Strange Gaming Diaries: Far from Noise, by George Batchelor

this is another one of those little games I got bundled with about a hundred other games a while back and decided to try out—and for reference, it was about a year and a half ago that I played this game. I don't usually talk much about my life circumstances in this blog series, but my place in life is pretty relevant to the discussion of this game, because it makes a very clear point about being about disasters and how people deal with them, and oh buddy oh boy was my life a disaster about a year and a half ago.

far from noise affixes itself entirely on the singular, dramatic scene of a car dangling over a cliff face, with all the happenings of the game whirling around this single point. it does a lot to ground you in the physical space of the game, be it your attempts to get the car going again or your wistful contemplation of the stars up ahead. indeed, you're far from any external point of influence, leaving you alone save for the company of a talking stag that may or may not be real.

it's the conversation with the stag that sets up the core philosophical point this game wants to unfurl and examine—when all external circumstances are stripped away and one hones their focus down to your singular experiences as a person, if you perceive the things in front of you to be a certain way, even if that doesn't line up with a preconceived notion of reality, are they not still real to you in that moment? far from noise doesn't answer this question very loudly—the game doesn't really do anything loudly—but it still has a clear opinion it voices: it might as well be real, so why not take it as an opportunity to challenge your perspective and see what you can learn from it? talk to the stag. maybe you'll have a soul-bearing conversation about your hopes and dreams along the way, and maybe you've actually needed that this entire time.

the game revolves itself around philosophical ideas of idealism—that reality only exists in the mind of every person perceiving it, and that a change in that perception represents a change in reality. the game is even able to use its medium to communicate those ideas by shifting what the player is able to view accoringly—when the stag encourages the protagonist to let their surroundings fade away, they do so. when the protagonist starts inventing impromptu constellation, they're visually drawn across the sky. even at the very end of the game, when the protagonist tries to get the car started once again, the frame around the scene closes in to simulate eyes closing, and when they're awake, the car is gone, with no way of objectively knowing whether they fell to their death or drove away to see another day.

but see, I didn't see those things in my playthrough. I didn't play the game the way you'll probably find most people playing it if you look up footage on youtube or similar.

it turns out that there's a branch in the narrative that happens pretty early into your conversation with the stag, where the protagonist maintains a realistic perspective on events and rejects the idea that talking with a stag could possible help them in their situation—they are here on the brink of death, and the protagonist insists that that's all there is left for them. if you make this choice, the game is cut short, with the stag walking away in silence, the credits rolling, and the cliff crumbling and sending the car down into the ocean in plain view.

that's the ending I got. between a constantly dire financial predicament, unstable housing, and being wracked with severe mental illness, I didn't feel like I really had the luxury to envision a world in which I was able to conceive of anything besides immediate peril. peril was all I'd ever known. I rejected the idea that peace could be made with this kind of situation. peace was the enemy. peace was stillness, and stillness was death.

I felt very frustrated by this outcome, like the game was chiding me and making my perspective, marred into near-sightedness by persistent trauma, out to be little more than thoughtless pessimism. I think that wasn't very fair of me, but I also feel like there was something I was hitting on with that. there's an air of pity to the way this ending plays out, with the stag even taking a dramatic moment in the middle of walking away to turn and look at the car before continuing on its path, that I think really undercuts what it's trying to communicate. it creates a connection between the idealism/realism dichotomy and concepts of peace and defeatism that I don't think I agree with, and to have that disagreement seen as a thing to pity feels...a little uncomfortable?

like, I definitely believe that the mind is the most powerful shaping force of our realities, but I don't believe that power to have such totality as to be able to reshape anything and everything it encounters. the conscious mind is not the mind's entirety, and sometimes we don't get to choose what reflexes and schemas are written into the subconscious mind—especially when we're placed in structural positions of powerlessness. not to say that there's any obligation the game has to speak on all of those nuances, but I think in this decision to include this sort of "bad ending" there's a chilling effect to the ability of people like me to debate the points it's speaking on.

I honestly think it would've been better off omitting the whole thing and letting the game speak for itself so it didn't end up with this dismissive sort of air to it, like you're not allowed to play through the whole thing if you aren't willing to go along with what it has to say. at least let me get a fuller perspective of your thoughts about life and the universe before you show me to the door, alright?

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