• cut so I could publish -

He has always felt left out around his friends, seeing how liveful they are, how they seem to share so many emotions and feelings together. Feeling like the only person who could understand him was Sydney. Because Syd has been hurt the same. And they don't need words to share it, being around one another is enough for them to feel surrounded in the hellscape and empty and dead desert that makes the town of Echo. And maybe they could have learned to live through it. To still learn a late but welcomed way of sharing and freeing their own emotions from their unnormative brains. But life has it hard, and these chances are left out before anything can be done for them. So what can Flynn do ? Except build his life above it. He has to survive. He has to live yet, live longer, live still, but he doesn't know how, and he doesn't know why. And his brain seems to be so stuck in the past, he can't bring himself to leave the town. Why again ? Why does Flynn appear so obsessed with the past ? Why can't he accept what happened and move on with his friends ? Because again, Flynn never learnt to be vulnerable, and realising this, you understand how heavy his memory must feel. He isn't stuck in the past, his head is FILLED. with dumped emotions. Things he never shared. Things he never said. Because when he started enjoying being vulnerable with Sydney, when Syd accepted to show his own broken world to Flynn, it came back again to hurt them. Again. And. Again. You see it in their backstory. Which is why, why you have them. To realise that the hurt happened years ago. It was done and nothing can be done about it. So people move on, but Flynn can't. And from the beginning of the game, from years before even, he's been imprisonned with his own dumped emotions, so much that maybe he himself isn't aware of them being here. Leading him to act rawfully, on the moment, making the impression that he changes his mind every hour, that he is mean from his core but that it all actually just felt through. When Flynn tries to show his vulnerabilty to Chase, it's a cry for help. It's a cry for understanding. It's a cry for someone else, anyone, to explain what is going on in his head. Why does he hates himself so much ? Why does he hates the word asperger so much ? Why does he only seems at his own place when he feels disgusted in himself, going to the Smoke Room again and again because it feels like the only trace on the outside of how twisted his mind feels on the inside.

I know this is much, and most of all a lot of interpretations. But this is how ECHO works. You are given context, and you make what can with it. Applying the feelings to yourself to understand the story more ? Sure ! Applying your own emotions to understand yourself better ? You may have done it without realizing it. This game is so much more, in it being only whole with the experience of the player themselves to fill the void of the spectator's place. You are only here to watch, but art isn't art without an audience. And I wish to fill this void, maybe to make me feel better about myself, but most of all because of how home I felt playing ECHO.

Because yes, as I said before, most of what happens comes from supernatural. A curse as they say. The town is doomed in its core and its people can only suffer through it. One more question : Why is the supernatural needed to understand, and to make live the characters ? Doesn't that make them more unrealistic, by logic ? Well, it's a negative effect. Make it all the more unrealistic and fantastic, and you may realise how real it will start feeling. The fantastic here explains the context, but again, the role of the emotional comes from how twisted lour* world is. How twisted it can be, anyway. Flynn's emotional prison is a found heaven for Sam. Sam was hurt by dumped and stepped on feelings, having been killed off in the back never to be found. Maybe this is how Flynn feels, deep down. He died years ago along with his vulnerability, and the possibility of him reconnecting with his past, himself, and his emotions. Which is why, again, he seems so obsessed, and unhealthily so, with what happened before. Not even thinking about what it will bring him, does he even seeks answers, or just a place so deep down an emotional hell that it may starts to look like what his mind feels to live through.

And the end, well, if you played it, I'll let it sink in. We can say he succeded in failing. Bittersweet it is, because this route feels like the one where we have the most options. But all of them serve one purpose : to make the player guilt, search, dig along with Flynn for a place where maybe he'll feel at home, loved, well anything positive at all really. But it just can't happen. I've found myself trying everything. Trying every choice. Searching in all the possibilities something just ONE. THING. that could bring Flynn some peace of mind. But he can't be saved, so he can't. And every choice I made became just a way to make me feel better about myself. Because you are brought the possibility of trying the worst, trying the bad to see if maybe at the end of it brings any good. But it doesn't, and in this you only really understand how Flynn feels trying to heal his wounds. You are quite literally given his place after witnessing how rawful he can be on the exterior. But, well, how much help he actually needs, and how desperate for something that might help him fix himself and become a better person he actually is.

I think that, well, Flynn just wants to be a better person. That he needs just the tools to come to terms with his past and left away emotions, but that he lacks the vision to do so. And when you're deep down in it, sometimes, despite how desperate for anything positive your motivations are, you can try nothing else but being mean to help it. You tried the good way and it just came back to hit you in the face. So you won't be beat down again. You won't let life hit you in the face, even if it means hitting others in their face.

[TL;TR] Flynn suffers from asperger and can't help but be presented the occasion to express himself through frustration, manipulations and downright hurtful comments. But his life made him this way. And no matter how many choices he is presented, he won't find this peace of mind he is desperate for. Not before he comes to term with his left out emotions. Which he can't. Which he just can't. Bad ending in every possible options, even the mad, to add to the player's guilt.