1000xResist Review (Spoilers)
Hekki Grace
1000xResist starts with matricide. Afterwards, you go back to the start and are sent to see your sister Fixer off. Before doing so, Knower tells you “There is no feeling so strong it’s worth getting incinerated over” and you head on your way.
The main gameplay loop consists of you walking around, investigating your environment, and talking to the people you run into. The first chapter introduces you to a Communion, where you’re brought to a specific location and you flip through that location across different times. Sometimes its hours, days, or even years. Often, you’ll be looking for specific pieces of information, and once obtained, you can proceed further or solve a puzzle you previously couldn’t. The game is very narratively focused, so those expecting something more action focused might be better off elsewhere.
The first act of the game focuses on Watcher (the player character) learning more about the history of the Allmother during her time as a normal High School aged girl named Iris. Iris isn’t the most likable character. She’s short-tempered, rude to those kind to her, cold, closed off, and she’s moody even for a teenage girl. She’s the daughter of a mother and father who fled Hong Kong a little time after 2019. During the chapter set in the highschool, an affliction is spreading through the school mostly believed to be carried through water droplets secreting from those infected. While the initial chapter certainly points toward the game going in a specific direction, it uses those surface level expectations to aim a lot higher and hit harder.
For those who were/are unaware, there were a series of protests in 2019–2020 in opposition to an extradition bill introduced in Hong Kong which would allow for the extradition of criminal suspects from Hong Kong to mainland China. The bill effectively would extend China’s control over Hong Kong despite the “one country, two systems” arrangement following Hong Kong’s release from being a British controlled colony in 1997. Hong Kong has its own judiciary and legal system that is separate from that of mainland China, however those freedoms (known as the Basic Law) expire in 2047.
The year for the High School communion in 1000xResist is designated as 2047.
At this time, Iris and her family live in Canada. The second chapter focuses more on Iris’ home life, some of the stray memories we get of her mother meeting her father during a protest in 2019, her grandmother disowning her mother for never being able to “…know what your father and I sacrificed for you”, and glimpses at an unspecified illness afflicting Iris’ mother.
As the game goes on, it gets more and more dense. There’s clones, religious fervor, apocalyptical happenings, unethical practices in the name of “preservation”, hatred, regret, fear, and so much that going over it step by step would still feel like a disrespectful abridging of what happens. In short, the first act feels focused specifically on understanding. Understanding how things got to where they are, how they affected those involved, the scars formed from those events, and how those scars festered and led to emotions that even the person feeling them couldn’t understand.
After Chapter 5, the game shifts. The Orchard you spent the first half of the game in is now ran by The Provisional Government, and you start in a location known as “Old Town” which carries a visual presentation unmistakably influenced by Hong Kong. The “Reds” patrol the streets, keeping an eye on the new class of sisters know as “Shells” as they go about their restricted lives. Old knowledge that the sisters would pass along to one another in the previous chapters during the interims between communions are now outdated or seen as “antique” in comparison to how things now operate. “Hekki Grace” and “Hekki Almo” (which you can even pontificate the meanings of with fellow sisters during the first few chapters) have been pushed out and replaced with statements such as “Glory to the Provisional Government” as a sign of the changing times.
Sisters, you once had the chance to speak to as Watcher, have changed positions, roles, and names. A new class of clones have been made as an explicit servant class under the “Iris-types”, propagandist plays are on display to re-tell the events surrounding the Allmother’s death and fallout of Watcher’s actions, a religious sect believes in the Allmother’s eventual return, and the Orchard now has manned checkpoints restricting access to where sisters can go without proper credentials. All of this serves as the backdrop for the introduction of the new player character named Blue. The segment ends in an unavoidable act of rebellion against the provisional government.
The only word I can use to summarize Act 2 is “Change” and how that occurs over the course of time. Chapter 7 encapsulates this in a horrifically beautiful way. In a communion with Watcher, you’re restrained to her perspective over the course of seven years. Memories of Iris, her mother, and Watcher blend together as the world grinds to a halt in 2049, Principal’s truth and control over the Orchard spreads, and Iris’ own mental decay slowly unfolds. The chapter feels like you’re forced to watch as three separate worlds fall apart as you’re helpless to slowly witness it all at once. Time always marches forward, and we can’t choose when we get to exist.
No parent wishes for their child to grow up in a world with suffering. Many have fought for a world they want to proudly display for their children. Some believe that path to be possible with words, and others… through spilt blood. One person’s hero is another’s terrorist. History is a tale of conflicts both direct and indirect. The “victor” is the one who gets to tell the most a story of what happened. As long as time continues to march on, history will continue to be reshaped, changed, and adjusted to reflect whatever the “current era” is. Knower says “Someone will always get hurt. That is the reality” and she’s right. There can be no winner without someone else losing. But even some losing battles are still battles worth fighting. To show that there were those who resisted the history that was being established before their eyes.
The end of the game gives you a brief moment in time. A moment where everyone is together, sectioned off to have their own conversations, speak to those who they couldn’t, and just reflect. Some air their regrets, some don’t say anything, and others get to just crack jokes to finally relax. Iris gets one last conversation with her mother. She asks her how she was able to live her life despite all that happened to her, and the answer was to move forward. Wishing to cling on to too much, fix everything, make it perfect, and never letting anything go just weighs you down. We can only do so much, so we simply do what we can. Even if we’re tired, bitter, exhausted, or even in pain… we move forward. You can’t change the past, but you can still do what you can to make tomorrow better.
1000xResist carries so many different ideas, themes, and stories within itself. In essence, it’s very reflective of what it’s like to live through “interesting times” as you get to see that different times have different struggles. One thing is always the result of something else. The path to hell is paved with good intentions, but so is the future. Very few act with the belief of their actions being in the complete disservice of both themselves and others. As time continues, our pasts are perpetually re-written and re-examined to better fit the world we find ourselves in when we look back. Concepts like “right” and “wrong” are little more than a matter of both perspective and what is dictated by those with power. There will also be those who do what they can just to simply survive as time marches on and slowly erodes what they once knew as facts of life.
We choose what we get to carry. Our pasts, present, future, and very sense of self exists in relation to what we have. Things change, we change, history changes, and sometimes the only thing we can do is move forward. Life is hard, there’s no roadmap, and we have to figure everything out ourselves and with others. We all experience life together, even if where we start or end is different from one another, we are here, at the same time, together. Living is hard, but we can make it a bit easier if we have others we can be with. Be them friend, sister, mother, father, or even a nosey bartender. You are not alone, and you are not the only one burning up on the inside with the same feelings.
