Everhood 2 Is A Transcendental Mess That Stuck In My Brain

Ok, so. This one is going to be a little different.

"Reviewing" Everhood 2 is a tough thing to do. We're going to unpack a lot here, and it's barely going to scratch the surface for what you can expect in this game. It's going to be full spoilers, because a) I can't properly talk about this game without doing so, and b) I think it actually helps to know things going in vs. chugging this aimed-to-be-LSD-adjacent experience blind.

Alright, let's get into it.

Everhood 2 does, and always was going to, stand in the shadow of its progenitor. As I wrote on the original, Everhood is a tight experience that is in conversation with the widely beloved classic Undertale, while building out its own excellent lore, themes and world. To expand on this more explicitly, Everhood is very much centered on questions of life and death, morality and depravity, fragility and immortality. A collection and concepts of dualities, you could say. Despite its steadily grown cult classic status with hundreds of thousands of people across the world falling deeply for the experience, Everhood continues to be an underrated absolute must play for anyone that likes to think deeply about games, media, philosophy and the world we live in. It didn't need a sequel, but when one was announced, the expectations laid on top of it couldn't not be immense.

At a broad surface level, the second expands on everything from the first game, as sequels often do. The much lauded battle system is expanded in every direction. Combat has been reworked into a full blown RPG system with weapons, experience points and levelling mechanics; The number of battles is massively expanded with more characters than the first; the sensory overload on many of the battles has been dialled up to 11, with even more stunning setpiece moments throughout. The flashing lights warnings here are more serious than just about anything that's released since that one episode of Pokemon that triggered epileptic seizures in kids all across Japan.

Everything narrative related, from theme to story to lore to character, has also been more deeply explored. To pull a quote from the marketing material of this game prior to release:

"We wanted to expand Everhood's most eclectic aspects with our sequel," said Chris Nordgren, co-founder of Foreign Gnomes. "You can still subdue evil carrot mages, time cops, robust slime creatures, and all that good stuff to the dulcet tones of Electronic Psychedelic Power Rock, but there's quite a lot more discovery here. We even surprised ourselves! Quite a few unknown mysteries await for Everhood fans - and for anyone new, we hope this refinement of our original ideas speaks directly to your soul, whatever color it may be."

Everhood 2 is then positioned not necessarily as a continuation of the first in directly narratively - which makes sense, given how the first wraps everything up very definitively - but instead as a re-do and expansion on everything the devs now had the resources and time to work on. I believe that's important to keep in mind as we continue on.

In playing through this prior to its release, I felt uneasy and unable to put pen to paper on how to approach writing about it. My gut feeling was that this is a game antithetical to the traditional "review structure", in that of playing in isolation prior to release is detrimental to getting out the juice that can be squeezed from it. It felt like a game that most people aren't going to "get" - myself included - without significant community discussion. Hours long YouTube analysis videos, ten-thousand word strong essays and hundreds of comments long threads on Reddit and the Steam Forums aren't just the type of thing reserved for the hardcore fans - they will be required reading for players to understand what it is that is going on. And, whether it even all makes sense.

Given reviews both professional and player driven, this intuition seemed to be in the right ballpark. General consensus is that the battle system is fun, but the characters are much harder to connect with, the story is a mess no one can understand, and the ending is a travesty - particularly for those so invested in the original. This is where I've been at too, mostly, though not as harsh. Weeks on from "finishing" it, I can't stop mulling over what exactly the game is saying. Even reading many different people's interpretations, everyone has different theories and ideas, many of which are conflicting.

What follows here is the interpretation I'm sitting on, at least in the current moment. My hope is that, by reading this before you play the game, having these thoughts in your mind might enhance your first time through experience, or at least set you in the right state of mind going in.

Slay The Dragon - Free Your Mind

The first act of the game is fairly straightforward. You are tasked with taking down the "Mind Dragon", a representation of the ailments of the mind - trauma, denial, depression. If you are already "strong enough", eg. you can take down the difficult fight immediately, the game does not stop you. However if you cannot, then there are 3 main areas you can journey through in order to gain experience and items to help get through it. Each of these realms is designed as a separate story to invoke conflict that you must resolve - reach the pinnacle of strength in a kingdom built on fighting, free an oppressed alien species in a mining colony, and face the abyss in a seedy township. Success in this endeavour rewards a Soul Weapon. This is allegorical to mastering your mind, readying you for the path to enlightenment.

Expand Your Consciousness - Open Your Mind

The second act of the game sees you visiting various hubworlds, going on further wacky adventures with your pals Irvine, Sam, Raven and Riley, for the purpose of Defeating The Root Of All Evil, or in other words, facing God. The more you explore, the more worlds and stories you will play your part in resolving - including several trips to different time periods post mine colony liberation, investigating the Mushroom Bureau and a secret lab, visiting various hotel guests and even a trip back to an old memorable neighbourhood. Your ultimate goal is to reach Pandemonium, the place where you can walk the steps to meet God. This part of the game plays more heavily into the idea of walking that enlightenment path - potentially with the help of mind altering assistance. Maybe some Lucy or some Molly.

Time, Cycles and Godhood - Unleash Your Mind

Entering the endgame of your journey, you face off against many "God" characters - Dmitri, Bobo, Shade, The End Of Time Itself. Depending on how much you have explored/acquired, you will either come to a point where you are looped back to the beginning of the game, or run through another final sequence where you need to defeat another God character. Doing the latter will loop you back to just before the ending sequence. And (providing some other """true""" path doesn't get uncovered, but I find that doubtful currently) that is the game. This is where many critics and players have been left underwhelmed and disappointed. The first game ends on such a note of finality, releasing you back into the real world with much to ponder. The sequel leaves no explicit final resolution, instead choosing to loop back in on itself over and over no matter how much you keep playing. This is the game making its statement about achieving enlightenment - more on that soon.

A Shade of Humanity

The most interesting character in the game is, without a doubt, Shade. On a blind playthrough you may not notice, but they pop up in the game everywhere. Sometimes they are dressed up as a different character: a back alley thug, a shaman, a guide. Other times their smile will appear for the briefest of times, sometimes within or sometimes just after a battle with another character. Through the ending sequence, a section has you back in the original void you started in, sitting at a table with Shade, followed by a discussion with them. This can be interpreted as the conscious engagement with the self through the enlightenment process - again, more on that below.

I'm grasping at the edges of my own knowledge with this - I'm far, far from an expert on any of this - so please bear with me. I want to have this discussion, and I'm working through my understanding even just by writing this.

Much of the game, through direct expressions and exclamations as well as in background theming, is concerned with Duality. That is the duality of body and mind - eg. the physical and the spiritual, or the existence of a soul that is not linked to the fleshy plane of existence - as well as the concept of duality itself, as in action vs. opposite and equal reaction. The first is consistently referenced throughout the journey - soul weapons, slimes (Lucy, Molly, blue slimes, Dmitri and Raven at various points), Riley's final monologue. The second is textually constant in underlying themes - conflict vs. resolution, life vs. death, good vs. evil, purpose vs. aimlessness. Weighty philosophy vs. full on trolling fun.

Shade is the counterpart to your player character. You are a "light being". Shade is darkness. You are a hero on a quest - Shade is the prime antagonist. You are the resolution to all conflicts created by Shade. You are the player, and Shade is the game.

Shade can draw things into the game, such as a fan that blows you across the screen. They are the creator. Your character is the conduit into the world, the one going through the experience - the destroyer of worlds. Your character literally cannot and never does speak - the 3D battle representation of your character has no mouth at all - and Shade's face is only mouth, which always has plenty to say.

Shade is a representation of game systems. Stories with conflicts set up for you to conquer. Enemies placed for you to defeat. It is the conflict to your resolution. Without it there is... nothing. No game. No experience to be had. No enlightenment to be obtained.

Which is where we wrap back around to the themes of the first game, expanded upon here. Cycles, godhood, choice - and most prominently, I think, death. Inherent to both games are the idea that everything exists in a cycle - a time of living, and a time of dying. To deny this through any means - searching for immortality, ascending to godlike existence, to fight in our own minds against this natural and immutable truth using trauma, denial, depression - is not only impossible, but useless. Therefore the only "choice" to make is whether or not to find some kind of sublime joy in the existence we currently hold. Death, or the end, comes for all eventually - and it rarely, if ever, comes with satisfaction.

This is where I think the sequel is running up against player expectations. There's no conclusion that the game can give you to satisfy your hunger for enlightenment or transcendence. The closest you can get is to exist in Pandemonium - finding peace and dancing within a state of total chaos. You can keep fighting battles, one-shotting the most difficult bosses, grind out those anchievements and perfecting weekly challenges, but you will not find nirvana within the Everhood.

In the white void, Shade stands in front of a large painting and waxes poetical. This is the closest this game ever comes to directly giving you a message.

The artist's task is to save the soul of mankind.
Because of the artists, who are self-selected, for being able to journey into the "Other".
If the artists cannot find the way, then the way cannot be found.
The color purple is my wisdom color, they know the truth.
Well, as close as you can know the truth without knowing the full truth.
Only you know that, human.
...
Go out and make some art.

Human beings are the only creatures understood to be able to create “Art”, and only we can determine what is and isn’t art.
Only we can journey to the “Other” - an open ended phrase for an afterlife, a further plane of ascension, or even just playing and deriving meaning from a video game.
If we can not achieve this, then it is not possible to achieve this.
Dmitri and Raven are the two major purple characters in the game, who are two sides of the same coin. Raven is searching for understanding, while Dmitri is somewhere in the realm of godhood and has specific guidance to give to the player when interacting with them. A semi-hidden cameo from Purple Mage from the first game, who has their own monologue about searching for the “why” of existence, only strengthens this.
Shade references “human” - not light being. They are talking to you, the player.
The final line before they blow you away to the end of time sums up what the game wants from you.

Playing a video game will not bring you enlightenment. It can affect you - sometimes, even in profound ways - but it is not enough. The experience is important, but in order for it to mean something, you have to create. Art conveys meaning - the meaning of your life - to others. It in turn can affect others, who can then create their own art. It's a choice you have to make, to be a part of that cycle. And in that creation, we come as close as humans can to immortality.

I played Everhood 2 pre release for review, for about 12 hours to see it through to the end. I've played through the game twice again since, with my clock now sitting at 23 hours, with many more hours on top of that spent reading through reviews, Steam discussions and Reddit threads, and simply just thinking about the game. Regardless of the conclusions I've come to, I’m still alongside everyone else in thinking I might just not "get" the game.

This reading I have. Did the game give me enough to pull this meaning from it? Or, did I go out of my way to try and find meaning in it, thanks mostly to my adoration for the original? Does that even matter, given the conclusions I’ve come to? Is that just another layer the game is playing with, in pushing me to put in the work and search for my own meaning in a fundamentally meaningless world?

So much about this game makes it way too complex to ascribe it positive or negative sentiment. A review score on this game is meaningless. Does it matter what a story is trying to say if people can't grasp it? Regardless, it's made my mind turn over for weeks now, with itches to learn, understand, and create begging to be fulfilled.

I do think if you were going to play only one Everhood, the first is easily the star pick, but that doesn’t mean there’s no value here. Not for nothing, I think for me at least, Everhood 2 did what it set out to do. Maybe that's enough.