Writing these words down over email, she told me, prompted her to cry. Now 21 years old, her father three weeks sober, sheās āholding [her] breath and waiting for the ball to drop.ā Precious little has changedāsheās still cleaning, cooking, and tip-toeing around the house.But like the ending of Captain Spirit, where someone comes to check on Chris, wondering if thereās something going on, Emma has hope. Sheās in school right now, and wants to work in animal conservation. Video games, Captain Spirit and otherwise, have also been comfort."Seeing Chris had me bawling even when nothing was really happening, because I not only remembered being that kid, but I still feel like it. I just wanted to hug Chris and say it's okay, he's not alone. I'll be his friend, like how I wished someone would do to me."
Charles, as it turns out, isnāt up for the moment.āCaptain Spirit is not a game about an abusive father, or an abused kid,ā said the designers. āFor us, it is mostly a story about a son and a father escaping their grief, loss and disillusion the only ways they know. Don't misunderstand us, this is still very much abuse and it is not āless serious,ā and this is, we think, very much the point: Abuse can come in any form in our society, and it doesn't have to be straight up beating to be important or noteworthy.ā“This nightmare doesn’t happen when I’m sleeping—it seeps into my daily subconscious every so often. I’ll be cleaning the dishes, the darkness creeps in, and I’m paralyzed for a few minutes. My breathing labors, my back stiffens, and I slowly come back to reality. If I’m lucky, the terror passes quickly. Other times, late at night, I stare at the ceiling for too long. I try my best to be a caring father and husband, but it’s not hard to feel like everything is dancing on a knife’s edge, waiting to fall apart the moment someone pulls on the seams, and if my wife was suddenly to exit the picture, I’d suddenly discover I wasn’t up for the moment.”