I have mentioned previously in this blog that video games are like fairy tales of the new era; a good amount of them follow the structure of classic fairy tales, but in some this is extremely dominant, resulting in being an essential part of their plot, their mood and the development of their characters. BioShock Infinite is a very characteristic case, which I analyzed in a previous article, and Resident Evil 7 shares a similar trait: it is built around the logic of an archetypical fairy tale, including in its plot several such elements as crucial axes. 

Fairy tales in general, and specifically those that are or based on folk material, no matter where they originate from, have a few standards as far as both their plots and their characters are concerned: there are some good characters, some villains who usually chase and wish to kill the good characters, there is someone (most of the times, but not always, a girl) who is locked in some sort of prison, sometimes there is a cruel giant, a witch, an evil stepmother with an equally evil daughter, other times there is a knight or prince who arrives at just the right moment to kill the villains and free the imprisoned girl. A mysterious house is a place of interest in several tales, together with its strange residents - whether those are humans, animals or creatures that belong to another world, doesn't really matter although it may make a difference as far as the development of the plot is concerned.

What usually dominates is an evil force; one which may have numerous manifestations in a tale: the aforementioned evil antagonists are such a case, also a supernatural and very powerful entity can represent it, while sometimes all the aspects of evil can co-exist in the same story. In Resident Evil 7, the spirit of evil that dominates Ethan's story, is Eveline, the bioweapon that takes human forms, first appearing as a lost little girl, then transforming into an old, seemingly harmless invalid woman who seems to be everywhere in the Baker family home where the story unfolds. Eveline, who slyly invaded the house a while back, infected the members of the family, turning them into monstrous, cannibalistic creatures with absolutely no sense of humanity inside and about them, making them carriers of evil.

Snow White and the Sleeping Beauty were metaphorically imprisoned, as they were doomed to remain asleep for a long time. Rapunzel was literally imprisoned, high up in a huge tower. In Resident Evil 7, the role of the imprisoned princess initially belongs to Mia, whom Ethan finds literally asleep in the dark and gloomy dungeons of the Baker property grounds, among suspicious-looking stuffed bags and weird tools. During the same time, Ethan has the role of the liberator prince or knight; instead of on a white horse, he arrives in a fancy car, and he does not find a castle or tower but a grim guest house. The rescue process goes anything but well, as Mia, possessed by Eveline, unexpectedly abandons the role of the victim/princess and takes that of the bad witch, attacking Ethan viciously and subsequently attempting to kill him. Eventually Ethan stops being her rescuer, and is forced to attack her so as to save his life. At the end of a frustrating battle between them in the attic of the guest house, Jack Baker arrives and drags an unconscious Ethan in his actual "castle": the family's house, where Ethan comes face to face with its inhabitants: Jack, Marguerite and Lucas. He also indirectly meets the family's daughter, Zoe, infected as well but much less than the others and is able to control herself, who promises to help him escape.

Jack is the fairy tale's giant - a terrifying and merciless cannibal who is constantly hungry for human flesh. When he walks around the house looking for Ethan, he is a reminiscent of the giant who returns home and senses that there is a human hiding somewhere because he can tell of their scent. Later on after he mutates, he becomes a literal giant, a huge, monstrous creature that is uncontrollable in its appetite and attacks.

The dragon Jack establishes his position in the main house, while Marguerite guards the old house and Lucas locks himself up in what used to be the barn and storage area. The main house is filled with traps, monsters and intimidating doors decorated with dead animals, and to be able to escape from there, Ethan has to find three key items that unlock the exit and fight against Jack in the basement and temporarily defeat him. Then, following Zoe's plan, he goes to the old house where he has to evade Marguerite's tricks and eventually confront her in the greenhouse. Marguerite, whose mutation involves giving birth to giant flies and swarms of spiders, gradually identifies herself with her insects, growing extremely long arms and legs, additionally developing her cannibalistic habits even more, which is also an attribute of a specific genre of fly. Her attacks are vicious, and she grows a particularly wild appetite for Ethan's family jewels. Of course this is not random; as she gradually strips off her human nature, the primordial instincts come forward; but her cannibalistic tendency messes with her lustful appetite and she wants to devour Ethan for real. At this point, she borrows the trait of her husband and expresses a hunger for human flesh, therefore taking herself the role of the giant since he is temporarily out of the picture.

The role of Lucas Baker in this dark fairy tale is a complex and twisted one. Although Ethan does not belong to the dragon Jack's family, he and Lucas seem to be two sides of the same coin. In several fairy tales, there is a beautiful and kind maiden, unlucky enough to be the stepdaughter of an evil witch who also has a daughter of her own, a girl who is ugly and wicked like her mother. This girl is generally aware of her unpleasant physical appearance, but prefers to turn a blind eye to this fact and instead play along her mother's various devices that aim at making her believe that she is pretty. At some point, the beautiful girl sits on a tall tree with a well below it, and the ugly girl goes to the well to get water; she sees the reflection of the pretty girl and thinks that it is her own. When the revelation comes, the ugly, evil girl hates the pretty, kind girl even more, and does everything to humiliate and/or exterminate her. 

With Lucas taking the part of the ugly, evil child, Ethan becomes his counterpart - the male version of the kind, beautiful maiden. Although we can never see Ethan's face, we can assume that he is good-looking; a fair-haired young man with white skin, obviously coming from a rather well off urban environment, whose life was undoubtedly happy until he got involved in this nightmare. Lucas does have a natural sister, Zoe, but her role in this fairy tale is that of the companion and helper of the hero: she is the one who guides him via phone calls and offers him valuable assistance during his quests. From the moment when Zoe escaped the Baker family home, distancing herself from her disturbing family, she became an outsider; and she is literally one, since she is never seen actually getting inside the house, unlike Ethan who wanders around getting to know every single room and secret passage in there. Zoe, with her medical knowledge, is also the positive counterpart of her mother - Marguerite is the evil witch while Zoe is the good witch who performs "magic" for a good cause and creates "spells" that are able to rid of "curses": she uses two objects with magical significance - a head and an arm - to create the serum which will be used to free herself and Mia from the virus with which they have been infected.

Lucas, unlike his parents, never transforms into a monster in the main game; Ethan has to deal with his human form only, but this does not correspond to a typical boss fight. The son of the Baker family is playing hide and seek in the chaotic and mazey storage area, where he has set up all sorts of twisted and lethal traps in order to torture and eventually kill his victims. Ethan is forced to fight several monsters and go weaponless through a stressing trial before he is able to take back one of the valuable ingredients for the serum, which Lucas has stolen. So just like in the fairy tales, the evil character is constantly trying to prevent the good protagonist to reach his goal, which now is to save both his wife and Zoe whom Lucas abducted in the meantime. 

At this point, Ethan still carries the role of the liberator/knight, but it won't be long until this condition is reversed, because after he leaves the Baker property with either Mia or Zoe, the fairy tale takes an unexpected turn:  Ethan becomes the male counterpart of the imprisoned princess, and Mia acts the part of the knight who battles all sorts of evil forces in order to save him. Eveline traps Ethan in a cocoon in the wrecked ship in an attempt to keep manipulating Mia; but Mia, who still has her free will, manages to liberate her husband and nearly sacrifices herself in order to make sure he will be safe.

Puzzles and trials many times form the core of fairy tales, and this is one more element that makes video games relate to them so strongly. Ethan's story is full of both, and most of them are dangerous and cunning. The main house itself is one big puzzle, as nearly all of its passages are locked and Ethan has to look for keys to open the intimidating doors that block them. There are items hidden in bathtubs, grandfather clocks, books, corpses even. The basement of the house is yet one more puzzle, accessed through more than one entrances, that has been transformed into a huge slaughterhouse.

Although the main house of the Bakers is the dominant environment, it is in fact the old house that is the most compelling and iconic stage of action. Broken wooden floors, hidden crawlspaces, melted candles, torn wallpapers, swarms of bugs and flies that either fly around or hang on nests, a secret altar with items that echo the voodoo ceremonies of the rural Louisiana, where the story takes place, bridges decorated with dolls and doll heads, an abandoned greenhouse with wild vegetation, narrow passages filled with crawlers, vintage objects that are used as pieces of puzzles, like a wooden crank or an oil lamp, are only some of the elements that describe the chilling atmosphere of the old house, which is Marguerite's domain. If the main house was a death trap, the old house is like a witch's lair, where any intruder is unwelcome.

The old house is partly the fairy tale's maze; although not a literal labyrinth, its setting is equally confusing due to the many doors, locked passages and similar-looking rooms. Ethan has to cross its hostile grounds several times, while being hunted by Marguerite and her bugs, as he is looking for a series of items that will lead him to one of the ingredients that Zoe has requested. Prior to getting inside the old house, however, Ethan has the chance to watch a revealing video cassette which shows Mia wandering around the place while Marguerite is looking for her. This creepy footage offers some hints as to where he should go and what he could look for in order to solve the many puzzles of the old house. Marguerite appears eventually, unleashing her bugs to make him go away from her realm and blocking his path on several occasions. Ethan has to find ways to outsmart her in order to complete his exploration, but it is not until he faces her mutated form and kills her that he is able to find the ingredient for the serum.

The less fairy tale-looking environment is the wrecked ship, a stage that somehow switches the story back to reality with its grim grey/blue colors that contrast the faded sepia/yellow tones of the Baker family property sceneries. It is interesting that after Mia's part is complete on the ship and we return to the Baker house with Ethan again, the colors of those areas are not sepia/yellow anymore; their tone resembles more that of the ship; and additionally, the whole look in the guest house, which was the very first area that Ethan explored when he arrived, is now like it belongs to a hallucination. The atmosphere is dense and thick, Ethan has disturbing visions on his way, and eventually he finds himself back up in the attic where it all began - where he had that very first battle with the possessed Mia. Now it is Eveline waiting for him there, taking her human forms before she reveals the literal monster that she really is: a huge mutant that has taken over the guest house and whatever is around it, a creature of unidentified identity that reeks of poison, destruction and death, the personification of Evil in its most extreme form. Like in fairy tales, Evil is defeated in the end and Good prevails, but as we know Evil never actually dies for good, always finding ways to resurrect itself from its ashes.

Yukio Mishima and The Evil Within

Some other time in this blog, I mentioned how the backstories of the characters in video games give us a rich insight concerning the research that the developers went through while shaping them. Sometimes, said backstories involve details that may be offered randomly and thus pass unnoticed, until you get a clue to put them together: then it is like puzzle pieces that are placed in the right spots to form an image, thanks to which the character that they concern is set under a new, revealing light.

In The Assignment, one of the extra episodes of The Evil Within, where we get to play as Juli Kidman, we have the chance to view parts of the main game's story through her eyes. While literally floating in a state between reality and nightmare, Juli comes across some particularly nasty surprises in her way. The most revealing of them is having to fight Joseph Oda, who appears before her as a Haunted, determined to kill her. In her attempt to distract him so as to perform her attacks against him, Juli can resort to several diversions, one of them being turning on a film in a small cinema, which depicts Joseph as a Samurai, yielding a katana.

 

It is interesting that, although we are already aware from the main game that Joseph is the descendant of a historical family of Samurais, this is the first and only time that we see him literally paying homage to his heritage, and it is through an indirect means, in the distorted reality created by Ruvik in STEM. As Ruvik is exploiting the memories of his victims, blending them with his own so as to be able to control them, it becomes clear that the appearance of this specific film comes straight from Joseph's memory stash, serving as a way to confuse him at that point (because he is a Haunted, therefore not himself), while offering Juli the chance to stealthily attack him.

Joseph is described as a considerate and composed man, but it is hinted that he is constantly suppressing himself in order to comply to the norms and stereotypes of society. Coming from a strict upbringing, he feels forced - partly by his environment and partly by his own self - to keep his sensitivities and weaknesses hidden. This is something rather typical of the Samurai upbringing, so it is natural that Joseph, due to his family's historical past, had it too, to some degree at least. The film that we have the chance to see in The Assignment shows that he had been through Samurai training as part of his celebrated family's tradition.

Mostly known for his ritualistic suicide via "seppuku" (or harakiri), Yukio Mishima was nonetheless a multi-talented writer, considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. Both as an artist and a personality, he was obsessed with beauty, eroticism and death, as well as their becoming one. Mishima was a homosexual, but growing up in the extremely strict Japanese society of the 1930ties made it particularly tough for him to accept and express himself as far as his sexuality was concerned. In 1949, he wrote his now considered iconic novel "Confessions of a Mask" which, although not entirely autobiographical, narrates episodes and memories of its protagonist that are greatly connected to the author himself. Written in first person, the novel explores a young man's continuous agony as he struggles with his ever-growing and forbidden sexual desires while evolving in a society and a family environment that are not only particularly strict, but moreover guide their members towards very specific, predesignated paths from which it is quite hard - if not impossible - to divert.

The young narrator starts his confessions going back to his childhood and early teens, during which time he had his first sexual awakenings triggered by random visual experiences. Although not the very first, the strongest, most memorable and critical one was an image of Saint Sebastian that he saw in a book, a painting by Guido Reni which depicted the saint during his torture, tied on a tree with his body pierced with arrows. The hero describes with both precision and subtlety all the emotions that rushed through him while looking at that painting, resulting in a rather intense first experience of culmination which defined his subsequent view of people and the world and made him more than conscious of his sexual identity. However, living in a society that condemned such deviations from the accepted norms, he knew that he would be forced to live his life in disguise, always putting on a mask that would hide his true self from the rest of the world.

Joseph of The Evil Within has grown up in a similar environment - probably not so strict, but still the values and beliefs that characterized old-time Japan should have been ever present in the life of his family and surrounding environment. Apparently he took some important education, then trained to become a detective. We can see from his attitude and approach that he likes to dig into things, examine them deeper and he also has a notable combinatorial mind. He has a small notebook where he writes down everything that he sees or thinks that can be related to a crime case. He got married at a relatively young age and made his own family, but he still seems to be quite vulnerbale socially, despite his smartness and the choice that he made to follow a dangerous line of work. But maybe he chose the specific line of work for this reason: so as to give him inner strength and help him overcome his fears and anxieties.

 

Teaming up with Sebastian was a turning point in both his professional and personal/social life, as Sebastian was quite different as a person, and came from an equally different environment and background. Although he was not too open as a character either, he was much more free sentimentally and spiritually and, unlike Joseph, obviously not hunted by strict rules and norms. The two partners formed a close bond and became good friends, always caring for and helping each other. From a symbolic aspect, Sebastian was for Joseph what Saint Sebastian was for Mishima, a new force in his life which brought forward a mental strength that he always had but kept suppressed and maybe woke up in him some darker and forbidden desires (maybe towards Sebastian as well). Sebastian, aptly named after the saint, was in a similar way tortured - not literally like him, but psychologically broken - but he was also a hot-blooded, passionate man who would always show his feelings and never suppress himself. Although he too was positively affected by Joseph's presence in his life - the calmness and love for order that were due to Joseph's upbringing helped Sebastian have better control - the biggest influence was the one that he had on Joseph, something that the latter obviously came to realize while being trapped in STEM, during which time his subconscious took over and brought him face to face with new revelations about himself.

There are several instances in the game, where we can see a progression of this newfound self-awareness, albeit they all occur in the dream-like sequences that STEM creates. What triggers the initiation of this development is his succumbing to Ruvik's power and becoming a Haunted for the first time. This transition could very well symbolize the awakening of his darker side and all those elements that he kept hidden in the real, "civilized" world. During the sequences when Joseph is a Haunted, he seems to possess an insane power which makes him become extremely violent and lethal. Unlike any other random Haunted, however, he is totally aware of this transformation and seems to be able to control it, as he can go back to normal and vice-versa. In a most revealing scene at the start of Chapter 7, after he and Sebastian found refuge in an abandoned church, he acknowledges that he does like it when he turns, since this transforms him into someone that he cannot be in real life. Although it scares him, it also fascinates him, and this is one more reason why, in the previous chapter, he tried to put an end to his life. Embracing his dark side would mean accepting all that would come along, and this is something that can also be applied to his normal, real life. Just like Mishima, Joseph is in a constant struggle between faithfully following the rules with which he grew up and freeing himself from everything that keeps him enslaved

Elements of Classic and Contemporary Culture in Life Is Strange 2

Apart from its extensive references to JD Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye and its Resident Evil easter eggs, which I covered in two separate articles (here and here), Life is Strange 2 features many more references to both classic and contemporary culture, which are also worth exploring, as all of them are not simply there for the sake of it, but are moreover connected to the game's story and its characters in several ways. Some are more obvious while others require a bit more observation and search.

Finn's name nods to Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer's best friend from Mark Twain's famous novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huckleberry, best known as Huck, is a young boy who lives in the margins of society; son of a drunkard, abusive father, he found it was better to live in the streets. He is smart and cunning, sometimes gets misguided, but he has a heart of gold. Pretty much like Finn from the game, that is.

Finn with Sean (left) and Huck with Tom from a recent film adaptation of Tom Sawyer

Additionally, Finn's full first name is Finnegan, referencing Finnegan's Wake, the novel written by James Joyce which is considered the most complex work of fiction of British literature and the hardest to interpret. It is written in a bizarre, complex style which consists of puns, made-up words and idioms and its story is like a maze. Something which, to some extent, applies to Finn who may have an extrovert attitude and social charisma, but he is also multi-dimensional, with many secrets and unexplored paths in his character.

This is not the only case where James Joyce comes into play in the game. When Sean and Daniel enter Karen's room at the end of episode 2, they find one of her toys, a bear called Ulysses. Ulysses may be the legendary hero of Homer's Odyssey, but it is also the title of one of Joyce's most famous novels. Both the Odyssey and Ulysses narrate numerous adventures that their main heroes go through, just like Sean and Daniel do during their journey.

By the end of episode 3, Sean is seriously injured and loses his left eye. Later in episode 4, Karen gives him an eye patch to cover it with. Interestingly enough, James Joyce used to wear an identical eye patch over his left eye, since he had many problems with his vision and had undergone several operations for this purpose.

Sean (left) and James Joyce with their eye patches

Sean and his destroyed eye also allude to Carl Grimes from The Walking Dead, who lost his right eye after being shot. From that point and on, Carl is always seen wearing a bandage over his eye, just like Sean during the months after his injury.

Sean (left) and Carl, both with bandaged eyes

This resemblance alone might have been random, but it is not, as it is related to a few more Walking Dead easter eggs.

While Sean and Daniel reside in the abandoned cabin in the woods in episode 2, they (well, most probably Daniel!) carve the message "Keep out, Wolves inside". In the first episode of The Walking Dead, Rick Grimes wakes up from a coma at a hospital and, while wandering around the deserted, bloody halls, he arrives outside the Cafeteria, where someone has written "Don't open, Dead inside" on the padlocked doors. Since Daniel's fascination with zombies is well known, we can easily assume that he wrote the message on the cabin wall, inspired by the one in the series.

Additionally, after Sean escapes from the hospital to find Daniel in episode 4, he comes across two hostile locals in the desert, one of whom is particularly violent and when he realizes that Sean is Mexican, he attempts to humiliate him in any way he can think of. If you choose to obey to him to avoid trouble, in the end he forces Sean to sing a song in Spanish. This scene reminds of one in The Walking Dead, where the bloodthirsty villain Negan forces Carl to sing a song for him in private. Although Negan's motives are different from the evil guy's in the game, the sequence plays out in a similar way.

The scene from Life is Strange 2

The scene from The Walking Dead

When episode 3 starts, we do not know much about Finn yet, but as the story unfolds, we have the chance to learn about him and his habits. While exploring his friend's tent, Sean spots a copy of The Lord of the Flies, the famous novel by William Golding. The book tells the story of a group of students who find themselves stranded on a tropical island after their plane crashes, and are forced to find means to survive in an environment where the wild and the unknown are not the most dangerous enemies. Apart from the book's literary significance, it also relates to the story of the game as the group of drifters led by Finn live a solitary life out on the road and are called to face several dangers every day.

That said, there are also references to Jack Kerouak's novel On The Road, where the main characters are in the course of a road trip that follows a route similar to the one Sean and Daniel take, which also ends in Mexico. The drifters' bohemian lifestyle, smoking weed, traveling through the desert, getting to California, all this alludes to Kerouak's story, which is, to a high degree, autobiographical, although he has altered the names of the real people who correspond to his fictional characters.

Kerouak (top left) and his friends in Mexico City

One of them is Dean Moriarty, whose real life counterpart was Neal Cassady. Cassidy's name is partly a tribute to him, since her own attitude is laid back and carefree like his was. Her most significant reference, however, is to Eva Cassidy, a singer and guitarist who used to play and sing in the streets for a good amount of her life, but died very young. Since the game's Cassidy is a talented singer and guitarist, we can assume that she used to sing from an early age, and probably adopted her nickname to honor the famous but ill-fated musician. Or maybe her friends called her that way because she would always sing and play her guitar.

Cassisy (left) and real-life musician Eva Cassisy

Pennywise took his nickname from the penny he is wearing as a pendant, as a reminder of the dear friend that he lost and is desperately trying to find. If we attempt to analyze his nickname more thoroughly, it hints at his street wisdom, since he tends to express philosophical questions several times during the game. The nick itself, however, nods to It by Stephen King and its main evil character Pennywise. Of course the game's Penny is anything but evil; sharing a name with such a terrifyinh character is pure irony. Maybe he was a fan of King's horror stories, and besides he is the kind of person who tends to believe in conspiracy theories and urban legends.

Having a copy of The Lord of the Flies is not Finn's only exhibition of literary interest. If we take the time to look around the drifters' camp in the forest, we will come upon a tree with the words "Bonjour Tristess" (sic) sprayed on them. We can be sure it is Finn who wrote them, as they are made with the same style and the same colours that he used to spray the target on the tree near the lake, so that Daniel could practice knife-throwing. The words allude to the novel Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan, which tells the story of a frivolous teenager who unwillingly causes a family tragedy. Though not directly related to Finn as a theme, the book and his life's story do have the tragic factor in common, only in his case the drama was caused by his father. But it's very likely that Finn didn't care much about the story of the book, and was more attracted to its pessimistic title (Hello sadness) which he liked to use as a quote, albeit he did misspell it on the graffiti. Or maybe he was directly quoting Paul Éluard's poem À peine défigurée, from which the phrase originally comes.

The scissors in the middle of the graffiti are also one more proof this was made by Finn, as he uses actual scissors a bit later in episode 3 to cut Sean's hair.

Kerouak also has written a novel titled Tristessa, which narrates the story of a real-life prostitute from Mexico whom the writer had met, and gave her the name Tristessa in the book. See Mexico is ever present in the game, from the very beginning; and several reminders show up as we proceed.

 

A rather unforgettable sequence in episode 3 is right after Cassidy, Finn and Jacob find out about Daniel's power and they swear to Sean that they will keep it a secret. When all are back at the camp, the sub-section that begins is titled Paradise Lost, and it is when Sean has to decide whether he and Daniel will agree to go to Merrill's house to rob his money. The title of this section is borrowed from John Milton's famous poem which tells the biblical story of the fall of man. In this case however its significance is not religious but rather literal. It foretells how the drifters, and together with them Sean and Daniel, are about to lose their freedom, and subsequently the relatively happy days that they were living in the camp, since the heist is going to happen anyway.

The whole episode 3 is titled Wastelands, taken from TS Eliot's masterpiece The Waste Land, a long poem full of symbols and allegories which is one of the most important works of literature of the 20th century. The whole structure of the poem bears some resemblance to the specific episode from Life is Strange 2, but also to the game overall: it deals with themes such as disorientation, distress and disillusionment, it features several characters who talk about various themes in turn and in the end comes judgement. Additionally, it is split in five parts, like Life is Strange 2 has five episodes, and there is imagery in each of them that can be related to the game's story sequences.

The Catcher In The Rye and Life Is Strange

J.D. Salinger's masterpiece novel The Catcher In The Rye has inspired several themes in Dontnod's brilliant games of the Life Is Strange series and their universe. The book is narrated in first person by Holden Caulfield, a 17-year-old boy who is currently in an institution in California. A few days before, he had been expelled from his prestigious college in Pennsylvania due to bad performance and got back to New York where his home was, intending to spend a few days wandering here and there until his return for the Christmas holidays, as he did not want his parents to find out about the expulsion. He talks about himself, his family, his college, his schoolmates, his friends, in a form of consecutive abrupt confessions, while he several times refers to his three siblings - his older brother, D.B. a careless, successful author with whom he intends to live from now on, his younger sister Phoebe, a smart and intuitive girl, and his little brother, Allie, with whom he obviously had a strong connection and who died sometime ago. During his wanderings, he encounters several people, recalls memories and visits bars and hotels, while regularly going back in his mind to things that cannot leave him in peace. The novel is a unique piece of literature, written in a very distinct style, and is one of those stories that require very careful reading in order to become fully clear.

Max, the lead character from Life Is Strange 1, shares the same surname with Holden - they are both called Caulfield. Another notable reference is of course the boarding high school where Max is studying, nodding to the similar albeit much more elite school that Holden attends. There is also a direct easter egg, paying homage to the book and his hero. At some point, Max spots a red hunting hat, similar to the one that Holden is wearing for most part of his story, hanging from a rack in a corridor, and makes a comment referencing him.

Holden is notorious for his seemingly misanthropic attitude; and you got to love him for calling everyone and everything phony in any given instance. So there you have it, Holden; Max thinks your red hunting hat is phony. I bet that if he knew about this, he would definitely called her phony for calling him phony. There is also another major easter egg, spotted in Max's room in the school - there is a poster on a wall, probably of a movie called The Winger and the Cow. Both the title and the style of the poster resemble the cover of the original edition of The Catcher In the Rye.

But it is not only with tangible stuff that Life Is Strange 1 is conversing with The Catcher In The Rye. Major themes in the game's story, as well as character traits of its heroes, bring Salinger's iconic novel to mind.

In one alternate reality, Chloe, Max's friend, is severely injured in a car accident and later Max pulls her plug, helping her to rest in peace. Assuming that this alternate reality is what actually happened and that what we see in the game as taking place in present time is in fact an alternate reality, we are able to see Max under a different light: arriving back to her hometown, Max is overwhelmed by memories of her friend and her passing away, facts which she obviously, and naturally, cannot get over. Unable to come to terms with reality and move on somehow, she resorts to what possibly every single human being on earth has said or thought of at least once in their lives. She wishes that she could turn back time so as to change Chloe's fate. She probably wished this so many times that one day all of a sudden she made it happen. Because it would be impossible for her to go on with her life having experienced such a tragic loss, in which she also had a share, the only way to deal with it was to manipulate time and change the events. So it's a dream come true for Max, who is able to rewind time, keep whatever she wants from her peculiar flashbacks and then prepare a present and a future of her liking. But can it be that simple? Of course not. Since Max is not living alone on this planet, and since her actions affect not only herself and Chloe but also several other people, things are destined to escalate sooner or later.

In a similar way, Holden is trying to cover up his real anxieties and fears by dressing them up as contempt for people and society and constantly pretending to be something that he is not. He wants to pass as a bad student but in fact he is very smart and educated. He is supposed to be a misanthropist, but he constantly seeks the human presence around him. Holden's story is generally viewed as one of teenage rebellion, but in fact it is something completely different; reading between the lines, this becomes rather obvious to the trained reader, and it is intensified by the knowledge that Salinger was very protective of his hero and did not allow any adaptation of his novel, probably fearing there would be lots of misinterpretations - which indeed was and still is the case with this genuinely unique story.

Holden narrates his story from a bizarre point of view. We do not know from the start where he is or what he is doing, as he starts revealing fragments of his life that sometimes do not seem coherent. But there is a constant in his story: recurring phrases that appear regularly in several variations, but always in the same spirit: People always think something's all true, people never notice anything, people never believe you, people never give your message to anybody. Not only these phrases are spoken like a mantra, but they also sound as though Holden is trying, through them, to say something about himself using hints, because he may be too scared to talk about it directly. His recurring nightmare about trying to catch the children that are running in the rye field and are about to fall off a cliff symbolizes his inability to get over his little brother's death and his secret wish to be able to turn back time and save him somehow - which again brings us back to Max and her super power. It also hints at his desire to protect innocence, since he couldn't do it with his own.

In a most revealing scene, which is full of hints and innuendos that are mistakenly taken literally, Holden visits a professor of his, Mr Antolini, and, having nowhere else to go since it is very late, decides to stay the night in his apartment. Mr Antolini is an intelligent and educated man, but obviously leads a somewhat strange lifestyle: he is married to a much older and rather unattractive woman, with whom he seems to have no real emotional connection. Still the couple throws parties regularly, as if trying to convince society of their marital happiness. The lady offers Holden some coffee and disappears in another room, leaving him alone with her husband. Moments later, Holden begins to feel dizzy, as Mr Antolini starts a bizarre lecture about intellectuality and how Holden should not resist it and embrace it. His words are carefully chosen so as to hint at his real subject matter which, of course, is far from being educational. Still feeling inexplicably dizzy, the young boy falls asleep only to wake up in the middle of the night to see that Mr Antolini is sitting right next to him, admiring his long legs and stroking his hair. Holden leaves the apartment in panic and, once out on the street, he realizes that his vision is blurred and that he cannot walk straight. Obviously that coffee was not that innocent after all. He manages to collect himself somehow by sort of summoning his dead brother in his thoughts. 

Mr Antolini brings to mind the perverted Mr Jefferson from Life Is Strange 1, the charismatic but twisted professor of photography who was obsessed with capturing the loss of innocence with his camera. Mr Antolini looks and sounds like a toned-down version of Mr Jefferson - toned-down only because back in the times when he lived, he could not freely express his secret desires. But just like Mr Antolini attempts to seduce Holden, Mr Jefferson leads Max to his lair and ties her down, planning to turn her into one of his themes and, subsequently, victims. Unlike Max, however, Holden cannot rewind time so as to change reality. Max manages to effectively have Mr Jefferson arrested by using her super power to plan her moves, while Holden ends up in a mental institute, trying to come to terms with himself and all the secrets that he feels forced to keep.

Life Is Strange 2 moves in a different path story-wise, but again focuses on themes that were explored in the first game. This time the lead characters are two young brothers, Sean and Daniel Diaz, who are forced to abandon their normal life after their father is shot dead and the two of them are accused of murder. They embark on a journey from Seattle to Mexico in a race against time, while having to deal with Daniel's telekinesis, a new-found power which can potentially destroy them or save their lives. Brotherhood, trust, friendship and loyalty are among the cornerstones of the story, but the motifs of the loss of innocence, unavoidable change and maturity, both physical and emotional, play a major role in the game.

So it is no surprise that Holden Caulfield is present in this game too, albeit in a more elaborate and complex way. You may not be able to automatically connect Sean with him, as the overall setting of the story, Sean's background and the odyssey he has to go through with his brother look like they have no common ground with Holden's story or his character, but there is a key chapter in the game, the third one which is titled Wastelands, that is, in reality, a story inside the story: an epic tale of struggling with adolescence, adulthood, love and sexuality, centered around a tumultulous but powerful brotherly bond, which marks Sean and Daniel's coming of age in the form of a painful rite of passage. This chapter has a very special atmosphere and development that is pretty similar to Salinger's novel, although again this may not be that obvious on first look or if you play the game in a haste or read the book superficially. The Life Is Strange games are very much alike with Salinger's stories: they have so many layers that each scene, each phrase, each word even, may mean many different things.

Like in Life Is Strange 1, here too there are references to the Catcher In The Rye that are more or less direct. For example, Sean can be seen very early in the game wearing a red beanie and smoking a cigarette, reminding the most common depiction of Salinger's hero, that shows him with his red hunting hat and a cigarette in his mouth.

There is also a mural outside the garage at the basement of Sean's home, made by him, that depicts a kraken. The overall drawing style and colours again look similar to the original cover of The Catcher in the Rye, just like Max's poster did.

In the first pages of Sean's sketchbook, there is a drawing that he made depicting a baseball glove with a ball. This too nods to Holden, who used to carry with him a baseball glove that belonged to his deceased brother, Allie.

 

 

Another easter egg referencing Salinger's novel that may pass unnoticed because it is somehow hidden can be found in the house of Sean and Daniel's grandparents. In there, Sean watches the aquarium and comments that he has not seen any fish yet. He asks Daniel to lift a log that is blocking the bed of the tank and reveal the goldfish that had been hiding behind it.

D. B., Holden's brother, is a writer who became successful with a book that he wrote, titled The Secret Goldfish.

But the references that are contextual and have to do with the essence of the story are the most important. There is a recurring theme that shows up in the second chapter, Rules. In a segment in The Catcher In The Rye, Holden is sitting on the backseat of a taxi that drives through New York on a cold winter day. He keeps wondering what happens in winter to the ducks that swim in the Central Park lagoon in the spring; where do the ducks go when the lake freezes. Of course it is a question that no one can answer, because no one cares about the ducks; but for Holden, it is essential that he knows about them, as they stand for several things in his mind. The cycle that the ducks follow, appearing in spring then somehow disappearing in winter, is like the circle of life and the inevitable changes that come as time passes. As Holden sees the lake frozen with no ducks, he fears that maybe a spring will arrive one year, when they will not appear again. In other words, he has lost his innocence already, and he is afraid to grow up and accept himself for what he is, come to terms with his bad experiences and proceed to adult life and maturity. Another parameter has to do with his grief for the death of Allie, his little brother, which he obviously has never gotten over. There are also the incidents from the past years that never stop haunting him: the murder or forced suicide of a fellow student who was obviously gay, the confession of a close friend who was probably sexually abused by her stepfather; and of course Allie's death.

In Life Is Strange 2, in the second chapter, Rules, Sean and Daniel find shelter in an abandoned house in a forest in Oregon. It is December, the heart of winter, and there is snow everywhere. There are several interesting things in the house, but the most intriguing one is the picture of a duck hanging on the wall above the makeshift bed where the two brothers sleep. Not so coincidentally, there are flying ducks depicted on Daniel's sweater in this section.

Later on, in their grandparents' house, where Sean and Daniel find refuge for a while, in one of the rooms there is a wooden box with a duck painted on it, and on the box sits a red cap.

And there are three sculpted flying ducks decorating the wall near the glass door which leads to the backyard of the house.

Of course the duck images are not randomly placed there. The second one is much more direct, as it is accompanied by the red cap which nods to Holden's hunting hat. But both of them are there as a reference to Salinger's novel and as a symbol in the game, in connection to their original symbolism in the book. And maybe it is also an inside joke that answers Holden's question: the ducks that disappear from Central Park in winter, are kept in Oregon.

Just like Holden, Sean and Daniel are in the process of moving extremely fast from childhood/adolescence to adulthood. Like Holden, they too have lost their innocence, and acceptance of themselves and maturity await for them around the corner. The first duck, the one in the abandoned house, has pale colors, while the second one is bright red; they may very well stand for the "winter" ducks and the "spring" ducks respectively, in Holden's ramblings, while Sean and Daniel get closer to breaking free and moving on. The cabin in the woods and the grandparents' house in Rules, the two places where the ducks can be seen, are like passages, leading to the next major step that Sean and Daniel will eventually make when they hop on a train headed to California. Which brings us to Wastelands, the aforementioned chapter, where essential changes begin to happen, affecting both themselves and those around them.

Like Holden grieves over his brother's death, Sean has a constant fear of losing Daniel: at first, he is afraid that they will get separated, then he is worried all the time about him maybe not being able to control his power, therefore putting himself in danger. This fear inevitably becomes reality in episode 4, Faith, when Sean loses Daniel after a dramatic incident, and subsequently risks everything, including his life, until they are reunited.

This development is foreshadowed in an ominous dream that Sean has at the start of the fourth episode, where he sees himself sitting with Daniel at the top of a cliff, and suddenly Daniel tells him that he is alone and falls off, in a sequence that is one more vivid reference to The Catcher In The Rye, as it is connected to Holden's dream about being in a rye field, trying to catch the little children as they are about to fall off the cliff so as to keep them safe, and hence the innocence that he lost, and his inability to deal with Allie's death.

In this specific context, Sean identifies with Holden, as he himself becomes the "Catcher" who is desperately trying to save little Daniel from falling off the cliff. In the same context, Daniel has his literal identity as Sean's brother, symbolizing the blood link that connects them and that Sean fears of losing, but he also represents the lost innocence for both himself and Sean, identifying with the allegory of the children in Holden's dream.

Miasmata and Lord of The Flies

As an iconic, futuristic novel, Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954) can be considered a major example of symbolism and allegory in literature. Set during an undefined war period, the story follows a group of boys who find themselves stranded on a tropical island after their airplane crashes somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Two of the boys, Piggy and Ralph, form an unlikely friendship despite them having absolutely nothing in common, while Ralph seems to be respected by the majority of the other boys, who establish him as some sort of leader. At first, the boys seem to enjoy their freedom, but soon their primitive survival instincts come forward, resulting in unavoidable tragedy just before salvation arrives. In the meantime, they develop a weird obsession about a monster that lives in the deep forest, which in fact represents their own fears and manias.

James Aubrey as Ralph in Peter Brook's adaptation of Lord of the Flies (1963)

Although the story of Miasmata (2012), the beautiful game by IonFX, is quite different from Lord of the Flies, we can identify several themes that are either prominent or implied in the book. Miasmata takes place in a tropical island, where the protagonist arrives in a boat. The island is a haven where several scientists, now deceased, had been working on a cure that could defeat a deadly plague that had infested the so-called civilized world. The protagonist has to search the whole place and find the ingredients (flowers and plants) that, when mixed together, will produce the cure. While at it, he is being stalked by a strange and vicious creature that chases him relentlessly while he is practically unable to defeat it.

The first theme that is common in both stories is the setting: the tropical island which looks like Paradise on Earth. In relation to this, comes the second theme, that of the representatives of the civilized world who are unexpectedly forced to live in primitive conditions, devoid of all the luxuries and benefits of their past lives.

Here the two stories deviate, as in Lord of the Flies this theme becomes highlighted from the moment that it establishes itself in the plot, while in Miasmata its role is secondary, since the protagonist is alone on the island, therefore his survival is easier and he has no one to compete with about a potential leadership.

The most prominent theme that is common in both the book and the game, is that of the "monster", the unidentified threat, the vague hostile force that is there around somewhere and becomes a recurring element that indirectly pushes the plot forward while every time it marks a notable progression in the characters' plunge to insanity.

The "creature" that stalks the protagonist in Miasmata

In Lord of the Flies, the "monster" is finally revealed to be the disfigured corpse of a pilot who got killed in an attempt to jump on the island with his parachute. In Miasmata, it is a strange creature that looks like a combination of a bull and a cat, which may appear several times during the hero's quest and depictions of which can be seen in one of the cabins of the deceased scientists. As the story of the game reaches its conclusion and the protagonist finds the cure and uses it to heal himself from the plague, the monster disappears, implying that it was a figment of his imagination, as well as a figment of the imagination of all the other scientists who had been on the island before him.

In both stories, the unknown enemy gradually becomes some sort of reverse driving force: its existence, mostly in the minds of the characters and less as a tangible threat, intensifies their darker instincts (in Lord of the Flies) and their agonizing uncertainty about what comes next (in Miasmata). This results in inevitable dramatic consequences as the characters get trapped in their own perception of that threat, which blinds them, preventing them from seeing and facing reality.

In Lord of the Flies, the climax of the drama occurs when the boys, under the influence of Jack, Ralph's rival awe who at some point, in a coup-like move, becomes the leader, kill Piggy, just before a ship arrives that will lead them back to civilization. In Miasmata, the protagonist, after healing himself with the cure, manages to swim to the boat that will lead him to salvation, only to commit suicide just there.

In a most moving twist of fate, we realize that the cure will never reach the civilized world, seeing that several injections containing the healing mixture, including the one of the protagonist, are lying on the bottom of the boat; which implies that all the other scientists before our hero managed to arrive to the boat but never left the island. In a parallel allusion, the boys in Lord of the Flies do go back to their home, but after what they had to go through on the island, they will never be the same again. In Miasmata, the shot, which is literal, heals the protagonist but leads him to realize that some secrets need to be preserved at any cost. In Lord of the Flies, the shot is metaphorical: the ominous atmosphere of the island injects itself in the minds of the boys and shows them what monstrosities they are capable of.

Kafka's Revelations: Franz Kafka in Resident Evil Revelations 2

In my recent analysis of Resident Evil: Revelations 2, I noted the several references to Franz Kafka that can be found throughout the game. But since the story is literally based on Kafka works, I thought it would be interesting to put together those elements that are related to the author and can be spotted in the four episodes of the game.

It's worth mentioning that early references to Kafka can be found in the first Resident Evil game. I am not sure about the original version, as I haven't played it, but in the remake and its recent HD remaster, a copy of The Castle can be seen on two occasions.

One, in the medical storeroom where you also find the serum:

Another one, in the small study where you find the dog whistle (and the lighter, if you play as Jill):

In Revelations 2, things become more specific as the main villain, Alex Wesker, seems to be obsessed with Kafka's books, and specifically with the short story In A Penal Colony and its concept. However there are many references to Kafka's other works, as well as his life, that exist in the whole game.

To begin with, the four chapters of the game borrow their titles from Kafka's works.

Episode 1 is 'Penal Colony'.

And rightly so, as it takes place in the prison where Claire and Moira are trapped. Barry's section of this chapter also has the prison area as a setting for most of its part. The original story of Penal Colony describes an isolated prison on an island where a condemned man is about to be executed.

Episode 2 is Contemplation.

Contemplation is a collection of stories by Kafka. This episode in the game is some sort of interlude, in the sense that all the involving characters have a little time to think about the state they are in and try to figure out ways to get out of their stressing situation.

Episode 3 is Judgement.

Kafka's Judgement narrates the story of a father and his son, who hide things from each other and don't communicate properly. The father's actions cause idirectly the son's death. In the game, we get to see both Barry and Moira (father and daughter, as connected to the father and son of the story) talking about their issues with each other to Natalia and Claire respectively. In this episode, we have the chance to learn the reason behind the bad relationship between them, and to see in more detail how each one of them views each other. We understand that it's mainly due to Barry's actions and attitude that he doesn't get along well with Moira, although he is a good man, and never wanted to hurt her feelings.

Episode 4 is Metamorphosis.

Metamorphosis is a story by Kafka about a man who discovers one day that he has transformed into an instect-like monstruous creature. It is not random that the final episode, the conclusion, is named after this story. There are several cases of transformation that we witness in the game, and they are both literal and allegorical.

There is Alex's metamorphosis, the most obvious and literal one. Alex transforms into a hideous mutated creature, after she failed to be reborn through Natalia.

Alex would have reconsidered power had she known how ugly she would turn

Then there is Neil's transformation, both literal and metaphorical: he turned into a mutant after Alex injected him, and he also had a spiritual and sentimental alteration when he tried to steal the virus from Alex, wanting to take advantage of its power.

Neil got mutated against his will but the result was fatal anyway

There is also Natalia's metamorphosis, which is internal, as she got possessed by Alex; a transformation that passed unnoticed by everyone around her.

If you notice sublte details, like Natalia's smirk, you can tell she's been possessed

And there's Moira's transformation, which is the most essential, in the sense that she is the only one of the 'transformed' characters whose metamorphosis is for the best: in a bildungsroman-esque twist of events, she is forced to take responsibility and do something she would never do otherwise: she grabs a gun in her hands, so as to kill Neil and save Claire's life. So later when she gets trapped under the rubble in the collapsing monument, the old Evgeny finds her, saves her and takes care of her. In the long six months that she passes by his side, she becomes wiser, both practically and mentally. Evgeny teaches her how to hunt and how to be able to survive in the toughest situations, and although they seem to not tolerate each other at all, by the end they form a close bond, to the extent that when Evgeny dies, Moira becomes a wreck. All this makes her reconsider her relationship with her father, she starts to view him through a different prism, and by the time they get to reunite, she seems ready to make up for all the wasted years. It is worth mentioning also that she saves yet two more lives, Natalia's and Barry's when she appears as deus ex machina at the end of Barry's story, to initiate the final act of Alex's downfall.

A wrecked but wiser Moira appears at just the right moment to save the day

It is notable that the two main characters, Claire and Barry, do not experience any transformation; they may have sentimental ups and downs, and they both pass through a process of epiphany - Claire when she finds out the truth about Neil, and Barry when he hears the message that Moira had left in her phone, that she directed to him saying she was sorry - but their personality remains solid and clear from start to finish. They represent the stability, clarity and logic and all the positive things that keep the world going, something that they both also prove with their actions: Barry travels to the isolated island to find Moira, and Claire goes back there as well, determined to save her.

The setting of the story is an island, just like in Kafka's Penal Colony.

Alex kidnaps her victims and imprisons them on that unnamed island, where she makes them lab rats for a twisted experiment: she injects them with a virus that responds to fear and which may turn the carriers into mutated monsters when they get too scared. To monitor their reactions, she attached bracelets round their wrists. These bracelets change colour depending on how scared the prisoners are, but they also have another use: they are some kind of receivers through which Alex can communicate with her victims.

Claire and Moira find themselves in the cells of an abandoned prison, and while looking around for ways to escape, they come across a room with a weird machine in it.

As an item that they need, the cog, is trapped in it and they can't operate the machine since the power is down, they have to do more exploration so as to turn the power on. When they get back to the room with the machine, they are able to operate it only to find out that there is a dead body trapped there along with the cog.

This machine is a replica of the torture machine described in Kafka's Penal Colony. In Kafka's story, it was used to inscribe the sentence of the condemned prisoner on his skin, allowing him to live for just 24 hours.

Near the end of Kafka's story, the machine malfunctions while one of the characters, the Officer, sets it up to inscribe some words on his skin, it drops and kills him. The dead body that Claire and Moira see in the machine they encounter nods to this.

There are four characters in Kafka's Penal Colony, just like the four main characters in Revelations 2.

The Condemned - a man who is to be executed.
The Officer - the man in charge of the machine that will perform the execution.
The Soldier -  a man who guards the Condemned.
The Explorer - a visitor to the island.

If we were to associate each of these characters to one of the characters in the game, we could identify the Condemned with Natalia, since she was the one chosen by Alex to fulfill her experiment and she is never freed from this destiny, no matter which version of the story you get .

The Officer is associated with Moira, as it's her intervention or not that will decide the fate of Natalia (the Condemned). In one version of the story, Moira dies by the falling rubble in the Monument, like the Officer dies when the machine stabs him to death.

The Soldier is Barry, who protects Natalia (the Condemned).

And the Explorer is Claire, who observes and connects hints together and is not as attached to the events as the other three characters whose fate seems to be directly affected by Alex's actions.

Throughout their journey, Claire and Moira come across hidden drawings on the walls, which are revealed when Moira highlights them with her flashlight.

These drawings are replicas of Kafka's original sketches that were found in his journals after his death. The minimalistic style of these drawings hardly betrays that they come from so many years ago.

The loading screens of each episode feature quotes from Kafka's works:

There are also several instances where Alex can be heard, through the bracelets, quoting or paraphrasing Kafka.

Alex nods to Gregor from 'Metamorphosis' as Gabe's falling chopper is leading him to a certain death

Claire and Moira listen to Alex as she recites Kafka through their bracelets

Alex's timing for getting philosophical is just as bad as her experiment

Alex mentions another character from 'Metamorphosis' while attacking Natalia

Close to the end of the first episode, Alex guides her prisoners to go to Wossek, "where life begins".

As it turns out, Wossek is the name of an inn, which is located in a deserted fishing village, several kilometers away from the prison area. The girls arrive there at the start of Episode 2.

Wossek was the name of the village where Kafka's grandfather lived.

In relation to this, his grandfather was a slaughterer. Thus it is not random that in the next episode in the game, Claire and Moira have to explore a slaughterhouse to find a key item.

Close to the start of this episode, Alex welcomes Claire and Moira to Kierling, "where all things come to an end".

Kierling is a district of Klosterneuburg, an Austrian town, where Kafka spent the last three months of his life, in a sanatorium.

It looks like Alex has taken over the island, and put names on everything, inspired by her obsession with Kafka.

Before entering the slaughterhouse, Claire and Moira have to enter and explore an abandoned factory.

At some point in his life, Kafka became a partner, along with his brother-in-law, in the first asbestos factory in Prague. The abandoned mine in the mountains in Barry's Episode 3 also alludes to this.

In addition, the gas-polluted underground mine in Barry's episode 4 is related to this fact as well, since asbestos is a mineral which may cause serious illnesses when inhaled for a long time.

The mine that hides Alex's hideout is filled with poison gas

A few years before that, Kafka had worked as an officer in an insurance institute which specialized in compensating idustrial workers for fingers or limbs that they lost during work. This relates to the factory of the game too, as well as to the liver replicas that you have to find, one in the factory and the other in the slaughterhouse.

The slaughterhouse liver drops out of a gross machine

The lost limbs reference could also apply to the Revenants in Barry's story, as these terrifying monsters are made of several human parts stitched randomly together.

Sometimes the random stitching of Revenants turns out to be particularly grotesque

The two livers that Claire and Moira find have to be placed on a statue of Prometheus, which blocks the door to the next part they have to visit. When you first approach that statue, Alex speaks accordingly, parallelizing Neil to Prometheus.

Although this alludes directly to the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus, it is connected to Kafka as well, as the author has also written a short story entitled Prometheus, which narrates four different versions of the aforementioned myth.

As you go along the game, you find several files, some of which are directly connected to Kafka.

There is one excerpt from Penal Colony and another one from The Trial.

There are also Alex's notes on Kafka, where she mentions the story of Metamorphosis and refers to her brother Albert.

The game ends with a scene where we see Natalia sitting in a room in the Burton residence, reading a book. The first phrase that she reads, is from the Third Notebook of Kafka's Blue Octavo Notebooks.

And she continues:

 "But now the bird is gone.

The bird has changed."

 

» Kafka Drawings and Quotes in Resident Evil: Revelations 2