Livber: Smoke and Mirrors Narrative Log - The Departure

The second part of the game unfolds at a different pace. Act 2 is where the tension that began in the first act fully veers into the territory of a psychological thriller. In fact the word tension doesn't quite capture it. Perhaps the word we ought to use is "heaviness". Act 2 is crucial for showing us the protagonist's inner conflicts, the source of the ceaseless weight he feels with Lilith. This is the part where we understand our protagonist, but in understanding him, we cease to sympathise with him. This is a narrative choice that is in many ways dangerous and just as effective.

The greatest challenge of the second act is that the player begins to truly know the character they are playing, the one for whom they make decisions. It makes you see that this isn't a character whose shoes you can fill, whose personality you can shape with your choices. My aim throughout Livber's narrative was to put forth this truth: you cannot change the past. This game is about your suffering because of decisions someone else made in the past. You will play his story, you will play it in different ways each time and each time you will see a different facet of the relationship. But ultimately you will suffer for a sin committed by another. You cannot escape this and you never will. Yet this is precisely where I believe the narrative begins to work.

Because we always love to hear about what others have been through, how their stories ended in tragedy. It is a human need. The suffering of others is spoken of in whispers; their hardships, the deaths they have endured, are uttered so softly the words might dissolve into the wind. The second act is where these whispers first form as thoughts.

Another challenge with the second act is the other characters. The NPCs first appear here. When I started writing the game I never imagined any of them would form such a fundamental connection with the main character. They were supposed to be nobodies I'd use to extend the playtime, trapped in Lilith's cellar. But as I began to converse with the characters and as the second act began to write itself these characters became alternative personalities the protagonist had brought to life inside his own head. Discovering them was quite astonishing for me as well.

Clara was a character intended to reveal Lilith as a figure we see in classic mythology, one who brings evil not only to men but to women too. A character Lilith experimented on, trying to shape her into a form that Elbek could love. I decided it was a good idea to combine body horror elements in a little girl, pieced together from different bodies like Frankenstein's Monster. But then with a bit of self-censorship I decided that keeping the idea of an abused little girl so front and centre wouldn't be quite right and throughout the game I referred to her as the young woman.

Clara is in a very basic sense an exaggerated version of the childhood Elbek never had. Personally I was never mistreated as a child. But growing up was in itself a traumatic act and I suppose it will remain so forever. With Clara we get a glimpse into how Elbek processes this trauma within himself. What no one has noticed yet, and what I think they won't notice for some time, is that Clara is female. Why is Elbek's unlived childhood represented by a different gender? I suppose the answer to that lies on a different plane of consciousness.

My favourite character in the game is Keenan, a chattering corpse who says the things Elbek cannot, the things Elbek lets rot inside him. I remember taking a note a long time ago. It was a note I scribbled as incomprehensible words in my notebook after seeing a vision while trying to fall back asleep after waking from strange dreams: "A story about the things left unsaid, left to rot inside a person." I would sometimes think about this note and try to create a story from it but they all died on the page. I finally found the opportunity to write this story with Keenan.

Initially Keenan was just another man Lilith had kidnapped to make a new Elbek for herself. She would tie them up in the cellar, make them drink alchemical mixtures and try to create an Elbek who loved her. This was why there were so many dead bodies in the cellar. This basic premise is still in the game. But that's not what we should be looking at.

What we should be looking at is that Keenan is alive and talking. That he is confronting Elbek with the things he cannot say. Because we all need this in the end. As we carry the things we run from everywhere with us, we need to put a mirror in front of us and spit in our own face. Keenan does this. Keenan cannot escape. He has no body below the waist, no penis, no feet. His intestines spill out onto the floor from where his hips should be. Keenan doesn't need these things. His hands are bound to the ceiling by unseen forces. He has nowhere to run. However, there is one thing he can do in the end. Say the things that are rotting in his chest. Keenan isn't dead. Keenan is rotten, worn out and tired. Every unspoken word is shoved down his throat to his stomach. And he just vomits them back up. Keenan screams at you the things you don't want to hear.

The most bright scene in the entire game is in the attic, which we can visit at the start of the second act, where Lilith's favourite flowers are. All the flowers are sprouting from the mouths of dozens of different dead Elbeks.

Leigea, or by her name that never appears in the game, Seraf Hanım, is Elbek's mother. When writing the synopsis of the story I thought that Lilith should have a serious conflict with Elbek's mother. The noble Seraf Hanım would never approve of her son's relationship with a woman who was not of noble birth. We actually see the seeds of this conflict in two places in the first act. But I didn't pursue this potential conflict. Because by the time I reached the end of the second act I realised that the story's structure had become psychological and individual. This story wasn't for Elbek. It was about Elbek. Therefore the tension between Lilith and Seraf Hanım as daughter-in-law and mother-in-law would have been too simple and to some extent meaningless. Although this tension would have a grain of truth, it wouldn't have carried enough weight within the story. It's a good thing I didn't elaborate on this conflict.

The reason I say this is because Leigea dies in an accident when Elbek is just eight years old. So Lilith and Leigea never actually met. Therefore they could never have had a conflict. (PLOT HOLE!) At first I thought Lilith could save Leigea and hide her in the cellar under the house. The idea of Elbek walking around the house freely while his mother, whom he thought dead, was living tied up in the cellar below seemed like it could create interesting conflicts. If I had had enough time I'm sure I would have developed it. I'm glad I didn't have time to write some things. The idea of a ten-year-old Lilith at most pulling Seraf Hanım's burnt body from the ocean, bringing her back to life and feeding her in the cellar for years, hidden from Elbek, doesn't seem quite so thrilling now.

The role Leigea now has in the story is that of the wise guide. Her conflict is not with Elbek. Nor is it with Lilith. Leigea's conflict is with the Narrator himself. With the true antagonist character I set up throughout the game but never brought to a conclusion. Looked at from this perspective, perhaps Leigea is the most 'real' person in the game. She wants her son to die, trying to get him out of this cycle.

I tried to make the second act a form of 'dungeon crawling' in general. By doing so I aimed to give the player a sense of exploration but the process didn't quite go as I wanted. Although we can enter different rooms within the branching structure, if you pull on both ends of the second act it unravels into a single thread.

The longest part of the game does a good job of laying bare the toxic relationship dynamic between Lilith and Elbek, while also effectively showing that Elbek is a cowardly and wretched man. By the time we reach the end of the second act we are supposed to have understood why Elbek wants to escape from Lilith and for that reason, no longer feel any sympathy for him. We are supposed to say 'You are a coward Elbek' and not shed a single tear for his destruction. We are meant to understand and to hate.