Knights in the Nightmare Analysis 2: Destined for Brutality

An adorable witch's last words.

Wisp, you are a heartless b*****d.

As peachy as restoring the kingdom sounds (see my last post on Knights in the Nightmare), ultimately, the Wisp is a floating ball of light devoid of any apparent personality. Yes, the game later reveals that the Wisp (spoiler alert!) is in fact King Wilmgard's soul, but this is not reflected in the dialogue. The Wisp blankly listens to things being said, offering no opinion. It can hear the souls of the kingdom's dead knights, prepare them for battle, and even sacrifice them to strengthen others, but it cannot hold a conversation with them.

The Wisp's lack of thought translates into a total lack of agency for the player. Oh, there's plenty of choice - different items to use, and knights to train - but these actions are all done for the purpose of killing. Knights takes a step back from the moral choices of Mass Effect and Bioshock, deliberately placing the player in a situation where their only power is to destroy, perhaps akin to Hotline Miami. While his subjects lauded him with praise, Wilmgard is seen as a tyrant by the Mehse and Tiamat peoples, and this aspect of his personality becomes his defining characteristic as the brutal Wisp.

Mass Effect: Terribly difficult moral choices.

Knights: See a general? KILL.

The player has two duties as the Wisp: restoring order to the kingdom as its former king, and maintaining dimensional boundaries as the divinely-appointed Arbitrator. I remember feeling this sense of purpose while playing, which added to the visceral thrill of butchering traitors and sending demons back to where they came from.

But then, the game takes a different direction: it sends the player off to the western lands in search of Wilmgard's body. Here, you encounter the disheveled, sometimes-undead Mehse people, whose lives have become defined by their oppression by Wilmgard's kingdom. The game offers no chance to make amends - instead, you must plough through every Mehse who stands in your way. During one instance in particular, the happy victory music seemed unsettlingly out-of-place as I watched a little Mehse witch I had just defeated take her final breaths. Suddenly, I didn't feel so good about my senseless slaughter of the aforementioned traitors.

The fate of the Tiamats doesn't look good either, considering they're keeping Wilmgard's own body away from him (and thus sealing their doom).

The game even taunts the player, posing scathing questions about how far they will go to take back their kingdom. These are made all the more meaningful by the fact that even in-game, the Wisp can offer no reply.