The greatest video game of all time?

In the late 1990s there was an old man named Alfred. His wife died and he fell into a deep depression. He couldn’t bear to live without his wife; he had no reason to live anymore. He became suicidal. It’s even rumoured that he went as far as to buy a gun to end his life. Alfred lived in the UK where guns are far harder to purchase for regular people, but according to the rumours Alfred was desperate enough to end his life, that he went to the trouble. Before he decided to end everything he decided to use the rest of his money and blow it on a PlayStation and a handful of games. “Might as well give this gaming fad a try before I end it all” I imagine he thought. “See what all the fuss is about.” The games were a distraction if anything else. As long as he was playing these games he was still living, but they would only last so long. Maybe they would give him the time he needed to reconsider ending his life, but it wouldn’t be much.

But there was one game that was different to the others. Alfred became attached to the character in this game, and his struggles. Over the 10 hours or so that would take to complete the game Alfred changed his mind. He wanted to live. This game had entirely rekindled his appreciation for life. He was going to live rather than die because of this one game.

That game was Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee.

Abe’s Oddysee can be seen as an allegory for escaping depression. You take the role of the eponymous character Abe, a member of a slave race in bondage to a meat factory in the titular Oddworld. Abe spends his days waxing the floor of this vast, grimy facility, never seeing the sunlight. His eyes are bloodshot from the dark and the fumes; he lives with the sound of the constant industrial grind of machines and the crunching of bones as the wildlife from beyond the walls of the factory are slaughtered to extinction. But Abe’s simple but painful life changes when he is given a reason to live. When working one night on his regular routine, he comes across a board meeting between the higher-ups of the factory and discovers something that shakes him to the core. The factory had been losing profits due to the near extinction of all those species they use for their products, and to save the factory, the higher-ups agree that Abe’s own race, slaves allowed no free will, are to be chopped up for a new meat product. Horrified upon hearing his new fate, Abe’s resolves to live. He flees the factory, chased by the cruel security forces, hired to keep the slave work-force in line.

Once Abe escapes from the factory, he continues all he can see is the thick industrial smog of the factory surrounding those big metal walls. But the further away he travels, the cleaner the air gets until he sees nothing but the deep blue of a peaceful sky of bright stars. Abe was free. In his travels as a freed slave, he comes across an ancient ancestral temple of his forbears where he sees other free members of his own race. He begins to uncover the lost history of his people. But he is troubled by the fact that his race still lives mostly in bondage, never able to see the sky, now destined to suffer a horrible fate. Abe resolves to return to the factory which he escaped with his life, and liberate as many of his brethren as he can, hopefully shutting the factory down in the process. With the factory gone, his race could recover; the sky could clear; the wildlife could prosper.

Escaping the bondage of the factory, fleeing to where Abe’s ancestors lived in peace with sky above their heads and rediscovering a culture once lost makes a strong resemblance to escaping depression, returning to the healthy state of mind and rediscovering the things that once gave your life so much meaning. I don’t know if this is what Alfred saw in Abe’s Oddysee, but he saw something, and whatever it was it saved his life. He survived his depression because of Oddworld; he owed his life to the developers of the game and he let them know that. He wrote to Oddworld Inhabitants, and one of the lead developers read out his story in the long letter he sent. The entire staff of Oddworld Inhabitants was in tears by the time she finished. They had saved a life. Abe’s Oddysee saved someone’s life.

This fact is something worth considering when discussing what the greatest game of all time is. I have never before heard of another video game saving someone’s life. For that accolade alone, I would nominate Abe’s Oddysee to be one of the greatest video games, if not THE greatest video game of all time.