I'm sorry! There was a point in time that I loved this game like the rest of you, but the longer I sit with it, the more I find it to be manipulative and a highly irresponsible depiction of its subject matter.
Upon completion most of my criticism was "hey this story's pretty good but the game should've been 5 hours instead of 25", but now I realize that critique goes much deeper. It baits you into thinking there's some kind of justification for this frankly awful pacing, but it never comes. That is to say, there's just nothing to the narrative. You can make media that deals with themes of mental health, impostor syndrome, and guilt without reducing any kind of substance/narrative progression to symbolism until the very end. It makes the whole experience feel very hackneyed and disingenuous in retrospect!
I also find it highly manipulative that the main character is a blank slate whose only real personality is an unspecified mental issue, when the story is explicitly about his mental trauma! It's intentionally designed to be a wide net cast via relatable tropes to ensnare as many people within while not making any explicit vindications, or having to make any tangible decisions that could alter one's opinion on the game. It's very lowest common denominator content. It exists for people who don't want to have to do any critical thinking or real introspection while reading stories about people doing those very actions! This game possesses a very devout fanbase, and I can't help but believe it's all projection - mass delusion that the writers did something profound here when in reality it's one of the "safest" games I've ever seen. To paraphrase the hbomberguy video on RWBY, writing, in essence, is making decisions and risking that those decisions might be the wrong ones. What the writers have done here is not make the wrong choices, but they have done everything in their power to abdicate the responsibility of having to make them in the first place.
There is a lot to like about this game nonetheless, I quite like the way it contrasts the mental and physical worlds, I like the art, I like the music, I like the general concept of the twist, but not the way it was implemented per se. I just wish it was all in service of something that meant anything!
Upon completion most of my criticism was "hey this story's pretty good but the game should've been 5 hours instead of 25", but now I realize that critique goes much deeper. It baits you into thinking there's some kind of justification for this frankly awful pacing, but it never comes. That is to say, there's just nothing to the narrative. You can make media that deals with themes of mental health, impostor syndrome, and guilt without reducing any kind of substance/narrative progression to symbolism until the very end. It makes the whole experience feel very hackneyed and disingenuous in retrospect!
I also find it highly manipulative that the main character is a blank slate whose only real personality is an unspecified mental issue, when the story is explicitly about his mental trauma! It's intentionally designed to be a wide net cast via relatable tropes to ensnare as many people within while not making any explicit vindications, or having to make any tangible decisions that could alter one's opinion on the game. It's very lowest common denominator content. It exists for people who don't want to have to do any critical thinking or real introspection while reading stories about people doing those very actions! This game possesses a very devout fanbase, and I can't help but believe it's all projection - mass delusion that the writers did something profound here when in reality it's one of the "safest" games I've ever seen. To paraphrase the hbomberguy video on RWBY, writing, in essence, is making decisions and risking that those decisions might be the wrong ones. What the writers have done here is not make the wrong choices, but they have done everything in their power to abdicate the responsibility of having to make them in the first place.
There is a lot to like about this game nonetheless, I quite like the way it contrasts the mental and physical worlds, I like the art, I like the music, I like the general concept of the twist, but not the way it was implemented per se. I just wish it was all in service of something that meant anything!