Taking Time OFF (Pt. 2)

     Welcome back to my OFF review! If you haven't already, I encourage you to read my other OFF blog post first, as it contains most of my thoughts surrounding OFF's design and game aspects, whereas this post will focus on the story and messaging of the game. Assuming you already did that, let's dive right back into it!

    Before analyzing the different readings of the text (OFF), I'm going to take a moment to do a recap of the general flow of events that take place throughout the game. After this summary of the game's story, I will break down the three main interpretations of the story, and end with my personal reading of OFF, which has been molded by all three different interpretations.

    Like I mentioned in the last blog post, OFF revolves around the sacred quest that the Batter states in the introduction of the game: to purify the world.  In the first area, Zone 0, you are introduced to the mechanics of the fighting system and puzzles by a character known as the Judge- a creepy smiling cat with an extremely particular vocabulary (seriously, if it was hard to read through for me, I can't imagine others). 

    In Zone 1, the main gameplay of OFF begins, with the exploration of the Smoke Mines and the expurgation of the specters that plague the Zone. Zone 1 is ruled by Dedan, who has transformed the Zone into an administrative location where he manages the labor of the Elsen (the inhabitants of each Zone). After fighting and defeating Dedan, the Zone is purified, and we move onto the next Zone.

    In Zone 2, we repeat a lot of similar gameplay to Zone 1: clear out the ghosts, do some puzzles, rinse and repeat. However, instead of it being a zone of labor, it is a zone of entertainment, academics, and relaxation. Here, the Elsen are able to rest from their work in Zone 1, with a theme park, library, and neighborhood, all thanks to their ruler Japhet. However, after Japhet loses his mind, it is up to the Batter to defeat him and the spirits that he unleashed upon the Elsen. After fighting Japhet, who takes the form of a massive bird, the Zone is purified, and we move onwards.

In Zone 3, the Batter makes his way through an industrial hellscape, with factories and chimneys making up much of the landscape. We learn that Zone 3 is tasked with the production of Sugar, which is a sort of drug that the Elsen get addicted to. The leader of this Zone, Enoch, is a massive grinning giant, with little concern for the poor conditions in his factories, prioritizing output over the wellbeing of his employees. Naturally, we defeat him, and the Zone is purified.

    However, after the completion of the Third Zone, the gameplay exits the pattern, and instead invites us to revisit the purified Zones to see what they've turned into after our purification. The sight that greets us: bland, white landscapes devoid of life, with all color and personality drained from the land. After seeing this, we make our way to the final Zone of the game, which is called The Room.

    Here, we meet two very important characters. The Queen, who has been mentioned throughout the game in passing as the ruler of all Zones, and boss of all of the Zone guardians, and Hugo, a small sickly child. The Batter confronts the Queen, saying that she has failed her purpose as Hugo's guardian, who she neglected during her rule of the Zones. The Queen, after the fight ends and she is dying, says that "He has your eyes," presumably comparing her child, Hugo, to the Batter (potentially his father?). But to this, the Batter coldly replies: "They are full of fear." Woah, pretty cruel way to distance yourself from your own son, claiming that Hugo's eyes are scared while the Batter remains steely calm.

    After the Queen is defeated, we are faced with one last person to fight: Hugo, our son. With this final encounter, we are the aggressor, against the Player's will. Hugo sits there, crying instead of attacking, as the Batter relentlessly beats upon him until he is gone. With Hugo's death, the Room is purified, and the Batter marches onwards to the last room of the game, where we are confronted by the Judge, our old cat friend. The Judge speaks directly to the Player, begging us to choose to fight the Batter and stop him from completing his mission. We are faced with choosing the Judge or the Batter to decide our ending.

    If you choose to side with the Batter, you engage in one last fight as you battle against the Judge. Sadly, the Judge is much too weak to stop the Batter at this point, resulting in his death. With the Judge slain and every other Zone purified, the Batter thanks you for helping him purify the world, and turns the light switch off, ending the game.

    However, if you choose to side with the Judge, you get an alternate ending. Personally, after seeing the Batter murder his own defenseless son, I was feeling pretty betrayed by the Batter, so I chose to side with the Judge, and as we enter battle against the Batter for the first and final time, there is a chilling reveal...

    The Batter has transformed into an utter monster, with massive hands and a terrifying face. After siding with him for so long, we finally see the Batter as the other characters have come to see him: a demonic killing machine, a far cry from the heroic crusader we had thought he was. The creator of the game confirms that this is not a sudden transformation, but a shift in perspective that has allowed us to see the Batter as what he really is: a violent beast.

    With the Player's help, the Judge is able to swiftly defeat the Batter, and the game ends. The damage has been done, however, and the Judge is left to aimlessly wander the barren ruins of the world that you helped to destroy, under the blind trust in the Batter's quest to purify. I thought it was really interesting that at the end, whoever you choose to side with ends up winning the final battle. While it makes sense from a videogame perspective (I mean, what kind of game would force you to lose?), I thought that this decision said a lot about the reality of evil in the real world. As powerful as the Batter was, all it took was a shift in perspective for us, the Player, to stop enabling them, and with the loss of his support, the Batter fails his quest. Perhaps this was meant to mirror real-world instances of evil, where blind support is what enables horrible men to succeed in their evil desires. When the support is shown the truth, all that is left is a weak monster, who can be taken down if there is support behind the forces of good.

    So, that is the story of OFF! Now that you are familiar with the basic flow of events, let's discuss a couple of different interpretations that players have come up with after experiencing the game. There are three interpretations of the Batter and his story that I want to talk about, and I'm labelling each of them as: Neutral, Broken, and Evil.

    The Neutral reading of OFF largely takes the events of OFF at face value: it doesn't assign any sense of morality to the Batter, instead placing the burden of blame on the mission itself. His conviction to his quest to purify the world resolves him of responsibility, as he is simply doing his job, as was designed of him. This interpretation treats the Batter as a passive force in this world, without any personal opinions or motivations beyond doing as he is told, without questioning the motivation or manner of how this quest is accomplished.

    I'm not a huge fan of this interpretation, since it feels like kind of a cop-out for responsibility. To believe that the Batter is truly neutral would mean that he murders his own son without question because it's simply the next step in his journey to purify, and that leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Sure, it's an interesting concept to give the Batter the same benefit of the doubt that we give ourselves. After all, aren't we, the Player, similarly just playing through a game as we're meant to? Killing the child isn't part of our personal motivations, we just do it to progress the game, so why should we hold the Batter to a higher standard? In short: because while our decision to progress the game is a non-diegetic action (not part of the in-game reality) the Batter presses towards killing him within the confines of the game. This difference doesn't absolve either of us of guilt, but when analyzing the game from a story perspective, it's hard to take in meta concepts into discussion.

    The Broken interpretation of the Batter is really metaphorical, doing the complete opposite of the Neutral reading, and trying to find some sort of higher meaning or metaphor in every aspect of the game. Throughout our journey in the world of OFF, we are introduced to several elements that make up the world: Smoke, Metal, Plastic, and Meat. Theorists on Reddit have come to the conclusion that these elements are all representations of a hospital, and that the entire game takes place within the imagination of a terminally ill child, with the Batter representing his father trying to mercifully pull the plug on his life support. Crazy leap in logic right? Well, there are a few details that seem to support this wild theory.

    The game's "game over" song is called "Stay In Your Coma," which obviously alludes to some sort of sickness or coma being important to OFF's story. The final sequence (in the ending where the Batter wins) of him flicking the light switch OFF could be interpreted as turning the switch off on a life support machine. The conversations between the Queen and the Batter feel like the discussions between two parents about their sick child, with each of them blaming his health on the other. The Batter's true monstrous form may represent how people might view a father trying to kill his son, even though his intentions may be "pure" in ending the son's suffering.

    Personally, even though I think it's a neat idea to interpret so many details of a game into a somewhat cohesive meta-story, I don't really like this reading either. Beyond some connections feeling like a logical stretch, I just don't enjoy theories that sum up a game as being "all in someone's imagination." It's a cheap way to justify weird narratives or nonsensical worlds, and while they are possible interpretations of the story, I think it's creatively bankrupt to try to make everything realistic. 

    The final reading of OFF is that the Batter represents an absolutist evil. In the face of societal issues and misuse of power from the Zones' rulers, instead of aiming to fix and resolve these problems, the Batter opts to completely wipe out the Zones. This perfectionist, all-or-nothing attitude reflects a sort of cruel exactness that the Batter has, as he is a man with few words and direct action.

    Once again, this sort of reading doesn't really appeal to me that much either. I think that exploring absolutism and a perfectionist viewpoint that is detached from the issues a character tries to solve can present an interesting story, but the simplicity of the way this might be presented in OFF feels like it wasn't the intended story.

    It probably seems like I don't really like ANY of these readings of OFF, but actually, I do think that aspects of each interpretation provide really good context for the game's events. However, only applying one of these ideas usually results in a lackluster reading, so I instead choose to take ideas from each theory and mold them into my own, personal understanding of OFF.

    Taking the literal approach of the story from the Neutral interpretation, I believe that everything that happens in-game is real, and not a figment of someone's imagination like the Broken reading suggests. However, I don't think that it's fair to absolve the Batter's responsibility in his actions simply because he's "following his mission." While flawed, I do think that the Evil reading of the Batter gets one thing exactly right: that the Batter is an absolutist. When faced with any problem, he sees only two options: leaving it be, or exterminating the problem (usually through violence). The motivations behind his purifying rampage can be borne from good intentions, like the Broken reading suggests, but ultimately, it is the manner in which the Batter carries out this mission, regardless of how merciful or honorable it may be, that is condemnable.

    I think that, like any good art piece, OFF has room for many different interpretations of its story. The beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, and for me, I think that telling the story of a moral absolutist gone too far provides the most interesting story for me personally, since I find myself sometimes falling into the same moral issues as the Batter when I'm faced with a problem (although obviously not to his extent). Perhaps after having the full story and different theories laid out in front of you, you can come to a new reading of the game!