There was once a game company called Quintet
You might not know them if you weren't there for the Super Nintendo era
You might not know them even if you were
But they were a company worth remembering
There aren't a lot of games that deliver on melancholy
That slow pensive sadness that leaves you quiet and reflective
It's an emotional state that we need sometimes
Something that creates a place for us to learn about ourselves
And to feel the tragedy of the world we just don't make melancholy games very often these days
But that wasn't always the case and that's why I miss Quintet
I really wish a developer like them existed today
I feel very privileged to have grown up with their games
Because they frequently brought this unique Japanese sense of melancholy to their games
That I'm not sure I've experienced in a video game since they mysteriously fell apart
And that melancholy was a powerful devastating thing
A thing that left you joyful in sadness each time the credits rolled
Quintet games were wistful games games about humanity
They were games that saw all the flaws in us and loved us anyway
That is something I would love to experience in a game again
And we have got to talk about those games
I'll have to get into some pretty major spoilers to do it fair warning
But I think you have to get into those spoilers
To understand what made these games so uniquely powerful
Even with the spoilers though if you have never played these games
I recommend playing them for yourself sometime
You'll get a taste of them from my description but to get the real experience you really do have to play them
Quintet's four major games are all about the struggle between the light and the dark
Between the two sides of our nature
In the series this light and darkness are embodied by a god and a demon
But without a doubt these games are really about us
And there's a beautiful arc to these and evolution in thinking
They're all meditations on the same theme
But with the type of evolving perspective that comes with thought and time
The first of these games is ActRaiser
In which you play a defeated God returning to try to push back the darkness
Over the course of the game. You build up followers and your power grows
Untill you can finally take on the Archdemon plaguing the world
But once you finally succeed there's an epilogue
You take one last look at all of the people you helped
And you find that while the people as a whole are prospering
Many of the characters you've had the most interaction with have suffered or died
But that suffering isn't what makes it a Quintet game
No what makes it a Quintet game is that after surveying all of the towns you realize that the churches are empty
Now that you've won, you aren't needed
Nobody worships you anymore
There's nothing left for you your power is gone and all you have left is to withdraw again into the sky
But it's pointed out that this is a good thing
That you shouldn't hope for a time when humanity needs you again
When they flock to your churches praying for help
Because the best possible thing for mankind is to not face such perils to be able to take care of itself
ActRaiser was then followed by Soul Blazer
A game where you once again take on the role of the god opposing an evil demon
But where actraiser was a story of struggling against the darkness soul blazer is a story of becoming whole
Here the demon has imprisoned the souls of everything on earth
And you have to free them by defeating the monsters they're bound to
One by one you restore the beings of the world and with them comes the restoration of what they've created
What they added to the whole
Over the course of putting the pieces back together of becoming whole
The avatar you send to earth to fight the creatures keeping souls imprisoned falls in love
The game ends with his task done and him having to return to the heavens and leave everybody behind
But in the final scene your avatar chooses to become mortal to return to the woman he loves
The cost though is forgetting everything he has experienced including his time with her
But despite this she finds him and echoing the plot she starts from the beginning
Rebuilding their connection together now that the world itself is whole
ActRaiser 2 follows this, making nods to Paradise Lost the Divine Comedy
And the romantic era iterature that so clearly influenced the Quintet games
It's also the darkest of the bunch involving a literal journey to hell
The game is about false recovery the unending of pushing back the dark
That moment where you convince yourself you've won when really there's a lot more work to be done
And the game ends in the most Quintet way possible too
It ends with a line saying that the God you play will live forever
Just before showing your statue whether and crumble as the credits roll
That is so good
But it's Terranigma that means the most to me
Terranigma is the final phase of Quintet philosophy
The culmination
It's about accepting the place of sorrow in fighting the darkness
That the only way to get through the darkness is to first accept that it's a part of you
In Terranigma the way out of darkness starts with darkness
You can't ever find your way past it if you don't come to terms with the fact that it's where you began
It has elements of all the other games, the perpetual war between light and dark
The restoration of the world piece by piece
But most of all it's about not sealing away the dark but facing it
No matter how much it hurts you
The game is a tragedy where your character is both the cause of the tragedy and the subject of one
You are betrayed what you believe about yourself is completely upended
And at the end after so much sacrifice You create a world that is perfect
But in its perfection it has no place for you
The ending is left open though
There's a knock on a door, nothing else
It's never shown who's on the other side, but there's hope
Was that your character knocking?
There's the possibility of a rebirth of your character being reborn into this more perfect world
And then Quintet just ceased to be
The name stuck around for a few more years the studio helped with a few more projects and released a handful of minor works
And then just faded, in 2002 they've closed their forums
In 2008 their website finally died their work was done
The ideas they were trying to wrestle with had been worked through
The story they were trying to tell was told and so they just vanished
But we shouldn't forget their ideas
Or the feeling the sense of melancholy tinged with wonder and hope that they brought us
All of that to say if anybody knows or owns the right to the core Quintet Saga
Please reach out because I would love to talk to you
See you next week
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