My biggest, and most compelling fear in my entire life is the fear that despite how hard I try, despite my efforts to be known for my kindness and gentleness, that I am, in fact, cruel, cold, and unkind. That my very existence hurts the ones I love.
Because of this and a mix of past trauma I deal with SIGNIFICANT guilt issues. I will do mental gymnastics to AVOID blaming anyone but myself. I will blame myself for almost anything with nearly no pushback. I am everything that is wrong in my life.
And… On my darker days… I can get into a headspace where I really, truly believe that everyone in my life would be better without me.
I open with all this because not only is it relevant to Omori, all these here are the core themes of the game. And more.
There are rare moments in one’s life where a story resonates with you on such a personal level that it can actually change you.
This is that game for me.
It is the most terrifying game I have ever played in my entire life. It is the most wholesome, loving, adorable game I’ve ever played in my life. It is the funniest game I have ever played in my entire life. It is the saddest game I have ever played in my entire life. Omori expertly weaves such contradictory emotions like grief, trauma, guilt, forgiveness, friendship, nostalgia, and loss into a game that packs more emotional punch than anything I’ve ever played in my life.
I will try to keep the spoilers to a minimum but I will not succeed. you have to understand that this game is best when you don’t know anything about it. I implore you if what you’ve read so far intrigues you, go play it for yourself and see why it is so good.
So I’m now gonna get into it. First we gotta talk Horror.
Silent Hill is a series about a town that takes your worst, most personal traits, and creates your own personal hell. Especially in Silent Hill 2 where every single monster, location, item and plot beat servers as symbolism for who the person was in life.
Doki Doki Literature Club is a horror game disguised as an adorable romantic dating sim. Eventually it is “revealed” to have been a horror game all along.
Omori is almost the opposite of DDLC. It has ZERO allusions as to what it is. A horror game. The game STARTS with some extremely disturbing imagery in the form of a cutscene showing a boy crying while someone tries to assure them “Don’t worry everything is going to be okay” followed by a blank, featureless white room that features Gameboy sounding chiptunes background music almost reminiscent of Pokémon and while endearing, one cannot shake the feeling that something is VERY wrong here. This is White Space, and while they don’t spell it out here, it’s clear that all of this is a dream of our main character.
But almost as soon as you leave White Space you are thrust into one of the most endearing, cute, and wholesome worlds one could ever find themselves in. Almost as though everything previous did not even happen. But even while this part of the game feels cute and wholesome, that feeling that there is something VERY wrong just beneath the surface remains, as though this world were covering up something horribly dark.
And just like Silent Hill, when things get dark they get DARK. Nearly everything in this dream world of his is a representation of something in his waking world. Contorted into how he sees it. Even parts that he does not want to admit to himself, things that he doesn’t want to remember. Try as he might to keep this cute and fun world on the surface, the darkness keeps seeping in. Keeps reminding him of what happened all those years ago… Because that’s what happens with trauma. It seeps into everything. It consumes you. You can try to distract yourself with fun wholesome things, you can try desperately to cling to a past that has long past you by, but no matter what it WILL surface. Whether you like it or not.
It becomes very clear though the progression of events in this game that our poor protagonist Omori and, honestly, everyone in this game is dealing with some HORRIBLE trauma and is coping with that trauma in a way an adolescent teen might.
In Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder there are three main symptoms. Hyperarousal, Avoidance Symptoms and intrusive symptoms.
Intrusive Symptoms are symptoms that cause you to re-live your trauma again. As though it were happening to you again. They can be in the form of flashbacks, but also happen in bad memories and nightmares. They are your body’s way of working through whatever traumatic event occurred. But they are not fun. Going through a traumatic event once is bad enough, having to re-live it in your nightmares is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. In Omori this is represented as something called “Black Space” which is where all of Omori’s worst memories reside. Memories that he is trying DESPERATELY to repress.
Hyper arousal is being hyper susceptible to anything that might trigger a panic attack. One suffering from PTSD might be a lot more jumpy and easily startled than others. More anxious. We see this a LOT in Basil who gets startled by basically everything.
The last symptom are Avoidance Symptoms. Where you avoid absolutely everything that can trigger those horrible intrusive symptoms. Avoid the things that will trigger the nightmares. We see this in Sunny who refuses to go certain places that he associates with his trauma, to avoid experiences that will re-surface those memories. Including friends that he had at the time.
But… Try as he might. Those memories resurface. They begin to encroach upon everything in his life. The horrors that he has been repressing for years inevitably make their way to the surface one way or another whether he likes it or not.
And this, here, is what makes the game so damn terrifying. Not only is the imagery scary, but it’s real.
A body being stuffed into a rabbit mascot and being left in a blood soaked theme park is scary. You being trapped aboard a small space ship while a predatory alien stalks its halls hunting you is scary.
Coming to grips with the reality that regardless of your intentions you are ACTUALLY a bad person? That there is absolutely nothing good about what you do or who you are and you are fooling your loved ones into caring about someone who is sick and twisted in the head?
That is BEYOND anything I ever thought I could feel from a game.
And that is the true nature of the horror in Omori. This is not fun gory gory gross n’ blood horror. This is REAL, adult, keep you up at night stressed and preoccupied horror.
And if that’s all the game was, a mirror into my own soul making me feel bad about every wrong thing I’ve ever done in my life and telling me that I am worthless and that all my loved ones would be better off without me? I wouldn’t wanna play that game. But luckily… That’s not really the case.
Because for all it’s horror, all the heavy topics that it is presenting you with, there is an equal amount of love on the other side of that coin. The other aspect of this game. Love.
Some of you who know me might know that I’m a fan of a game series called Danganronpa. It’s a murder mystery but it is centered around characters. Its main draw is its characters. Characters that you can befriend, characters that you can hate, characters you can love. Some of my favorite video game characters of all time come from this game. The likes of Chihiro Fujisaki, Chiaki Nanami, Nagito Komaeda, etc. Some of my favorite media of all time is really just really good characters. Bojack Horseman, Watchmen, The Last of Us, Doki Doki Literature Club etc. Omori is no different.
From the very start of the game you meet some of the most ENDEARING characters I’ve ever encountered in a video game. By far. I daresay more endearing than any character I’ve met in a Danganronpa game or any game for that matter. They’re complex, they have bonds, flaws, ideals, secrets.
Hero, for example, is the older brother of Kel and excels at basically everything he does, but with that comes a lot of pressure to BE the best at everything he does. He studies almost relentlessly and holds a LOT of responsibility FAR above his age. Aubrey is EXTREMELY passionate. In all meanings of the word. She is extremely passionate in her love for those she cares for throwing absolutely everything into her relationships. She is extremely passionate about those who hurt her holding grudges and anger for YEARS. It’s a dynamic that I often see in life that we don’t often get in games like this.
The interactions these characters have feel like ACTAUL interactions I’ve seen in life. Like I know Kel. In real life. Kel is my cousin Chris. Aubrey is my friend Jennie. Hero is my cousin JJ.
More than being real rounded characters who go through realistic character arcs, they also have some amazing chemistry. The way Kel and Aubrey bounce off each other is wonderful to witness. Everyone cares so much for each other and there is so much obvious love between all of them. It is genuinely heartwarming to see and you fall in love with these characters and want all of them to be as happy as possible.
You know you have well written characters when you can look at their actions, even the bad actions and understand what they’re feeling, even see yourself in them. DDLC and Bojack did that a lot. I see a lot of myself in Sayori in how I hide my feelings behind a happy face so that I can pretend things are okay. I see a lot of myself in Princess Carolyn in recklessly fixing other people’s lives because I have no idea how to fix my own. I see a lot of myself in Sunny because I have TERRIBLE guilt issues and think that everyone else’s lives would be better off without me sometimes.
But not only is this a game filled with a lot of heart it’s a game filled with HUMOR! Like good, honest, wholesome, quirky humor. Like you can tell that this was inspired by earthbound. It has the exact same quirky, sometimes random, but always silly and childish humor. Like, it doesn’t really have “jokes” not like Portal 2 or even Undertale would have. But it does have silly little moments that actually had me laughing out loud at times at just how silly they are. Especially Sweetheart. Every time she is on screen she is a delight.
And all these things in this dream world are all happening and encompass roughly 60% of the entire game. To the point where you can almost forget what’s happening in real life. Like I was getting head over heels involved in the lives of these sprout moles. Going and doing fetch quests for them. I was getting invested in the side-quests. Like I was fully caught up in this world that isn’t even the entire game.
And that is 1000% the point. This dream world IS a distraction. It’s SUPPOSED to try and help you forget that outside of this some SERIOUSLY depressing events have been, and continue to unfold in your life. Speaking of depressing… We gotta get into that aspect of the game. The sadness that contrasts the love and humor on display in this game.
I cried during those two scenes in Mother 3. You know the ones. I’ve cried for characters I loved being killed in such cruel ways in Danganronpa. There are many a game that I’ve gotten misty-eyed over.
I don’t think I’ve cried for a game like I did when I played Omori.
This is going to get a little more into spoiler territory but I’m going to try and keep it vague.
At some point after you wake up from the dream world the first time Aubrey reveals the HORRIBLE traumatic event that happened in your past.
That… Honestly made me cry. I thought about Hero. About how much he cares about others and tries his best to make everyone around him as comfortable as possible so when THAT happens… And he can’t understand why… I… I melted. I’d feel the same way. Like I failed. Did I not make them happy? What did I do wrong that you’d rather… Not be here…
But that’s not even the worst part. The entire game has been leading up to “the truth” which is even more horrifying and that… That had me bawling. Like heaving sobs.
But even in that moment I felt so many conflicting emotions. Confusion, denial, grief, anger, even guilt. More than any single moment in Mother 3… I broke down. Completely. I was sick. So many emotions ran through me. Disbelief, denial, anger… But there was also understanding. The feeling you get when you’re that young, and feel backed into a corner, with no way out. The moment when you make a terrible, terrible decision that you deeply regret and more than anything want to go back and re-do. The hatred you feel towards yourself. I’ve never done anything NEAR as terrible as what happens in Omori. But I do live with deep regrets that I’ve carried with me.
I had nightmares after that. Nightmares about those scenes from the game. No game I’ve ever played has ever given me a nightmare. Especially not one where I woke up crying.
We see a little bit of ourselves in Omori. At least I did. And not like how some people see themselves in Bojack or Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty way where some people see themselves in their toxic behavior or horrible things they’ve done and feel validated. Omori calls you not to excuse behavior, but empathize with them. Because for all the flaws and horrible things that we see… We still root for them. We want them to be better. And still asks us “can this sort of thing be forgiven”.
It almost doesn’t matter what the answer to that question is. What matters is coming to terms with what happened. Taking responsibility for it. Not running away but facing whatever consequences you face.
I cannot think of another game that I’ve played where I have to face my deepest, most intense and personal fear. The fear that I am not worthy or deserving of love.
But despite the guilt and the shame and the regrets and despair… The game’s main message shines through. That you can forgive yourself. You can love yourself. Even if you’ve done bad things, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. You can change.
Sunny is stronger than I am. In so many ways.
It gives me hope that if this 16 year old bundle of nerves can overcome himself, learn to forgive himself, and face whatever happens then… It gives me hope that I might forgive myself as well.
THAT, above all else, is why the game resonated with me so hard. Why despite everything I was still rooting for Sunny.
I wanted to hold him tight, pull him into a hug and tell him “She knows you love her. She knows that. She knows you don’t hate her, couldn’t hate her. She loves you too. Still. Because that’s who she is. Without a thought. She always will”
Omori is the most terrifying game I have ever played in my entire life.
Omori is the most wholesome, loving, adorable game I’ve ever played in my life.
Omori is the funniest game I have ever played in my entire life.
Omori is the saddest game I have ever played in my entire life.
Omori is the greatest game I’ve ever played in my life.
