Cave Story Appreciation Week! Part 4!

(This post may contain some story spoilers. I'll try and be vague but it may still give something away. Sorry in advance.)


So yeah, more Cave Story! The game is fantastic, it's great and I've been showing my love for the game all week and today is no different. Today I'm talking about the story.

So you start out Cave Story as a dude you're in a cave and you have no idea where to go. As you adventure into the world you find a weapon then you come across a village a village of rabbit people called Mimigas. They're being plagues by an evil Doctor and his two minions, Misery the sorceress and (Huzzah!) Balrog the whatever he's suppose to be. The hero of the village Arthur has been killed in a battle with the Doctor and the remaining Mimigas are just trying to survive. This is where you come in and start to help the Mimigas out with their problem.

You soon learn you have no memory of who you are but you eventually run into people who know you're a "Soldier from the Surface." As the game goes on you learn exactly what that means.

The overall story in Cave Story is a pretty dark one. Many people will die some you can save but most there isn't anything you can do. I'm use to see this type of thing happen in more modern games. A character dying isn't that big of a deal because it happens so much or it's presented in a different way. Cave Story from a graphics stand point takes us back to a time when this didn't happen in games. You made it through the whole game to save the princess a girlfriend or even a pet frog. In the end you were successful and everyone lived happily ever after. As you battle through Cave Story you watch your new allies and even friends die right before your eyes, it's a different dynamic for a game like this. Your direct actions can either save or condemn the one person who knows exactly who you are and why you're on the Mimiga island. If you fail to save this person you will not find out who you are. The writing is done in such a way you feel connected to the people you meet. They personalities of each character is very clear and the writing reflects it well. I played the PC version so I had the fan translation and that was done so well to convey the emotion in this game it's just amazing. When Cave Story ended I actually felt something. I wasn't sad but I had a emotion stirring inside and I think that's part of why I really like this game. It's rare that a game or anything for that matter make me feel something on the inside so when it happens it's special. In an age when developers are trying to give us these emotional experiences with realistic 3D graphics and top notch voice acting to try and make the people seem real to us so we feel for them. I think they need to take a step back and look at Cave Story and how it did what they try to without the fanciness of cell processors and SLI video cards.