If Standing Still is Fine
DEATHLOOP & NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139…
A pandemic post-mortem on grief, time lost, and acceptance
Contains spoilers for both Deathloop & NieR Replicant
Exiting the holiday reverberation of COVID-19 cases, this time has been an interesting context to think about cycles; about repetition; about time locked in stasis. One could even say I’ve been obsessed with thinking about it.
Along the way: I quit my job, my family went through some medical scares (thankfully relatively unscathed), I traveled and road tripped in Western Iceland, and friends entered but mostly exited the limited sphere of my everyday experience. And yet despite these changes, I find myself lost. I wonder how I’ve returned here; locked in the gravitational pull of this cycle; dumbfounded at the thought that I’m traversing a road I’ve already traveled; still paralyzed with indecision and uncertainty.
So of course I played more time loop games.
Deathloop: the recent Dishonored-universe time looping immersive sim from Arkane Lyon; was an interesting pairing for this context. The protagonist: Colt, forgetful of how he got here; finds himself trapped in a repeating day, spurred on by some unknown force to break out of it. Julianna, the island’s Archivist, is hell bent on preventing him from doing so.
Surrounded by Silicon Valley-esque “Visionaries” and a mix of battle-royale-victors and trust-fund-socialite “Eternalists”, the Isle of Blackreef is its own caricature of venture-capital-backed startup culture. A few intellectually obsessed chase morally vacuous ends and a wide cast of hanger-ons reap rewards by association; partying and drinking away on the sidelines awaiting the next life-changing breakthrough to carry them to new heights.
In order to restore the flow of time for its inhabitants, all nine Visionaries (Colt and Julianna included) must die within the day. We, as Colt, inexplicably come to the conclusion that the loop must be broken, and get to work:
- the day is split into four discrete time segments: morning, noon, afternoon, evening
- four locations with events and changes depending on time: Karl’s Bay, Fristad Rock, The Complex, Updaam
- each target has their own schedule throughout the day, which can be coaxed by the player during or even between cycles
- Julianna, under another player’s control (or AI control occasionally) will sometimes invade the map to kill Colt if another Visionary is still alive at the current location
Devoid of answers as we piece together this murder puzzle, we get lost in figuring out the systems and flows of Blackreef. Until eventually, all of the knowledge and experience and information we’ve gathered coalesces into the “golden run”: our plan for a single day to finish things once and for all. In parallel: mirroring Colt; lost in the loops of iteration and time; we rarely stop and often fail to truly question why we’re doing what we’re doing.
When we carry this to its final conclusion and never really interrogate why we’re here, we succeed. The loop has been broken, Julianna hates you, and you’re left with an emptiness: “What was the point?”
It’s unfortunate that players only stop to question themselves at this point of finality.
Because breaking the loop was never what was important here anyway.
It’s in Julianna, in all the ways that Deathloop differs from previous entries in the series. The perfectionist player can no longer only crawl and comb over every nook and cranny. Once Julianna invades, all feelings of safety, familiarity, and mastery are thrown out the window. Suddenly your senses come alight and your knowledge is put to the test. Beautiful disaster ensues. Failure: real failure; is now within our possibility space, and there is nothing quite like dancing on the edge between survival and oblivion.
It’s in the slow burn realization of what your relationship to Julianna is; the quips of banter and traded barbs; the uneasy familiarity of someone near and dear and yet at odds with; the disgust at the callous ends to which she’s willing to fuck with Colt; the somberness at the realization that the loop is really all she has left.
It’s in the gradual change that occurs the longer you stay in the loop, drifting further and further from Colt’s cause and resonating with Julianna’s resolve. Until finally, you take up the mantle of Julianna yourself: enveloped in the thrill of becoming the hunter; running free unhindered by danger; leveraging your earned knowledge and lived experience to protect that which matters most.
Because while stories about time loops generally traverse our natural inclinations about repetition:
Towards our fear of, and breaking cycles of;
They rarely look at all the regenerative ways loops in our lives serve us. Despite what may be going on outside, the routines we choose keep us: on track toward our goals; in touch with the people we love; in connection with the communities we’ve found ourselves a part of; as long as we keep at it.
And in many ways, Deathloop tells a story parallel to Colt’s. In all the ways Blackreef’s anomaly serves us (as player diverged from Colt), it also serves Julianna:
- Colt is still the only actual family that Julianna has left
- the remaining Visionaries are the family she’s chosen despite their flaws, but the repetitious cycles of being killed by Colt serve as a kind of justice in its own way
- there is enormous opportunity in the loop for her as one of the few retaining information and memories between cycles
- the world outside has already turned to shit, considering at least a century has passed
When we realize what the loop means to Julianna: in how it is her choice to be here; what right do we have to take that away?
Colt has lived his life.
Stop breaking the loop; stop chasing the end; there is no resolution to be had here.
This emptiness is grief, and that is okay.
In many ways, these cycles mirror another game I played this year: one where, while the reality of events remain monolithic despite our best efforts, revisitation with added perspective opens up new questions, understanding, and a path towards making peace with the past.
NieR Replicant is unlike so many other games in this genre. It is wholly unconcerned with saving the world or really even going on some grand quest. Masquerading as a journey about curing and later finding your sister when she is kidnapped, Replicant at its core is really about four friends who traipse around the shrunken ruins of a post-post-apocalyptic society, attempting to figure out how to make peace with all the ways they’ve been broken.
Like lingering along the event horizon of a dying star, each of these characters finds the pull of the Protagonist inescapable, even if it inevitably leads to their own demise.
At first, Kaine, Emil, and Grimoire Weiss are all drawn to the Protagonist because of his selflessness: searching tirelessly to cure his little sister; their fates intertwine as he helps them in exchange for accompanying him. And yet once Yonah is kidnapped, we see how the years following have worn on him. His pride and identity as selfless caretaker have warped into vengeful pursuer, selfishly consumed with reclaiming his lost status.
We must achieve our goals no matter the cost, even at the expense of those closest to us.
And so we do. We rescue Yonah, our friends are gone, and the credits roll.
And yet, in classic NieR fashion, there are multiple endings here that occur semi-sequentially, and so we replay the latter half of the game, post-Yonah’s kidnapping, with added perspective from our companions. We learn of Kaine bargaining against borrowed time; of Emil’s daunting apprehension of the monstrous being he has become; of the cost of Grimoire Weiss’ betrayal of his rigid purpose for being. Bit by bit, we iterate and realize the true cost of our selfishness: dooming our friends and all of humankind to oblivion; all for a sister we claim to love and yet rarely actually spend time with; all for our own hubris.
As we face down Kaine-turned-shade, the last fragment of our friends who remains, we can finally account for the tragedy our violence leaves in its wake. To spare her life, we’re finally given a new choice: to discard all proof of our achievements as if it never happened; to delete ourselves and everything we’ve worked towards since the beginning;
To let go of the goal, so that the memory of the moments in-between can live.
What happens after, in Ending E as Kaine, is triumphant and validating in all the ways of realizing where the true value of these experiences lie. In revisiting and capturing those moments of selflessness; in salvaging what we can from those moments in repetition from this time of fated doom and loss. In taking this inheritance and growing something new from the ashes of what was.
Despite my best hopes for otherwise, this time in repetition has been, what it has been
Empty
Lonely
and that any lingering regret, fear, expectation, or shame towards it is meaningless here.
Occasionally I’m reminded that the fragmented moments of mundane levity I long for existed before this time, and that they will exist for forever afterwards.
I tell myself that this ebb and flow is life. That the only worthwhile pursuits are to seek out deeper truths about what has been, and focus on integrating small bits to be a part of what will be.
Until those pieces are sturdy, static, solid
A part of this repetitious cycle that living is.
Thanks for reading
If you enjoyed what I wrote, feel free to leave some claps or followDEATHLOOP by Arkane Studios @ bethesda.net/en/game/deathloop
NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139… by Toylogic @ nier.square-enix-games.com
