There are many routes and paths in slay the princess, that do end up getting you to think about deep philosophical questions, practical relationship advice and metaphors, how things play out in their most toxic versions possible, deep questions about life, death, the nature of change and stagnation, the difference between singular individual perspectives and a whole multitude of collective ones, how all of that shapes us...
And then you get to a path (let's say the eye of the needle) where you hear the Narrator's description and it starts to feel like it is a metaphor for something FAR different. And you are an adult.
Like... idk... I think the eye of the needle is like a metaphor for... finding something very specific in warm, tight and moist tunneling spaces... Something that some may not ever even find in their lives.
razor/cheated and para/nightmare are the same type of relationship just two very different tones
they both engage in spy vs spy, "my beautiful wife(gender neutral) who wants me dead", behavior - creating elaborate ways to try to kill each other but theyre both immortal pieces of gods so they cant die
but cheated and razor do it because it quickly becomes a game they BOTH enjoy (cheated takes longer to like it but he does find razor fun to be around once he realizes he just needs to cheat back)
para and nightmare do it because they hate each other so much but they cant get rid of each other. like the premise of their route is paras terrified refusal to let mare out and mares cruelly playful refusal to ever let para know a hint of peace
I've finished my first play through of Slay the princess
Wow. Just, wow. Holy fucking shit.
This game is amazing. It's one of those games that makes you sit with your thoughts, makes you think about so much. There's so many different options, so many possibilities. I loved this so much. It was wonderful. It's one of those games that quietly changes you. I loved it so much.
This game is beautiful and unique. It tugs at the player so deeply
Im gonna be replaying this again and again, trying to get all the vessels and endings. Ir was wonderful
Major spoilers below (The Shifting Mound - Movement III, The Shifting Mound - Movement V, and The Spectre).
"I would never dare to tarnish our relationship by assuming myself above you."
The Shifting Mound can tell you this after your third gifted vessel. But... doesn't it end up being an empty promise? She does do that. In the end, She places herself on a pedestal of omniscience and truth, dismissing our every rebuttal and refusing to acknowledge truth outside of Her own nature. It's honestly a little tragic. All of that "divine confidence" (as the Voice of the Hero puts it) has blinded Her to the possibility of any sort of compromise or genuine empathy. (One of many reasons I believe that Saving Her is one of the worst endings. The relationship is framed as loving, but Her words and actions feel like red flags to me.)
"Death—at least as a form of permanence—is just a concept, and clearly it's not a very useful one anymore. Maybe we should just throw it out entirely."
Unrelated to the first quote, the Voice of the Cold can comment this in The Spectre. And... isn't this it? Isn't this the compromise that would seemingly make everyone happy? If She is a being of perception, then can't we just... change what "death" means? It completely solves the mortal dilemma, it means the world doesn't have to reboot once She leaves the Construct, and it means we don't have to kill her and create a static hell world, perform any hard resets that just put off the resolution until later, or take the uncertain path into the unknown. It's honestly wild that this line is in the game at all, given how weirdly perfect of a solution it COULD be to address everyone's problems. The Narrator gets death as He understood it removed, the Shifting Mound gets to live and escape with you, and nobody has to cease to exist.
How fucked up do you guys think it would be if one labelled the chapter number for moment of clarity neither infinity or "???" there, but just straight up "Chapter TREE(3)"?
Like fuck it! Let's not make it an implied high number you may be able to imagine or guess or even a vague far away abstract infinite one. Nope, let's just instead take one of the most absurdly highest numbers we could define, whose size is so absurdly big that you struggle to comprehend it, yet it is still a finite and specific number that does exist.
A transfinite number if you will.
Like have that be the case and just sit down and realize, how fucking high of a mindbogglingly number that is just digits wise alone, then realize that we're talking about the number of chapters and therefore worlds that are over now and just how much fucking time therefore had to pass to make it all happen.
And now understand that this is the scale conceptual gods like the long quiet and the shifting mound do effectively work with as if it was nothing, whether they do so consciously, subconsciously or not.
