RoryTate
Member
- May 15, 2018
- 194
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The thing is that some people don't see or play the MC as such a tortured soul in this game. I mean, there are events to show the player that he likely has poor mental health, like seeing ghosts of his dead friends a lot and having conversations with them, and an obvious mask of "Cassanova/womanizer" that he plays up to hide who he really is, plus there are other characters – mainly Els – telling him that he's not well or that he should be attending sessions with the other veterans. The most important symptom here though is the way he is slowly processing his memories, and the fact he is experiencing them like they are new and just uncovered. Plus he seemingly can't face what happened on the day that Zaina died, or speak of it (at least that's where it seems his block is when talking with the therapist). But that absence is tough to notice unless you're specifically looking for what isn't there.None of the other women actually knows, or cares about his burden or how he really feels. [...] They show no interest in his inner conflict. Sure, they sometimes come upon the symptoms, and try to be there for him, but not the real issues.
On the other hand, the MC has a very successful MMA career that he's moving forward, a close group of friends who support him, no unhealthy addictions or other crutches to deal with any supposed issues, and he generally acts laid back and chill in his reactions to everything. Seeing Zaina and Davis can easily come across to the player as just the MC's internal dialog. Or that he is still in love with Zaina and just misses her. Honestly, to me these scenes often feel more like a narrative device that limits the need for too many unwanted flashbacks. The presence of these "ghosts" just doesn't feel menacing or unhealthy, in a "You must start fires, because the world must burn!" kind of way.
So I can see why others have said that Els felt like she was forcing herself too much into the MC's personal space – and perhaps gaslighting him – during the initial poolside talk when a lot of this first gets dumped on the player. It was only in the most recent chapter that we got a real sense of illness with the clearly dangerous panic attack. And this was also the only time in the story when the MC talked out loud to his ghosts – it happened during the therapy session – where he forgot he was in the middle of a real-world conversation at the time.
The extent of the MC's character is a lot better established now, with a more solid sense of his injuries, but I still sometimes feel it clashes with his other behaviours, and so it can feel more "angsty" than "serious" at times.
To bring this all back around to the love interests, I think who you choose can simply depend on how well that main storyline lands for you. And for some I think it feels like those issues are something the MC will work his way through in time on his own, as he needs to. I'm probably more in your camp than otherwise. To me, Vi sees the MC too much as her "Knight in shining armour", and so I feel she will have difficulty being there fully to support him when he's broken in some manner in the future (whether that's due to these traumas, or just in general because life is never without challenges). So other LIs do seem like a better fit to me as well, but I think it all comes down to whether the MC is played as a tortured soul or just a moderately stressed war veteran.