‘Afterlove EP’ and the Agony of Non-Linear Healing
“Remembering the past always makes us think about the future.” – Cinta, Afterlove EP
I am lucky enough that, this year, my friends at Epilogue have given me space to discuss intensely personal subject matter at length in discussions of games like Omori and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. These articles helped me process deep layers of grief, albeit both in somewhat metaphorical presentations. A game in which I did not expect to see my inner sadness reflected back at me was Fellow Traveller’s Afterlove EP, a posthumously published story directed by Mohammed Fahmi, of Coffee Talk fame. The beauty in this story cements Fahmi’s legacy as a nuanced and heartfelt writer who could only see others empathetically, instead of the instrumental ways the world teaches us to ladder-climb. Though critics have concurred that Afterlove EP is a deeply flawed or even “confused” game, I found it to be one of the most beautiful explorations of post-relationship grief I have seen a video game directly tackle.
Like Florence, a wordless story that serves as one of my linchpins when discussing how games uniquely enable storytelling to evolve from traditional media, I credit Afterlove EP with wasting no time establishing a non-verbal language with which the immediate stakes of the story are set: you were happily in love with an archetypally perfect doting girlfriend, Cinta, who suddenly dies of a respiratory illness as your protagonist whittles away, distracted, at his guitar with his headphones in. Rama, your string-plucking protagonist, is never able to let go of the guilt of missing Cinta’s final call, her final texts, her final breaths – he became stuck in that moment, in the past, before she was gone – and there he stays, paralyzed in between the past and present, for the next year.
The game begins, properly speaking, once Rama’s gap year, for lack of a better term, has elapsed. One day, he awakes, inspired to write music and get the gang back together, as it were. When your character emerges from his musty one-bedroom flat, the world seems to have largely moved on without him. Sure, the town’s main haunts, like the record store, cafe, and music venue, seem to have remained intact; but your level of discomfort with these surroundings bleeds through memories that refuse to be buried, eleven of which the game ties achievements to, as you pursue closure with Cinta.
Afterlove EP players will have to immediately and permanently accept that your protagonist quite literally hears Cinta’s voice in his head, still, a year after her death. The game swipes like a cat, lazily, at a string, suggesting that these discussions with Cinta are somehow productive or even healing for Rama. In the beginning of the narrative, once the player gains control, Cinta’s remaining presence is framed as a supportive companion; she provides input on difficult choices and conversational intersections that Rama is presented with, and since she speaks with the confidence of a wizened diplomat, I tended to listen without a second thought.
Rather soon into Afterlove EP’s narrative begins, however, I noticed that the Cinta in my character’s head was not altogether acting in ways that kept my still-living Rama’s best interests in mind. In other words, Cinta’s advice felt slightly suspicious and I kept her at arm’s length for a duration of my playthrough. Obviously, the delusion of the protagonist is remaining enraptured in the existence of someone who has physically passed on, but in the world of video games, I, too, wish to fantasize that fate isn’t so final.
A strange caveat, for me at least, is Afterlove EP’s relationship with therapy. Though the game explicitly pains itself to mention how therapy isn’t a panacea, the narrative seems contradictory with itself in how Rama’s time with Dr. Santi, the therapist, helps him organize everything in a linear way. This problem of linearity, for me, ties to how experts in grief – whatever that means – refrain to the phrase, “grief isn’t linear,” citing how we all grieve at our own pace. What is omitted from this phrasing, in my view, is my experience of grief, which I have written ad nauseum about this year: the Big BreakupTM. My grief ripped me apart, somewhere generously around zero, if not in the negatives; through an immense amount of work, I’ve accrued about twelve charisma points back; recently, I feel like I have reversed about eight of those points. And there is no amount of accepting “grief is non-linear” that makes that regression feel any better; sometimes it just sucks.
While I completely understand the sympathy pouring from people who parrot the pith of grief’s nature, I can’t help but question what sort of losses they themselves have endured and why it is so hard for them to pause and give space to others whose grief might not be so linear. For me, at least, when I was going through the depth of my grief, caring for myself in basic ways was an afterthought – in the relationship, eating and showering was automatic, but not so in the wake of losing someone precious. In one of Afterlove EP’s achievement-related memories, for instance, called “Outfit of the Day,” Rama discusses how his fashion sense has declined since Cinta’s death. I think I can relate to that in the sense that when I was still with my ex-partner, I cared more about how I presented myself than I do now that I’m single again. That attentiveness disappears in some places when you are absent of the person that inspired you to care about yourself in the first place.
There are some cultural works that I now avoid, post-breakup, whether that be Disney films, Taylor Swift’s music, or even a few local businesses and restaurants. I wouldn’t argue that it’s necessarily healthy to avoid them, but when I encounter them, they still bring me pain. In Afterlove EP, I went on a date with Mira, the bookworm poet, and she suggested we visit Yoichi ramen – Cinta’s favorite place. There is quite literally a ramen place nearby that my ex and I used to frequent that I now avoid even though it has the best yakisoba in town, so I understand Rama’s distraction and malaise when, despite his happiness to be going on a date, he is pulled backwards into the past in a nostalgic and ultimately depressing fashion. Mira even distinctly praises the same aspects of this ramen joint that Cinta used to, and in Rama’s head, that’s repeatedly confirmed. I would get lost in thought, too, if I took a new prospective partner to “our” old place.
When you start to try and love again, you begin to see new parallels between your now-ex and the new prospective partner you’re pursuing, and it’s almost impossible to completely separate them. But as Afterlove EP prods and suggests, it’s crucial as a person to keep going, persist, and preserve your embodiment of every angle that comprises who you are – and even reclaim things that were foundational to your relationship – like in my case, going to Target together all the time, or driving out to a nearby national park just to watch the river erupt around the boulders within it.
Afterlove EP is additionally an exploration of the idea that you can believe what you want to believe. As Cinta used to say about Rama when he wasn’t around, he was off in his own world – our protagonist is repeatedly accused of believing what he “wants” to remember. This confirmation bias reflects some lingering grief I contain where I feel like I remember things differently – or I must have – because the way things fell apart and consequently died off so suddenly and without adequate explanation felt (and feels) completely antithetical to my experience of the relationship. So in that way, when Rama loses Cinta, keeps her alive in his head, and then gets upset with his remaining social circle for getting frustrated with him when he distractedly talks to her and makes everything related back to his grief – I understand that. Believe me, I’m beyond ready to cease writing about my own grief – it’s just that, as I’ve previously stated, writing from an impersonal standpoint feels insincere, and I want to keep being honest and transparent with the articles I publish because that’s important to me.
What separates me from Rama, at least, is that I was completely in love but my ex-partner was not anymore. In his case, the separation was involuntary and a complete accidental tragedy. I was ready to plan a future together with my ex-partner, meanwhile she was planning her flight back home to Florida. In the same way, I was prepared to remain friends after the separation, while she has now deleted me off all relevant social media. Cinta remains in Rama’s head relentlessly throughout the story and, despite her manipulative and limiting flaws, acts as a guiding figure for someone who desperately needs reassurance. While I struggle with accepting how things went wrong so dramatically in my past relationship, Rama struggles with accepting how he can be a person again without the love of his life – and though those struggles are distinctly different, I feel they unite us, and that feeling brought me closer to Rama during my playthrough.
As strange as it is, decoupling yourself mentally from a relationship is a slow and methodical exercise. As in, when I first went on a date, post-breakup, I didn’t immediately know what to feel about the experience, or what to take away from it without doubting myself. With Rama, one night, he returns home from a date where Cinta asks him if he remembers the time they went to get ramen after a torrential thunderstorm. In Rama’s head, they end up disagreeing on what actually happened: Cinta wanted to try something new, but Rama said she should stick to her usual. In Rama’s account, he got the Shoyu ramen and let her eat off of it because she disliked her Tonkotsu. These discrepancies are the focus of why I think my own relationship didn’t work out, and why I focus so much on trying to learn lessons from that experience: “Why don’t you remember it the way it happened?” she asks.
Another brilliant line which fits here, “Just because something’s in your mind, it doesn’t mean it’s correct, y’know?” And guess who said that? Also Cinta.
When I think about the epigraph I began this article with, about the relationship between the past and the future, I think of my past relationship – the life I intended to build. Cinta doesn’t want to articulate what she wished for. Before my own now-former relationship, I would never do silly things like wish on a dandelion or an eyelash or even at 11:11, but with her, I did embrace that wistfulness. That’s the attitude Cinta brought into Rama’s life in Afterlove EP, and in my experience, my actions were never cynical or ironic. I would participate because, what the hell, what’s the harm, and if you watch Rama’s character develop in Afterlove EP, you will notice that pattern of cloistered behavior evolves into whimsicality. And we see that correspondingly improve his life.
But then Cinta says, when pressed, that “wishes” are for the future. Rama feels crestfallen and even embarrassed by this because he wanted to help her wish come true – and that’s how I feel in my own vain yearning to repair things or seek closure with my previous relationship. What I “wish” now is different from what I wished for back then, obviously, and the same is true for Rama. He is a different person, post-Cinta, and that’s one of the primary reasons this game broke my heart.
Sure, there’s nitpicky aspects of Afterlove EP to be critiqued: the game is a little wonky, perhaps. I’m not going to pretend like the music-related input prompts sync up with the songs whatsoever; in fact, I was astonished that I earned the “perfect”-related achievements for them. As a lifelong Guitar Hero fan, I don’t have anything complimentary to say about these sections mechanically, though I genuinely love the music and aesthetic presentation. They’re fun, even if they could use some extra, let’s say, polish.
As with many Fellow Traveller games, there are some strange and sometimes inconsistent writing or translation errors, basic issues with editing that distract from the heartfelt writing that the game succeeds at. But the mistaken punctuation or awkward phrasings don’t fundamentally diminish what the game is trying to accomplish, and that’s – despite the issues – a wonderful success, and one of the reasons I’d say Afterlove EP is easily one of my favorite games of this year.
Uncharacteristically, I would like to conclude this article with a grab-bag smattering of thoughts, because many of the compelling feelings that remain about Afterlove EP aren’t properly their own topics – and you’ll see why.
There is a lovely but restrictive romance system in the game, where, like the Persona games’ idea of “social links,” you can choose to spend time with individual characters and, if you choose the right dialogue option, eventually end up with them. This, for me, was a highlight of the game, but also a little puzzling. Whereas, in Persona 5 Royal, I can romance everyone and maybe reap the consequences, I am limited in Afterlove EP. And though the romance options are compelling, I was immediately drawn to Mira and only considered Satria as a fun second-playthrough option.
Building a life with someone, only to have it ripped away unexpectedly or suddenly, takes time to process, to say the least. Another way I related to this game is that, for Rama, that time was at least a full year. For me, I have to continually remind myself that it’s been six to eight months, depending on the timeline – and though I did not experience a death, I think it’s okay to still feel sad and lonely about my loss when those feelings resurface.
I love games that are about bands. I have embedded nostalgia from the multifaceted nature of being in one – the writing, the recording, the marketing, the merch, etc. – from the feeling of family to the more business and numbers aspect of music, nothing I’ve done before or since has been as intense and impactful – hell, life-defining – as being in a band. So seeing games that touch on those themes like Night in the Woods, Goodbye Volcano High, and in this case, Afterlove EP, truly rules. These are games that allow you to pursue the energy of being in a band, including the social dynamics of it all, but without the work.
By the end of my playthrough, we put on a kick-ass performance. That is, “we” being Siegmund Feud, the band in Afterlove EP – and because of my decisions, the band decided to stay together. I kept dating Mira and went on a cute outing as a finale. And I had one final “letting go” conversation with Cinta: about how I don’t “need her” anymore, about how much I’ve changed in a month through therapy, my new relationship, my rekindled relationship with the band, and so forth.
Moving on, as the game argues, is “somatic.” The game’s therapist discusses how you experience grief through your body, not just your thoughts or your mind – and that’s something I’ve learned to be true this year. I, personally, cannot fill the physical lack of a romantic partnership on my own – but I can surely ask my friends and family for hugs, I can ask for physical touch – and in the other ways that matter as a perceived lack, I hope I see myself in Cinta’s final discussion with Rama.
I hope I have learned meaningful techniques through weekly therapy this year. I hope I have developed new relationships that will last into the future and in some cases, perhaps develop romantically in ways I don’t currently anticipate. I hope I rediscover my passion for writing music, and my collaborative spirit for performing live shows with bandmates. These things and more are what Afterlove EP reminded me of at its core, and again, these reasons make me feel like this game is truly special – warts and all.
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