[PC Game] Broken Age

So I noticed in my e-mail last week that Double Fine released the adventure game I kickstarted awhile back, so I decided yesterday to finally boot it up and give it a whirl. I thought it was interesting that I was choosing two different stories, often switching back and forth between them. The only thing I couldn't figure out was how the two stories were connected.

One story is about a young girl named Vella in a fantasy-style land, who is being sacrificed by her village to a massive floating monster. She does not want to be sacrificed and instead tries to figure out a way to destroy the monster.

The other story is about a young boy named Shay living a seemingly repeated life on a sci-fi spaceship, with a computer "mother" that takes care of him. He is bored of being treated like a child and yearns to be a real hero, even working with a stowaway to do such.

They always seemed to have some things crossing over, but it was not till the "end" that everything came together... somewhat...

I mean... Holy shit... what?
So at the end of the story Vella defeats the monster and out of it's mouth walks Shay, revealing that the whole time his space ship was the monster.

After the reveal you go back and see how each story played out and the parallels fly at you like a hammer. When playing Vella's story, during her sacrifice, Vella watches as three of her fellow young girls are eaten, but escapes before she herself is eaten. When going to Shay's world, he breaks his cycle by teaming with a stowaway person in a wolf suit named Marek, who convinces Shay to help him save innocent lives caught in war. During one of these missions Shay uses the ships boom arms to collect three of the innocent creatures in space, but much to Marek's protests decides to push through and collect the forth, which seems to turn angry and escapes, causing an alarm to sound. Those creatures? The maidens.

At the middle point of Vella's story, Vella meets another maiden that was set to be sacrificed the day before, but the monster for some reason left behind after the ceremony, and she is brooding around the two broken cages of the two taken maidens. Shay's world? The first time you do the mission to lift people with the boom arms, you collect two creatures before Marek tells you an enemy ship is coming and you have to leave, thus abandoning the third creature behind. Once again, he was picking up the maidens. At no time are you, as Shay, allowed to see the creatures in the storage hold.

You think this is confusing? It get's worst. The way Vella succeeds in bringing down the monster is by being lead into the temple of a being known as the Dead Eye God. The being turns out to be a man named Alex, who was in a cryostasis on what was his former space ship, helping her focus the ship into a laser weapon. His actions and words parallel very close to Shay, as he was a boy who wanted to be useful but ended up taking over the navigation of his ship and crashing it. This means there could be dozens of children on these ships thinking they are in space but actually in floating monster houses.
Honestly the whole thing feels mind blowing. I really would love discussing what the hell might be going on with those that played it.
 
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I kinda saw the surprise coming, especially as I noticed the parallels you mentioned. You know what else?
Vella's grandmother says that Mog Chothra appears every 14 years. How old do you think Shay and Vella are? About 14? And then Mog returns to wherever to "feed" and "mate"? I think that might be what the ship is programmed to do every 14 years: to mate the male with the females every 14 years. I could be wrong, but that's my theory after what we've been given so far.

I also noticed that Alex mentions Operation: Dandelion, as well. An interesting name for an operation, given that a dandelion's life cycle includes sending out dozens or hundreds of individual spores, much like Shay or Alex's individual ships.
But yeah, I'm right there with you. It's a fantastic game. The puzzles were relatively easy, though there were one or two that tripped me up the first time through.

I also think the ending for this first act is one of the best cliffhangers for a video game in a good, long while. Even if it wasn't originally planned as a 2-part episodic game, I'm kinda glad they did because it ended at JUST the right moment that will leave a lot of great speculation.
 
I kinda saw the surprise coming, especially as I noticed the parallels you mentioned. You know what else?
Vella's grandmother says that Mog Chothra appears every 14 years. How old do you think Shay and Vella are? About 14? And then Mog returns to wherever to "feed" and "mate"? I think that might be what the ship is programmed to do every 14 years: to mate the male with the females every 14 years. I could be wrong, but that's my theory after what we've been given so far.

I also noticed that Alex mentions Operation: Dandelion, as well. An interesting name for an operation, given that a dandelion's life cycle includes sending out dozens or hundreds of individual spores, much like Shay or Alex's individual ships.
But yeah, I'm right there with you. It's a fantastic game. The puzzles were relatively easy, though there were one or two that tripped me up the first time through.

I also think the ending for this first act is one of the best cliffhangers for a video game in a good, long while. Even if it wasn't originally planned as a 2-part episodic game, I'm kinda glad they did because it ended at JUST the right moment that will leave a lot of great speculation.
I think you were on to something there...
Notice how Marek seems to have intimate knowledge how the ship works? He seems to know how to override key systems, has cameras up all over the place, and sleeps in a space right between Shay's bedroom and Shay's trophy room (where all his baby toys were stored). He only appears to Shay when it becomes obvious that Shay is "ready to grow up" and then starts the process of "rescuing" the creatures. When the ship comes under attack by Vella's laser, Marek is very intent on Shay getting to safety. I think Marek is Shay's actual father.

As for the mother computer, she tells Shay a story that mirrors the Maiden Feasts in Vella's story, only with her being one of the maidens. It could be that after Shay was born, his mother allowed herself to be absorbed into the ship, becoming the mother computer so that she can always care for her child and keep him safe, with the intention that Marek would one day approch him when he was ready for the next step. Marek, wearing a wolf outfit to represent guardianship, then takes over, but does it in such a way that it looks like Shay is "rebelling" versus his mother. A sort of reverse psychology to make sure he carries out the next step with enthusiasm. I don't know what this makes the "father computer" though.

The issue is, I don't know what this makes Marek overall. Does he collect the girls for himself (Shay and Alex look very similar, physically)? Or is he the last boy that inhabited that ship? Could it be that the "Marek" persona is passed down once the boy comes of age, while the old one is finally free to leave and retire in the "real" world? What happens to the mother persona in all this? Is she reset and replaced with another one of the maidens once she has a child?

When did the Maiden Feasts actually start? We know Suger Bunting was doing it every 14 years for a good long while, but not 300 years ago when Alex crashed his ship, since he remembered Suger Bunting as the warrior town of Steel Bunting. However, Alex made it known that all the other towns were terrified of Steel Bunting, so it could be that the Maiden Feasts were occurring in other towns for a long while until Steel Bunting itself finally fell to influence.

The other question though, is what influence? The two women guarding the shrine of the Dead Eye God said that once the god returned he would bring the conclusion to the "human and Mog war", and Marek makes constant allusions to a "great war" they were saving the creatures from, yet we don't see if the ship actually attacked Suger Bunting after Vella escaped (the alarm does sound, then there is a decent gap before Shay gets everything ready for the final save.) or simply left, though Marek makes it sound like the ship "automatically warped away", which likely means it left the town (Shay's star systems seemed to coincide with Vella's towns). Could it be that rather then an actual battle, the whole Maiden Feasts were actually propaganda passed down by the "free" Shay/Alex type characters to keep the cycle going? Could explain why Marek was so adamant about Shay not "rescuing" all the creatures, as they don't want to make the monster seem more greedy because they need to keep the towns as part of the cycle.

So many questions, I can't wait for the next act where the two characters seem to get trapped in each others environment.
 
I plan to play it this Saturday. In the meantime I'm watching the documentary series, and really loving it. Even if the game was garbage this look into the process would have been worth my kickstarter money.
 
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