#brian echo

I don't think I'll ever like or agree with Duke, but I do certainly understand him a lot more upon multiple readings of Echo and Arches. In particular his reaction and actions toward Chase.

Before learning about the Embrace, I really wasn't completely sure what Duke and Leo were talking about when mentioning that they saw Chase before he arrived in Echo. With Leo, I rationalized that it was probably his obsession with the otter plus his the supernatural nature of the town causing him to hallucinate, but I couldn't quite figure out what was going on with Duke. I think I ended up settling on the idea that when Leo was discussing his visions of Chase with Duke that somehow Duke began hallucinating Chase? That by telling Duke what he had seen, the town began causing Duke to hallucinate visions of Chase as well.

So when I learn in the other routes that the Embrace is a very real entity that isn't just in Leo's mind, my thoughts changed. Cause now Chase really did start appearing outside of Duke's window and around town for weeks in the dark of night. So when strange things start happening, it makes a bit more sense that Duke would pin it on the guy who suddenly appeared after three years acting strange. Especially with his grandfather having lived through the 1915 hysteria and passing down stories of that event.

It really sucks that he's an associate of Brian's. They have a complicated thing going on cause Duke is willing to work with Brian, but it's also clear that Duke fucking HATES him. And for good reason, Brian is Brian plus he killed Duke's wife. Duke's actions towards Brian in Arches does make me like Duke a bit but I really just wish he took action earlier. He does seem to have at least some bit of authority over Brian with how he bosses him around during Leo's route.

Duke disabling Arturo's car is a massively fucked up thing to do, but it's been established that Duke isn't the most morally agreeable guy and I completely get that having people snoop around the remains of your hometown and seemingly poking fun at/having fun with the tragedies that occurred there would really piss someone off. So I understand his thought process but again I do not like or agree with his actions. Especially cause he knows that Brian is still around in town and he out of anyone knows what Brian is capable of. Between that and again working with Brian during Echo, I just can't see him saving Arturo and reporting Brian as enough to get me to like him given everything. Solid character from a meta perspective though. Really well written.

Bad news walkin'. (Brian, from @EchoTheVN )

-Howly pulled an Undertale and went meta on us in the best possible way, as Cameron’s reaction to the town allows him to see different possible futures. In short, he beomes a VN player, save scumming between the outcomes of his choices. Oh were you wondering why Arches is the only Echo game without choices? Well here you go! They’re here, but we’re not the ones making them. These games never cease to impress me in how well they take advantage of the medium. - This is even more fitting when you consider Cam’s character arc. Much of Cam’s character conflict is built around his self loathing and the belief that he doesn’t deserve happiness. He’s well on the way to recovering from his addiction, but he still feels deep shame over it. He feels he shouldn’t have survived while his mother died. He escaped an abusive relationship but convinced himself he was just as bad as his abuser. And his relationship with Devon is dogged by a fear of rejection. A belief that he’s a freak who will ruin Dev in some way. And yet, when given that final horrifying vision of his own death in the mines, Cameron chooses to act. He makes the choice to live. -Building on Cam’s visions, it kills me that Cam’s ability allows him to see everything, to understand even the minds of the people that have hurt him. In a series all about fractured psyches and traumatised people trapped in their own heads, unable to relate to reach other, the eleventh hour superpower that ends Echo’s multi-century spannig history of violence and tragedy is cosmic levels of empathy. Call me pretentious, and I get that it’s largely the result of drug addled disassociation, but I think that, as a message, is goddamn beautiful. -Brian’s demise was a cathartic end for such a monstrous villain. I enjoyed Cam’s rumination that spelled out what Brian represents at the end of the day, something I’ve already talked about here before. He’s emblematic of the most harmful kind of selfishness. Of falling into the same loop of self destructive coping mechanisms that make him a danger to himself and even moreso to others. Time after time he chose his own selfish pursuit of pleasure over basic human empathy. He refused to stop moving in circles, and so became a walking symbol of the town itself. And as such, he dies with the town. -The actual fight with Brian was viscerally horrifying. Arches has consistently been perhaps the most suspenseful and dread-laden out of all the Echoverse games. And this may just have cemented it as their scariest game to date. My heart was in my mouth the entire time and Cam’s last fake-out vision left me in a state of almost sickened shock. -Ending things in the mines was such a perfect choice. The place where Brian killed his victims, the place where Flynn died and was swallowed up by the town itself to become the Socket Monster. The place where Mary Applegate and others like her were killed by whatever was lurking down here during the events of The Smoke Room. It’s the place where all of this started when Sam killed Jack. Where the tragedy of the town has kept repeating, and now it’s where it all ends. -Devon and Cameron both come to terms with the people they’ve lost in the past. Devon, who has blamed himself for the death of Lupita, accepts that he can’t keep chasing shadows to run away from his guilt over her death. Fixating on the paranormal nearly got his friend and the man he loves killed. So he resolves not to go in circles, not to repeat the same mistakes. Not to ignore the warnings before it’s too late. And so, he saves Cameron. Cameron comes to terms with his feelings over his mother’s death, and accepts that he loves and misses her. And I love that Arches does this without confirming one way or the other the existence of any kind of afterlife (outside of Echo’s own supernatural influence that is). Chasing after ghosts out of grief was what got them into this mess after all. Instead, it’s really down them to decide how they feel about the people they’ve lost and so make their own closure.

-Just as many of us predicted, Arches delivered on its foreshadwing through the motif of half-circles splendidly. The arch goes from a symbol of Cameron’s inescapable trauma to an image of breaking cycles and moving on. The final scene drives this home.

...He found her arch. And she was right. It did save him...

On a surface level, it’s such a deliciously evil way to mess with returning fans. When you hear that a story you love is getting a sequel, you kinda hope that you’ll see your favourite characters again. Maybe you were hoping you’d see an older Leo, Carl, or TJ? Flynn’s ending in Echo even teased the idea of Devon and Cameron meeting Chase. Instead, Howly went ‘oh you want returning characters? Well here you go!’ before going full monkey’s paw and bringing back the last character anyone would want to see: the terrifying predatory serial killer.

But there’s another layer to why this works, and not just because, logistically, he’s one of the only people still there. See, the thing is, fan favourites they might be but, thematically, it would be wrong to bring the main cast back. Echo was a game about a broken friend group, this set of wounded people all tied to the past, trapped in their own heads. We saw them grapple with supernatural forces that played with their worst fears. This could turn out in any number of good or bad ways based on the endings but ultimately there was hope for all of them. Leo was taunted with a false image of his old life and lost love. Carl grappled with the most monstrous aspects of his family legacy and the expectations that came with it, in turn battling his own insecurities. Jenna faced her lingering feelings of anger and resentment towards her abusive upbringing, and learned to let go. Ideally, you’d want these characters to be far away from Echo, somewhere they can heal and move on .

And then you have Brian. Brian is the best expression of the worst outcome of the themes of the whole series. Like Chase, he had blood on his hands, and the supernatural hysteria of the town torments them both over what they’ve done. But Chase has the capacity to either repeat history, swallowed up by the unearthly forces feeding on his trauma, or else support his friends and change for the better, depending on the route or ending. Brian however can’t, or won’t, do so. He commits the same murders over and over again to distract himself from the influence of the town. He’s only moving in circles. Repeating the same destructive and self-destructive behaviour over and over again.

The title image of Arches is immediately portrayed as negative. It’s the symbol of Cameron’s grief. A reminder of the loss of his mother, and his fear of losing himself to addiction the same way his mother lost herself. That being said, a lot of people have pointed out the other significance of an arch. It’s a broken circle, a direct response to the main motif of the first game. It feels like it’s setting up a theme of breaking out of harmful cycles. It’s what Cam wants to do on a personal level to escape his past, and it’s what he may have to do to put an end to Echo’s cycle, to save himself and Dev.

Content Warning Blood, Torture Jenna's route spoiler #EchoVN Art by @F0x_hunt A Night at Brian's House

HOT BRIAN PIE EATING ASMR #EchoVN