1000xRESIST
This is not a review, at least, not the way that I would write one for any other game. I don't even know if I can cohere these thoughts long enough to write up an entire post, let alone pick apart the game's thematic threads to a degree that would be useful to anyone else. There's a lot going on here, chief among them the frequent and repeated references to the Asian (and Chinese, especially) diaspora - something I, a white guy from Baltimore, have nothing to add to. But as Iris's mother would say, it doesn't matter; we move forward. So...I'll give it my best shot.
1000xRESIST is, at its core, a walking sim. The world outside has been devastated by a plague, and the only survivor was a girl named Iris. She (and her family) were the only ones with immunity to said disease, and now she serves as the "Allmother" - a deity of sorts to all of her clones that occupy the Garden, the hub where most of the game takes place. Each one is given a color and a job, and those that perform their roles the best are given the titles of one of the five main sisters: Knower, Healer, Fixer, Bang Bang Fire, and Watcher, each operating under the watchful eye of Principal. You play as Watcher, the youngest of the sisters, and are tasked with "observing and remembering," primarily through the medium of reliving parts of the Allmother's memories in a process called "communion."
For the first half of the game, these communions represent the bulk of the gameplay. You're sent off to some part of the world in a memory, and solve some puzzles by moving through time and manipulating your location so you can get past doors or other blockades. You also occasionally run into what I can only describe as "zip puzzles" - you get dropped into an environment and have to reach some point by shooting yourself at these grapple points that are scattered around. It is not particularly well done, and by far the most blatant example of having "gameplay" for gameplay's sake. There's one near the very end of the game that works, but that's pretty much the only one that's worthwhile, at least in my book.
Then, around the halfway point of the game, things change. The game is hardly shy about its political point of view - Iris's parents fled Hong Kong after the 2019 protests, and there are multiple parts in the first half that imply that there are things underfoot in the Garden and Something Needs To Be Done, but it's here in the second half that things really come into focus. While I'll freely admit I didn't entirely understand every faction's goals, the vibes are crystal clear: Resistance, rejecting the status quo and reaching for something better, is in and of itself a virtue. The cost of revolution may be steep, and it may very well make you the villains of the next generation's story, but you owe it to the world to struggle and try to make it a better place regardless.
In the final scene of the game, before you move on to the epilogue, you are presented with a room, and a representative of each and every faction in the game. In this moment, the game asks you "Whose burdens and memories are you willing to take with you into the new world?" Are you willing to forgive the Youngest Sister, who, yes, was a traumatized victim herself, yet committed unspeakable horrors and is largely responsible for how we got to this point in the first place? How about Knower, who was willing to do anything for her own survival, even if it meant playing along with the blatantly authoritarian Provisional Government? There are a handful of endings to get via different combinations of what you choose to keep and purge (I ended up with what I understand is called the "Blue" ending), but regardless, it is far more interesting than simply picking Ending A or Ending B, and I'm pleased with how it works on the whole.
Finally, for reasons that are neither entirely bad nor the game's fault, my relationship with this game changed...drastically, about halfway through. I had just reached the point of the time skip, where everything takes on a much more overt dystopian look, only to find out that we had just re-elected Donald Trump. I can only hope that the next four years will be (relatively) peaceful, but I know in my heart that will not be the case. Whether by his own designs or the people he surrounds himself with, they will attempt to do unspeakable cruel things to the least and most vulnerable of us, and it will be up to us to fight back. To protect each other to the best of our abilities. To resist.
Hekki grace, sisters.