Night in the Woods - Introspective (Spoilers)
A long form video introspective review that I wrote not too long after the switch release. This is based on the PC Weird Autumn version.
Mae arrives at the town’s bus station at night; no parents, compounding perhaps that they don’t care. Did they ever care whilst she was in college? This could be part of why she felt alone or maybe she shut them out and they gave up trying. Either way there was clearly no contact between them on the day she was arriving home so who knows…
A nice moody and somewhat dystopian feel to the beginning of the story.
Her conversation with the janitor who clearly doesn’t have a lot of contact with people for a lot of the time brings about an air of detachment to Possum Springs. We’ve seen set pieces in other stories which have characters arriving into a town that perhaps seems less than friendly giving a noir and romantically downbeat feel to the world of which we’re coming into. A taste of the mood to come perhaps being that the town isn’t in the best state it’s ever been in carrying a state of general unrest and sense of forlornness with the inhabitants.
Almost straight away Mae mentions feelings of nostalgia for the haunting sound of the train going by, recalling how she used to hear it ‘in bed in the winter, whilst the leaves were down’. A wistful lullaby at a quiet moment of her youth with nothing else but her thoughts to accompany her.
For those that have returned to their childhood home, even for a short spell, this is a relatable situation as sights and sounds can almost seem fresh and bring about a possible sense of warmth.
It also highlights the feeling of coming back after the first time of being away for a lengthy period. Nuances that suddenly show up and tap into that part of our life that has now by default become a finished chapter.
The rather sombre journey home through the woodland is interrupted by her police officer aunt who scolds her for taking a route through an area that’s out of bounds. Mae’s reaction could be borne out of frustration from merely being left to make her own way home or possibly that she has a less than patient attitude towards authority now that she’s been away into the big wide world. It could also be that her auntie is a bureaucratic pain in the arse and Mae doesn’t want to been seen as a helpless little girl anymore, which is quite telling in the bigger picture.
The Borrowski family home is more or less how Mae remembers it. In the evenings her Dad is usually watching TV alone whilst her mum, we assume is in bed. Alone time with her Dad is usually a calm affair in which we can see Mae, more or less being herself a lot more than she feels that she can with her Mum, she’s not grilled or questioned, or continually encouraged to talk about ‘what happened at college’. Whilst in the daytime her Mum is usually sitting in the kitchen reading whilst her Dad is working at one of the areas new developments, 'The Ham Panther'. We seldom, if ever see them all together as a family, highlighting Mae’s nostalgic pauses at the family portrait in the landing, which is also adorned with other pieces of furniture such as the grandfather clock and the birdcage. The former being something that she points out as being somewhat of an anachronism, noting also that it’s odd that something so large or elaborate serves a sole purpose that we nowadays find quite inconsequential.
Needless to say it’s the small changes that jump out at us at home, further here being the crawlspace in the storage area which is now blocked with old belongings and clutter. This bothers Mae in a way that makes us think that it’s an area that she would’ve frequented many times when she was younger. It never poses a big problem in any way, It’s just the matter of it being an option that she suddenly doesn’t have any more that can add to the notion of things changing whilst she was gone, or even because she was gone.
We waste no time being introduced to the relatively calm but economically declining town of Possum Springs as Mae journey’s through it the next day. She stops to chat to some of the locals who sometimes regale her with their catch up story or simply comment on what it is they’re more or less doing at that moment.
In some ways we start to see the beginnings of how time has advanced or in some ways, eaten away at the town and it’s locals but the general feel of things remains unaltered. An isolated world that’s relied only on its ever deteriorating eco-system and has the hard cracked land to show for it.
In regards to the locals we’re introduced to a lot of a-typical small town characters; Along the first stretch alone we meet Mr Twigmeyer an old goat (literally) who seems to assume the role of, possibly the elderly Jewish gentleman. Selmers, who’s a rather despondent lady with recovering addict tendencies who spends her time sitting on the front stoop. Selmers like to share her poetry with you, which can range from being pretty dark to pretty hilarious and somewhere in between.
Contributing to the ever apparent decline of the town are those residents who let us know how difficult it is finding work. One of those being Dennis who explains that the myth of ‘construction always hiring’ is in this case just that. He jovially mentions his ‘Zombie Resume’ being active in a lot of ways, however still dead. Having fairly recently been laid off work again, his previous stretch of unemployment being a year, he mentions that this time he only lasted six months.
New developments are happening outside of town as there’s a newly built prison as well as a supermarket. We’ve seen In our own economically challenging times work cropping up from some organisations perhaps not affected by the downturn but still, being very intermittent in nature.
One person who doesn’t necessarily seem fazed or at least too affected by hard times is the proprietor of the of the pierogi stand. More often than not, the older business can be the ones to stand the test of time. The owner here, being someone that holds onto tradition as tightly as he does mini scandals, remembering Mae as the THIEF that stole the pretzel years before. An act that we can choose to repeat at a later opportunity if we so wish.
The past is brought back to us in other ways too. One being from an elderly lady called Miss Rosa who frequents the subway daily and tells Mae that she’s known Mae since she was born. It turns out that she knew her Grandfather and in future conversations could possibly tell her things that she may not have known about him. Could this be a situation of tragic lovers never being together, or perhaps something that was only one sided. Miss Rosa’s affectionate comments towards Mae, possibly a result of how she is being reminded of a familial desire that she once had but, alas, never came to pass.
Mae’s Friends:
Catching up with childhood friends can be a mixed bag in regards to how things play out. Sometimes we’re surprised, nay, blindsided by how some people we know have moved on, grown as people and became different. Sometimes the same effect can be felt but from noticing how WE are the ones who’ve moved on and evolved in some ways and they’ve remained exactly the same.
One of Mae’s oldest and closest friends is the insanely excitable Greg, who works at the local 7-11 style store known as the Snack Falcon. As with a lot of friends who’re mainly concerned about simply being with you and enjoying your company, Greg merely asks why you’re here and then wastes no time in wanting to get back into things as before, bringing up the fact that they have band practice and would of course like you to go. Friends that don’t change or at least alter that much can be a much needed tonic in those moments of retreat. Whether life is going good or bad, knowing that we have these friends is a settling thought. Solace amongst startling changes or unexpected confusion.
Greg’s boyfriend Angus, is, unsurprisingly the polar opposite of Greg. Working at the ‘Video’ store he takes the role of the more collected, level headed of the bunch. Indeed he’s the quiet storm that we’ve all been party to from time to time. One that never feels the need to say a great deal, or at least anything unnecessarily, he’s the one that we can feel taken aback by when we really get to know the inner workings. When we’re in a situation that evokes transparency a talk with this type of friend can last hours, and leave us feeling that we haven’t just ‘got to know them a lot better’ but made a real connection, feeling a profound sense of kinmanship. The latter being something that Mae becomes party to with a fair few of the characters in the story, albeit in different emotional states.
Bea, another one of Mae’s once close friends is our guarded sceptical type. Speaking in almost equal amounts sarcasm and blunt sincerity we know that there’s a very heavy burden that contributes towards her melancholy nature. Having to cope with her Dad being seriously depressed and unable to work after her Mother’s passing it’s pretty much left to Bea to support them both and 'The ‘Ol Pickaxe' – the hardware store, once manned by her Father is now her responsibility entirely. Living in a small flat as opposed to the house she once lived in; the majority of her time is spent either sorting out the family finances or working. Having a resentful attitude towards Mae causes an already large rift between them to get larger at one point and strengthens our focus on Mae’s immature nature and unfair label of ‘ungrateful dropout’.
We learn that Bea tries to grasp hold of some semblance of her youth and the person that she at least thinks she wants to be, by the parties that she attends in her small amount of downtime. The oasis that she can travel to brings about a sense of calm and perhaps hope to a life that she’d hardly planned or asked for. In opposition to Mae she likes escaping Possum springs as Mae has been drawn back to the town for similar reasons that Bea intermittently leaves of an evening. She’s perhaps experiencing at least one side of the student life that she’s frustrated to see Mae depart from.
Pastures new aren’t always as green as we hope but to the friends and family of Mae they remain shiny plains of possibility and dreamlike opportunity because, of course, they haven’t been allowed or allowed themselves to experience them. The ‘I’d have given anything for that’ mentality remains an toxic thread, undulating until it finally erupts in both a cathartic but heated talk with Bea and a bitchy argument with Mae’s Mum at home.
Coming back home after new experiences brings different challenges in the form of our minds sometimes being a lot broader (whether we initially know it or not) and subsequently a stark realisation of how the minds of those we grew up with being somewhat narrower. That’s not to say it’s anyone’s fault, but being the target of jealousy from simply doing something more ambitious with your life can a lot of the time be par for the course.
Communicating with her friends also comes in the form an msn messenger style service that Mae has access to from her laptop. This brings forth the contentment that we feel from the disembodied & more or less, tone free idle chat that we can have when socialising (for want of a better word) online.
The hack n slash game 'Demon-tower' is always a click away, and it’s presence immerses us into Mae’s carefree world by simply providing the option to dive in, or not.
We even have a clip it style OS resident in the name of Sharkle, who brings about a surprisingly high amount of enjoyment from his singular function which is to basically chuckle or say hello when clicked. It’s fantastic that, it’s pretty much all he needs to do. The effect that the laptop set up has is easy to not see on the surface; I found that despite now, not being able to actually visualise Mae’s attic room, I can more or less feel a lot more connected to the surroundings. The sofa bed beneath me, the solitude that the more often than not, warm surroundings provide and a general feeling of not just being relaxed, but being home and relaxed.
It seems as though retreating to a life that we once knew as comfortable isn’t always the answer. We find, a lot of the time in retrospect that it can merely be running away from our issues as there’s more than enough unrest happening back in Possum Springs.
Mae can’t seem to shake off an aspect of her past due to the locals not letting her. Despite her absence from town, some of the inhabitants still try to hold her to account for bygone mistakes. Be it, petty vandalism or a rather serious case of violence, the small minded remain thus and judge her regardless of her current behaviour or demeanour. Mae’s Aunt Molly being one of them as she takes the opportunity to either question her or simply patronise her which stems from her still viewing Mae as a trouble maker and somewhat of a waste of space. This highlights Mae being back in town as the a-typical square peg in a round hole as she really doesn’t seem cut out for the provincial town life, but it becomes clear, eventually why it is Mae has returned.
We learn that Mae has suffered with dissociative disorders which have manifested themselves in the forms of depression and anger, explaining why her violent ‘incident’ for want of a better word happened some years prior. To cut a long story short, she attacked a boy with a baseball bat and ended up causing him a lot of physical damage which resulted in a lot of financial damage for her parents. Her disorder has Mae seeing everything as obsolete and pretty much pointless. Things that she can’t relate to at all. Dr Hank, her therapist has suggested that she keep a diary. Putting one’s thoughts to paper is of course a great way of lending them some clarity and acts in itself as a process of therapy.
We see, on a more visceral level, how she feels about people she meets, catches up with and people she once knew, such as her Grandfather. He was always a caring and comforting figure in her life whom Mae understandably misses an awful lot.
We learn that Mae’s father Stan had an issue with drinking some years previously and had to stop as it was getting dangerously out of hand in that Mae and her Mother were at risk of being hurt. Both of the parents were happy to allow the grandfather to read Mae a bedtime story each night. Being the last person that Mae saw each evening whilst in the comfort of her own bed would indeed foster a bond stronger than she may even have had with her Father, who in a sense, seems to be trying to make up for it by chatting to her in the evenings whilst watching some TV. Never the less, losing a type of parental figure at an early age wouldn’t stand anyone in good stead for big changes in life, especially if there are other issues going on mentally.
College is a challenging time for a lot of people, regardless of their level of confidence or personability. Mae typically isn’t someone who would easily mingle and gel with a group of newcomers and her detached mental state hardly made this any easier.
Not being able to relate to anyone, especially in new surroundings, nurtures a self-critical attitude and feelings of loneliness. These feelings usually become a lot more present in our day to day lives than is healthy and the people around us can seem, unattractive to the point of being repellent. Social situations can become painfully awkward as the mind desperately tries to make sense of not just why people are there but how they’re being able to interact with what seems like natural fluidity. The party in the woods that the friends all attend is a perfect example of this, with Mae not only feeling nervous that her ex-boyfriend is there but also trying to shoehorn herself into the gathering with no regard to her being the type of person that would not necessarily choose to be there or at least not at that point in her life.
Attempting to remedy her feelings of detachment and probably boredom, Mae, on top of having already drank some cough medicine, resorts to binge drinking beer which, before causing her to vomit, exasperates her mental disorder resulting in her having a rather unsettling episode in which she again see’s everyone and everything as merely shapes, and how she’ll cause harm to those around her eventually.
As things eventually come to a head in the story we learn that the economic situation is linked to the youths disappearing, the latest being a kid at the Harfest ‘Halloween’ festival and another being one of Mae’s friends Casey Hartley who vanished some years earlier believed to have simply ‘took a powder’.
Things take a rather surprising, and somewhat jarring turn for the paranormal when it becomes apparent that the town has its own cult who are complicit in the kidnappings and ultimately the sacrifice of those that have been going missing to a demon like entity known as the Black Goat. They explain to Mae and the rest of the group that basically, sacrifices need to be made to keep the town thriving, otherwise, jobs go, businesses close and in extenuating circumstances natural disasters happen. Not unlike in one possible case the flood that took place just after Mae’s Grandfather passed away. Attempting to justify their ludicrous behaviour they say that they choose ‘individuals who won’t be missed’ or 'who’ll never amount to anything'. Drifters and the like.
Casey had played in the band and got into a few scrapes with Mae and Gregg and we learn that he was getting into drug dealing so of course, the cult were more than happy to use him as a remedy to their beloved town going under and also as an excusable victim. They say that they did the kid a favour as he’d only end up with a rap sheet a mile long.
Although it’s true that no one like’s change the cults absolute resistance to this possibly shows how enterprise and industry are a corrosive thread on the natural world.
The cult leader, as it seems, mentions that if the Black Goat isn’t fed then all that’d be left are fields and trees. As though that is in some way a bad thing. The town was once famous for its mining industry and they say that they want to see this industry thrive once more. Essentially sapping the land of its natural resources would push things to a point of needing those to be replenished once more. That however wouldn’t happen in their life time so that particular route would hardly be good enough for them.
We can take a variety of punts on whom the members may be from some of the local business that are still thriving. The pierogi stand in the old trolley network (that leads to the mine, no less) has stood for fifty years, the 'Video Outpost Too' still remains open despite Angus admitting that he doesn’t know why it’s still in business and The council, we hear from Pastor K have voted against her in the situation of helping the local homeless guy Bruce.
Inspiration for the supernatural part of the story could well have been taken from Lovecraftian fiction being as he wrote about Shub Niggurath, also known as The Black Goat of the Woods or Lord Of the Wood in his work [i]The Whisper in Darkness[/i]. The latter story telling of a historic flood in Vermont that leads to strange sightings and talks of old legends about monsters living in the hills who abduct people who get too close to their territory. Vermont, like Possum Springs is known for its natural landscape and heavily wooded areas.
Regardless of how heavily the Lovecraftian fiction is linked, the character of the Janitor plays what certainly seems like the role of God. He mentions that he fixes things; in a couple of instances in the game he’s fixing a door. Right at the start when Mae arrives in town and in the hospital when Mae is unconscious. He seems to be providing a gateway for Mae to come back to the town and in some ways back to the land of the living, respectively.
Mae certainly seems as though she’s one of the latest candidates to either be sacrificed to The Black Goat, or most probably the next person to lead the cult as all of her mental problems, her delusions and nightmares are linked to The Black Goat who’s been calling out to her all this time. So much so that she returns home and eventually willingly attempts to give herself to the demon by walking back through the woods and eventually into the mine.
Has the Janitor seen Mae as a saviour figure and been orchestrating a good portion of her journey to finally end the insidious horror that has plagued Possum Springs for years.
Mae felt lost, drifting like a leaf in the wind and finally seemed to fulfil what seems like a very important part of her destiny in bringing her home town and subsequently the inhabitants back In line with whatever their natural fate should be. Needless to say with the help of her friends the cult is brought to an end, as they trap them seemingly for good, poetically down in the mine that they seem to love so dearly.
The next day, autumn passes and Mae’s mother mentions the possibility of snow. The season where nature is seen to die is over and a new one is beginning.
Mae has finally had her profound realisation that she now wants to live a life of meaning, on her terms. She is free from seeing things as just shapes, meaningless objects and wandering lost through her existence trying to make sense of it all. As she said to 'The Black Goat' back in the mine: "I want to lose, I want to get beaten up, I want to hold on, until I’m thrown off and everything ends. And you know what? Until that happens, I want to hope again, and I want it to hurt. Because that means it meant something. It means I am something at least. Pretty amazing to be something at least".
Night in the Woods could be lazily coined as a coming of age story, but despite Mae being the main character we see each person in the game with almost as much individuality. They have their own way about them, their personalities and quirks are communicated in an effortless manner.
The script carries an extremely naturalistic patter and helps the player to connect with each character on a relatable level. So much so that the paranormal final quarter failed to hit the mark with quite a few people. This on one hand is a testimony to the initial story and overall flavour of the journey and how well it works for the majority of people, but on another it could merely show how much material the studio ultimately had and how tricky it was to make a lot of good ideas fit into the final product. But, who knows.
I think it’s best to look at a lot of these set pieces in a metaphorical manner. One could pain over the conspiracy theories of each supernatural event or simply view Night in the Woods as an embodiment of how things grow. How people, places and relationships can veer into directions that we either don’t expect or simply don’t intend them to.
Try as we might to steer the rudder in our own direction with all of the attrition we can summon, it’s sometimes better to take the road of acceptance, however fearful and say to ourselves that if this is way it’s meant to be, then so be it. I’ll try my best to be happy on the journey, whatever the destination may be.
- By OuttaSite
