ebu

πŸ³οΈβ€πŸŒˆπŸŸ¦πŸ•

gay blue dog
send pets (plz)


this is my post for the third route of Echo (see the first and the second posts for more thoughts). any and all spoilers will be kept generic and minor, but i yield to below the break for any of those looking for a completely unspoilered experience.


okay! third route down. i had predicted in my first post that i would be most attached to Leo, so i saved him until now so as to... somewhat shield myself from inevitable pain.

that didn't happen as much as i expected, in part due to... well. there's not many ways i can speak about it without major spoilers, so this paragraph gets a extra-special no-for-real-this-is-a-major-spoiler, spoiler warning.

major spoilers about leo's route! i was tipped off pretty early, not just from other routes, but also from a couple of the red flags in the beginning and middle of the routes, that Chase trying to continue their relationship with Leo was a bad idea. i chose the better ending the first time (finally, for once, this entire goddamn game! sigh) and found it to be quite bittersweet.
even more spoilers about this route! even while i was playing, i was thinking "hmm, they're clearly setting up a contrast between Leo and Kudzu, because Kudzu, while being able to take charge and make plans, isn't controlling like Leo is. i was rather shocked (and pleasantly surprised) at what developed in the ending, but i welcome it anyway.

okay, less major-spoilery and more minor-spoilery stuff. random bullet points:

  • this game has a good way of making you question the fuck out of literally everyone who says "i'm fine", ever, for any reason, because you watch Chase lie "I'm fine" out to everyone else, and then watch everyone else lie to Chase about it as well. it's a painfully honest depiction of everyone painting over their problems instead of engaging with them, which might just be the central thesis of the game. oh, besides dating hot furry men.
  • the repeated motif of otters, in Chase's eyes, being "swimming clowns" to everyone else feels like queer subtext for... well, being queer/gay in straight society. and it does a really good job of depicting how exactly it feels to be reminded that the performance of queerness in straight society is something that will, even in the best of times, be an object of entertainment; picked up, laughed at a bit, and discarded.
  • part of what makes the whole game so heartwrenching is the knowledge that, yes, these characters have flaws, and yes, their avoidant behavior is reinforcing those flaws to their and their friends' suffering, but that there's obviously an external force amplifying all those problems to eleven and a half. maybe in another town, another timeline, another place altogether, separate from this corrupting thing, there was a way for everyone to recognize, start to fix, and perhaps atone for their behavior. somewhere else, these people might have reckoned with their problems. but not in echo.

good game. very good game.

link to my post on my fourth route
link to my post on my fifth route


You must log in to comment.