The Abandoned Children Of The Watcher DLC (a Ramble)

The Abandoned Children of The Watcher DLC (a ramble)

(Spoilers ahead, obviously, but this is just a quiet sort of pondering I've been having with myself, feeling an ache so profound where the child in me - lost and afraid and so, so cold - resides.)

I love the thematic change that the Watcher DLC presents us with. I know it's been a point of complaint for many, and to each their own, but I can't help but feel that throwing aside these painful, heartfelt themes, writing them off as rushed design is doing the beauty of the tale that we've been given a disservice.

Rain World - the base game - felt primal. You are an animal, wandering the world - eating, fighting, running and dying, thinking and moving like a rat in a maze, the maze being a god you could never truly hope to understand. And why would you? You have a family to find, and even they are soon forgotten in the pressure of the cycle, drowned out by the rain and the echoing, burning call of the Void.

The Downpour DLC was much more narrative-driven. It was character-based and iterator-focused, putting emphasis on these dying gods that feel less like gods and more like abandoned children, growing in their lonesome and their bitterness, losing themselves in their self-destructive tendencies until there's nothing left but metal slag and somewhat-organic rubble. That seems to be a repeated theme, here.

The Watcher DLC feels much more... personal.

A tale of two children, abandoned, never made to grow up. The Watcher themselves, so plagued by naiveté, busying themselves with toys instead of confronting what the little lost echo tried to tell them.

Spinning Top searching endlessly with a tragic sort of fervor for any evidence that anyone ever missed them, never having been taught the weight of what they were supposed to do, only doing what others did, what they were taught was right, and nothing more. A child, a little girl playing with spinning tops and plushies, made to ascend through that "white door" and leave the reality that they had just barely begun to set foot in behind.

The Prince, even, simply… learning. Growing. A toddler, smashing and breaking and rotting all in its path with delight, seeing what he's doing as something so wonderful. The tragic part about it is that he truly does - for all that he represents, he means well, but the Cycle is callous and omnipotent and cares not for the wishes of a mere child.

A cold, golden hand, marked with an X and sprouting flowers from its palm.

An endless repeating pattern that will consume you utterly if it so wishes.