Today I’m going to look at the themes of my 2014/2015 indie game Last Word, and address why the game isn’t really about words! Or, at least, not in the way you might think.
First I'll spell out the theme as best as possible, then quickly recap the game itself. After that, I'll talk about the ways in which the theme affected the design of the game, ranging from mechanics to goofy little jokes. Then I'll take a moment to muse about reception to these ideas, and finish it all off with some stray thoughts.
The Themes of Last Word
What you say and what you mean can be different, yet still understood. In linguistics, this is called pragmatics. I’ll touch more on pragmatics later, but this idea is crucial to understanding my shenanigans.
When I say something like "I'm cold" to my wife, it’s not a simple statement of fact. Instead, what I’m really saying is "can you turn on the heat?" or "bring me a blanket!" or "close the window, please." However, if I say "I'm cold" to my doctor, I'm probably expressing a medical concern. The actual meaning of "I'm cold" is not based solely on the words, but, rather, how the words interact with the context of the world around us.
To me, this malleable relationship between words and meaning creates an almost mystical power. This is the heart of the themes in Last Word. "Words have mystical power." However, when I say "words," I don’t mean the words themselves, taken literally by their dictionary definition. I mean how the words are used within social contexts. By altering my audience, inflection, word choice, timing, emotions, body language, etc., I can create a socially informed power dynamic.
(Vito Corleone from "The Godfather" using a veiled threat to mean something he isn’t literally saying)
For the sake of simplicity, then, what is the main theme of Last Word? How about this:
Words have mystical power...
... but it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.
Theming Disclaimer
As usual, the value of themes differs from person to person. Some skip them outright. Some are affected by them without knowing. Some love them. And, yes, some people see patterns where there are none. Knowing this, we can chat about themes safely.
I’m in the position here where I don’t need to speculate on what the intended themes are: I intended them. That doesn’t mean, however, that I executed them correctly, or that there are no other themes that emerged without my conscious effort. All I can say on the matter is that when I was making Last Word, I had a major idea in mind, and I used that idea as a guide whenever I made a decision about the plot, characters, or mechanics.
Last Word - A Quick Summary
The blurb I made for Steam sums up the premise of Last Word pretty well, I feel:
You play as Whitty Gawship, a Dagny Taggart style go-getter (yes, the Randian reference is intentional—it’ll all make sense later). She is invited to a get-together in a mansion. A new invention is going to be revealed by war linguist Professor Chet Chatters. Whitty is surrounded by the bumbling upper-class, a hodge-podge of "polite society" members who, befitting our theme, are experts at saying one thing and meaning another thing entirely.
The Professor reveals his invention to be a one-way intercom. In the universe of this world, having a conversation requires two-way communication, but this invention (The Mouth) has circumvented the social norm. It can articulate with nuance, implication, subtlety, and tact. The tongue-in-cheek tone of the game is set at this point, I think. We are aristocrats who have been out-maneuvered by the equivalent of a child putting their fingers in their ears and going "la la la I can’t hear you!"
What does the Professor want? Without getting too much into the overall lore, he wants a magical artifact known as the Last Word. Having the Last Word will give him, as one might imagine, the last word in every conversation. And, in a society that hinges on using the implications of conversation to gain subtle power over peers, having the last word is not just a convenient outcome; Having the last word is power itself!
In the game, Last Word, the idea of having the last word is both a linguistic pragmatism and a physical object (known as the Last Word) that grants this ability. I hope that’s not confusing. I find it funny.
With all of that out of the way, let’s take a look at the first fancy technique Last Word uses to subtly demonstrate the themes I outlined earlier.
It Literally Tells You
This might come as a surprise, but the game literally tells you the theme.
Right after Whitty teaches Seymour the "battle" mechanics, she says to remember the motto of St. Lauden, the country in which they live. The motto is "Civilitus Civilititum," which Whitty describes as "gibberish to the finest degree." The words, that is, don’t really mean what they sound like. Instead, the motto is a reminder that "in the civilized world, it isn’t what you say that matters, but how you say it."
It's a simple tactic, but I think it's okay to tell people what the theme is once or twice in a game. By giving this nugget of wisdom after the "battle" tutorial, it also cements that both the mechanics of the game and its story will be tied to this theme.
A Pit-stop in Pragmatics
Before I go on, let’s get to the clarification of linguistic pragmatics, like I promised. I'm not a linguist by profession, so don't expect a completely thorough lesson.
Pragmatics is the study of the context that informs meaning. There are sociolinguistic norms that every society partakes in. When you deploy a word or phrase that can’t be understood in perfect technical meaning, your mind follows different paths of interpretation to understand its meaning. This is where irony, implication, and sarcasm are formed. The word "beautiful" is not, by definition, a sarcastic word. However, due to pragmatics, it can be used that way. If you do something that is considered obviously disgusting in our society, and I make the remark “beautiful,” I have imbued that word with a new meaning—one of sarcasm.
Crash Course does an excellent job of discussing linguistics, and I recommend this video if you want a fuller explanation.
(Crash Course: Linguistics demonstrating discourse as if it were a turn-based RPG... hmm...)
Let’s get back to how Last Word demonstrates the theme. Other than telling the player the theme outright, what other techniques does the game use?
It Literally Shows You
A lot of off-the-cuff advice for writers and creators is "show, don’t tell." I have a lot of thoughts on this advice, but for the sake of this discussion, let’s just concede that the "best way" to communicate a theme is to both show and tell.
As I pointed out earlier, the game Literally Tells You the theme. But does it show you?
The Discourse System
The Discourse System is the main distinguishing mechanic in Last Word. Whitty enters into "discourse" with an opponent. Every turn, Whitty must choose to say something Disruptive, Submissive, or Aggressive, to various degrees of intensity. The goal is to push the conversation to an end with Whitty having the last word and closing any further discussion.
(Whitty engaging in Discourse with Judge Boasting)
Disruptive: Increases Power in the conversation, and slightly pushes the conversation forward in favor of the speaker.
Submissive: Converts Power to Tact.
Aggressive: Consumes Tact to move the conversation very far ahead in favor of the speaker.
We can see the abstraction at work. Discussions are turn-based, where some control is gained by being disruptive, and where being aggressive is tactless (consumes Tact), but gets you closer to closing out the conversation. This system is further complicated with a layer of Composure, which acts a bit like a defensive shield. The lower your Composure, the more effective Aggressive arguments are against you.
This is the theme, isn’t it? This is communication without the words. It is an abstraction that demonstrates the how of discourse, rather than the what. This is exactly like Whitty explains it to be: Gibberish to the finest degree.
If we want to see a group of aristocrats speaking over each other with meaningless words that are meant to garner social sway without saying anything or importance, this is it. This is one of many reasonable mechanical representations of the theme. Even the speech bubbles, which typically have actual words in them, are instead filled with images that show the effect of their words rather than the words themselves.
(A cutting remark... hehehe!)
The Characters and The Setting
The theme doesn’t just present itself in a stray line of dialogue and a "battle" system. The characters and setting are just as important.
Let’s get the major thing out of the way. Each character has a silly pun name based on speaking. Whitty Gawship ("witty gossip"), Mrs. Falar Prattle ("falar" is Portuguese for "to speak"), the Saymores, the Chatters, Will Banter, etc. I won’t go into all the puns, but that’s why they're there. They fit the theme... also, it's fun lol.
The main villain, Professor Chet Chatters, is a linguist. All this talk of linguistics as a theme and, lo and behold, there is an actual linguist in the game! A "war linguist," which is a term that makes me giggle.
(Boasting and McCall, having a war of words on the main screen)
The cornerstone of these interactions, for me, is the one between Judge Boasting and Holden McCall. On the main screen, before you even start the game, Boasting and McCall are performing discourse. This is something they will do repeatedly throughout the game. Their speech bubbles say things like, "after you!" This is a mocking demonstration of "polite society" discourse at its most accessible. We don’t actually care what these two are saying, because we understand the context. They are following social norms, and using their language to allow one person to enter before the other, to display respect and social grace. They are in competition, with their words, to gain power for the simple effect of forcing the other person to enter first, allowing the winner—the person with the last word—to seem gracious.
That brings the setting into focus. If someone’s going to make a game themed around discussions that skirt semantic meaning in favor of social meaning, what better than a pseudo-aristocracy set in the 1940s? People are vying for power, but are too civilized to resort to brute force like you might find in the middle ages. Instead, words are weapons, and power is petty social maneuverability. These are Downton Abbey rules!
It’s All in the First Ten Minutes
If showing and telling the theme is valuable, the timing is as well.
All of the ideas I’ve mentioned so far are not hidden. There are abstractions, and jokes, and other things happening, but the connections are there. And, more to the point, they all appear within the first ten minutes.
My hope (and, again, you can be the judge), was to display the theme of the game as quickly as possible. If the player sees the pseudo-conversation between Boasting and McCall, then meets Seymour (our "ignorant" stand-in), then gets a taste of the Discourse System, then gets an explanation of the theme from Whitty, the player has been given all of the tools they need to understand how and why the Professor’s invention is going to be a problem. It also prepares them to understand what the titular Last Word actually is.
What Is the Last Word, Anyway?
There is no last word.
Like, in terms of an actual dictionary definition, there isn’t a specific word. Remember, this is pragmatics. The last word is simply the word that is spoken at the end of a discourse. It’s defined less by its word-ness than it is by its last-ness. Whomever has the last word in a conversation is said to have won that conversation (at least through Western, in-person norms and conventions). In sports terms, the phrase "last word" is similar to "the winning play." The play itself is irrelevant. What matters is that it wins.
What about the scene where you try and guess the Last Word? This scene, here, where Whitty attempts to make a copy of the word from her collar, but can't?
(Whitty trying to transcribe the word, and failing)
That’s a demonstration by way of futility. There is no correct answer. Code-wise, the game is programmed so that you can never be correct. If you didn’t understand the message by this point, you may never. The game is giving you an actual tool to solve what the last word is, and there is no correct answer! There can’t be. Being the last word is conceptual and contextual, not lexical.
The whole idea of the Last Word being an object called the Last Word is another layer of that demonstration. If this story were just about "talking" being used as magic, I would just make it a Magic Object That Lets You Win Arguments. That would have been fine. But just being a Magic Object That Lets You Win Arguments doesn’t imply any sort of how—and, remember, the How vs. What aspect is a major idea here. By calling it the Last Word, it is projecting not what the word is, but how it works. It works by being the last! So, by allowing the player the chance to guess at the word’s what-ness, with no possible solution, I’m allowing them the chance to fully understand that there is no what, only a how.
Interpretations and Retrospection
One of my favorite write-ups on Last Word was by journalist/writer/editor Jenni Lada. I’m not sure what happened to the site where she posted it, otherwise I’d quote it. But you just have to trust me that it was thoughtful and neat. The idea that she focused on was the relationship to power in Last Word. She realized, without saying exactly this, that Whitty is not necessarily "the good guy." And she’s right! Remember how I compared Whitty to Atlas Shrugged’s Dagny Taggart earlier? That's because I dislike Ayn Rand! Whitty is a selfish character who, like the rest of the aristocrats, is willing to manipulate people with her words in order to gain power over them. This gets even more obvious in the full ending, where her hunger comes out more intensely when trying to deduce who is the person holding onto the real Last Word artifact.
Fun Fact: Catherine Thomas, the artist, was given this image titled "DT" (Dagny Taggart) as a reference for Whitty Gawship's design.
(Photograph of Natasha Fedorova by Alexander Kuzmin)
However, Jenni’s understanding of the game is less common. Below is a quick snippet of different Steam reviews about Last Word, some good, some bad. I won’t focus on whether the players enjoyed the game overall, but I will say that there is an interesting impression that these players have of the game's usage of words.
(A lot of, um... insight?)
What I find interesting in these types of reviews is that many of them do seem to understand what the game is going for, to some degree. The second review is funny because it claims to "not get it," and then describes exactly what "it" is. They thought it would be about lexis, and instead it was about having the "last word" in any argument? Well, yeah. You nailed it?
I know disappointment in some of these extends beyond the themes and into other factors, such as the engine, the "blobby" character models, the amount of writing, etc. The biggest thing may be that expressing this theme is very hard to do outside of the game itself—like in the marketing—setting the wrong impression. Or maybe I just didn’t do it correctly. The expectation that a game is going to be superficially about saying a word and summoning that word’s exact meaning is one I can understand. To me, however, that sort of thing has been done. Last Word takes a different approach, and sometimes people vibe with it, and sometimes they don’t.
Stray Thoughts
All right, I have a few stray thoughts to complete this picture.
Pragmatism
When you learn Whitty’s special skill, you get the cheevo "Pragmatism," which is another small bit of theming. Is it because Whitty is a pragmatic person? Or because of pragmatics in linguistics? Or both? (Both.)
(Pragmatism)
Guns
I’ve seen several let’s plays and reviews and conversations in regards to the universe of Last Word. Many of them agree that Last Word takes place in a world where there are no guns. I find it odd that people reach this conclusion even though a mandatory story event at the beginning of the game has Judge Boasting talking about how he wrestled a gun from a woman using his silver tongue.
(Judge Boasting, boasting)
Yes, this is a world where words have an almost supernatural power. And yes, wars are fought with words, both on and off the field. But guns exist. And, if you get close enough to discourse with a person holding a gun, you may be able to disarm them.
Leftover Pun Names
There wasn’t enough space in the game to mention this, but General Sandhoff is an immigrant to St. Lauden. Her birth name is Ming Ling. Get it? Heh.
Also, one of the names I wish I would have found a place for is Linus Peach (line of speech). If I ever do a sequel, I will add this name somewhere.
Murder Mystery Themes
The main ideas of this post have been covered, but I didn’t touch on the murder mystery themes that also clearly exist. There are several obvious allusions to Agatha Christie-isms, such as the setting and the whodunnit sequence at the end. Naturally, this also links to the board game Clue/Cluedo, where every character is a simple color.
Some of these things work with the previous themes of words as power, and others work against it. For example, the Mancillas Diamond, the Lighthouse Doll, the elephant motif, etc., don’t seem to add to the main themes at all. If I had to do it over, I would find a way for those little aspects to work with as many of the larger ideas as possible.
Rhetoric Magic
One "secret" aspect of the lore is that the Last Word’s magic runs on the “fourth appeal.”
For those who need a refresher, there are traditionally three rhetorical appeals used to persuade people: pathos, logos, and ethos. In Last Word, the name of the victory theme is "Fourth Appeal (Victory)." There is some mention of it in the game, secretly, that the fourth appeal is Auros. This is a fictional appeal that basically just loosely explains the magic of the universe. Professor Chet Chatters wrote a whole book about it.
(Enlarge this image if you want to read it, but it's mostly nonsense)
When using a special move in Last Word, you can sometimes see a script of words go by (pictured above). All of that is stuff I wrote, from the Professor’s perspective, talking about the mystical fourth appeal.
After You
The original working title of Last Word, during the 2014 Indie Game Making Contest, was After You. The game starts and ends on the simple action of saying "after you," which, like I mentioned before, is an accessible microcosm of the main idea. It's a nice bookend. I ended up changing the name of the game to Last Word after a pizza-and-beer thinking session with fellow creative Kan Gao.
Overall
I like Last Word. I made it very quickly based on an idea I thought would translate interestingly into an RPG. There's a lot of other decision-making behind the final product that I didn't touch on, but I think, without this theme threaded from front to end, it wouldn’t be what it is. Maybe it would be better! Who knows? But it wouldn’t be as cohesive, as guided.
I don’t want to leave the impression that all of this theming elevates Last Word to some pretentious, genius, avant-garde piece of art. It’s a silly, funny little game. It’s true that I had core ideas in mind with Last Word (and in most of my games), but themes aren’t some automatic game-enrichener. Themes aren’t valuable in and of themselves. There are still a lot of other things to consider.
Still, the next time you get the last word in an argument, hopefully you think about the implications, the meaning, and the value of that final utterance.
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Sources:
Last Word (2015)
Image taken from "The Godfather" (1972)
Crash Course: Linguistics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPwpk-YgvjQ
"DT" by Alexander Kuzmin https://www.deviantart.com/kuzminphoto/art/DT-137397060
The Logomancer (2015) https://store.steampowered.com/app/375430/The_Logomancer/
Assorted Steam reviews for Last Word (2015)
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