Celeste: Farewell

Aaaaand we're back.

Not many probably noticed that I was off the grid for the week, but well, that's that.  Part of the reason for hopping back on ye old mundane social media stream is honestly....marketing, but the other main reason is because I'm feeling better now.  I did some soul searching on Monday, found some things that I thought were important, found some other things that I thought were important to AVOID, and so on and so forth.

In addition to being emotionally off-kelter and in need of some answers for my self-motivation as well answers for external pressures, I ended up getting a little sick as well -- nothing too major, honestly probably helped me sleep better in the end.  Twas an off week for sure, but I definitely want to write about the thing that brought me back full-strength, and that is that I've finally sat down and played through the Celeste DLC, "Farewell".  This is a new chapter of Celeste that released around last September and that has sat quietly on my computer as I waited for "the right time" to experience it.  That right time was this week.

While I have not attempted the "extra" challenge of the m*o* *e**y, I actually spent basically ~4 hours last night playing through almost all of the DLC "level" (if you could really call 4 hours of content a single "level").  I stopped at the final screen, but finished that up this evening (honestly without =too= much difficulty).  I am thinking that I will come back for the aforementioned extra challenge at some point, probably at a later time, but that's it for me -- no golden berries, no dashless chapter 1, none of that.  At that time, if I want more Celeste, I'll probably just replay everything that's there (it has been a while since my first climb, after all), or alternatively go and play some custom levels.  Or perhaps just replay IWBTG or IWBTFG or something haha....

But back to the topic at hand.  Celeste's 9th chapter, "Farewell", is....not really your traditional "cherry on the cake".  Celeste is an amazing game -- and even before the existence of DLC I would have been happy to call it my favorite overall game of all time.  But Chapter 9 is =bursting= with additional content...I mean, 4 hours???  It kept on going on and on, screen after screen, long, long, long after I thought that it would have stopped.  And truly, I savored every moment of it.  These screens were challenging, clever, and made you really work to get through them.  They tested not only my control and reflexes, but also my problem solving abilities and my resolve.

But I knew that I could do it.  And as I progressed through these screens, a wonderful feeling began to permeate my soul -- the feeling that I was strong, that I was capable, that I had accomplished great things.  The self-doubt and stress over all of the problems I had been struggling with over the past week seemed to melt away and I found that I....was =believing= in myself, more than I ever have been in a long while.  "You can do this." I told myself out loud.  "You've got this."

After failing the final screen a number of times, Madeline's mirror self appears and asks her, "Are you alright, Madeline?"  She responds with "We're so close, but it feels impossible."  And her mirror self tells her, "We can do this...come on, just a few more tries."  It felt like it had echoed an internal conversation I had just been having with myself.

Celeste has great gameplay, level design, and, well, everything else.  I mean, that much is obvious -- it's an amazing game.  The level design in Farewell really astonished me as well, and I think this is where Noel and crew really took the gloves off and showed us what was really possible in this world, pulling out all the stunts and all the tricks for one last, final hurrah.  But I think even more than that what resonated with me was the emotional feeling of accomplishment, of persistence, of triumph.  This is something that Celeste has always been amazingly good with, especially in Chapter 7 (the summit).  But I think Chapter 9, being an even greater challenge -- a massive challenge, both in length and difficulty, really -- held that true even more.

I'd like to think that I can imagine why people scale mountains in real life now.  This emotional feeling of struggling against an incredibly difficult challenge and then coming out of it triumphantly on the other side...it really did wonders for me.  Playing through these 4 hours of levels was some of the best I've felt in a long time.  And as I said, all of my other problems felt so meaningless in comparison.  So what if I don't mesh well with other people?  So what if I don't meet their expectations, or don't get along with them, or don't =want= to get along with them, or don't fit in?  Does it matter that I don't have XYZ trait and am not such-and-such enough?  No.  No, it doesn't matter.  Because playing this game, I believed in my own strength.

I did it.  I really did it.  I knew that I could, and I did.

Farewell, Celeste.  I know I'll be seeing you again, someday.  Thank you.