There was a long stretch of this game that was pure bliss. I didn't know my goal and I didn't care. I went from one island to the next solving every puzzle that came my way. I didn't worry about completionism– like finishing every island in a cluster before moving on– I just... roamed and enjoyed.

A Monster's Expedition is a puzzle game with a simple verbset and only a few ideas to work with, but part of the fun is discovering the details to these scarce gameplay objects, like how you can flip one log over another. It seems very inspired by Stephen's Sausage Roll, which is right up my alley.

I've not completed all the bonus puzzles so we'll see if my opinion on this game changes but it's an incredibly solid puzzle experience.

This is an absolute disgrace to the anthology genre and it's Devolver Digital's version of Twelve Minutes.

First of all, I wouldn't even call this an anthology to begin with. That's being generous. When making a short story collection, you need to make sure all the stories can be enjoyed on their own. Even if your collection has a framing device to escort you from story to story or even a theme for the collection at large, the actual tales within have to be fully standalone to be enjoyed on their own.

With that said, Stories Untold fails at its premise with having "stories" that are near non-existent outside of their premise, with the exception of The Lab Conduct, that are a front for a final story with the worst trope in all of fiction that makes you feel like you wasted your time and your patience getting through this "collection."


The House Abandon: You go home to find another person in your house. That's it. There is literally nothing else to this story once the premise is in the air and it ends before any interesting conflict can happen. We Never Left from Dread X Collection 5 is an infinitely better version of this and that was made by a collage student in comparison.

The Lab Conduct: The only interesting story in this game. You're a scientist conducting an experiment that goes wrong. Unlike the rest of the stories in this collection, this actually feels like a standalone short. The only issue I have with this one is that it ends abruptly.

The Station Process: You're a radio guy talking to two other stations as the rest of the world dies. That sounds like a great idea for a story, but guess what? There is barely any story in this one where literally nothing happens most of the time and the story ends before anything worthwhile can happen.

The Last Session: The worst offender and the reason why I call this game a disgrace to the genre. All three stories are intentionally designed to be as one note as possible so this story can happen. And what happens in this story? A PSA on why you shouldn't do [INSERT BAD THING HERE] while the entire anthology is rendered worthless. As soon as you realize what is going on from minute one, all of your investment in this collection is thrown out the window and it doesn't even have a conclusion to end the narrative. Nothing ends, nothing begins, and nothing matters. What is the point of doing an anthology if it's obvious you don't want to put in the effort to do one?


Now for the gameplay. It can be whatever, it can be fine, it can be repetitive, and it can be so boring that it would make you want to uninstall the game. Especially in the third episode. There's nothing more I can say about the gameplay other than I was bored with it mostly.

Overall, Stories Untold is a perfect example of how to not do a short story collection. The three shorts feel like a last minute addition compared to what the writer really wanted to do and so we got this as the result. A game that lures players in with the promise of interesting stories, only to pull the rug out of all of them with the worst storytelling cliche in history. At least V/H/S: Viral understood the concept of the genre it was set in.

I think the most interesting thing about Valkyrie Elysium is that it’s not a story about saving the world. It’s about what happens in that period where everything is ending already. Most of my time playing this game was spent in ruins, fighting the vengeful spirits that still roam the land alongside those spirits who chose to fight with me and listening to the voices that had long perished. And although Odin tells you from the beginning that your efforts are done so save it, actually walking through Valkyrie Elysiums world, the question haunted me: What is there left so save? This question is at the heart of the game. [Spoilers follow] The Valkyrie, a hollow shell at the beginning, distanced from the world she wants to save, becomes more and more involved over the course of the story – through the help of the spirits that chose to stay with her. And in the end, the player must choose what to do with that involvement. The different endings all give a different answer to the questions “What is there left to save? What is there left to fight for?”. The so-called “true ending” has a somewhat cynical answer to this: That the gods who were responsible for the worlds’ demise will not see the next one. Another ending plainly states: heterosexual love. In every ending the world we walked through in the game ends. The agency of the player is to decide what happens next.

Safe to say, the themes and story of Valkyrie Elysium actually resonated with me in a sort of way. The engaging combat system helped me to stay hooked and – I had a good time with the game! It’s not some great masterpiece but it’s an odd little game, lacking in variety, but with a lot of heart.

Rain World is many things, but if I had to sum it up in one word, I'd say it's beautiful. I'm not great at video games, and I try to stay away from especially difficult ones. I don't know what convinced me to get Rain World though. I mean hey, I managed to beat it in the end. It was incredibly frustrating at times, and there's even some mechanics in the game I absolutely hated, but despite the adversity and problems, and I can say I enjoyed it. It's unfair and unpredictable to a brutal degree, but the way it tests your intelligence and problem solving skills over your reaction speed and ability to press the attack button several times sets it apart from other games that are ridiculously hard. Knowledge is more valuable than anything else in Rain World and embracing failure and letting yourself learn is the key to moving forward.

Gameplay:
Rain World sees you playing as a slug cat, traveling through a world filled with danger around every corner. It'll teach you the basics, but it's up to you to learn how the world works. The game's a platformer at its core with elements of survival woven throughout. The movement system is simple to grasp but takes time to master. Chaining wall jumps, climbs, and careful leaps is something you'll be doing all throughout the game. Quick observation is constantly rewarded, as thinking fast and platforming well can get you out of a lot of situations. The game also spices it up sometimes like the segments with the grapple worms and jet fish. If I had to give one criticism, it would be that swimming feels awful. I feel like I'm in an all-out war against the controls just to go where I want to in the water. Doesn't help that the slug cat has the lungs of an asthmatic snail.

Rain World's world is ridiculously big and complex. You'll encounter a plethora of creatures on your journey, each with their own behaviors and mechanics associated with them. Some are friends, some are predators, and some are prey. There are even tons of interesting plants to interact with, for better or for worse. Learning what each one does can really take time. There were so many things throughout my playthrough that I didn't know were food until I accidentally ate them. Speaking of which, finding food is something you'll have to do on top of dodging danger. It's not too difficult to do, but it is mandatory for hibernating at a shelter. The game is technically on a time limit that is reset everytime you hibernate. Finding shelters is crucial as you travel through the world, as they'll protect you from the impending deadly rainstorms and act as a save point you go back to everytime you die. Locations of plants will stay consistent with every death, but you'll find it hard to find a creature in the same place twice. This is what truly makes the game so hard. You can play through an area several times and learn its layout top to bottom, but enemy placement is something you will always need to adjust for on the fly. You can get both extremely lucky and extremely unlucky with placements of enemies, which can be irritating when you run into unwinnable scenarios. This isn't a detriment to the experience on its own, in fact it might it might even enhance it because it means you can never get too comfortable, but the game has one simple mechanic that makes this dreadful...

I wouldn't call the karma system bad, but it is questionable and pretty counter-intuitive to the game's design. Karma is raised by surviving a cycle and lowered every single time you die. It can be controlled by karma flowers you can find to prevent your karma level from being lowered for one death, but it can still be a royal pain. Karma gates prevent passage between regions without a proper level of karma. This means in order to progress, you need to hope to heck you don't die by stupid stuff multiple times and hope you get lucky enough to make it to a karma gate with the proper level or else oops! you're probably going to die by the rain before you can return to your shelter, meaning you get to lower your karma. Hooray : D While a mechanic like this does encourage players to try not to die, this is Rain World we're talking about. Dying is inevitable, and for a game that behaves so inconsistently sometimes (looking at you, Farm Arrays), it can make the game a frustrating nightmare! I'd highly recommend newbies to play as the Monk slug cat first, as it will let you learn the game without having to have the right karma everytime you need to re-enter a gate, which trust me, you'll be doing a lot. Unfortunately, you still have to sit through the obscenely long gate opening sequence every single time you die. I absolutely don't blame anyone who feels like the karma system ruined the game for them because ugh. Easily my least favorite part of the game.

To compliment the great movement system and wonderfully complex flora and fauna, Rain World brings great level design to the table. Though the world of the game boils down to a nonstop platforming and survival gauntlet, each region brings its own unique challenge to the table. Whether it be conquering verticality, braving the sea, navigating zero gravity, or whatever else, there's always something interesting and engaging to offer. The game gives you a lot to work with too. Every room is filled to the brim with areas to climb and items to grab. The game is nonlinear too, so there's tons of paths to take to reach your objective. Some paths are definitely easier than others though, so while you can't necessarily get lost, you can definitely end up getting stuck going in a direction that is 100x longer and more difficult than another. Still, the options for exploration are amazing. I'd definitely recommend playing this game without a guide, at least when it comes to figuring out which direction to go. I can't necessarily say the same for more confusing mechanics though (LOOKING AT YOU AGAIN, FARM ARRAYS)

Story:
I've already explained what the game is on the surface, but there is shockingly rich lore to uncover. It's best left to discover on your own, but I will say that the game has excellent visual storytelling. There is very little text throughout the game so it's up to you to theorize about what's going on for most of your first playthrough.

Sound and visuals:
Rain World has a "less is more" approach to sound design. The game's sound effects are very subtle, leaving a lot of silence that builds atmosphere effectively. Music is also subtle and infrequent. The game has adaptive tracks with layers that build on each other slowly. This approach to audio fits the game perfectly and I wouldn't want it any other way.

Rain World's visuals are wholly impressive. There's no shortage of gorgeous, wallpaper-worthy sceneries in this game. The environment design is somber and moody with gray backgrounds contrasted by the bright colors of the organisms that inhabit them. It not only serves a game design purpose but also makes for a distinct art style. The creature designs are also stellar. Each one is so unique and out of this world yet they all feel like believable animals. Their movement is almost uncanny, as animation in Rain World is done completely through procedural generation. I actually thought the game was made with 3D models made to look 2D at first, but nope. It's all some crazy complicated programming. The animation has its hiccups but I'd say that's a fair trade for the liveliness that comes from it.

Conclusion:
Rain World is beautiful. It perfectly captures what it's probably like to be a small creature in a big ecosystem. It's got great atmosphere, great visuals, great lore, and, for the most part, great gameplay. It's definitely not for everyone though. This game is daunting. I would recommend it if you're up for the challenge though, as this is one of the most unique and incredible games I've ever played.

I will end this review by saying that I do not recommend getting the game on the Nintendo Switch. It's an okay enough port if it's the only thing you got, but the performance in certain areas of the game can range from annoying to experience-ruining. Stutters, brutal frame drops, input delays, the works. Though not exceptionally common, crashes are definitely something you gotta worry about too. In a game like Rain World where exiting the game will take your karma and send you back to you last save, there were many times where I had to hold my breath and pray that my hard work and luck wasn't about to be erased. Yeah, just please get the game elsewhere if you can.

To say that I was skeptical about Downpour going in would be an understatement. The original Rain World is, as of the time of writing, my favorite game of all time. One of the most important things about it to me is that it feels incredibly holistically designed, with every individual component thoughtfully considered in how it relates to the larger whole. Everything in Rain World is interconnected, reflecting the Buddhist existential themes explored within it.

With that, I think you can understand the trepidation I felt when I heard about this expansion. New content of any kind was enough reason to worry about the sanctity of the original experience being trampled over – an entire expansion developed by fans, with new characters, creatures, and regions, along with ““quality of life changes”” (a subtly threatening term when it comes to something as idiosyncratically designed as Rain World)? Let’s just say that I feared the worst. The new slugcats that had been revealed didn’t exactly fill me with optimism, either. Rain World cannot claim to be a realistic game, but it is grounded - and those new slugcats did not look grounded.

Now, Downpour has been released. Were my fears unfounded after all? Well…

Something that I really respect about this expansion, and give endless kudos to the team for, is how humbly it presents itself. Make no mistake, this is an absolutely massive DLC with heaps of new content, and yet the first thing you do after downloading it is navigate a new mod manager setting where all the new stuff is listed. This manager does not distinguish between workshop mods you can download for free and this new expansion you pay actual money for – Downpour essentially declares with pride instead of shame that it is little more than an officially supported collection of fan mods. I really, really appreciate that, because as we’ll see, Downpour is extremely ambitious; a layer of separation between what is and isn’t Videocult’s original work was an absolute necessity in my opinion, and I respect the hell out of the team for refusing to muddy the waters in this regard. More pragmatically, this is also a boon to Downpour’s reception – if you don’t like a creative decision, you can simply remind yourself that this is just one (very talented) team’s take on the original work. Nothing is sullied, but a lot can be gained.

Moving on now to discussing what has actually been added in this expansion: there’s no way around it, Downpour is a very different experience to classic Rain World in almost every regard. It turns the dial considerably towards “gaminess”, and makes for something that is a lot messier design-wise, which I just about expected. What I didn’t really expect was how high the narrative ambitions here were. This is something that would’ve troubled me immensely had I heard about it before release. Surprisingly, though, this came to be probably the part of the experience that I enjoyed the most; thanks to, again, that level of separation between the base game and Downpour, and also because the new narrative stuff is honestly nothing to scoff at quality-wise and came a lot closer to replicating the thematic and atmospheric flavor of the original than I was expecting. Mind you, that does not mean there isn’t any tension between what the original Rain World was going for and what Downpour is. The outlandish abilities of the new slugcats definitely do undermine the grounded ethos a bit, for one (though I appreciate that they’re all given reasonable explanations in-universe). More importantly, though, the narrative priorities have completely shifted.

In the original game, the story of the setting (the "lore") was told in the background and was totally subservient to the player's own personal journey of surviving an enigmatic world. You'd stumble upon Moon, or Five Pebbles, and you'd react with awe and wonder, but lacking context and familiarity, file those experiences away as simply another discovery in a pile of them. In Downpour, what was previously the background narrative takes center stage. You always know where to go – to Pebbles and Moon, probably in that order. That doesn't mean that there are no surprises along the way, but on a whole the design philosophy of Downpour is totally juxtaposed with the original’s. In simpler terms: the original was centered firmly around the journey, whereas Downpour is all about the destination.

The slugcats aren't the protagonists any more - they're side characters in a narrative that centers on the iterators, with our dual protagonists being the two we can visit in-game, Five Pebbles and Looks to the Moon. Now, to be completely accurate, this shift was technically already present in the original game. Fundamentally, every new slugcat campaign in Downpour is building on the groundwork laid by the Hunter’s campaign, which served as the original game’s hard mode. What makes Downpour feel like such a change, however, is the sheer totality of what is added. Hunter felt like a side mode, a way to capitalize on the game’s many brilliant mechanics in a more gamey way while still grounding it narratively. But when you add twice the amount of campaigns the original game had (and counting the Monk separately is honestly generous), it's hard not to look at these "side modes" as having become the main dish. The campaigns are thus reframed as small vignettes that serve as the building blocks of a larger narrative that is far more epic in scale – a real opus, one that presumably spans centuries and centuries. And quality-wise, I found myself rather enjoying the story being told. Though I am a little ambivalent on some particularities, on a whole the arcs of Pebbles and Moon are compelling to follow, and full of evocative moments.

The Saint’s campaign was a particular highlight; seeing the world in an even more ruinous state, collapsing in on itself, with cycles fading out as the periodic torrential rain gives way to never-ending snowstorms, was incredibly affecting and felt like a very fitting note to leave this setting on; though I am a tad conflicted on how bombastically that campaign ends – I almost feel like it totally undermines the quiet poignancy of what came before, but I’d also be lying if I said that I didn’t find it to be a fascinating development that, in many ways, pulls a lot of the threads of the narrative together pretty well.

The rest of the campaigns range narratively from decent to great. Gourmand I don’t have much to say about, but I quite like the addition of the Outer Expanse – venturing outside the grounds of the iterators and back on to your (aesthetically inspired) native turf was very exciting (if a tad fanservice-y). Spearmaster allows for the experience of exploring Moon’s facility and seeing her fully operating, which is nice, but I’m not that fond of how the bulk of the narrative is told through chatlogs. Artificer’s story was like a self-contained filler episode in the context of the larger narrative, but it really won me over as it went on and somehow managed to not make me too troubled over the addition of a boss fight to Rain World of all games – it felt grounded in the narrative and avoided the most egregious pitfalls like Dark Souls style titles and healthbars. And Rivulet operates beautifully as a brief moment of optimism, with Pebbles’ redemption and the restoration of Moon preceding the melancholy of the Saint’s conclusive campaign.

With these narrative additions, a question has arisen in the community on whether Downpour is or isn’t officially canon, and ultimately, I think that question is missing the forest for the trees. It feels to me like Videocult, in officially sanctioning this fan effort, is going beyond basic notions of ‘canonicity’, essentially renouncing total ownership of the setting they’ve created and handing it over to their audience. This is further supported by Downpour separating itself firmly from the original work, and not distinguishing itself from other fan mods anyone can make. The question of canonicity then becomes functionally meaningless and a hindrance to productive discourse. It’s a different work, made by different people, with different priorities. It comments on the original ‘text’ (if you will) extensively, but is ultimately firmly separate. The only question that really matters to me is whether Downpour is engaging, interesting and worth experiencing. My personal answer to that question is that it is.

Gospel of Matthew 24:27: "For as the Lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man"

Being the last game of arguably the most polarizing trilogy in video games, the Final Fantasy XIII saga, Lighting Returns was a title that had already received mixed reviews by journalists while it was still in development. Considering how XIII-2 improved in nearly every aspect of the criticism that XIII received, fans were surprisingly hopeful, until news went out that it would be employing the most radical changes ever seen to the traditional FF formula. Despite having a gameplay style mostly resembling Majora’s Mask by being a single lonely character clashing against time and current society, the philosophical implications of Lightning Returns run much deeper than that, although not being as obvious, but impossible to ignore once you start to realize how it ties in with the trilogy’s themes. To properly explain how this game’s subjects became so misunderstood (which I hope you don’t mind spoilers about), we first have to talk about the privatization of stress.

Although the game wasn’t made as a 1 to 1 capitalist critique, it mimics themes of stress and solitude in a desperate narrative reminiscent of those in modern urban life scenarios. It is no coincidence that one of the trilogy’s most criticized aspects of not properly handling cities, side quests and NPC’s is directly answered by having most of the game be spent in 2 fully fledged cities that always feel awake 24/7. Not only that but all of the quests in these places feel very mundane and uneventful, usually regarding easy to solve social problems as someone from the outside or simply a miscommunication between people who find themselves stuck in their own struggles to maintain a meaningless routine.

You are tasked early on to face a former friend after not being able to recognize them through the years, while the only person you used to care about becomes more hostile towards you because of your life choices, all in all with an inner angsty teenager sense of persecution, proved to be factually right, that the entire world is against you. This is the closest I have ever seen in a power fantasy game, especially one that deep down recycles the same classic formula of “kill god” narrative, dealing with such a down to earth theme of self-indulging despair and hopelessness that isn’t solved miraculously by external magical sources. The foundation of the premise is something we can all relate to, as even if we haven’t experienced all those 3 together, something in our brain just seems to understand perfectly how messy it would be. Your inner struggles are irrelevant to your divine task however, and you’re left to conquer your own psychological problems by yourself, as the burden of carrying out your divine duty never cared for your well being, giving a complete uneasy feeling of possibly being a discardable chosen one.

“ Relentless monitoring is closely linked to precarity. And, as Tobias van Veen argues, precarious work places ‘an ironic yet devastating’ demand on the labourer. On the one hand work never ends: the worker is always expected to be available, with no claims to a private life. On the other hand the precariat are completely expendable, even when they have sacrificed all autonomy to keep their jobs. “ - Mark Fisher

Stress is the core gameplay element of this game, as it always runs in a hellish wicked timer, waiting for you to make a grave mistake and ponder whether to continue or not, which can be seen by some as even more cruel than simply ending it. Necessary events to the game’s story can be only accessed in a specific time window, as well as NPC’s sidequests and routines, meaning that you’ll have to do some serious planning if you don’t want to miss a crucial bit in your adventure.

From the very start you are told to finish the main quests in under a week with a high sense of urgency, however you’ll quickly notice that by rushing the first main story in the initial city, the gap between how strong you are and how intense the fights can get is pretty substantial. Not spoiling what happens after one week. but I sincerely hope you prepared yourself for it. The only way to increase your stats, and your time, is by finishing quests, not by trading punches, which pushes you to pursue the game’s side content for small gains in order to properly be able to handle the main ones for an even higher stat gain. Juggling with these two, you’ll find yourself in situations with near conflicting times that don’t seem to have an objectively best way out, effectively creating the perfect complete opposite experience of a sandbox game.

" Daily life becomes precarious. Planning ahead becomes difficult, routines are impossible to establish. Work, of whatever sort, might begin or end anywhere at a moment’s notice, and the burden is always on the worker to create the next opportunity and to surf between roles. The individual must exist in a state of constant readiness. Predictable income, savings, the fixed category of ‘occupation’: all belong to another historical world. " - Mark Fisher

Let’s suppose that you need to sneak your way through a certain castle until 11:00 pm, so you decide to be free until 10:00 pm to not lose such an occasion. You hope to finish an investigation sidequest, with no guarantees, until 9:30 pm, which is when you think the NPC leaves, as when you tried to interact with him the other way at 10:00 pm he wasn’t there but you remember passing him by at 8:00 pm. While thinking about that, you also make a mental note to fetch the rewards for another sidequest at 6:30 pm in another city that takes 30 min by train, meaning that either one hour traveling or a massive amount of spell points, spent in a teleportation magic, will be lost. You also ponder whether or not you should take that optional boss fight at 6:00 pm, as you want to save your limited spells for later, dreaming about its massive loot reward that could be useful later on. All of that is happening, at 11:00 am, having no set plans for 12 hours to come, while not precisely remembering what you forgot to do yesterday, without realizing that you didn’t check that your secret royal entrance closes at 9:00 pm.

The only way you can stop the clock is by fighting, either by being directly in combat, or using precious spell points gained after a battle. Your own blood becomes partially meaningless, as healing sources are abundant, and the punishment for running away or losing becomes the same: The loss of 1 ingame hour. Our own life becomes an end goal that is not as impactful as the cycle we find ourselves in, independent if we are the main character in this story, as it’s meaningless to the ordinary citizen stuck in this vicious cycle. The dehumanizing cogs of time can’t stop running, as someone or something requires it to, because even if it’s not a natural nor necessary way to handle a civilization, it was imposed onto us the moment we were born.

" The tendency today is for practically all forms of work to become precarious. As Franco Berardi puts it, ‘Capital no longer recruits people, but buys packets of time, separated from their interchangeable and occasional bearers’. Such ‘packets of time’ are not conceived of as having a connection to a person with rights or demands: they are simply either available or unavailable. " - Mark Fisher

The majority of the game’s sidequest in one of the cities can be directly traced to monetary problems, directly or indirectly. Some are quite obvious, such as buying medication for someone poor as others refuse to acknowledge their existence, or being knowingly scammed daily by a desperate child while she tells her story in life. Some points, however, such as needing to talk or ask someone in the slums about anything at all, always carried a subtle connotation regarding the inherent cultural divide that is present. You see, even before monsters and cultists started to appear, the city used a system of applying ‘martial lawish’ gates to block out its poor parts, enforcing their place on a section with very little resources overall. The lack of access to other cities, terrain to expand, or even a way to get direct food and water without having to buy overpriced second hand ones by the city's traders, means that not only it was built, but also purposefully maintained as a hub of enforced poverty.

The other city, exuberant with richness everywhere, faces an entirely different and post-modern problem of being ‘bored’ by the virtue of having everything they so desire. Ranging from useless side quests to get materials that you can’t buy (only way to give them any value at this point) like the embarrassing chocobo girl one, or the amazingly cute chocobo baby ones. Serving as small first world problems that could be easily solved on their own, they are absurdly blown out of proportion, for being the only mild annoyance this egoistical and socially clueless bourgeois will face in their near ending lives. One quest in particular caught my attention, because it all boils down to a bunch of kids trying to have some fun by attempting to predict the future in which you’ll arrive to talk to them, joking about the concept of free will and pretending like they have some sort of special powers, when in fact they already have the most noticeable one out there: privilege. Having to help such a carefree society that turned a blind eye into a possible perpetual state of wastefulness while the rest of the world is still facing inequalities, is heartbreaking, specially when considering Lightning’s own problems, that discredits what you’re repeatedly told about being the world’s only hope, by giving you a slight nod that no matter who you are, divinity is not a virtue under capitalism.

" If the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism had its psychic casualties, then post-Fordism has innovated whole new modes of stress. Instead of the elimination of bureaucratic red tape promised by neoliberal ideologues, the combination of new technology and managerialism has massively increased the administrative stress placed on workers, who are now required to be their own auditors (which by no means frees them of the attentions of external auditors of many kinds). Work, no matter how casual, now routinely entails the performance of meta-work: the completion of log books, the detailing of aims and objectives, the engagement in so-called `continuing professional development’. " - Mark Fisher

Lightning Returns is truly a special title in the list of video games that criticize capitalism indirectly, as its ending (no spoilers, don’t worry) doesn't follow the usual liberal notion that “if we get rid of the evil king, we can live forever happy with the good king”. Existing within a system that allows such people to even exist, and even worse, take over, turns into a fundamentally broken political structure that can adapt to the needs of those in power. No amount of boring and expository dialogue that aims to say “I had good intentions tho” could fix the inconsequential flaws of those who misused power in the past for their own benefit.

Soul harvesting is the ultimate consequence of a system based heavily upon materialism, where the need for one’s time, feelings and dedication can no longer fulfill such impossible to meet demands. In a society that finds itself at peace, forever cursed to not age, was it really so hard for people to come together in union? The only thought keeping this shambling community in such a chaotic state is the self-imposed fear that it could somehow get worse, even with the apocalypse blasting its ugly true colors upon the sky. Most saddening however, is when you realize this is what’s happening in our real world at this very moment. Churchill’s asinine phrase that capitalism is a boat sinking less than others, became ingrained in modern capitalists brains that refuse to acknowledge it’s main problems while trying to get rid of smaller ones, as supposedly it’s better to let a bomb explode slowly by not cutting a wire, than giving a shot to a method that could save us all.

Self imposed faith in the system is the downfall of a society that doesn’t ponder about its future, as being on the edge of insanity for centuries for never questioning the line of thinking that led to such a problem, is both saddening and fascinating. Greed kills, murders and slaughters those that try to oppose it, or just refuse to hail it as the ultimate goal in life. We treat God as a currency that blesses those already privileged ones with even more privilege, in a modern miracle supposedly called ‘meritocracy’. It’s only by rejecting the ideas of self imposed righteous workplace figures that we can debunk their cult, as the only foundation they have is blind faith accompanied by financial fear mongering.

" But this should not be a cause for lament; far from it. What we need to revive is not social formations that failed (and failed for reasons that progressives should be pleased about), but a political project that never really happened: the achievement of a democratic public sphere. Even in Blond’s work, the lineaments of a hegemonic shift can be discerned – in his startling repudiation of the core concepts of neoliberalism and his attack on managerialism; and in the concession that, contra Thatcher, it turns out that there is such a thing as society after all. Such moves give some indication of the extent to which – after the bank bail-outs – neoliberalism has radically lost credibility. " - Mark Fisher

The conclusion of Lighting Returns is an impossible one for us to meet, as it’s not only absurdly magical, but also displays a lot of light in a totally fantastical future that retroactively also fixes her own personal problems, the ultimate power fantasy move. Her external and internal troubles are fixed by punching them into the embodiment of everything that was wrong until that point, which is something I’d like to personally experience one day. You can’t make a revolution alone, much less disregard those who are in the wrong, for that a strong conviction can shed some well deserving light even in the worst of cases. The good thing about being an emotional wall during the entire story, is that you know how she must have felt in this journey’s end, in one of the most beautiful sequences I have ever seen in my entire life. We’ll have to learn from Lightning, and try our best to recreate such a sequence in our own real world, for it’s the only recipe of an ultimate utopia.

Godspeed Mark, thank you for changing my life.