost drowns, but the peaks of motion, power and narrative intensity that follows are all as close to perfection as any visual media can get.

SOTC definitely handles better the darker themes, making it feel more grounded by giving a greater level of control to the player, but nothing conveys as much life and as much death attached to its gestures so well.