MOTHERly: You Call This a Dystopia?!
A Conceptual and Societal Analysis of MOTHER 3's Masterful Deconstruction of "Utopia"
MOTHERly is an experimental bonus content category focusing on the MOTHER series (AKA “EarthBound” outside of Japan)
Like all bonus content, MOTHERly is only available to Game & Word’s paying subscribers. If this type of content interests you, and you’d like to read more of it, upgrade to a paid subscription today:
Preamble
Everyone who really knows me (and quite a few who don’t, for that matter) knows how much I love the MOTHER series, particularly the second and third installments (MOTHER 2/EarthBound and MOTHER 3), which I consider to be the best video games ever made.
These games continue to surprise and delight me each time I replay them (on average, every 2-3 years since 1995). This is in large part due to their depth and nuance. They’re so deep, I could write an entire separate newsletter just about MOTHER and never run out of content. But that’d take a lot of time I don’t have. So instead, I created a whole new category for this newsletter!
This time around, we’ll examine MOTHER 3’s masterful deconstruction of the concept called “Utopia.” The perfect society. And since this constitutes one of the game’s central themes, we’ve got a lot to talk about! If you haven’t played, then don’t worry, as I’ll walk you through the relevant plot points first… though if I were you, I’d play it first, then read this piece.
…Ok, back now? Let’s get going!
🚨🚨🚨SPOILER ALERT!!!🚨🚨🚨
This analysis is packed with MAJOR story spoilers for MOTHER 3. If you think there’s any chance at all that you, at some point in your lifetime, might experience for yourself one of the most powerful, beautiful, and moving stories told in any medium, then I won’t hold it against you if you skip this one.
⚠️⚠️⚠️CONTENT WARNING⚠️⚠️⚠️
This analysis, and the story it’s based on, deals with some very heavy subject matter, including: death (literal and figurative), darkness (and not the goth/emo kind), desolation, despair, and humans acting horribly towards other humans, animals, and the environment. I won’t go into that much detail. But if these subjects hit too close to home for you, proceed with utmost caution.
SYNOPSIS
Sowing the Seeds of Utopia
For such a deep and nuanced game, MOTHER 3 can be a bit… blunt with its allusions, references, and messages. Textbook example? The name of its setting: “The Nowhere Islands.”
Why is this significant? Because in MOTHER 3 the Nowhere Islands are home to a small group of people living in a Tazmily Village, a seemingly perfect society—in other words, a utopia. And hey, wouldn’t you know: “Utopia” is Greek for “no place” or “nowhere.” Hmmm… subtle, isn’t it?
In the game’s opening chapters, we see firsthand just how ideal and idyllic Tazmily is. Everyone knows each other’s name, and everyone has a role1 that they perform with pride and purely for the good of the community and its people. There is no money, or even trade: people can simply take what they need from the “bazaar,” with the implicit understanding that they’ll either return it or make some of their own wares available later on. There’s a sheriff’s office and jail, but both have sat vacant for as long as anyone can remember, since there’s no crime.
And the Tazmilites all help each other when needed. During a catastrophic forest fire that kicks off the story, everyone pitches in to help rescue the town’s lumberjack and his son, who both live deep in the forest and were trapped by the flames. The innkeeper provides beds to sleep in, the baker makes extra food, and so forth.
Flint, the sheep farmer who actually ran into the forest and braved the flames to rescue the lumberjack family, was waiting for his own family to return home. When the fire broke out, he was waiting for them to come back from a trip to grandpa’s mountain cabin. And similarly, when Flint’s family doesn’t turn up, the villagers help Flint scour the area for any signs of his wife, Hinawa, and twin boys, Lucas2 and Claus.
Everyone contributes, and everyone is cared for. It almost sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?
Spoiler alert: it was. There wouldn’t be much of a story to tell otherwise, would there?
What ends up happening? Fortunately, the kids are found safe and sound… but Hinawa, unfortunately, was killed by a wild animal,3 and Claus soon took off to “avenge” his mother… never to be seen in Tazmily again.
Flint, quite understandably broken by these events, becomes an empty shell of man. Having lost a wife and a son, and wracked with grief, spends his days either grieving at Hinawa’s grave or futilely searching for Claus—and in doing so, neglects poor Lucas, who might as well have lost his father along with his mother and twin brother.
It’s one of the most heartwrenching openings in any game. And all this would be sad enough if the forest fire that tore Flint’s family apart were just an unfortunate accident, or a whim of nature.
But in fact, it was deliberately and maliciously orchestrated.
The New Eden’s New Serpent
Who set the forest ablaze? The villain, of course! MOTHER 3’s antagonist goes by the name of “Master Porky,” or just “Porky” for short, and he’s a frighteningly vicious, vindictive, and selfish child. One who can travel through time and space, to boot.
Shortly before the events of the story, Porky and his “Pigmask” army arrive on the Nowhere Islands to cause all sorts of havoc. In addition to starting the forest fire, he also orders his agents to perform cruel experiments on the local wildlife4 as his top lieutenant sneakily introduces Tazmily’s villagers to the concept of money.
Tazmily would never be the same after that fateful night.
Fast forward a few years, and this once-idyllic and pastoral hamlet has become a completely different place. Paved roads have replaced dirt paths. Electricity keeps the lights on, not candles. Whereas everyone used to know each others’ names, as the town grows more and more people are named “Guy,” “Girl,” or “Lady” onscreen. A dilapidated old folks’ home is built, and the town’s senior citizens are corralled into it, where nobody has to see them or hear them complain about all the changes that this newfound consumerist lifestyle keeps bringing.
And instead of working their usual trades, the residents now commute by train to work at a distant factory run by the Pigmasks, whose presence around town is now inescapable. Nobody seems to know what the goods they produce at the factory are used for. And in return for their toil, they get a pitiful wage that they promptly spend on stuff, more stuff, and the occasional night out to escape their novel lifestyle’s novel hardships.
Tazmily’s old way of life is on life support, with less than a handful of denizens stubbornly clinging to the “old ways.” These holdouts become, essentially, pariahs: shamed and shunned by their neighbors for not keeping with the times, and subject to the Pigmasks’ increasingly aggressive “nudges” to get with the times. They’re quickly bunted to the social ladder’s bottommost rung.
Porky and the Pigmasks use a “carrot and stick” approach to pacify the population. The “carrot” comes in the form of a “Happy Box,” a strange device5 that entrances the villagers, compelling everyone who owns one to sit in front of it and stare for hours on end.
Meanwhile, remember those “nudges” I mentioned the Pigmasks bestow on those who hold off on buying a Happy Box or are otherwise skeptical of modernity? Well, “nudges” might have been too soft a word—the holdouts’ homes are regularly and “accidentally” fried by powerful lightning blasts. These strikes, framed as accidental or karmic in nature, are in fact fired from a distant Pigmask outpost.6
Several gaming commentators consider the Pigmasks an allegory for fascism, and I’m inclined to agree with them. The similarities go much deeper than I have time or space to analyze today, but take my word for it—it’s quite obvious.
Some Utopia…
As Tazmily further advances and modernizes, its rapid progress eventually reaches its logical conclusion. Now completely estranged from their labor, their neighbors, and themselves, Tazmily’s residents become bored with their podunk town and, one by one, pack up to move to the big city: New Pork City, that is. Eventually, Tazmily is—save for a couple of stubborn stay-putters7—entirely deserted, a veritable ghost town. At this point, Lucas’ quest also takes him to the big city.
New Pork City is everything that Tazmily8 is not—and in equal measure. New Pork City is gaudy, flashy, tacky, and fake.
Although its name is clearly a play on New York City, I don’t believe Porky’s urban hellscape is supposed to represent the Big Apple. New Pork City is actually much more like Las Vegas: it puts on a glitzy front with bright lights, loud music, and every hedonistic depravity readily available for anyone and everyone who wants to indulge.
But underneath the surface, it’s filthy, crowded, degrading to the spirit, and corrosive to the soul. The game adeptly shows this when Lucas goes past the lights, through the sewers, and into a filthy tenement building—complete with water leaks, trash bags, and shopping carts strewn all across its hallways.9
Lucas enters one of the tenement units and sees Leder—a really tall resident of Tazmily who positively towers over everyone else. Back in old Tazmily, all he’d do was stand watch beside a bell tower, never saying a word to anyone, never going anywhere,10 and never doing anything except occasionally ring his bell (most recently during the prologue’s fateful forest fire). But one day, Leder mysteriously vanished—without anyone11 seemingly noticing. Apparently, he’s been holed up in this filthy apartment, as far away from Tazmily as he could possibly be on the Nowhere Islands. Why?
Well, as it turns out, Leder possessed some very important information—the kind of knowledge that Porky would not want spreading amongst the villagers he’d worked so hard to pacify and mollify to his will. So he snatched Leder and stuck him in this crumbling building.
And now, at this crucial moment, before Lucas heads to confront Porky and end his reign of terror once and for all, Leder finally speaks.
He tells Lucas what he knows. What Porky had so desperately wanted to keep hidden. What gives context to all the toil, strife, and suffering that Lucas, his family, and his neighbors have endured throughout this story.
He tells Lucas… the truth.
Leder’s Gymnopedie
Leder’s speech is so well-written, I might as well paste it here… well, only the relevant parts, anyway. It’s a loooong speech, and this piece is getting bloated enough as it is. I’ve bolded the really salient bits. For the full experience, play Erik Satie’s “Gynmopedie No. 1”, the song that plays as Leder gives his momentous speech.
Anyway, here goes:
——
Long ago, there existed a “world”. A world different from what the people on these islands think of. This “world” was incredibly big. More people lived on this world than there are grains of sand on these Nowhere Islands. I know it may be hard to imagine, but such a world once existed.
At some point, the world wound up destroyed. Naturally, it was humans who destroyed it. In the back of their minds, everyone had an inkling that it would happen at some point. And then it really did happen. …And so, the world is no more.
Just before the end of the world, a “White Ship” came to these islands. On it were all the people of Tazmily Village. Yes. Aboard the White Ship were those few who had managed to escape the "world.” The people on the ship still went by their names from the previous world. This “White Ship” plan had been set in place before the world was destroyed. And, although they’re part of the world, the Nowhere Islands is a special place. They were the one place that would remain even if the world was lost. The one and only place where people could survive. And so the White Ship arrived on these islands.
[…]
Those who came here aboard the White Ship feared another “End of the World” more than anything else. They felt the world’s destruction was a direct result of the way they had lived. The people of the White Ship discussed things at great length. They shared their wisdom and spoke with grave seriousness. And then they arrived at their conclusion. They decided to completely erase everyone’s memories of the previous “world” and start their lives over with new rules and new roles.
Yes. In short, everyone would play out the ideal “story” they had come up with. That is what happened. The people would restart their lives in a simple, peaceful village, in the kind of place they wished they had grown up in. They would erase their memory of everything: their world, their belongings, their rules… and then they would begin their new lives. Everyone’s old memories would be reset and replaced with their newly-created “story”. And thus, the village of Tazmily came to be.
[…]
And there’s one other thing. Me. It was essential that one person retain memory of the previous world to sort of “keep watch” over things. I was the only one in the village of Tazmily who wasn’t given a role in the new “story.” The sound of my bell served as a “suggestion” to keep everyone’s fabricated memories from reverting. My name “Leder” comes from the word “Leader”. No, no, that doesn’t mean I was anyone special. It was just that I was particularly taller than all the others. So, upon discussion I was selected because it would be easier for me to stand out. Being so tall, people would want to come see me, you know? And so I was given the role of revealing these secrets when the time truly called for it.
[…]
Truthfully, we had no idea how Tazmily Village would turn out. But things actually went rather well. The people who had arrived on the White Ship had fully taken to their new identities. They believed that they had always lived together peacefully. It was when a person by the name of Porky stumbled across these islands that everything started to go amok. It seems he used a “Time Distorter” machine to travel through time and space at will. However, he was apparently shut out from all other times and spaces and tumbled into this era and these islands. Even worse, he used his Time Distorter to bring many people from other eras here. The Pigmasks, as well as everyone in New Pork City, were all brought here and brainwashed by Porky.
This Porky fellow seems to view these islands as his own personal “toy box”, with which he can do anything he wants. He would take animals apart and recombine them to make creepy, new “Chimeras”. As a child-like dictator, he began doing whatever he pleased, including building Thunder Tower and forming his own army.
[…]
We have to put a stop to Porky’s antics. If we don’t, the world will be completely destroyed again, and it will spell the true end for everything. For Porky, that might be the ultimate pleasure, but we can’t allow that to happen. We, the last handful of people there are, absolutely can’t allow it to happen. […] Let this be my one and only order to you as your “leader”.
[…]
It’s been such a long time since I’ve spoken to anyone. And now I’m exhausted.
——
If you need to let that sink in for a bit, take your time.12
Side note: Leder’s last line—about how tiring it was to speak after years of silence—is a textbook example of the MOTHER series’ unparalleled ability to successfully inject levity into heavy and serious scenes. It’s a huge part of what’s endeared the series to so many people.
The Final Countdown
Anyway, Lucas and friends proceed to storm Porky’s stronghold. Not just to make him pay for all he’s done, but to stop him from ending the world all over again—his endgame is to awaken a dormant force within the islands with the power to remake them in the image of whoever awakened it.13 Most frightening of all? He’s doing it, basically, ”for the lulz.”
All the way leading up to the reveal, we see the full extent of Porky’s depravity, psychosis, and straight-up evilness. A climactic showdown eventually ensues, which involves Porky’s comeuppance, the bombshell twist that Lucas’ missing twin Claus had been brainwashed into working for Porky, a heartrending duel between the two twins, Claus eventually snapping out of it and sacrificing himself to atone for his own sins and to finally be with his… ahem, MOTHER again,14 and Lucas awakening the dormant power deep beneath the islands, thus fulfilling his destiny.
The power awakens… and the player is treated to a front-row view of the Nowhere Islands’ complete and utter annihilation at the hands of said power. Everything is destroyed. Everyone’s dead. It’s all over.
THE END
…OR IS IT???
Indeed, after the screen fades to black and the words “THE END…?” pop up, people suddenly begin addressing you—as in, you the player, not Lucas—thanking you for everything and letting you know they’re ok and everything worked out in the end.15
And the last thing the Tazmilites say before the story actually ends? This stinger from none other than Lucas himself:
“What's the world there like? It looks like things will work out here, but what about your world? Will it be alright?”
And fade to black again. That’s a wrap!
ANALYSIS
So, why did Tazmily fail?
Just like everything else in the MOTHER series, the reasons for Tazmilite Utopia’s ultimate failure are wide open to interpretation. The game hints quite heavily that Porky was Tazmily’s downfall… but leaves in just enough ambiguity for players to reasonably conclude that the Tazmilite’s utopian experiment would’ve failed sooner or later. In other words, Porky may have hit the fast-forward button, but he was simply accelerating the inevitable. At least, that’s what Porky thinks, as a particularly chilling line from Lucas’ confrontation with him makes abundantly clear:
“You resorted to blanking your memories to create a new world where humanity's past failures would never be repeated... How stupid can you be?! No matter how much you change the rules, no matter how much you refuse to admit defeat, in the end, the creatures known as "people" will always sign their own death warrant by acting out of stupidity and evil. And then... Mankind will be gone for good.”
Considering series creator Shigesato Itoi has confirmed in interviews that Porky is “a symbol of humankind,”16 Porky’s words are thus highly significant, and players could easily interpret them as proof that humanity truly will never get it together.
After all, the Tazmilites were never forced to let greed and materialism run amok in their hearts, and then in their community. The Pigmasks never held guns up to them and told them they had NO CHOICE but to start using this strange thing called “money,” as well as adopt a lifestyle that would lead them straight to hell—and indeed, already had. No, they chose to do so, of their own volition. Just like Adam and Eve couldn’t resist the serpent’s Apple in the Garden of Eden, the Pigmask’s promises—of neverending wealth, happiness, and even life—proved just as irresistible to the Tazmilites the second time around.
Maybe if they hadn’t wiped their memories, things would’ve played out differently? It’s an interesting question. If they’d retained awareness of how industrialization and consumerism had ultimately destroyed the old world, might they’ve been better equipped to withstand the temptation? Just like how an innocent child is easier to deceive than a jaded adult?
But even allowing for all that, the fact remains: Tazmily was built on a lie. Swapping out one lie for another isn’t as big of a leap as choosing to lie in the first place. And the villagers retaining their memories wouldn’t have changed this inconvenient roadblock.
Maybe that’s it. Perhaps the very attempt to construct an ideal society, instead of letting things progress “naturally,” is what doomed Tazmily. It’s not like this theory’s without precedent—as even a cursory look through our own history makes clear, every human attempt to create a perfect society actually has ended in failure—indeed, most attempts actually made things worse—and every future attempt may similarly be doomed to fail. After all, humans are flawed creatures, and flawed creatures build flawed societies.17
So… is humanity doomed?
Of course not! Although we’ve delved quite deeply for a surface-level survey, we still aren’t quite getting the full picture. You probably believe, reading up until now, that MOTHER 3 is nothing but a bleak and hopeless indictment of the human race.
But believe it or not, that’s actually not the case! After all, Porky is eventually defeated, and ultimately—despite everything I just said—there’s no definitive “smoking gun” that the Tazmilites would have failed if Porky hadn’t come along. As Leder said, they were doing just fine for quite some time before His Porky Highness showed up.
Besides, there’s an odd type of duality present in each of the MOTHER games: that of light and dark, of human’s capacity for good and evil, in equal proportions. MOTHER 3, despite being the series’ darkest and grimmest entry by a very wide margin, nevertheless displays a remarkably earnest optimism and faith in humanity to—despite its own worst tendencies—do the right thing in the end.
MOTHER 3, despite its searing admonition of humanity’s collective sins, remains a celebration of the human spirit. It doesn’t quite come through in this write up because I’ve greatly simplified the story in the interest of brevity and staying on topic, but trust me: this brand of nuance is everywhere in the game, and even the series.18
In MOTHER 3, you constantly see people doing horrible things… but also, within eyeshot, other people doing kind things:
The people of Tazmily may have decided to lock their grandparents up in a retirement home like animals or prisoners… but some of the villagers still spend their time volunteering there, putting a smile on the old folks’ faces. Even as everyone around them follows the pied piper down an unfathomably dark path, there are still those who refuse to go along, doing what they know to be good and right, even at great personal risk and loss. For every Porky, there’s a Lucas.
And even after the end of the world, it’s never too late to atone for your wrongs, nor is it too late too try and do better. Even a villain as thoroughly corrupt and despicable as Porky can, at certain points, even inspire pity and an odd kind of compassion—even while you hate his guts for all the suffering he’s caused.
In short, in spite of humanity’s seemingly endless capacity for cruelty and self-destruction, every human being has equally endless potential for good, selflessness, and compassion. And although both sides must necessarily tussle, it is the most fundamental human trait—that of perseverance, adaptability, and tenacity even in the face of impossible odds—that opens the possibility of our good side winning out. But that choice is ours, and ours alone, to make.
So… going back to our central question… according to MOTHER 3, is “Utopia” impossible? The answer: yeah, it probably is… but the human spirit shines so brightly that we can’t rule out the possibility that one of our attempts might, one day, actually work. And even if it doesn’t, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try making things better!
When it comes to making the world a better place for ourselves, for our fellow humans, and for all the living beings we share this world with, everyone can do their part. And if we really are to succeed, then we all need to do our part. Utopia may not exist as a geographical location, but it does exist within all of us—it symbolizes our capacity and aspiration to create a better reality.
The moral of this story is not “everything will be ok,” but rather “everything can be ok.” And if that’s not an optimistic take on utopia, and humanity more generally, then nothing is.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk reading!
~Jay
PS—Here’s a neat detail: the music that plays in New Pork City is called “Isn’t This Such a Utopia?” in MOTHER 3, and “You Call This a Utopia?!” in Super Smash Bros. (Yes, it’s the same song. Welcome to MOTHER, enjoy your stay!). The clashing titles subtly highlight another reason Utopia is unattainable: one person’s Utopia is another’s Dystopia!
Farmer, blacksmith, cook, innkeeper, lumberjack, and so forth.
The protagonist.
The islands’ wildlife had always been docile, but were starting to act aggressively—for reasons unknown at the time.
Turning them into hideous and hostile “chimeras.”
Happy Boxes look suspiciously similar, in form and function, to TVs. Even though series creator Shigesato Itoi has explicitly stated that Happy Boxes are not stand-ins for TVs, the resemblance is so strong it’s hard not to think of them as such.
Known as “Thunder Tower” to the Pigmasks, and the very Orwellian “Tower of Peace and Love” to the Tazmilites.
And I do mean literally a couple—as in, two people out of a village of dozens, possibly even hundreds by that point.
Both pre- and post-modernization.
Expectedly, New Pork City also has no nature in sight, save for a lowly tree… that’s being used as a landfill.
In fact, he’s the only villager to stay put, in the exact same spot, each time you see him.
Often, not even the player.
It’s not clear from Leder’s speech, but Lucas and all the other children of Tazmily were born on the Nowhere Islands, after the White Ship had sailed. As such, Lucas has no memories of the old world. Just in case you were confused about that.
Obviously, someone with as evil a heart as Porky awakening said power would be VERY bad news.
Title drop!
MOTHER 3, like its predecessors, is entirely text-based with no voice acting, but the writing is so sharp, the characters are so well-developed, and the game so shrewdly plays with the text speed and even the “chatter” sound effect’s pitch and speed, that you can instantly tell who’s saying what.
His words, not mine.
This is why people who bash MOTHER 3 for being “anti-capitalist” are, frankly, stupid and you shouldn’t listen to them… and also why people who cite the game to bolster their arguments against capitalism in favor of any other -ism are only marginally less stupid and you should also ignore them.
Yes, MOTHER 3 is packed to the brim with very obvious and unambiguous criticism of capitalism’s societal ill-effects, but to stop there is to give this game a very superficial reading—its criticisms go much deeper.
Capitalism is merely a symptom, not a cause—the cause is humanity’s failure to account for its own propensity towards greed and cruelty when planning things like Utopia. If another economic framework had come to Tazmily instead, the details might have differed, but not the outcome.
To the point I’d even argue it’s a contender for the trilogy’s core theme.