Oh boy. So many people are upset that the ending to the game didn’t explain everything.

WARNING: There are spoilers ahead for Eastward. It’s such a good game that it’s worth playing before you read this. If this post reads weird or incomplete, that’s because I wrote this many, many months ago and have not polished it. I just wanna get it out of my drafts. After a skim, I feel like it’s Good Enough ™️

This is a follow up to the original review I wrote for Eastward.

Narrative Decisions - SPOILERS

How did Mother come to exist? How did Charon come to exist? What the hell is up with Solomon’s aging? Is he time traveling? Are there multiple Solomon’s? Why was Sam even in the caves in John’s village? Who IS Isabel?? Who is Alva’s grandfather? What does that ending scene mean for Sam and John?? And one particularly egregious one I saw: “How did Alva get hurt?”

It’s okay that a story doesn’t explain everything! It’s fine for a narrative to leave things up to the audience’s imagination. This modern insistence that all stories must explain every little thing is exhausting and tiresome. I’ve seen other people share my frustrations, and I wonder when this started to become such a big thing for audiences? Some have placed blame on the Marvel movies. I haven’t watched enough of them to know. We know that Mother is from long ago, as part of a system set up to ensure humanity’s survival; we’re told that much. How long ago? By whom? That’s lost information, within the context of the world. Charon? A relic of the same creation. Why? How? How does it still run now? I dunno, how does the ship Destiny in Stargate Universe still operate after more than fifty million years? Even for a franchise that goes out of its way to explain things really well, that one’s hand-waved away as Ancient technology being incredibly advanced, even before they created the cityship Atlantis. Because it doesn’t actually matter for the story.

I’m going to take a stance right here: Certain things actually do not matter in terms of the narrative, and certain things should not matter either. It doesn’t actually matter that we don’t know why Isabel was even in that machine when she was found by Alva’s grandfather, a machine that might be similar to the one Sam was found in. We, as players, do not actually need it spelled out like we’re children. The conclusion, that should be pretty clear after paying attention to the story, is that she is another clone. Why is she a clone? Because of the entire project that Mother is running. It’s really not that hard to piece together. You encounter several such facilities throughout the game. It stands to reason at least some would have living humans inside them who get discovered from time to time.

Do not confuse “does not matter” or “should not matter” with “is not important,” please. It is very important that Isabel is a clone. It is very important that she goes to Ester city to use that same cloning technology to make new Alvas after Alva dies. It is very important that we keep encountering Solomon, and it is important that he is different every time. He is an incredibly important antagonist, but we know nothing of his background. Except we can piece it together. Just like Alva and Sam, he’s got to be a clone. I don’t believe it’s ever confirmed, hence “he’s got to be”, but how else do you explain it? He’s always ahead of us, even when we leave him behind. Every time we meet him he’s got a different life with new memories, and he’s older. We leave the young one behind in New Dam City, the teenaged one becomes a drone watching TV on the Monkollywood train, and the old one is “dead” in Ester City. I’ve read speculation that he’s time travelling, and since the game does play with the concept of time on the railway to Ester City and within Ester City itself, this actually isn’t a super farfetched guess. But all of the time manipulation we’ve seen in game are time loops, either with the participants retaining their memories or being reset along with the loop. The simpler explanation is that all the Solomons (Solomen?) are clones, because human cloning facilities is an established fact of the world.

I’m getting a little lost in the weeds here, but I think it is important. The story did not “fall apart” as so many claim. It is not “a mess.” Plot points do not get “abandoned.” The story is deliberate. What we are given and what we are left to question is all deliberate. I just find it incredibly difficult to look at what we were given, that was written and handled so well, and then assume that what we were not given is a failure of some kind. Give the writers more credit than that.

Alva’s grandfather is.. her grandfather. He removed Isabel from her pod, he was a great guy who loved New Dam City, and he’s dead. Do we really need anything more? What else would be added by detailing a dead man who is, honestly, barely relevant to the story? Does it matter how Alva got hurt? We never see the inside of the Buddha Fan’s mechanisms, where she gets mortally wounded, because those specifics do not matter to the story that is being told. Alva gets hurt in there, and her being hurt is what matters. Isabel’s reaction to that is what matters.

There’s a lot more such questions I’ve seen that I just, I just want to grab the asker and say “you’re taking the fun out of the story.” Eastward’s story is not a “mess” because it leaves stuff unanswered. Nor is it a “mess” because various “plotlines” go unresolved. Alva’s grandfather isn’t a plotline, he’s a guy. He exists in the story in exactly the capacity he needs to exist. And then he gets out of the way when he’s no longer needed. Any extra information on this dead man would bog down the story, which some complain was already bogged down by the mundane slice of life segments. Those very segments that characterize everyone, including the grandfather. You DO actually find out more about his character, that is to say his demeanor and values, by the way people talk about him. And it’s plenty enough.

I briefly talked about this game on Bluesky too:

A lot of discussion is centered around how the story “fell apart” or there’s “not enough explanation.” What happened to imagination? hypothesizing with friends? actually discussing the story?, instead of just pounding the table for easy answers you won’t even think about in a few days?

And I think that’s part of why I’ve taken so long to write this review. I’m still turning all of this over in my head and I don’t have any clearer answer or understanding of the story itself. The more I think about it, I no longer believe years passed for our heroes in Ester city like I originally did. But I do believe a not small chunk of time HAS passed. Like any good sci-fi show timeloop episode, an important line of dialog is always how long the characters were stuck in the loop. Star Trek: Discovery recently had one that only lasted six hours. Stargate: SG-1 had one that about two months. But we’re never given that in Eastward. And to be honest, in this case I don’t know that it’s necessary to be given that information. Would it have any effect on our characters or the story? I don’t see how it could.

Another sticking point of mine is players treating John as a silent protagonist versus simply allowing him to be mute. It’s very much part of who he is and how he interacts with the world. As a duo, Sam and John, they are together not silent protagonists.

Or as I said on Bluesky:

Further, I think everyone characterizing John as simply a “silent protagonist” are missing the fact that he’s actually Mute, and that he AND SAM are at minimum joint protagonists, with Sam being much more so the protag than John. It’s her story, you just play as John to help her through it

How are you going to finish this story and see everything Sam goes through, all of her joy and pain, her sacrifice, and wish JOHN talked more?

One talks a ton, one is mute. Games that present silent protagonists have interactions shaped around that. NPCs will pretend the protag spoke by recounting what the protag would have said, or simply nodding and going “I see, so that’s how it is.” We see regularly that characters actually interact with John’s muteness. They talk about how quiet he is, they get involved with him on his level.

And it’s not like he can’t communicate at all! They never show it, but it’s safe to say he communicates in other ways to the other people they meet and stay with. So much time passes in this game, he had to have communicated with multiple people throughout. To be so unimaginative as to not even think he could write things out or use a sign language. To be so unimaginative that you demand that be shown on screen or else how could you know for sure? Just once do Daniel and Lee each actually pull out a “I see, so that’s how it is” type response, and given all the context we already have about John, the safest assumption is that he communicates non-verbally and the other characters who know him know how to read him.

I don’t know if I have the right skill or knowledge to expand on this point further. I just wanted to touch on the fact that it really bothers me that people treat John as a simple silent protagonist, and then go on to be upset about that, about how the story would be better if he talked and had a more prominent role. It also feels like erasure of Mute people, and this is where I’m struggling to present my viewpoint. I am not Mute, I do not have this experience. I sometimes go non-verbal, but it does not have a major effect on my life. I wish I could point to something written about John by someone who is Mute, but I have yet to find anything.

Heartbreak - SPOILERS

So after THOSE rants.. ending the time bubble at Ester City was more heart wrenching than I expected it’d be, once I realized what it meant. Captain Pam hinted at it though, when he said he couldn’t go beyond it.

Sam: I… I must have… known them before…

Why don’t I remember?

And if I don’t remember… why do I feel so sad…?

This is really tapping into some of that death anxiety and fear of death I was having a couple years ago. Memories are so fickle, yet so incredibly important. They define who we are. What happens to us when they’re gone? Where do they go when we die?

The monkeys stuck in the fog on the train. They’re not exactly losing their memories at least, but are they truly living? Just making movies day in day out on the same train. Is that a life? Well, to them it is, because they choose to make it their life. They’re know they’re stuck, they know why they’re stuck, and they keep persevering in their craft.

Meanwhile in Ester City, everyone’s stuck. Anyone who enters the city becomes part of the time loop, and in this particular time loop, memories do not form. These people are stuck largely repeating the same day over and over. Only a few times did the routine change, and only barely. But it was weird when it did, it felt wrong. In a city that initially felt wrong because it kept looping, we got used to it and the loops became a comfort. Then when it suddenly changed, even just a small change, it ruined that comfort we found.

If Monkolywood is about persevering despite insurmountable struggle, then Ester City represents getting stuck and giving up.

New Dam City was very much about people and relationships and living, existing, experiencing, growing, moving forward, and fighting to survive. This is represented with Isabel, Alva, and Lee.

Ending - SPOILERS

Personally I believe the older Sam at the end is indeed “our” Sam, just, her memories were potentially hastily put into a new clone body that emerged and is trying to make sense of them. That she and John happened upon each other is wonderful luck, and perhaps they’ll continue to journey together and she’ll remember more.
Was it heartbreaking that she didn’t remember him at the end, and that THAT’S what we got left with? Absolutely! Is it a bad ending for not showing her remembering him? No no no, not at all, no! A major theme of this game is memories, forgetting, remembering, hanging on to them, and holding on to them when we should let them go (Isabel).

Part of why I think that a LOT of time passed in Ester City, years, is because the Alva clones were already pretty mature. It’s not clear how quickly a human can develop in the cloning pod, but I’m choosing to believe the cloning pods do not accelerate human growth. Isabel didn’t age, but Isabel hasn’t aged. She was exactly the same when she first met Alva, as per Lee’s description of her. She’s gotta be an advanced robot. Most of the robots seen in the game are clearly clunky Futurama style robots. Isabel is more. Though the Eastward wiki describes her as a human. I, find that hard to believe based on what we’re told in game.

Nevermind, I just read up on some information I missed: Isabel was found in a machine in an abandoned complex. Much like Sam was found. She became fiercely, deadly, loyal to Alva upon first meeting her. Another clone. Kotaku actually has a pretty good takedown of how Isabel was handled in the story. She could have been given better. William and John sure were.

It could still work though, even Isabel was stuck in the timeloop, for who knows how long. She could have not aged for the same reason, despite years passing.

But then, all the residents of Ester City died when the timeloop was ended. HM! Maybe the clones really do mature quickly..

Conclusion

And I do have a clearer understanding of what I’ve taken away from Eastward: Keep going. Keep pushing through. If you’re fighting a good fight, if you’re trying to help people, you gotta keep at it. And don’t lose yourself along the way. You are wholly important and people will remember you, even if you’re gone, even if you don’t remember them.