second playthrough via The Final Draft, which gives what I consider to be the actual ending. tbh, still not sure what it all means. for me the best horror has a hidden, or not-so-hidden, layer of metaphor stemming from the human condition. I'm not entiiiiirely sure if that exists here? there are flavours of it but the plot is so complicated and the lore is so heavy that it can be hard for me to process it all into something more in depth, more meaningful. still, it's a hell of a sequel and the most remedy-ass remedy game that ever remedy'd. and i would be lying if i said I hadn't thought about it every day since finishing it the first time. I'm probably gonna be thinking about it EVEN MORE from now on.

AW2 is so unique because it feels like such a singular vision, executed in such a specfic way that only heightens that vision. it is, in some part, literally about creating something and the chaos of that process. in the context of a videogame, with hundreds of people working on it, all of them needing to click into place to make the entire thing work, that theme is inherently relevant to every single thing that happens in the not only in this game, but retrospectively everything in Remedy's previous works too.

I have so many thoughts but I really struggle to put them all into words, it's all just so much, but in the best way possible.