u/Ok-Secretary-28

Hello! I'm hoping this is an okay post for this subreddit...

I have recently discovered an anonymous game online that I believe to be inspired by Zork!

It's available at MrWhatsIt.com

I have been playing for a couple of weeks now and I am BEYOND stuck on how to proceed. There are no guides or anything available, unfortunately. The biggest breakthrough I've made with the game is realizing it is in the style of Zork and familiarizing myself with Zork in the hopes of gleaning some insight on how to navigate the game.

I was curious if any Zork-heads would be interested in checking it out/ giving advice on how to solve games such as this. The 'Try something else' field offers a wide range of possibilities, and I've been trying out all sorts of key words to try and trigger additional discoveries.

I think the screenshots/ quotes I pulled in the images of this post largely speak for themselves, but I wanted to talk about something that has started bugging me since watching Tales From 85.

I've talked before S5 released about how El loses her voice in S4, especially as it relates to the resolution of her relationship troubles with Mike. You can see that post here!

And while there are several things that bother me about El's ending in S5, there is an element of consideration that I hadn't really realized until I was watching Tales From 85.

That being- NO ONE ASKS EL WHAT SHE WANTS TO DO AFTER DEFEATING VECNA!!!

Holy cow!! I honestly thought Mike's attempts to comfort El in S5 were sweet, but I have also felt frustrated by the fact that he is functionally given narrative control over HER ending and seems to ignore key things that she DID say to help him understand where she's coming from.

This mainly manifested as anger that El got wiped out before the epilogue, but after hearing El express her frustration at never being ASKED what SHE wants in Tales from 85, this injustice of it all is hitting even worse!

Because it's not even that Mike seems to ignore El's words- it's the fact that before he is made to witness her literal dying wish, he never thinks to give her a platform to share her own fantasy!! She asks him!! But it's just further assumed that his fantasy is what works for El- even AFTER she tells him that she doesn't agree with it.

And as El argues herself to Mike in Tales from 85- her not saying anything herself isn't really a good excuse tbh! Maybe she had an even better plan, but no one ever asked for her perspective. As she says in Tales From 85- Mike does NOT get to speak for her, and he does NOT get to choose what she does. That should be up to El! Mike should've turned it around at some point and asked what she thought!

Mike further doesn't even respect her plea for him to understand her choice- he instead takes HOPPER's advice to 'accept' it and make something up to help him cope. And so, Mike uses El's death as a prompt to write a new ending that sets her back on the path of his own idealization- never actually entertaining the notion that she could have had something else in mind that was her own idea. Just.. splat! Copy/paste of Mike's re-used waterfall ending from old campaigns. Tied with Mike's words that El's fear of the military was a 'little sidequest' to deal with after Vecna, it doesn't feel like he ever took her seriously. Like it was all a game. She quite literally becomes an NPC controlled by Mike in the final scene.

Ajflkdsaj;sd. It's just so unfair, she deserved so much better.

It's a trap!!!