The upside of predictability: a dissection on Nihilumbra

[Feo Takahari]

Another of my irregularly scheduled dissections, which I'll keep doing until someone tells me to stop.

Nihilumbra is a game about Born, a little chunk of nothingness that escapes from the void. He finds shape and form in reality, and he's intrigued by the world around him--but that which is void is meant to remain void, and the void itself chases after Born, consuming entire chunks of the world as it searches for him.

Born flees through a snowy mountainscape, a forest, a desert, and a volcanic region in that order, each utterly destroyed as the void follows behind him. Along the way, he learns from his surroundings, demonstrating both a new power and a new emotion in each region, gradually becoming more alive--and showing more and more guilt over the ruin left in his wake. As early as the second region, I was able to guess what the final region would be, and why it would be the last one. There was only one real possibility:

Spoiler: It ends in . . .

a city. Born becomes more and more human, so it's only natural that he meet his fate in a place where humans dwell. He's spent the whole game as an intelligent being surrounded by unintelligent ones, and now he has something to compare himself to. Finding himself lacking, at least in enough value to justify this endless destruction, he stops running, and he lets the void consume him.

I say that it's predictable, but it might as well be called inevitable. It was the single most fitting way to end the story, fulfilling every promise implicit in its structure and its themes, and any other ending would have been weaker.

But with that said,

Spoiler: it did manage to pull one over on me . . .

Born lets the void consume him, but it rejects him. His emotions have developed to the point that he's capable of self-sacrifice, so he no longer has any void inside him, and there's nothing in him for it to want.

This was the culmination of the secondary theme of emotional growth, but I was so distracted by the primary theme of inescapable mortality that I didn't see it coming. I only realized in retrospect that it, too, had been set up throughout the entire game.

How much do you try to avoid being predictable? Are you willing to do something expected if you think it will still have an impact?

 

[buyjupiter]

My brain makes connections in such odd ways that I'm actually trying for inevitability in most of my fiction. There's a spectrum of oddness that people will tolerate, and I'm trying to stay just this side of guano-level insanity.

 

[Nagash]

Nihilumbra was a stunning game; i found it to be extremely compelling and very touching on a human level, since its entire composition (music, main themes, sad and fatalist prose) was splendidly tragic. While most of the game was predictable, like you, I wasn't expecting Born being rejected by the void. However, i was almost certain that he would end up being devoured by the great wave, and sink in nothingness, his few days of life vanishing with the colors he had discovered along the way.

Fatality is a common theme in literature, even more so in theater and classical tragedy. You probably know that most Greek tragedies - and later French tragedies - follow a similar pattern, and obey to very strict rules (unity of time, action and place). By similar pattern, I mean that you are almost absolutely sure, that as the story closes in to an end, the title character will die, or be struck by tragedy as those surrounding him/her are biting the dust. In Sophocles's Ajax, the title character ends up falling on his sword, trying to die honorably after he brought shame upon himself through intolerable actions. In Oedipus the King, everything goes along the way the prophecy said it would, and the spectator is powerless, seeing Oedipus unknowingly slaying his father the king, mating with his own mother etc... Because that is the point of tragedy : we know from the beginning how it's going to end. At the time, when the plays were first elaborated and shown in public, most of the Athenian spectators (the citizens) would have heard the story of Ajax in Homer's Iliad, the legend of Oedipus, Medea, Perseus, Agamemnon... They knew most legends and stories by heart.

And the whole point of tragedy wasn't to play on suspense, doubt or surprises for the audience. The power of classical tragedy, was this feeling of fatality occurring before your eyes, as you stood powerless. This exact same fatality which struck the characters, continued to exist through these plays. Frustration, the pain, the pity felt through these representation was much thus greater, since it played on this state of mind. Catharsis wouldn't have been possible otherwise.

Let's just say that, while facing classical tragedy, we, much alike the protagonist, have heard "the prophecy", and know what will happen in the future. But since a "wall" divides the world of the audience, and that of the play, we can only assist to the debacle of the hero, who walks head first to his doom, despite our pleas, despite our cries... Fate is crushing, heartbreaking and, thus, extremely compelling.

Fatality - such a useful tool to play on the powerlessness of the reader. I find it to make tragedy even more compelling that when using suspense and uncertainty.

As for nihilumbra, I mistakenly believed it was a metaphor of man trying to escape his fate, always running, always changing, shaping the world around him as he went on. Always, he would progress, but he would never find a way to stop the clock, and put an end to inevitable death. Eventually, even in his great city, it would come for him and take him away.

However, seeing as the game ends, it would seem it wasn't so much about escaping your fate, than accepting it. Along his path, as he ran from the void, Born collected colors, as if they were some treasures of life we discovered along the way. Although hey helped him going through the plains, the deserts, the icy mountains, the volcano, the city...in the end, he always had to run. And in the end, as he stood atop the great city and that void came for him, Born gave in. He gave in to fate, and accepted his condition. Life had been precious, but even more so since it had been short. And the colors, made it worth living. In the end, the void ended up rejecting him. Why ? Because the void represented anguish, fear of fate, terror, despair... Terror of not having lived enough, despair facing death as we wished to live all over again, to make it a better life. But Born had filled his heart with the colors of life, love, joy, and his life had a meaning. He had truly lived, and therefore, death didn't threaten him.

Thus, the anguish, the despair, the terror, this feeling that time is always running out which makes us constantly run away, faded away. Because Born was ready to meet his fate, as he had experienced and tasted the colors of life, and fiercely lived with a burning passion. He had no regrets, and could therefore go on, unbothered.

In the end, this story is a charming and touching metaphor about growing up, aging, and embracing your fate at the end of the journey, with a smile on you face, a cheerful gaze, a mind full of memories, and a colorful heart...