I love this game so much.

This is the pinnacle of long term storytelling in gaming. What MoT does the best, is slow building. They take the time to get you emotionally invested in the characters, the story, why you should care. The first game did that to perfection, leaving the second game to close the story.

Haku is a super relatable protagonist, hes an average fun guy who happens to be in a bizarre situation. We his identity of “haku” as we know it die in MoT, every day is emotional hell as he’s forced to confront his friends behind a mask, wishing he could interact with them genuinely. The every day interactions build up to emotional crescendos perfectly. Whether its Kuon & Nekone, Haku/Oshtor and his mom, Kuon & Haku, these encounters are teased insanely well. You know its gonna happen, you know one day they’re going to find out Oshtor is Haku but they tease the moment countless times, forcing you to want it even more.

When Haku finally lets his guard down, and allows Oshtor’s mother to acknowledge his suffering, that he still exists, I couldn’t stop crying. The imagery of a mother, even while blind, still recognizing Haku as Haku, knowing her son Oshtor was probably dead was beautiful. He had been holding so much in and the payoff was emotional as hell, they do this amazingly.

As Oshtor’s sister, we see a young Nekone attempt to cope with her brothers death, and Haku stealing his identity. To make it worse, her role model Kuon left for a while, its impossible to really understand her pain but we see her open up bit by bit. When Kuon comes back, Nekone is shaking its very obvious something is wrong. Kuon is the only one to see this side of her & comforts her, this breaks her “im fine nothing is wrong” facade as she starts sobbing even though she cant tell Kuon what really happened. The line when Kuon offers Nekone to sleep with her for the night, but a shaking child responding “Just the night? You wont leave me right…” broke me. Shes only a child that misses her older brother dearly.

The last example I wanna bring up is the relationship between Nekone & Haku. Nekone is very uncomfortable acting like Haku is her dead brother, but she goes with it because its what must be done. “If he’s my older brother, then where will my real older brother go.” She can not truly mourn Oshtors death/memory, its an unbearable burden to put on a young child. Its extremely painful, but she justifies it by blaming her brothers death on herself. Its heartbreaking. We see the culmination of this guilt when she’s kidnapped. She goes on about how she doesnt want to be saved, that she should be left to die since shes such a burden to Haku & Oshtor. Yet by the end, Haku saves her anyways & tells her that he only wants her to smile. Even though they both acknowledge Oshtor is never coming back, their relationship improves and Haku becomes an amazing role model and big brother figure for her. Character development is beautiful.

Master class in storytelling, easily my favourite game of all time.