#brain problems

Wanderstop is about hating yourself. It's about hating something you have done or someone you have been so much that you wish you were a different person. This is much more obvious by the end of the game, and I suspect most of those reviews saying the game is about burnout had not reached this point. Still, that is what this game is about. Alta doesn't burn out solely because she worked too hard. She is deeply lethargic because she carries around the burden of being a failure and a monster.

There's so much that Wanderstop gets right about this experience that it makes me glad. Way back in the day, I used to talk about how much I loved empathetic portrayals of downright unpleasant and especially violently mentally ill people. Alta is never redeemed for her violence. The game does not ask you to overlook what she did or move past it. But the narrative gives space for Alta to comprehend her own actions, that she (not some spirit possessing her) did try to kill someone who was just trying to help, and says, "You still carry in you the capacity for good. Whether you do good is up to you." Not to sound like a therapy enjoyer, but there's space for both of these things - just like there's space for the synthesis of both Altas.

On that note - I loved the concept of the forest creating "space" between the two fragments of Alta (and doing the same later with Monster), because that is exactly what it was like for me. I used to fight with myself all the time, and that's what those conversations with myself were like - like two different people, with two completely different mindsets and perspectives, existing just a few centimeters apart from one another. It also represents the way that people overcome (violent) impulses - by creating just a small space to pause and think. That space starts so incredibly small, but just a tiny wedge allows you to slowly wedge in more time until you can really take a good 30 seconds to think before you chunk your phone across the room. (True story.) (I'm very lucky that I never broke a phone doing that.) (This happened many times.)