Peppered: A Game Where Everything is Pointless and the Choices Don't Matter (Spoilers, Obvs)
Yep. That's it. That's the game. But of course that's the TLDR version.
Really, Peppered is a game about a random person deciding to save the world (or try to) when the designated and legally mandated hero is mysterious absent from the annual ritual where you insert Tab A into Slot B. The act of inserting Tab A into Slot B is regarded to be soo delicate that nobody else other than this designated hero is fathomably capable of doing so. So much so that when this random person decides to... well, DO SOMETHING instead of waiting to see if a miracle can happen, practically everyone else deems them a criminal. Forever branded as the Star Thief.
SUMMATION OF THE PLOT BEGINS HERE, IF YOU WANT JUST TO SKIP TO MY THOUGHTS
Even when the world starts falling apart literally before everyone's eyes, they decide that Procedure is much more important than, well, considering anything else.
And for the first half of the game, it's a decent deconstruction of the trope of a passive world that would rather sit by and wait for the proper Chosen One to save everything. But then it starts to fall apart.
After the circus show that is The Court, the story can branch off into only two different paths; one where our protagonist succeeds at their task, and one where they fail.
Let's get into the failure route first: As everyone becomes mortal again following the God of Death's release allowing him to take everyone's souls, Life Stars shower across the world, and everyone is in a frenzy to get one and hopefully prolong their lives. The protagonist here gets up and gives saving the world another go, as they go out and travel to collect Life Stars in order to... do something.
Nothing actually comes of this. Karmine, a potential seller of Life Stars, decides to switch to becoming a lackey of the God of Death and turns on the protagonist, offering them up to the god's cultists.
This is practically inevitable and you cannot escape the sequence. You cannot advance any further than that point.
And most importantly, you cannot go on to actually try and stop the God of Death. Why? No reason is ever given, besides his prison suitcase being destroyed. It just cuts to the sentencing of our protagonist for the crime of gathering Life Stars.
But what if the protagonist succeeds in the initial quest?
Well, you actually go on to a different game altogether - almost literally. You start to play a game of golf against Merdeka, a police officer who started out against you, but through a harsh revelation she decides to actually help you try to save the world instead.
But then it turns out that the prison/suitcase has been stolen by none other than the designated hero, Theodore Glagolev! He wants to undo your efforts by releasing the God of Death himself, for some reason!
As you tee off your way through Theodore's mansion, you find out the initial reason that he sealed away the God of Death to begin with: Because the god condemns every last soul that dies into oblivion. Nothingness. A complete cessation of existence.
Once you find this out, you confront Theodore himself who drops another bombshell: That Life star that was just used to keep the God of Death imprisoned was the very last one. Those Life Stars that rained down in the failure route were really sealed away along with the god himself. So even if you do succeed in defeating Theodore, it's pointless, because in a year's time, the God of Death will be released anyway.
Nothing about that is discussed, other than a shrugging "Welp, was good while it lasted."
Okay but what if you let Theodore win and release the God of Death?
...He just kills Theodore. That's it. The protagonist and Merdeka just let it happen. You never get to fight the God of Death either!!
So basically, no matter what you do, you can't win the game. At all.
SUMMATION ENDS HERE
So you know what I think? It's a massive waste of potential. Peppered claims to be an existentialist game, but well... nothing gets expounded upon.
The God of Death gets his world back on a silver platter sooner if not later, and instills tyranny and condemnation to nothingness. But the world that was originally his playground to play tyrant has no longer become his in the past 100 years. The people living in that world have adapted and actually made the Abyss their own, so the idea let alone the realization that everything would go back to absolute death and oppressive living becomes all the more horrifying. And yet, that idea goes unaddressed in any serious fashion.
Merdeka's trauma at the hands of her parents goes unaddressed either. It's just a funny "Ha Ha, Parents are Awful" gag that gets thrown away. There is no serious talk or exploration or anything. She never gets a therapist for her deeply seated issues.
And well, everyone else? Well assuming that any serious effort were to go into thwarting the God of Death for good, a MASSIVE overhaul would have to take place to society at large. But apparently, since the game's world is a reflection of our own, it would seem such an overhaul would be unrealistic. So of course nothing of that sort is addressed. Much like every MCU film where the bad guy wants to address injustice, but they're bad because Status Quo.
And assuming that the developers of the game decide to add an ending where you confront the God of Death? Well, a particularly acidic side of me would assume that it would be yet another gag ending; the protagonist is smushed. Nothing is accomplished.
Really, games like this are frustrating to me because of not just the exercise in futility, but also the sense of humor that becomes rancid once you think about it, and the lack of thought of any meaningfulness that I think would make an existentialist piece of work truly stand out.
But apparently, this game is not allowed to become the next Undertale. Nobody is allowed to be happy in this game, not for long. Death and nihilism will eventually come for us all, according to the writing.
