The main theme of the game basically centers around failure. How it manifests, how people react to it, how it affects them in the long run. Bitterness, apathy, delusion. Most of the characters are some kind of fuckup (except Kim, my beloved). Some of them are failures because they're fucked up, some of them are fucked up because they failed again and again, but either way it's an exploration of what that does to a person, what that does to a people, what that does to a town.

Some people just disassociate, some people give up and abandon their values to go with the flow, some people fight back impotently against forces they'll never overcome. Above all, I think it's basically about perseverance, one way or another, in the face of failure.

It's very raw, very bleak, very human. It's easy to feel vindicated when you strive and succeed, when you're a virtuous hero, but who among us is just a virtuous hero? It's much more complex and real to fail over and over and still get back on that horse, because what else can you do? The characters are supposed to be flawed, they're supposed to be unlikeable. The game is about exploring what it is that made them unlikeable: how much of it is forces beyond their control, how much of it is their own stubbornness and maladaptive reactions, how much of it is just trauma.

If you don't like exploring those ideas, you probably won't like the game.