It’s not every day I play a game and say, “I have to make a video on this.”
Undertale gave me that feeling, and so did Doki Doki Literature Club.
It happens few and far between with games that really drive home a specific message
for the people playing it.
While every game has a message, some aren’t as strong as others, some aren’t as meaningful
or useful as I might like.
But every once in a while you find a game that is amazing to play, but what really takes
your breath away is the story.
Now if you haven’t played this game yet and are planning to, there will be spoilers
and I don’t want to ruin the game for you, so maybe wait on watching this video until
after you’ve gone through it.
However, if you’ve played the game or just want to hear my thoughts about it, you’ve
come to the right place.
Celeste is has a lot of emotion and its quickly become one of my favorites of all time because
of the creative storytelling that’s unleashed through the literal metaphor of climbing a
massive mountain.
It’s story hit me deep and really spoke to me so I want to share what I felt with
you because I think it’s important and because I think it could help someone else in their
life.
This game is a masterpiece of gameplay that has a heartfelt lesson for a plot.
And it’s an idea that we constantly forget and struggle against everyday in our lives.
So please join me as we go into one of my new favorite games, and take the lessons it
shares with us to heart.
Celeste is about a young girl named Madeline who doesn’t just want, but needs to climb
Celeste Mountain.
Madeline doesn’t really know why she needs to climb it or what is driving her to this
decision, but she knows she needs to do it.
I can understand that sentiment.
I don’t know about you, but I often feel the need to do something without knowing why
I need to do it.
Sometimes I need to write.
Sometimes I need to do something out of my routine and do something new.
Sometimes I need to go and get flaming hot cheetos.
I don’t know why, I just need to!
So Madeline’s story from the very beginning already resonated with me.
She needed a change, a challenge, something to shake her out of whatever life was giving
her.
I get that, I understand that and I already want her to climb this mountain and succeed
because of it.
Right from the start I relate to her on a deeper level than I do with most characters.
She’s troubled.
She has problems.
And those problems have led her to take on something most people wouldn’t because she
needs to do something for herself.
She needs to prove something to herself.
Madeline meets this old lady who tells her the mountain is a strange place and that Madeline
might see things she’s not ready to see.
Course then Madeline tells her she needs some psychiatric help and goes on her way only
to nearly die from a falling bridge.
Luckily a bird henceforth known as BIRDFRIEND tells you how to dash, and you make it safely
to the other side.
Even in this pixely game you can see the emotion on Madelines face after that close call.
She’s breathing heavily, obviously stressed from what just happened.
She’s probably worried that this might be too difficult of a task for her.
The game then tells you the one thing you need to remember for the rest of your climb.
“You can do this.”
As the game goes on, you learn more and more about how to climb, how different mechanics
work and you start thinking “yeah, I got this!”
And then you come to a lone mirror where your reflection is..different.
Suddenly your reflection breaks out of the mirror and runs away.
You find that being a short time later and she stops you.
She’s “A Part Of You”.
That’s her name for the entire game.
She’s literally a part of you.
A part you don’t like.
This Part Of You says she’s worried about you, that you’re not a mountain climber,
that you can’t handle this task.
She then proceeds to actually try and stop you from progressing when you talk back.
That...that was real to me.
It’s probably real to you too.
In some form, there’s a part of us that is holding ourselves back.
Whether its fear, anxiety, doubt, depression, or something else.
There’s always a part of me telling myself that I can’t make it, that I can’t do
what I want to do, that even after four years of making videos for people to learn and laugh
from, I’m somehow not capable of making anything worth watching.
There’s always a part of me telling myself that my life won’t work out, that my goals
aren’t obtainable.
That I should just give up and stick to the easily trodden path because that’s where
I belong.
This game makes that so real.
There’s literally a part of you telling you that this path is too hard, that you can’t
climb that mountain.
And what do we all do from our fears sometimes?
We run away.
Just like in this game.
Madeline runs away from her problems and fears.
The only way she can see to move forward is if she leaves them behind and forgets about
them.
But we all know that isn’t possible in real life, and that Part of You returns later on.
In the next chapter where you have to deal with being Mr. Oshiro’s maid and clean up
the ghost dude’s hotel, that Part of You comes back.
She hurts Mr. Oshiro’s feelings, lashing out at him for his hot steamy dump of a resort.
Madeline just let her problems fester beneath the surface and ignored them, so we’re seeing
those issues coming out and affect the people around her.
This is a learning moment for the player, but not quite for Madeline.
She keeps asking the Part of Her why she’s still here, why won’t she go away.
Madeline doesn’t yet understand that this part of her can’t be left behind and will
continue to torment her until she actively works to take care of it, and by taking care
of that Part of Her, Madeline will be taking care of herself.
She’s not there yet though, as we see later on in the gondola, that Part of Her shows
up again and causes a panic attack that her friend Theo needs to help her through.
Her worries, doubts and fears are going ignored, and that’s causing worse and worse things
to happen to Madeline.
I know the feeling.
I too have let my own issues go ignored for a long time.
The longer you ignore them, the worse they get, and the more damage they do to your life.
We really see that damage in the next chapter, the Mirror Temple.
In the Mirror Temple we literally get transported inside of a world created by our own mind.
Every horrible thing trying to kill us is created from us.
And just like you’d expect, that Part of You is there to explain that to you.
It’s like you’re looking in a mirror, but you are actually seeing inside your own
mind.
And Madeline’s mind is full of things trying to hold her back.
The entire chapter is a magnified version of it.
Madeline asks one defining question: “If you’re a part of me why do you want to hurt
me?”
And that’s the thing, we don’t want to hurt ourselves.
We don’t want to hold ourselves back.
Just like Madelines other part doesn’t truly want to hurt her.
But she’s the literal version of doubt, worry, fear, and anxiety.
She’s emotions that manifest in all of us.
It’s not about those emotions trying to hold us back, its about our own misunderstanding
of how we feel.
If we don’t know how to understand our own emotions, and Madeline certainly doesn’t
understand that part of her yet, how can we expect to move forward?
It’s like trying to swim against the current.
You’re fighting against a part of yourself and that’s going to slow your progress forward.
Just like it does with Madeline.
The mountains power makes our insecurities a reality.
We see the massive labrinth that is created from Madeline’s mind that we need to traverse
through.
At the same time, we see the cage and eyes that Theo’s mind creates to trap him.
As a YouTuber, that manifestation of his mind also hit me really hard.
I get that.
Sometimes I do feel trapped in a cage with literally thousands of eyes watching me and
judging me.
I mean...i guess that's what YouTube comments are...but that’s his cage too, he’s so
obsessed with getting views on his photos that it’s become an insecurity of his rather
than something to enjoy.
Now, I’m not saying I don’t love making videos, but I can understand that mindset
and sympathize with it.
But It’s Madeline I truly understand because I’ve gone down the path she’s on.
I know people who struggle with her demons.
I see so much reality within her troubles.
Even after getting out of the Mirror Temple, she still doesn’t understand.
In her next encounter with that Part of Her, Madeline says that she doesn’t need that
part of her, she’s setting that part of her free, that they’ll both be so much happier
that way.
The Part Of Her returns that idea by calling her stupid, doing some pixel tentacle porn
thing and making her fall.
And fall, and fall.
Madeline has essentially hit rock bottom here.
She’s come to the wrong conclusion about that other Part of Her and because of that,
she’s come to her lowest point since starting the climb.
This is representation of a point we all hit at some time in our lives.
Life isn’t always a consistent upward climb.
It takes downward spirals and sometimes we find that we’ve thrown ourselves so far
down that we have to climb back out of the hole we made.
Madeline still feels like this is all that Part of Her’s fault.
It’s not until she talks to the old lady that she met at the beginning of the game
that Madeline begins to understand.
She’s angry at herself, and the only way to move forward is to stop being angry at
herself, recognize that this is a part of her, and work towards understanding that part
of her, and not being mad when it comes up.
We all have problems, we all have fears, but getting mad at ourselves because we have them
does nothing but hurt ourselves.
If we care for our fears, do some self-reassurance, and take the time to acknowledge they exist
and work on them instead of just pretending they aren’t there, we can stop that current
from sweeping us away, calm the waters, and move forward with more strength than we had
before.
Madeline attempts to do this which becomes an epic boss fight.
Even this fight has its place in the story.
It resembles the difficulties and time it takes to get to a point where you do understand
yourself.
It’s hard and difficult and takes a lot of effort to get to the next step on your
journey to understanding yourself better.
Madeline takes that time and makes that effort in this fight and it leads to her caring,
consoling, and reassuring her other part.
Even after their fight when they agree to work together, her anxieties are still there.
You can hear it every time Part of Her speaks.
She’s always unsure.
But it gets better and better the more Madeline supports herself.
And that’s the real beauty of this game.
It took something that we all have, and made it real.
Celeste showed us that we all fight against ourselves and sometimes that fight can consume
our lives.
It can seem insurmountable.
Why am I plagued with fear and anxiety and doubt?
Why can’t I just believe in myself?
Why can’t I ignore this part of me?
Why can’t I just be happy?
I don’t want to be this way!
But that’s the thing, it's part of you.
It’s part of me.
And I need to learn to accept that.
That’s a struggle we all have to fight our entire lives, but just like Madeline, if we
are able to do it, then we can climb our mountains too.
We can reach our summits, and it won’t be because we left part of us behind, it’ll
be because we became more whole.
That’s the message of Celeste, and I hope you can take it to heart like I did and work
with yourself instead of against yourself.
This was a really helpful video for me to make, I hope you all enjoyed it and learned
something about this beautiful game and about yourself in the process.
Thanks to all of you who watched till the end and if you’d like to see more content
like this let me know in the comments and subscribe.
I feel like I’m ready to take on my own mountain, and I hope you are too, I’ll see
you all at the summit.
Bye everyone!