Lore'd to Death
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Lore'd to Death
You should play "Laika: Aged Through Blood"
This week we take a bit of a detour from the usual formula to talk about a game that I played recently that had a profound impact on me. It's one of the best games I've played in recent memory, and the best Metroidvania that's been released in quite some time.
Shoutout to Iron Pineapple on Youtube who I heard about this game through. Please go check out their content if you like the Soulsborne games.
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Hey there, welcome to the Lore’d to Death podcast– a deep dive into the lore of your favourite games, movies, shows, and more! My name is Brett, and today I want to actually take a break from the typical lore episode and talk about a game that I played recently. And, yes, I do realise that I’ve technically taken a break from the format for the last couple episodes talking about Elden Ring, but get off my back. And, honestly, I was having trouble trying to write an episode because all that’s on my mind are Elden Ring, Dune, and Laika: Aged Through Blood. So that’s what I want to talk about– Laika.
But, why do I want to talk about it? Because it’s one of the most profound experiences I’ve had with a game in quite some time, and it’s the best Metroidvania that I’ve played since Blasphemous (and between you and me, I actually like Laika more. Blasphemous, right?). Currently, it has just over 3,000 reviews on Steam, most of which are positive, after almost one year of being released. That’s not a small number by any means, but I think that this game deserves more attention. And if I can convince one of you to play this game then I feel like I’ve done my job.
I’m going to split this up into two portions. The first is going to be a review of the game, an overview of the gameplay and story and be spoiler-free. Anything that I talk about is going to be seen in the trailers and screenshots on the Steam page so I urge you to take a moment to listen to this portion, buy the game, then come back for the back half of the episode where I talk about the story and how it impacted me with full spoilers. I’m really excited to talk about this game, so let’s get into the meat of it.
But before I do, please remember to rate this podcast wherever you’re listening to it, or subscribe if you’re on Youtube. Remember that you can leave a comment or email me if you have something in particular that you want to hear about. And there is still merch available! Get it while it’s hot. Anyways, on to the subject of today’s episode.
Laika: Aged Through Blood was released on October 19th, 2023 by Brainwash Gang and published by Thunderful Publishing. Laika is described as, “a western-inspired motorvania set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It is the story about a tribe oppressed by occupant forces, and the personal story of a mother coyote warrior who descends on an endless path of vengeance to take back what her people lost”. And you heard that right, a motorvania. There are a lot of things that set this game apart from others in the genre, but this is probably the most polarising aspect.
Instead of trudging around a dank castle or spaceship on foot, like in most Metroidvania titles, you take control of Laika (the mother coyote warrior that was mentioned before) as you traverse a wasteland on your motorcycle. You can get off to go inside buildings and interact with the hub area, but most of the game takes place on your motorcycle where you can move forward, stop, and tilt your bike left or right just like in the Trials games, if you remember those. Mastering this movement on your bike is the most important mechanic in the game because, if you remember from the description, you’re on a warpath of vengeance which means that you also have a full arsenal at your disposal which you use from the comfort of your bike seat. As you go through the wasteland rootin’, tootin’, and shootin’, you have to backflip to reload your guns and front flip to reload a parry, which you can activate just before a projectile hits you to send it flying back to the one who fired it.
Now, if you’re anything like me, then you’re already sold on the base premise of this game. A western-themed metroidvania where you shoot enemies while doing flips and tricks on a motorcycle. That’s one of the coolest things I’ve heard of in a long time, and I think it’s the most original and interesting thing to happen to this stale genre in a long time. While this premise is what had me whipping out my credit card at mach speed, it’s also what most of the negative reviews cite as the reason why they disliked the game or found it too difficult. And I have to agree with them. It’s a very hard game to get the hang of.
The fact that you’re on a motorcycle and have to do tricks to reload your guns and abilities leads to some exceptionally frustrating gameplay. The fact that it’s so hard mixed with the fact that respawns are tied to “Bone Totems” (which are essentially bonfires) has led to Laika being branded as a soulslike. I want to get ahead of this and go on record to say that I don’t think that this is a soulslike. I think that any comparisons to the souls games come almost strictly from the respawn system and that when you kill an enemy, you get “viscera” to spend as currency, much like souls in the souls games and the ability to parry. But that’s where the comparisons end, and I think it’s disingenuous to call this a soulslike even though it’s just as soul-crushing at times, if not more, than most souls games.
But, like I was talking about before, the mechanics of the game are its greatest feat, and simultaneously its worst. I choose to believe it's more of the former, but there are those who disagree and I find it hard to blame them. I think that it’s a lot of fun, despite how frustrating it can be. It makes for a really great, action packed game that makes you feel really cool while playing it. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll take anything that makes you feel 10% cooler, which riding on a motorcycle, shooting everything that moves while doing flips and tricks certainly does. It’s such a simple concept, mixing the Trials Fusion sort of formula with guns and creating a shooter, but putting that into the Metroidvania formula is something that I would have never considered, and I was even sceptical how they were going to pull it off when I first heard of the game. That being said, they pulled it off fantastically, as I’m going to say multiple times in this episode I’m sure.
I will say that having to keep track of your ammo while constantly backflipping to reload does get a bit exhausting, and sometimes encounters just feel like a maths game. It goes even more frustrating when you factor in the fact that on top of having multiple weapons to cycle through and keep track of ammo for, you also have different abilities like the parry (which does exactly what you think it would do– time it right and send a bullet back at whoever fired it) which requires a frontflip to reload. So you have backflipping to reload your weapons, and frontflipping to reload your parry. This gets absolutely exhausting to keep track of, and I found myself in situations where I was just panic mashing through my weapons and just hoping that I had enough bullets to deal with the crowd of birds that were shooting at me. And when it came time to reload, I just had to pray that I didn’t land on my head and have to retry.
And that’s my only big complaint about the mechanics of this game is that it’s so easy to die just because of the constant flipping around. I know that it sounds a bit like maybe I just didn’t like the mechanics, but that’s just not true. My biggest issue is that sometimes, it’s genuinely hard to tell what way you’re facing. Especially when you’ve been mowing through birds and Laika ends up covered in blood. At that point, Laika is just a red blob with no other real definition. It’s hard to convey this if you haven’t seen the artstyle, but that means that the two wheels of the motorcycle and Laika’s head end up looking like a red fidget spinner. There’s no other way for me to describe that accurately. It’s really hard in those instances, especially if the camera decides to zoom out because there are a lot of birds in the area that you need to keep track of, to keep track of which way is up and I often found myself believing that I was going to land rightside up after a backflip only to find out that my wheels were in the air and Laika just because a meat crayon. That sounds wild, right? And I know it seems like a petty complaint that could boil down to me not paying attention, and that’s partially true. But in a game where you’re constantly scanning the environment and not necessarily staring at your character the entire time, it doesn’t always feel like you’re in full control of what’s happening. Like I said before, sometimes it just ends up becoming panic mashing buttons in the hope that you’re going to get through this wave of enemies and have time to reload.
And I know I’m only a few minutes into the episode and I’ve already been griping about the game for half of that time, so let me try to sell you on the game. I just wanted to get my complaints about the mechanics out of the way and let you know that when you go to the Steam page for Laika, you’re going to see these reviews calling out the same issues that I had. It almost deterred me from playing, but there were other factors that made me feel like it was worth picking up. And I want to help someone else to overcome that as well. So let’s talk it through. And, again, I’m not going to spoil anything quite yet. I’ll let you know when that happens.
Laika takes place in what seems like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. There are the ruins of cities in the background, but no major settlements to be seen or heard of. You play as Laika, a coyote warrior and mother, who is integral to her tribes’ survival because of a unique trait that runs in her family. Laika, just like her mother and her mother before her, has the ability to come back after death and communicate with those beyond the veil. This means that her bloodline is the only thing keeping her tribe from succumbing to the main threat and antagonist of the game, the birds. Not everyone in her tribe is a coyote like Laika– some are mice, raccoons, walking televisions, and more. However, all of the enemies are birds. It seems like it’s wings versus feet in this universe, and it’s been going on for a long time. Laika is just continuing a fight that likely started generations ago.
Laika takes orders from the tribe leader, and seldom takes parenting advice from her mother in the village. Laika has a child, Puppy, for whom Laika does everything that she does for the sake of keeping her child safe. At the beginning of the game, there’s an event where one of Puppy’s friends, a child, is taken by the birds and murdered. This starts the events of the game where Laika is on a revenge fueled rampage, and starts taking the fight to the birds. It seems like before this point, the rest of her tribe were in hiding and did their best to stay out of the bird's way, but some rash decisions are made and this sparks an all-out war with Laika at the head of it since she can’t die.
And so you traverse the wasteland on your motorcycle, seeking ways to get to the birds and completing side missions for those in your tribe as you go. There are plenty of different areas in the game, and each one of them (in typical Metroidvania fashion) is meant to be revisited every time you get an upgrade so that you can find all of the goodies that you might have missed the first or even second time through.
The side missions I think are a very strong point of the game. I wasn’t expecting there to be as many, which extended the game’s runtime significantly which I won’t complain about in this instance. It didn’t feel like it was being unnecessarily padded by the side quests, and often they gave you an excuse to revisit an area that you might not have been to for a while, which is great if you acquired an upgrade that would let you get somewhere you couldn't before. Pretty much all of the quests are just fetch quests, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. And every time you complete a quest, you get to learn something more about the story from the person who you completed the quest for. The exposition you get from completing a quest really fleshes out the game and makes the universe feel more lived in, which I appreciate. Again, I think that the side quests were really well done.
And of course no Metroidvania is complete without a host of bosses to fight. And Laika has some really great boss fights. Most of the boss fights are on a long stage with plenty of ramps and platforms that you have to manoeuvre your way around, carefully timing your shots and reloads to make sure that you’re making the most of your arsenal. I think that this is where the mechanics really shine. I’m going to be very honest here and say that I don’t think I’m particularly great at this game. I don’t think I’m bad, per se, but I don’t think that there was ever a point where I felt like I was able to breeze through the game. And the boss fights were no exception. They were really tough and I died several times to each boss. But not in a way where I felt like I was slamming my head against a wall because the skill cap was too high, but rather because there was a certain ebb and flow to each boss fight that you have to memorise to a certain extent (much like a boss in the souls games, as much as I don’t like the comparison) and I thought it was actually fun to learn each fight. When I finally finished the encounter, I felt like I really earned the win. That’s not to say that I didn’t get frustrated at any point during the bosses, but when I got to that point it was largely because I knew that I did something wrong, and it wasn’t the game that was at fault. I think that the boss fights were a great standout, and I have some gripes about particular bosses but I’ll save that for the spoiler portion of this episode. The one thing that I will say is that I wish that there were more boss fights. Even little mini bosses along the way would have been great.
You might expect that, given the description of the game, you might get some great metal ambiance to rival Doom, but that’s not the case. I was actually very pleasantly surprised by the soundtrack. My wife was, as well, and she would sometimes come in while I was playing and comment on how the music was beautiful, given that the game is so chaotic. And I have to agree. It’s hard for me to describe the music as anything other than hauntingly beautiful. You have this lovely acoustic guitar and light percussion with very soft vocals overtop which explain the themes of the game. As you go, you collect more cassette tapes which expand the songs that you hear on repeat. And that might sound annoying to some, having the same few songs on repeat. Especially if they have vocals, it can get pretty old pretty quick. But I didn’t find that I had that issue. The vocals are soft enough and I feel like its sung in a way that you kind of have to listen intently to hear what they’re saying most of the time. Which means that the vocals are mostly just a part of the melody of the entire song rather than having the lyrics be a focal point. This is all to say that there was never a point where I felt like I needed to turn off or turn down the music, and it remains as one of my favourite video game soundtracks to date. It really is beautiful, and it makes the game feel very unique in its style.
And that is a great segue into the art, which I think is the game’s strongest point. Everything has a very painterly feel to it. It’s very heavily stylized, but not to the point of being overly cartoonish. The colours are bright and bold, and everything has harsh black outlines almost like a comic book cover. And I think that this style lends itself really well to the Metroidvania genre where the environment is very important. Since you’re on a motorcycle, the terrain that you’re going across tends to be a lot of loops and turns and bumps and ramps so that you can reload at various points. And the art style makes sure that you know what is what and that nothing is getting lost in the background. It seems like a bit of a silly thing to bring up, but I’ve played a lot of games where the art is so stylized that it’s hard to tell what is a platform and what is in the background, or even what things you’re able to interact with in the environment versus what’s a static object. Laika doesn’t have any of those issues. The art style indicates everything flawlessly, and I think that the art is its strongest suit, like I mentioned before. Plus, this game is delightfully gorey. And I know that is a weird way to describe it, but it’s true. Birds explode into viscera when you kill them, and that viscera is collected and used to barter for upgrades. And honestly– it rules. The game itself is pretty brutal with its themes and general gameplay, so I think that having enemies just explode everywhere is a cherry on top.
That, and the art style somehow goes really well with the music despite the art being very bold and bright, and the music being very subdued and melodic. Like I said, I kind of expected the trend of a heavy metal soundtrack to accompany the game, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a more chill environment. I think that really helped me keep the rage down when things got particularly stressful or I had to repeat a certain encounter a few times.
And those are my general thoughts on the game. I think that while the mechanics can be a bit frustrating, they really shine in boss fights and I think that the boss fights are some of the most memorable parts of the game. Traversal through the world is really well done, as well, and I think that being on a motorcycle doing tricks and flips really shakes up the typical Metroidvania genre and adds something very new and unique. On top of that, the art and music direction are some of my favourite in recent history. Like I said, this soundtrack is one that I can see myself playing while I’m at work, or in the background at home. There’s something very zen about it, which creates a great dichotomy between the music and the chaotic, gorey gameplay.
If it were just based on what I’ve said so far, I would give this game a 9.5/10. That half point off would be for some general jank that’s kind of just an integral part of the game. It’s nothing major, but it does spoil some of the enjoyment of the game. However, I’m going to start getting into the spoiler territory of the game and with everything that I’m about to talk about, my final score is going to be an 8/10. That’s a pretty big jump down, but there are some issues in the late game that are pretty glaring and affect how I would ultimately rate the game. But, most of the gripes that I have are going to be pretty subjective, so maybe this game will rate higher for you. So with that being said, let’s get into the meat of Laika and explore it a little deeper. And, like I said, there are going to be full spoilers in this section.
First I wanted to talk about the mechanics, and then I’ll get into the story. I’ve already touched on the mechanics, but I wanted to go a little deeper into how everything works and my thoughts on the different weapons and upgrades as well.
So to preface, there are two main phases of the game– night and day. During each day, you start in your camp and you end each night in your camp. Depending on whether it's day or night, there are different people who are active in the camp, and you can only do certain things during the day and night respectively. This can be a bit frustrating in some ways. Sometimes you want to interact with certain people, and you just can’t. Like the weaponsmith or the guy who sells you upgrades for your weapon and viscera bags. They are only there during the day, and aren’t there during the night. So if you want any upgrades, you have to do it first thing before setting out because as soon as you return to camp after heading out, it turns to night and they aren’t there anymore. It doesn’t ultimately matter, though, because there’s only one portion of the game where time really matters. You could go through a hundred days in the main game, and I don’t think it would make a difference at all. So while I initially took this as a gripe, I’ve changed my tune on it because, like I said, it doesn’t really matter. And I actually like that there’s a day/night cycle in the game. A change of pace every once in a while makes the game feel a little more alive.
And that brings us to the upgrade system. Like I said, there’s a guy who basically just sells you bags for weapons and viscera named Xoot. The weapon bags are pretty self explanatory; they make it so that you’re able to carry more weapons. You start with two, one for your revolver and an initial empty slot, and end up with four weapons that you can carry in total. I think that this system is pretty great, and it’s not terribly hard to get up to the maximum if you really grind out resources day-to-day and I maxed out my bags before I even had four weapons to carry. The viscera bags are a little different in that you lose a bag every time you die, and you have to go and collect your bag to get your viscera back. It’s like collecting your souls in a souls game (again, as much as I don’t like the comparison). You can get up to 8 bags in total, which I think is overkill. If you’re dying 8 times without collecting your viscera bags, I think that you need to focus on getting better at the game. There are enough respawn points throughout the game that I don’t think I ever lost more than 2 at a time. But, I guess it adds a layer of security for someone who might not be great at these kinds of games.
Then you have the weapons themselves which can be purchased from Zooey along with a number of upgrades for each gun which includes more ammo per reload and reducing the angle that you have to flip in order to reload which can be really useful. There are 6 weapons in total, which means that since you can only carry 4 at a time you have to make sure that you’re bringing the right tool for the job. However, this is where one of my main complaints comes in.
You start with the revolver, then get the shotgun, then the crossbow, then the machine gun, sniper rifle, and rocket launcher. The revolver is always going to be a mainstay, in my opinion. When it’s fully upgraded, it’s one of the most versatile weapons in the game and there’s no reason to not use it as your main weapon. The shotgun is used partly for traversal. Yes, you heard that right. When you shoot the shotgun, it pushes you in the opposite direction that you shot in, meaning you can use it to do a little jump or give yourself a little extra distance if needed. And this mechanic is actually used and encouraged to get around to certain areas before you get the dash much later in the game. So you have two weapon slots which you’re not reasonably going to give up, meaning you have four weapons to choose from. The machine gun trivialises boss fights. I am not joking when I say that I beat the last boss in less than 15 seconds because of the machine gun. I didn’t need anything else. And once you get the machine gun, the game is WAY too easy if you use it. So I made a specific point of not using it except for bosses. So why wouldn’t you use it as your third weapon slot? Then you have your choice of three other weapons. You’re hardly going to use them, because the other three that are already in your inventory are far more useful. So it kind of feels moot to even have the selection if they’re not going to compare to the others. So a huge gripe for me is that the machine gun is far too powerful for its own good. I think that it should be nerfed pretty heavily in the interest of making the other guns viable to use without just hamstringing yourself.
But that being said, I think that the weapon upgrade system itself is pretty solid. I wish that the other weapons that they gave you could replace the revolver, shotgun, and machine gun, but in their current state I have zero reason to ever use anything other than those three. I kept the crossbow in my fourth slot because it’s great at covering a large area with bolts, but I found the reload speed to be quite tedious which is a great tradeoff, and something that the machine gun should have had to make it less of a mainstay.
So to create and upgrade your bags and weapons, you need two things: viscera, and upgrade materials. And there are a lot of different upgrade materials out there. And the costs get pretty steep as you get into the later game. You find different upgrade materials scattered through the wasteland in boxes, and those boxes respawn every time you start a new day. The fact that they respawn means that there are several routes that you can take every day to get a ton of viscera and upgrade materials just by doing the route. Even if you find it hard to get enough resources out of the boxes, there are plenty of merchants throughout the game that will sell you everything that you need if you have some extra viscera. And this is made even easier by the cooking mechanic.
On top of getting upgrade materials, there are vending machines and food all over the place that you shoot to collect, just like the resource boxes. With the ingredients, you can cook different recipes that do a number of things. Some of them give you extra parries, while others give your bike an increased pickup radius for materials (I used this one every single day because it made collecting resources so much easier). And then there are ones that increase your combo multiplier, which increases the amount of viscera gained in combat, and also ones that just give a flat percentage increase to resources and viscera picked up. All of these buffs have a timer, so they will eventually run out and you can’t just use them indefinitely, but the ingredients are usually pretty easy to find so it’s easy enough to have perpetual buffs. I, personally, love this mechanic. I think that it’s a great way to be able to customise your experience and give yourself an extra edge where you think you need it. The only caveat is that you can only cook at designated cooking areas or at the main bone totems where you can also switch your loadout and fast travel.
And that brings me to fast travel, which I’m pretty iffy on the execution of. To fast travel, you need to be at a specific kind of totem, like I just mentioned, and you can only travel between those specific totems. I don’t have a problem with that, and I think it makes sense. To be able to fast travel, you need candles which can only be made at your mother’s home. And to make those candles, you need beeswax which is a resource that you can find all over the wasteland. I ended up with way more candles than I would ever reasonably use, and that’s perfectly fine. What I don’t think is fine, is that you end up with a side quest pretty early on from your mother. She tells you that there’s a pendant that allowed her to travel quickly all over the place, and that you should go find it. She leads you on a wild goose chase which is pretty much only there for the sake of exposition. Every time you go to where she tells you to go, you experience a memory from Laika’s past. And it lets you know the story of her firstborn, who died because of the curse on women in her family, which I’ll get to later. When you finally complete the quest, somewhere just past the halfway point in the game you get the pendant. With this pendant, you can fast travel without the need for candles. And that’s where I’m iffy.
There are enough resources throughout the wasteland that, even if you need to fast travel multiple times a day to get some side quests done, you’ll still never use all of the candles that you’ve made. I ended up with dozens extra by the time I got the pendant, and I had hundreds of beeswax to be able to make more and that all just went to waste. I think that the pendant is unnecessary, and it makes the whole candle mechanic feel redundant, to me. If candles were more scarce, I might be singing a different tune, but because they are so plentiful, I don’t see a reason why the pendant needs to exist at all. And the fact that there’s nothing to do with the candles or the wax after you get the pendant makes it feel like a wasted resource. I understand why they wanted to limit fast travel initially, to make you go out and explore more, but I don’t feel like this was implemented particularly well.
Then there are the other two upgrades that I wanted to talk about, which are the dash and the grapple hook. I’ll start with the dash, which I thought was awesome. Basically, you can use it once in the air or on the ground to dash forwards, and then you need to touch the ground with both wheels to be able to use it again so that you can’t just dash in perpetuity. This basically replaces any of the functionality of the shotgun’s traversal abilities, because it’s a far better, more easily controlled version of that, but I still found myself carrying the shotgun regardless. Maybe it was a comfort thing. But you get it pretty late in the game, which means that you got pretty used to using the shotgun to get around, and it comes at the right time that it feels like a welcome upgrade. It made combat so much more fun (and easier), and I partially wish that the dash was available earlier just because of how much I loved using it.
The grapple hook, on the other hand… was created just so you could take down the Big Tree, home to the birds’ popes and religion. It was used really well for that purpose, where you grapple onto these giant columns to tear them down and topple the floors of the Big Tree, but after that there’s no purpose to it. I don’t think there’s a single use for it after that aside from one side quest where your goal is to take down statues of important birds throughout the wasteland. Initially, when you get the grapple, you use it to grapple a bomb which you carry to a rock that you need to let go of the bomb and shoot it to destroy it and get through. I thought that this mechanic might make a comeback at some point, but it never did that I encountered. I was pretty disappointed by the lack of usefulness. It felt like they just needed an excuse to be able to topple the columns in the Big Tree, and didn’t have any ideas after that. I don’t know what I would have done differently, but they could have just as easily had some points where there’s rubble in the way and you need to find a bomb somewhere, grapple it, and blow up the rubble just like in the first portion with the grapple. Even if you could grapple enemies and throw them around, that would have been neat. But they just kind of forgot that it existed in the last half of the game.
And in talking about the last half of the game, I think it’s worth talking about the bosses a little bit more. I think that the first three bosses were incredibly well done. A Hundred Hungry Beaks was kind of a skill check to make sure that you understood the mechanics of the game at this point, and wasn’t too hard. It was a good challenge, but I managed to beat it on my first try. A Long Lost Woodcrawler was in the same vein, where I didn’t have too much trouble but I thought it was a really well designed boss. I think that A Caterpillar Made of Sadness was the hardest boss in the game, but also the best designed. It had three different encounters, each had a different shtick that it brought to the fight. Then the final encounter brought all of those elements together in what was ultimately an endurance test. I thought it was a little harsh because you basically had to be perfect with your shots and reloads, and there was very little room for error. But, like I mentioned before, I think that learning this boss was actually pretty fun and overall I thought it was very well designed.
Then we get into the second half of the bosses, most of which I thought were pretty weak in comparison to A Caterpillar Made of Sadness. A Gargantuan Swimcrab was pretty difficult, but was in the same vein as A Caterpillar Made of Sadness where it was ultimately just memorising the pattern and trying to make it through without error. It just didn’t feel as good as the former. Then you have Pope Melva VIII which was a shining disappointment in terms of all of the boss fights before it, but was still an interesting challenge. You basically have to dodge the eggs that it shoots out, which keep multiplying as you shoot them, forcing you to really ration your bullets and make perfect use of the environment to get away from them while trying to damage the boss. But once I got a hang of it after a couple tries, it was trivial. The Two-Beak God I have less of a problem with mechanically as I do from a story standpoint, which I’ll go over in a minute. But like I mentioned before, I beat this boss in less than 15 seconds with the machine gun, and it felt like it was just kind of a placeholder for the real thing, and then you basically roll credits once you kill him. I was pretty disappointed with how easy it was to just get up in the air and backflip forever in bullet time while using a dash to get away from the second head and keep airborne while you finish it off. Maybe it was just because of how I beat it but it felt disappointing, just like the leadup to the fight.
And I think that leads nicely into talking about the story portion, speaking of the leadup to the final fight. And the story is, honestly, incredibly well done. From the way that the story is told, to the worldbuilding that you get from the environment and by doing side quests; it’s all executed in such a way that you could totally play the game with just a base understanding that you need to kill birds, and everything else is just a set piece in between your trickshots. You don’t need to engage with a lot of the story, and not all of it is told to you directly. There’s definitely some figuring out that you have to do to understand everything in its entirety. As someone who loves the souls games, I think it’s a perfectly valid way of telling the story and I think it’s a great method for this game. I don’t even know why I went on that tangent, honestly, so let’s talk about the story. And I feel like it’s necessary to give the warning that there is going to be some pretty explicit themes of sexual abuse, so if that makes you uncomfortable, then I would stray away.
The story starts with, and I believe I’ve mentioned this before, a child named Poochie being murdered by the birds. Poochie’s father, Jakob, steals Laika’s revolver and goes after the birds at their military base, where he attempts to get retribution in the form of revenge. This is where you start the game, trying to figure out where your revolver ended up. You find Jakob, on the brink of death, and you learn that the birds have started genetic experiments to create monsters (which you can presume they’re building so that they can finish off Laika’s tribe). After defeating one of these experiments, Laika goes back to Jakob where he succumbs to his wounds.
This is where the player is introduced to the idea that Laika can communicate with the dead, which is a genetic trait in the women of her family. Along with being able to communicate with the dead for a short period after their passing, they can come back from the dead with their bone motorcycle, which they use the bones of their ancestors to make, pretty much endlessly. It’s later revealed by Laika that this is an extremely painful process that one never really gets used to. She explains it as having every cell in your body ripped apart one by one, and then suddenly, just when it ends, she wakes up back in the world.This is the central mechanic and plot point in the game. Since Laika can’t die, she is the tribe’s greatest warrior and the only one who can leave their home to go fight the birds.
We also learn that this immortality doesn’t last forever, for only one in the family can possess it at a time. When a child of the immortal first bleeds, as they call it (which is menstruation in this case, and represents a coming of age or maturity), they take the mantle of the immortal and their mother ceases to have the ability to commune with the dead or come back from death. However, it’s not that simple. It turns out that not everyone survives their bleeding, as it is almost a sickness that takes you to the brink of death and leaves you with a slim chance of survival. It makes sense for an ability that would bring you back from the dead to bring you right to the brink and have you feel the suffering of your own mortality before you’re given its powers. But that’s all I want to say on the matter for the moment. All of that comes back around.
So, after putting Jakob’s spirit to rest they have a funeral for him and we’re introduced to Laika’s child, Puppy, and her mother, Maya. Maya wants Laika to train Puppy for when she is to inherit the family curse assuming she survives. Here is where we get one of our main themes, which is a refusal to continue the cycle of violence that surrounds Laika’s family. Laika has no interest in training Puppy because she thinks that she’s too young, and she wanted to prevent Puppy from having the same traumatic upbringing that Laika had by being forced to grow up too fast. So Laika keeps Puppy at an arms’ length from her mother, Maya, who constantly brings up the fact that Laika won’t let her come over to their house so that she can visit her granddaughter. These themes of trauma and the never ending cycle of violence are the core themes of the game, in my opinion. And I think that they’re done very well.
At this point we also meet the Elder and the rest of the tribe. The Elder is the one who makes all of the decisions, and they have decided that they must declare a full out war on the birds to stop the conflict once and for all. This is to be done by making an alliance with a mining town and to destroy a lighthouse which serves and a communications relay for the birds so that they can go to their main “base of operations”, as you might call it– the big tree– to destroy it and hopefully scatter the birds to the wind. And so begins the events of the game.
Throughout your adventure, you meet with a host of strange characters throughout the wasteland. Most that you meet will either give you a side quest or sell you something. When you get to the mining town, you get sent on a quest to liberate the town from the birds, who have seemingly ransacked the place, in return for the cooperation of the mining town in your war against the birds. After defeating the boss and confronting those who sent you on the mission, you come to the understanding that there was no one to save and that the birds massacred everyone in the mining town except for those who you spoke to. This is where we first see Laika’s rage. She threatens to kill them for deceiving her, but ultimately spares them as there’s no point to more needless bloodshed.
On the flipside, we see more compassion from Laika during her trip to the lighthouse where she meets Roy, the boat captain who agrees to take her deep into bird territory to destroy the lighthouse. Roy works for the birds, which Laika doesn’t seem to understand but comes to empathise with him after learning that he hates the birds after they killed his wife and three kids but works for them because he still has to make a living somehow. He ends up being killed, which seems to take its toll on Laika. Like I said, we see quite a bit of compassion from her in this segment.
After that, Laika goes to the Big Tree where her goal is to topple it down to cause havoc amongst the birds. The Big Tree is the birds’ religious centre, so if it were brought down to dust, that would surely rustle some feathers. Here we meet Orella, who is a member of Laika’s tribe who is willingly living at the Big Tree with the birds. Her passion is for architecture, and so where else would someone who loves architecture be other than the older, most prominent building in the wastelands? She loved the Big Tree, but understood the importance of taking it down. Unfortunately, she couldn’t quite wrestle with the conflict within her and ended up taking her own life when Laika finished the job and killed the bird pope. This is another area where we get to see a bit of empathy from Laika amidst her usual stoic, apathetic self.
And I think that it’s really important to show both sides of Laika like this. You see that she is utterly brutal when someone is actively working against her, and she tends to be cold and reserved as a result of being used throughout her life. But then the odd moment comes up where she is able to let her guard down and be who I think she wants to be. She has plenty of these moments with Puppy, who, at this point in the game, is really pushing Laika to find Poochie’s body (which was stolen away) to put him to rest.
It’s this push that leads to Puppy going to find her friend’s body by herself. Laika had been so preoccupied with disrupting the birds’ communication networks and trying to gain allies for the war that she hadn’t had time to look for Poochie’s body. Laika is eager to get this over with so she can put down her gun, turn off her bike, and focus on raising Puppy to be different from her and her mother, and her mother before her. And so, Puppy headed out on her own journey and ended up getting kidnapped to be taken to “heaven”, which is a bird city in the sky where their God supposedly lives.
It’s during this arc that we see the extent of Laika’s brutality when it comes to protecting something that she loves. She would do anything for her daughter, and she does… well… heinous things to get her back which includes killing someone in her tribe who was loosely associated with Puppy's kidnapping. And, again, brutally. Laika goes on a remorseless killing spree to get her daughter back, and it’s honestly really hard to watch. Of course, we’re on her side; we want to get Puppy back. But it’s still hard to watch Laika execute civilians who were, in their eyes, trying to do what was best for everyone. It turns out that the birds up in heaven were looking for the key to immortality, and they knew about Laika and her family curse. They figured that the key was in their blood, and so they had a bunch of people in this scheme to abduct Puppy and get her blood, since they weren’t likely to get Laika’s. We know that they were wrong, of course, and that Puppy’s blood was no good since she didn’t have the curse. And, truthfully, the blood likely had nothing to do with it at all. And I think Laika realised that, and she offered up a vial of her own blood in exchange for Puppy. Although that didn’t end up happening and she had to kill yet another to get Puppy back home safely, which she does.
And, as hard as it was to experience, this really goes to show how deep Laika’s love for Puppy is despite the fact that she had never properly named her daughter. She just called her Puppy, which is the equivalent of us naming a child Baby or Child. And it’s around this arc that we start getting side quests to explain why it is that she never gave her daughter a name. Remember when I mentioned the side quest where you’re being led around the wasteland to get a pendant that replaces the fast travel candles? This is that quest.
We learn that Laika actually had several children before Puppy- eight, to be exact. And they all died to the curse. They all succumbed to the fever and pain that happened around their bleeding. So that gives you an idea of what the survival rate of the curse is, and it’s pretty bleak. And that’s not the end of it. It gets so much worse. Through this side quest, and numerous other interactions with Maya and the Elder throughout the game, you learn that Laika only willingly had one child. And, honestly, it doesn’t even sound like she willingly had the first one and it might have been begrudgingly because she knew that her child would either succumb to the fever, or inherit her curse. Neither of which she wanted, as Laika very much wanted to break the cycle of abuse that came with the curse.
It turns out that both her mother and the Elder forced her into having more children. And, yes, that means what you think it means. Laika was forced to have 8 more children after her first died to the fever. And, with this you can start to understand where Laika’s trauma comes from. That and her mother being abusive while she was growing up, forcing her to use a gun and kill from a young age to “prepare” her for the role of the undying warrior before she reached maturity. And that’s why Laika never named Puppy. She named her other 8 children, but she didn’t have the heart to get attached to another child after so many years of what was honestly torture. She didn’t want any of these children, and they were forced upon her by her mother and Elder so that they would have their immortal warrior to defend the tribe. They really took this theme to the extreme, but it left its impression on me and I think that it was profound in its execution. And I think that it’s worth noting that all of this information that we have is implicit, meaning that they don’t outright say that Laika was sexually assaulted and made to have children, but everything in the writing makes it abundantly clear that this was the case.
And so, Laika has Puppy back just in time for her to start bleeding. Whether it was the trauma of her kidnapping or just bad timing, it started happening pretty much as soon as they got back. This poses a few problems. The first is the obvious that Puppy might die like the rest of Laika’s children. The second is that they’re currently in the middle of a war. Laika had not only just taken out the birds’ communication centre, but is pretty fresh off of coming back from toppling their religious centre and killing their pope. The birds are pissed, and for good reason, and the climax of the war was right in front of them. If Puppy bled before Laika was finished, then that would mean that Puppy was the one who would be sent out to finish the job with no training. Remember, Laika wanted her to have as normal of a life as she could, and so she didn’t train her to shoot or ride a bike.
And so Laika had to step away from her daughter, who was deep in a fever. Maya, her mother, stepped in to take care of Puppy while Laika took care of the birds so that she could finish the job before either her daughter died, or her immortality ran out. And, honestly, this is where the game feels a bit rushed and where it lost some points for me. I wish that they had fleshed this section out a bit more, and if you’re listening and you’ve played the game then you might agree with me.
I mentioned heaven before; the floating city in the sky where the birds’ god lives. This is where it would all end. Laika makes her way there, and is told by one of her comrades that there is a resistance group amongst the birds who are pacifists and want the warring to stop. And I love that they included this because there are hints to it all throughout the game, including one portion when Laika is looking for Puppy where she disguises herself as a bird and goes through a slum and sees signs for the resistance. The members of this resistance all wear white armbands, and they are everywhere including in the military. You actually encounter birds who are a member of this resistance all throughout the game, and you might not even realise it until the end here. These birds will not shoot at you despite being amongst groups of other birds who are trying to kill you. Even if you kill all of the other birds, you can go right up to those with white armbands and they won’t react to you. And they’re all over the game. I think that’s such a great little detail.
So, Laika is told that the leader of this resistance, Pluck, is going to help her get into Heaven. And this is where I start to really disagree with Laika’s attitude. I understand that she has been fighting birds for basically her entire life, and her mother and her mother’s mother have been doing the same. I get that there’s a deep seeded generational hate there, but even when confronted with Pluck and assured that he’s there to help and he wants the birds to stop the war as much as she does, Laika is still very obtuse when dealing with him. To the point where he’s guiding her in how to take down certain defences so that she can get into heaven, and she’s threatening to kill him the entire time. Again, I know that a hatred like that kind of trumps anything else but I was really hoping that Laika would be able to see the other side of it. Laika is a symbol of change and kicking the generational abuse that was forced upon her and wanted to make a new life for herself and her daughter, away from all of the hate… and she still can’t see eye to eye with a bird who has shown her no reason to distrust them other than the fact that they’re a bird. I think that’s a missed beat. It feels like all of the progress that Laika has made, and the virtues that she stands for were kind of just dashed for the sake of it. But that’s just my opinion, and if you have a different opinion I would love to hear it.
But with the help of Pluck, you’re able to get into Heaven. It’s a very short segment all self-contained in one area, and once you’re able to get up into Heaven, Laika immediately gets captured. Just plucked out of the air by a claw. And so you figure that you’re going to have to escape from Heaven. Maybe they take all of your equipment, including your bike, and you have to find a way to get to your belongings before confronting the final boss and taking it all down… but that doesn’t happen.
You are unceremoniously dropped into a cage where the Two-Beak God is making a performance out of Killing Laika, the one who has been single handedly causing them all of these problems. And not only are you dropped into a cage with their God, but you’re there with your bike and all of your weapons as if you were being dropped into a gladiatorial arena. And after a brief monologue about how the Two-Beak God is going to bring glory to the birds by killing Laika, and then everyone else by way of a tactical nuke called the Egg, you have the final boss fight.
After you kill him, the Egg is dropped from the cage along with Laika and sends them both hurtling down towards the wasteland. I will admit that the following scene is pretty neat. You’re freefalling through the air aside a nuke while birds are dropping down to try to stop you from blowing it up. You take no damage during this phase, so you don’t even have to deal with the birds around you, and your goal is to shoot the crap out of the Egg so that it doesn’t nuke everyone into oblivion.
And as fate would have it, right at the time you’re hurtling towards the ground, Puppy bleeds. And that means that Laika is no longer invincible. In taking out the Egg, she would be condemning herself to death. But the goal was always to stop the birds at any cost, and this was the final cost. In an act of self-sacrifice, Laika forces the Egg to blow up mid-air, saving everyone but herself in a very poetic ending.
And I want to be clear that I have no problems with the ending. From the moment that they talked about the curse and you find out Laika has a daughter, I knew that the game was going to end with Puppy inheriting the curse while Laika dies trying to save everyone. I think that’s beautiful, and I don’t think that there’s any other way that this game could have ended. My only problem is that the entire ending seemed rushed. And the way I described it might not sound like it but I really feel like we were robbed of one or two more stages. Again, I really think that there should have been some gameplay in Heaven where you have to escape from imprisonment. Hell, make it Metal Gear style, that would have been amazing. But other than that, I think that this game was beautifully made.
This episode went far longer than I thought it would, and I’m not sorry about that. This has been one of my favourite games that I’ve played this year, and it’s my favourite Metroidvania in recent history. If you’ve made it this far, then you either really love my voice or you’ve played Laika: Aged Through Blood and you also enjoyed it. Either way, I would love to hear your thoughts. Do you think that the runtime for this game fell short in the end? Or how about the boss fights- did you like them? Hate them? Let me know!
You can find us online @loredtodeath on your favourite social media apps, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any questions or suggestions for topics, please send me a message wherever you can find me or at loredtodeath@gmail.com. If you’re using the Spotify app, there’s a comment section attached to the episode where you can submit any questions or topics. I would love to hear from you!
And remember, good games are still being made. Amongst the dumpster fire that is live service games, there are still companies, mostly indie, who are making games because they love what they do and they have a story to tell. All you have to do is dumpster dive through Steam to find those gems.
I’ll lore you to death in the next one. C’ya.
