Difference between revisions of "Illusion of Gaia"

Revision as of 11:31, 15 August 2014

Illusion of Gaia is an action RPG for the SNES in which the young hero Will, and several of his companions travel around their world, motivated by a search for his father, pursuit by royal guards who are seeking to "reclaim" one of his friends, a runaway princess, and at the suggestion of a mysterious being called Gaia that Will meets after stumbling into a portal to another realm. Along the way, Will and his friends must battle against an approaching evil forewarned by Gaia that threatens all life. The game takes place in a cartoonish amalgam of the real planet Earth, containing mishmashes of various cultures, locations, and time periods.

The game nevertheless contains sufficient complexity to contain a myriad of issues which could prove troublesome for someone sensitive to those issues. Additionally, the game contains some content not currently covered by GamePhobias' tag system which we at Gamephobias consider likely to prove troublesome for some players. For that reason, if you are playing this game, please also consult the Editor's Note at the bottom of the review.

Alcohol

In the town of Watermia, Will has to play a drinking game that’s basically Russian roulette, in order to win transportation across the desert. The glasses contents are not explicitly alcohol but could very likely be and are described with terms usually applied to alcohol (shot, etc). A similar scene is set up in Watermia’s gambling hall with two men having a drinking competition; this one seems more likely to be alcohol as it seems to be a competition of who can drink the most.

Animal Abuse

In the town of Dao, Will can play Snake Panic, a game where he must hit as many charmed snakes as he can within one minute. If his score is high enough, he gets two Red Jewels, which are necessary to unlock the game’s secret dungeon. The snakes are non-hostile and merely pop out of their pots when called by the snake charmer. ==Animal Death==Kara’s pet pig, Hamlet, sacrifices himself for a village of hungry people, by jumping into a fire and cooking himself.

Aquatic Violence

Will and his friends end up on an ancient Incan ship which gets attacked by a giant fish and is destroyed. Will and Kara wake up on a debris raft, and one of their friends is eaten by the fish. While Will and Kara are on the raft, they are briefly threatened by sharks, though they end up not being attacked.

Body Horror

The Zombie enemies feature an eye-less snake head on a humanoid body. When the head is defeated, an eye opens up on the monster’s chest and must be attacked for the monster to be killed.

Bones

The opening cinematic includes both a skull and a skeleton. Ribber, Skull Chaser, and Steelbones are animate skeletons. Flasher enemies are ghost-like and have skeletal hands. Ramskull enemies are bone-constructs. Skullker and Yorrick enemies are animate skulls. Skeletons can appear as background tiles in ruins, and can sometimes be interacted with to get backstory the person the skeleton belonged to.

Cannibalism

In the Japanese version of the game, there is a tribe of native people who are starving because the animals they would hunt have all turned into monsters. They resorted to eating the sickly among their village and attempt to eat Will and his friends when they arrive at the village. This is cut from the American release of the game, though certain elements remain. The skeletons of dead villagers still litter the village, though they are fluffed as simply being dead and not having been eaten. Will and his friends are still set upon by the natives, tied up and, seemingly for no reason, as the threat of cannibalism is removed, dragged out by a large fire. Will finds the journal of a dead adventurer in Ankor Wat, which reports that when he and his party entered the village, they were put up for the night by the villagers, and some of the party died there mysteriously overnight. This could be a cannibalism reference, or it could be a reference to the diseases reported by slaves who used to live in the village.

Dead Bodies

Ribber, Skull Chaser, and Steelbones are animate skeletons. Zombies enemies are non-standard zombies; they have a snake-like head and a humanoid body. Haunt enemies are animate mummies. Skeletons can appear as background tiles in ruins, and can sometimes be interacted with to get backstory the person the skeleton belonged to. Will and his friends encounter the skeletons of the long-dead crew of an Incan ship, along with the mummified body of the Incan queen. When Will is saving Kara from being captured by the Jackal, he triggers a fire trap which lights the mercenary on fire and kills him.

Death of Family/Friends

Kara’s pet pig, Hamlet, sacrifices himself for a village of hungry people, by jumping into a fire and cooking himself. Will’s friend, Neil, is briefly reunited with his parents, but they turn out to be disguised moon spirits and that his parents have been dead all along. (Endgame Spoilers) Will discovers that his father, Olman, has been physically dead the whole time Will presumed him missing, and had instead ascended to a spirit form, in which Olman continues interacting with his son. Will’s friend Seth is presumed alive after the accident with the Inca ship and even talks to his friends and tells them that he has, somehow, become the fish that ate him. Come the end of the game, Olman draws up several spirits to give Will extra power, and Seth is one of them, along with Hamlet, Neil’s parents, and Will’s opponent in the Russian Glass game in Watermia.

Dehumanization

In the town of Freejia and other locations throughout the game, Will and his friends encounter slave traders and slave markets in which the enslaved laborers are being treated like animals.

Disease

The long-dead inhabitants of the island of Mu report a disease-like plague once decimated their population, turning people into monsters. Some of the slaves Will encounters report that terrible diseases that petrify the infected were becoming common near their homes when they were made to leave.

Disruptive Home Life

Will’s friend Seth has a very unhappy home life, thanks to his parents’ constant fighting. Seth’s father wants to be able to spend his money on fun things, and Seth’s mother feels that that is irresponsible. Seth’s mother says she’d leave her husband if not for Seth. When Will first opens the door to Seth’s house, a jar comes flying out of the house and onto the street, implying that one parent or another threw it, likely Seth’s father, since he is standing near a similar jar.

Kara’s parents, King Edward and Queen Edwina, are cruel and keep her locked in her room. Kara is desperate to get away from them.

Explosions

In several places, defeating a certain enemy will prompt the next area to open. A small light orb will fly to whatever will open or change to unlock the next area and create a small explosion to open the way. Several enemies fight with explosions. Will’s friend Eric gets strapped to a bomb at one point during a boss-fight. Will must defeat the enemies within two minutes to prevent the bomb from exploding and save his friend.

Eye Horror/Eye Trauma

Eyestalker is an eye-shaped monster. Eyesore and Firebug enemies are fiery eyeballs. The Zombie enemies feature an eye-less snake head on a humanoid body. When the head is defeated, an eye opens up on the monster’s chest and must be attacked for the monster to be killed.

Fire

Several enemies and bosses fight with fire or are fire-themed. In the back alleys of the town of Freejia, a man will offer to provide an interesting demonstration for Will. He will breathe fire, but his hair will be accidentally lit on fire, and he will run offscreen. When Will is saving Kara from being captured by the Jackal, he triggers a fire trap which lights the mercenary on fire and kills him.

Ghosts

The Moon Tribe are ghost-like creatures. For a time, Will interacts with the crew of an Incan ship who believe him to be their king. He goes to sleep and awakens to find that the crew had been dead for a long time and that he had interacted with their ghosts. Flasher enemies are ghost-like and resemble dementors from Harry Potter: hovering cloaked figures with skeletal hands. Will interacts with the long-dead inhabitants of the island of Mu and the Tower of Babel who appear as small ghostly wisps. Haunt enemies are haunted mummies which will, when they’ve received enough damage, unravel and reveal the ghost haunting the mummy. The Mummy Queen boss of the Pyramid will burst into several small ghosts when she is struck. The ghosts will then coalesce, at which point she can be attacked again. (Endgame Spoilers) Will discovers that his father, Olman, has been physically dead the whole time Will presumed him missing, and had instead ascended to a spirit form, in which Olman continues interacting with his son.

Heights

Will will jump off of cliffs, ledges, and roofs, though the falls are never damaging. The Sky Garden dungeon is a floating garden high above the Nazca Lines. While traversing the dungeon, Will has to jump between the top and bottom sides frequently to complete it. Will cannot mis-jump and fall.

Insects

Slugger and Scuttlebug enemies resemble pillbugs. The Sand Fanger boss is a centipede. Zip Fly enemies resemble flies. Wall Walker enemies resemble large ticks. During the Ankor Wat level, Will ends up jumping down into a dark room which, when the lights turn on, turns out to have a floor covered in harmless beetles.

Kidnapping

At the beginning of the game, Kara has run away from her home at the palace and is forcibly dragged out of Will’s home by two knights who come to take her back. Kara is taken by the angel painter, Ishtar, and sealed into a painting, from which Will must rescue her. At one point, Will has to rescue slaves whose backstory is that they willingly left their tribal home when the animals died off and were hired as laborers. They were tricked and sold as slaves instead. Kara’s father sends a bounty hunter called the Jackal after his daughter. Kara is eventually captured, but Will saves her.

Murder

When Will is saving Kara from being captured by the Jackal, he triggers a fire trap which lights the mercenary on fire and kills him.

Needles

Some enemy constructs shoot needles.

Nudity

Will’s Shadow form is a muscular, blue, nude male surrounded by flames. His crotch is in shadow, but his butt is visible when Will jumps off of a ledge in this form.

Parental Abandonment

Will went on a trip with his father before the events of the game, and only Will returned home from it. His father appears to still be alive but is nowhere to be found at the beginning of the game. Since his mother died years before, Will lives with his maternal grandparents. The father of Will’s friend, Lance, also went along on this trip and was lost. Lance was raised by his mother who had remained in South Cape. Lance’s father turns up alive in the town of Watermia. Neil lives apart from his parents, but that seems to be more his personal choice, rather than a case of abandonment.

Psychological Trauma

Will’s friend, Erik, loses his memory after the Incan gold ship is attacked by a large fish. The father of Will’s friend, Lance, is discovered part-way through the game, having suffered amnesia during his trip with Will’s father.

Racism

The game features a mishmash of ancient world cultures, fusing elements of fantasy with historical elements from our world. There are elements of this that could be problematic for someone who is more sensitive to these issues than this reviewer is, as a white-privileged person, but they will do their best to call out offensive material.

When characters who ought to be POC are depicted, their skin is usually as white as Will’s.

Will has a white-savior plot-line. He is a blond, white male who is “the chosen one” and must dig through the ruins of ancient cultures which would belong to POC in our world. Throughout the plot, Will has to rescue slaves whose backstory is that they willingly left their tribal home when the animals died off and were hired as laborers. They were tricked and sold as slaves instead. Will also travels to the home of these slaves and must save them from starvation, disease, and the monsters plaguing them.

During the Freejia arc, Will has the option to turn in a runaway slave for a reward: one of the fifty collectable Red Jewels which unlock a secret final dungeon. This is not required, but if the player wants to 100% complete the game, this Jewel is necessary.

The game features a region based on Incan mythology and architecture. This part is relatively inoffensive. The biggest issue is that Incan people are depicted as white, and most of the women are even shown as blonde; however, other members of the Incan crew have blue or purple hair so realistic depictions were obviously not a priority.

A region based on China features a zone called China’s Great Wall which Will has to explore. It features a large wall, vaguely reminiscent of the Great Wall of China, full of living clay soldiers. The music for the zone draws from Chinese musical traditions. Will does not encounter any people there, and it seems as though the mishmash of the area is not a pan-Asian mishmash and sticks merely to Chinese tropes.

A man in a village near the Great Wall makes a crack about how weird Chinese medicine is, apparently drawing the line at “the bodily fluids of insects” even though the particular variety he’s criticizing do prove to be a cure-all.

Will and his friends encounter an indigenous tribe who has been all but wiped out by famine. The tribespeople have darker skin than most of the game’s characters and cannot understand or be understood by Will and his friends. In the Japanese version, this tribe turned cannibalistic and ate their sick when faced with starvation. They attempt to eat Will and his friends in the Japanese version and merely capture them in the American release, only releasing them upon a sacrifice by Kara’s pet pig, Hamlet.

The town of Dao is supposed to be based upon the Middle East. This is probably the most problematic part of the game. Snake charming is apparently a sport in the town, and Will can participate by whacking charmed snakes to get Red Jewels. Tough-looking, turban-wearing, pot-bellied, mustachioed slave-traders, who look more non-white than almost every other character in the game, really read as Arab stereotypes. These men control part of the town and force female slaves who cannot speak the same language as Will and his party to weave decorative carpets for rich whiter people in a far-off part of the world nonstop in what reads as a sweatshop for 40 years.

Rats/Rodents

Bat, King Bat, and Dive Bat are based on bats.

Reptiles

Flayzer enemies are reptile-men. Draco enemies are small, reptilian dragons.

Sexualization/Objectification

The Mummy Queen boss is supposed to be the queen who was buried in the Pyramid dungeon hundreds of years before the game takes place. She does not possess the appearance of a desiccated mummy and is instead a very busty, leggy woman. Her skin starts out pinkish and human-looking, but then turns green, then brown as though she is decaying as the battle goes on. Despite this decay, her sexualized build never changes.

Slavery

While on a raft drifting at sea, Will and Kara will find a message in a bottle from a slave on a ship begging for help. When Will and Kara then get to the town of Freejia, much of the plot for the town will involve the slave trade and freeing slaves. During the Freejia arc, Will has the option to turn in a runaway slave for a reward: one of the fifty collectable Red Jewels which unlock a secret final dungeon. This is not required, but if the player wants to 100% complete the game, this Jewel is necessary. This slave-rescue plotline reappears once the party reaches the town of Euro. In the town of Dao, the slave trade is more openly practiced, and Will can go into a sweatshop staffed by female slaves who cannot speak the same language as Will and his party. These women weave decorative carpets for rich whiter people in a far-off part of the world, nonstop for 40 years.

Snakes

Asp enemies are based on snakes. In the village of Dao, Will can encounter snake charmers.

Spiders

Acid Spider enemies are based on spiders.

Suicide

Aboard the Incan gold ship, Will and his friends find the long-dead skeletons of the last of the Inca, who, instead of setting off and trying to save themselves, waited on board their ship and needlessly died waiting for him. In the town of Watermia, Will has to play a drinking game that’s basically Russian roulette. When he and his opponent have worked their way through four of the five glasses and have not been poisoned, the spectators realize that the final glass must be the poisoned one and try to dissuade the opponent from drinking the final glass. As he’s been disgraced as the champion and is also terminally ill, as Will will later learn, he insists on drinking the cup and dies, leaving behind a sizable inheritance for his pregnant wife. Kara’s pet pig, Hamlet, sacrifices himself for a village of hungry people by jumping into a fire and cooking himself.

Supernatural Evil

Monsters throughout the game are described as demons, but none of them resemble classical Western demons.

Torture

In the diamond mine, Will must rescue slaves, many of which are being beaten by the reptile-men wardens. Several background tiles and stones around are the skeletons of former slaves and their skulls, implying that they were tortured or worked to death.

Undead/Zombies

Ribber, Skull Chaser, and Steelbones are animate skeletons. Flasher enemies are ghost-like. A pair of Vampires are the boss for the Mu island region. Skullker and Yorrick enemies are animate skulls. Goldcap and Frenzie enemies are animate mummified heads. Zombie enemies are non-standard zombies; they have a snake-like head and a humanoid body. Haunt enemies are animate mummies. The Mummy Queen boss is undead, but she is not decayed.

Violence Against Children

Will, Kara, and most of their other companions are young, and a good deal of trauma happens to most of them.

Weapons

Freedan uses a sword, and Will attacks with his flute, using it like a bludgeon. Enemies use spears, swords, chain whips, and bows. Some constructs shoot needles, rocks, detachable rocket fists, feathers, or fireballs.

Additional Resources:

The below links show the sprites of ingame enemies and boss enemies for viewers to review prior to encountering them in the game itself. If one is particularly sensitive to the material at hand, GamePhobias encourages acquiring the assistance of another who will be able to look at the material and help determine whether or not such material is safe.

Enemy List: http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/snes/iog/enemies.shtml Boss List: http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/snes/iog/bosses.shtml