ash talks for way too long (nitw edition)
Jan. 16th, 2021 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hereinevitablyhave you ever consumed a piece of media so impactful that you genuinely cannot discern whether it happens to be tailored towards all of your specific interests or whether it is the basis of all of your specific interests? well. that's me. might i offer the video game night in the woods!
general / miscellaneous notes: starting from a purely visual standpoint! nitw has such a charming art / animation style i think. the characters have flat colors and simple designs, noodle arms, floppy puppet animation. also they're all animals. that's fucking awesome. the majority of nitw is set in late autumn, so the town has a really nice and warm color palette, leaves changing color, etc. etc. later on in the game, where the cosmic horror elements (more on that later) start to kick in, they handle that very prettily as well! i especially love mae's dream sequences, the shift to cold colors, the way mae glows, how everything moves a little differently. game mechanics wise, i don't think there's much to cover? honestly i'm more of a game... viewer than player so i'm not really qualified to talk about this but. it gets the job done! the main focus is the story, the story and the dialogue and the writing in general, so the gameplay just. works. and that's perfectly fine!
there are a few things though that i fucking love—first, mae's ability to jump on wires. this is so wonderful to me. it's instilled in me an incredibly dangerous and entirely unrealistic desire to jump on a powerline or two. i just think it would be fun! second, the addition of the guitar hero minigame! or, uh, bass hero? anyways. i think that is so cool of nitw and also the main cast of characters like. there is a BAND they are in a BAND [slaps knee] music. what's not to love there. and finally the demontower game which is shockingly good? i actually cannot make it past like the third level but boy do i have fun trying! but the fact that there is just a fully functioning hack-n-slash arcade game tucked into nitw. gameception. amazing.
and more [slaps knee] music! the soundtrack is so funky. fits the different moods of the game so well. i have both albums saved on spotify and frequent both of them. as well as the songs in the bass hero minigame! die anywhere else... the lyrics. yeah.
overarching themes and motifs: a single glance at my ao3 (and my ao3 tags) will tip off the fact that i am deeply obsessed with small-town settings. my own town isn't quite as hopeless and crumbling as possum springs, falling more on the infuriatingly bland suburbia spectrum of small-towns; however, themes such as bea's constant pipe-dreams of making it out of a tiny, claustrophic town resonate deeply. also the beginning scene where one of the dialogue options refers to an awful flood just makes me chuckle a little, because if there's anything i understand it's a good old devastating flood.
all joking aside, the writers really did a fantastic job with the town of possum springs, to the point where it could almost be a character in and of itself? or, maybe that's a little much, but there is just. so much dying soul to this place. the right side of the mae's house that's permanently under construction throughout the duration of the game, the boarded up windows throughout the place, the bits and pieces of history that you learn as the game progresses. oh man.
there's a quote that i've seen a lot of people bring u whenever they mention this game: "everything i've ever let go of has claw marks on it" from david wallace's infinite jest. and man it really does fit! one of the most interesting bits of analysis i've seen is how everything in this game moves backwards. right from the beginning scene, where mae is at the bus stop, the player needs to move her left—which is weird, because moving... right is usually associated with progression, especially in the west! pretty much every big side-scrolling platformer i can think of (mario is a huge one) has you move right, move forward, so nitw's focus on leftwards movement just hammers in the... feelings of being stuck in the past that the entire town is swathed in. like i mentioned before, the right side of mae's house is entirely blocked off by construction and an inacessable part of the map. the transition screens from area to area show mae running left. a good majority of the game is mae waking up, leaving her house, and moving left through the town until the next day. like a constant cycle! like the headline for the game. At the end of everything, hold onto anything.
it really does cater to my deep fascination with themes of change (or... lack thereof?)! mae's reasion for dropping out of college and returning back to possum springs is needing to be back in a place where everything is familiar and not just. shapes. the miners' motivation for all that they... do with the black goat is that they want to return to the glory days, back when possum springs was supposedly prosperous and not just a forgotten spot on the map.
that's another thing that i enjoy about nitw: it's portrayal of mental health? pretty much the entire main cast has something going on, be it mae's dissociative disorder, gregg's... potential bipolar disorder, angus's childhood, bea's general... stress and hopelessness. hmm. there is a lot to unpack here, most of which i don't really want to delve into in the middle of a silly little dreamwidth post, but i just think that. the game handles each character very nicely—it's not... so aggressive that it become preachy, but it's still present and prominent and just. ahh. there's also the gay rep! i think at one point gregg and angus talk about the difficulties of being the only (openly) queer people in town, while mae mentions that she doesn't really mind what gender a potential partner would be during the scene with the weird teenagers. she's also confirmed to be pan by one of the creator's curious cat but... i feel like that is a gray area of canon. but yeah! if i was not so bad at putting things into words i would probably elaborate more, but as it stands, the cast of nitw are all so real and fleshed out. they have awkward moments! they have sad moments. they have silly, stupid, happy moments. they deeply impacted me when i first played the game, and they still bounce around my thoughts today like a air hockey puck let loose.
favorite scenes: there are two scenes in particular that just hit me so fucking hard every time i revisit them: the chat at the lakeside about goodness from gregg's path, and the talk about proximity from bea's path. starting with gregg! this is the path i got to know first, and i'm pretty sure it's the moment that fully skyrocketed this game up my list of favorites. there's something so raw about gregg opening up about his relationship with angus, feeling like parking lot trash but also feeling like he needs to be someone, someone good for his boyfriend? when gregg asks mae if he's a good person? when mae says that he's good, that angus is also good, but gregg only agrees with the part about angus? man.
bea's scene is something i didn't visit until much later, but it hits so hard. her anguish is so palpable when she talks about how these are her parties, something she needs in the middle of a life that's just filled with dread for her, and how mae's ruined it for her. when she finally explains a little more bluntly why she resents mae so much—because mae had a chance to escape and "threw it away" for reasons that she refuses to disclose. and then they move onto one of my favorite conversations, the one i have quoted in my carrd and everything. where mae asks if they would still be friends had they not been shoved together in girl scouts as kids, had it not been for proximity, and bea says that she doesn't know for sure. but her life seems to be chasing things that keep on slipping away, so maybe there is something to the things that are in reach? god.
cosmic horror: i don't really have much substance for this section either than just a simple FUCK YEAH. [points at my twitter and ao3] i am so in love with anything horror so this is kind of just a free-for-all brownie points section but man is it good. the eldritch abominations revealed by the "god" mae meets, the strange floating feeling every dream sequence carries, the !@#$%^&^%$ of it all. i didn't really pay too close attention to the synopsis of the game when i first got into it so i actually did not expect things to get as dark as they do, but god am i pleased with it. it's like, night in the woods could've just been about mae's return to possum springs without all the supernatural stuff and i probably would've still enjoyed it, but the cosmic horror is just. cherry on top. amazing.
other thoughts: don't know how coherent this post is going to end up because. something about the format of the dreamwidth post box makes every intelligent thought i've ever had fly straight out of my head and leaves behind only brain rot. but like i said in the beginning of this, night in the woods is one of the most impactful things i've ever had the pleasure (and pain) of experiencing, and i really did want to splay at least a few of my thoughts out for the world to see. there are days, months, where i cannot touch the game myself because the level of emotion it evokes in me is too much, but during those periods i'm still absolutely haunted by the game. and, when i do play it, it really is quite cathartic. and i think i really am diving off into the deep end at this point, but. yeah! yeah. night in the woods.
College dropout Mae Borowski returns home to the crumbling former mining town of Possum Springs seeking to resume her aimless former life and reconnect with the friends she left behind. But things aren't the same. Home seems different now and her friends have grown and changed. Leaves are falling and the wind is growing colder. Strange things are happening as the light fades.i actually have no plan going into writing this entry; i just really want to talk about this game. i apologize in advance if this is entirely incoherent. if you would like to form your own opinions, i would highly—highly—recommend giving the game a try, or at least watching a playthrough on youtube. otherwise, i will be going heavily into spoiler territory here!
And there's something in the woods.
general / miscellaneous notes: starting from a purely visual standpoint! nitw has such a charming art / animation style i think. the characters have flat colors and simple designs, noodle arms, floppy puppet animation. also they're all animals. that's fucking awesome. the majority of nitw is set in late autumn, so the town has a really nice and warm color palette, leaves changing color, etc. etc. later on in the game, where the cosmic horror elements (more on that later) start to kick in, they handle that very prettily as well! i especially love mae's dream sequences, the shift to cold colors, the way mae glows, how everything moves a little differently. game mechanics wise, i don't think there's much to cover? honestly i'm more of a game... viewer than player so i'm not really qualified to talk about this but. it gets the job done! the main focus is the story, the story and the dialogue and the writing in general, so the gameplay just. works. and that's perfectly fine!
there are a few things though that i fucking love—first, mae's ability to jump on wires. this is so wonderful to me. it's instilled in me an incredibly dangerous and entirely unrealistic desire to jump on a powerline or two. i just think it would be fun! second, the addition of the guitar hero minigame! or, uh, bass hero? anyways. i think that is so cool of nitw and also the main cast of characters like. there is a BAND they are in a BAND [slaps knee] music. what's not to love there. and finally the demontower game which is shockingly good? i actually cannot make it past like the third level but boy do i have fun trying! but the fact that there is just a fully functioning hack-n-slash arcade game tucked into nitw. gameception. amazing.
and more [slaps knee] music! the soundtrack is so funky. fits the different moods of the game so well. i have both albums saved on spotify and frequent both of them. as well as the songs in the bass hero minigame! die anywhere else... the lyrics. yeah.
overarching themes and motifs: a single glance at my ao3 (and my ao3 tags) will tip off the fact that i am deeply obsessed with small-town settings. my own town isn't quite as hopeless and crumbling as possum springs, falling more on the infuriatingly bland suburbia spectrum of small-towns; however, themes such as bea's constant pipe-dreams of making it out of a tiny, claustrophic town resonate deeply. also the beginning scene where one of the dialogue options refers to an awful flood just makes me chuckle a little, because if there's anything i understand it's a good old devastating flood.
all joking aside, the writers really did a fantastic job with the town of possum springs, to the point where it could almost be a character in and of itself? or, maybe that's a little much, but there is just. so much dying soul to this place. the right side of the mae's house that's permanently under construction throughout the duration of the game, the boarded up windows throughout the place, the bits and pieces of history that you learn as the game progresses. oh man.
there's a quote that i've seen a lot of people bring u whenever they mention this game: "everything i've ever let go of has claw marks on it" from david wallace's infinite jest. and man it really does fit! one of the most interesting bits of analysis i've seen is how everything in this game moves backwards. right from the beginning scene, where mae is at the bus stop, the player needs to move her left—which is weird, because moving... right is usually associated with progression, especially in the west! pretty much every big side-scrolling platformer i can think of (mario is a huge one) has you move right, move forward, so nitw's focus on leftwards movement just hammers in the... feelings of being stuck in the past that the entire town is swathed in. like i mentioned before, the right side of mae's house is entirely blocked off by construction and an inacessable part of the map. the transition screens from area to area show mae running left. a good majority of the game is mae waking up, leaving her house, and moving left through the town until the next day. like a constant cycle! like the headline for the game. At the end of everything, hold onto anything.
it really does cater to my deep fascination with themes of change (or... lack thereof?)! mae's reasion for dropping out of college and returning back to possum springs is needing to be back in a place where everything is familiar and not just. shapes. the miners' motivation for all that they... do with the black goat is that they want to return to the glory days, back when possum springs was supposedly prosperous and not just a forgotten spot on the map.
that's another thing that i enjoy about nitw: it's portrayal of mental health? pretty much the entire main cast has something going on, be it mae's dissociative disorder, gregg's... potential bipolar disorder, angus's childhood, bea's general... stress and hopelessness. hmm. there is a lot to unpack here, most of which i don't really want to delve into in the middle of a silly little dreamwidth post, but i just think that. the game handles each character very nicely—it's not... so aggressive that it become preachy, but it's still present and prominent and just. ahh. there's also the gay rep! i think at one point gregg and angus talk about the difficulties of being the only (openly) queer people in town, while mae mentions that she doesn't really mind what gender a potential partner would be during the scene with the weird teenagers. she's also confirmed to be pan by one of the creator's curious cat but... i feel like that is a gray area of canon. but yeah! if i was not so bad at putting things into words i would probably elaborate more, but as it stands, the cast of nitw are all so real and fleshed out. they have awkward moments! they have sad moments. they have silly, stupid, happy moments. they deeply impacted me when i first played the game, and they still bounce around my thoughts today like a air hockey puck let loose.
favorite scenes: there are two scenes in particular that just hit me so fucking hard every time i revisit them: the chat at the lakeside about goodness from gregg's path, and the talk about proximity from bea's path. starting with gregg! this is the path i got to know first, and i'm pretty sure it's the moment that fully skyrocketed this game up my list of favorites. there's something so raw about gregg opening up about his relationship with angus, feeling like parking lot trash but also feeling like he needs to be someone, someone good for his boyfriend? when gregg asks mae if he's a good person? when mae says that he's good, that angus is also good, but gregg only agrees with the part about angus? man.
bea's scene is something i didn't visit until much later, but it hits so hard. her anguish is so palpable when she talks about how these are her parties, something she needs in the middle of a life that's just filled with dread for her, and how mae's ruined it for her. when she finally explains a little more bluntly why she resents mae so much—because mae had a chance to escape and "threw it away" for reasons that she refuses to disclose. and then they move onto one of my favorite conversations, the one i have quoted in my carrd and everything. where mae asks if they would still be friends had they not been shoved together in girl scouts as kids, had it not been for proximity, and bea says that she doesn't know for sure. but her life seems to be chasing things that keep on slipping away, so maybe there is something to the things that are in reach? god.
I don't know. I honestly don't. My entire life feels like running after something that keeps moving away into the distance, while I stay in the same place... and I guess proximity counts for a lot right now.now. does that not just ruin you.
cosmic horror: i don't really have much substance for this section either than just a simple FUCK YEAH. [points at my twitter and ao3] i am so in love with anything horror so this is kind of just a free-for-all brownie points section but man is it good. the eldritch abominations revealed by the "god" mae meets, the strange floating feeling every dream sequence carries, the !@#$%^&^%$ of it all. i didn't really pay too close attention to the synopsis of the game when i first got into it so i actually did not expect things to get as dark as they do, but god am i pleased with it. it's like, night in the woods could've just been about mae's return to possum springs without all the supernatural stuff and i probably would've still enjoyed it, but the cosmic horror is just. cherry on top. amazing.
other thoughts: don't know how coherent this post is going to end up because. something about the format of the dreamwidth post box makes every intelligent thought i've ever had fly straight out of my head and leaves behind only brain rot. but like i said in the beginning of this, night in the woods is one of the most impactful things i've ever had the pleasure (and pain) of experiencing, and i really did want to splay at least a few of my thoughts out for the world to see. there are days, months, where i cannot touch the game myself because the level of emotion it evokes in me is too much, but during those periods i'm still absolutely haunted by the game. and, when i do play it, it really is quite cathartic. and i think i really am diving off into the deep end at this point, but. yeah! yeah. night in the woods.
