A LONG RANT: Mouthwashing TW & spoilers (?)

What is Mouthwashing?
- mouthwashing is a shifting pov game about pressure and responsibility. Circling the happenings of 5 co-workers on a ship that was driven into an asteroid, permanently disabling their captain & slowly driving the team's integrity with each other into shit thanks to their captain's replacement.


Without going into too much detail I want to address how many layers upon layers I keep analyzing when it comes to each character & their level of suffering. How uncomfortable it is to try and sit in anyone's point of view of the situation regardless of who is who. A carefree intern, an anxiety-ridden nurse, a grumpy alcoholic millennial, a regretful & self-deprecating captain & a control freak co-captain with a hero complex.

Each of them had an assigned job that they didn't fulfill, and the game shows different elements of how they slowly deteriorate from the crash being the main domino to start the effect. Fragments of time are shown to explain why behaviors changed from a month to three months, the pressure of taking responsibility.

It only goes to show however that no one was innocent, well aside the intern but even he had a hand in dirty work, so my point still stands as a whole. All to try and get the job done and the ship home.

Even in the game of responsibility, literally no one does. Even when Jimmy is in the stars with Curly, sure he apologizes but still takes the sorry way out to try and justify things.

 "We can still be heroes" 

THE HELL YOU MEAN WE?? WHO IS WE?

Curly was just as in the wrong as Jimmy was for not doing something about him when Anya told him what happened. But on one side I can see why he was hesitant, that's his friend. Any normal person would be concerned about how to approach their friend hurting someone so deeply ( being brief so the post isn't taken down ) but as the captain, it's your job to protect EVERYONE from harm. Not just from the ship, but psychologically & physically.

So as an end result? Curly has to sit there and deal with the reminders and consequences of his actions just as everyone else and within the ending? Now he has to *live* with those consequences if someone even finds the pod. In the end, nothing got solved, everyone got picked off one by one with no one spared.

Daisuke was the one that should've been spared. I'm sure he was the one who was supposed to be spared since it was hinted that Swansea wanted to save Daisuke instead of himself. this entire game has been gobsmacked with so many layers of issues that the characters had to sit with as each one died, and I feel like it wasn't gone into as deeply as it should, especially if the symbolism is only really recognized on a meaningful level like SA. that's hard to handle delicately in a game and to have it so blunt, and have the character that caused it to suffer because of it? It's satisfying to see them deal with the regret behind it with other entities to pick and prod at or run away from. Really driving in the guilt we all wanted Jimmy to feel for letting this all happen.

I just, really hate the ending.. I wouldn't want a part two to it though since even I wouldn't know how to pick it up from there. Not spin it off as a 'good' ending but pick it up realistically after the chamber. Like who found him? Did Curly have any family to come home to, hell, did Curly even survive the pod after the fact? Did he recover or give up too? There's so much to take into consideration so I think the ending is genuinely the best we'll get to end the game.

Thoughts?