This post will contain spoilers, obviously.
Papers, Please was on sale recently on Steam, so I decided to fork out $20 and buy it for a few friends. The two people who have tried the game liked it enough to spend about 10 hours each getting all the endings and achievements, and I'm really glad that people can relate to why this is my favourite game ever.
There is probably an infinitely long list of things I want to praise about the game design and narrative, so I've decided that I will break it down and try to go through it part by part. After recently playing Undertale and being a fan of how that game loves overthrowing the player's pre-conceived notions about rpgs, I want to talk a bit about how Papers also did that but in different ways.
We all want that good ending in some way or another in gaming. Having grey-area-ed, and downright terrible endings, is definitely nothing new in games. But I honestly cannot think of any game that had given me the experience quite like Papers did. The first ending I got was Ending 20, what I like to call the "Arstotzkan Dog" ending. Growing up in the Nanny State of Singapore, I guess that would have made the most sense. In fact, I think I would have gotten the "Too Honest" ending first if I could figure out how to pass the EZIC documents to the Inspector earlier on (yea it's pretty simple, I was just being dumb). It made sense considering the upbringing, anything wrong pops up hand it over to the Police and let the State handle it. Defiance of the law is generally not a good idea, and not intuitive at all. Together with the added consequences of credits penalty and a sickly, starving family, that seem about the right thing to do. When ending 20 played, I felt proud... for a moment. Until I realise the Inspector and his family was probably just stuck to this brutally mundane job forever, and forced to make decisions that betray the heart day in day out. Ending 20 is not that happy ending I wanted. Next.
Escape to Obristan was my second ending. It is the route that you will absolutely fall in love with Jorji, who hands you his forged passport despite you detaining him (at least I did), in order to repay your kindness from earlier. It is the one route that felt powerful, the player can confiscate passports illegally, in order to stealthily bring his family over to Obristan. You can run alone, but the game sends a man to tell you not to forget your family, and the way this shakes up the gameplay mechanics is really quite special. Jorji forces your first compulsory citation unto you (taking away any chance of a perfect run), and the game teaches you to break the rules that it had set for you; I love it when games do that. Speaking of family, this also feels like the most heartwarming of endings despite it being similarly gritty and painful to go through as there is that moment of fear that the rest of your family will get stopped by the Obristan customs, but all of you get through in the end. But what awaits across the borders is another communist slogan in the same vibe, "Obristan above all". We just escaped from one hell to another. Next.
The final 'big ending' is the EZIC takeover. Looking at how the rest of the endings went I had a feeling that this was going to be bad before it came. Perhaps it is clouded by my own perception that such a resistance led by fanatical violence upon innocent border guards will never work out, but I think the ending speaks for itself. You have helped to bring the resistance to victory. The ending slogan "Glory to New Arstotzka" seem to signify that the supposed change that was to come after the violent takeover was only at the superficial level. How will the next regime rule? There is a Chinese saying that translates roughly to how the effect of medicine will not change if you simply change the water used to boil the concoction without changing the prescription first; this seems to apply perfectly here as EZIC seem to have no new solutions to change the nation. You are still the poor border inspector like the end of Ending 20, and the nation is simply being ran by a new ruling class like in ending 18. Nex... But wait, there's nothing else left.
One side achievement one can attain, and by far the best one in my opinion, is for upgrading one's apartment. The upgrade does virtually nothing for your family except making rent and heat become more expensive as your house gets 'better' without ever showing you any visual representation of an upgrade. But we all want to climb that ladder to the top, a drive that I think is inherent to all humans, and we try whenever possible to make our lives a little less grim even if all we get are bragging rights and nothing substantial. We want to have reasons to convince ourselves life is getting better, perhaps to eliminate any desire to end it in a state of despair. So you keep upgrading the flat from grade-8, to grade-7, 6, 5... and the game stops you right there. "Grade 5 is the best for workers." Oh. I didn't know to be thankful for putting a stop on that fantasy that my in-game family can live in luxury one day, or should I be pissed off that this is different from this apparent 'meritocratic' nation that I live in? I sit down and question the state of meritocracy in Singapore from time to time, how skewed the system is towards people of higher classes, how terrible it is to be a late bloomer and how prejudiced people are by race, gender and place of birth for no apparent reason. In the end, regardless of what kind of meritocracy Singapore claims itself to be, I will be staying in a grade-5 apartment one day till death, and at least Arstotzka is kind enough to say that is because it is the best apartment I can get, while the Singapore government will wag its finger and tell me it is because I didn't perform well enough. And by that they mean my scores at the national examinations at 12 were not amazing enough (despite being in the top 10% of scorers) because the top schools don't need anyone else other than the 1%.
Before I delve any deeper into whine-zone I want to again thank Papers, Please for helping me rethink my life. Growing up as a pessimistic boy and plunging deeper and deeper into the depths of fatalism had helped make the connections I had when playing Papers. The happy ending does not seem to be there, at least not in this life, or not in this world. Perhaps I will need to find my answer in religion, or perhaps I am just looking at the wrong life goals. Or perhaps we will just fade into oblivion after we are dead, and even this sadness is a pointless emotion.
Escape to Obristan was my second ending. It is the route that you will absolutely fall in love with Jorji, who hands you his forged passport despite you detaining him (at least I did), in order to repay your kindness from earlier. It is the one route that felt powerful, the player can confiscate passports illegally, in order to stealthily bring his family over to Obristan. You can run alone, but the game sends a man to tell you not to forget your family, and the way this shakes up the gameplay mechanics is really quite special. Jorji forces your first compulsory citation unto you (taking away any chance of a perfect run), and the game teaches you to break the rules that it had set for you; I love it when games do that. Speaking of family, this also feels like the most heartwarming of endings despite it being similarly gritty and painful to go through as there is that moment of fear that the rest of your family will get stopped by the Obristan customs, but all of you get through in the end. But what awaits across the borders is another communist slogan in the same vibe, "Obristan above all". We just escaped from one hell to another. Next.
The final 'big ending' is the EZIC takeover. Looking at how the rest of the endings went I had a feeling that this was going to be bad before it came. Perhaps it is clouded by my own perception that such a resistance led by fanatical violence upon innocent border guards will never work out, but I think the ending speaks for itself. You have helped to bring the resistance to victory. The ending slogan "Glory to New Arstotzka" seem to signify that the supposed change that was to come after the violent takeover was only at the superficial level. How will the next regime rule? There is a Chinese saying that translates roughly to how the effect of medicine will not change if you simply change the water used to boil the concoction without changing the prescription first; this seems to apply perfectly here as EZIC seem to have no new solutions to change the nation. You are still the poor border inspector like the end of Ending 20, and the nation is simply being ran by a new ruling class like in ending 18. Nex... But wait, there's nothing else left.
One side achievement one can attain, and by far the best one in my opinion, is for upgrading one's apartment. The upgrade does virtually nothing for your family except making rent and heat become more expensive as your house gets 'better' without ever showing you any visual representation of an upgrade. But we all want to climb that ladder to the top, a drive that I think is inherent to all humans, and we try whenever possible to make our lives a little less grim even if all we get are bragging rights and nothing substantial. We want to have reasons to convince ourselves life is getting better, perhaps to eliminate any desire to end it in a state of despair. So you keep upgrading the flat from grade-8, to grade-7, 6, 5... and the game stops you right there. "Grade 5 is the best for workers." Oh. I didn't know to be thankful for putting a stop on that fantasy that my in-game family can live in luxury one day, or should I be pissed off that this is different from this apparent 'meritocratic' nation that I live in? I sit down and question the state of meritocracy in Singapore from time to time, how skewed the system is towards people of higher classes, how terrible it is to be a late bloomer and how prejudiced people are by race, gender and place of birth for no apparent reason. In the end, regardless of what kind of meritocracy Singapore claims itself to be, I will be staying in a grade-5 apartment one day till death, and at least Arstotzka is kind enough to say that is because it is the best apartment I can get, while the Singapore government will wag its finger and tell me it is because I didn't perform well enough. And by that they mean my scores at the national examinations at 12 were not amazing enough (despite being in the top 10% of scorers) because the top schools don't need anyone else other than the 1%.
Before I delve any deeper into whine-zone I want to again thank Papers, Please for helping me rethink my life. Growing up as a pessimistic boy and plunging deeper and deeper into the depths of fatalism had helped make the connections I had when playing Papers. The happy ending does not seem to be there, at least not in this life, or not in this world. Perhaps I will need to find my answer in religion, or perhaps I am just looking at the wrong life goals. Or perhaps we will just fade into oblivion after we are dead, and even this sadness is a pointless emotion.
