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General / Thoughts and Reflections
« on: January 17, 2011, 07:32:45 pm »
I wanted to write out my thoughts about Aquaria, particularly in regards to the extended scenes ending. As I write about it, I might come across as being critical of it, but my intention is not to criticize so much as to reflect on why I reacted to the ending the way I did. I finished the game over a week ago, and Naija’s ending with Mia has left me brewing with some thoughts that I’d like to get out for the sake of catharsis, as much as for the sake of dialogue.
I read through both Zixinus and Aristobulus’s threads with regards to their reaction to the ending. I understand that the story is not intended to end happily. I don’t have problems with endings that are unhappy – trying to think up unhappy-ending movies off the top of my head: Requiem for a Dream, Army of Shadows, No Country for Old Men. These are all stories that definitely do not end on a high note, but still conclude in a way that feels complete to me. I’m having a harder time thinking of a game story example, but one that I can recall from recent memory is Zero Punctuation’s 1213 game, which ends on one of the bleakest notes that I can recall from my personal gaming history.
The examples that I’ve used so far aren’t simply unhappy as they are tragic, which is a label that doesn’t fit Aquaria. The unhappy aspect of Aquaria has more to do with its cliffhanger conclusion. In this regard, I think I do cope better with tragic/bleak endings than I do with cliffhanging ones. Yet even on this criterion, I don’t recall being as upset by other stories that concluded on cliffhangers. A case might be made for Empire Strikes Back if there was no intention to release VI, though it’s hard for me to imagine Star Wars ending on V. The only game example I can think of is Dreamfall. In that game however, I think I felt prepared moving towards its conclusion when everything began to go wrong. I don’t even remember Dreamfall upsetting me as much as Aquaria did.
"He walked slowly: Happiness drained out of him more quickly and completely than out of an unhappy man: an unhappy man is always prepared."
- The Power and the Glory
I think the key thing leading to my reaction to Aquaria’s ending rests on my preparation to it. Throughout the game, given Naija’s personal reflections, I was honestly expecting worse things to befall her, namely that Li would die, leaving Naija alone again. However limited Naija’s interactions with Li were, I liked him, and following his absorption into the Creator, I was prepared for the horrific possibility that the Creator would permanently corrupt Li, forcing Naija to kill him. Going beyond my expectations, she saves Li, slays the tragic figure that is the Creator, restores the Balance, and starts a family. Yes, there is a bit of melancholy on Naija’s part as her adventuring days are over, and there’s the lingering tragedy of the number of races devastated by the whim of a god that never had the chance to possess maturity. But at the end of it, an era of Aquaria of ends, and there’s a chance for a new beginning. Congratulations Naija and Li! Blessings to your family and may you live long, fulfilling lives.
Then Mia shows up.
I had honestly forgotten about the hooded figure by the end of the game, and I didn’t even feel particularly intrigued by it. Hell, the mystery behind the Arnassi civilization was probably more memorable to me than the hooded figure.
But for whatever reason, Mia decides to intrude into her daughter’s life after Naija’s already started to settle with her family. “Hi Naija! I’m Mia. I’m the mom that mind-wiped you so you’d be better at committing deicide. You’ll never guess what! I just came back from stealing the ‘Queen Bitch of the Universe’ title from Kerrigan!”
Mia is ridiculously off key as to what Naija’s personal values are by trying to appeal to the glory of world domination. Now I acknowledge that the game has hinted a bit to Naija’s wariness of being enchanted by power. But unless I am completely misreading her character, I honestly don’t see a significant danger of Naija somehow being tempted by the dark side. The melancholy she seems to express in empathizing with her encounter of other races indicates to me her nurturing character. The fact that Mia had to force paralyze her attests to me that she’s not interested in the power tripping business. Mia might be skilled at coercion and manipulation, but I don’t see mind control as being one of her abilities, otherwise the game would have made more sense with a zombie-Naija narrating to us from the start about the voice in her head that repeatedly tells her to “kill the Creator”.
Setting aside the dream theory, I am disappointed that for a person who essentially ate leviathans and gods for breakfast, Naija succumbs to a hug, although I’ll concede that Mia did an effective surprise ambush, the surprise being just how shitty a person she revealed herself to be in the span of one minute.
I’m forced to move on to hypotheticals now since a sequel is unlikely, but assuming Naija got her consciousness back and had a chance to gather her thoughts and rebuff her mother, I expect her response to be nothing short of:
“I don’t care for your bigoted views or your petty plans for world domination. Go pitch your megalomaniacal plans to someone else. You gave me life, and I’ll thank you for that, but I owe you nothing else. And if you dare touch my family, I will fucking unmake you.”
although gentle-lady that she is, she’d give a more polished delivery.
A final thought concerning Aquaria is the demiurge concept. Now the Creator is the obvious example for the story, but the way in which he describes Naija being made a flawed creation from his perfect (though rogue) creation, makes me think of Mia as a demiurge of a demiurge. Going by the Gnostic narrative, the Creator is flawed, and anything he creates is also flawed, perhaps even compounded so. When it finally came to combating the Creator, I went into it with absolute contempt for him, and wanted to utterly ruin him. When we come to actually learn about his original nature, I was very impressed by how well the narrative evoked my pathos. Having gone through this once, and imagining the continuation of the story, I don’t see myself developing any sort of sympathy for Mia when we bring her to heel. Although we learn little about her, she showed herself to be more mature and cunning in the one minute, in contrast to the petulant immaturity of the Creator. She’s cognizant of her bitch status, and she has no qualms with it.
I want to see her go down. If not violently, than by humiliating her in her realization of how insipid her plans are. If at any point she’s brought to her knees, she tries to pull some card along the lines of, “You can’t fault me for who I am. My maker was flawed, and in being flawed, so were his creations, and thus, so was I,” we only need to point to Naija, her own creation, became a better person than she was. Maybe Mia can be reformed too, but that would be calm, lofty thinking. Right now, I just want to throttle her for fucking up the ending.
Alright I’m done.
What a fantastic game.
I read through both Zixinus and Aristobulus’s threads with regards to their reaction to the ending. I understand that the story is not intended to end happily. I don’t have problems with endings that are unhappy – trying to think up unhappy-ending movies off the top of my head: Requiem for a Dream, Army of Shadows, No Country for Old Men. These are all stories that definitely do not end on a high note, but still conclude in a way that feels complete to me. I’m having a harder time thinking of a game story example, but one that I can recall from recent memory is Zero Punctuation’s 1213 game, which ends on one of the bleakest notes that I can recall from my personal gaming history.
The examples that I’ve used so far aren’t simply unhappy as they are tragic, which is a label that doesn’t fit Aquaria. The unhappy aspect of Aquaria has more to do with its cliffhanger conclusion. In this regard, I think I do cope better with tragic/bleak endings than I do with cliffhanging ones. Yet even on this criterion, I don’t recall being as upset by other stories that concluded on cliffhangers. A case might be made for Empire Strikes Back if there was no intention to release VI, though it’s hard for me to imagine Star Wars ending on V. The only game example I can think of is Dreamfall. In that game however, I think I felt prepared moving towards its conclusion when everything began to go wrong. I don’t even remember Dreamfall upsetting me as much as Aquaria did.
"He walked slowly: Happiness drained out of him more quickly and completely than out of an unhappy man: an unhappy man is always prepared."
- The Power and the Glory
I think the key thing leading to my reaction to Aquaria’s ending rests on my preparation to it. Throughout the game, given Naija’s personal reflections, I was honestly expecting worse things to befall her, namely that Li would die, leaving Naija alone again. However limited Naija’s interactions with Li were, I liked him, and following his absorption into the Creator, I was prepared for the horrific possibility that the Creator would permanently corrupt Li, forcing Naija to kill him. Going beyond my expectations, she saves Li, slays the tragic figure that is the Creator, restores the Balance, and starts a family. Yes, there is a bit of melancholy on Naija’s part as her adventuring days are over, and there’s the lingering tragedy of the number of races devastated by the whim of a god that never had the chance to possess maturity. But at the end of it, an era of Aquaria of ends, and there’s a chance for a new beginning. Congratulations Naija and Li! Blessings to your family and may you live long, fulfilling lives.
Then Mia shows up.
I had honestly forgotten about the hooded figure by the end of the game, and I didn’t even feel particularly intrigued by it. Hell, the mystery behind the Arnassi civilization was probably more memorable to me than the hooded figure.
But for whatever reason, Mia decides to intrude into her daughter’s life after Naija’s already started to settle with her family. “Hi Naija! I’m Mia. I’m the mom that mind-wiped you so you’d be better at committing deicide. You’ll never guess what! I just came back from stealing the ‘Queen Bitch of the Universe’ title from Kerrigan!”
Mia is ridiculously off key as to what Naija’s personal values are by trying to appeal to the glory of world domination. Now I acknowledge that the game has hinted a bit to Naija’s wariness of being enchanted by power. But unless I am completely misreading her character, I honestly don’t see a significant danger of Naija somehow being tempted by the dark side. The melancholy she seems to express in empathizing with her encounter of other races indicates to me her nurturing character. The fact that Mia had to force paralyze her attests to me that she’s not interested in the power tripping business. Mia might be skilled at coercion and manipulation, but I don’t see mind control as being one of her abilities, otherwise the game would have made more sense with a zombie-Naija narrating to us from the start about the voice in her head that repeatedly tells her to “kill the Creator”.
Setting aside the dream theory, I am disappointed that for a person who essentially ate leviathans and gods for breakfast, Naija succumbs to a hug, although I’ll concede that Mia did an effective surprise ambush, the surprise being just how shitty a person she revealed herself to be in the span of one minute.
I’m forced to move on to hypotheticals now since a sequel is unlikely, but assuming Naija got her consciousness back and had a chance to gather her thoughts and rebuff her mother, I expect her response to be nothing short of:
“I don’t care for your bigoted views or your petty plans for world domination. Go pitch your megalomaniacal plans to someone else. You gave me life, and I’ll thank you for that, but I owe you nothing else. And if you dare touch my family, I will fucking unmake you.”
although gentle-lady that she is, she’d give a more polished delivery.
A final thought concerning Aquaria is the demiurge concept. Now the Creator is the obvious example for the story, but the way in which he describes Naija being made a flawed creation from his perfect (though rogue) creation, makes me think of Mia as a demiurge of a demiurge. Going by the Gnostic narrative, the Creator is flawed, and anything he creates is also flawed, perhaps even compounded so. When it finally came to combating the Creator, I went into it with absolute contempt for him, and wanted to utterly ruin him. When we come to actually learn about his original nature, I was very impressed by how well the narrative evoked my pathos. Having gone through this once, and imagining the continuation of the story, I don’t see myself developing any sort of sympathy for Mia when we bring her to heel. Although we learn little about her, she showed herself to be more mature and cunning in the one minute, in contrast to the petulant immaturity of the Creator. She’s cognizant of her bitch status, and she has no qualms with it.
I want to see her go down. If not violently, than by humiliating her in her realization of how insipid her plans are. If at any point she’s brought to her knees, she tries to pull some card along the lines of, “You can’t fault me for who I am. My maker was flawed, and in being flawed, so were his creations, and thus, so was I,” we only need to point to Naija, her own creation, became a better person than she was. Maybe Mia can be reformed too, but that would be calm, lofty thinking. Right now, I just want to throttle her for fucking up the ending.
Alright I’m done.
What a fantastic game.