At first look, Crow Nation is a nostalgia piece. It pulls on the horrific sprawl of Resident Evil, populating its theme-park setting with mind twisters and monsters contorting into human shapes. It borrows from the toy aesthetic of Last Fantasy VII, its characters rendered in blocky, plastic proportions like Playmobil. But, it is greater than only a throwback, it lays bear the haunted roots of nostalgia tradition.
Protagonist Mara Forest visited the titular theme park as a toddler, nevertheless it was not a contented expertise. There, an odd man bit her and he or she gained some terminal sickness, which is slowly killing her. She has returned to make issues proper, discover out what occurred, and cease it from occurring once more. She returns to what was, solely fleetingly, a website of childhood pleasure. She finds loss of life, its shadows, its echoes, its remnants.
Crow Country’s complete setting is a spot of childhood play. The park is clearly designed for young children. It lacks thrilling high-rise curler coasters and is as a substitute populated by graveyard ghoulies, thicket mazes, and fairy-tale stage exhibits. It is all playful and inspiring. Even the “Haunted Hilltop” part of the park is extra trick-or-treat than Horror Nights. However with out the bustle of life–the dad and mom and youngsters to animate it–the park positive aspects an eerie high quality. This isn’t an authentic remark, in fact. Theme parks are a standard setting all through horror, however Crow Nation begins on the park’s gates and ends when Mara leaves them as soon as once more. The entire recreation is enveloped by this childhood setting. It’s within the distinction between the toy aesthetic and its eeriness–between theme park and haunted house–that Crow Nation builds its horror.
Crow Nation departs from its influences in that it doesn’t have mounted digital camera angles. As a substitute, every room is a miniature diorama. The angle mimics peering over a dollhouse, lifting off the roof to see inside. For a time, the world outdoors is distant; you solely see this room, its little objects, and its traps and puzzles. That is, in fact, true of most video video games, the place there are solely so many locations you’ll be able to go, however Crow Nation attracts its strains decisively and artificially, very like its theme-park setting. But, the theme park is continuous–interlocked. Like several survival-horror recreation, it’s a set of keys and locks, every contingent on the opposite, one door opening one other. Crow Country’s world is a microcosm, apparently siphoned off, however truly the broader world in miniature.
Crow Nation spoilers forward.
Fittingly, the theme park itself is deceptively giant, intercut with hallways and dug underneath with hidden depths. Mara wanders by backstage rooms and places of work as a lot as playgrounds and rollercoasters. Finally, she descends to the park’s secret mining amenities, an underground setting made from metallic scaffolds and infinite abysses. Very similar to Resident Evil’s manor, Crow Nation has a secret industrial coronary heart. Nonetheless, very like the theme park itself, the mine is segmented. Every part holds a “root,” a big tentacle-like object made from treasured metals that the park’s proprietor, Edward Crow, has been secretly mining. As the sport progresses, the theme park turns into dirtier, overwhelmed with monsters, laced with traps and obstacles. The solar units. The park turns as darkish because the abyss beneath.
That construction, from the world above to the world beneath, and from day to nighttime, mimics the sport’s plot, during which hidden issues come to gentle. Edward found the roots touring the land along with his father, wriggling within the grime by their campsite. As an grownup, he started to mine them, obscuring the operation with a canopy story a couple of mine in Brazil. However then the creatures began coming by. Edward shortly found the creatures are, actually, human beings. Edward Crow’s mining of the portal has distorted what goes by it. The extra the portal was mined, the extra it stretches out, blob-ifies, and melts the individuals who go by it. They can’t speak–only reach–and their contact contaminates. The portal is to the longer term: a prophetic warning of catastrophe and the planet rendered uninhabitable. However Edward retains mining, obscuring this reality relatively than spreading it broadly.
But Edward has a curious reverence for the portal. He calls the creatures who come by it “company,” nearly like they’re visiting the theme park. One root he leaves intact, constructing a shrine for his childhood discovery. The remainder he mines out, leaving them gaping like severed limbs. That may appear a curious contradiction, however it’s mutually reinforcing. His personal previous is all that issues to Crow; the remaining can rot.
Crow Nation faucets right into a vein the remainder of tradition can be mining. The latest novel Birnam Wooden considerations a billionaire secretly mining lithium beneath a New Zealand nationwide park, an echo of Crow’s extraction. No person would bat a watch at a reclusive millionaire having mining property in Brazil, however a mountain of gold from a US backwater? That could be controversial. Each works name into query what violence is additional unseen, when it is in international locations outdoors of the worldwide North.
Crow Nation has parallels to Alan Moore’s “Illuminations” as properly, which is a brief story that considerations a middle-aged man touring again to the pier of a childhood trip, solely to be horrified when he finds himself truly touring again to the previous. The story turns nostalgic longing into pure terror: the type of factor solely a idiot would truly need. Returning to the previous with the data you may have now means returning as you are actually, not as a wiser previous you–an grownup in kid’s garb.
Crow Nation builds out a span between secretive financial exploitation and a private eager for the previous. Edward Crow’s mission is in precise distinction to these of “the company.” They transport themselves from the longer term to the previous to strive to reserve it. In distinction, Edward maintains an imagined previous to destroy the longer term. The one part of the park that’s inaccessible is an unbuilt sci-fi part a la Tomorrowland. The longer term is unknown, far off, and people with the precise energy to foretell who’re struggling the longer term’s atrocities can’t be heard. Notably, Crow Nation was not at all times known as such. It was once known as Condor Nation, presumably by its native inhabitants. That previous is completely misplaced, utterly overwritten, solely present in Crow’s personal admission that the land was not at all times his. Nostalgia is by nature selective, typically violent in what it chooses to omit.
To be clear, Crow Nation isn’t precisely a startling work of horror. It’s cute, and at occasions cuddly and heat like a worn VHS tape. However its remedy of nostalgia provides it hues, depths, and darknesses. That’s what is so scary about it. It’s that refusal to be merely cute, its want to recollect however to not commemorate, that makes it such a textured and beautiful work. Any recreation seeking to the previous to make a future has so much to be taught from it.
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