In the 90s Tim Schafer made some of my favourite games — notably Grim Fandango — but his later non-point-n-click games have never appealed to me in the same way as his early adventure games. The thing that drove me to those games wasn’t so much the gameplay, but the stories and characters. Hearing that the Broken Age Kickstarter campaign had been successful certainly grabbed my attention, but upon finding out it was episodic and hearing a lukewarm reception of the first act, my enthusiasm dwindled somewhat.

However, last month the complete game was included in the PlayStation Plus free bundle, so I lapped that shit up. Having completed it last night I can safely say that it was great. Of the two episodes, the second was easily the stronger of the two, but I certainly feel better for playing them both together.

Before I get into the main thing I loved, I’ll just say that the art style is beautiful. The script is also full of moments that made me laugh out loud, especially in its second act. I do wonder if it was worth paying for a-list celebrities to do the voice acting, considering how it was funded. However, they did a good job and in time no-one will care about the game’s development.

I’m gonna spoil the hell out of this game now so if that bothers you I wouldn’t read any further.

Spoilers:

When I first started playing, the initial impression I got with regards to its themes was that it was, essentially, a coming of age story. This initial impression turned out to be incorrect, I think. The central theme and thrust of the game, to me, is one about inequality, and our innate fear of those that are different from ourselves. This theme is expressed throughout with varying levels of explicitness.

First of all, it’s in the two central characters, Vella and Shay. Shay is a white male who starts his journey on a spaceship. His purpose on this spaceship is unknown, but it’s clear that the ship’s purpose is to protect him at all costs. Vella, by contrast, is a black female whom is about to be fed to a big scary monster as part of a ritual to keep their village safe. In terms of narrative, the first act doesn’t really have a great deal to offer — Vella is set on killing the monster, and Shay is tasked with ‘saving’ creatures from various planets.

At the end of the first act, Vella is able to take down the monster. Meanwhile, Shay’s ship mysteriously crashed. Spoiler alert, it turns out that Shay’s ship was the monster, and his entire existence has been a lie. He was never in space, and the creatures he was saving were in fact the maidens that were being sacrificed. It was all an illusion.

The characters then end up switching environments. This really gives the second act a lot of life. While each character is still essentially completing an arbitrary laundry list of tasks (through the medium of puzzles), it’s interesting seeing the two worlds mix like this.

It is in this half that it is revealed that the reason for everything is a eugenics scheme by a race on the other side of a ‘plague dam’. This dam is a literal wall dividing the ‘impure’ people of Vella’s world from those of Shay’s world. Why were they taking maidens? Because as anyone who knows anything about genetics will tell you, inbreeding does not lead to perfection.

The story comes to a climax with two monster ships — one with Shay on board and the other with Vella— literally butting heads, unable to pass each other. The solution to this puzzle is to get one ship to hug the other, while the other ship melts them both together. Once melted together they act as a bridge so they can both pass. Honestly, it’s pretty unclear how exactly they were able to escape the ships, but what is clear is the message — we should stop butting heads and start building bridges.

My favourite thing about the ending is the very final moment, where Shay and Vella see each other for the first time since switching places. They don’t say anything, or make any physical contact, they just share a smile. It’s a beautifully simple and heart warming moment. By stepping into each other’s world they were able to learn about the other person and gain a new found respect for each other, where before they met each other with confusion and aggression.

I think Broken Age’s message is really important, especially in the wake of things like GamerGate, it’s pretty clear that we still have a long way to go. It’s a shame that Schafer managed to alienate himself from that group before finishing the game. The problem with talking about issues is getting people to listen. People don’t want to hear opinions that differ from their own, so they won’t read the blog posts or watch to the lectures. Everyone is living in an echo chamber. Games have such great potential because it puts players in a character’s shoes, but so many games fail to take advantage of this. I wish there were more games like Broken Age, that can spread their message by engaging with people rather than yelling at them.