There's a dichotomy in Anodyne 2. It's constant. In the same ways it asks us to break away from our complacency, the systems that bind and pull us to accept simple easier truths, it plays its hand through various fundamentals of the games that make it. In its commentary on trends it plays on trends, has you walk through trends, blasts away trends with trends. It forges its own path full of its own dust and blemishes. It too is trapped within its own cycle, hoping for more. Hoping to be better than it is. Hoping we can all be better than we are.

All of this is so viscerally poignant to me. It's almost nauseous to me how melancholic and constantly on your shoulder it is. It seeks to understand you as much as you're trying to understand it and there's constantly a bit of friction. It swaps between very clear explicit tones and vague musings. It wants to touch on as many facets of life and experience as it can but in some ways it almost commodifies that idea. There's a sort of 'contradiction' in it all.

I think that's better for Anodyne 2, though. The journey is hard but we'll be free, I believe that. Even if none of this makes sense to 'you', the story is crystal and upfront, we must choose the path to walk forward between some perfect communion full of Limitation vs. accepting us all for our little frictions and attempting to think more Beyond. Also just kind of genius how that's all distilled, whether some of that was intentional or not. All up to you anyhow. Go forth, Nova!