If it wasn’t for these pain points, Bō would be a game I wholeheartedly recommend to any fan of Metroid and its ilk, but they currently stand as severe detriments to the overall experience. I hope they’re things that can be ironed out with patches, because Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus is positively dripping with love for the genre and deserves to be acknowledged for what it brings forth—not the concessions I must make regarding it. It took me roughly 16 hours to reach 100% completion, and I enjoyed 15 of those hours greatly. A brief conversation I had with someone on the marketing and community side of Squid Shock Studios vaguely pointed towards even more secrets to uncover or future content planned for the game, and I will likely jump back into Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus to experience those myself when and if they happen: but only because I know the worst is behind me.
Perhaps these attempts distorted reality enough that Alan could build on them and eventually escape, and perhaps these attempts reflect Remedy’s own struggle in crafting what would become Alan Wake II. I wrote that “North Star” could have been a Control prototype— and maybe it was. It still exists as a part of the story, and Remedy showing that to us feels special. It feels incredibly novel that a game’s DLC exists to thematically bolster itself, rather than solely provide additional entertainment. Night Springs does both, and furthers the metanarrative spiral of the base game. In the end, I shut up and trusted Remedy, and I’m ready to do it all over again whenever the second expansion, The Lake House, arrives.