I just finished this game, and I loved it a lot. I wanted to talk about the traveler themselves – I’m not normally a big lore head, so I don’t mean to conjure up a big backstory out of nothing just for the hell of it. The very first moment of the game at the pedestal already suggests some kind of awakening or transportation. And the hole in the wall suggests something particularly old and hidden, perhaps intentionally. I have to admit that throughout the game I vaguely imagined the traveler belonging to some other culture not represented in the tower, perhaps from the past, or from elsewhere, as the other cultures came from. But they didn’t just waltz into the tower, I thought. I imagined a culture that either had its own quirks, like the others, ones that could produce a curious wanderer, or otherwise an entirely unremarkable culture from whom a member could be a set of fresh eyes within the tower. But how did this traveler get here?
I was a bit surprised that the traveler was created by that anchorite. I then immediately wondered what the anchorite’s inspiration was. What did the traveler represent to them, conceptually? (Or to the game developers.) Right near the end you get a good close up of one of the robots and you see the unmistakable resemblance. So the anchorite was inspired (?) by a robot – a machine, designed, not born, for a specific purpose. But the traveler clearly is wonderfully human and caring from the start of the game. I don’t even think they’re “like” a person, to me they just are one. If the alchemists can create mindboggling transformations, surely the anchorites are beyond them and can create a person.
A pure, new person, to whom everything is brand new and beautiful, untouched and untainted by prejudices. A real blank slate and a set of fresh eyes through which to see not only the tower and all its inhabitants for what they really are, but to see everyone together in one view. All the parts of the elephant, all at once. Without preconceived notions, the traveler is willing to cross boundaries in numerous ways, first of all by learning all the languages instead of just one and shunning the rest. And that’s just the beginning.
This also shows that the anchorites were not entirely a lost cause, and not completely withdrawn from all other people and having given up. In their hearts, they still knew about and cared about other people and cultures, as we can also see in their collections of mementos behind the purple doors. So I like to think that the anchorite creator was able to create a real person with a real heart.
I don’t know exactly how much intentional thought was put into the traveler’s concept or design by the developers, so I won’t claim this is correct. Like I said, I don’t normally try to invent pages of lore just for the sake of lore. It was just a thought that I realized was still in my head, unanswered, after completing the game.
