Middens is an unsettling, surreal game that it turns out I can’t play.
It’s not that it’s impossibly buggy (although it does have some frustrating hitbox issues). It’s that I felt really bad and stopped immediately.
Middens opens well, with creepy revolver and weird rambling dialogue. The gun is pushing for me to shoot stuff, but I decided the part where it said it was both my conscience and my id was a sign I shouldn’t do anything it said, but then decided I should at least try it out and shot a fluffy multicolor ball.
1) This makes it make a cat cry and I regretted everything.
2) Then we go to a fight screen where you see it is a cat.
3) Then it begs you not to kill it.
I ran from the battle and played just long enough to work out that everything you shoot makes cat sounds (from my sample of three) and that not shooting anything doesn’t seem to be an option because other stuff kills you really well and the game is built around all sorts of cool, inventive enemy sprites. I quit when I tried shooting a giant floating ball and it made a cat sound and then instantly died.
I’ve had cats most of my life. You know that Homestuck song that has meows in it? Can’t listen to it. Cat sounds make me instantly alert and anxious until I can find the cat making them. I think of myself as generally friendly toward animals, but a little while ago a dog was barking outside and it took me about ten minutes to realize there was anything amiss and another few minutes of staring to work out from its body language that it was a scared lost dog my neighbors were trying to catch. (It was fine in the end.) When that’s a cat, I’m out the door in seconds.
Sometimes people complain about how it’s bad to care more about animals than people, but here’s the thing – I’ve never seen a baby by itself. Babies, in my experience, are things that are generally taken care of. There are exceptions, and I know this, but it has never impacted my life. Of the many cats I’ve had, only one of them wasn’t a cat off the street, and he was still one people were getting rid of. I have never had a starving baby crawl up to my door. I have seen zero babies dead by the side of a road. Bad things happening to babies in a videogame is clearly fictional.
Middens’ NPCs are nowhere near as personable and engaging as most games, but it turns out you don’t need characterization, you just need halfway realistic meows.
Ah, that’s a shame.
As I’ve said before in an email, a technical pacifist run is possible, should you decide to give the game another chance, though it requires some caution on a few locations. If you don’t want to bother, though, it’s understandable.
I’ve recommended the game to Act as well, so I’ll wait for her to confirm whether or not she plans on reviewing it. If not, I’ll give it a go myself.
Gingiva, though (a sort of sequel to Middens) really should be done by one of you as it does… ah… something with gender roles, but I’m not sure exactly what.
I have this experience all the time, but with dog-related things. I can’t even like, read stories that have happy endings for a sad dog because all I see is my dogs in pain.
[Sometimes people complain about how it’s bad to care more about animals than people]
I can’t speak for you, but for me… I think I have stronger emotional reactions to animals because they don’t understand. They rely on us, and when we hurt them they don’t know why. When something bad happens we can’t explain, they just wonder. And I’m going to stop now because I’m getting all sad just talking about this.
I can’t speak for you, but for me… I think I have stronger emotional
reactions to animals because they don’t understand. They rely on us, and
when we hurt them they don’t know why.
Yeah, true that. There’s a kind of unstated contract that people are supposed to look out for animals, small children, and other things that have to rely on us to survive. For me what I think really gets me, more so than the actual fact that it’s an animal being targeted, is the violation of that contract, which feels to me like an especially awful abuse of power.
Like, for me, how affected I am really depends on how the animals are characterized. I don’t usually have problems with books like Watership Down where the animals are anthropomorphized, or with stories that involve animal-on-animal violence. What really bothers me are cases where the harm is caused by someone I perceive as being responsible for the animal’s care, whether through negligence or through malice. Like, generally I wouldn’t be bothered about a story centering on animals where a housecat escapes and gets eaten by an eagle or something. On the other hand, if it was presented as there being someone who was supposed to be looking out for that cat, they were careless, and then that happened, I’d be pretty mad. The way the story’s presented changes where I see the agency.
It’s an innocence thing, I guess. Rightly or wrongly, I tend to think of animals as being innocent (unless, again, the story characterizes them otherwise–though sometimes it can try and fail, with me), so failure to protect that innocence, or to actively try to harm it, hit me especially hard.
There’s a kind of unstated contract that people are supposed to look out for animals, small children, and other things that have to rely on us to survive. For me what I think really gets me, more so than the actual fact that it’s an animal being targeted, is the violation of that contract, which feels to me like an especially awful abuse of power.
What pushes it over the edge with me is that I feel this way, but I know other people don’t. If there’s a small child, I feel like I can hand it to basically anyone else and be just “hey, small child, needs help” and it’s generally understood that not helping isn’t an option but if I do that with an animal maybe they’ll just kill it or dump it.
On the other hand, if it was presented as there being someone who was supposed to be looking out for that cat
And this is also the secondary issue – I could probably grit my teeth and try to ignore the sounds, but I have to be ready for hearing stuff out my window any time, otherwise it’s all my fault when something happens! Because no one else is going to be listening!
Oh, hey, since you are here, I should probably ask directly: are you planning on doing Middens review at some point in the future, or should I do it? I’m fine either way, I would like to hear your thoughts on the game, and I have stuff to say myself, I’m asking for the sake of not stepping on each other shoes.
As for the animals, yeah, I think the lack of understanding, the lack of true agency in the face of cruelty and violence is a big part of our sympathy to them.
I do have strong reaction on cats suffering (not strong enough to be particularly bothered by mewls in Middens, but strong enough to retreat from the fight with the cats), and I remember watching Alien and being on edge the whole time over wondering whether the cat will make it. Like, chestbusting monster, people dying? Yeah, whatever, now show me the cat! Is it fine? And in retrospect, I think a big part of it was that human characters more or less knew what they were dealing with and did something about it, even if it didn’t work that great, while the cat was there, doing cat things and not comprehending the sheer danger of the situation.
Somedaaaaaaay. But you’re not stepping on my toes if you’d rather do it now!
And I had literally the exact same experience with Alien. I actually believe that was the Trope Namer for “Don’t Kill the Cat”? Regardless, here is an amazing website: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/
Dogs are even worse because if you hurt a cat they just bite you back.
Apparently dogs do understand when you apologize to them which is a huge load off my mind.
Oh god. I can’t consume any media where a cat is in peril. Apparently there’s some kind of book series called “The Warriors” about magic cats? NOPE NOPE NOPE ALL CATS ARE FINE ALL THE TIME AND THEY HAVE HOMES
…Now all I can think about is a bunch of tough-looking cats just trying to get back to Coney Island.
“Warriors, come out to play-aaay! I’ve got a scratching post right here!”
Oh, that scene gets even better when I remember that, apparently, Luther was supposed to “clink” together dead pigeons, instead of bottles!
Reminds me of my experience with Warframe. Which, if you’re not aware, is a free to play PC/PS3 game where to play ancient cyborg ninjas who have returned to save the Sol System, which has fallen into chaos since the ancient Orokins (implied to be future humanity) disappeared and all that’s left are the biotechno cyborgs known as the Grineer and the corporate-bound Corpus.
Not long into the game you unlock the ability to create Kubrow, which are basically giant wardogs. And they make it very easy to get attached to your little deathdogs, and I find myself surprisingly often zooming over to help save my dog when they’ve been defeated, even though there’s no real penalty to them falling in battle.