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The Samaritan Paradox (spoilers)
Just finished the game and thought it was quite terrible. User review pending approval, but in the meantime I wanted to ask if anyone figured out what the title is about. So “The Good Samaritan” is Jonathan’s son who’s some kind of not-very-nice-agent, but where is the paradox?
And why even choose the title based on that plot, considering it ultimately has nothing to do with what you’ve set out to investigate, i.e. the hidden inheritance?
Wasn’t the gun running operation called project Samaritan? That’s from where the name cames from I guess.
But yeah, I didn’t think it was that great of a game either. It did have some good puzzles, but as a whole it just didn’t work for me with its blend of fantasy and grim swedish detective mystery.
It was, but I still don’t get the “paradox”.
I guess it was simply because of Samaritan is usually used to describe something good, but in this case it was not, hence the paradox.
Oh. Could be, but it’s not really a paradox, just an ironic name. “The Samaritan Irony”? “The Samaritan Misnomer”?
I guess it might be a bit like “the Two Towers” situation. Even Tolkien wasn’t sure of which towers the name referred to, as it was publishers suggestion. Though in this case I think they’ve just chosen a name they thought sounded cool.
I took the title to refer to the broader plot, and how you potentially ruin the entire Bergwall family’s lives (in various ways) by pursuing the mystery. But it wasn’t necessarily written out… and that’s a good thing.
I really liked the game—the slow-burn style mystery, the creative jumps to the book/fantasy world.. Mature themes! Hard, clever, puzzles! It’s strong stuff.
My user review is up so you can see what I think about that.
That being said, I think you hit the nail on the head here. Ord is the good Samaritan, helping several people out more or less for the heck of it. So the “Paradox” is that only through his help can bad things happen to Sara/Veronika. Still not a real paradox but it makes sense considering how people really use to word.
I think the title means something a little different. There’s some discussion in the game about whether “do-gooders” are genuinely nice people, or whether they’re just compensating for a guilty conscience or covering up some dark secret…
(Pretty big plot spoilers.)
Jonathan Bergwall was an investigative reporter who took on both the government and the church, uncovering scandals and genuinely doing good, but he also sexually abused his daughter.
[spoiler]And in the game, Sweden is behaving like a benevolent nation, offering aid and diplomatic help to poor countries, but at the same time the government is secretly selling weapons to repressive regimes or civil war combatants (I forget the details). By the way, this plot is partly inspired by the real-life Bofors affair.[/spoiler]
The Samaritan Paradox is therefore the strange, seemingly paradoxical fact that a person or a country can be quite sincerely committed to doing good in one arena, but still do terrible things in another part of their life/policy at the same time.
Therefore, I do think it makes sense, even though it’s a little bit to the side of the main focus of the story.
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