The player is the best parent an EarthBound kid can have
Sins Of The Father
Our Special Topics In Gameology series on the unseen parts of games continued this week with William Hughes’ examination of parental figures in EarthBound and the rest of the Mother games. Ness’ absent father and loving mother are indicative of the series’ view on parents, William argued, but in the grand scheme of things, his dad was one of the better ones. Down in the comments, Fact Robot broke down how Mother handles the absent dad and abusive dad divide:
One of the interesting things about father figures in Mother games is how “bad” fathers have infantilized sons, while absent fathers have strong and independent sons.
In Mother 2/EarthBound, Giygas essentially regresses to an “almighty idiot” who just talks about his feelings and can’t comprehend what’s going on around him. Pokey/Porky has to do all the heavy lifting in that fight in terms of actually explaining what’s going on, but Giygas continually tries to reach out to Ness by talking to him.
Meanwhile, you’ve got Pokey/Porky, who is totally obsessed with Ness. His homes throughout Mother 3 are full of memorabilia from the previous game, and New Pork City boasts a dedicated museum and a movie theater that plays a slideshow of scenes from EarthBound. Like Giygas, he’s trying to latch on to someone who had a good dad and came out strong, and like Giygas, he basically winds up as a super-powered man-infant once he’s in the Absolutely Safe Capsule. It’s tempting to say that Pokey/Porky’s abusive mom is the determining factor in his downfall, but remember, Giygas was raised by Maria, a perfect mother.
Elsewhere, Quarrelin Hardy defended Flint, the father of Mother 3’s star, Lucas:
I guess I wouldn’t go so far to say that all the dads in Mother are useless. I definitely have a different take on Flint. The town of Tazmily in Mother 3 is such a highly idealized small town that at the start of the game, it has never had anything bad ever befall it. Suddenly, Flint’s wife is killed. The town has its first ever awful experience, shattering its ideal society at his family’s expense. Flint doesn’t know how to deal with it (no one in the town does, shown by Bronson’s terrible job breaking the news), and he lashes out in grief. I would argue that this lashing out isn’t any sign of his weakness as a father, but one of many natural emotional responses a person may have to losing a loved one.
Immediately following that, one of his sons runs away from home and is missing. In a short period of time, Flint loses two family members. That would be a crushing experience for anyone. He devotes himself to trying to find his missing son who he believes is still alive—a fact he’s right about. In the end, after three years of never giving up his search, he’s right there with Lucas in New Pork City. They just took different paths to get there. I don’t view that as useless. I view it as dedicated.
Merlin The Tuna agreed that Flint isn’t such a bad guy, but points out that his dedication still came at the expense of his other, present son:
Agreed that Flint is a stand up guy, but his single-minded fixation on his missing son causes him to totally lose sight of the one that’s still there. They do end up meeting up, but I recall that mostly being due to happenstance rather than to good parenting.