Spoiler break starts immediately at the first paragraph. If you are planning to play Hate Plus and don’t want to ruin the game for yourself, stop reading now.
The main thematic motif of Hate Plus is about hatred. When left unchecked and allowed to fester together with emotional instability, hate can lead to tragedy for everyone. There is also another important sub-message that Hate Plus is trying to convey: why people are driven to suicide, and its ramifications. This is a topic very familiar to me because I have attempted suicide in the past.
There are three characters that commit suicide in Hate Plus: Oh Eun-a’s “little sister”, Pyeon Mi-seun; Heo Seo-yeong; and *Mute at the very end of Day Two in her route. The root causes for all the victims are the same: their strong feelings of perceived powerlessness and guilt. Mi-seun just wants to continue loving Eun-a and be loved back by her in return, but Eun-a decides to pursue her affair with Ryu to fulfill her long-term agenda. *Mute is an AI construct programmed to ensure the safety of the Mugunghwa, and starts doubting herself when she reads about how her Old self failed to protect the ship.
While we never get to read a suicide note from Seo-yeong (she is locked up in jail after all), the player can make the inferrence from Eun-a’s funeral memorial speech and after discovering how the armed coup in 4045 failed: Seo-yeong feels great shame at being responsible for the radical change in the ship’s society. It is something that she could have prevented, but failed because of her devotion and faith in following Old *Mute’s orders.
When you realise that you have totally failed in your life’s purpose, when you feel betrayed by yourself or the people you care about, it can be a very bitter pill to swallow. And when you feel that you can no longer endure the pain and suffering, when you feel like you have no more control over the situation, that is when people may choose to end their life.
*Mute’s suicide is such an incredibly contentious and upsetting moment in Hate Plus, that it has caused quite a few distraught gamers to condemn the game on Twitter and on the Steam forums. And you cannot blame them. After spending so much time alongside her, both in Hate Plus and back in Analogue: A Hate Story (not to mention the effort you put in to save her from the exploding Mugunghwa, sacrificing *Hyun-ae in the process), this is what you were rewarded with: the death of someone you cared about.
Suddenly, Christine Love’s insistence on implementing mandatory 12-hour breaks in between the three days makes sense. It is to teach us a very important fact of life: death is something that can come suddenly when we least expect it, when we are not looking. It is neither considerate nor convenient. And when someone dies, everyone becomes affected.
Think back to the exact moment after you have finished reading *Mute’s suicide email. After the initial shock, anger, and despair, what was the next thing that went through your mind?
“What did I do wrong? I feel so helpless.”
“It’s my fault, I could have prevented it…”
“I wish I had more control to stop it from happening…”
We suddenly inherit the same feelings of powerlessness and guilt that the victim experienced. It’s a vicious cycle of suffering, similar to how hatred simply breeds more hate.
So what are the main lessons about suicide that Hate Plus is trying to tell us? How exactly do we go about preventing them? For *Mute’s case, it is all about learning to accept one’s faults and having the courage to learn from past mistakes. New *Mute summarises it best in her final dialogue wheel option:
“I don’t believe in second chances. I don’t believe in clean breaks! You can’t just ignore what happened in the past. You can’t just say ‘it’s better not knowing’. If there’s one thing I’ve learned… it’s that you can’t just have a clean start… I’m going to learn from my mistakes.”
Mi-seun’s suicide could have been prevented if both she herself and Eun-a had the courage to sincerely maintain their open communication and reassurances for each other. As for Seo-yeong, it is incredibly difficult to fault her decision, especially after she was forced to take the fall for the rebellion after Old *Mute’s betrayal. Perhaps what might have convinced her to stay alive was her daughter: the thought of orphaning such a young girl during a feminine-oppressive patriarchal society, is absolutely terrifying.
But these are solutions that only the player, an outsider who has access to the entire picture, can see and understand. As Mammon Machine states in their blog post, a tragedy remains a tragedy because there is no way to prevent it. None of the characters knew the right things to do, the right things to say. Even if we believe in our ideals, that what we are doing is right, even if we follow our heart and follow all the rules, things can still go horribly wrong.
And we, the player, must learn to accept their tragedy and faults.
Perhaps the overall, hidden message of Hate Plus is that of acceptance: we have to accept that evil, unfairness, and tragedy will always exist in this world. We cannot prevent all of them from happening, we just have to try to learn from them and move on. I have already managed to accept, quite painfully, *Mute’s death, and I hope everyone else will eventually be able to do the same.
P.S. Christine, if you are somehow reading this, I really hope that the Level Four Revive Materia is a red herring, or some sort of joke achievement, because if the player could really “revive” *Mute and prevent her death, then the entire impact of the tragedy would be muted (no pun intended) and lost on the player. Death is absolute and final, there are no restarts or second chances.
Cruel Ultimatum 
You’re assuming Heo committed suicide. There’s really no definite proof for that, unless if you really bought into Eun-a’s speech.
You are probably right. But on the other hand, there’s absolutely no reason for Ryu to kill Heo when she was already imprisoned, the rebellion had been all but crushed. Anyway, this is just my interpretation, thanks for the comments.
Mentioning Ryu reminds me of Oh Eun-a and how, in a very real way, she killed herself as well: at least in all the ways that matter. And the irony of her daughter too …
The achievement displays a pic of New *Mute with the dress. That doesn’t mean *Mute is really revived, just that we found a way to have her change clothes.
Are you sure it refers to New *Mute?
1) No one has managed to obtain the achievement yet. Check the Steam global achievement stats, it’s currently at 0% for Level Four Revive Materia.
2) The fact that the achievement is called “Level Four Revive Materia”, is already a reference to resurrection. Revive Materia is a Final Fantasy term, more specifically, a reference to an FF7 hoax where Aeris could be revived after her death.
3) http://l4rm.wordpress.com/
Don’t forget, Kim Hyun-ae also committed suicide by deactivating life support. (The AI Construct is… as hard as it is to accept, NOT her)
I was referring to the suicides in Hate Plus only, but yes you are right, she technically commits suicide by removing the ship’s life support.
I’m researching this game for a paper, and I really enjoyed this post. Very insightful and thoughtful. I hardly ever bother to comment on things, but I wanted to let you know how much I appreciated your really well-put thoughts on Hate Plus (and I’d never thought about the imposed 12-hour waits like this; what a great insight!).
Thanks!
Researching the game for a paper? Is it psychology related? That sounds amazing, good luck. Be sure to check out my other post, the one about Eun-a and her role as a villain.
“P.S. Christine, if you are somehow reading this, I really hope that the Level Four Revive Materia is a red herring, or some sort of joke achievement, because if the player could really “revive” *Mute and prevent her death, then the entire impact of the tragedy would be muted (no pun intended) and lost on the player. Death is absolute and final, there are no restarts or second chances.”
Despite what a great point that is, I hope that there is some kind of work-around that would keep *Mute alive, because if not, then there are two achievements that I can never get, and that’s just plain frustrating -.-
That’s what fanfiction is for? Or the L4RM mod that was created by some Steam community members.
I still wouldn’t touch L4RM personally though, because I have already accepted *Mute’s ending.
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What I actually thought, when it happened, was “maybe I should do that too.”
I don’t feel that Hate Plus has anything useful to teach about suicide or tragedy. It simply *is* a tragedy, in the literal and not the dramatic sense. I think it’s great that you’ve found meaning in it, but I also don’t think that there’s anything preventing you from getting the same meaning out of any other tragedy, like a train wreck or plane crash. It contains as much useful commentary on the subject as a flash video of stick figures decapitating each other.
Besides the way that *Mute’s suicide affected the suicidal, because suicide is contagious, I think the other tragedy is the loss of the story that could have been told. How would *Mute have reacted to reading Eun-a’s diary entries? The game doesn’t tell us, because you can only see them on *Hyun-ae’s route, even though they’re basically irrelevant to her. Whereas *Mute would have been confronted with proof that her whole life was based on a lie.
From the flippant way Love has handled the controversy — and again, from the fact that Hate Plus contains nothing to set it apart from other senseless tragedies — I feel like her intent was not to teach a lesson, but was either laziness (not wanting to tell that story), a lack of empathy (the inability to tell that story), or just plain trolling (the desire to tell a story that she knows will hurt other people). I don’t feel that any of those motives ought to be celebrated. I don’t feel that a story which is, at best, a hostile force of nature, ought to be celebrated either.
That’s your own interpretation and takeaway from the game and it’s fine.
I actually liked New *Mute better, since she was way more reasonable about the log entries. Of course, then I was disappointed that she still failed to see things from Hyun-Ae’s perspective. I guess she does not have access to some critical logs in that route, but still… Having lost the bias from the brainwashing that *Mute had, New *Mute was more perceptive about all other events described in logs – so, she could’ve wondered if there was actually something significant behind a decision to, oh I don’t know, kill everyone on the ship? But, nope, just “I don’t want to read about that murderess”.
Saying that *Mute died because of her? Yeah, right. That was because she was brainwashed by Eun-a, and *that* was because she failed as a security program. Putting a person in power because he’s supposed to not have an agenda, and then ignoring the ever-more-obvious signs that he DOES have one, for years, until it’s too late? Giving those people the root password, after knowing all that they did, and somehow believing they would let her be after that? …No, all incarnations of *Mute were flawed – old one made several terrible decisions, next one was brainwashed from the start, and newest one wouldn’t even read all the log entries with you! (I mean, it’s a limited number of logs, she has no memories, you’d think she would want to absorb all she can about the past…)
So… the only thing I miss about *Mute is that impossible-to-get Steam achievement – and New *Mute is the best *Mute!
All three *Mutes have their own strengths and flaws. I think the biggest lesson the game was trying to teach us at the end of her route was: can you still accept this New *Mute, after what her previous incarnation did by committing suicide?
As heartbreaking as it was, I still liked New *Mute because of her capacity for wanting to learn from what her previous selves did wrong. We all make mistakes, we need to find the courage to face them and not repeat them.
When *Mute committed suicide I had a very different reaction to the ones you posted. I looked at it, sighed and went “Mute wouldn’t like to see me like this.” so I smiled when the New *Mute appeared.
I’ve learned to deal with death with a smile, after all, crying over someone won’t bring them back. Though in character, I would’ve headed to Pyongyang and tried to see if I could plant a flower in memory of *Mute and Hyun-ae.
Was Pyongyang a visitable place in the world of Analogue? I seem to vaguely recall reading some log entries about the city… but can’t quite remember the details.
Yeah, the Tourist Email you get in Hate Plus points out the Pyongyang Gardens.