#off theory

off is such an interesting game to me, because of the mystery surrounding its story. theres no clear answer, mortis ghost himself has said the game itself is up to interpretation. however there are many many theories some deep some not, and at the end of the day it may just be a game meant to be vague and weird and thats it ! but this is the theory i think fits the best from my experience playing the game.

one thing that i believe is pretty straightforward about the story is the allegory for the effects of extreme illness and its effects on the lives of people, specifically our most important character- Hugo, the sickly child who we know as the creator of the world of off (which includes the queen and the batter himself)

I will get this out of the way now, i think the overall theme of off deals with the idea of eugenics as well as religion.

we know that hugo created this world, we know he is extremely ill, we know he is lonely and most likely using the creation of the zones as a coping mechanism to escape his reality. we can see that hugos mother is most likely his primary guardian but is not often around (as the queen has duties to attend to) and his father is not present up until the start of the game- meaning he has just only now started to have relevance in hugo’s life.

now where does religion come in ? its simple, the batter is here to purify the world (the world=hugo) and he will do do by force. with this we can assume that hugo’s real life father is a religious man, even further with the idea of the three rings, three zones, etc being a reference to the holy trinity.

so back to hugo, i believe he is a sick child, terminally ill. his mother might be working all the time to cover the medical bills and his father, a religious man refused to take care of a child who is destined to die. perhaps at the start of game hugo is quite literally on his deathbed, being kept alive by machines and pumped full of medication, causing his father to have to come into the picture for them to make a choice: pull the plug (or switch the world “off”) and let hugo rest, or continue to keep him alive.

i will also agree with the idea that each of the guardians of the zones represent some level of illness or disability as well, but i will not go into tje specifics of each as this is already going to be a long post.

anyways back to the batter. he needs to rid the world of “imperfections” (catch the implication ?) and bring about an era of holiness. i believe hugo’s father did not want him as the parents knew hugo was going to be born ill, and that is why he left. God damned his soul and hugo’s father believes that hugo is in some way paying for his sins. the mother has the child, wanting to give him a chance to survive, but now hugo is reaching the end of his life. his father wants to pull the plug, to rid the world of his “impure” son, the mother wants to keep him alive and give him a chance- but most likely for selfish purposes as i believe hugo’s brain is mostly gone already, what’s left is his mind’s attempt to cope with the pain by creating this world.

the elsen are also extremely sickly, working to death mindlessly, so while i am mostly talking about the story in relation to hugo himself, it can also be assumed that perhaps some type of epidemic is going on on a larger scale. of we consider that and branch out our view, we can see this:

there are people who are sick, and there are people who are using religion to push an idea of eradicating them. some may say this is an allegory for a genocide of sorts.

but back to the small scale with hugo. what is it that caused him to be sickly ? i believe he was born this way yes but with his environment it worsened. now we get into the elements in the world of off. smoke could be the reason for his terrible cough. ive seen people say metal could refer to the chrome sterile hard surfaces of a hospital. plastic which associates the toys we see him playing with as a distraction. and meat os essential to him to keep on living. with these things in mind i also assume that perhaps while born ill hugo’s condition is worsened by living in poverty- specifically in reference to the meat- as it flows thruout the world of off in abundance, the importance of being able to access food being something very important to hugo.

and then theres the secret element: sugar.

sugar to me is representative of drugs, medical or otherwise. the sugar is there to lessen the pain of living and is extremely addictive. these drugs could be im reference to the use of substances to escape the horrid reality of poverty by the working class as well as the medication being used to keep hugo alive in the hospital, or at the very least suppressing his symptoms.

so what is it i think off is about ? i believe off is a sickly child’s perception of illness in both himself and his community, worsened by the effects of poverty amidst a complicated relationship with his parents. his mother is active but neglectful, his father wants him dead, they are fighting bacl and forth on the decision of hugo’s life. on a larger scale i feel it has to do with how religion is often a big element of eugenics and the idea of a “pure” human being, and that is often a stance taken to defend mass destruction such as genocide, and hugo happens to be a victim of that.

And it is that the spectres act like their world's errors. It was mentioned that Hugo created the main characters like the Queen and the Batter. After that, the Queen took over creating the rest of their world. It would make sense that in between all that expansion some mistakes would be made along the way. Like how the body might produce some abnormalities and deformed cellular components once in a while, the Queen would make a few missteps. The method of building their world was vague, so it could be possible that she couldn't correct some of them.

But because their world was already growing corrupt she couldn't assess the imperfections that were rapidly overtaking her kingdom or just wasn't aware it was happening. It was hinted many times in the game that she was already neglecting her duties both as a ruler and a mother. I could get the feeling she was not as resisting as much to what the Batter had planned. At least not as much as Dedan, who really believed that what the Batter was doing was deranged.

"There is nothing but the void after me."

"You don't even know his first name."

"You've been wrong since the beginning."

Her words sound like the words of someone who is trying to reason with and intends for reconsideration from the Batter. That what their world had now was better than the nothing he wants it to be. Maybe some guilt tripping for the Batter not being better than her.

The Queen says a lot of gibberish. And I can't begin to know how Mortis ghost really intended her character to be.

But it wouldn't be too farfetched to say that she might have alloted her time to her kingdom more than she did for Hugo. And would have likely known about the Spectres but was not able to reel them in. She was against the Batter destroying "beauty" and it would not make sense for her to create them to sabotage her own.

So maybe, the specters were just their own kind of mayhem.