Emily is Away <3 (2021)

I can't overstate how invested I feel when playing the Emily is Away series. I spent years talking to my then-high-school-sweetheart-now-wife on AIM and the first two games pull me back in time, sitting too close to my 19" ViewSonic CRT, waiting for her next message to appear with that doo-doo-doo sound effect. Loading up Emily is Away <3 for the first time didn't hit for me like the first two games. It's set in 2008 using Facebook's UI to tell the story. By 2008, I'd been married and could talk with my wife in our house—no instant messaging required. This game had more work to do.

I started playing nearly a year ago. I enjoyed it, but gave up about half way through. I noticed how much bigger the game was: the choices seemed more significant, there were more moving gameplay pieces in a less familiar UI, and the ending loomed large. I put it aside for 360 days before deciding to see it through.

Today, the ending devastated me. I reminded myself that these are just words in a series of decision trees written by a guy years ago, but it didn't really help. I spent quite a while telling myself the ending I got was just how it was intended; I didn't need to look up alternative endings or re-play to find them all. Skip to 5 minutes later and I was modifying Player.json and using Cheat Engine to speed up part of a run so I could get the closure I wanted. It turns out that the good endings are gated by getting a bad or neutral ending first and then doing a New Game+. Judging by other reviews, this was an unpopular choice, but I think I understand why it was done. The game is more complex than its predecessors and requiring a replay not only encouraged more exploration, but also guaranteed even careful players got to experience a traumatic high school break up over Facebook Messenger. I didn't experience that in 2008—I didn't really want to—but now I have.

I feel better having seen a good ending, but still sad. I don't think I'll ever play this entry again, but it was devastating in a way I want to recognize.

Did you know that this game actually has (kinda hidden) replayability?
Without going into hard spoilers: There are some endings that are exclusive to first playthrough, and some other endings require you to be on save slot 2.
So it's almost like an easter egg. The second save slot is secretly a "new game+" mode with different possible endings.
I wonder how many people found this out.

Now, if you beat the game already, check out this spoiler and maybe you'll be motivated to play the game again: Your first ever playthrough is absolutely always doomed to "failure", but on the second playthrough you may get the "good endings". More details can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2460589486.

Also, I don't really agree with how people define "good" and "bad" endings in a choise driven games like this.
Having a good time dating somebody for X years and then going your ways after it got stale is seen as a bad thing?

And in general, I try not to treat the choice-driven games with different story branches like a puzzle, where I have to guess how to get the "best outcome". I'm very tempted to do so because gamer's perfectionism, but I realise that the "perfect" path is often less interesting than the story branch where you mess things up.

To be honest, even in real life, sometimes letting go of trying to do things perfectly is a relief.

A fine opportunity to forget about your grown up stuff and remember how it feels to be an angsty teenager who listens to punk-rock and chats with 2-3 people at once for fun, while disregarding grammar.

I don't know how, my logical brain knows that the dialogues in this game aren't that great and the plot is kinda predictable, but I am still able to fully immerse in this story and feel like I'm having a real chat with real friends and stuff. And listening to the music from that era adds up to the atmosphere.