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Thursday 23 February, 2017
This time around, the pixel cloud got serious and started picking off the members of Thomas' little group, and it was sad how they were gradually separated, one by one. First, Thomas, Second, Chris, Third, Laura, Fourth, Claire (John had wanted to be next, so that he wouldn't be alone), and finally, John was taken into the pixel cloud. That's when, suddenly and for the first time in many levels, a new character is introduced: James. James is probably a character that is the quadrilateral equivalent of being gay ("inverted"), because he falls upward and jumps downward, while being someone who's a social outcast and sorta bitter about it. It's not explicitly said to be that, but I get the feeling he's a representation of someone gay while avoiding outright saying it. He rescues Thomas and finds the red quadrilateral isn't so judgmental as other people had been and they get along. Depending on interpretation, this could be the introduction of a moral question, but I think it's better to just think of it as generic "diversity". Like people such as Shakespeare, the game is taking "weight" in the case of Claire, "oddity" in the case of Laura, "competitiveness" in the case of John, and so on, and transferring them into a different world that is distant from our own so it can avoid a strong reaction. The idea of AI seems to be rather adjacent to the rest of the game, instead of a core element. Unlike my experience with The Talos Principle, Thomas Was Alone isn't trying to talk in depth about artificial intelligence, and instead using it as a premise to a game.
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