Fox attempts to RiME – Final Chapter

It’s been a while since we visited Puzzle Island, and I would have to say it’s with good reason. We’ve established for definite now that the chapters are all the stages of grief. We’ve been hurt enough in the previous chapters; now we enter depression. Are we ready for that? I can say I’m not.

There’s a very visual element to RiME at times, and the opening of this section really plays on that. Our boy is asleep, curled up on top of our Orb based son; the rain is unforgiving and lashing down. The sky is dark, the waters darker and unsettled. In the distance, a shadow looms. As we approach we see that it’s some sort of ruined temple, the architecture matching the rest of the towers rooms. It’s hard to make light of what is sure to be a devastating end. Can we turn around and go back to playing with our Orb son in the temple again? No? Dammit.

We clamber onto the ruins, and we see our little family all climb from the water too. There’s no unsure footing, slipping around like they’re on ice as we previously saw. They’ve grown up.

Of course, that pride and joy are incredibly short-lived. We begin to follow a path that the Orbs must have some innate knowledge of, but we’re stopped by a door. There are markings and an indent on the door, and before we can even shout randomly as has been our want so far, one of the Orbs steps up. A blinding flash, and he’s gone; he’s become part of the door. It swings open, and we’re one orb down. The next room has a statue of a sad king, and he looks ominously like the ghostly black figure with the red cloak we’ve seen. There is a procession of the dementors behind the king too, and when they clear the Fox is back! Even this doesn’t cheer the boy up, though, and when the fox makes his way over to us, he’s lost his usual cheer. His ears and tail are even drooping.

We all see where this is going, right? As we carry on, we lose more and more Orbs. After one particular helpful Orb smashes a bridge down for us, he then takes his place in a door, and our boy drops to the floor to hug the Fox and sob. Understandable. I, too, am currently sobbing and wishing there was another way.

As we come to the final door, a quick detour lets us look down onto a rocky outcrop below and see the remains of the Skeletor bird from Chapter Two. This area must be affecting us, because even seeing that dickhead crashed upon the rocks isn’t cheering me up. Our boy knows too. As we approach the last door, it’s just us and our Orb son left. The boy is screaming, crying but it’s to no avail. To progress, he must let Orby sacrifice himself.

There is a plateau behind the door, and it mirrors the first area. One big figure in the middle with the small statues around it. There are a lot of dementors milling around, no longer running in fear. Similar to chapter one, there are 4 statues beaming pure light into the sky, but even that seems dimmed, as if even the light is affected by the atmosphere. The rain intensifies, and when we reach the first statue to shout at, the Fox is pawing at it and whining. I don’t think I can take much more.

Once we’ve stumbled throughout this watery maze and shouted at all statues, we return to the large statue. Instead of a fox, this shows a boy crying. Anyone else get that feeling they’re about to witness something awful? Yeah. You’d be right.

Our Boy shouts at the statue, as the only way out of this area is a bridge that is FILLED with Shadow people unwilling to move. Nothing happens at first, but then, the worst. The Fox is limping and as the boy turns to cradle him he fades and disappears. We’re alone again. As emotions well up, the statue behind the boy reacts, dark purple lights pulsing and an aura appearing. It builds until release, a scream of all the boys hurt tearing from him. However the aftermath leaves him a statue.

We break free, and now we’re the little red riding demon from previous chapters. We can no longer shout either, just whisper at the shadow folk surrounding us. They do appear to notice now, and will roughly push us around. I guess Karma for us terrorising them in the first sand village. Oh and on the bridge when we used them for 10 pin bowling. Don’t forget the great shadow genocide of Chapter 3 either!
So okay maybe it turns out we deserve a little shadow rough housing.

Let’s take one more recap before we push on. Chapter 1 we established a connection to our fox, we were stalked by the Red Cloak (Damn that’s a cool nickname) and we toyed with the idea that we had lost someone close to us following the Great Storm. Chapter 2 was just us taking out our anger on a bird and some shadow people. Chapter 3 is where it got heavy again. We enacted more Shadow killings but they weren’t nearly as fun, and we started to really feel the loneliness of our Boy. Now in Chapter four, we ourselves have become one of the lone spirits wandering Puzzle Island.

Life as a Shadow – It sucks

We’ve faced the shadows as some sort of threat to them, causing them to run in fear. We’ve faced them when they channelled Nancy Reagan and tried to suck the life from us. Now they’re just….people. As we try make our way across the bridge, we’re jostled and shoved repeatedly the shadows taking no extra notice now. We finally get away from the crowd to find an entrance to a hall, with two statues.

One is a crying king, the other is a crying boy. I’m even more confused; who has actually died? I have my suspicions now…

As we’ve walked, colour has slowly seeped out of the area, leaving us in a fading sepia toned wasteland. The room we’ve found has a tower in the centre, standing in ankle deep water. There’s a lot of climbing and no shouting at all – we seem to have given up on that.

Helpful tip for all you new parents out there; if your child won’t stop shouting and screaming, banish them to Puzzle island, whereby they will eventually suffer a trauma so profound it rips the colour from them, leaving them a shadowy husk of a person – who no longer shouts! Yay!

Climbing the tower brings us to some heavy duty chains that look like they can- yup, jump on the slightly different shaded ledge and it’s a handle. The chains fall away to reveal a giant glowing light. It seems like a lighthouse, but as we approach it suddenly glows brighter than ever. When the ancient lighthouse flash bang recedes, we’re left with a miniature sun in it’s place. We’re also no longer hanging off a tower, but instead standing in another body of ankle deep water. Oh and suddenly we aren’t a shadow person anymore – we have…Colour is a very strong word for it. In fact colour would be the wrong word for it. We have Tone? I guess? Imagine the game started again, but when our boy was coming through the printer of life, they ran out of Ink. The shape and detail is still there, but…everything is beige?

There’s at least another puzzle to distract us from our colour neutrality. This is a shadow lock that we’re familiar with, and it’s relatively straight forward to solve. With excitement and hope we rush through to see what awaits us next.

Apparently what awaits us next is that the guy who designed the opening to Chapter 3, the one who loved M.C Escher’s relativity? Yeah he crept back in. We’re on a staircase, but it turns out it’s the staircase from the end of every chapter, in all it’s glory. The Whole thing. Oh we’re also underneath it, and upside down. So..let’s get running!

My fear though as we run is that every time we’ve cleared this thing, we’ve been met with some awful flashback that gives us an insight into what tragedy brought us here. When we reach the end, will we finally understand what happened?
Yes. Yes we will.

The end does as it always has; it gives us a look at the Giant Storm of Death from previous chapters. The difference though, is it is all in colour, and that includes our friend the Shadow Man in the red cloak. This time, the Boy is in the red coat, and the other figure, the man, is trying to fight the storm tearing at their ship. My earlier suspicions were correct, and it is in fact, the Boy who goes overboard. The man, who I’m going out on a limb, I will assume he is the Father, grabs, but we know how this ends and he is instead left with just a sleeve. A very familiar sleeve in fact; we’ve seen it whipping about in the chapter one ending, which we chased through limbo to the boat. The Cutscene is all viewed through the giant keyhole of the Tower, and then suddenly, we’re not looking at the tower but we’re in a small house.

Now, we’ve assumed the role of Dad. We have a key in our hand, and with great hesitation we make our way down a hallway to what is apparently our Boys room. Those collectible toys we’re been finding? They cover the shelves. There is a lighthouse in view of the window. Resigned, Dad drops to the bed. Our boy appears, a ghostly apparition and gives Dad a hug. As he fades away, Dad is once again left holding his sleeve. This time though, he lets it go, and with that he has reached the final stage: Acceptance.

It is worth noting here that there is an additional ending I actually missed! If you manage to find the White apparition, the Boy isn’t the only ghost who appears to hug The Father; the deceased mother shows too!

Thats it.

For me, RiME was a wonderful playthrough. I fully recommend playing it for yourself if you haven’t already, because although you’ve just read my explanation of the story, even knowing what’s next, the game itself is magical and will be an experience for you. The music, the art, all of it warrants a play through of your own. There are things I missed, other parts that I didn’t mention due to forgetting or wanting to save a little mystery for players as well!

Please do let me know what you think of the game and any comments regarding our write-up.

Thank you for coming with me to the world of RiME, whether it was through these posts, or if you were there for the multiple streams we’ve done.

-Brightstarfox.