In our seventh episode of CNM we delve into the delight that is Broken Age. Broken Age is crowd funded point and click adventure game developed by Double Fine Productions. Our episode starts with a spoiler free review and then a spoiler rich discussion/celebration of the game. (Spoiler for the review, we love this game!)

Our discussion leads us into our take on the adventures of two 14 year olds, Vella and Shay as they try to stop the monster Mog Chothra from attacking villages and consuming maidens.

Listen on Youtube or Spotify.

Notes:

Did some checking after recording and could find no evidence that Mog Chothra’s name has any hidden meaning or reference.

******Extras****************

Memes!!

Extra Analysis No One Asked For!

The following essay assumes you have played or have other familiarity with the game and characters, full of spoilers. (Warning: this is a long deep dive.)

Broken Age: What Have We Done to Our Kids?

An Essay Exploring the Impact of Generational Trauma

I am an adult with adult aged children. I have experience both being a child and being a parent, almost 5 decades of experience. One thing that occupies a lot of my time and thought capacity is dealing with the legacy of generational trauma, being very aware that it is generational. What horrible things did I inherit and pass on before I understood what I was carrying? How do I cope and heal without vilifying myself as a parent or my parents? Is that even possible? I think Broken Age does a really heartwarming job of asking the question, “Why would someone do that to their kid?”

Broken Age steps up and presents not one but two scenarios that interplay with each other to find context rather than answers around this very idea. The game does this in plain sight but without calling any attention to it at all. You can have a complete gaming experience and never even notice the themes or the big concepts the story, setting and characters are wrestling with. This is not an easy trick, and they may have lost some audience in the execution. I’m so glad they took the risk.

Scenario 1: Vella

Vella comes from what appears to be a loving family. In Act II they confirm this with their actions risking their lives to try to find and save her. Yes getting on a 300+ year old airship that runs on autopilot with the goal of going beyond the plague dam, directly into the den of people who murder their own citizens to curb contamination, is risking their lives. I’m not sure they understood that though, when they made the choice to try. While exaggerated and a video game story, the elements absolutely ring true of what happens to people. An unexpected event occurs, in this case the event is not that they sacrificed their daughter to appease a monster, it’s that she refused to be sacrificed. That act of defiance gave everyone a chance to apply perspective. They then jump in behind Vella to try to stop the process, showing that they also are hot headed like she is.

The point being if they are good people, and a loving family, how where they ever ok with sacrificing Vella in the first place? Tradition. The local culture had been doing this for long enough they had vague reasons why it made sense but didn’t really know and it had always (in their personal lifetimes) been that way, so it must be “the right thing to do.” Generational trauma can be “traditional”. In some families it’s exiling members who exhibit undesirable traits like queerness or neurodiversity. In some families it’s reacting to problems with verbal or physical assaults and abuse. Some families have a tradition of neglect. The truth is we raise children the way we were raised unless we actively choose to parent differently. These patterns become traditional parenting in that family, the way we do it or it’s always been done.

If our children are being harmed, why don’t we throw away tradition? Usually because this feels like vilification of our parents or larger culture. If your culture is one that punishes you may be kicked out of your family or community for not adhering to tradition. This reinforces itself by often bringing up shame in the grandparent generation. Having your children choose differently how they raise their children can feel like a slap in the face, an attack on their efforts. “I did that, and you think it was wrong. You think I’m evil.” That criticism can be debilitating, it doesn’t seem like it should be, but it is. Once you identify a harmful tradition, and you see someone take steps to change it in front of you, you are confronted with the possibility of being guilty of harm yourself. Harm was not the intention, following tradition was. This internalized game of blame then flows up the chain, if it vilifies me, it vilifies my parents who taught me, and their parents that taught them, on and on and on. It’s easy to default into believing you are a monster. That’s not the truth. The truth is the tradition if it is causing harm and cannot be changed then its purpose is to use you and your parenting for monstrous purposes. When the ideal becomes more important than harm, the people holding it are tools for a larger purpose. The lesson of Broken Age is that we don’t have to care what that reason is, or who’s purpose it was in order to stop investing in harm. We can stop. We can stop for our kids and the world they live in.

If Vella’s parents were real people and not video game characters, they would probably need a lot of healing time and maybe support around all the feelings that come from discovering you’ve been invested in harm. All the maidens have real reason to be angry, their parents literally fed them to a monster for their own safety and gain. If the story continued, the rebellion of these young women might ricochet into violence if not given space and support. Especially if their parents try to play the victim rather than own their part. Yes, they were lied to, but they still gave up their daughters for sacrifice. Their children whom they have a duty to provide for and protect, were not only fed to a monster, they were told it was their sacred duty, that this sacrifice would bring prestige to their families. Denying any personhood these young women ever would have had. How much do you invest affection, attention or time into someone who is destined to be a sacrifice? How hard would it be for you as a parent to get attached to a child if you knew you only had them until they were 14? Would you invest in their education? Would you teach them about philosophy or how to be a good person? Would you bother? And I don’t think anyone would make those choices consciously but if you observe that situation from the outside and do the math, eh wouldn’t other parts of your life (or other children) feel like a better investment?

This can all sound like a fantastical scenario being blown out of proportion, but if you come from the right traditions, ones that heavily invest in Patriarchy, this is exactly what happens to girls as they are married off as teenagers. They are groomed by their culture to know it is their sacred duty to be a good wife. They are only taught to be that and value that. Once they are married they are part of their husband’s family first then their own, maybe. It can be very hard for a human being with limited emotional capacity, which we all are, to choose to spend our precious time and love on someone we don’t get to keep. It’s a tragedy, but it really happens. Subtler versions of this same thing can happen in any family. Again, I don’t think people engage in these behaviors with an intent to harm, only that they are harmful anyway.

Scenario 2: Shay

Shay comes from an infinitely curated upbringing. Everything is just so. Unlike Vella we don’t really know what Shay’s normal culture would have been like. He’s never been invited to participate. We have no idea what it was like to grow up for Hope and Ray. We don’t know if they had any connection to their parents but, they do not seem to have one now. This is a direct contrast to Vella who lives in the same village that her parents and grandparents grew up in. We have no context for tradition in Shay’s culture. He is deliberately isolated. Why? Why were his parents ok with him being raised this way? Is it really to his own benefit? If it doesn’t benefit him why are his parents going to such lengths to raise him this way? Shay is kept free from influence so he can tap into a part of his nature that his culture stifles in some unknown way but is essential to the culture’s very survival.

As the story progresses, you find out that not only is Shay in a virtual playpen in “space”, so are his parents. They have all been lied to on a level of fundamental reality. They have been isolated to the point that they don’t even understand that they are not in space. Even as they fly and maintain a spaceship for 14 years!!! I cannot imagine what an upbringing for Hope and Ray would look like to prepare them for that. So all three of them are living completely isolated duty filled lives in a confined space.

In order to not corrupt him, Shay’s parents go completely hands off in one sense, they stop physically being in each other’s presence to the point Shay forgot his parents were physical people and not just a computer. The game conveys this by not letting the player know for sure Shay’s parents are real until the end of Act I when we meet Ray outside on the beach. On the other hand every part of Shay’s life is laid out for him, he is given no real agency or ability to grow.

Shay being raised in isolation forgot his own parents were also people. He was forced to live a tiny life with a pointless routine that accomplished nothing. While being told he was precious and would serve a great purpose. He’s given hero training where he faces no risk. He is put in situations where it is impossible to fail, then praised for his success.

All of this could have set Shay up for life as an entitled awful person. Since he is a character and not a real person we can never know if someone in that situation would be hard to get along with when they finally meet other people. In this game, this type of upbringing doesn’t ruin you socially, as seen by the introduction of Alex in the end of Act I. Alex went through an identical upbringing except that he was raised 300 years before. Both Shay and Alex seem really normal for this world. Their clothes alone mark their real difference from locals. So it doesn’t appear that Shay’s isolation did any lasting harm.

Side note: This is fiction in a video game. This isolation is a metaphor. Literally isolating a child in this way would have drastic effects on their ability to socialize, this kind of isolation no matter how well intended does cause harm, that is not addressed in the scope of this game. It would be an interesting conversation to have, but that’s not the conversation here.

Rather than isolation itself being what causes harm in Shay and Alex’s cases it is the fact that they were used to perpetuate harm against other people. They were chosen to select the sacrifices among the maidens. Why would you raise your own child for such a nefarious purpose? Tradition. The boys’ parents were trained to raise their sons so they could do something? I don’t even know if it’s revealed, but the isolation is important and the sons are precious cargo. The boys are “corrupted” into rebellion as they age to 14, by being visited by a stranger in “wolf’s clothing” who finally gives them something meaningful to do. They are lied to about what they are doing, told they are saving helpless creatures while they are actually kidnapping maidens, completing the sacrifice process. They are kept out of society and given no practice with meaningful choice, but STILL lied to about what they are doing.

Why would such a ridiculously complicated tradition exist? How did this come to be? You, the player are given some context as to how over centuries this convoluted system developed. Long ago, they sent the emissaries out to select maidens and they chose to live in the badlands instead of take the girls from their families. So they isolated them in “spaceships” so they no longer were exposed to the temptation. Then from that you can extrapolate that even when isolated the boys had a problem with the kidnapping, so they trained them to be heroes and told them this was a rescue mission. I’m guessing that when they just had the parents lead the rescue missions the parents caught on (maybe by talking to the captured maidens), so they started the rebellion protocol and made the kid do the rescue missions hidden from their parents. The thing is, when you have to lie every step along the way to get people to go along with your tradition or plan, there is a strong possibility that the plan causes harm. Complicated systems needing secrets and lies to succeed are usually that way to avoid blame. It’s so much easier to admit harm and negotiate around harm and harm reduction. These complications are there because the intent is to harm.

Why talk about this in a video game? Because it is a good metaphor for how children (often boys) can be infantilized. They can be set on a specific path and their parents clear obstacles and messes with equal abandon while letting the kid themself experience no impact from their actions. They do not receive feedback that they are making good choices, because they are denied agency. They are denied the lived experience of what causes harm because they are not allowed to even witness the harm they cause. When coupled with protective isolation people can be absolutely clueless about how they impact others in the world. Isolation and infantilization don’t teach critical thinking, they teach dependence and obedience. If these isolated people are raised in a culture of patriarchy and racism they are going to carry those biases without question, leaving them open to causing great but completely unintended harm.

End Note: The Bad Guys

Why are the baddies barely mentioned? Why don’t we know almost anything about who the Thrush are and why they do things? I believe this choice very deliberate and powerful. It’s to not give them power. This is not their story. It is Vella and Shay’s. The Thrush’s motivations are suspect and they are known to gaslight, lie and murder for their cause, whatever it is. It does not matter what it is. NOTHING should justify what they do. I applaud the game for making the reveal of the “saboteur” a joke. Only Hope even knows who he is. The game does not want the player to care. Also, the goal isn’t to kill the baddies, it is to stop them. It’s to ruin their weapons so they can’t hurt people, not to change their minds or culture, or to murder in retaliation.

In conclusion, how do we save our children without throwing our parents (and ourselves) under the bus? I don’t know, but we can start by playing video games together.

If you read all that, thank you- Giggleklutz