Pastelland Forum

Jatsko wrote:Finally uploaded Cube Escape: The Mill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXTJuYrSqG8

Jatsko wrote: In other news, I played HL, HL2, HL21 AND HL22 in the span of six days. Now I'm on the HL3 train just like everyone else, and this train is quite full of starving passengers.

Jatsko wrote:...Of course, there's no reason as to why we would want to move two eggs, as we have no basis for the appearance of twins in this game. But this instead might be hinting at the many subtle hints of duality found everywhere in the game, more on that later. After completing this puzzle, we have pretty much reached the end of the chapter. The next area will actually take us right into another metaphor for the uterus, but let's back up a second.

We started out by saying that the game could be divided up into three trimesters. The way we do this is by looking at the general motion of our player. In the first half of Chapter 2, we mostly move downwards, along the walls of what we'll call "The Well", as named in the game's loading points. Starting in the second part of Chapter 2, the player mostly progresses through the game horizontally, on a level surface. Yes, the same danger of falling is always there, but whether traversing the base of one of the columns or walking swiftly on the catwalks, most of the movement is horizontal. This continues into Chapter 3 with many meters of running along swiftly spinning axles and rods. In Chapters 4 and 5 (and let's not forget the very end of Chapter 3!) we find our player moving upward, whether it be via climbing platforms in the strobe light rooms, ascending swirling blurry geometric forms, or climbing the seemingly endless staircase before reaching the desert. Now I understand that this analogy isn't airtight, especially considering the last two chapters of the game, but we can work within it for now. Anyway, by direction of movement the game naturally divides itself in three parts.

So back to the Well/Uterus analogy. After conception and fertilization, the fertilized egg will attach itself to the inner wall of the uterus so the baby has a starting point for growth. If we track our progress down the well, for the most part, we pretty much stick right to the walls of the whole thing! Also, the Well's sheer height and sudden dropoffs can make players experience feelings of nausea and vertigo, much like the constant upset stomachs and nausea (known as morning sickness) often felt in the first trimester of pregnancy. The Well also seems to offer more places for the Player to slip and fall from great heights, ultimately ending in a death and a game restart. The threat of dying seems more apparent here than in either of the other two "trimesters" of the game. Similarly, newly-made babies are at their most vulnerable states during the first trimester. Now try as I might, I simply cannot think of an explanation for the seemingly acidic slugs that appear in this section here! If this Well is symbolic for a uterus, then the slugs must definitely represent the possibility of infections that can happen during the first trimester, and yet we actually need these creatures in order to progress through the game. I'm not even going to bother trying to figure them out. I should say this: I'm not saying my theory is a 100% correct interpretation of the game, if even there is any interpretation that is correct. It's more of a string of thoughts that I think make some sort of sense.

Back to the trimesters. In the second trimester of pregnancy women often shed most of the feelings of nausea and morning sickness. In the game, the flat expanse at the bottom of the well definitely draws away from the vertigo aspects of the Well. Not entirely, as there is still a fair chance that we can fall to our death pretty much anywhere. But there are definitely many more broad expanses to walk around on which give us an increased sense of stability...