@oMuStiiA

4 months ago

Personally I think one particular theme in the game is intergenerational trauma as a cycle. I think the conflicting info on who was driving and who was the child and who died is purposeful, the roles are meant to be interchangeable, with part of Selene's torment being the ways she enacted the same cruelties on her own child that were enacted on her. Trying to leave the planet represents her attempts to end the cycle and be a better parent, and her returning represents being sucked back into those toxic behaviours over and over again, and her fear is that leading to the destruction of her child and the endless abandonment of Helios. Whether she's the driver or the passenger doesn't matter, in the cycle they are one and the same.

I think it's interesting how the alien lore ties in to Selene's story as well. The Severed weren't originally aggressive (they wrote the ciphers and one of the xenoglyphs even says "we were only trying to communicate") but the sentients were afraid ("our brethren feared us") and rejected them and imprisoned several of them, resulting in a needless war that destroyed both their world's and left the remaining Severed mad. As the game progresses Selene releases and fights the bosses from their prisons (some forced on them and some of their own make) and takes on pieces of sentient tech to use herself, symbolically becoming more like the sentients herself while not being part of the hive mind, similar to the Severed. Each boss represents a part of herself that she releases and confronts: Her fear (Phrike), her hubris (Ixion), her resentment towards herself and her mother (Nemesis), her feelings of abandonment (Hyperion), and her feelings towards motherhood (Opheon) act as the final barrier or gateway she has to overcome to really delve into her past and the truth about herself. I think Hyperion represents abandonment in part because it was the song playing when she crashed and abandoned Helios, and in part because I think either her father, her husband, or both were absentee figures in her life (one Xenoglyph in the Echoing Ruins even says "I never spoke to him afterwards or heard his music again"). Nemesis was what was left of the Sentients and their hive mind, hidden away from what remained of their world and escaping what their actions had wrought. They were their own worst enemy, their misguided fear and hatred towards the Severed resulting in both sides being brought to ruin. In a way the Severed are like the children of the Sentients, they're even smaller in stature than the Sentients were iirc, and in their madness they bear the continued punishment for their parent's mistakes as well as the part they themselves played in the battle, their thoughts are even described as being an endless loop of suffering with the "creator/destroyer" being the only one who could end the loop, it being implied that Selene is the Creator/Destroyer. They could also potentially represent different parts of Selene, the part of her shaped by her mother and afraid of change or confronting her own issues, and the part of her that wants to break free and be a better mother than her own mother was. Opheon likewise resembles the skeletal depiction of Selene's mother including the long tentacle-like fingers. I don't think it's made very clear what Opheon is, but some of the Sentients, such as Phrike and Ixion, were supposedly seeing visions of something drawing them to the depths of the Abyss, and I'm assuming Opheon was what was calling them to some sort of divine truth that resulted in their severing and ascention, and the Sentients imprisoned them for it out of fear. That could represent motherhood both in how it gave Selene perspective on her mother's feelings of resentment and in how Selene herself has to overcome her own resentment towards Helios.

I like to think that the secret ending with her swimming to the surface is actually Helios escaping rather than Selene, because I like the idea that ultimately Helios is the one to escape the cycle and survive the "crash", and it is their (I think Helios's gender is ambiguous?) mother's attempts at ending the cycle that allows them to make it out even if Selene doesn't. I do remember there being a version of the crash mentioned at some point where the child survives while the mother dies, so I think that points towards it being a possibility. Plus in several house sequences you play as a child, and that child could be Selene, or they could be Helios, so it's not unprecedented that you could be seeing the POV of Helios at the end, and when you hear Selene's voice saying Helios's name as they surfaces it's more of an echo. I think it also fits with Selene descending down into the depths and embracing those memories instead of trying to escape them. Trying to escape without confronting those memories and what they meant only lead to her abandoning Helios and repeating the cycle over and over again. Even when she thought she'd escaped, no matter what she was always pulled back so long as she was running from the truth, and while she was escaping from her own past Helios was left on that planet, abandoned and decaying. But going deeper and confronting those memories are what allows her, or Helios, to finally escape the car and reach the surface. The first time we see the crash we see her reaching for Helios and failing to save them before being pulled away by those tentacles, and I think that represents what she's been wanting to do throughout the game: save Helios. You start the game by leaving Helios the ship and abandoning it, and you end the game by returning to Helios the child trapped in that car on the bottom of the river, and I personally think the most thematic and rewarding ending to that would be if the one surfacing in the end is Helios, successfully pulled out of the car and released from the cycle because of Selene finally confronting her memories and her role in the loop and coming to terms with that. Maybe Selene herself didn't make it out of the car, aka out of the cycle, because her own mother never went through that process of confronting her own issues and Selene is still always going to be haunted by that and already made her own mistakes resulting in the crash and the loop in the first place, but even if Selene didn't originally make it out, maybe Helios still can. That's my personal interpretation of the story and the ending at least. I think the only thing that really contradicts this reading is that in the secret ending the character swimming to the surface is wearing Selene's jacket, but it's left open to interpretation purposefully so I prefer to read it that way and I think a lot of other stuff supports it as an option. One xenoglyph in particular has a section that says "Helios lies shattered and I must put him back together". Plus since the role of child and mother are interchangeable that also means that symbolically she is both Theia and Helios as well as herself depending on where she is in the cycle. By saving and freeing Helios, she frees herself as well.

Regardless, it's a fascinating story to think and theorize about lol. Great video btw. I do kinda wish you'd lingered more on the Hyperion fight, such as the music cues leading the player towards the spire throughout the level/biome, the way it crescendos as you approach the boss room going up the spire itself, and how the battle with Hyperion goes to the pacing and notes of the song being played while you fight so you're basically fighting to the tune of the song which helps a lot with timing if you realize it during the fight. Those aspects of the gameplay were so fascinating to me I still sometimes get chills just remembering that experience. But otherwise I felt the video captured the appeal and complexity of the gameplay and the story well. I don't usually play rogue-likes but Returnal caught my attention and I absolutely loved it.😮😮

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