Game:

Mad Rat Dead (2020)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 15:00

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4

Picturesque enough for a thumbnail.

(YouTube eats line breaks in some places for description previews, so this is some buffer text to prevent the spoiler-y stuff from being accidentally visible from people's sub boxes or whatever)

I've seen actual video essays on the feelings the first part of this video manages to evoke. I do like bittersweet stuff, maybe to an irrational degree, so this is just wonderful to me.

Come to think of it, while I've expressed a little regret over killing the scientist in the previous episode, I think Mad Rat's admission that he's still uneasy about dying has a little more impact when it follows him having actually realized his dream. Granted, he authentically did seem fine enough dying after killing the scientist in his hallucination, but that was also before he grew some empathy and while he was still riding the high that the hallucination might've enhanced a little.

It was always weird to me that the game skipped over the implication that Heart actually dies multiple times as a result of the time shenanigans. One of the things I find most interesting about Heart, truth be told, is just how little he ever complains about what he's personally put through. He expresses a little grief over not having been able to help more, but never anything like his death having been pointless, or even having died at all.

Speaking of which, Heart's consciousness persisting is one of the stranger parts of the story, I think. I've long wondered if it's a slight pun on "kokoro," a Japanese word often translated as "heart," but meaning more like "mind" or "spirit" than the actual organ, at which point the two being one and the same would make a little sense. I admit that this game's story has a couple things, a few much worse than this one, that come out of nowhere or might not hold up to much scrutiny, but I can let it pass.

Now that we've established Heart isn't just a hallucination, by the way, I have to admit I always wondered where the story might've gone if it turned out he was when Mad Rat asked last episode. Not sure what it is I find appealing about that.

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