Wow, its the moment we've been waiting for since Sienna's Game of the Year 2022. This year, Sienna is going to talk at length about her favorite game among those she played for the first time this year. Which game will she chose? Its a real mystery....
Just kidding. Of course its
It will be no surprise for regular blog readers that I selected "The Great I Am" as my Game of the Year. I've talked about this short indie VN about a young woman with a peculiar communication style whose in a dire situation a LOT since it was published. It is definitively the game I most enjoyed, thought about after playing, and most want to encourage YOU to play. Why?
"The Great I Am" is by no means a long game. Its ich io page describes it as having a '10-20 minute' playtime. This is in some way accurate- I think on my second playthrough I finished reading in ~15 minutes. However, I wouldn't recommend playing the game like that. If you just blast through the text like that, you miss so much of what the game wants to say. Each character in the game, save for I Am, is given a variety of titles by the titular main character. When I initially played the game, I took my time processing each title- sometimes even looking up the allusions- to get a better grasp of what they meant to I Am. That is the best way to play this game. Understanding those references brings a lot of depth to I Am's character and helps you connect with her- which in some way is the point of the game. Plus, her little digs at her antagonists are honestly so funny! You're likely to miss a lot of them if you aren't looking up those allusions.
The art style is also an important part of "The Great I Am" that is so easily to overlook. Theres a very noticable tension between the designs of I Am and everything else in her world. The other characters all feel ripped out of some 17th Centruy painting, even the sympathetic ones, while I Am looks like she walked out of VRChat. She is Immediately and Obviously Recognizably Different from everyone else. The design dissonance between the other characters and I Am really heightens how alienated I Am feels- she doesn't even look like she belongs in her own story.
The background art is… very strange! I'm not sure I entirely understand the narrative purpose of them to be honest. They also feel alien, or broken. As if the world itself is fundamentally incompatible with reason or sense. I would say that the 'fucked up-ness' of any given background is tied to the 'fucked up-ness' of the character I Am is interacting with at that moment. In particular I remember the Boyfriend and the Priest having the weirdest backgrounds. And I think the Friend and the Lover had the least strange and most peaceful backgrounds.
With all that mentioned, its time to talk about the star of the show: I Am. The narrative follows her in the short time she has left before her community sacrifices her. We aren't given any particular reason for the sacrifice, other than that I Am is Different. Her death, if she doesn't escape, is presumably pointless. The narrative doesn't give us any reason to believe this community has a good reason for these sacrifices. Its easy to imagine in another story a protagonist stopping this horrible tradition. If I Am were normal, perhaps she would rally her friends for some daring adventure, either advocating for overturning these awful pointless killings or escaping their torturous society together. But I Am is not normal.
Firstly, she can only communicate using "I Am-" style sentences. And generally she prefers to use analogy and metaphor within these sentences to relate her feelings, situation, and thoughts. For example, she isn't likely to say "I Am Very Upset Right Now", but instead "I Am The Raging Tempest That Never Ends." You would imagine this makes it difficult for her to communicate, and for others to understand her. You wouldn't be entirely incorrect, but a careful reading shows most of the people around her are able to have conversations with her and at least partially understand what she means. Occasionally the more antagonistic characters will 'give up' and not attempt to decipher her meaning, but its clearly from contempt's for her and not genuine inability to parse her meaning. I don't believe it is an accident that the only accidental misunderstandings are when she describes her situation as it is, rather than in metaphor. The game is grabbing your shoulders and asking you to please respect people enough to try and understand them, even if they are weird!
So if the other characters can, to some degree, understand her, what does make I Am different enough for her community to stop caring for her? Maybe if I Am were otherwise 'normal', if she just had this strange communication issue, other people in her community could accept her. But I Am is pretty pointedly Autistic, and I think that is what prevents others from trying to understand her. She is willful and stubborn and An Individual in ways they can't accept. For them, its Conform or Die. And to I Am, its be herself or die.
I suppose thats where I'll end my ranting and raving about the game. There is a lot more I could say about the game, make no mistake! I didn't even talk about the ending! God what an ending. I honestly think it is a masterpiece and a "must read" for any fans of virtual novels or like, media that is good in general. Its good and its free, so go read it now! Seriously right now!
Having Rayan defending Marina in front of my salad does makes me feel like smooth Eric. Maybe then he will get a clue of HOW BAD CHEATING IS. She was ready to hook up with him, like. BRUH.
