It’s a game about jumping. This is not an unusual refrain, pioneered of course by Mr. Videogames Himself. I leap and reach. I cling to a frozen, rocky wall. I kick off and sail backward seeking my next purchase, then, down I go. My tiny bundled body collides with a row of spikes and I disappear in a Megaman-ian flourish. Instantly, I materialize on the ledge where I began and take stock of my surroundings: the chill wind, the twinkling stars, the rows of deadly spikes. I can do this. I know I can because I’ve done it before.
“Celeste” believes in its player. It says “I know this is hard, but you can do it”. It shows you your death count and then exclaims, “Look at how much you’re learning!”. It introduces an NPC, Theo, who pushes you at the same time he tries to understand you. In fact, the only voice of dissent (or of “descent” if you prefer) comes from the hero, Madeline. She states with certainty that she has no idea why she’s climbing the eponymous mountain, only that she must climb, all while bemoaning her ineptitude at every step. For most of the experience we see her in all-out conflict with herself. The game’s central metaphor is a personification of her depression and fear, Dark Madeline, a kind of wraith of herself which springs forth from a magic mirror within a nightmare to torment and endanger us in the real world as we climb Mount Celeste.
The dialogue and conflict with Dark Madeline coupled with the tight, treacherous gameplay vivifies the narrative beautifully. There can be no separating the game’s stance on platforming, jumping, and climbing from its take on the fragile ferocity of the human heart. Every element, from the carefully constructed brutality of the jumping puzzles to the framing of Madeline, contributes to Celeste’s greater theme; to overcome outside obstacles while taking on the task of self-acceptance, is deeply affecting.
Dark Madeline first appears in a dream and for a while I believed her sabotage and interference was all in my head — in particular, the confrontation with Mr. Oshiro. Madeline tries to be patient and understanding with him while Dark Madeline hovers at her shoulder rebuking him for his rundown hotel, his rundown existence. She palpably hates him for being a version of something she could become: a demented, obsessive spectre unable to see the impossible task of cleaning and running a dilapidated hotel for what it is, a desperatedesprite, pointless act. Climbing Mount Celeste is a self-imposed act of impossible proportions in the same way. But it is Oshiro’s constant arguments with himself which particularly disturb us.
Eventually, Dark Madeline’s cruelty is too much for him and he flies into a rage. He becomes an unstoppable boss monster and chases us out of the hotel. We leap, dash, and scurry away as fast as we can. In the end, my remorse over what happened between us and Oshiro is met only with Dark Madeline’s insistence that he was dangerous after all and therefore she was right to hate him. She thinks I’m too nice, too much of a doormat.
It’s easy to read the confrontation with Oshiro as a conversation between only two people. While Dark Madeline appears on screen, her dialogue could be read as the literal spoken words I’m saying and my dialogue with her could be the internal monologue of a person helpless to control their own maladaptive defense mechanisms.
I contend with the violent outcome and just try to move on. But of course, I have dealt with nothing. Shortly, I reunite with Theo and we find a gondola. After some fiddling, we get it moving again. Halfway up the cable, Dark Madeline reappears to wreak havoc, assaulting the gondola and triggering the most shocking and bold moment of the game: my panic attack.
Outside of this game, I know about panic attacks. I’ve watched from a distance as my body was unable to move, as a friend or loved one casted about for what to do. It’s harrowing and mortifying every time it happens. Theo, basically a stranger, responds with pitch-perfect care and sensitivity to the event. He identifies what’s happening immediately and gently guides me to breath, which triggers a mini-game about controlling your breathing by keeping a feather afloat. This is done with a slow rhythmic pressing of the A button. It works. And one thing the game gets right is that getting through the attack is only getting through an attack. The problem is in no way solved and you don’t feel good about it afterwards. You’re exhausted and embarrassed, and this is played out in Celeste with a palpable humanity and competence.
But there’s more mountain left to climb, quite a lot more. So we move on. And we find ourselves at the entrance to the ruins of an ancient palace. Theo can’t help himself: despite the unknown dangers he charges ahead. But what do you expect? The mountain just calls to that kind of person. I pursue him and shortly discover he’s been pulled into some kind of mirror world, just like the one from my dream. The place where Dark Madeline came from.
The whole level is a full-on Zelda dungeon. There’s simply no other way to describe it. It is a twisted maze of magic and moving platforms. The temple is replete with monsters (a first in the game so far), traps, crystals to light up, looping paths, locked doors and small keys, a mirror world, and, the coup de gras, a mechanic where you pick an NPC up over your head and throw them to solve puzzles and escape.
I think about Theo as I journey into the palace. As a character, he does not reflect the typical response people have to witnessing a panic attack. But I understand why he is the way he is. One obvious goal this game has is to address mental illness with decency and respect, and casting a support character as an ideal care-giver works as well as a message of how things should be. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t change a thing about Theo. In fact, the world would be a better place if there were more Theos in it.
It’s here the metaphor of my dark and unresolved interior becomes fully explicit. Dark Madeline emerged from a strange mirror, and here we have a “Mirror Temple.” We are pursued by visions, unkillable shoggoth-esques depicted in the Lovecraftian-shorthand of eyes, teeth, and tentacles. When we finally discover Theo, he has been trapped in a crystal prison, not unlike a certain legendary princess, and the lifting-and-throwing mechanic is introduced. I must escape the dungeon carrying him above my head. Mechanically, it adds very little and is never iterated on at any point later in the game. It’s a bit out of place in this tight little story about personal resolve and conviction to have our main character, who has not yet finished her arc, drop everything to drag someone else around. It’s the only moment of the main game where the action moves contrary to its emotional momentum. Perhaps there are compelling arguments to the value of rescuing the person that just pulled you out of the dark, but the sojourn to Hyrule (and the discarding of the highly personal narrative) was not the answer.
What follows feels far more in line with traditional heroic story-telling and game design. The strange and personal moments we see between Madeline and Theo are over now. Not that it doesn’t satisfy: the Fall is important and exciting. It’s necessary that we witness Madeline plummet further even below than where she started. The crystal caves are beautiful and visually distinct. Seeing the old woman once again and letting her guide us in her Yoda-but-Mean way. So is the confrontation with Dark Madeline (although the pursuit drags a bit). Ending with the triumphant and explosive final sequence where we soar to the peak revisiting briefly everywhere we’ve been before. It’s all so perfectly cinematic. Too perfect, in fact. The last leg of this journey flattens everything that came before.
Celeste does not benefit from getting on board the hero-tale train. Madeline’s personal goal of reaching the summit seems somehow less approachable or even appealing to me once we can fly. And while each location in the game had a special significance (yes, even the Zelda temple), it feels as if, by going for the big heroic ending, the game gives all its constituent parts and themes a simpler, shallower meaning. There was subtlety in Madeline’s dream, in the conversations at the fire with Theo, in the old woman laughing her ass off at your nonsense. Nothing better typifies the ending’s simplification like the Feather power up.
I’m not mad, I’m disappointed. The breathing exercise scene was so poignant and contumacious, both in mechanics and subject matter. And now, the yellow feather, a symbol which would be extremely obvious to any player who had made it to this point, does what? Let’s you fly a short distance? Frankly, I have no idea how to square this. It’s easy, when designing things, or telling stories, to call back to something from earlier. It gives the feeling of cohesion and intention in the narrative, and lots of audiences will respond well to it. But for me, it was jarring. It was certainly intentional, right? I’m supposed to consider the feather as a sign of power? Personal strength? This is what I mean when I say the last leg of this journey flattens the rest.
Celeste is a good video game. It is a good video game about jumping, and for many moments throughout it’s a good video game about mental illness and baggage. And at the end, there’s a pie.
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