… The virtual camera was floating across the desolate city, showing the perspective of wrecked buildings, vanquished shops and others marks of destruction left after the apocalypse. It was all empty and deserted… except for a two grim silhouettes, who were walking at the dawn. One of them was a small boy presumably of the age of 15, dressed in a torn, dirty clothes and strange green necklace. His face was hidden under the baseball cap, so the viewer couldn’t see it. The boy wasn’t alone: there was a weird dragon-like creature with him. In this world (or at least from what has remained from it) it was known as “Pokémon”.  

It wasn’t clear how long these two survivors were walking together, as there wasn’t any need in time anymore, but finally the weird creature started to slowly loose its balance.

-             Aran… - the creature finally spoke – sorry, I can’t get up… will you give me a hand?

…The boy was feeding weird thing with hot soup in some kind of nearby building (or at least what was left from it), while the creature itself was lying in the bed, unable to get up.

-             Mmm, this is great, thanks… Haha. I can’t even tell how hot is it anymore.

 The dragon heavy handedly took the bowl of soup in his scruffy paws and then added:

-             You should get some food yourself. You have not ate at all, are you?

…Red moon was lit the city landscape, where the boy was sitting on his knees and holding in the hands his dying companion.

-             It’s a bit chilly, but I feel better now…

The life was slowly fading for a little dragon, so it was harder and harder for him to talk.

-             The stars… they’re so beautiful… why I never noticed this before…

Creature paused and then continued:

-             Aran. Listen to me. I don’t think… I can go on. I’ve held on this long, but… This is a fight I can’t win. I’m sorry, but… I think it’s time for me to go. I thought we could finally live together in peace… But it looks like… I’m out of time. You should return… to the worlds of humans.

The face of the youth was still hidden, but it was clearly seen that there were tears dropping off his face on dragon’s scale.

-             Don’t cry for me, Aran. I’m sorry… I’m sorry for breaking my promise, for leaving you on your own. No need to bury me… I don’t want you to that.

-             …

-             I’m… I’m getting sleepy… Goodbye… Aran…

Suddenly the kid touched the green necklace and it started to glow with emerald light.

The dying dragon used the last of his strength to rattle his last words:

-             No… don’t… DON’T!!!

…

“Will you sacrifice yourself to save Zekrom?    Yes; >>>No”

 …

Each time I’m relaunching a save file to watch this cut scene again and again and each time it’s so hard to decide the answer. Why it ends like this, and why I can’t change anything? No matter how hard I try to replay this game, no matter how hard I’m trying to save this none-existent world, the choice is always the same. Although, why am I bothering with this at all? Like my life depends from it? It’s just a game after all. Just a game…

….

The Nintendo Switch’s portable display stared at me as if it was alive.

Sometimes I was really curious when either the characters on the other side of the screen were actually existent, had their own thoughts and wishes, ambitions, feelings, could love and suffer. As if in our relationship they weren’t just a bunch of pixels and polygons – it was me, a lifeless piece of some kind of broken program code that was consisted solely from “zeros” and “ones”. There is truth in that, probably because computer games were providing 90% of my communication with the “outside” world last years. Adventure games, Western or Japanese role-playing games, third or first person quests, interactive fiction, visual novels, rarely shooters.

I wonder why do I care about them so much. I mean, people in the computer games are do not exist! They are all simply creations of a sick imagination, an error in the source code or a kernel bug, which started to living life on its own!

….

If one looked at my existence from the side, I’m sure such thoughts would seem as totally insane, and psychologist would surely give me a bunch of sophisticated diagnoses and maybe write me a doctor’s referral to an asylum. It should have, that’s for sure. There is no explanation could be found in the world, why a young and wealth man in his twenties would waste his life on something like this. I’m sure that any normal person on my place would prefer to live in real life instead of virtual – there was so many perspectives would open for them – loving family, faithful friends, successful job, and probably cars, women and money. Unfortunately, aside from family, it all hardly was bothering me. The reason why I like to play games with tens different endings that require over a hundred hours of average playtime to see – that’s just the way of making me feel like I could be something special, which is exactly what I will never have.

Like, for example, I could be a superhero and make other people happy. Each time I jumped into new game with anticipation that just in a couple of weeks or months I’m going to make another world a little (or a lot) better, and each time I completed a new game I lovely was adding to my geeky collection of games with the warm feeling of satisfaction. Every time… except for now.  

And the problem wasn’t even that I didn’t had an access to my collection of games, thanks to the fact that I was abroad on a “Super-Mega-Vip-Elite” cruise ship, but that I had absolutely no wish to do that.

“I wonder what the story writers were thinking to insert such ending for a game for kids. Probably one of them really felt that this would be the most emotionally impactful ending that fit into some kind of hero’s journey narrative. They probably went with it even without thinking if it would traumatize children, just to be true to the “story”. What a bunch of bullshit! Although, now that I think about it, why include story mode into the game in the first place? Maybe they realized that young players will screw it up and created this as an easy way to replay the content and un-screw themselves!?”

I turned off the console and raised from the bed. I was in a small cabin with one bed only. Besides it, it also had a small table with a travel book, a cabinet for luggage and a toilet with sink. Almost like a jail cell. That wasn’t the most comfortable cabin for a VIP cruise ship, because who cares about curriers, but I guess I don’t really mind. Odd, how the daylight from the illuminator just makes it gloomier.

I rose myself from the bed to look on my reflection in the mirror. Fun fact: the “furry”, hikimori and gamer, who stared at me back in the mirror and looked like he jumped out from shounen anime himself (except he didn’t have a big sword nor the muscles to carry it) was actually going to become hippie in near future.

-          Yeah, I’m still looking wonderful. Although… I suppose that’s not for long. I’m yet to grow long hair, bristle, and – who knows – maybe to start making a holes in my belt. 

But the choice has been made. I had no regrets.

“I wonder why the story writers made the ending like this.” – I came back to my concern yet again after a while.

“Maybe they wanted to comment death’s inevitability? Or test the “power of friendship”? Well, maybe. I guess they just wanted to make ending that will stick with players for a long while that way.  And yet… that doesn’t feel satisfying.”

The global European release for the game was delaying, and now it was really clear why. Nintendo has a very strict policy about games who might potentially traumatize its younger audience (That was the reason why “Mother 3” took so long to get European release), so I suppose that was the mine reason for this game’s delay. If “Mother 3” only had a sad ending, then this game not only have a sad ending, but also force the player to choose between two equally lovable characters. The scriptwriters just gone crazy! And all this stuff was in Pokémon. Pokemon! The game series where the story was always taking a backseat for a grinding!

“Now that I thinking about it, maybe there is a way to save them both? Maybe I was just not good enough in game? Or… maybe after I will make either of choices, everything will magically turn out to be alright? No, unlikely”.

The frustration of an ending was still aching in my heart, but I was perfectly aware that there is nothing I could in this situation. Finally, I grabbed some of my possessions and decided to go to the deck.

I opened the door to my cabin, walked up through the dark hallway, as everyone of passengers were still sleeping in their rooms, and rise up through the wooden stair case. Finally, I could see a glimpse of sunrise through one of the doors, so I walked toward it and opened.

I felt the flux of cold air.

-         Whoa… now that’s feels good.

Eventually all of my false frustrations left me, and I was anticipatingly glancing on the sunrise in front of me. The sound of the sea could be heard nearby.

“That’s alright, very soon I will forget everything. There, I will get rid of all my problems. There, I will forget about games. There, I will start all over again”.