UNITY'S PROFILE

What I was expecting was “Two sisters survive in a bleak world where the only thing they can depend on is each other (and maybe later they can depend on a couple of extra party members, too!)” Instead we got “Two sisters survive in a bleak world until one of them dies, then thirty years pass, and circumstances force the remaining sister back into the world” to put it really mildly. Granted, Mint’s death was forshadowed pretty heavily, but I don’t automatically assume that every sickly or anemic character automatically is under a death sentence.

Hell, for a classic example, even Tiny Tim lived to the end of that story. Then again, Tiny Tim didn’t adventure around the world fighting monsters. If Ivy and Mint had returned with Cyril when they were denied the opportunity to see their mom in prison, I wonder, would Mint still have been alive 30 years later? I mean, it’s a moot point since we wouldn’t have a game in that scenario.

The pace really took a nosedive, in my opinion, after you beat Rutger for the final time. Before that, you find out through Rutger’s own overcockiness (written beautifully, I might add) that he’s got part of the God’s Eye and is going to destroy Yvette’s country and your sanctuary town (forgive me for not having all the names here, I’m not on the same computer I played the game on and can’t look them up).

The big antagonist had left the world for the space station, and now WOW, we better stop Rutger before he ruins everything! This is the closest thing the game has for a climax, and I don’t think that was the intent. The tension rises to its highest, but then you beat Rutger, and the tension is gone. World saved. Boom. There is no more looming threat.

But we’ve still got to find out what Raccoon is doing. The game states that its highly unlikely that he poses any kind of threat to the world anymore. Look, I wanted to know what his deal is as much as the other characters, so I was certainly motivated to find out. But we’ve had a story where Raccoon has conquered the major cities of the world, has emptied the poor sectors of the towns and used their denizens as slaves, worked them to death to uncover a gigantic technological tower, and after that, he just runs off to a space station, leaving the places he’d taken in a poor state, but free from his rule. The antagonist has almost defeated himself, as far as the player knows at this point. This is bad pacing.

Raccoon’s motives for going all Bandit King Evil Overlord after the thirty year time-skip still seem unclear to me. We’re told that when we first went to the floating mountain, Raccoon went a different way than us and saw something that shook him to his very foundation and thus made him decide to conquer the world.

You find out that the reason Raccoon did everything was because he saw Solomon’s recording that stated that every Wingless and Winged person in the game was taken from the past, as all the current Wingless were destroyed in the world and all the Winged are trapped in a time-loop. Raccoon is clearly mad that this happened. He thinks Solomon has abandoned the world and is pissed about it.

Now, at first I thought that all of his actions after that were to get to Solomon on the space station so he could go “What the hell, man?” But when we get to the space station, we find that Raccoon hasn’t even spoken to Solomon. Racoon is on the space station, apparently, so he can enjoy the space-station’s ability to create a false reality for himself where he can do whatever he wants, even if it isn’t real. But wait, that’s not true either. He’s miserable here, too, and it seems he’s punishing himself for his deed but doesn’t have the willpower to commit suicide.

So, then, why did he conquer the world in the first place? Was it just because he was so disillusioned with the world after finding out Solomon’s big secret that he didn’t value life anymore? I understand that he’s a man who cannot love himself. But then what was his big overall plan? It’s never explained well, and makes it feel like “Raccoon is doing this because the plot says so now” rather than “Oh, I see what he was going for. I see why his mind chose this path.”

Another part that felt weak to me was the discovery of why the Winged religion hates Wingless and wants them killed. This was a major theme in the game, especially in the first half where Ivy and Mint’s mother has been jailed because she fell in love with a Wingless. It shapes the world so much. Then when Rutger threatens us with the God’s Eye, we find that we need a doodad from an android to break into the castle, and Oliver buried an android companion in a cave long long ago.

We find that someone has built a giant holy place over the android's tomb, and after navigating through several trials of flame-traps, we finally get to the android, and it’s revealed that he was mistaken for a god, and because he was programmed to kill the Wingless, he said that the Wingless are evil and must be killed. That’s the whole reason for all of the persecution in the world. And it comes right out of left field and we would have never even known if we didn’t need that android’s doodad to beat Rutger.

Before we get into the events of the ending, let’s talk about what the game’s been building to, especially in regards to Ivy’s character. Mint dies. Ivy stays in the barren surface world, alone, for thirty years, because the surface world produces very life-like illusions from your past, so Ivy can still see Mint. Then Gainer and company find her and bring her back to the floating world. We learn what Mint’s death has meant to Ivy and other characters.

All throughout the rest of the game, I thought Ivy was finally coping with the loss of her sister. She reunites with Yvette and Lief, finds that her friends still love her, and seems to find other things to live for. She is shown more illusions of Mint on her journey, but she rejects them because they aren’t real.

Fast-forward to before the final boss battle. We are in the space station, and Raccoon is basically god of the reality here. He makes a fake Mint appear, but Ivy again rejects it. Ivy and the others preach to Raccoon about how he shouldn’t hide in this fake world. Raccoon wants to die but decides to die in battle with you. A battle ensues, and after a long while, Raccoon falls.

The characters lament his fate, but head out to leave the fake reality of this place. But Ivy pauses. Instead of leaving with the others, she SPENDS THIRTY YEARS in the fake reality staying with a fake Mint.

What!? Why? I thought one of the biggest themes of Ivy’s character was her finally, finally moving on with her life. She had just been telling Raccoon how pointless living in a fake reality is. Then she turns right around and indulges in that exact thing. I thought she was moving on. I thought she now had all her friends and the town of Sanctuary in her life. But I guess not. She’s still not over Mint and has to spend thirty more years with a fake version of her. She eventually leaves the fake reality, and thanks to how time works there, she’s only been missing from the real world for a second or two, but that doesn’t matter when you look at this as the last piece of her character arc. This is a serious blow to her character.

Add that to my confusion over Raccoon’s motivations, and you get an ending that I found disappointing. Not to mention that we don’t get a single mention of anything else that happens to any of the characters or the world after that.