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Trying to make some sense out of snatchers

Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 3:48 am
by Crowley
This is a line of thought that has been going through my mind for a while now. It seems to me that the weakest point in the storyline of Snatcher was Elijah Modnar/Madnar. I could never get the hang of his motivation. He's in love with Jamie but knows he can't have her. He sabotages the Chernotron research facility releasing Lucifer-alpha, and then the three of them enter cryosleep. Elijah wakes up first, can't bring himself to wake Jamie and instead continues the suspension of her and Gillian before leaving.

What I can't understand is why exactly Elijah chose to continue the snatcher program by himself? What did he hope to gain by that? What would have been the ultimate goal he strove for, what would he have achieved in the end if it hadn't been for that one unlucky plane crash? Admittedly Elijah seemed somewhat insane in the end, but that alone makes up a poor villain in my opinion. The snatchers themselves seemed to hold humans in low regard for their common psychological weaknesses such as their tendency towards fear and doubt, but I can't remember Elijah echoing those sentiments.

Let's take a look at SD Snatcher then. There Elijah is not as much the mastermind there, but the unlucky prisoner of his own creations. He built a "Master Snatcher" who apparently devised the plan to wipe out the mankind by a new strain of the Lucifer virus. This scenarion still contains the original problem: why did Elijah continue the snatcher project by himself? Furthermore this goes back to the frankensteinian tradition of man's creations turning against himself, and often cyberpunk consciously seeks to distance itself from that, usually showing how humans are perfectly capable of being monsters all by themselves.

At this point I am beginning to have great doubts for Kojima's ability to write villains with credible motivations.

Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 8:28 am
by HorseFactory
I'd always perceived it as that he was about to lose the only things that he cared about, his work and jamie, so he would make some crazy attempt to save both, hoping originally to work on the snatchers with jamie.
The snatchers themselves seemed to hold humans in low regard for their common psychological weaknesses such as their tendency towards fear and doubt, but I can't remember Elijah echoing those sentiments.
He makes a speech about this and it seems to be the initial purpose of him continuing the project, to see how humans react. When he sees the panic and suspicion it causes, only then does he try to take over the world with them.

Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 12:33 pm
by Reborn from the Ashes
Didn't he want to find out everything he could about the human animal? He wanted the Snatchers to bring out fear and suspicion in people, which leaves the question, why were the Snatchers discovered only by an accident?

After coming to the conclusion that people are weak, that they'll never be able to grow while they are plagued by mistrust and suspicion, he decided that he was above those "trivial" issues, and that he should be the one to help people grow, by, Snatching them.

That was my take on it anyway.... :???:

Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 12:43 pm
by Artemio
One thing to keep in mind though is that the original version (PC-8801 and the msx port) weren't completed most probably for time constraints and they ended in act 2.

After that, the CD-ROMantic version was created. Thsi one though was extended with Act 3 to include the originally intended ending. But a lot of it was changed due to problems with the voices that were recorded. As far as I know, details were changed in the plot and scenes to make up for these mistakes. But the game was once again, flawed... eventhough the SD-Snatcher version does have several elements in it's ending that make reference to what was supposed to be the real ending.

Then the sega cd version was made. A port of CD-ROMantic with several team members working on it as well, but not directed by Kojima.

With all that in mind, I am surprised it is not a hugely broken story.

Of course it is a fact it is not perfect, and I also have my own beliefs about what his drive was. I always though of it more in a young romantic dream and how that can be turn into the worst driving force..

This doesn't make the best villian, but it did create a "gray" kind of villian for me.. something I had rarely seen in a game then, a game where a distinction between good and evil was not so clear cut, since I could somehow understand the characters when I let myself go with their feelings (not motives).

Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 1:52 pm
by Crowley
Snatcher wrote:Of course it is a fact it is not perfect, and I also have my own beliefs about what his drive was. I always though of it more in a young romantic dream and how that can be turn into the worst driving force..
That works for me. I could see that Elijah had two things to live for: Jamie and his work. Knowing one was lost forever for him he would lose himself into the other.

It would be very interesting to know what the original plan was and how things were changed in the process. You wouldn't happen have any details on that, Artemio? At this points I would be even interested in any enlightened theories. As much as I would've liked to see Rando/am surviving, the ending as it currently is would not facilitate that credibly.

Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 2:00 pm
by Marc
I generally think of it as also him wanting to be the best he can be at what he does.

Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 5:54 pm
by HorseFactory
I know it's never confirmed or gone into in any detail but maybe the plane crash was caused by the Snatcher purposefully?

I'd really like to know what exactly the original plan was - it's my only issue with the game really, there's no "definitive" version either technically or from the story point of view.

Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 8:53 pm
by Marc
HorseFactory wrote:I'd really like to know what exactly the original plan was - it's my only issue with the game really, there's no "definitive" version either technically or from the story point of view.
Maybe that's what Elijah was after all along. To cloud our minds...and fill it with doubt.