When I wrote my Backloggd Review of EarthBound about a year ago, I tried to shave down my impressions and interpretations into something concise, digestible, and spoiler-free. I’m not going to do that with this one; I want to take this as an opportunity to speak freely and honestly about the MOTHER series and its genre cousins without worrying myself over the burden of design, if I can (already I’ve rewritten these three lines maybe six or seven times, but we’re loosening up). Let’s leave a little less on the cutting room floor this time, how ‘bout that. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, we’re goin’ all the way in.
On MOTHER 3 (Or — "Ticket to Nowhere”)
If EarthBound feels like “hanging out” with a weird, kind, fascinating person, then MOTHER 3 is the story of her life. That’s the way it starts, anyway. It’s fantasized and spun out into a broader and heavier story than she ever intended, but it’s true to her lived experience nevertheless. She’s a liar, but only in the way my parents were liars when they told me that babies are made out of eggs and fish. MOTHER 3’s practical jokes are kinder, because its story and world are darker. She can still be funny about it, she still has excellent taste in music, but she has nothing to hide anymore. The end of our last conversation (EarthBound) saw her opening up about the sadness and trauma that lingers behind that smile, so there’s nothing left to give but the whole truth, and nothing but (and “truth” is not always synonymous with “fact”). We just had to wait twelve years before we were old enough to hear it.
We hunted for Melodies in MOTHER to sing to the ghost of our great-grandma (who babysat an alien) to fix her ghost amnesia. We acquired Melodies in MOTHER 2 as part of becoming a wiser, more thoughtful person. In MOTHER 3, the Melodies are people who die when we pull their needles. And we don’t pull all of them.
MOTHER wasn’t so much about Ninten himself as the lore surrounding his family and their association with extraterrestrial forces. There’s little reason to believe that Ninten is anything other than a vessel for the player’s personality, like his Dragon Quest forebears, and I think it’s as beautiful here as it is there. It isn’t visually a first-person perspective, but a first-person story stitched together through the player’s investigation, where Ninten is the player’s mind. It’s unique to videogames, and for a game whose world is already unique among videogames, I think it’s handled well. You are Ninten, plain and simple.
But MOTHER 2 plays around with that expectation; it’s very much about Ness’ relationship with the player. Yeah, Ness begins as maybe the most down to earth protagonist in the genre’s history — a silent avatar living in a modern suburb with his family — but he gradually develops and asserts his own identity as new experiences inspire deeper personal reflection. We first read flickers of his childhood memories in each Sanctuary location, then his thoughts written out in Lumine Hall, then his feelings and flashbacks visually represented in Magicant, until finally, he speaks. The game even seems to reinforce this initial link between Ness and the player by addressing him in the second person during both the Coffee and Tea Breaks. And all the while, it's chipping away at that connection by breaking the fourth wall, reaching out to the player and asking for their real name, and then pleading for their prayers at the end.
Unlike Ninten before him, Ness has a past separate from the player’s, and he remembers it. We’re simply here to guide him through that journey, give him strength, and share in that process of reflection and growth. In doing this, he loses the innocence he had at the start, and in the strangest way. As many do, he grew up believing that Evil was a corruptive force, separate from the world he knew. Evil radiated from Giygas, pulsed through the Mani-Mani statue, and swayed everyday objects and animals and people to violence. If there’s anything we learn about Ness in Magicant, it’s that he still views Pokey as a friend, even after everything they’ve been through. Surely, he’s just another one of Giygas’ innocent victims. Like Mr. Carpainter, like Monotoli, he’ll snap out of it as soon as Giygas is out of the picture. But Giygas dies, and Evil does not die with him. After the final battle, Pokey pops in to let us know that he hasn’t changed a bit, and winks off to spread his influence elsewhere, elsewhat. He even has the last word, after the credits have rolled. And so, Ness’ last discovery is that Evil is as human as Love. My favorite thing about EarthBound’s ending is that we still walk home together, with Paula, after learning this.
Lucas picks up where Ness left off. He discovers the dark side of humanity early on in life, and has no illusions about where it came from. We know that Lucas doesn’t blame the Dragos for his mother’s death. The only monsters in the UFOs circling over Tazmily village are people. We can put a face to Lucas’ absent father. We know why he’s gone all the time. We don’t call him for favors. Lucas speaks early on in the game, we see his reactions and his memories and his feelings all laid out in front of us. MOTHER 3’s “Shower Break” in Chapter 4 already addresses Lucas in the third person. We don’t even play as Lucas for an entire scene before switching over to another playable character. The game asks the player their name mere tens of minutes into the first chapter. The sight of the “Chapter 1” title card alone might already tell us all we need to know about the game’s structure and its priorities. It’s “Shigesato Itoi’s Dragon Quest IV” (just as MOTHER had been Itoi’s Dragon Quest II, and MOTHER 2 was analogous to DQIII). Right from the start, we aren’t invited to “live” in MOTHER 3 as we had in MOTHER 2, we’re invited to perform it. EarthBound was a mirror, a conversation. MOTHER 3 is a play. And what a production it is.
In plainer terms, what I’m saying here is that MOTHER 3 was and is the logical next step for this story. We can’t go back to what we had. We’ve already grown beyond our childhood, so Lucas doesn’t have one. Po(r)ky is knocking down his door, and this time, we’re all complicit. It no longer makes a secret of the fact that it knows we’re there, because it knows that we know that it knows we’re there. The question of which is the “better game” feels ugly to me, most of the changes to the series’ staples feel more like a result of the different intent of this game than linear “improvements” on the others, though they’re worth talking about anyway.
MOTHER 3 has far more animation, its art style smooths over EarthBound’s rougher edges, there’s a run button, full recovery stations are easier to come by, you can save and manage money with frogs, there’s a slot for key items, the menus have groovy music and so on and so forth, but more interesting to me are the considerations made to the battle system and enemy encounters. On the whole, enemies are more deliberately positioned and have more varied behaviors, so the ability to sneak up on them is easier to take advantage of. Duster acquires just about all of Jeff’s status-afflicting abilities immediately (alongside a few additions) and they occupy their own menu, meaning this game is more interested in battle turns as a resource than it is in inventory slots (one of the designers might’ve considered that, because you can only pick one per turn, and they don’t deal damage (progress toward victory), and you’re liable to take damage every turn, and most enemies are only susceptible to certain tools, the more interesting decision is simply the matter of using them, and deciding on the one for the job. Not a bad idea). Buffs and debuffs are more effective than ever, and there seems to have been a lot of attention given to the general turn order. Boney always going first (and having no special offensive or PSI abilities) means he’s best utilized as the “item guy,” Lucas’ status buffs and recovery spells have to be planned out in advance, since he’s usually going to go last. Kumatora's healing isn't quite as powerful as Lucas’, but she's much faster in a pinch. That’s important to take note of, because “Rolling Health” is given much more prominence in this one, it really comes into its own. Party members are afforded larger amounts of Hit Points to work with from the very start, and there’s a more gradual overall “roll” speed (it slows down to a crawl if you use the “defend” option, which is especially thoughtful), which, when coupled with the Rhythm Combo system, is nothing short of brilliant.
Rhythm Combos are perfect, and I want them in everything. I wouldn’t be surprised if Itoi wanted to put something like this in every MOTHER game, he probably tapped the ‘A’ button to the beat of Dragon Quest II’s battle theme in 1987 (it starts with this repetitive, percussive “boop,” so I can see it). It turns the music into an essential obstacle for the player; an active and skill-based, but not at all obtrusive addition to JRPG combat which strengthens the value of the standard physical “attack” option incredibly. It’s strict, but if you’re tuned all the way in and tap to the beat of the music, you can land more than double your normal damage. The songs themselves mess with this, having weirdo time signatures and skips to throw the player off and get them to choose their moments carefully. If your health is rolling down, you might still be tempted to squeeze in a few extra hits before the next turn, making for some excellent tension. It imbues so much personality into not just the enemies themselves, all of them having their own variants or entirely unique tracks, but the characters. When you get hit, a sound effect reflecting the enemy’s personality will play in sync with the backing track, but that goes for your party as well. It’s only fitting that a series so in love with music should allow the player to wield it. Master the rhythm battle system, and your crew becomes a band to rival the DCMC themselves (revealing that maybe every JRPG is far less about killing monsters than they are about people learning to work together). Funny though it may be to admit, it’s a key reason I’ve picked up the game as many times as I have, only to see it through to the end.
I always try to land a full sixteen hit combo as Claus at the beginning of the game, just to jam out to his sitar sound effect the only time you can.
But yes, that production. Replaying it now, after about a year away from it, I’m surprised all over again at how efficiently the game manages to convey this beautiful sense of community between the people of Tazmily. It isn’t long at all before it feels like it could be home, and it it isn’t long after that that it begins to fall apart. The careful attention to NPC placement and changing dialogue depending on the situation is nothing short of meticulous. I couldn’t help smiling at Mike’s “slightly unclean and not very tasty” cookies, Nichol’s “the Funshine Sorest is on tire!”, or Wess’ grumblings about how “nobody’s aware of how strong [he] really [is]” because he looks like an old, balding man (and he is). Everyone pitches in to help Flint out in some little way, and it’s devastating to watch — in the series’ most animated moment to this point — as he takes out the full force of his horrible grief on the people who care about him. This is one of those scenes everyone remembers and talks about when they talk about this game, and it’s a testament to the character writing that we feel it as much as we do. Flint himself is completely silent up until this point, but he never had to say anything for this moment to land. The game never has to tell us, in his words, why Lucas doesn’t want a Happy Box. It doesn’t have to tell us why Duster has a bum leg. We could control Flint before and now we can’t, because he can’t.
It’s incredible that the game never seems to let up in this regard, it’s as densely written at the beginning as the crushing finale, so rich and full of ideas that it has to provide designated pit stops between major sequences. It fills its presents with fireworks and reggae beats and spills over with sad beetles to whom we can offer dung in exchange for experience points, all in the name of encouraging us to smell the roses. And we should smell those roses while we can, because the world is changing. The people we love are changing. They’re coming to throw rocks at us, spit on us, and make our lives hell…or…is that the mushrooms talking…? The Nowhere Islands don’t give easy answers.
If MOTHER 2 is about a boy growing up and losing his innocence, 3 is about how a world can lose theirs. These are people who wanted so badly to return to a state of innocence after the End of the World that they had their memories trapped in an egg, and still they become corrupted by forces promising to bring them happiness and salvation from dangers they caused. Could the people of Tazmily have continued living peacefully in this Rousseauian society, or was it destined to come to an end? Porky seems to think that humanity will always fall victim to cruelty and evil, and though he's hardly the most trustworthy character in the story, he didn't invent any of the methods he's using against the Nowhere Islands. He's just taking them to their logical extreme. Not to absolve him of blame, of course, Porky is one of the most pitiful and terrifying characters in videogames. It’s quietly horrible to watch Isaac admit to Salsa in Chapter 3 that he just wants to see if happiness really is as easy as buying a Happy Box, too naive to recognize the happiness that’s available all around him. Because we’re duped all the time in that same way, riding the hype of new products and falling for advertisements, ever encouraged to wonder just how much happier we might be if only we had that one thing. If we’re lucky, those things come with genuine sincerity and authenticity. If we’re luckier, we can share them with people who love us. We’re rarely so lucky.
Not for nothin', but Dragon Quest V’s portrayal of slavery felt pretty toothless after MOTHER 3 made me push claymen around for a whole afternoon at the factory (I’m sorry Dragon Quest V, I still love you). It doesn’t take very long, but it feels humiliating and wrong to help the enemy in such a tedious exercise, knowing that some of the villagers do this all day, every day, for a pithy reward. Knowing that everyone in the village is being molded like these claymen. Some of them even become Pigmasks. To call out the absurdity of MOTHER 3 is to feel alienated by the absurdity of our everyday lives. If we’re already feeling that way, it’ll be an eerily validating experience.
But is it too much? Is it too heavy-handed? The MOTHER series had always been such an understated thing, and now we’re just saying the quiet parts out loud. But could it be any other way? Maybe I do have to listen to Samba de Combo while considering the ramifications of materialism on our fractured world and the meaning of happiness. Maybe I need to fire a pencil rocket at a bass guitar. It’s a game of so many paradoxes. It’s a game that loves being a game, yet is wary of its own place in the world. It has such a zest for life, but lingers on destruction. How are we supposed to feel about Wess, or Flint? The islands’ sworn protectors are selfless immortal nonbinary psychics who are frequently described as “strange,” but “good-natured,” and I’m frankly not one thousand percent sure how to feel about that portrayal. One of them betrays the rest and becomes an evil monkey-torturing mechanical chimera made out of brass instruments, but is still loved by a mouse. MOTHER 3 is two brothers wrestling friendly dinosaurs. It’s those same brothers breaking down in tears because everything they love is gone. I played this game for my brother once, performed it like a musical. He asked if I was crying during those final moments. I don’t remember if I was.
I always tell people to play MOTHER 3 on a DS Lite if they can (it’s two Happy Boxes for the price of one), or another portable console of their choice, because the game is designed to be the player’s companion. The plentiful save points and hot springs are part of that, but there’s something about having this world in your pocket, by your desk, on the train, in line at the airport, in your hands, which makes it feel so much more intimate. That’s ironic in its own way — the DS Lite was new when MOTHER 3 came out, a game that wanted us to think about the nature of technological progress, and now our “portable” consoles don’t even fit in our pockets anymore. Take it from me, you don’t want to play MOTHER 3 on your iPhone. The physicality of the buttons is necessary. The lack of notifications and other applications is especially necessary.
Both MOTHER 2 and 3 end by reaching out to the player. MOTHER 2 fills our screen with Giygas, so we’re face to face with the embodiment of Evil. MOTHER 3 fills our screen with Nothing, so we're face to face with our own reflection.
But why go to such pains to separate the Player and the Character? Why draw so much attention to us? Why did I waste so much breath emphasizing the importance of that growing divide throughout this series?
Because it doesn’t want us to think of this experience as an “escape.” It doesn't give us anywhere to run. It wants us to take it with us. It wants us to do something with these feelings and memories. These are games we play as ourselves, whoever we are.
...Wherever we are.
On MOTHER 3 (Or — "Ticket to Nowhere”)
If EarthBound feels like “hanging out” with a weird, kind, fascinating person, then MOTHER 3 is the story of her life. That’s the way it starts, anyway. It’s fantasized and spun out into a broader and heavier story than she ever intended, but it’s true to her lived experience nevertheless. She’s a liar, but only in the way my parents were liars when they told me that babies are made out of eggs and fish. MOTHER 3’s practical jokes are kinder, because its story and world are darker. She can still be funny about it, she still has excellent taste in music, but she has nothing to hide anymore. The end of our last conversation (EarthBound) saw her opening up about the sadness and trauma that lingers behind that smile, so there’s nothing left to give but the whole truth, and nothing but (and “truth” is not always synonymous with “fact”). We just had to wait twelve years before we were old enough to hear it.
We hunted for Melodies in MOTHER to sing to the ghost of our great-grandma (who babysat an alien) to fix her ghost amnesia. We acquired Melodies in MOTHER 2 as part of becoming a wiser, more thoughtful person. In MOTHER 3, the Melodies are people who die when we pull their needles. And we don’t pull all of them.
MOTHER wasn’t so much about Ninten himself as the lore surrounding his family and their association with extraterrestrial forces. There’s little reason to believe that Ninten is anything other than a vessel for the player’s personality, like his Dragon Quest forebears, and I think it’s as beautiful here as it is there. It isn’t visually a first-person perspective, but a first-person story stitched together through the player’s investigation, where Ninten is the player’s mind. It’s unique to videogames, and for a game whose world is already unique among videogames, I think it’s handled well. You are Ninten, plain and simple.
But MOTHER 2 plays around with that expectation; it’s very much about Ness’ relationship with the player. Yeah, Ness begins as maybe the most down to earth protagonist in the genre’s history — a silent avatar living in a modern suburb with his family — but he gradually develops and asserts his own identity as new experiences inspire deeper personal reflection. We first read flickers of his childhood memories in each Sanctuary location, then his thoughts written out in Lumine Hall, then his feelings and flashbacks visually represented in Magicant, until finally, he speaks. The game even seems to reinforce this initial link between Ness and the player by addressing him in the second person during both the Coffee and Tea Breaks. And all the while, it's chipping away at that connection by breaking the fourth wall, reaching out to the player and asking for their real name, and then pleading for their prayers at the end.
Unlike Ninten before him, Ness has a past separate from the player’s, and he remembers it. We’re simply here to guide him through that journey, give him strength, and share in that process of reflection and growth. In doing this, he loses the innocence he had at the start, and in the strangest way. As many do, he grew up believing that Evil was a corruptive force, separate from the world he knew. Evil radiated from Giygas, pulsed through the Mani-Mani statue, and swayed everyday objects and animals and people to violence. If there’s anything we learn about Ness in Magicant, it’s that he still views Pokey as a friend, even after everything they’ve been through. Surely, he’s just another one of Giygas’ innocent victims. Like Mr. Carpainter, like Monotoli, he’ll snap out of it as soon as Giygas is out of the picture. But Giygas dies, and Evil does not die with him. After the final battle, Pokey pops in to let us know that he hasn’t changed a bit, and winks off to spread his influence elsewhere, elsewhat. He even has the last word, after the credits have rolled. And so, Ness’ last discovery is that Evil is as human as Love. My favorite thing about EarthBound’s ending is that we still walk home together, with Paula, after learning this.
Lucas picks up where Ness left off. He discovers the dark side of humanity early on in life, and has no illusions about where it came from. We know that Lucas doesn’t blame the Dragos for his mother’s death. The only monsters in the UFOs circling over Tazmily village are people. We can put a face to Lucas’ absent father. We know why he’s gone all the time. We don’t call him for favors. Lucas speaks early on in the game, we see his reactions and his memories and his feelings all laid out in front of us. MOTHER 3’s “Shower Break” in Chapter 4 already addresses Lucas in the third person. We don’t even play as Lucas for an entire scene before switching over to another playable character. The game asks the player their name mere tens of minutes into the first chapter. The sight of the “Chapter 1” title card alone might already tell us all we need to know about the game’s structure and its priorities. It’s “Shigesato Itoi’s Dragon Quest IV” (just as MOTHER had been Itoi’s Dragon Quest II, and MOTHER 2 was analogous to DQIII). Right from the start, we aren’t invited to “live” in MOTHER 3 as we had in MOTHER 2, we’re invited to perform it. EarthBound was a mirror, a conversation. MOTHER 3 is a play. And what a production it is.
In plainer terms, what I’m saying here is that MOTHER 3 was and is the logical next step for this story. We can’t go back to what we had. We’ve already grown beyond our childhood, so Lucas doesn’t have one. Po(r)ky is knocking down his door, and this time, we’re all complicit. It no longer makes a secret of the fact that it knows we’re there, because it knows that we know that it knows we’re there. The question of which is the “better game” feels ugly to me, most of the changes to the series’ staples feel more like a result of the different intent of this game than linear “improvements” on the others, though they’re worth talking about anyway.
MOTHER 3 has far more animation, its art style smooths over EarthBound’s rougher edges, there’s a run button, full recovery stations are easier to come by, you can save and manage money with frogs, there’s a slot for key items, the menus have groovy music and so on and so forth, but more interesting to me are the considerations made to the battle system and enemy encounters. On the whole, enemies are more deliberately positioned and have more varied behaviors, so the ability to sneak up on them is easier to take advantage of. Duster acquires just about all of Jeff’s status-afflicting abilities immediately (alongside a few additions) and they occupy their own menu, meaning this game is more interested in battle turns as a resource than it is in inventory slots (one of the designers might’ve considered that, because you can only pick one per turn, and they don’t deal damage (progress toward victory), and you’re liable to take damage every turn, and most enemies are only susceptible to certain tools, the more interesting decision is simply the matter of using them, and deciding on the one for the job. Not a bad idea). Buffs and debuffs are more effective than ever, and there seems to have been a lot of attention given to the general turn order. Boney always going first (and having no special offensive or PSI abilities) means he’s best utilized as the “item guy,” Lucas’ status buffs and recovery spells have to be planned out in advance, since he’s usually going to go last. Kumatora's healing isn't quite as powerful as Lucas’, but she's much faster in a pinch. That’s important to take note of, because “Rolling Health” is given much more prominence in this one, it really comes into its own. Party members are afforded larger amounts of Hit Points to work with from the very start, and there’s a more gradual overall “roll” speed (it slows down to a crawl if you use the “defend” option, which is especially thoughtful), which, when coupled with the Rhythm Combo system, is nothing short of brilliant.
Rhythm Combos are perfect, and I want them in everything. I wouldn’t be surprised if Itoi wanted to put something like this in every MOTHER game, he probably tapped the ‘A’ button to the beat of Dragon Quest II’s battle theme in 1987 (it starts with this repetitive, percussive “boop,” so I can see it). It turns the music into an essential obstacle for the player; an active and skill-based, but not at all obtrusive addition to JRPG combat which strengthens the value of the standard physical “attack” option incredibly. It’s strict, but if you’re tuned all the way in and tap to the beat of the music, you can land more than double your normal damage. The songs themselves mess with this, having weirdo time signatures and skips to throw the player off and get them to choose their moments carefully. If your health is rolling down, you might still be tempted to squeeze in a few extra hits before the next turn, making for some excellent tension. It imbues so much personality into not just the enemies themselves, all of them having their own variants or entirely unique tracks, but the characters. When you get hit, a sound effect reflecting the enemy’s personality will play in sync with the backing track, but that goes for your party as well. It’s only fitting that a series so in love with music should allow the player to wield it. Master the rhythm battle system, and your crew becomes a band to rival the DCMC themselves (revealing that maybe every JRPG is far less about killing monsters than they are about people learning to work together). Funny though it may be to admit, it’s a key reason I’ve picked up the game as many times as I have, only to see it through to the end.
I always try to land a full sixteen hit combo as Claus at the beginning of the game, just to jam out to his sitar sound effect the only time you can.
But yes, that production. Replaying it now, after about a year away from it, I’m surprised all over again at how efficiently the game manages to convey this beautiful sense of community between the people of Tazmily. It isn’t long at all before it feels like it could be home, and it it isn’t long after that that it begins to fall apart. The careful attention to NPC placement and changing dialogue depending on the situation is nothing short of meticulous. I couldn’t help smiling at Mike’s “slightly unclean and not very tasty” cookies, Nichol’s “the Funshine Sorest is on tire!”, or Wess’ grumblings about how “nobody’s aware of how strong [he] really [is]” because he looks like an old, balding man (and he is). Everyone pitches in to help Flint out in some little way, and it’s devastating to watch — in the series’ most animated moment to this point — as he takes out the full force of his horrible grief on the people who care about him. This is one of those scenes everyone remembers and talks about when they talk about this game, and it’s a testament to the character writing that we feel it as much as we do. Flint himself is completely silent up until this point, but he never had to say anything for this moment to land. The game never has to tell us, in his words, why Lucas doesn’t want a Happy Box. It doesn’t have to tell us why Duster has a bum leg. We could control Flint before and now we can’t, because he can’t.
It’s incredible that the game never seems to let up in this regard, it’s as densely written at the beginning as the crushing finale, so rich and full of ideas that it has to provide designated pit stops between major sequences. It fills its presents with fireworks and reggae beats and spills over with sad beetles to whom we can offer dung in exchange for experience points, all in the name of encouraging us to smell the roses. And we should smell those roses while we can, because the world is changing. The people we love are changing. They’re coming to throw rocks at us, spit on us, and make our lives hell…or…is that the mushrooms talking…? The Nowhere Islands don’t give easy answers.
If MOTHER 2 is about a boy growing up and losing his innocence, 3 is about how a world can lose theirs. These are people who wanted so badly to return to a state of innocence after the End of the World that they had their memories trapped in an egg, and still they become corrupted by forces promising to bring them happiness and salvation from dangers they caused. Could the people of Tazmily have continued living peacefully in this Rousseauian society, or was it destined to come to an end? Porky seems to think that humanity will always fall victim to cruelty and evil, and though he's hardly the most trustworthy character in the story, he didn't invent any of the methods he's using against the Nowhere Islands. He's just taking them to their logical extreme. Not to absolve him of blame, of course, Porky is one of the most pitiful and terrifying characters in videogames. It’s quietly horrible to watch Isaac admit to Salsa in Chapter 3 that he just wants to see if happiness really is as easy as buying a Happy Box, too naive to recognize the happiness that’s available all around him. Because we’re duped all the time in that same way, riding the hype of new products and falling for advertisements, ever encouraged to wonder just how much happier we might be if only we had that one thing. If we’re lucky, those things come with genuine sincerity and authenticity. If we’re luckier, we can share them with people who love us. We’re rarely so lucky.
Not for nothin', but Dragon Quest V’s portrayal of slavery felt pretty toothless after MOTHER 3 made me push claymen around for a whole afternoon at the factory (I’m sorry Dragon Quest V, I still love you). It doesn’t take very long, but it feels humiliating and wrong to help the enemy in such a tedious exercise, knowing that some of the villagers do this all day, every day, for a pithy reward. Knowing that everyone in the village is being molded like these claymen. Some of them even become Pigmasks. To call out the absurdity of MOTHER 3 is to feel alienated by the absurdity of our everyday lives. If we’re already feeling that way, it’ll be an eerily validating experience.
But is it too much? Is it too heavy-handed? The MOTHER series had always been such an understated thing, and now we’re just saying the quiet parts out loud. But could it be any other way? Maybe I do have to listen to Samba de Combo while considering the ramifications of materialism on our fractured world and the meaning of happiness. Maybe I need to fire a pencil rocket at a bass guitar. It’s a game of so many paradoxes. It’s a game that loves being a game, yet is wary of its own place in the world. It has such a zest for life, but lingers on destruction. How are we supposed to feel about Wess, or Flint? The islands’ sworn protectors are selfless immortal nonbinary psychics who are frequently described as “strange,” but “good-natured,” and I’m frankly not one thousand percent sure how to feel about that portrayal. One of them betrays the rest and becomes an evil monkey-torturing mechanical chimera made out of brass instruments, but is still loved by a mouse. MOTHER 3 is two brothers wrestling friendly dinosaurs. It’s those same brothers breaking down in tears because everything they love is gone. I played this game for my brother once, performed it like a musical. He asked if I was crying during those final moments. I don’t remember if I was.
I always tell people to play MOTHER 3 on a DS Lite if they can (it’s two Happy Boxes for the price of one), or another portable console of their choice, because the game is designed to be the player’s companion. The plentiful save points and hot springs are part of that, but there’s something about having this world in your pocket, by your desk, on the train, in line at the airport, in your hands, which makes it feel so much more intimate. That’s ironic in its own way — the DS Lite was new when MOTHER 3 came out, a game that wanted us to think about the nature of technological progress, and now our “portable” consoles don’t even fit in our pockets anymore. Take it from me, you don’t want to play MOTHER 3 on your iPhone. The physicality of the buttons is necessary. The lack of notifications and other applications is especially necessary.
Both MOTHER 2 and 3 end by reaching out to the player. MOTHER 2 fills our screen with Giygas, so we’re face to face with the embodiment of Evil. MOTHER 3 fills our screen with Nothing, so we're face to face with our own reflection.
But why go to such pains to separate the Player and the Character? Why draw so much attention to us? Why did I waste so much breath emphasizing the importance of that growing divide throughout this series?
Because it doesn’t want us to think of this experience as an “escape.” It doesn't give us anywhere to run. It wants us to take it with us. It wants us to do something with these feelings and memories. These are games we play as ourselves, whoever we are.
...Wherever we are.