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Hate Plus: are you ready to be heartbroken?
This post may be of limited interest to people who haven't played Analogue: A Hate Story, as Hate Plus is a generous bonus track rather than a fully realized game. On the other hand, what exactly is stopping you from playing Analogue? (My review is the second half of this post.)
As expected, Hate Plus tells a sad and horrifying set of interwoven stories. Following your departure from the empty generation ship Mugunghwa, having learned what happened there, you're presented with new files that tell you why the society turned out the way it did -- who the bastards were who had and implemented the fantasy of Neoconfucianism in space, and how doomed they all fucking were to start with anyway. It's a tragedy leavened with only a few moments of humor, and it's beautifully done despite feeling constricted in a way the original game doesn't.
It's hard for me to specify what it's a tragedy of. Linear thinking and dueling conservatisms. AI psychology as a consequence of immortality. Because of Love's impressive scripting of the interacting factors and characters, I think the ending was inevitable from the point at which our view starts, but going farther back, of course it wasn't.
Old *Mute had failed once in the distant past, which lost the ship its navigation AI, but we know that there was enough room in the remaining computers to run another AI (because *Hyun-ae and *Mute coexisted later, even if they mostly didn't run simultaneously). If Old *Mute had cloned herself then, she had another thousand years to learn to navigate and get everyone the hell out of space, which after all is what generation ships are for. But *Mute, in every iteration we see, and as smart and badass as she can be, is a linear thinker. Her tendency only gets worse as she canalizes into Eldest Security Councillor Who Knows All.
Of course, the character I identified with the most was the scientist, So-yi, inept with humans and obsessed with her research. She is sexually harassed to an extent that isn't completely clear, but is gross even before you're confronted with a terribly plausible theory late in the meta-game. She is paid less than her male counterparts despite her excellent work and eventually forced out of her job completely. Her marriage goes to hell. And her research, the thing she cares the most about in her life, is shunted aside and lost, and we never find out what kind of social difference it might have made, or not. I suspect that it was suppressed on purpose, and that it wouldn't have made things better, but that's the kind of thing you come out of these games thinking.
Compared to the first game, *Hyun-ae's character really takes a back seat to *Mute in this game, which seems a little unfair considering most people liked *Mute best even in the main game. I really felt for complex, traumatized *Hyun-ae, so I was a little disappointed at her nearly total retreat into cute-cosplaying-girlfriend mode. (Though okay I really liked her new year's hanbok, shut up.) The problem was partially redeemed by the harem-style playthrough, in which the AIs are both there and interact with each other -- *Mute still dominates, but you get a lot of good player-involving conversation on Day 3. And *Hyun-ae is so queer! Poor rigid *Mute, stuck with the two of us. :)
(Fascinatingly, *Mute is grossed out by lesbians and inter-class relationships, but was TOTALLY FINE as soon as it turned out the person dressed as a maid was a man. Sure, men get up to that stuff, no big deal. And while she consistently blames women for problems caused by their society, her empathy for them is always really clear in this game, which isn't something you see often at all. A lesbian is miserable at being dumped and wants to reject her arranged marriage? "That's why this kind of relationship isn't harmless." It's keeping her from a stable family situation that would protect her. If you accept its axioms, *Mute's prescriptivism follows in a logical and caring way -- it's just that she should never have accepted those awful axioms. But you find out why she did.)
The main weakness of the plot is that I did't find one of the major villains, Eun-a, believable. Like, at all. She's a historian, the President of the University, but all she ever says is that she wants to be a wife and not an official, it's too much responsibility for her. Okay, maybe I can believe that she gets some promotions out of nepotism -- we see that happen with So-yi -- but So-yi is ambitious and dedicated. I can easily believe that Eun-a's family Councillor would stuff one of his own into that position as soon as possible, but I fail to believe (1) that the ship wouldn't simply melt down under as much corruption as it would take for someone to even become a professor without wanting it badly, or (2) that in the regressively patriarchal climate we see there wasn't some man in the family who would shove in front of a lukewarm Eun-a to get that job. Four playthroughs and I'm not seeing the logic.
Interface-wise this is not as much fun as Analogue, and the reasoning for having a dialogue wheel again is a joke. However, as an add-on for people who have played the first game, it's fine. It's odd and annoying that the game requires real-time delays between stints of reading; it produces the opposite of immersion, not usually what you want, but there has to be a Day 2/Day 3 transition for the plot to work. (There's an in-game skip option, or a person can change their system clock to sneak around it.)
It's sad, I can't say it's not, but as a piece of storytelling craft this is a worthy addition to Analogue. I recommend Analogue highly, and you should definitely continue to this if you enjoy it.
As expected, Hate Plus tells a sad and horrifying set of interwoven stories. Following your departure from the empty generation ship Mugunghwa, having learned what happened there, you're presented with new files that tell you why the society turned out the way it did -- who the bastards were who had and implemented the fantasy of Neoconfucianism in space, and how doomed they all fucking were to start with anyway. It's a tragedy leavened with only a few moments of humor, and it's beautifully done despite feeling constricted in a way the original game doesn't.
It's hard for me to specify what it's a tragedy of. Linear thinking and dueling conservatisms. AI psychology as a consequence of immortality. Because of Love's impressive scripting of the interacting factors and characters, I think the ending was inevitable from the point at which our view starts, but going farther back, of course it wasn't.
Old *Mute had failed once in the distant past, which lost the ship its navigation AI, but we know that there was enough room in the remaining computers to run another AI (because *Hyun-ae and *Mute coexisted later, even if they mostly didn't run simultaneously). If Old *Mute had cloned herself then, she had another thousand years to learn to navigate and get everyone the hell out of space, which after all is what generation ships are for. But *Mute, in every iteration we see, and as smart and badass as she can be, is a linear thinker. Her tendency only gets worse as she canalizes into Eldest Security Councillor Who Knows All.
Of course, the character I identified with the most was the scientist, So-yi, inept with humans and obsessed with her research. She is sexually harassed to an extent that isn't completely clear, but is gross even before you're confronted with a terribly plausible theory late in the meta-game. She is paid less than her male counterparts despite her excellent work and eventually forced out of her job completely. Her marriage goes to hell. And her research, the thing she cares the most about in her life, is shunted aside and lost, and we never find out what kind of social difference it might have made, or not. I suspect that it was suppressed on purpose, and that it wouldn't have made things better, but that's the kind of thing you come out of these games thinking.
Compared to the first game, *Hyun-ae's character really takes a back seat to *Mute in this game, which seems a little unfair considering most people liked *Mute best even in the main game. I really felt for complex, traumatized *Hyun-ae, so I was a little disappointed at her nearly total retreat into cute-cosplaying-girlfriend mode. (Though okay I really liked her new year's hanbok, shut up.) The problem was partially redeemed by the harem-style playthrough, in which the AIs are both there and interact with each other -- *Mute still dominates, but you get a lot of good player-involving conversation on Day 3. And *Hyun-ae is so queer! Poor rigid *Mute, stuck with the two of us. :)
(Fascinatingly, *Mute is grossed out by lesbians and inter-class relationships, but was TOTALLY FINE as soon as it turned out the person dressed as a maid was a man. Sure, men get up to that stuff, no big deal. And while she consistently blames women for problems caused by their society, her empathy for them is always really clear in this game, which isn't something you see often at all. A lesbian is miserable at being dumped and wants to reject her arranged marriage? "That's why this kind of relationship isn't harmless." It's keeping her from a stable family situation that would protect her. If you accept its axioms, *Mute's prescriptivism follows in a logical and caring way -- it's just that she should never have accepted those awful axioms. But you find out why she did.)
The main weakness of the plot is that I did't find one of the major villains, Eun-a, believable. Like, at all. She's a historian, the President of the University, but all she ever says is that she wants to be a wife and not an official, it's too much responsibility for her. Okay, maybe I can believe that she gets some promotions out of nepotism -- we see that happen with So-yi -- but So-yi is ambitious and dedicated. I can easily believe that Eun-a's family Councillor would stuff one of his own into that position as soon as possible, but I fail to believe (1) that the ship wouldn't simply melt down under as much corruption as it would take for someone to even become a professor without wanting it badly, or (2) that in the regressively patriarchal climate we see there wasn't some man in the family who would shove in front of a lukewarm Eun-a to get that job. Four playthroughs and I'm not seeing the logic.
Interface-wise this is not as much fun as Analogue, and the reasoning for having a dialogue wheel again is a joke. However, as an add-on for people who have played the first game, it's fine. It's odd and annoying that the game requires real-time delays between stints of reading; it produces the opposite of immersion, not usually what you want, but there has to be a Day 2/Day 3 transition for the plot to work. (There's an in-game skip option, or a person can change their system clock to sneak around it.)
It's sad, I can't say it's not, but as a piece of storytelling craft this is a worthy addition to Analogue. I recommend Analogue highly, and you should definitely continue to this if you enjoy it.