ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE MOTHER 3 SPOILERS IN THIS POST
You have been warned
Also be warned that there will be no pictures here, simply because it doesn't seem appropriate, and because even if you do decide to spoil the battle for yourself, I want to let you experience at least a little of it without being spoiled.
One final warning, this is going to be a pretty long post, so be prepared for that.
Okay, so this is going to be hard. Let me start by saying I realize that my experience with the final battle of Mother 3 is probably a lot more visceral than it should be to most people, and I'll explain why in a little bit, but first let me set up the format of this blog post.
I'm really writing this article for myself, to try and get through the emotional turmoil that this battle stirred up in me, so here we go.
First, I'm going to talk about the context of the battle, basically, what led up to it. Then, I'm going to talk about the battle itself, first a transcription of the battle, and then an analysis, specifically of the way it uses it's gameness to hit the player square in the gut. Finally, I'm going to talk about my reaction to this battle.
Okay, here we go
Context:
I wrote up pretty much the entire story of Mother 3 in my review, so if you want to get what I'm talking about here, and you don't care about having even more spoilers heaped on your plate, then check it out right underneath this post.
Okay, so, Lucas's twin brother Claus seemed to have gotten himself killed going after the monster that killed his mother Hinawa. After the time skip, you start to run into a Masked Man who keeps pulling the needles that you need to pull. It's pretty heavily foreshadowed that Lucas is related to the Masked Man, which makes it pretty obvious that it's Claus.
You get confirmation that the Masked Man is Claus from Lucas's father Flint right before you go to fight Porky (which is what Pokey is actually called in this game) and then the Masked Man. Clause went through a process of cybernetic augmentation that left him more of a robot than a person, which is something you see the Pigmask army do to animals and one major villian throughout the story.
After you get to the Masked Man at the final needle, he fires a bolt of lightning at your party, knocking out every party member but Lucas, who is wearing a Franklin Badge, at which point, the fight starts.
The Battle(transcription):
Note that this is also a sort of transcription of the battle in text form, the analysis of the battle is in the next section, so if you want to skip this, feel free, I really only did this because I felt it would help me come to grips with it.
The boss battle takes place on a dark, pulsing background with a creepy song that has of bass.
When you try to attack, you will be told that
"For some reason, Lucas couldn't attack." and you will lose your turn.
At some point in the fight, the screen darkens, the music changes to the mournful Mother 3 Love Theme, and some text appears saying "Lucas..." and the response in the battle menu saying, "from somewhere, you heard someone call your name."
The battle continues until the screen fades to black again, this time with the text:
"Claus..." which is followed by "It was Hinawa's voice. It failed to reach the Masked Man"
The fight continues, and the Masked Man continues to attack relentlessly. He even uses PK Love Omega on you, which will almost assuredly deal mortal damage.
Fade to black again and this time the message
"Clause... Stop this. You aren't Porky's robot. You're are son!" appears on screen. Then the battle screen responds again, this time with "The Masked Man looked around."
The battle once again resumes until the Masked Man tries PK Love Omega again but
"Lucas! Look out!" appears in the battle menu and you are informed that "Flint jumped in front of Lucas" and then that "The Masked Man's attack dealt major damage to Flint." Flint then says, "Claus, please remember... I've been looking for you for so long..." The masked man then attacks again and you are informed that "Flint suffered major damage. Flint couldn't stand up."
At this point, you are able to attack the Masked Man, though as far as I can tell, you aren't able to defeat him by dealing damage. But then the text pops up
"Lucas... Stop fighting..." and the battle text response is "Hinawa's voice sadly echoed." To be honest, I never could bring myself to attack the Claus again.
As the battle goes on, the Claus' attacks slowly get weaker, this is most pronounced by the fact that his PK Love attacks start going down in level from Omega, to Gamma, to Beta, to Alpha.
The screen eventually fades to black, and the text this time says
"Claus... You and Lucas are brothers!" There is no response from the battle window.
Clauses attacks get weaker again, and the battle goes on until the screen darkens again and Hinawa says
"Can you hear me? You're Claus. Your name is Claus! You're our son!" The battle then continues.
After another bit of getting beaten on, the screen once again fades to black and Hinawa says "Please... Remember! Lucas... Claus..." at which point the screen fades to white, and a gray scale picture of two cribs comes into focus, and the Love theme plays. There is a lot of dialogue here, so I'm going to transcribe it a bit differently. Also note that the game doesn't say who says what, but I assume this is a conversation between Hinawa and Flint from back when Claus and Lucas were still babies, and I'll put down who I think says what.
Hinawa: "To think we would be blessed with two children at once... I bet they'll accomplish things together that they couldn't alone. I'm sure they'll argue a lot, too. And I can see them helping each other out when they need it. Claus... and Lucas. I bet we'll mix them up a lot until they get bigger..."
Flint: "Claus... and Lucas, huh? How do you want them to grow up to be?"
Hinawa: "To be kind, just like you."
Flint: "Oh, I was just going to say... to be kind, just like YOU.
Hinawa: "Great. Then it's decided. Claus. Lucas. Make us proud."
Fade back to white, then to the battle screen.
Now the previously shaded boxes that represented your fallen teammates are gone, and a sadly empty version of the love theme is playing.
At this point, various messages will appear in the battle text window, such as:
"Lucas isn't sure what to do anymore."
"Lucas shut his eyes tightly"
"The Masked Man shut his eyes."
"The Masked Man covered his ears."
"The Masked Man gazed at Lucas."
At this point, the Masked Man is doing very little damage to you. You can attack him, but I couldn't. Eventually, the screen gets washed out, not in black, but in white, the normal love theme starts playing, and Hinawa says:
"Claus... Claus... Claus... Come to your mother. You must be so exhausted. Come here, Claus.
The battle window response is:
"The Masked Man looked around, as if searching for something."
The Masked Man's sprite fades to black, a sound effect plays, and fades back in, this time with his weapons lowered, and his helmet off,'. The battle text says:
"The Masked Man removed his mask. His face looked just like Lucas's. It was Claus."
Now we get to the heart wrenching part.
"Claus fired an intense bolt of lightning!"
"Lucas's Franklin badge reflected the lightning back!"
"Claus took mortal damage!"
Fade completely to white
"Claus staggered towards Lucas."
"Claus embraced Lucas."
"Lucas, remembered Claus's smell."
Fade to black and open text box for cutscene
Claus: "I'm sorry it turned our like this. I'm really happy you could be with me just before the end... Thanks. Dad. I'm sorry I didn't listen to you. I'm going to where mom is now. Lucas. I hope we meet again someday. Bye. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm sure we'll meet again."
Fade to scene of Lucas holding Claus's body while the rest of his party and Flint surround him.
The Battle (analysis):
The final battle of Mother 3 is easily the best final boss in the history of video games. I say that not because it is fun to play, on the contrary, it is absolutely gut-wrenching to go through, but it so effectively conveys what the designers hoped to convey that it stands as a the most affecting boss battle of all time, and that is the reason I say it is the best boss battle of all time.
When the battle starts, the first thing most people will try to do is attack. You are then told that "For some reason, Lucas couldn't attack." No matter how many times you try, or what type of spell you try to launch at the Masked Man, Lucas refuses to attack his brother. The point, then, of this boss battle is to survive by leveraging the scrolling health meter to keep yourself from fainting while still receiving massive amounts of damage from the Masked Man's attacks. The way I played it was, guard to slow the health meter to a crawl and wheal when necessary, but it is possible to survive by just healing a lot. This actually brings up the major flaw in the battle.
The best way to play the battle is to guard until your health is about to scroll to zero then heal and wait for your health to stop scrolling up. This, unfortunately, takes you out of the experience and ruins the immersion. It is quite possible to beat the battle without doing this, but it is still a problem that the best way to "win" is to game a clearly broken system that ruins the emotionality of the fight. It's not something you have to do, but it is sad that it is in an otherwise pitch perfect fight.
One of the major things about the battle is that all the text in this battle either appears in the center of the screen, or in the battle menu, which up until now had only been used to relay battle information. This sudden leap from abstract words to the use of battle menu's as narrative driving forces is a great subversion of traditional RPG tropes that really helps the immersion. The other major difference is that the messages are pausing to add dramatic tension, for instance, "For some reason, Lucas couldn't attack" pauses after Lucas's name, then finishes. It is once again a subversion of how the battle menu has worked in the game up to this point, and really helps drive the battle home.
I mentioned immersion just now and I want to talk about why this battle is immersive. There is the already mentioned use of battle text to tell you what is going on, but there is also the fact that what you can do is linked very closely to the way you are supposed to feel. The fact that you can't attack Claus until he attacks Flint shows how Lucas is unwilling to attack Claus shows that we are not supposed to be approaching this from the angle of how do I beat this boss, but with the question of how you can kill your own brother.
Then there is the matter of player control. This is relevant because Lucas clearly can act on his own, since he will refuse to attack or start crying independent of the player. Earlier in the game, it is established that the Player is separate from the character you control, and it is to this game's credit that it is still immersive despite that. For example, when Flint is attacked, the obvious response is anger, and so you can attack Claus at this point, but Hinawa doesn't like that, so even though you can still attack, it feels like something you shouldn't do. This is, like the rest of the battle, both what Lucas feels and what the game is trying to make the player feel.
Another small part of the battle and story interweaving is that Claus takes "mortal damage", the thing is, this term is only used when one of your own party members gets hit with an attack that will eventually roll their health meter to zero. This is a small touch that really bring Claus closer to the player.
The white screen scene, as I call it, is also expertly made to bring out the emotions of both real life siblings and real life parents. The thing is, this scene, and the boss battle as a whole is going to resonate a lot less with only children and non-parents than it will with people with siblings and/or children. I'm not sure whether this is a problem however, since the entire game is very much geared towards a person with a traditional nuclear family. That's not to say it's worthless to them, just that it will be less affecting.
There is one thing about the final battle that needs to be addressed. I have a friend who insists that the entire boss battle is less of a boss battle and more of a cutscene, since you really don't do anything to influence the boss battle other than try to stay alive. In response, I would say that trying to stay alive is what makes this boss battle special, and emotionally resonant, since it creates a sense of hopelessness that really hits the player until they are "saved" by Hinawa and Flint's intervention.
My Reaction:
Okay, here comes the part that is probably going to turn a lot of people off, since this is really just a place for me to, as the title says, share my reaction to this fight.
I broke down at the point where Claus fired the lightning bolt that would kill him, I had to stop for a good 15 minutes because I couldn't see through my tears. I may have just been particularly susceptible to it, because I have a brother very much like Claus, and I kinda see myself as being like Lucas. However, I have to stress that I have never cried more at a work of fiction than I have at the end of Mother 3.
I'm still working through it, and I feel as if I lost a member of my own family, and so I guess I wanted to share that with the community.
Thanks for reading this long ass post, I promise I'll do something fun soon.
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