The big turtle creature you see in the top banner.

Let’s try to get at the heart of what Idi means to the game. Starting with his name, Idi, is a very unoriginal extension of the word Id, as in the third counterpart to Freud’s Ego and Superego.

Idi represents a more fleshed out version of what the fox does in the beginning scene. That is pure naturalistic desire. Idi is impuslive, one second happy, one second scared, the next he’s aggressive. It’s quite hard to figure out what is actually ever on Idi’s mind as he is distracted by the strangest things. Because he exists among the creatures of the world as a peer, everyone has great disdain for Idi. Either because they think he’s dumb, weird, brutish, or even because they’re jealous.

I think a good introduction to Idi would be that Alia is sent on a quest to kill Idi because he unknowingly wrecks the homes of the creatures of chapter 3. After an intense short battle I will try to reveal Idi’s true nature, and that is one of innoncence and as such hopefully create a level of empathy towards him.

Which bring me to another important note about Idi. Idi is gigantic. One of the biggest creatures in the game. This makes his nature that much more potent. He is very dangerous and destroys things without knowing. He has been forced to move way out of civilization so he doesn’t destroy anything more, and as so is very lonely.

So maybe a good way to reveal his nature is after battling Idi he goes “Rumpah! Well that was fun! I haven’t danced like that in forever! Thank you! Will you be my friend!? Oh please pelase please, I could use a friend so bad.” Alia will be confused and Idi will continue to jump around shaking the ground excited.

So after getting an introduction to his character this is when I hope to kick in the excitment and pure joy that is described in my History of Video Games class when describing the joy one gets from a headrush. Aka zero challenge all pleasure. Idi will let Alia jump on his back and all the sudden the player can traverse gaping mountains and have more power than ever before. Exciting music like when Karen O and the Kid’s track kicks in on the Wild Rumpus. The two will eventually fly way out on top of a plateu and the player will hopefully even be instructed to wildly spin their mouse or something extravagent to spin faster and faster with Idi until they reach a treshold and the two collapse like in the beginning scene. The music will settle, and the camera on Alia and Idi’s happy faces will pan.

After a lull Idi will talk, and instead of reflecting on the moment Idi will go “I’m hungry”. He will ask Alia for food. He will get up and notice there is nothing around. Idi will panic, and ask Alia to fix it fix it fix it! Then get desperate and attack Alia saying he will eat her. At this point the player will have to run around avoiding Idi untill they can find a portal and escape.

Anyways that ends my thoughts on Idi for now. He is an important character to the central theme of the game. That is the beauty and indifference of the purest naturalistic desire in contrast to the beauty and ugly of the socialized, civilized, human nature. Up until this point it’ll be pretty hammered in with many examples how much crap society has brought through social roles explore in chapter one, social expectation to be the best buisness fucker-over or the best pagent doll in chapter two, and now in chapter three after running through a world of those without romance and escapism or a mirror world with pure romance and escapism, it’ll, hopefully, be a breath of fresh air to come across Idi.