A lot of this stemmed from a remark on one of my films of Chapter Five from someone saying that they missed the Bobs. I think I do, too. I understand fully why they were removed, and agree with the decision – they aren’t actually good representations of the Jjaro. But it makes the levels feel a bit… well, empty.
I feel like one of the most important parts of the game is the final chapter, but a lot of its applicability is sort of… subtle, and a lot of players will probably miss it. I didn’t pick up on it the first time I played the game, though that might’ve been the fault of the impenetrable swarms of enemies. Players of 1.2 probably won’t have that problem, but still… I wonder if there are ways to illustrate the game’s central themes a bit more powerfully by involving the player more directly in them.
I’ve been reading up on Shoshana Zuboff’s theses on surveillance capitalism and am probably going to check out her book of the same title from the library relatively soon. I feel as though perhaps they could be extremely relevant for the Jjaro in this game. What I’ve gotten from the game – and Pfhorrest can correct me if I’m getting any of this wrong – is that the Jjaro are basically conservatism, in the old-fashioned sense of opposing change rather than how most Americans use it today, taken to an absurd extreme. They are so dogmatic in their refusal to allow history to change that they become a mirror of their own worst enemies, turning their society into a nightmare of surveillance and violations on civil liberties and, ironically, leading to the potential destruction of all organic life in the galaxy.
Most of this isn’t explicitly spelled out, though. I’m not necessarily suggesting to spell it out explicitly, either – I’m a bit wary of works that explicitly tell players what to think. It’s an awful dogmatic imposition on the part of the author. But what I see in Chapter Five seems like, to use a crude metaphor, a connect-the-dots drawing filled in from only about a quarter of the dots. I’m not necessarily suggesting we should connect every last dot, but perhaps we can redraw the outline from a larger number of the dots so that players get a clearer picture.
Some of this is liable to depend on whether Tacticus or someone else will have time to create sprites for the Jjaro. But perhaps, if so, we can throw in some individual Jjaro fighting against the W’rkncacnter, and then sprinkle across Chapter Five various terminals alluding to what a dystopian surveillance state their society has turned into. It might feel a bit ridiculous to add those terminals without actual Jjaro populating the levels, but it could probably be worked in fine if we had them. Perhaps we could even use the structure and writing styles of Infinity’s Pfhor bureaucracy terminals as a guideline, suggesting that there are some continuities to authoritarian societies throughout galactic history.
Obviously all of this is up to Pfhorrest. Some of these ideas also stem from a discussion a week or two back in the Discord about “show, don’t tell” in video games (and Marathon in particular). I feel that some of these suggestions might be a way to show some of the game’s central themes a bit more vividly. Essentially, one of the core components of fascism is people surrendering their individual liberties, particularly privacy; and this may occur voluntarily if people are not careful. Social media seems a particularly insidious and almost invisible case of this (which takes us back to Zuboff), but it’s not as if that’s the only case in recent history where this occurred. The War on Terror, which was a direct inspiration for many of Eternal’s events, was of course another notable case of this.
I will also want to work some of these ideas into Chronicles as well, and if they are in the final release of Eternal, it would be a way to increase continuity between the two games, so I will admit to a bit of a self-interested motivation in making this suggestion. However, it is also, of course, an idea I have come to care deeply about. As an aspiring IT major, it is necessarily an idea that I have given great consideration to, since it is inextricably intertwined with the profession I am studying. If there’s a way to illustrate some of Eternal’s themes more vividly for players, it may be worth considering.
I should note that I’m not attempting to say Chapter Five is below par at this point – 1.2 was a colossal improvement over every previous version, to the point where it’s now a lot more fun to play. It may actually be my second favourite chapter on that front after Chapter Three. But there might be a way to make it feel more… real, for lack of a better term. The fact that you’re basically fighting just Pathways enemies until the Pfhor show up does seem like a potential area for improvement, and this is one part of the game where it actually would make story sense to have recognisably humanoid characters in the levels. So if Tacticus or someone else has time to create Jjaro sprites, I would greatly welcome the addition, and think it would be possible to use that to bring some of the game’s central themes across more vividly for players.
Just something to think about.