the matildenet : at dead of night

At Dead Of Night: simpathy for the villain

BEWARE: SPOILERS FOR "AT DEAD OF NIGHT" ALL OVER THIS BLOG!
Jimmy Hall, the villain of "At Dead of Night" apparently seems just like one of those antagonists who is its own curse and disgrace: his condition makes him do things he doesn't really want to, and ends up being alone and a killer, but there's way muuuuch more than this.

Introduction

The reason I love this videogame so much is because it explores the complexity of human connections in a context even so little and simple as an hotel, the one that us, the player, will explore to try to escape from jimmy Hall's fury.

A brief introduction to the story: Maya and his friends are going to a festival, but since the weather is terrible they decide to go and stay at the "seaview hotel" and then go on with their journey, but Maya is late.
She meets Jimmy Hall, the director of the hotel, who immediately greets her in a creepy way.

He tries to invite her and her friends to come and see his comedy show which, he says, starts at midnight (probably the time the actual game really starts) and always takes place in the hotel; Jimmy describes this character he impersonates as a "comedic sociopath who says things he shouldn't really say" called "Hugo Punch", and after this interesting introduction Maya politely refuses his offer and goes to her room: the 101.
And here the game starts.

I've been having a big fat crush for this game lately, i love everything of it, from the style (the 3d enviroment mixed with the motion video) to the storytelling of it, it's so intriguing and beautiful that it's shocking how not so many people are brainrotting over this game. BUT HERE I AM
Now that the game has started though Maya will see another face of jimmy: Hugo.

In the beginning we'll see Jimmy losing his head over the fact the the young friends of Maya and Maya herself didn't want to see his comedy show (Note to the developers: i know you called the villain like your son, WHICH HONESTLY I hope that when he grows up he doesn't read tooooo much into this game CAUSE HONESTLY EHM EHM I mean you'll see going on with the story...) and, what to us seems to be his alter ego, called Hugo, starts talking to him from a mirror: he says "Show them who's boss!" with a bat in his hands, "That's the way to do it!".

Soon after this Maya will see what is now Hugo in control of Jimmy poisoning her friends and putting them to sleep closed in their rooms, and freaked out she runs away trying to call someone on the phone, but this one doesn't work and in the hotel there's no signal (one of maya's friends, Hannah, tells her this at the beginning of the story).
Next to the phone at the entrance of the hotel there's a weird box with written on it "ghosts and spirits voice receiver", it looks like a little radio, and from it a voice comes clearer than others: many shout to run away from there, probably ghosts of people who died in the past always for the hands of "Hugo", but one also says "You have to find out what he did... and tell everyone. Make him realise what he did!".

It's a little girl.

Your job is now to wonder around the hotel and speak with the dead to try to stop Jimmy, but the way you do it is just amazing.

You'll have to run around hoping Jimmy doesn't catch you and take away your device to try and look for clues that can help you dig into his past while the way that has been conceived for running around gives you no control over how fast you move, is built like the way you would move in google maps, just step by step, not knowing where jimmy could be.

He usually hides behind corners and you are able to see if he's hiding somewhere by seeing if his head pops out for a few seconds.
Rarely, and I mean this seriously, RARELY you get to see him from behind.

The ghosts in the sea view hotel

Amy Bell

The first ghost we encounter is the one of Amy Bell, daughter of one of the clients of the hotel and, apparently, jimmy's friend.
The ghosts we encounter symbolize the slow descent of Jimmy into Hugo, and one of the pivotal moments comes from his childhood, from that time he hurted Amy by setting one of her toys on fire.
Since he was a child Jimmy demonstrates to be very impulsive and it looks it's pretty much part of his personality, but he is still a child and quite immature.
The real problem tough is that since he didn't want to get in trouble for hurting Amy Jimmy deliberately decides to give her some alcohol to drink so that she doesn't feel the pain of the burned toy on her hand.
This ends up making the situation even worse since Amy, by that time completely drunk, jumps off the stairs of the hotel and dies instantly.
This incident causes Rose, Jimmy's mother, to call a psychiatrist, Dr. Bose, to get hand on the situation.

Dr. Bose

When Dr. Bose arrives he finds Jimmy, an impulsive kid, with absolutely no will in starting to take a medicine to help his impulsiveness.
We learn trough his story that Jimmy is very well protected by his mother, even too much from my perspective.
It's obvious that Rose understands that having a girl getting killed is a serious thing, but we never see how seriously she takes it, even though it's enough to call Dr. Bose.
Rose is always very protective towards Jimmy, and probably this caused his carelessness in his every day life without counting the influence of Hugo.

But going back to Dr. Bose: he has a very polite manner of speaking, and immediately tries to get along with Jimmy, but something is very wrong.
Jimmy's impulsiveness goes far beyond what he expected: apparently Dr. Bose finds the body of a dead rabbit in one of the offices of the hotel, which probably was killed by Jimmy, but still Dr. Bose is very calm about going on with Jimmy's treatment, even though the child is still very, very reluctant in doing so.
Dr. Bose tries to distract Jimmy into putting his energy into something creative, such as cooking, but this ends with Jimmy putting in

a sandwich for Dr. Bose pieces of glass.
The doctor now understands the gravity of the situation, and tries to do anything to somministrate the medicine to Jimmy, but this ends up in Jimmy trying to find a strategy to get out of the situation: he makes up a lie that the doctor physically abused Jimmy and took advantage of him, and Rose believes him without any questions.
Dr. Bose is searched by the authorities and, realising he has no future ahead, kills himself.

Harvey

Harvey is quite a coontroversial character to me: he is Rose's boyfriend, and the owner of the seaview hotel, and has an impulsive personality as heavy as Jimmy's.
After witnessing Jimmy lying about what the doctor did to him he acts aggresively, even threteaning Jimmy with a gun to go out of his hotel.
Jimmy makes some pretty dangerous jokes to Harvey, always to the point of gravely injuring him, and it's understandable how much Harvey is angry in this situation, BUT i cannot stress this enough, if he knew Jimmy well enough already he should have known he shouldn't have threatened him with a gun, or locked him up in the basement as he does in the story, which brings Jimmy to set the whole hotel on fire.
Still it could be a moment in Jimmy's life where his Hugo part was not always present, and Harvey acting this way was out of pure fear and despise for what Jimmy was doing.
Harvey, by the way he behaves, looks like one of those men who belongs to a different generation, one built over acts of violence disguised as teaching, but these acts only escalated the stress that probably was being put on Jimmy, ending in him taking a paper cutter and stabbing Harvey to death.

Rose

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