[MISC] #10: Another Child in Quarantine

Deep within a labyrinth of scribbly ghosts, reverse chapters, memories and repetition, there is a little boy in a red room. He coughs and splutters in the smoke, alone in this place, with only a red blanket for company. But he can sense the happenings of the world beyond his cell.

That little boy's name is Hugo.

OFF is a critically acclaimed French-language surreal RPG developed by Unproductive Fun Time, comprised of just two members - creator Mortis Ghost and composer Alias Conrad Coldwood. It was released in 2008, with English translations coming several years later. It had a short spark of life in the early 2010's, and now it's utterly devoid of life, minus the few fangame updates here and there.

Yes... welcome to the obligatory post where I gush about my favourite game of all time.

Initially, I thought about writing about this game as my Plague Stories entry, but I wasn't able to tie a connection between them beyond the fact that spectres "plague" the lands. But upon realising just an hour or two ago that there's a child locked up in there somewhere, to be kept safe from the world he created, I wanted to make a post talking about it. Letting out the creative juices perhaps, or procrastinating researching about loneliness. One of these assumptions is more correct than the other.

In OFF, you, yes you, control a being called The Batter. He is a man dressed entirely in black and white baseball attire, and he has a sacred mission - to "purify the world". He, and several others are aware of your existence as the Player, and will address you directly throughout the game. His journey takes him on a quest through "Zones" with "violent junkie colours". He attains glorified white hula hoops called "Add-ons", who aid him in his spectre-destroying quest, and taking down the corrupt guardians striking fear into the hearts of their citizens. Unfortunately, with every Zone cleared, the Player can go back to discover that they are white, pristine shells of their former selves. This is the true meaning of "purification".

The concept art for this game describes it as a "nice game for good children" and a "good game for nice children". It's like those anthology books with "bad stories for good children".

There was a TV show like that once, which aired late at night on ABC. I'll never forget the terror of a cartoon man getting his toes chopped off in a gruesome sequence.

Moving on.

The Batter eventually reaches the last "Zone" called The Room. It is where the Player learns of the backstory behind the game's events and meets the Queen, who could be interpreted as the Batter's wife, attempting to stop him from the destruction he has caused. With an icy confidence, he calls her out on doing nothing to help save the world that his father, the sick little boy Hugo, has created, nor even to help their father-turned-son. "Lost in preparing the birthday party, you forget who it was for" he says, before they initiate a fight, like a domestic couple gone bad. 

After killing her, the Batter arrives at the bedroom where Hugo is located. He announces his presence, before bashing in his son's head with a baseball bat. The room turns white, and a new doorway appears. He walks through the corridor, shaped similarly to spinal vertebrae leading up to the back of the brain, to turn the world OFF.

The Batter... could be interpreted in many ways. He could be the true disease that destroys the world, like a virus. Or he could be an aggressive anti-body, slowly shutting down a body's functions one by one. He's like Angus' essay description of a virus, a living being (not confirmed to be human in the end), with a sole mission in mind.

The coronavirus that lurks outside our homes... thankfully isn't an unstoppable baseball player with a bad and some hula hoops. It's a viral disease. I doubt the virus will claim us all, but it's certainly not impossible. There are many guardians out there, working to help restore peace among its citizens. Our Vader Eloha, Daniel Andrews, is out there, day after day, attending press conferences we've all come to dread hearing. At least he is doing something to protect this world, not sitting back and allowing its destruction.

OFF is an example of a world that lets the virus play on easy mode. The Zones' leaders, Guardians, do nothing to help their meek, sugar-reliant citizens who suffer from mental burnout via their heads literally exploding from stress. In fact, one guardian downright encourages them to lose their minds in sugar, made from the ashes of corpses of their kind. The Queen sits above her high throne, doing nothing to stop the spectres plaguing the land. And the only one who rises above to stop it, or perhaps the virus itself, is left to do as he wishes.

At the end of the game, the Batter goes to hit the switch but is confronted by one final enemy. The Judge, a white feline with a highly advanced vocabulary, calls out the Player on allowing the Batter's actions to unfold. The Batter replies that the world in the state that it is in is "better that way". The Judge demands the Player make a choice - join him and save what little is left of the world, or die holding the strings of their marionette.

I could go on and on and make better, more in-depth connections here, but this post still stands as a miscellaneous one, so I'm gonna end it here. Thanks for reading.

I pray to god we, the judges of our bodies, are collectively able to stop the faceless being desperate to turn our world into a clean slate.

May we all survive.

-Katie, the Plague Wanderer