Game 86 - Emily is Away Too - Week 168 - Mar 23

mily is Away Too

There’s something about this series that is so masterful in its ability to transport me 20 years back to my youth and immerse me in its MSN messenger style conversations to the level that I feel real emotion toward the NPCs I’m talking to. The first game did all this and had a devasating story, investing you in Emily and then giving no option except for your relationship with her to end in tatters. Life is that way sometimes and beyond the nostalgic purview at it’s heart this is what the story was about – but also how you conduct yourself as person – through lies or honesty in a setting that is all the more easy when you’re not speaking face to face.

Of course you can't show the mid 2000s without our boy Rick Astley. I remember this dominating WoW and other vids at the time. 

This time around the format remains the same. The game mostly taks place in a chat window with several characters. You can set your profile image and bio, read others and then chat with people. This time however there’s a few key difference namely in its external links. Throughout the game characters will send you links to music videos on “Youtoob” or have links on their profile that link to Newground, Steam or Facenook. Many of which you can interact with, browsing videos on YouToob, playing games on Newgrounds or cyber-stalking on Facenook. All in all it expands on the Emily is Away experience by giving you plenty of nostalgic content to immerse you in the story it has to tell you. I love that they give you an 8-bit wallpaper to round out the entire experience on your computer. It's perfect. The presentation and references are on point AF. Rise Against, MCR, World of Warcraft Burning Crusade, Oblivion… just FKN amazing. The game will even save stuff to your desktop as your love interest writes a poem for you or a girl sends you chatlogs to ask you if she was a bitch with her begrudged ex.

To my surprise the game doesn’t open up with Emily, but instead Evelyn is Online (otherwise known as punk4eve). It’s pretty clear from the start that you’re going to have to choose and well Eve is a girl after my heart with her love of punk music. But at the same time Emily is into video games and so lovely. This won’t be easy. Like the first game it’s set over four seasons but unlike that it’s set over the final year of high school instead of graduation leading into college. Questions shift from “will we keep in touch” to “do our plans align after graduating?”. The chatting between these two girls goes back and fourth. Both end up dating douchebags and you’re their closest gay guy friend with a shoulder to cry on. Which if you think about it is a clever premise in itself because that’s something the audience itself, pale, nerdy, socially awkward would have likely experienced. So it goes right for the jugular.

Something that the first game did that was extremely clever was you’d choose an option, and the character would forcibly backspace chickening out. It did this until the end and you ended with a saddening result regardless of what you do. It was clever in its accuracy of the time in how scared we were as teens to say how we really felt. So this time around your character does it and I’m like “oh shit, here we go again”. But then Emily responds “hey, what did you just delete?”. Fucking chills. The game took our expectations from the first game and completely flipped it on its head. It gives you 3 options – 2 for the cowards and 1 for the “fuck it, I’m gonna say it” approach. I did the latter of course and to my surprise it actually lets you do it! What a nice twist.

As you go back and fourth all this reaches a head. Both NEED to talk to you and are clearly neurotic. They need you to respond right away and the game drops a time bar on you out of nowhere. Bouncing between the two becomes increasingly harder and eventually you just have to choose whether you want to or not. Whether subconsciously or not I ended up going with punk4eva over emerz35. Maybe it was the punk style, but I don’t know because I’m equally attracted to the girl next door. But I guess Eve just had the punk with a bit of girl next door vibe. I continued to talk to Eva and give her good counsel (I think) but Em wasn't happy at all. 

Some time passes and Emily is Away. Eva thanks me for the useful advice and things get a little cute and flirty. From that point on things flourish, you ask her on a date and she likes you to, you go to prom, have an amazing time and she writes poems about you. I’m fully invested at this point and I’m 13 again. I can’t stress just how well written this is for the time to the degree that I’m fully enveloped in these characters.

Speaking of poetry, guess who else is in this class? Emily. The final chapter and they get to talking. Em apologises for being a massive psycho and you become friends again. I tell her how Eve is great and you can’t help but feel she’s got massive FOMO. But that could have gone a lot worse and I’ve got a prom to go to… Prom passes with flying colours but Eve is concerned as we’re going to different colleges and doesn’t know what to do. I tell her we should stay together and she agrees – ending the story with “I love your stupid ass". 

Awwwwww

Boy was I wrong about this game. Like the first I expected a sad ending, but nope it got all fucking nice and genuine. For me, when I was a teen I always wanted a companion and even though I don’t believe in it any spiritual or fatalistic sense - I wanted a soulmate. And so in my head cannon it was meant to be. I imagined myself throughout that college and was there hiccups? Absolutely. But Dan told her "College is only a few years, we have a lifetime ahead of us".

All this got me thinking: What happened to that romantic in me? When did it die? Did the failure of a first relationship make me more pragmatic about relationships (which I am in all other aspects in my life)? Then repeated failures? Or was it when I first put on a tie (i.e. got a job) and became that way inclined? How can I get this back how? Is it even possible? It’s fucking phenomenal that this game could make me even think and feel this way. An absolute masterpiece in nostalgia that had me remembering parts of me that I forgot even existed – the naïve romantic, the shy kid, the IM master of sarcasm – tapping into the deepest parts of my memory and emotion.

Not only that but chatting away while listening to banging AF punk music made me experience a side of myself that I feel like I missed out on. The punk emo goth version of Dan that never existed? All in all it was nostalgic in every sense of the word. That being the true German meaning of painful memory – like I missed out on a part of me I’ll never get to experience. A true reminder to enjoy and find joy in every single day and not block myself to different experiences.