A Whistle Blowing in a Pikmin Face, Forever: On The Moral Depravity of Captain Olimar, Gaming History's Greatest Monster
Recently, I have been playing the classic Nintendo video game series "Pikmin", and have reached two conclusions. Firstly, they are excellent and very enjoyable video games. Secondly, they form the bleakest fictional dystopia yet conceived by man. The Hunger Games? Amateurish. Never Let Me Go? Takes a while to really kick in. The Handmaid's Tale? Strong competition, but Pikmin edges it. Allow me to elaborate.
I will focus on the first two games in the series. For anyone not familiar with them, here is a summary of the plot. In the first game, Captain Olimar crash lands his spacecraft on a "mysterious planet" (Earth), spreading thirty parts of it across the landscape. On the planet's surface, he discovers creatures he names "Pikmin", which seem to follow his instructions, and uses them to recover the lost ship parts, so he can escape. He also discovers various other things, through which we find that he is very small by human standards. In the second game, we find out that Olimar works for a delivery company, which has gone broke in his absence. On discovering that a bottle cap Olimar brought back with him is very valuable, his boss sends Olimar back to Earth - with a subordinate along this time - to collect more 'artifacts' to pay off the company's debt.
Now, even with this bald summary you may find the ethics of this plot a bit questionable. It gets worse! Let's dig deeper.
Both games occasionally imply - or have characters outright state - that the Pikmin cannot thrive without Olimar's "guidance". It does seem to be the case that, under Olimar's tutelage, their numbers and capabilities increase substantially. However, the ends to which these capabilities are put seem shockingly exploitative, and - initially - unexamined. Olimar never does anything purely for the benefit of the Pikmin. Everything he does is ultimately for the purpose of recovering the ship parts or "artifacts", to fulfil his own goals. He takes a superficial interest in the "strange planet" on which he finds himself, but it seems to be mostly for his own benefit and amusement; he performs no serious, disinterested scientific research, and makes no plans for further study once he leaves. His methods are, franky, brutal. He directs Pikmin to their tasks wordlessly and without affection, by blowing a whistle and bodily throwing them places (small as he is by our standards, he is much larger than the Pikmin). And once he has completed his task, he simply leaves, with no apparent offer of gratitude, companionship or compensation for the Pikmin who have been so crucial to his escape. Yet the game appears to portray him sympathetically, and by making him the only character the player can play, appears to have us condone his behaviour.
This is bad enough! Yet we have not arrived at the full, horrifying truth. Let's go even further.
Let us consider the ecology of Pikmin. Olimar does not discover Pikmin first; he discovers the organisms in which they live, which he names "onions" (he has no interest in what the Pikmin call them). These "onions" serve as both safe living quarters for Pikmin and as their reproductive mechanism. Pikmin can drag organic matter to the onion, where it is absorbed, and the onion sheds seeds that sprout into new Pikmin. A particularly vital source of this matter is a flower called the "pellet posy", which produces "pellets" that are easily handled by Pikmin and produce many new Pikmin seeds relative to their size and weight.
When Olimar arrives, the onions, several Pikmin, the pellet posies, and several predator species which can easily defeat individual Pikmin are already present. The game appears to suggest to us that these Pikmin are, somehow, barely clinging to survival, and without Olimar's intervention would presumably soon have died out. Yet how is this possible? How could this ecosystem of pellet posies and onions have come into existence? The pellet posies flower daily, and are easily harvested by a small number of Pikmin; the rate of flowering and the number of Pikmin they produce should result in plentiful Pikmin reproduction with no outside intervention at all. Add to this the ability of Pikmin to harvest the corpses of their predator species - which will of course die naturally or be killed by their own predators, even if the Pikmin cannot organize to kill them themselves - and we should probably be thankful the predator species do exist, or else our world would be entirely overrun by them.
The games later indicate that the Pikmin are perfectly capable of harvesting pellet posies and predator corpses without Olimar's direct instructions - if Pikmin are left to their own devices near to a pellet or corpse, they will transport it back to their onion. Carefully considered, what we see is a robust and healthy ecosystem. So how are we to believe the game when it appears to tell us about the Pikmins' tragic plight on Olimar's arrival?
Now that we're paying attention, here is the shocking revelation: we must not. What we see is not the truth; it is a twisted lie originating in the diseased mind of gaming history's greatest monster, Captain Olimar.
On careful examination, there is no reliable, independent witness to the events of either game. We directly encounter nobody in the first game but Olimar, the Pikmin, and the various other species with which he interacts, none of which are given a voice. No other member of Olimar's race is present, nor is any outside observer. The game's third person perspective is nothing but a clever narrative ruse. Make no mistake - this is Olimar's story as told by Olimar, and it is not a pretty one. In the second game, the tragic Louie is present, but he is entirely under Olimar's spell.
No, what appears to be the game's somewhat half-hearted justification for Olimar's behaviour is merely the tortured scream of what remains of this black-hearted villain's conscience, attempting to retroactively whitewash his crimes. This is the classic excuse of the rapacious imperialist - "these natives would be nothing without me; they should be grateful I am here to lead them". There was no small band of struggling Pikmin when Olimar arrived. Either he found a few individuals from a much larger group who merely happened to be in the area where he crashed, or he is simply lying. Either way, his subsequent actions lay bare the true, horrific depths of his vicious depravity.
As my own little narrative device, I merely passed lightly over these actions above, but let us now look into them in full, excruciating detail. What does "Captain" [1] Olimar do immediately upon encountering Pikmin for the first time? He discovers that when he blows his whistle, they follow him unquestioningly. He - allow me some license, here - he grins. We do not see him grin, but unquestionably he grins. It is not a pretty grin. From this moment on, his whistle will rarely leave his mouth except in his sleep.
He continues his experiments. He discovers, rapidly and roughly, that these poor, trusting/terrified (we are never quite sure which - think how big this creature, with its diabolical whistle, is to them!) Pikmin will follow him even into extremely dangerous situations of no benefit to them. They will follow him even to their deaths. They will allow him to hurl them indiscriminately around the landscape, even - are you sensing a theme? - to their deaths. Does Olimar repent of his experiments and come to treat this trust as the rare, beautiful, and morally dangerous wonder that it is? Does he take some time to meditate and to consider his ethical position? Does he put his predicament - that he must, at least in his telling, recover the ship parts within 30 days to ensure his own survival - to the Pikmin, and beg of them their assistance? Does he look elsewhere for possible sources of help, or means of survival?
He does not. He grasps his whistle, and he sets about establishing a fascistic, imperialist nightmare.
He works the Pikmin unforgivingly, from sunrise to sunset each day. He even, chillingly, has his shipboard computer declare them 'lazy' for not doing so of their own volition; we are no longer so naive as to believe these are really the computer's words, it is merely a mouthpiece for what can now only be termed "Olimarism". He treats them as an expendable resource, forcing them to fight deadly enemies and conquer deathly hazardous terrain, all for nobody's benefit but his own. He alone determines when they wake, when they sleep, where they go, what they do. In the classic fascist style, he even asserts control of their reproduction and demands ceaseless population increase, all for his own survival and greater glory. The climax of the first game sees the Pikmin pitted against a terrifying foe, finally defeating it after dying in droves - and all merely in order to retrieve Olimar's own piggy bank! A more brutally clear metaphor would be hard to conceive.
Once he has retrieved all his possessions, he immediately returns to his home planet, leaving a horrific trail of death and destruction in his wake. The brutalized Pikmin, trapped deep in their fear and their Stockholm syndrome, line up to see him off. Does he thank them? Does he offer - in consistency with his alleged belief that they will not survive without him - to take them with him? Does he, in fact, speak a single word to them? He does not. This creature has no soul, only a screaming void within.
In the second game, he and his soon-thoroughly-corrupted lackey force the Pikmin to explore deep caves which they would never enter alone, and in which they find nothing but more death, destruction, and resources for Olimar to take away to his fatherland. Once again using the transparent device of his "talking, sentient shipboard computer", Olimar's shrivelled husk of a conscience pathetically attempts to convince us, or himself, or both, that the Pikmin "want" him to hurl them into flowers which eat them and shed Pikmin seeds of a different color, which of course he does with abandon. At this point there is little we can do but cry, and wait for the nightmare to end.
Properly considered, this is no cosy, cutesy creature game series. This is not even a standard-issue video game series with a plot that's a bit problematic if you think about it for a minute. This is such a masterpiece that we must admire it, but so dark and twisted that we must perhaps implore the Japanese authorities belatedly to round up the minds behind it for a cup of tea, a wellness check and possibly some kind of long-term psychological evaluation and monitoring. This is the hardest-hitting, most uncompromising polemic against expansionist imperialism you will find outside of any given issue of the Observer.
[1] Of course, the title alone is a dead giveaway. There is nobody else on board Olimar's ship for him to be the "captain" of. Giving oneself a ludicrous, overinflated title with military overtones? Classic evil dictator behaviour.
