In The Swapper the Watchers Pay Attention from the Beginning to the End

The Swapper:

What follows is the final of three articles on The Swapper. Part 1 and Part 2 are available at the proper links.

The Watchers are ancient, wise, sentient rocks, native to the planet of Chori V. When the scientists aboard Theseus Station visited the planet they orbited, they discovered unique rocks which they brought aboard. Later the scientists realized the rocks were sentient and called them Watchers, out of a sense of anxiety. Unmoving, unable to speak, but communicating in a unexplained manner, data logs across Theseus station explain how the scientists were able to create the swapper gun by studying their method of communication (though the details are unexplained, and even the scientists admit they don't understand how the gun functions). Yet, without producing any evidence, the Triumvirate (Scavenger, Dennet, Chalmers) declares the Watchers responsible for the death of everyone on the station. How they murdered all the scientists, she never explains. She hypothesizes a motive; the Watchers felt threatened when they were removed from their planet to Theseus, and fought back. She proposes to return them to the surface of Chori V, and the player spends the latter half of the game dedicated to this goal.
Though The Swapper never clarifies how, the Watchers communicate with the player whenever he is within their vicinity. Passing nearby activates their telepathy, and thoughts of a Watcher appear, while also ominously blurring the entire screen. Based on the confidence with which the Watchers issue their proclamations about the universe, one might expect them to be in agreement. Yet, they are not united. For instance, one Watcher declares, “Mind is only a brain, no such thing as swapper”, while another replies, “Don't listen, mind is not only a brain.” But they are in agreement that humanity (the protagonists, the scientists) have separated themselves from a fundamental, universal connection. Based on their cryptic proclamations, it's possible they are referring to a universal consciousness, the ability to experience all time as one, or a deep understanding of what it means to be a self. Though the data logs of the scientists of the Theseus, and conversations with the Triumvirate, imply an understanding of the Watchers, their explanations only illustrate how oblivious they are. The Triumvirate show the protagonist their most unnerving discovery, a giant Watcher formed in the shape of a human head, like the Moai of Easter Island. She believes it is the leader of the Watchers, a conduit for their collective consciousness. But the head's creation, ultimate purpose, function, and innateness are undecipherable by the player.
At last we arrive at the ending, and the beginning.

In the original article I stressed my confusion over the identity of the protagonist. The beginning of the game had faded from memory as the protagonist worked themselves deeper into the maze. But after reviewing the beginning on YouTube, it seems someone forced the protagonist into an escape pod aboard Theseus Station, and the escape pod crashed on Chori V. Yet, there is strong circumstantial evidence to believe the protagonist was not a member of the crew (doesn't have knowledge of the Event), nor was the protagonist sent to rescue the station (a rescue crew arrives to rescue him). One possible theory, the Scavenger (or the Triumvirate) created clones, sent them to the planet, and the protagonist is one of these. But this generates unanswered questions: How did he gain consciousness (Mind, Self-hood), when all clones created by the player are mindless husks? Perhaps this theory isn't even the best answer, but it's the one I offer here.

While the beginning is an interesting conundrum, the ending is a hurried, semi-predetermined ending with a pointless binary choice. A rescue party, hailed by the Scavenger, arrives to retrieve the protagonist. They dispatch a member of the crew, and meet the meet the protagonist while separated by a deep chasm. Facing each other across twenty feet of empty space, the rescuer scans the protagonist, and transmits the data to the ship's computer. It analyzes the data and reports of the player's contamination. Unfortunately, the rescue ship doesn't have the facilities to decontaminate the player, and they leave. The Swapper doesn't explain what has contaminated the protagonist. Even more disturbing, the rescuers, who traveled a vast distance to Theseus Station, can't even bother to try to devise a solution. They might as well have said, “Hey, I know we spent weeks in transit to rescue you, but we aren't willing to spend five minutes evaluating your situation.”

As the rescuer recedes back to his ship, The Swapper presents the player two choices. The protagonist can use the swapper gun to transfer their mind into the crew member's body or dive to certain death in the chasm. Neither solution is particularly satisfying. While both have some tenuous philosophical relationship to the positions outlined last week, neither are connected to any choice or action the protagonist took earlier. Even worse, they are without consequence. Once the choice has been made there is no more gameplay, just a minute or two of conclusion. Nor does either ending offer any sufficient answers, though dying in the chasm seems more philosophically coherent, with unseen Watcher's narrating and debating the player's choice. Though both endings are frustrating in their sparseness, the writer seems to subtly undercut either decision, with the resulting dialogue rendering the player's choice untenable. A minor aside, in attempting to experience both endings for this article, I encountered an infuriating development choice. Though neither ending are based on prior choice, and both are without consequence, a player cannot reload their save to access the other ending. Reloading the save immediately sends the player to the credits.

Briefly, it seems as if choosing death implies the player believes in dualism, that they will die to retain their identity, their oneness, still in control of one's mind, and free to decide their own fate. But swapping into the rescuers body demands a belief that nothing is worse than death, a complete annihilation of the self. Perhaps it is inappropriate to read too much into the end, as the conclusion is truncated and without proper resolution. It's likely a player could invest more energy in examining it than the writers devoted to composing it.
In conclusion, The Swapper has too many loose ends, too many unexplained occurrences, too many rules it creates and then breaks, and offers no reasonable conclusion. It almost seems in its effort to remain impartial on the issue of Dualism vs Monism, it is willing to let the structure of the story disintegrate. Yet The Swapper is an intricate problem, and while the player is engage by the mysterious, thrilling aesthetic, and the inspiring puzzles, these missteps can be overlooked.

To wrap up this review of The Swapper, it seems proper to employ a quote of a Watcher. It says, “Does it understand yet?” and the answer both from another Watcher and myself is, “Certainly not.” But that doesn't mean it's unenjoyable.



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