Fiction for Utilitarians: Elsinore

[feotakahari]

This just beat Majora's Mask, Oxenfree, AND The Sexy Brutale for best time-loop game I've ever played. (I've yet to play Outer Wilds.)



In four days, almost everyone in Elsinore will die, and you're the only one who remembers. They don't respect you, but they also don't notice you, skulking around in the shadows and overhearing their secrets. Can you make them listen, or will they dismiss you--for your race, your sex, your status, or their certainty that they know what they're doing? Which lives can you save? Which horrors can you prevent? And where do you want this story to end?

(I told my mother this is a game about having all the information and none of the power to get people to act on it. She said that sounded like her life.)

There is no golden ending. Not just because these people are in so much pain, and not just because the invading enemy army is about to make most of your problems moot, but because the sick bastard who orchestrated all this is bored and wants to see people die. He hands over his magic book, sees how much chaos he can cause, and then once someone chooses a future they can live with, he takes it back and finds his next victim. No matter who you save or condemn, he walks free in the end.

Unless, of course, you make the hidden choice. Take his fucking magic book, and set it on fire. Trap both of you in Elsinore for time everlasting. Suffer together, knowing that the rest of the world is forever spared from his crimes.

This is the most brutally Utilitarian thing I've ever done in a video game, and I still can't believe the devs let me do it.

Comments

[lb_lee]

Oh man, it's like... Myst on a much bigger scale and fully populated with people (instead of an empty wasteland).

[feotakahari]

Myst tends to be go here, solve this puzzle, and then you’re done. Elsinore is a lot more about interlocking systems—telling person A fact B only solved part of the problem, so what happens when you also tell C about D? In a way, I’d actually compare it to Doodle God, as new combinations of information unlock new possibilities.