Post Script
Why Norah’s quest isn’t quite the tale of empowerment it could have been [contains spoilers]
When we interviewed Call Of The Sea’s creative lead Tatiana Delgado back in E347, it became clear that while Norah isn’t exactly a self-insert, in many ways her journey mirrors the studio’s own. A small team of experienced developers keen to spread their wings, Out Of The Blue’s debut is, at least for a while, in lockstep with its protagonist’s story. Its early steps are a little tentative, but it gradually gains confidence as it progresses.
We learn plenty about Norah within the opening chapter. She’s a 40-something art teacher suffering from a mysterious malaise, though it doesn’t become apparent until later on that she feels stifled in other ways, too. As her voiceover makes plain, she feels liberated by her adventures: encouraged, perhaps, to make big changes for the first time. Though if her life evidently hasn’t been fulfilling her needs for some time, it’s equally clear that her affection for Harry remains. This isn’t as straightforward as a need to escape a loveless marriage; indeed, Harry’s own role here is crucial in helping her realise she might need to strike out alone.
It’s here that we must enter spoiler territory, because it transpires that Norah is no ordinary art teacher, and that the game’s title isn’t merely an encouragement to sail out to new horizons. Those nightmares weren’t actually nightmares at all: Norah really does belong beneath the waves, her hands becoming webbed, scaly flippers as she swims effortlessly without needing to surface for air. Those strange fish-like creatures on the murals she finds dotted around the island? Turns out she’s one of them. That Cthuvian language? She can speak it.
For a while, we’re not entirely sure what to think. Is her illness simply a reflection of the way she’s steadily dying inside, trapped in a cosy but boring life at home that prevents her from achieving her full potential, or realising her own dreams? Perhaps. But as we’ve established, Harry is a loving and supportive husband, so it’s not quite as simple as that. And a late-game revelation makes it clear that he’s actually been leading her on a paper trail the whole time. All those letters and suspiciously-unlocked lockboxes are there to guide her to a truth he’s already realised: there is no cure for her condition, and he knows what she has to do to be rid of it.
If this is a tale of self-actualisation, then, it falters when we realise Harry has effectively been pulling the strings to get Norah to this point. And her emancipation is also undermined slightly by the way the puzzles are constructed: her husband, after all, has done much of the working out already. True, Norah is still tasked with deciphering those strange glyphs, and cross-referencing environmental features with her own journal sketches. In that sense, then, solving these puzzles almost feels like a co-operative effort. Which, you could argue, works as a comment on their marriage: even apart, the couple are still working as a team.
That’s reflected in the final choice, where Norah is given the chance to stay with Harry until her illness claims her, or to, well, swim off into the sunset. Take that at face value, and it’s troubling: there is something slightly offensive about the notion that you can choose between living out the rest of your life with a degenerative disease, or else throw your lot in with the Great Old Ones and extend it (possibly indefinitely, it’s suggested) as a mercreature of sorts.
Yet maybe it’s simply that we’ve been deceived, and that the story Out Of The Blue really wanted to tell was one of a couple whose lives have started to head in different directions. Either way, as Cissy Jones and Yuri Lowenthal sing a duet over the credits, we realise we’ve grown rather fond of these two ‘dear old pals’. Despite its missteps, Call Of The Sea makes us care about them both, and that’s worth celebrating.
Q