It takes little to realise that loss is an inescapable part of our lives. The death of a loved one is the most common example, but the same concept is equally applicable to other events.
When I was in high school I bonded a lot with one of my classmates, who soon became a valued friend. The years passed and at some point, because of the road she was on, we started to drift apart. I did everything to prevent this from happening, but we had both become different people and I did not want to accept it. So the worst happened: after a bitter argument we broke off all relations, as if we were strangers. And when she changed schools that same year, I didn’t see her again for more than ten years.
I thought back to this episode many times as I took on the role of Rei, the graceful Voidrunner called upon to avert the destruction of her home planet. She too, like me, was fighting not to lose something dear to her, with the cute stubbornness of the newbie who wants to change the world.
Solar Ash plunges you into a floating world, whose tranquillity clashes with the cosmic cataclysm taking place high in the sky. Heart Machine has once again demonstrated a keen sensitivity in drawing a desperate, dying universe. Despite this, I found the dialogues between the characters somewhat lacking in pathos compared to the general atmosphere and the feelings they were meant to communicate. Each of them has something to say to you, but the way they do it failed to involve me completely. I would have preferred something less expansive: quieter, but at the same time more evocative and meaningful like in Hyper Light Drifter.
Each of them, like Rei, is trapped in an obsession not to lose what little they have left, unfairly ripped from them by the voracity of the Ultravoid. And what would we do, placed in such a situation, if we had the power to stop it all? Would we exploit this possibility or embrace change?
Rather than surrender to her fate, Rei condemns herself and her companions to an eternal time loop in a vain hope of fixing things. The loophole, however, does not come without a price. Trapped in repeating the same path over and over again, she will always arrive at the same horrible moment: realising that her home planet, as well as the inhabitants living on it, is doomed and there is nothing that can be done to change this sorrowful destiny.
To us has been given the power to help Rei in breaking this painful eternal return. Will we really have to? This is the dilemma placed before us within the game. After all, there may always be a chance that things will end for the better this time.
Faced with this choice, I thought back to the event I narrated above and tried to compare it with the situation Rei was in. So I came to the same conclusion for both: everything in life changes. And with change we necessarily lose something along the way. Sometimes our actions can do something to avert it, sometimes not, but the important thing is not to let ourselves be shackled by the pain of what we have lost. “as long as there is life there is hope”, they say, but I would say more accurately: “as long as there is life there are possibilities”.
Solar Ash may have its flaws, imperfections and shortcomings, but it has left me with an important lesson: just as Rei has to live with the fact that she cannot save her planet and is its only survivor, I too have to live with the fact that people, even those we hold most dear, may leave for reasons beyond our actions and will. This doesn’t mean that we must remain at the mercy of events, on the contrary, but that we must move forward with the knowledge of what we have lost.
My old friend may have become a different person after ten years, but that doesn’t mean we can’t reconnect. One thing, however, I should always keep in mind: what we were in the past will never return.