Hm, when this game was first coming out I sort of shrugged it off as an imitator of other, better games (I saw traces of God of War and the rebooted Prince of Persia in there, with a bit of Resident Evil 4′s Ashley-hide-in-this-dumpster-and-never-come-out thing for flavour). But I’ve heard a lot about it in the months since its release. Not all good, mind you, but all at least interesting. Since I haven’t played it I’ll accept Anthony’s interpretation (although I appreciate @Enkidum:disqus’s followup), that the game’s ultimate message is by design or by incompetence of the writing staff sort of disgusting, but it’s interesting at least seeing a game in which the driving message of the story is in harmony with the mechanics of the game. Even if, as I said, that harmony seems to be a) upsetting on both levels, and b) probably accidental. Given the article I just read this is probably a silly question, but I don’t suppose this game has multiple endings?

Also, looking forward to more of this feature in the future. It’s very satisfying for me seeing someone beautifully unlock the thematic core of a work using the ending as a key. It makes for very elegant criticism and tends to be fulfilling writing, as Anthony’s piece is here. It’ll be interesting seeing discussion in the future of games with multiple endings, I think, as it’s basically the only medium in which that narrative technique is really feasible (CYOA books and Clue: The Movie notwithstanding.) I’d love to see a discussion about the idea of “canonical” endings, the distinction between good/bad endings and true “multiple” endings (this is the difference between Silent Hill and its first sequel, for example, SH1 having a gradation of endings from “bad” to “good”, while SH2 has multiple equal but different finales to the same story), games in which one ending is in harmony with the work’s themes while one is unsatisfying or unfulfilling, etc etc. I’m sure you folks have plenty of ideas for the feature and don’t need my help.

This is actually one of my favorite video game endings, although I think I had a different read on it than Anthony did.  I saw it more as a direct mirror of the ending to the original text, where the heroes bring Buddhism to the people. I saw the virtual reality happy land as a kind of false nirvana.  Everyone is happy, but they are purposeless and incapable of the kind of relationship we saw develop (all quality issues aside) throughout the game.  It’s worth pointing out that when she destroys the Andy Serkis FMV Overlord, she also wakes up all the other slaves, sucking them out of their fake heaven and into their harsh, but more meaningful reality.  This all seemed very Buddhist to me, but I might be seeing more than is actually there.

It’s not a perfect, but there’s a pretty low bar when it comes to video game endings.  I liked that this one tried to do something different, rather than just give us a musical montage of all the characters we met along the way followed by a slow fade as our heroes ride off into the sunset, or some such nonsense.

So if one agrees with the thesis of this essay, ‘Odyssey’ has the same message implicit that Bioshock made explicit; by simple virtue of playing a game, you are relinquishing much of your own self to fulfill an understood set of tasks provided you by another.
   Thinking on it, it becomes a little eerie how a gamer’s brain has been conditioned to the expectations of a game.  I can’t remember what it was specifically, but sometime ago I started a game while my wife watched, which is something of a rarity.  She asked me the not uncommon question for someone who doesn’t game; “How do you know where to go?  How do you know what you’re doing?”  Which I replied, having played video games over twenty-five years on a dozen plus systems, I was pretty fluent in the language of games.  Where to go, what that flashing doodad implies, what will occur by talking to that bobbing mushroom creature, etc. etc.
   So essentially, as gamers, we have conditioned our brains to take cues and follow directions.  Even the choice-y games are often simply a binary system. Do you a Eat the pulsating chicken leg?  Or b Kill the octopus?
   Thinking of it in those terms, it becomes more of an insidious hobby than even it’s common reputation as a violent time-waster would imply.
   ’Course that’s all an overly dramatic way of looking at it.  But it is a little incongruous that a medium defined as interactive remains something that can be experienced almost exclusively through reflexive muscle response.

I think this writer’s making the mistake of giving credit to the game for trying and failing to make insightful points when it should all really just be ascribed to bad writing.

The moment you know that the writers don’t have a clue of what they’re trying to say is when Trip sees the terrarium. She claims that it’s a perfectly sustaining ecosystem, like they one they’re trying to replicate. “The plankton gets the energy from the sun, the fish eat the plants, and the big fish eat the little ones.”

That works for one generation. Then the little fish have all been eaten, the big fish die without food, or eat the rest of the plankton, and then die. This was supposed to be her big metaphor for life, and her mission and it’s all BUNK.

I’d need to replay the game to write something longer and probably more insightful – but I found the ambivalence of the game (neither Trip nor Monkey are goody-goody, they’ve both flawed – although calling them ‘terrible’ strikes me as the sort of hyperbole you get on message boards) exactly one of its assets. Instead of being about freedom vs. slavery, I think the game, its story and its characters are about different kinds of freedom vs. different kinds of being enslaved. In a relationship (even without some techno-headband) you’re not 100% free – you agree to your freedom being reduced in certain ways, or you choose to leave the relationship. We tend to romanticise the ways in which we’re less free in a relationship, but the fact remains: in a relationship you trade some freedoms for other things. Same with society: there is no such thing as 100% freedom within a society, as there are always certain rules. Again, it’s a trade-off: you can be a free individual, or you can give up some of your freedoms in order to be part of a society.

I’m not saying that Enslaved did an amazing job of raising these issues, and the restrictive gameplay definitely counteracts the narrative to some extent – but I find the author’s own notion of freedom to be somewhat simplistic and binary in a way that simply doesn’t correspond with reality. The game’s notion of freedom as something that is situational and interlinked with shifting dependencies within a developing relationship? Strikes me as both more interesting and more realistic.