You Can't Save Her

The pale desert of this moon curves towards an empty horizon.

...

Clouds of gray dust swirl in your wake.

The wind is howling a language that you do not understand.

...

Moonlight is shining through the stained glass window, painting a rose of rainbows on the floor.

She is still waiting.

What I liked: Music + headphones is great. Styling and writing is on point. Aesthetics are gold. Really love the image of the one girl leaving the monastery as it's frozen in time, opening the gates which stand still like an "open ribcage". And other imagery like the selection of weapons the first girl can choose from, which are revealed to be (Spoiler - click to show)the same as the second girl's selection of weapons, in a stunning symmetry. One girl has antlers, an odd detail which is never explained, but combined with the antler-shaped chapter transitions I think it becomes charming.

It's been a while since I played any of Porpentine's games, so while I could vaguely appreciate the resemblance, what I really thought of was Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Elden Ring. The dark fantasy landscape with moonlight and angel blades and scarred women and crumbling cathedrals evoked that for me. Cool stuff.

What I didn't like: I think it might be too aestheticized. There's a lack of specificity that nags at me--little is explained about these characters or the greater world they inhabit. And the evil nuns and monastery feel a bit too on-the-nose, maybe? I think more details about the setting would help flesh it out more, and flesh out the characters, by extension. Speaking of the characters - without a richer background world to ground them in, their interactions feel too simple. They grow apart because of the book, they leave each other, they have a final encounter that ends, depending on the retelling, in bloodshed or a final conversation or nothing. That's all.

That's another thing: I'm not sure how I feel about the "multiple versions of their final encounter" structure. On the one hand, it's nice to see variations on how things might have played out, but I feel like they confuse the overall story. Especially that section where one actually kills the other, guided by "sacred algorithms". The inability to change your choices there was a nice touch, but it felt out of place since it didn't add much to the story as a whole.

What I'd change: My favorite moment came towards the end. It was where the first girl, the one who stays, reveals that she stayed more out of fear than faith--that she learned the gods view them as "punctuation", nothing more, and can no longer believe in anything. I felt like this revelation added a lot to her character, and wish it was explored more, or referenced more in different ways across the various chapters. Without it, she becomes a more two-dimensional "the original god is the best god and you are a heretic so I must kill you" character, which I can't find sympathy for. With it, I found her much more compelling, and it adds a lot to the world as well, knowing that these gods with so many devotees don't care about them in any way.

I really wish there was more built on that, about losing your faith and entire foundations of your worldview. About the gods and how their presence or lack thereof has influenced this strange desert world with its crumbling golems and cathedrals. But the way the story is told, passing quickly through time via small vignettes, tends towards summarizing and simplifying what must have been complex revelations for its characters in the moment. If we really saw more of the characters grappling with their faiths (or lack thereof) and with themselves, I think that'd add a lot.

Personally, I would remove the extraneous endings that don't seem to contribute to the overall story and the dynamic of the main characters (especially the "sacred algorithms" one where one girl kills another). Then I would expand on the particular dynamic between the two main characters that is described in the last ending, especially the first girl's realization that the gods don't care about mortal specks of dust. So instead of "good deity vs. bad deity", it becomes "a deity you can believe in vs. the inability to believe in any faith".