Here, loss is not a mechanic. It is ontology. The self is split—Lucas and Claus—subject and simulacrum. What is a man when grief renders him liminal? When memory is repurposed as state propaganda, when nostalgia is currency, what remains of the soul?

Scholars speak of Mimus, of the performative self. Goffman would call it the "presentation of everyday life." Mother 3 knows this. It plays it. Clay men dance for no one. The people smile too much. Facades wear faces. Even the music lies to you.

Kafka nodded quietly in his grave when Fassad fell.

This game, born of Japan’s obsidian intellect, is mono no aware etched in code—beautiful things that pass. It has the precision of lacquerware, the stillness of a Hiroshi Sugimoto photograph. Superior craftsmanship not of texture, but of concept.

It bleeds metanarrative. It chews up ludonarrative dissonance and spits poetry. The player laughs at fart jokes, then weeps when the laughter is weaponized. Brecht would be proud. So would Barthes. So would your mother.

It is not fun. It is felt.

There is a point where the boy raises a stick and the world does not get better. There is no catharsis. Just a door that opens into blackness. It is, perhaps, the black iron prison of Philip K. Dick. Or Plato’s cave after the fire goes out.

In the end, the credits roll backward. As if time itself wants to remember.

You cannot replay Mother 3.

You can only rehaunt it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5490934&forum_id=2#48819805)