Zeno Clash - Philosophy and Story

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Zeno Clash - Philosophy and Story

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Post by Splicer-Fox »

There was always this attraction I had to games with bizarre worlds,
that instead of having clear and interesting rules. Have no rules what so ever.
Zeno Clash is one that I perhaps think too deep into.
I find that I like theory and philosophy made by fans regarding deep games such as Deus ex, bioshock, Fallout ect.
I don’t know if I can actually produce a solid answer to any of this but I find that I like talking about this game, so here we go!

The world – Zenozoik
This place is a work of art.
The hands of dead gods holding up mountains.
Art cities that grew twisted by each new society that replaced the previous.
Animals and beasts of unconventional shapes.
Mountains with strange shapes. Deserts hiding secrets and mad forests and swamps.
There are weapons, but beasts and men prefer their hands to settle arguments meaning even though you fight you almost never kill anybody. (Unless that is the goal)
The further you move away from the centre, the more reality brakes down.
Your character discovers that Zenozoik is walled in by constructions and machines for a largely unknown reason.
You can clearly see this world was lived in by different sentient beings for… A very long time.
I can’t even tell if it’s taking place on a conventional orbiting planet or not.

The characters

Here it gets interesting and is what makes it the most unique story I’ve ever seen.
But I will stick with the 3 characters I think are important and the Corwids.

Father Mother

He She is actually my favourite character.
It’s very hard to talk about him her without spoiling the whole thing.
Father Mother is unique and the only one of his her kind.
He she wears a coat that is hardened with an animals ribcage,
so he she can open it like a cupboard and keep his her babies and pouches of milk for them.
You play as one of his her grown adult children.
As mentioned in the trailer there he she has one huge secret/flaw that threatens to destroy your family.
Everybody in the world including his her enemies can’t deny he she is a good father and mother.
And his her family is the biggest and strongest in the city of Halstedom.
He she makes her purpose clear. It’s all about the family at all costs.

Ghat
The person you play as.
Ghat is one of the older children of Father Mother.
He was a bit of an outcast in the family and got into trouble with everybody allot for being too curious.
He self-exiled himself and joined the crowds in order to learn what his purpose is.
He could not find a purpose and eventually decided to just pick a direction and just see what he can see and die. (I guess you could say he became suicidal after being rejected by his family)
But what Ghat does not know, is that he actually found a purpose which was too learn the truth about everything.
Not that it makes him any better as a person because he upends everybody’s world in doing so.
And obviously the more he learns. The more depressed he becomes. Until he changes his purpose too fixing the mess he made and accepting the pointlessness of existing.

Golem (Golem of the North)
On Ghat’s journey to find a place to die and learn, he accidently activates Golem.
Golem makes it very clear his purpose is to make sure nobody goes farther than the wall he is guarding.
But it seems he is very unsatisfied with it.
Golem proposes to follow Ghat back to the city of Halstedom to fix things his way.
As soon as he reveals himself too the savages and creatures of that world he shows his power.
He brakes his own fingers and everybody who has ever made eye contact with Golem suffer the exact injury.
Hundreds of people and beasts have their fingers broken at the same time making it clear if you hurt Golem you hurt yourself.
He then starts to bring this new thing that nobody can understand… Golem calls it LAW.
The people and beasts find this law to be most cruel and horrific because they get put into cages if they do what they must or want. “Why would you do that? Just fight if you want something no need to take away freedom”.
Obviously people don’t like Golem or Ghat for this and this “law” is not working out as planned.
I think there are 2 reasons for Golem doing this.
1 Golem is board and hates the purpose he was given, so he decides his new life mission is to bring law to savages
2 He is hoping if he creates a stable society, he won’t need to guard the wall any more.

The Corwids

What do you do if you have no reason for being?
What if reality is empty and cruel?
The Corwids are literately “The Myth of Sisyphus”.
Doing one thing and one thing only and extracting whatever joy they have in existing and perishing from it. (It’s no wonder a suicidal person would try to find a cure for depression from these people)
But their madness can be seen in the real world.
People who pursue ideas and great purpose until it harms them or the people around them. (e.g. Social justice, Dogma, Furries ect.)

That should be the basics of it.
Obviously there are more things going on than just this but that would be too spoiler.
And I like that, there is no protagonist or antagonist in a good or evil storytelling sense.
People just trying to escape OR find a reason.

There is a sequel - Zeno Clash 2. (Beware this trailer has spoilers)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJk2qqXbPiM
Hope you enjoyed that.

Also there are 2, skanky, multi-breasted, sergal, sisters in it ;) (in Zeno Clash 1 they got physics! on those bad girls)
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