*Heavy breathing, distorted lullaby by Johannes Brahms*
T̷̢̈h̶͓̕ả̴̡t̸͖̄'̷͙̑s̸̥̀ ̶̼͋ṉ̸̊ọ̵̆ẗ̶͙́ ̷͚̈́g̶̳͊o̶͙͒i̷̺͆n̸͙̆g̴̮͐ ̸̥̐ṯ̷͊o̵̙͝ ̵̨̌p̶̛͓r̷͕̒o̸̲̾t̶̘͆e̵̼̽c̸͍͒ṫ̴͚ ̷̰͝ŷ̵̜o̵̯̊ṳ̵́
*Scream*
*Game Theory intro music*
D̶̖̾o̴̲̓ ̵̭̐n̷̟̎o̷͍̔t̵̩͘ ̴̫͠l̷̪̀o̸̲̾ó̶̢k̸̲͊ ̷̗̈b̴̘͗e̸͖͝h̴̝̅i̶͇̋n̷̙̑d̶̕͜ ̷̪͑ȳ̵͈o̷̩̍ū̷̮.̷̧͌
*Game Theory intro music*
T̸̛̪h̷̗̓e̷̓ͅy̶͓̅ ̵̨̅l̴̡̃i̵̠͋e̷̗̽d̵͍̔ ̷̱͗t̸͙̋ó̵̲ ̴͔̔u̶̖̓s̸̯̈́.̴̖̐
*Game Theory intro music*
Hello Internet! Welcome to Game Theory,
the show that usually tries to encourage you to look at the world with both your mind and your eyes wide open.
But not today! because I'm talking about Close Your Eyes - hands down the scariest or, if not the scariest, the most WTF indie game I've played in 2018.
Now, I've suffered through A LOT of scary horror games that make you want to close your eyes,
but this is actually the first one I've played where closing your eyes is an actual game mechanic.
In fact, the first thing that you see when loading the game is an orientation,
welcoming you to the View Laboratory in the year 2057, teaching you how to blink.
You learn to blink, you learn to walk, and then this happens...
"OH NO NO NO" "WHAT IS THIS?!"
On the ceiling we're presented with a very clear mystery - a code written in reverse wing-dings 3:
"I need to know what happened to everyone."
And that's just the first few minutes of the game. It doesn't get much less disturbing from there, forcing you through fields of human hands...
"Yes please, take me on your magic journey!"
...burning hellscapes and cities made from purple alien tongues. While you're having to fight against these guys.
"WHAT IS THIS GAME?!"
As if that wasn't strange and creepy enough, all the while you're having to fight against THESE GUYS.
"It's the puppet now..."
"Now this is just like waiting for a theory isn't it?"
Clearly there's a story here. A really interesting story to boot,
but it's hidden under layers upon layers of hallucinations, cryptic dialogue, disturbing visuals, and heavy symbolism.
So today, I want to make sense out of the story of Close Your Eyes,
or at least piece together the story beyond "Drugs: Not even once".
Now, a lot of the game's story is actually told to us in the game's opening minutes,
but it's not until you've played through the whole thing that any of this makes sense.
As part of the tutorial, we see a chart for a test subject: Cecily Newman, part of the View program.
Sex: N/A,
Blood Type: N/A,
Husk Status: Insufficient Data,
Age: 4 hours,
Height: 5'6"
and Weight: 1,437 pounds?! That is one heavy androgynous baby!
The way the game presents this almost makes it sound like Cecily is a monster.
But the first time that we get a "Game Over", things start to make a little bit more sense.
That body that we see on the floor during the "Game Over" screen isn't a human body,
Cecily Newman is a robot.
A robot with no assigned sex, blood type, an age of only four hours and a weight of 1,437 pounds.
So that explains mostly everything that we see on the chart,
but then, what does "Husk Status" mean?
In the opening sections of the game we get the warning that "Husks can kill",
and that if you're attacked by a husk that you should cover your eyes.
Hence the game mechanic of closing your eyes.
But it's not until halfway through the game that we're able to piece together what these Stretch Armstrong rejects want and how they're related to us.
According to this diagram, the View program designed a procedure called "Cognitive Transfer",
a process that takes a human and then splits them into two parts. Their consciousness is saved into the Entity's Yielded Essence Storage,
E.Y.E.S for short,
which is then installed into robot bodies like Cecily's.
It's that classic sci-fi trope of a mind upload, a way to live forever.
So then what happens to the other half of the human, the discarded human body?
Well, as we find out, the discarded human bodies - the ''Husks" - are then sent to Sector A23/25 for testing and mutilation.
That's right, Ladies and Gentlemen! The Husks that we encounter throughout the game aren't monsters at all!
They're not even evil, they're just the abandoned remnants of people.
Remnants that want to reunite with the lost part of their consciousness by hunting down the host robots
and taking the eyes back.
In fact, we're told that the Husks were purposely made to look scary so that the humans would reject them.
Quote: "They made us deformed so everyone would fear us".
It's also clear that View's program was controversial as we see protest signs claiming that ''Cognitive Transfer is murder'',
and that this whole thing is one big hoax, which then leads to the question:
What exactly is View? Is it a mega corporation? Is it a secret government program?
The game doesn't really tell us directly,
but we do get hints. We find out that View stands for Vitality and Identity Extraction for WWV.
WWV like what? World War V?
It may seem ridiculous, but that's what it appears to be.
Remember the game is set in the year 2057 and in one of the four possible endings of the game,
The Husk Ending,
you attempt to free the Husks from the View facility.
But as soon as you throw the gates open, you're met with this apocalyptic wasteland,
a world that's been ravaged by war.
That might be part of the reason View wanted to develop a cognitive transfer program to begin with.
If you can take your country's people and implant their consciousnesses inside robot bodies with no need for food or water,
it would be possible for people to hide underground indefinitely to wait out the nuclear fallout.
Now, there's still one major character in the story that I haven't talked about:
That dress-wearing robot that you see at the start of the game.
I'm gonna call her 'The Witch'.
While the Cognitive Transfer program seems to seperate human test subjects into two groups,
the mutilated Husks, and the Host Robots, the Witch seems to straddle a line between both those groups.
She has a robotic body and yet she seems to speak as one of the husks. Or at least speaks for them like when she says:
MatPat: They made us deformed.. Stephanie: ...so everyone would fear us.
In one sequence we see her commanding them like an army and yet she seems to be on our side throughout the game.
Closing your eyes reveals Clues sprinkled throughout the environment.
Those clues are coming from HER. As she says: MatPat: every time you close your eyes, I send these messages to help you. Stephanie: Aaw, That's Nice!
So what, or more accurately, who is the witch? During one of the more memorable and Trippier
Sequences in the game we follow a path through a field of hands, human hands, buried in the ground the kind of hands that husks
Would have had prior to their mutilation,
before seeing the witch hovering over a lake. in order to create a path to the which the player must retrieve two glowing
flaming
essences from two
statues. the statue on the right has the appearance of one of the host robots like the body the player inhabits at the beginning of
The game the statue on the left has a face that resembles the witch's face by retrieving and uniting these two
Essences the player opens up the path these two statues in the flames that the player retrieves from each of them suggests the idea that
An essence has been split across two bodies the witch's body and a host robot body. It's also a small detail.
That's easy to overlook, but each one possesses one of the green glowing eyes one holds the right eye
And the other holds the left eye.
This essence imagery starts to make even more sense when you consider it in the context of one of the game's endings the
Recollection ending. In this ending as the facility is on the verge of exploding, the player comes across the witch, trapped
Underneath some falling debris by choosing this ending you choose to give the witch your eyes.
We can actually confirm that this is what's happening because we briefly catch a glimpse of an abandoned husk near the witch. (at this point
In the game we've been captured by a husk in our eyes have been stolen.) by giving the witch our eyes, the player
Implants their consciousness into her we, as the witch, then choose to end our life by jumping into the abyss to escape the exploding View
facility the game ends with the uplifting message of ''you opened your eyes.''
What's interesting is that this ending is called the recollection ending. recollection suggests the idea of being reunited with your old memories, not
Discovering something new. so what is being recalled through this ending? well,
It's simply the fact that you are the witch. or, to be more accurate, that you're carrying part of the witches consciousness
That's why the subtitle to this ending is ''you opened your eyes''. you remembered who you once were
Cecily Newman is the true
identity of the witch this is further
Supported by A LOT of easy to overlook details throughout the rest of the game. first,
We know that the witch has two eyes. near the end of the game She says ''give me back my other eye"
Which suggests that her consciousness has been split into two halves that she's trying to reunite
Half lies with the witch, and the other half lies with the player. as the witch tries to guide him through a trail of breadcrumbs
So she can be reunited with her other eye.
This also explains the imagery we saw earlier in the dream sequence with one host
Robot statue, and one witch statue, each containing half of a fiery essence. and when they're reunited a fiery eyed husk
Rises out of the water a completed being but the secret connection between us and the witch is held in the very opening
Moments of the game see how there's a single husk here with the view
Branded witch hovering over top of it? as we approach the program glitches out and binary code flashes up if you translate that
Binary string into regular text it reads
'I can't see', basically the powers that be don't want us to face the truth our eyes were ripped out and out of that,
View created the witch. as soon as we start to be exposed to that truth, it causes
The system to collapse. We also see this imagery of a lone husk kneeling on the ground appear at another moment in the game
Right before the recollection ending. where we physically must touch the lone
Husk surrounded by the devastated war-torn world to move the game forward. in the process,
We've symbolically
reconnected with ourselves before we cut back into the perspective now of the witch we
Remember, in a symbolic way, what we once were and what we lost. in the pain of those
Recollected memories is what causes us to jump off the platform.
The horrible truth of this game is pretty evident. the world is ruined. even if you managed to escape the View facility,
there's nothing to escape TO. right at the games ending, we get a glimpse of what the which might have been trying to escape to.
We see a vision of a meadow, outside of the facility,
But the game doesn't end there. we snap back into the reality of the View facility on the verge of destruction
as a countdown timer
Displays the seconds remaining we can rush to join the husks and free them from the facility, or we can reconnect with the witch
Escaping down and to the abyss. There is a third option however,
We can simply wait, and watch the seconds tick down, until at last the facility explodes,
Killing everyone. the husks, the witch, and us. the game calls this the best ending.
''Everyone closed their eyes.'' it seems like a grim note to end on but in a way
It seems like it might truly be the best ending. the husks are able to find release and death rather than having their eyes open
to the terrifying reality of a ruined apocalyptic world,
Cecily the witch is able to rest forever, not having to recollect the painful memories of her own
Creation, and the player can rest. knowing that the horrors of the View facility have all been completely destroyed.
Normally, we think about opening our eyes as a good thing.
we WANT to seek knowledge and
Understanding. we want to be enlightened about the world around us, we want to know the truth. and the game starts itself with a very
Clear mystery. that code on the ceiling saying ''I need to know what happened to everyone.''
however, in Close Your Eyes, the best ending is the one in which everyone keeps their eyes closed. as the adage goes,
''Ignorant is bliss'' and well it's not an adage
I often agree with. when it comes to a hopeless situation and a permanently ruined world, perhaps
It is truly best to remain in the dark,
Blind of the misery and horrors that exist outside. perhaps the best thing you can do in those sorts of situations is exactly
What the games title tells you: close your eyes, and THAT is perhaps the scariest part of this whole game.
But hey! that's just a theory! A game
theory!
Thanks for watching. Oh, yeah,
there's also a bunch of purple octopus creatures roaming around, it seems like they might be the owners or
Creators of View as evidenced by them standing over the lone
Husk at the beginning of the game, and wandering around the view facility right before the end of the game,
but I'm not super clear on it
I think they might have been the things that started World War 5 not 100% clear
Anyway, play the game it is free, and it's totally worth your time
And then tell me what you think in the comments below by the way if you're still in the mood for
Depressing indie game theories, well
then open your eyes to the box on the left while you're watching the depressing truth behind The Binding of Isaac,
it's one of my all-time
favorite theories the Box on the right meanwhile, is what YouTube has determined is the best video for you based on your watch habits I
Have no idea what it is so if it's good if it's bad, who knows? If you're so inclined,
let me know what it is in the comments. I'd just be curious
What YouTube thinks is the best for you and in the meantime,
I'll be back next week with someone who we haven't talked about in a while and some science. I'll see you then.