The moral of the story (spoilers)

[Roddy]

Massive creds for having a actual philosophical-theme in your story, I'm not sure if that's EVER been done in a video-game before.

In really good movies the entire story is often written simply to demonstrate a "moral of the story", for example the team who got together to eventually write Lion King first decided on what part of childhood they wanted to give a life-lesson about BEFORE they even decided the story had anything to do with lions!
they first wrote the life-lesson (which IMO is "Hakuna matata, how sometimes when you have a painful experience while growing up the best you can do is to put it behind you and enjoy life like it never happened, yet when you've finally grown up then you must gather courage to deal with it.") and then they tried to come up with the best setting, characters and plot to convey that life-lesson,

when you hear hollywood-stories like that you truely realize why video-games stories comes out flat, that sort of depth is just not of interest to the project lead in most game-project. (shit I worked on a AAA-game where they hired a outsource writer to write a first draft AFTER we finished making all the levels!!)

I'm not entirely sure I understood what your exact message was with the game, as the dialogue towards the ending confused me a bit, but in any way it felt like the story was crafted around a philosophical-topic, that it wasn't just "ok let's begin, I need a cool character, ok now I need a cool inciting incident, ok now I need a good twist and a cool ending" but it was more like "what scenario of any universe could really put this philosophy of human behavior to the test?". 


So I really liked the fact that it explored a subject, altho again I didn't quite understand what your exact meaning was, where you trying to say that it's not JUST life-experience (or in this case implanted memories) that shape your future as a good person will always try to make good-ish deeds out of it (which he did upon escaping the boyakata) in other words that ppl can't fully blame a f'ed up childhood on their evil deeds.

or am I completely projecting way too much thought into this? was the memory-theme there just so you could spin a cheap twist at the ending?

[saikofish]

I think there's a lot of messages to be gleaned from the story, and any good story will leave some of that up to the audience. There's never just "one" definite meaning.

The game explored a number of different ideas about memory and identity and didn't necessarily try to make a single claim about anything. One theme that did seem to recur was the notion that *regardless* of someone's past, what really mattered is who a person is at the *moment.* At least, Sayuri strongly believed that.

For Azriel, it's not entirely clear whether he is a "good person" because he just is, or it's based on experience,or it was implanted. However, it did seem to show that whoever he became during the game became so ingrained within him that a memory wipe couldn't erase his instincts.

As for Balder, did he have a f'ed up childhood? Is he just a bad person at heart? Is he really just bad, or making the most for himself in a bad situation? Who knows?

[TheJBurger]

A core idea of the story is free will versus determinism - do I have a choice in who I am, how I can react to life situations and develop as a person, or is this all pre-programmed into me by some higher (benevolent?) being? Sayuri is the one who is fighting this as much as Azriel, because she still feels guilty in leaving Delta-Six behind, yet Azriel is helpless to follow a specific route based on his past guilt and remorse regarding his lost brother.

However, I don't think it would be remiss to say that there is no definite answer at the end. Even though your life is shaped by your past, it cannot be the sole dictator of your actions, otherwise you yourself are almost the instigator of your own determinism.

But anyway, it's up to interpretation. And that's enough philosophy for now. 

[Nathan Allen Pinar]

"However, it did seem to show that whoever he became during the game became so ingrained within him that a memory wipe couldn't erase his instincts."

This is where Gemini Rue resembles Dollhouse for me.

[Roddy]

Thanks for the answers guys

A core idea of the story is free will versus determinism

Thanks, that's exactly what I thought, and my point is most stories don't have a "core idea", they simply have "hey I know, let's make LeChuck kidnap Elain again and then in order to get her back you now have to collect... etc".
I'm not even necessary saying that I agree with some of your thought in the subject (based on what I'm guessing they are from the game) I just like it that there's a "core idea" to begin with!

However, I don't think it would be remiss to say that there is no definite answer at the end.

Gotcha, that's why I was confused with the dialogue towards the ending, I was expecting there to be more of a "your personal argument on the subject" but I can respect that that's not what you were trying to achieve here,

I disagree with saikofish that:

any good story will leave some of that up to the audience. There's never just "one" definite meaning.

as I don't think that's the case of ANY good story, many of the best stories has a one definite meaning, but there are different kinds of stories and yes many good/great ones also wants to only portray a "core idea" rather than the writers exact opinions on a subject.