Tags

, , , , , ,

Puncherson_64LadyBrain_64

Spoilers for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

Butch:

I got nothing. Maybe for the best, though. I’m still a little shell shocked from the end of Lizzie. Have that thing that led to the 20 hour TLOU taking me so long to finish, that emotional procrastination. You don’t really want to rush back to something after that. But I will. Hopefully later today when Baby is at school.

Did start episode 3 of King’s Quest with the boys, which remains a charming little game. A good one to pick up if O’Jr. ever wants to watch/sorta play one with you.

Feminina:

I got nothing either, and I’m also at a conference all day (though with my computer), so this bodes ill for discussion.

The Lizzie part is the toughest. It’s more straightforward, sort of, from here. Plus, no kids.

Did you see the repeated kids drawing in the hall, with the dead birds and the butterflies? Also the notice about the guy who’d disappeared, missing as of June something, 1984. So, that’s our date.

I was also thinking about your idea that Lizzie poisoned everyone with the tea, which seemed reasonable to me, but during the night (obviously I think about this during the night) I started to wonder. I mean, would all the kids have also had tea? The baby? She could have poisoned the baby’s bottle, but can you count on kids to drink enough of their tea? I don’t know if Lizzie seems like the type to have been able to plan this mass poisoning so effectively on such short notice. (Plus, logistically, where did she get a nice, quiet poison so fast?)

I was thinking maybe it was just what she said: she wanted to distract the people, so she invited them all to the hall for a run through of the show and some tea. And then the planes came through and/or people were consumed by the light, which could have taken care of them all just as easily as poison.

So…yeah. I honestly didn’t think poison myself but when you said it I thought “oh yeah, that makes sense, how awful, that’s a perfect tragic point!”…but now I’m not sure.

Maybe something we’re not even really meant to be sure of.

Butch:

Well, that’s good there are no more kids, cuz I’m so done with that. Damn, man. Damn.

I did see the drawings….and the one with “mommy” and a black woman. Kate? Who’s Kate’s kid? Dylan? Cuz I was going ask who DID abandon Dylan? I know “they” did but did I miss who “they” were? Stephen and Kate? Dylan couldn’t draw a picture.

I dunno, man. The open thermos and all the cups next to every single place there was a sparkly kid was pretty suggestive. And the fact she did plan something. “I promised them a cup of tea.” A throwaway line that becomes incredibly ominous. Or maybe Rachel did it. She knew that there was to be tea, and she was the one that snuck it in. She was the one there at the end, after all, “comforting” the baby and the kids.

You think you’re losing sleep now, wait….wait until the Witness….

[Later]

You’ll be so proud of me! I COULD have stopped at the end of Stephen and done the chores I really need to do AND kept up my streak of stopping three minutes before the end but NO I finished!

I’m….not sure it made as much sense to me as it seems to have done for you. We’ll talk. Later, as chores, but…..

Did you miss something really, really important? Like, did you get a save scene with Lizzie…at a train station? Have you been playing coy here the last couple of days? Cuz if you missed that…..we gotta talk. And, if you DID get that….nice playing coy.

Also….I did NOT get the “reveal everything in the story” trophy. Shit was missed. I hate knowing that.

But I’m done. We can talk.

Oh, and, if you didn’t google some things already:
http://www.criticalhit.net/gaming/everybodys-gone-to-the-rapture-secret-code-guide/

Feminina:

I’m proud! Good for you!

I did get Lizzie in the train station confirming that she’s pregnant (just as I suspected!)–I was just being coy. Thank you, thank you. I do it well.

I didn’t get the story trophy either, although you knew that because you know I missed some of Jeremy. Probably something else as well. There was a lot there.

That secret code info is interesting. In that vein, you can also check this guy’s thoughtful interpretation: http://kotaku.com/what-the-heck-happened-in-everybody-s-gone-to-the-raptu-1724934829

I don’t completely agree with him, though.

See, maybe I just developed my theory early and clung to it, but…I ended it still thinking that this is not the real world: it’s some kind of snapshot of the world and the people in the valley that the light has taken and stored. And that interpretation above says “the light took over the world.”

I…don’t think it did. I ended it thinking that the airstrike (nerve gas rather than bombs, we later learned) killed everyone and successfully stopped the spread of the pattern (after all, we know the world didn’t end in 1984)–but that the light/the pattern still exists probably back out in space, with this information it’s collected. We see Kate opening the dome in the observatory at the end, right? I felt that this suggested that the light was going back out. Back to space. Leaving the rest of the world, unaware, behind.

I could totally be wrong (or there could be no absolute right answer), but that was my take. As for “who we/the player are,” I thought it must be the Pattern, taking a roughly human shape and exploring these snippets of human memory…we hear Kate saying that she explained things to it, like why it was bad to stop Lizzie and her child from leaving (although…why WAS it, from their viewpoint? another topic), and I thought that the way she explained it was this game, basically. At the beginning she said “everything you need to know is in the light,” and I guess that she was talking to the roughly humanlike pattern, which then wandered its own snapshot to discover things about people and life and the world.

OK. Gotta go back to my conference.

Agree? Disagree?

Butch:

You know, I ALMOST stopped. I almost did. It was getting on close to when I had to get baby boy, and I thought “If this is one of those 40 minute between save point bits I’m screwed….maybe I should….” but then I charged on.

Phew.

Very coy of you. But then, that wasn’t her on the train tracks now was it? Cuz that ended with her seeing planes, not charging down the track to her doom. And, if that wasn’t her, why was she in the train station when she must’ve known that the trains were all fucked up?

Sorry. I’m pulling at threads. It was a very good cutscene, and I guess that’s what matters.

I’m reading that piece now, and I agree with you that he’s wrong on some things. First, Stephen most certainly did set himself a light. Accidentally or no.

And now that I’ve finished I disagree entirely. But damned if I’ll comment. They can go read the bestest damn blog on the internet.

I think that you’re right….I find it interesting they ended with the quote that they did (in the link provided). It seems this IS real 1984, these people are dead, and preserved as memories, what was the quote, corona in those that survive (us? The players? Whoever we are?), who still survive because, as you say, they contained it.

And how the hell does Hamilton NOT address the obvious Christian imagery?

See, I got that cutscene early which you did not: the man assaulting Jeremy and then going into the light, or being pulled, and not wanting to go, scared, and saying “Everyone is there.”

See, I think the title “Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture” is literal. At least as applied to this story. Here’s why.

Everyone we meet, except Kate, is a sinner. Badly. They’ve killed, they’ve abandoned children, they’ve slept around, they’ve (in Rachel’s case) slept with someone out of wedlock, etc. The guy we saw go into the light just assaulted a priest, which, I reckon, is frowned upon by Jesus. And what happens? When the pattern (which I’m going with the God thing) finds them, it damns them. They turn to ash. They burn. The biggest hell imagery is saved for Stephen himself, the one who kept “God” from reaching the world, from spreading its gospel. Bad Stephen. Burn away.

So when the guy who hit Jeremy says “Everyone is there,” he means hell.

So the title…..

Kate is the one true believer. She LOVES the God pattern. She wants it in her life, wants to be one with it. She ALSO is the only person in the whole damn game who doesn’t have some sort of awful sin attached to her story. She’s an OUTSIDER in that respect: a godly, sinless woman in a hive of sinners. There’s a reason the story made her “different.”

And she’s the last one standing. When the story ends, she IS “everybody.” And she goes to the Rapture. Heaven. We see her going UP. The title of the game doesn’t lie. Everyone goes.

And I think her “Everyone finds somebody” thing, and the butterflies, and the logo, are because the game is, in the end, optimistic. Butterflies get “reborn,” from ugly, terrible things to beautiful. They get Born Again. They have second chances.

The logo, to me anyway, is two people, people who have found their love, their reason to HAVE faith, looking at a sun, at a light. Turning towards faith, and, perhaps, finding that rebirth.

So back to our “is this game anti-religion?” I answer with an emphatic “no.” If anything, this is extolling the saving power of faith.

Blog that shit, kotaku.

Feminina:

Sigh–I wish I weren’t super distracted with conference right now, because we have plenty more to discuss.

It was helpful to read that article, although I don’t agree with its entire take–it did help clarify who was on the tracks when the train derailed. I had assumed Dylan’s parents disappeared in the light, and that Lizzie was on the tracks even though we didn’t see that happen, but it’s true, the timing on that is off. So yeah, it works to assume they actually abandoned the baby (those monsters!–I felt bad for them assuming they’d been pulled away from him unwillingly, but now they just suck).

And yeah, I agree it missed a whole huge angle of analysis by ignoring religion. That is a rich and important area for discussion.

Sigh. I gotta go. Will try to keep the topic alive later today or Tuesday as I think of new brilliance, but too much going on right now.

Butch:

Nah, we’ll have time for more discussion, unless you manage to get WAY deep into the Witness (that is your next project, yes?) which I don’t think you will, cuz you gotta be pretty deep before we get this erudite. And I didn’t play Dear Esther, and you aren’t playing Day of the Tentacle or King’s Quest or Stardew Valley, which is also kinda cute (Jr.’s new thing. He loves it. It’s more him than anyone. My project is Tentacle), so we have some time to keep this up. Plus, I JUST finished it. Letting me ponder for a few days won’t hurt.

Yeah, religion…..is important. It’s….in the title…..

 

Feminina:

You’re just in a hurry to get to Day of the Tentacle. No worries.

Yeah, we’ll ponder this for a while. More brilliance will occur to us. We can finish hashing it out this week and then begin a fierce debate about the merits of Tentacle.

Tell me if you figure out a way to sprint.