Yes, I prefer to believe that Perfect Day is deliberately going to collide with Eldon's Ring of Law than coincidence. This is its way of showing off-the-beaten-path and unbridled outside of the game.
Although no matter which game, it has a basic purpose to make money. But beyond the commodity attributes, there are some people who would prefer it to bring something else to the world, such as "Perfect Day", which I would like to call the ultimate romance.
It has a very old poster style art concept, as well as a lot of childhood impressions of the 80s and 90s. It's a lot like a normal genre game with a nostalgia, under the banner of "childhood memories.". In fact, it is indeed unmistakably dedicated to the parents of the post-80s and post-90s generations - the workers who came from the big pattern of the change of century and the change of times, but the childhood memories of "Perfect Day" are not soda, mud and you at the same table, or yes or no.
I prefer to say that it is as romantic as China's "Bliss Disco", only by living in the context of a specific era, with collective memory and experience, I am afraid that it can understand its deep connotations and poetic fairy tales.
Man in England, just off the battlefield
If I summarize the core issues of "Perfect Day" in such a sentence, then you will definitely feel that it is a distance from other similar games - it uses the most ideal way to refute idealism and implement the firmest faith of the Chinese nation.
Of course, with my shallow knowledge, I really can't fully understand this game, but this statement is the most convincing to my own experience in this game in the past. In any case, in the game content that this article analyzes as much as possible, everyone should be able to produce their own experience after reading it.
Because the opening throws out such a "totem" as an alien, my mood has always been between "Is there any alien to give an accurate ah!" And "If in the end there are not really aliens I will kill them" between. Fortunately, the answer given at the end of the story is completely stunning.
Yes, "Perfect Day" throws out a lot of alien symbols at the beginning of the story, which is a common memory of an era, and it appears everywhere in people's conversations, newspapers, television, and every must-have "Ten Unsolved Mysteries in History". So at the beginning of the story, it's easy to feel that this isn't going to be a story to tell everyday.
In this fictional town called "Zhenhua", I, Chen Liang, a sixth-grade elementary school student, kept repeating the day of December 31, 1999, under the leadership of some force majeure, circling between classmates, friends, and elders again and again, trying to make their day perfect. In the eternal cycle, Chen Liang could not know what the incomparably abstract new millennium of the adult population really looked like, and he might never know.
Alien elements beyond the everyday are everywhere, not only in newspapers and magazines and on the Internet speculation about aliens, but in the town, within my circle of life, there are people who call themselves "Big Bad Six".
My father worked at the largest aluminum factory in town, which was the origin of Zhenhua construction. Now that the factory is about to close, Father Chen faces the future of being bought out of his working years.
Not only my father, but also the families of my friends around me are facing the choice of staying or going to the big city to make a living, and the family itself has also been distorted and torn by the changes of the times.
"Perfect Day" is a very obvious, telling the 80s, 90s parents in the 80s, 90s in the times, the great changes in life where to go from the big stage, any player who has experienced that era, should be able to find the real shadow of the past from the game.
Flipping through the Zhenhua Evening News, I understand that this is by no means a game made to play with nostalgia and reminiscence, although it has always been under the banner of "childhood memories"
To talk about the deep and romantic metaphor behind "Perfect Day", we have to mention "Bliss Disco". They are based entirely on different areas of discourse, but at their core are narratives of one corner of the world stage.
The main stage of "Bliss Disco", the fictional city of Revashao, is a projection of the entire Soviet world before the collapse of the Soviet Union in the last century, which uses a small murder to introduce complex political issues under the grand world map, and also uses a large number of surreal elements, mysterious animals that do not know whether they exist or not, "gray fields" linking continents, etc., to allude to abstract concepts such as the ideas and ideologies of the times.
And "Perfect Day" just happens to distill the issues of the times that we have transformed at the end of the last century to a new century and a new millennium. Our issue is not politics, but collective belief. Testing pragmatism with practice is our only faith.
The totem of aliens is therefore extremely romantic, and it is also a conceptual expression that does not exist in material form, but in the context of the times, aliens seem to be given the meaning of "expectation and fear of the unknown".
Za/UM, the production team of Bliss Disco, a former Soviet game developer in the United Kingdom, once sincerely wrote a letter to Chinese players expressing how grateful the Sino-Soviet friendship was for this game that sent the last letter to the Soviet Union, so they made Chinese the preferred localization language.
Coincidentally, in another game previously introduced by the think tank, "Not Broadcast", the production team in the United Kingdom also arranged a trilingual dubbing Chinese, Russian and English for the first time, and I always think that it is the best Chinese game dubbing.
In a way, Chinese players are a good ideological exchange group, using games as language, on the dark side of the world stage.
"Not moved by the trend, become the mainstay of the times."
But why does this day have to be perfect? Of course, it's not because I want to make up for anyone's regrets, after playing the real ending, I can also be sure that this is not the original intention of the game.
"Perfect Day" throws such a big problem, taking the changing situation as the stage and pulling up aliens as actors, which dooms players to harvest points worth the fare from the producer's "exchange conference".
The Zhenhua town depicted in the game has a variety of residents, corresponding to people from all walks of life who think and plan for the future, and they almost have a common theme, that is, to develop outward and seek breakthroughs under change.
When Chen Liang's father was about to close down in the aluminum factory, he tried to get rich overnight by buying lottery tickets, and Chen Liang's uncle found a black intermediary from nowhere and wanted to move abroad. There are also some adults of the same school, hoping to go to Shanghai to develop, under the change of the general environment that does not change the will of the individual, the small family is falling apart, but in the end it is their own way to find a way out.
But in Zhenhua Town, there is another camp of the dark side - aliens.
The white teachers in the game, the beggar Lao Ge, and the next-door neighbor Grandma Yang are indeed classified as "big bad six-star people", and we can completely regard them as aliens, without too much entanglement with what aliens really mean, what is the ultimate purpose of the three of them coming to Earth. This will be the most romantic imaginative space that the game leaves us.
Bai Jingxi, "This world doesn't matter if it's true, it can't find goodness, only beauty is worth my time." ”
Bai Jingxi is an art teacher at the school, and he admires the artistic talent of Chen Liang's mother. He came to Earth, became an Earthling, and once wanted to find truth and goodness, but after much experience, he found that only beauty was worth entrusting time.
He once fell into the abyss of nihilism (Lao Ge certification), he did not want to return to the six stars, nor did he want to realize the ideals of the earthlings, he only wanted to paralyze himself with beauty, a pure, isolated beauty.
When Chen Liang proved that "the world is advancing" with countless reincarnations, Bai Jingxi seemed to have metamorphosed his thoughts, "There is a kind of total dominator above all forms, and I need to destroy it once at this moment." The overall ruler, that is, the torrent of the times of force majeure, in the face of reality, the nothingness has temporarily compromised.
Grandma Yang: Adults die to face, forgetting that they are the role models of children!
Grandma Yang is also reincarnated on this day, she just wants to stew a pot of braised meat, but she has less aluminum pot and no recipe. Her ideals were trapped by the idea of "dying for face", until Chen Liang, the child, brought what she needed to her, reminding her that her ideal was to evoke the noble qualities of workers to be self-reliant. That's why I just had that line.
Grandma Yang wants to let the adults put down their faces, not to be strong in front of the children, to face the reality, to embrace the new era, and to re-cast the glory of the working people with her hands, just like in the past, she built factories with her hands and built the future of working people.
The meat is stewed, and a modern poem is written.
A simple hint: on the left side of this poem is Grandma Yang's philosophy, and on the right is Bai Jingxi's philosophy
Beggar Lao Ge, also a big bad six star who has been shouting "the soul of the big six, the big six decides", please allow me to sell a pass for the time being, his story reveals that this game is a romantic prose poem.
There are also some details that are very detached from reality, Chen Liang's cheated uncle, the black intermediary is tricking him into going abroad to where?
"A place of milk and honey".
The Promised Land, Jerusalem, the place where milk and honey remain, Canaan.
You could say that the country that the crooks tricked Uncle into going to was Israel, but in this game it can only be the paradise that exists in fantasy but can never be reached. In Exodus, the Israelites abandon their illusions of God and fight with their own hands for a better tomorrow, and this is the ultimate destination for everyone in this game.
There is an inconspicuous copywriting in the game, which should be its "subject", "not moved by the trend, become the mainstay of the times," all those who have created a better tomorrow with their own hands from that era should understand what it is saying.
Face change with a practical attitude.
"Empty shell" Chen Liang
In addition to poor guidance, SHroud-like UI interactive animation, "Perfect Day" is almost perfect in the combination of interaction and narrative.
Chen Liang, the player's "I", mechanically selects each specific location to trigger events according to a rigid time period (really not a pejorative). As a sixth-grade elementary school student, Chen Liang seems to lack the most basic common sense, nor can he talk about any emotional fluctuations, he is always asking "why" and "what", he is always executing the strange and unintelligible orders given to him by our players, he can forever cycle on December 31, 1999, the day, teleporting the props on his body back to the beginning of this day, but he seems to never remember what happened in the last cycle.
This slightly weird game setting is actually very ingenious according to the logic of the narrative. As an interactive narrative game, it is usually based on the story world view, character experiences and settings to find a suitable interactive way, as well as interactive way to adapt to the narrative expression. In "Perfect Day", the protagonist's way of acting and the arrangement of interaction are actually quite a kind of deduction, and find that it can only be done, and must be done.
All this is because Chen Liang is just an "empty shell". He is an alien, but he is not a big bad star, he is an "empty shell" that is completely manipulated by the player to manipulate his actions and control his will, he is not the existence of this world, he is the player himself.
It seems that the initial goal of the production team is probably to sell 100,000 copies of the game, and it is best that 100,000 players can see this ending.
Chen Liang's existence is destined to make the day of December 31, 1999, reach perfection, and perfection is the supreme spiritual belief of the working people.
The soul of the Great Six, the Great Six decision
In this game, "Perfect Day" stuffs thoughts on Lin Haiyin's "Old Things in seongnam", Camus's "The Outsider", Nietzsche's superhuman philosophy, the Bible's "Exodus" and other things, and I can't help but be dizzy when I write this.
Lao Ge is in the center of the dizziness, desperately trying to mess with the brains of all players.
There is no desire-driven mechanism in the Six Stars, and after occupying the body of the Gaia, desire begins to engulf us, and we quietly become the new Gaia.
The six people have not smelled the dirt of money, the six people have not glimpsed the stench of hypocrisy, the six people are in awe of change, and the six people yearn for a new life.
In "Lao Ge's Perfect Antenna", Chen Liang and Lao Ge finally hooked up, and also got the instructions of the spaceship from Bai Jingxi and boarded the spaceship to return to the planet of Tablise.
However, Bai Jingxi added a "negative" content to the start instruction, and they failed.
At this moment, Lao Ge certified That Bai Jingxi had become a complete nihilist, and the nihilism that Bai Jingxi admired was precisely the nihilism that Nietzsche denied and overcame.
Nihilism shatters ideals, and the spaceship is doomed by cause and effect to not return to the big bad...
But at the last minute, the ship's main engine was automatically activated. It seems that the supreme idealistic belief of the Great Six is not afraid of the dissolution of nothingness.
Zhicheng's believer Lao Ge, his wish is a perfect day, this day people have no sorrow, do not have to pay the price for change, misfortune will only take a detour away, Datong came to thousands of households.
Ideals are not fantasies, nothingness is the destination of fantasies, so the spaceship starts and then explodes in the sky.
Zhenhua does not rely on the illusion of ideals.
Going back to the original theme, what exactly is a perfect day?
I would like to answer with a cry of the working class in Liu Cixin's "Earth Fire" in the face of the reform of the coal mines in Shanxi.
"Everybody calls that thing the old charcoal pillar, but you know, it wasn't a pillar when it stood up, it was a big square block of coal." It was more than a hundred years ago, when the Qing Dynasty's governor Zhang Zhidong was erected during the construction ceremony of the mine. It is to let the wind and rain of more than a hundred years erode into a pillar. In the past hundred years, our mine has experienced many ups and downs, how many disasters and disasters, who can remember it? This time is not short, comrades, four or five generations! For such a long time, we should always write down something, we should always learn something. If you really can't remember anything, you can't learn anything, you should always write down and learn the same thing, that is--"
The director waved his hands at the black sea of people.
"Heavens, can't fall!"
Liu Cixin, "Earth Fire"