I love the Mother series.  Though I am unfortunately not cool enough to have gotten onboard with it during the Golden Age of the Mother fandom, I have been a Mother fan for a lot of my life.  When I was first getting online back in 2006/2007, I was kind of obsessed with retro games and it wasn't long before I was pointed in the direction of Earthbound, the at the time incredibly obscure SNES masterpiece.  I've told this story a million times before but when I was a teenager, I was looking for videos on Super Mario RPG because I was into Mario and had just found out that RPGs were a genre that I loved and finding out that there was a marriage of the two blew my mind.  So I was looking for info and I stumbled upon a YouTuber, who at the time was pretty well known for playing older Nintendo RPGs.  And, in wanting to sort of watch all the content on his channel, I discovered Earthbound.

Earthbound would then become one of my favorite games of all time, a game I fell in love with hard and fast.  The fact it was so unique compared to anything I had experienced, an RPG set in modern day America and dealing with modern problems in a satirical way hooked me.  Even when I was young and less media literate, I knew this was something truly special.  It's a game I've played partially or in full many times over the years and it's one I can keep coming back to infinitely.  And I've had the pleasure of not just making many friends over Earthbound but being able to see so many of my own friends get on board with it.  Guiding them with a subtle hand and a lotta snark about their playing.  It's been foundational for me.

Unfortunately, until I started this era of game clearing, I never really had room for either the prequel or sequel.  I had started both Earthbound Beginnings and Mother 3 at various points in the past, I had bought Beginnings excitedly when it was announced for the WiiU Virtual Console and had chipped away at the first bits of Mother 3 numerous times in the past.  But the archaic design of Beginnings and the fact that Mother 3 never got an official English release always made me stop playing them.  I used to be such a good boy who would never consider emulating anything so Mother 3 was always like "well, maybe I shouldn't be doing this".  But I have completed all three games now and doing so has given me a deeper understanding of what Mother is.  What this series is attempting to accomplish, how these three fairly dissonant pieces are actually connected.  And moreover, it has led me to a conclusion:

There Shouldn't Be A(n Official) Mother 4

The Trilogy

For starters, I just want to cover the three games individually.  I think to set-up what I am attempting to say, I need to sort of synopsize the three games on a game-by-game level.  I will be doing so in the order that I personally played the three games first, which I'm obviously biased towards since it's how I did it but I also think that, thematically, the games are strongest when you do it this way.  Oh and spoilers, obviously, if you care.  As such we will be starting with...

Earthbound/Mother 2

I am Earthbound.  I'm an RPG.  The second game in a set of three.  Didn't do so hot when I first debuted, but 20 years later I got attitude.  Shoutouts to Stephen Georg.  If there is a game in this trilogy which the average person is familiar with, it is the middle entry, Earthbound.  Released in 1994 in Japan and 1995 in America, Earthbound has become one of the most famous "cult classics" in video gaming and arguably the greatest of the Super Nintendo era of RPGs.  To this day Earthbound remains noteworthy for its interesting style and tone, its divorcing of itself from the fantasy trappings of the RPG genre and its social commentary and satire.  It remains one of the most beloved video games of all time and is largely considered a must-play of the JRPG genre, which is very impressive because it seems so unassuming.  It has a very simple art style and was a very traditional turn-based RPG at a time when ATB was starting to overtake the genre.  Compared to its contemporaries (Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, Super Mario RPG), it definitely doesn't look that noteworthy by comparison.  But, it's like the song linked above said, Earthbound fans are coming through your front door, because 30,000 signatures are hard to ignore.  That was very big for an online petition back in the day, trust me.

Set in the 1990s, Earthbound starts in the small town of Onett on the continent of Eagleland.  One night, a meteorite crashes into a hillside in the woods surrounding Onett, awakening the entire town.  One such resident awoken by the crash was Ness, a young boy who lives just on the outskirts of Onett with his mother and sister.  Ness decides to go investigate the crash, before being blocked by a police barricade and his next door neighbor, friend, and bully Pokey Minch.  Pokey assures Ness that he has everything handled and that Ness should just go home and go back to sleep.  Later that night, after the police have left, Ness is awoken by Pokey who is in a panic.  His younger brother, Picky, had snuck out to investigate crash at some point during the night and if Pokey doesn't come home with him, it'll be punishment for him.  This normally would not be a problem, but the local fauna in Onett, stray dogs, crows and snakes, are behaving strangely since the meteor crashed down.  Ness, being a kindhearted boy, decides to help Pokey.  Taking his dog with him for extra protection, Ness and gang set out to finally view the meteor crash site and hopefully find Pokey's little brother.

What the trio finds at the top of the hill is not just a meteorite, nor is it just Pokey's little brother.  A light emanates from the crashed space rock, revealing it is not truly a rock at all, but rather a ship that has crash landed with only a single being inside.  This is Buzz Buzz, a being from ten years in the future who has transformed themselves into a beetle to survive the time traveling process, and tells Ness his tragic tale.  In the time Buzz Buzz comes from, the world has been invaded by a being known as Giygas, an entity of ultimate evil who corrupts the minds of man to make them their most evil selves.  Giygas then quickly discovered that he was destined to be defeated by a group of four chosen heroes, Ness and three friends he will have met across his life.  Not wanting to be defeated, Giygas concocts a new plan: he will send his invasion forces back in time to corrupt the world of Ness' childhood, thereby preventing him from ever growing up to be the hero who will stop him.  He sends monsters to infect the areas Ness must go to in order to be in tune with his power and works to influence the adults in this time to become mean, greedy, and corrupt.  Fortunately, Buzz Buzz was able to travel back in time to tell Ness of this plan before Giygas could intercept Ness as a child and potentially take him off the board entirely.  Unfortunately, the powerful bug, being a bug, ends up getting squashed early on in their adventure, leaving Ness to find his future compatriots and free his Sanctuaries scattered across the world in order to prevent Giygas from taking over the world in his time.

After freeing the first Sanctuary location from Giygas' hold, Ness arrives in Twoson and begins seeing the full extent of Giygas' influence.  I just want to make sure y'all are aware that the cops in Onett didn't assault a child because they were under Giygas' influence, they did that because they're cops.  People walk the streets, angry, drunk, New Age AND Retro somehow.  Most notably, one of Ness' future compatriots, a "friend he hasn't met yet", Paula Polestar, has gone missing.  This disappearance seems connected to the Happy Happy cult who lives in a commune in the Valley to the east of Twoson, and indeed when Ness goes to investigate the cult, he finds Paula imprisoned in a cabin owned by the cult's leader, Mr. Carpainter.  Carpainter worships a mysterious golden statue known as the Mani Mani, the symbol of Giygas' influence in the world.  Also, somehow, Pokey Minch has arrived in the Happy Happy Village, and he has become a high ranking member of the cult.  Even being the one charged with keeping watch over Paula's jail cell.  Upon Ness' appearance and subsequent defeat of Carpainter though, he runs away to the big city.  Now joined by Paula, Ness finds another Sanctuary and moves on to fight Giygas' influence over the world.

Joined by their third friend, Jeff, in Threed, the trio makes their way to the Metropolis of Fourside.  This big city has been fully corrupted by Giygas' influence, with their Mayor, Mr. Monotoli, turning the place into a monument of greed and corruption.  The kind of place where everyone is bought and if you're not bought, you're about to be arrested.  Wouldn't you know it, Pokey is here too, having set himself up as Monotoli's right hand man.  Interesting that, Pokey seems to follow the exact trail of Giygas' influence to set himself up.  It's almost as if this game is saying something about the nature of the capitalist idea of "upward mobility".  Funny that.  Anyways, Monotoli, under the influence of Giygas, makes what is one of the entities biggest moves.  He kidnaps Paula and attempts to imprison Ness and Jeff in the realm of Moonside, a seemingly backwards world where the evil of Giygas emanates from, the world itself seemingly birthed from a Mani Mani statue.  The venture fails, and the duo breaks the Mani Mani statue and rescues Paula.  In the chaos, however, Pokey escapes yet again.

The group continues their journey, eventually being joined by their fourth friend, Poo, and traveling to the farthest reaches of the world to find Ness' Sanctuaries.  After collecting all 8 and unlocking Ness' true power by defeating the fear inside of him, we set out to defeat Giygas once and for all.  The group quickly discovers, however, that Giygas is not in this time.  In fact, Giygas has retreated to the very beginning of time itself, where he sits amassing loathing and hatred to become the ultimate evil.  The group finds a way to travel to where he is, but there is an issue.  Organic matter cannot sustain long term time travel.  For the gang to complete their mission, they must put themselves in robotic bodies.  And there's no guarantee they will ever be able to return, defeating Giygas might strand them at the beginning of time never to return to their bodies.  After a short deliberation, the quartet decides that saving the world is more important than what happens to them, and so they undergo the transference.  And then they set out to defeat Giygas once and for all.

When they arrive at Giygas' hiding place, a figure arrives in a small spiderlike mech, a figure who has become corrupted by Giygas' influence, who now serves as his righthand, who practically worships him.  This figure is, of course, Pokey Minch.  Pokey taunts Ness and the gang, saying that their weak heroics are no match for the sheer might of his master.  Giygas is less a being at this point, after all, and more an all consuming, oppressive hatred.  An entity whose ability to think and act rationally is really due to the machine containing him moreso than his nature at this point.  Giygas is so powerful at this point that the very nature of its assault is impossible to conceptualize.  And, indeed, when the machine containing it is broken, what is unleashed is an omnipotent, universe warping entity of primal hatred, one who both seeks Ness' destruction and is desperate to hold onto the boy as a tether to the intelligent being he once was.  All hope truly seems lost, the gang fighting and fighting and fighting but unable to put a dent in the sheer reality warping hatred of Giygas.

But as all hope seems lost, Paula puts out a plea into the void.  A plea for anyone who might be listening, a plea for those beyond Giygas' infinity to come to their aid.  Slowly but surely, the plea reaches across space and time to everyone that the gang had met along their journey.  All the friends they made along the way, their family, the people they aided, they all hear Paula's plea.  And every one of them unites in sending Ness and the gang their love.  Giygas is unable to stand the sheer, overwhelming might of such pure love, the overwhelming power of this connection.  And so he begins to weaken.  Begins to recede.  His hatred continues to get smaller and smaller until Giygas is nothing.  Pokey, being good at running away, once again flees as the fortress at the beginning of time starts to collapse without Giygas there to sustain it.  And for a brief moment, it appears our heroes have won at great cost, their robotic forms laying dead in a destroyed palace of hatred.  But the universe is not yet done with them.  Their souls fly out of their robotic facsimiles and back into their bodies across space and time, awakening back in the 1990s moments after they had left.

With that, the world is at peace.  All the monsters have disappeared, all the evidence of Giygas' reign of terror have gone as if they had never existed in the first place.  Poo and Jeff return to their lives and Ness walks Paula home, the two unable to say the things they feel about each other and instead just vow to keep in contact (although the ending makes it ambiguous on whether or not that happens, as the game seemingly ends with Ness looking over the memories of his adventure and going "I miss you").  Everything seems to go back to normal.  Until one night, Ness awakens to the sound of pounding on his door, akin to the very thing that started his journey in the first place.  When he goes to answer it, Picky Minch stumbles in, saying that his family had received a letter from Pokey in the middle of the night.  It just appeared in their mailbox.  Pokey had managed to somehow escape from the end of time, and he vows to return another day.  And so Earthbound ends, with a promise of a future that it would not receive for quite some time.  Which brings us to...

Mother 3

Mother 3 is just as famous as its predecessor, if not moreso.  Teased during Earthbound and eventually announced for the Nintendo 64 in the late 1990s, Mother 3 had what was, at the time, an unusually long development cycle.  Changing consoles multiple times and art styles/gameplay with it, eventually Mother 3 would be released at the end of the life cycle of Nintendo's Game Boy Advance system.  Being in a niche genre, releasing at the end of a console's lifespan, and with Itoi's usual "devil may care" attitude toward things like copyright or themes that may be inappropriate for certain audiences overseas, Nintendo ultimately made the decision not to localize Mother 3 outside of Japan.  This decision would end up turning Mother 3 into a symbol for games only released in one single territory despite large fanbases globally.  The campaign to petition Nintendo for a localization was one of the first prominent grassroots online fan campaigns, and would pave the way for things like Operation Rainfall and Operation Moonfall in the subsequent years.  And its now famous fan translation, done by the wonderful people at Earthbound fan site and secret dating platform Starmen.net has become the emblem for fan localizations/patches.

Set in an unknown time on an island in the middle of Nowhere, Mother 3 primarily tells the story of Lucas, a young boy who grew up in the rural farming village of Tazmily.  The game shifts perspectives several times across its playtime but Lucas is both the protagonist that you start the game on, being the playable character of the game's prologue, but also is the protagonist for pretty much the entirety of the game's second half.  I hope you will forgive me for kind of glancing over the first half, Mother 3 is genuinely a very brilliant game but there is a very specific point I'm trying to make here and it's best served to start at Chapter 4 and sort of fill-in the blanks as needed.  If you want to know more about Mother 3, please read my blog post about it, I cover like everything in-depth~

Lucas' story begins several years after the first three chapters of the game.  After losing his mother and twin brother when he was very young and watching his hometown turn from a idyllic paradise to a capitalist hellscape due to one guy with very good marketing showing up into town, Lucas has been waiting for word on where his friend Kumatora has ran off to.  Kumatora had left Lucas back in Tazmily to mature a bit while she went off looking for her friend Duster, who absconded with an important treasure, intuiting that the three of them have a destiny to fulfill.  As Lucas takes a stroll through town, he hears a few of the townsfolk talking about a club on top of the mountain with a bassist that looks a lot like the missing Duster.  He decides that his best course of action for reuniting with his lost friend and beginning to fight against the system that has been put in place since he was a child.

Reuniting with Kumatora and Duster, the group begins to seek out the treasure that Duster hid all those years ago.  This quest leads them to run into the Pig Mask Army, the main antagonistic force of Mother 3.  The Pig Masks are responsible for the urban development that has happened in Tazmily, introducing money to the once idyllic society and then providing all the goods and services that one would purchase with that money.  They are the military, government, and industry present on this once peaceful island, and their presence here reveals one of the dirtiest secrets that the faction is holding onto.  Far far out in the woods is a giant tower that they have been building for the past three years under the pretense it was a power plant.  While that is, certainly, one function of the structure the more pressing function is controlling the narrative.  This giant tower, commissioned by the mysterious head of the Pig Mask army, is designed to punish those who would dare have dissenting opinions by destroying their homes and putting an end to their traditional way of doing things.  It is a massive monument to the narcissism of the current regime, a regime that demands greed and rejects hope.  It is a symbol of everything Lucas and the gang hope to end.

Surprisingly, though, when Lucas begins his infiltration of the Pig Masks facilities he actually has a pretty easy time of it.  The Pig Masks seem to believe that Lucas is their leader, a young man who never shows his face but through context clues we can determine resembles Lucas a significant amount.  So much so that the majority of Pig Masks make this mistake, and it's only when a higher up gets involved that anyone notices the difference.  This stroke of good fortune allows Lucas and the gang to successfully sneak into the tower, and after fighting his way to the top, they manage to shut down the electricity to it, ending the Pig Mask Army's control over dissenting opinions once and for all.  Unfortunately for the gang, doing so also causes them to run afoul of the real leader of the Pig Mask Army, a mysterious figure known only as the Masked Man.  The gang is completely unable to stop the Masked Man, with his combat prowess and psychic abilities far outweighing their own.  Even the simple act of approaching him is nearly impossible, as he controls lightning with incredible ease.  Outmatched, the crew has no choice but to flee the tower, once again scattering them to the four winds.

Lucas ends up back in Tazmily Village, once again completely alone and completely directionless.  Consulting the townsfolk who still remember the old ways on what to do, Lucas is sent on a mission to locate the other race on this island, the Magypsies.  The Magypsies are a group of immortal beings who have served as guardians of the Nowhere Islands since time immemorial and who may very well hold the secret to unlocking a power strong enough to stop the Masked Man once and for all.  The first he meets grants him such a power, the power of PK Love, Lucas' signature psychic power.  They then set off to meet with a second Magypsy, only for said meeting to get cut short by the sudden disappearance of them before their very eyes.  It is here that we learn what is truly going on, the secret history of the Nowhere Islands and the true power of PK Love.

Long long ago, longer than anyone can remember, there existed a giant continent sized dragon.  This dragon had great potential to make the world a better place, but also had great potential to cause endless destruction and ruin.  So the decision was made to seal the dragon away, fearing the apocalypse that could be caused by its continued freedom.  It was nailed into the earth through seven enchanted needles and left to be buried and forgotten, the Magypsies being created to be the protectors of the needles.  But, sealing away such a creature seemed like such a waste, so the seal was designed to someday be broken.  When a chosen boy or girl is born, one who could harness the power of PK Love, the dragon could be awakened once again.  At which point its heart would reflect the heart of the chosen hero who unsealed it, be it a heart of creation or a heart of destruction.  Lucas IS that boy, the rightful wielder of PK Love.  There's just one problem: the Magypsies are meant to disappear after their corresponding needle gets pulled.  So who pulled the needle corresponding to their friend who just disappeared.  Why, who else, but the Masked Man.

That's right, the Masked Man also has the ability to use PK Love and, as such, can pull the needles out.  This is, obviously, an issue as the Masked Man is literally the leader of a fascist regime who hates all things natural and good and loves artificiality and money above all else.  There being 7 needles means that whoever successfully pulls four of the needles is given the right to shape the dragon's heart as they see fit.  Which means Lucas needs to find his friends quick and hunt down the remaining needles.  Our Magypsy friend gives us a direction to head, as they prepare to retreat to their own needle to await its pulling, excited and anxious about the oncoming end of their own life.  And so our hero sets off, reuniting with Kumatora and Duster along the way, sometimes beating the Masked Man to the needles and sometimes just barely missing out on being able to pull the needles themselves.  Eventually the score is 3-3, with the final needle, the needle located directly above the dragon's heart, still missing.  But before we can start hunting for it, we are interrupted by a representative of the Pig Mask Army.

This representative arrives to tell us that the "master" has invited us to his fortress, wherein the final conflict for the needle will take place.  The "master", as it turns out, has been enjoying the rat race between you and his "puppet", and so wants to ensure he can see the final battle take place for himself.  He has sent a limousine for his distinguished guests, rolling out the red carpet for his entertaining foes.  Our heroes are not given much of a choice in whether or not to board, the limo blocking every single exit from where the sixth needle rested.  So our gang must board the flying vehicle and prepare to go to the stronghold of the Pig Mask Army, the location where their true mastermind awaits.  The big city, a place where everyone has been moving to over the course of the game.  New Pork City.

Two things are striking about New Pork when you arrive.  The first is how much of a parody it feels like.  The city is a monument to excess in a way that makes it cartoonish.  It does not function like a real city, the floating stronghold is built on top of a labyrinth of tiny apartments while the facade of the city looks like a carnival.  A child's view of what a big city is, full of rides and toys and statues to them.  It paints the true villain as someone who loves himself a great deal.  The second thing that strikes you is who the statues are of.  Porky Minch.  Yes Porky, he was renamed from Pokey to Porky in Mother 3, don't worry about it.  Porky has, after all this time, fulfilled his promise to return and cause chaos in the world.  He has come to this idyllic world to prove that corruption is absolute, that mankind will always give into excess.  In a way, he is continuing the work of his own master, the great evil entity Giygas.  But whereas Giygas' corruption was more absolute, mankind giving into their darkest urges, Porky has a more targeted idea.  He was, after all, an insecure, spoiled brat.  And insecure spoiled brats want the entire world to be like them.

After allowing them some time to be appropriately horrified by his empire of excess, Porky calls the group to the massive skyscraper located in the center of town.  They go inside it to find it is very akin to the outside, a horrible collection of Porky's obsessions and twisted desires.  Floors of his monstrous chimeras, pleasure rooms devoted to the service of him staffed by androids, an obsessive collection of trinkets from the previous game in the series displayed as trophies, almost in mockery of his next door neighbor.  Like Ness' journey to defeat Giygas is now little more than Porky's trophy room.  As he reaches the top, Lucas finally meets the man himself, only to see he is a bitter, grey husk barely being kept alive by the machine he is now tied to and the hatred he feels for everyone and everything besides him.  He is the one who craves the wish, wanting to create a world where everyone is like him.  Greedy and arrogant and selfish.  He has orchestrated the transformation of the Masked Man, a boy he once found near dead in a ditch, with the specific purpose of making the world into what Porky desires.  And while Porky has enjoyed the entertainment of Lucas' battle with his puppet, the time for that is at its end.  Porky is here to kill Lucas, to make sure he is unable to pull the final needle.  So Porky pounces on him, causing Lucas and friends to fall through his skyscraper, fall down into the depths of New Pork City.  To fall to where the final needle is located.

The gang rushes to the final needle, attempting to prevent the worst outcome from passing.  While they are stopped by Porky along the way, who takes a page from his former master Giygas, having become something of an eldritch monster along the way, they defeat him swiftly.  Or, rather, convince him to hide with his tail between his legs, imprisoning himself in one of his own inventions that will keep him alive and completely safe forever but will never allow him to leave.  Porky always was a coward first and foremost, wasn't he?  With the final obstacle out of the way, Lucas and friends arrive at the needle just in time to stop the Masked Man.  It is here that we finally address the elephant in the room: the identity of the Masked Man.

So, when Lucas was young, he had gone up to visit his grandfather in the mountains north of their humble village with his mother and twin brother, Claus.  The night that they were expected home was the night that the Pig Mask Army, who had been operating on the island in secret for months, finally decided to show themselves for the first time.  This would lead to the tragic death of Lucas' mother, Hinawa, the first tragedy that the Tazmily villagers had seemingly ever faced.  In the aftermath of this, Claus would run away from the village to avenge his mother's death, to get stronger and face the monster that killed her and the people who turned a peaceful creature into a monster.  He, however, would never return.  The expectation being that he died as his mother did, although his family never gave up hope that he was still out there.  And, in a way, he was.  Claus' body, barely alive, was found by the Pig Mask army and, sensing the latent psychic power within him, he was converted into a cyborg puppet to be used as the mouthpiece for Porky Minch.

The Masked Man is Lucas' brother Claus.  Porky, through his experiments, has removed all sense of identity from the boy.  A perfect puppet to lead his armies in his stead and use his latent psychic energy to remove the needles.  Unable to recognize his own family, unable to even parse that he has one to recognize.  It seems the final conflict for the fate of the world will end in tragedy: one brother must kill the other to secure the future.  If Claus wins, the world becomes a reflection of Porky.  If Lucas wins, he can fix all the damage Porky's ideals have done to the world.  The two brothers square up for a final confrontation.  And it seems, for a fleeting second, Lucas will come out on top, the world will be saved.  But one problem arises at the final moments: Lucas can't do it.  He cannot kill his brother for the second time.  Lucas, who has known such tragedy in his entire life, cannot be the one to end the life of the brother he has only just found again.

So it seems the two will be locked into stalemate, Claus always attack, Lucas always recovering from the brink of death.  Until Lucas finally gives out, unable to compete with the machine his brother has become.  A hopeless outcome, one where Porky's ideals will always win in the face of goodness.  But there is never truly hopelessness is there.  Even in the darkest moments, hope will spring forward.  And in this moment, the voice of Lucas' dearly departed mother, Hinawa, begins filling the room.  Hinawa begs her boys to stop fighting, begs Claus to remember, to see the family he can no longer see.  And slowly, Claus' movements become hesitant.  Erratic.  The boy fighting against his programming at the sound of his mother's voice.  Until he stops completely.  Claus removes his helmet, to reveal the broken boy underneath.  He goes to his brother, embracing him one last time, before finally getting the rest he has been robbed for so long.  Dying in his brother's hands.  Saying goodbye to his brother, Lucas steps up and pulls the final needle, ensuring the world will not fall to Porky's ideals ever again.  But what form this new world will take, we will never know.  The characters of Mother 3 say their farewells to the player, as they stand on the precipice of this new creation, and we end the game with the hope that the world Lucas will create will be better.  Ending not just Mother 3, but the Mother franchise.  But what good is an ending, pray tell, if we don't know...

Earthbound Beginnings

This'll be the short part, another reason why it's good that I did this in this order.  In a franchise of black sheep, Earthbound Beginnings is the black sheep.  A fairly niche and arguably really outdated NES RPG, Beginnings leans the most away from its story and towards it just being a fun adventure in a version of America.  There are even entirely optional areas, places you do not need to go at any point in the journey but may have important items or even party members if you partake.  Making it seem way more like you're just wandering around the world, finding your own adventure.  Due to various similarities between Beginnings and it's sequel, some people have even stated that you don't need to play Beginnings as Earthbound somewhat replaces it.  Which is not true because outside of their structure and some of their theming, the two are nothing alike.  Beginnings doesn't have as much of Earthbound and Mother 3's sense of humor, instead being more serious and satirical than offbeat and funny.  And it is difficult, a rare trait for this trilogy as Earthbound and Mother 3 are both incredibly easy and accessible JRPGs.  Beginnings is like 50% grinding, a common trait for NES RPGs in general, they padded their runtime with grinding, but odd for Earthbound.  It is, a game that one could not blame another for skipping.  It is also a game that you need to play in order to understand what this trilogy is about.

Set in America in 1988, Earthbound Beginnings tells the story of Ninten, a young boy from the small town of Podunk in what appears to be California.  Ninten awakens one morning to find a disturbance in his home.  Various pieces of furniture and toys have mysteriously come to life, trying to attack his family for reasons currently unknown.  Defeating the living furniture and the phantom that cause them to come to life, a poltergeist that was set upon the family, Ninten quickly discovers that it is likely connected to the research of his great-grandparents, George and Maria, who studied supernatural and extraterrestrial sciences at the turn of the 20th century and whom disappeared mysteriously about 80 years prior, with only George ever returning.  Knowing that his family history is involved in this and seeing that the entire world has been thrown into chaos, Ninten sets out to discover what is causing these monsters to appear and how they can stop it and save the world.

Not too long into his journey, wanting to avoid a police roadblock, Ninten heads up into the mountains and discovers a portal to a mystical kingdom in the clouds called Magicant.  Exploring this mysterious kingdom causes him to stumble into the castle of the kingdom's ruler, a young woman named Mary.  Mary is pleased to meet the young boy, as she has had a vision of his arrival.  She's been having a lot of visions lately.  Her dreams have been plagued by dissonant fragments, maybe memories, maybe premonitions, but always accompanied by one specific element.  Scattered throughout the world, you see, in the sounds of various people, places and things, are hidden a melody.  A melody that belongs to Queen Mary.  If Ninten were to assemble such a melody, he could use it to fulfill the queen's request.  This becomes central to our quest, to find the scattered pieces of the melody and bring them back to the queen of Magicant, in the hopes that she will find out what they mean and use them to aid us in our quest to defeat the evil ravaging the world.

Ninten's journey takes him across a large swath of America (or at least the Pacific coast, it's heavily implied to just take place on the Pacific coast).  He meets new friends, Lloyd, a bullied child with a lot of brains and Ana, a sheltered rich girl with a missing mom.  He discovers that whatever is plaguing this world is more insidious than he could've ever imagined, kidnapping and murdering people in turn for its goals.  He fights gangs.  He befriends robots.  He has the kind of adventure that would fit in with the 80s family movies that people rave about to this day, very "movie that Drew Struzan would do a poster for" coded.  All the while, he collects the fragments of Mary's song.  This all comes to its natural close when he arrives at the final area of the game, Mt. Itoi, a massive mountain outside of Ellay which contains most of the secrets of his journey.

On Mt. Itoi, Ninten discovers his great-grandparents' lab.  In it there is a giant robot, designed to assist the young boy on his trek up the mountain.  George, his great-grandfather, apparently knew that someday Ninten would arrive to stop whatever is causing this world to become so chaotic.  Unfortunately, the robot encounters an enemy stronger than it, forcing it to sacrifice itself for Ninten.  Fortunately, it contains the final fragment of the melody needed to give to Mary to have her recall what she needs to recall.  With it obtained, the gang warps to Magicant to give Mary the song.  As Mary sings it, she remembers everything.  She is not Mary at all, you see, she is Ninten's great-grandmother Maria.  Having now been awakened, she tells the story of what happened during her disappearance.

The disappearance was actually one of their inventions successfully warping them to outerspace.  It was there that they met a young alien by the name of Giygas.  George and Maria fell in love with Giygas, and began to raise him as their own son.  But Giygas became paranoid and jealous, believing that his newfound family did not truly love him and were instead there to steal the secrets of his race, the secrets of psychokinetic power.  Furthermore, he was aware that a day would come when his beloved Maria would have to return home, and as such Giygas grew to despise the world she originated from.  Ninten's great-grandparents barely managed to escape, but only George would ever return home.  Maria was put into an eternal sleep, awaiting the one who could defeat Giygas to arrive so she could assist him.  With her duty fulfilled, Maria begins to disappear, Magicant going with her.  Leaving Ninten and friends to confront the alien at the core of the corruption of the world.

As Ninten approaches Giygas, he greets him as if they are old friends.  Ninten is, as far as Giygas sees it, the closest thing he has to family.  And, more importantly, Ninten is a family member with great psychic power, someone Giygas can truly view as an equal.  Giygas asks Ninten to return to his planet with him, to allow the destruction of Earth with him its only survivor.  When Ninten refuses, however, all pleasantries drop.  Giygas becomes aggressive, attempting to kill the insolent humans who dare think they can comprehend the sheer power of him.  And, indeed, it seems like Ninten and crew lacks a way to defeat this alien.  His technology is too advanced and his power is too absolute.  But then an idea pops in their heads.  They begin singing the song that awoke Maria.  A song of love.  A song she used to sing to Giygas as a lullaby.  The sheer emotion that overwhelms Giygas at hearing this song causes him to break down, a bullet piercing through the armor of hatred and contempt he wears constantly.  Giygas chooses to retreat, lest he be full destroyed by the music.  But he promises that someday he will return.  That he will harden his heart and once again destroy this world he despises so much.  For now, though, the day is saved.  And for our purposes, the trilogy is over.

What is the plot of the Mother trilogy?

Upon your first playthrough of the Mother trilogy, it can seem like Mother is, like many RPG franchises, anthological.  The Mother trilogy obviously has recurring antagonists, don't get me wrong, Giygas appears in both Beginnings and Earthbound and Porky appears in both Earthbound and Mother 3, and the games do make various nods to one another throughout their playtime.  But for the most part, the Mother trilogy seems unified in a more thematic sense.  Every game touches on very similar themes, the end of innocence, the importance of hope even when the world seems at its darkest, the corrupting influence of greed and cynicism, etc.  Shigesato Itoi intended the trilogy to be a satire and criticism of modern life, the thoughts of a man who believed the world was becoming too greedy, losing its substance in the face of the glamour of modernity.

But, I do think there is a singular central narrative a specific theme that makes the Mother series work.  Of course something deeper is going on within the Mother series, that's not very surprising.  The fact that the two main antagonists of the series, Giygas and Porky, both reoccur is obviously a deliberate choice.  But it could be parsed that the decision to never have the same cast otherwise is moreso about onboarding the player easier than having any real narrative weight.  That the overarching narrative is meant to be a story that is cool if you know the series and like seeing these antagonists recur, but is otherwise ignorable.  A way to ensure every Mother game could be your first and then if you dive in deeper on the series then the pieces come together.  But I actually think it's rather poignant that each game has an entirely unique cast, and that rather than being a way to lead players into discovering the overarching story, they are an incredibly significant portion of the overarching story.

Our story begins in Earthbound Beginnings, with George and Maria.  In the early 1900s, supernatural researchers George and Maria disappear from their home in the small town of Podunk, going missing for two years.  Their disappearance is due to discovering a portal to an alien world, somewhere far beyond the reach of planet Earth.  On the other side of this portal, they meet a young alien by the name of Giygas, an alien who was abandoned and is completely alone.  Giygas, you see, was born to be a conqueror.  And whatever race Giygas comes from, they believe that to breed conquerors, you must allow them to raise themselves alone.  George and Maria see the young alien and immediately fall in love with the poor child.  They take it upon themselves to raise this young creature, to show him the love that he is missing.

For a while, things were good.  Giygas loved his surrogate parents like any child would and George and Maria adored him with everything they had.  Unfortunately, though, a wedge would begin to form between Giygas and his parents.  He became aware of how different they were.  He was an extraterrestrial conqueror and they were of a planet far far away from his home.  He grew to resent the idea that, someday, they would have to return home, return to a family they left behind.  And while they likely assured him he was welcome to come with them, his nature made that an impossibility.  The people of Earth would never accept a monster like him in their midst.  He was jealous of a life he was unable to live.  Jealous of an Earth that would inevitably take everything from him.

This jealousy turned to paranoia.  George, always the researcher, had been asking questions of his son the entire time they were there.  He was fascinated by Giygas' race, a race that had unlocked all the secrets of the mind and learned to manifest thought into power.  As Giygas grew more jealous, more paranoid, though, he began to see these questions as malicious.  He believed that his father wanted to steal the secrets of his race, to bring them back to his planet and make them his own.  His paranoia turned once again, this time to hatred.  Giygas began to believe everything that his people had always said was true, that the universe is a cold, selfish, unfeeling place that was his to possess and subjugate.  And as his hatred grew, a distance grew as well between him and his parents.  Eventually, George and Maria had no choice but to flee from their son, seeing the monster he had become.  George made it back to his home planet of Earth, but Maria was never seen from again, having been caught in a place between places, a time between times.  George, sensing that his son would come back to finish what he had started, retreated to an old lab on Mt. Itoi just outside of Ellay.  It is here that he would begin work on a weapon to stop Giygas when he would arrive.  George would die on that mountain, his creation completed and awaiting the one who would stop his son's wrath.

Nearly a century then passes.  In that time, Giygas became the conqueror his people wished for him to become, fueled by the jealousy and hatred he had grown to feel during his time with George and Maria.  But his conquest had a specific target, a singular planet that he wished to personally subjugate and destroy.  That little blue marble, that insignificant speck in the universe that would take his family from him.  The planet Earth.  Giygas would land on Earth to begin his invasion, ironically stationing himself on the same mountain his father would die on, and begin a merciless assault.  He wanted the people of Earth to feel what he felt.  He abducted parents, leaving children to be orphaned as he once was, and would kill any resistance with a swift and decisive hand.  He would use his unending psychic power to throw the world into chaos.  His invasion force had one singular goal: to cause as much misery as possible.  And it is here that he ran afoul of a boy named Ninten.  Ironically a descendant of the man and woman who raised him.

This is where the main story of Earthbound Beginnings takes place as listed above.  Ninten finds the song for his great-grandmother, learns the secret history of his connection with Giygas, and arrives at the final confrontation with the alien conqueror.  Giygas greets the young boy as if they are old friends, perhaps feeling some sort of kinship with him as his "cousin", perhaps out of sentimentality to the one woman he doesn't completely hate, perhaps simply sensing Ninten's incredibly psychic power.  Giygas offers Ninten a chance to join him, to form an unstoppable duo to conquer the universe, to leave behind the planet Giygas intends to destroy.  As we know, though, Ninten will not budge, will not submit to the ideals of the conqueror.  And so, the two battle.

While Giygas' power seems truly insurmountable, so far beyond the understanding of Ninten and friends, an embodiment of the pure, all-consuming hatred he feels for everyone and everything, there is one element he never accounted for.  Maria.  As the group sings Maria's lullaby, Giygas reacts viscerally to it.  Screaming at them to stop and writhing around as if it is causing him physical pain.  To Giygas, hatred is absolute.  It is the driving force in everything he does.  But this simple song, this melody that Maria sang to him as a child, threatens to undo his entire worldview.  The hatred that has festered for nearly a century unable to stand up to the simple and pure power of a mother's love.  And as the song nears completion, Giygas acts in fear.  Fear that his empire will crumble because of the belief he buried long ago.  He has no choice but to retreat, to protect himself, to protect the hatred he clings so dearly to.  He abandons his conquest of Earth... for now at least.  But he makes Ninten a promise.  Someday, he will return to Earth to finish what he started.  And when that happens, Ninten, his friends, and his stupid song will not be around to stop him.

Giygas retreats to the far ends of the universe and awaits his destiny.  Festering in hatred for humanity for centuries.  Millennia.  Eons.  The universe warps and shapes around him, becoming old, then becoming new again.  He arrives in a new universe, one that fulfills his promise to Ninten.  One where there is no grand hero to stop him, no allies to aid them, and, most importantly, no Maria.  No lullaby to undo him yet again.  Giygas can now destroy the planet he despises so much without adversity.  Or, at least, that's what he thinks.  In the late 2000s/early 2010s, on this new Earth, Giygas mounts a large scale alien invasion with one goal in mind: destruction.  Complete and total destruction.  His original plan was too petty, too emotional.  Wanting the people of Earth to suffer as he suffered was arrogance, plain and simple.  Now he simply wants them to die.  But, despite what he believes about this new world, he is wrong that there are no heroes awaiting him.  A powerful psychic user named Ness, along with his friends Paula, Jeff, and Poo, arise to stop him.  Ending his invasion for good and almost defeating Giygas once and for all.

Mounting a tactical retreat, Giygas comes up with a new plan.  He will hide in the beginning of the universe, in a time unreachable by Ness and friends, and will restore himself utilizing a machine.  It is here, from a time beyond time, where he will command his army to invade once again.  But this time, the invasion will not be a grand scale conquest or a full destruction.  No, it'll be something far more clever than that.  He will send his forces to when Ness was a young boy, before his powers were unlocked and he was simply a child.  While he will take efforts to end Ness' life before it even starts, he has a different plan.  He will corrupt the world.  Utilizing statues and totems of his power, he will infect the world of Ness' childhood, turn it into a cruel, apathetic, greedy place.  He will conquer the places of safety scattered throughout the world, and leave behind only a place of contempt.  He will turn people into the worst versions of themselves, encourage them to give into their worst vices.  He will steal the world Ness would fight for before he even has a chance to fight for it.

Fortunately for our hero, his older self discovers this plan and, before his timeline would be erased, sends an ally back to the past to assist him.  Buzz Buzz arrives to tell the young Ness about Giygas and the attempts on his life.  How Giygas has infected the world and how he is attempting to steal Ness' childhood from him before he can even begin it.  Ness must travel the world, uniting the four heroes, rescuing the eight sanctuaries where he would've grown his power in the future.  This is where the story of Earthbound takes place within our little overarching story, Ness saving the world bit by bit, combating Giygas' corruption as he finds it, all the while Giygas watches from beyond time, believing Ness will never reach him even if he were to succeed.

Ness, however, is not the only person Giygas is watching.  Early on in Ness' journey, he is joined by his neighbor and frenemy Pokey Minch, not yet Porky, but also definitely is Porky and it's just a difference in how two different localization teams chose to localize the name.  Porky is cowardly, greedy, arrogant, spoiled, and just the perfect flavor of insecure.  In other words, he is exactly the kind of puppet Giygas needs to pull his strings for him.  A boy who will run towards the kind of power Giygas offers rather than trying to fight it.  After a bad encounter with his abusive father, Porky runs away from home and, incidentally, towards Giygas.  First finding himself joining the Happy Happyist Cult in Peaceful Rest Valley, where he serves as the right hand man to the head of the cult, Mr. Carpainter.  Then as the assistant to Mayor Monotoli.  Before finding himself in the dark swamps of the Southern continent, close to Giygas' final stronghold.  Everywhere where it would appear that Giygas' corruption is most strong, Porky Minch somehow finds his way there.  Giygas' perfect little puppet, a mouthpiece for him beyond space and time.

It is then, perhaps, unsurprising that when Ness arrives to face Giygas once and for all, Porky is there.  Or rather, a man who once was Porky.  The corruption of Giygas has changed him.  His skin has turned a deep gray, like a stone statue.  He simultaneously looks like a young boy and an old man.  He has become giant, monstrous, grotesque.  He is now fully an extension of his master's ideals.  He feels as Giygas feels.  He wants as Giygas wants.  He hates as Giygas hates.  He speaks of Giygas with a religious fervor, treating his master as not only the conqueror of the universe, but as the universe itself.  He adores him and fears him in equal measure, and finds great entertainment in the sheer audacity of these humans believing they can take on a god.  A god who, in his obsession with Ness and his psychokinetic healing, has ironically become a reflection of the very hero he despises.  His entire body turning into a vessel of Ness' essence.  He is far beyond rational thought anymore, all Giygas knows is hatred.

The gang then gets to work, destroying Giygas' machine and destabilizing his very essence.  Giygas is no longer a corporeal entity at all, he is psychokinetic essence in its purest form.  An entity with no wants, no thoughts, no feelings.  Just hatred.  Just pain.  If the Giygas Ninten fought seemed insurmountable, this Giygas seems like the apocalypse given form.  As the gang attempts to stop the sheer unadulterated hatred flowing through, it seems impossible.  Giygas is everything.  And they don't have a lullaby to soothe his soul this time.  But so long as they are alive, they have hope.

Paula reaches out through space and time, reaches towards the people who they have met upon their journey, and asks them to give them their strength.  The sheer, unadulterated feeling of love, the love of an Earth wanting to save those who would sacrifice themselves to save it, is too much for Giygas.  He begins to slowly dissipate, the hatred he represents dissolving into nothing.  It starts small, a few people giving them their strength, but balloons into the entire planet.  This unstoppable, overwhelming love is what destroys Giygas once and for all, ending eons of suffering and hatred and corruption.  The group runs off as his true fortress collapses, and Porky seems to be cast to the winds, never to be seen again.

That is, until a letter appears in Ness' mailbox, promising the return of him, promising that he will get his revenge.  Giygas may be gone, you see, but the hatred he represented has simply found his way to a new vessel.  Unfortunately for us, this new vessel is not some alien conqueror with no emotions and a singleminded ambition.  Oh no.  This new vessel is a petulant, arrogant, self-serving spoiled brat.  And the hatred he feels will manifest in some true, unadulterated horror, the kind of horror that you can only imagine when you are a child with incredible power but no empathy.  Which brings us to our third and final game, Mother 3.

It is easy to think of Giygas as the ultimate evil at the center of this franchise.  A physical embodiment of a hatred that lasted for eons, so long that universe reset around it.  But what if you took that hatred, that pure unadulterated evil and concentrated it onto a little boy who has been equal parts spoiled and abused.  My friends, you would get Porky Minch.  The main antagonist of Mother 3.  Porky takes several notes from his master in how he conducts his plans.  Much like Giygas, he waits at the end of the universe, awaiting a reality where none will oppose him.  Much like Giygas, he wants to corrupt the world to create one where any opposition to his whims would cease to exist before they could hope to oppose him.  Unlike his master, however, Porky does not crave the destruction of the world.  He is not driven by an all-consuming jealousy, a contempt for the world that stole everything from him.  Oh no, to the contrary, Porky wants the world to remain in existence.  What Porky wants is for the world to think and act like him in every possible way, shape or form.

Porky's machinations have been in the works for a while, so long that he is essentially not human anymore.  His body exists as a husk, being kept alive by the machine he rests within, unable to even move his own hands.  He has been traveling across the universe for who knows how long, corrupting the world, collecting the things he craves from it, reshaping it to reflect him.  It has, if anything, become tiresome.  He wants a challenge.  Something that will be fun.  And that's where he discovers the Nowhere Islands, an Island chain populated by people who fled here on a boat to escape a dying world, a world that had succumbed to its vices.  Porky is delighted that such a place exists, a place to prove that humanity is always the same, they will always fall to greed.  But, Porky discovers something else from one of the Magypsies, the one dissenter in their ranks.  This Magypsy tells Porky that soon a boy will come with the power to pull the needles scattered across the islands.  Whoever pulls the needles will be granted the power to reshape the world in truth.  Porky, always one to want everyone to be as corrupt as him, is delighted by this prospect.  A world of Porky Minches.  A world of greed.  A world of hatred.

This is where the Mother 3 section of our story would take place.  Porky finds the young boy Claus and turns him into his puppet, a puppet with the power to pull the needles from the dragon's back.  The heroes race to stop him, only for Porky to imprison himself in an invention designed to keep him alive but imprisoned for all eternity.  Lucas and Claus have a final battle over the fate of the world, and in that battle, their dearly departed mother urges the two to stop fighting, urges Claus to let go, to come home to his family.  And Claus stops.  Despite all that Porky has done to him, he never could've anticipated this.  How could he?  Porky has never truly experienced love, only a vague sense of belonging.  He could've never anticipated that his utterly foolproof brainwashing would be undone by something so simple, so pure.  That, just like Giygas before him, his best laid plans could not stand up to a mother's love.  And so Claus returns to his family, saying goodbye to them one last time, before finally getting the rest he was robbed of for so long.  And Lucas uses the power of PK Love to create a brand new world.  A world that, we are sure, will try its best to be good.  After all, was it not created with love?

There Shouldn't Be An Official Mother 4

This all feels rather pointless in the grand scheme of things, doesn't it?  The Mother series has been over for 20 years now.  The series' creator, Shigesato Itoi, retired not just from the series but from all game development after the third entry, choosing instead to focus on writing and stationary.  Nintendo would have no reason to ever try and create a Mother 4, as it's an incredibly niche franchise in their legacy whose relevancy has been bolstered by an admittedly passionate community and a prominent appearance within Super Smash Bros.  It's not even the most popular first party JRPG franchise they have, Fire Emblem and Xenoblade Chronicles are both significantly more popular than the Mother franchise in both the short and long terms.  And even if they wanted to, they couldn't, as while they own the trilogy itself, they do not own Mother as a franchise.  Mother belongs to Itoi, he holds the IP, and Itoi is not interested in returning to game development and, if anything, seems to believe Mother belongs to the people, not him.

Not only that, but there's not really a widespread fan want for an official Mother 4.  Again, the fanbase already essentially owns Mother, they can just make it themselves.  And lord knows several people have tried.  It doesn't make sense for anyone to really demand a Mother 4 from Itoi and Nintendo?  It would be an entirely selfish want, a desire sprung forth from the need to consume more Mother content rather than to love Mother as a trilogy of artistic works.  It would serve no one to "get the band back together" in this case, as "the band" is primarily comprised of very old men who haven't worked in the games industry in decades.  Granted, I think every fan has that moment of being like "it would be cool if Itoi came back and made Mother again", lord knows I sure do.  But it is not only not realistic, but, frankly, I think the Mother series would be worse off if it did happen.

Mother is a rare series that is allowed to do something that seems to be less and less common nowadays: it's allowed to end.  It is one continuous storyline, the story of a universe in peril, a story of all powerful threats that seem beyond comprehension, and the brave heroes who face them anyways.  It is one singular thing, a story told across three entries that does not need addition.  You could, hypothetically, build off the ending of Mother 3 and do another game mind you.  Porky is still around, even if he's forever trapped in a prison of his own design, the universe just reset with the shape it is going to take unknown, and I think a lot of people would just like to see some of these characters again.  If Itoi decided tomorrow he was going to come out of retirement as a game dev because he really wanted to do another one of these, found a new angle to make Mother work, I'm sure there would be something he could do with it.  I'm sure it would even be great.  However, I think there is something very poignant about how the overall story of Mother ends in 3, and I think a fourth entry would only take from it rather than build on it.

What is the recurring motif at the center of the Mother series?  Hating cops.  Okay, besides that?  Government figures are incompetent and will take credit for other people's work at every opportunity, especially during election years.  Okay, besides THAT?  The big city is a monument to excess that only seeks to pervert the natural order and rob people of innocence.  Okay, there are a lot of motifs at the center of Mother, Itoi has a lot of opinions about modernity.  But what is the one I've been getting at for this entire essay?  ...Capitalism bad.  Okay, look, I'm just going to tell you, the Mother series' main overarching theme is the power of love overcoming the seemingly endless depths of greed, jealousy, paranoia and hatred.  That is what every single Mother game is about.  It is what the actual plot keeps getting to and its honestly why this series is called Mother in the first place.  I mean it's called mother for a lot of reasons, including referencing motherships and John Lennon, but like within the text of the game, the theme of love overcoming all is why the series is called Mother.

In the first game, Giygas' primary motivation for wanting to ruin Earth is his jealousy, paranoia, and contempt for the people on it.  As stated, he views Earth as a planet that only wishes to take from him.  He believes that the power of psychokinesis is something that rightfully belongs to his race and he believes that the Earthlings coming in and attempting to study it is, in fact, a theft of his people's knowledge.  He believes this so strongly that he was willing to turn against his father, a man who raised him with love and compassion, for being a thief and a liar.  Even when Ninten faces Giygas for the first time, Giygas feels a lingering affection for Maria but holds nothing but hatred in his heart for George, still believing him to be a thief.

Moreover, though, Earth to Giygas is a place that wishes to steal his parents away from him.  It is the world they rightfully belong to, the world they will have to go back to.  Maria, the only thing Giygas seems to truly love, is only his temporarily.  And Giygas hates Earth for it, hates this planet that he had not known existed in the first place.  This leads him to mount a large scale invasion, punishing the population for what he believes it took from them.  He kidnaps and murders people, uses his power to interrupt the natural order and make animals and plants go wild, and even plays with the very order of life and death.

Yet, all this carnage, all this oppression, it cannot stand up to a simple lullaby.  Deep down, somewhere far deeper than Giygas even knew his heart could go, is still a child.  A child who wants his mother.  And he physically cannot handle the reality of that fact.  Cannot handle that he still loves, truly loves, in a way he thought was impossible for him.  His entire invasion undone by a simple song.  And rather than face what he feels, Giygas flees, feeling the love that undid him so decisively is simply a flaw he must overcome.  But the truth still stands: Giygas was defeated by something as simple and pure as a mother's love.

In Earthbound, he attempts to create a world where such a love cannot exist.  Create a world that is so greedy, so selfish, so full of his hatred that it cannot produce the love necessary to stop him.  To steal the power that would put an end to his reign once and for all before it can even blossom.  And it seems like he succeeds, at least at first.  The world of Earthbound is corrupt, it does have a lot of selfishness in it.  It is a world where it seems kindness is a rarity, a world where people are so angry and resentful that grown adults will harass children for the simple crime of walking.  His plan seems absolute, so much so that it spawned forth something of a cult to him, whether or not they knew they were worshipping him.  It even created a successor.

And yet, despite his best efforts, he accomplishes nothing.  Ness is able to go through the world, is able to find the places where he would be safest.  He defeats Giygas' plans at each juncture, using his wit, but also, most importantly, his kindness.  Giygas' reign of terror, a plan he had been putting in motion since the beginning of Ness' universe, is undone by the kindness of four children who just wish to help people.  He believed he had defeated the love that once threatened to defeat him, and yet Giygas did nothing but create a world that needed the kindness he thought he could suppress.  And in the end, this kindness was what undid him.  The love of an entire world, unified by four children, was capable of destroying an entity who had spent two entire universes hating.  But, the scars of this hatred lived on.  Giygas' very own protege, Porky Minch, was not swayed by this unified world.  He was, after all, too selfish for that.

Porky Minch wanted a world that was exactly like him.  And so he found a way to achieve it.  He would bend and break the rules of space and time more times than anyone could count, building an army that thinks, acts, and wants only what Porky would want.  He was really into his former master's plan, you see, corrupting the world in its totality to reshape it to your desires.  But Porky realized something Giygas didn't: humans don't like being manipulated.  If they discover they are being so, they will rebel.  No, to really make sure that their loyalty is absolute, you need to make their corruption feel like their own idea.  Make it so that it is them who is selling their own souls to you.  And that is exactly what Porky did.

Porky made people believe their lives were lacking, despite being perfectly happy and content with everything beforehand, all to sell them things that would make their lives more "fulfilling".  He preyed on curiosity and good faith to sell them things that were, in fact, making their lives worse, under the pretense of making them better.  He didn't try to control, he allowed people to give him control of their own volition.  All while orchestrating his true plan: to harness the power of creation and create a world of Porky Minch in earnest.  One where people weren't just like him, but truly were identical to him.  A world of greed and selfishness and pure unadulterated hatred.

This leads him to the creation of a puppet, a puppet who will be able to use the psychokinetic power he so sorely lacks and rewrite the world as he desires.  He strips the puppet's identity, memories, in some ways his very soul from him.  Instead turning him into a perfect robot for Porky's ambitions.  A surrogate dictator to command his armies and enact his plans while Porky prepares his "utopia".  But, like his master before him, Porky fails to understand the sheer power of love.  He thinks it is foolish, something people will willingly give up for wealth and power and belonging.  Love, to Porky, is just a programming error, something natural that he can oppress like everything else.

But when it comes down to it, the reason his puppet cuts his strings is due to the very thing that almost undid his master, the very thing that this series is named after.  A Mother's love.  Hinawa is able to come to her son's aid, guiding him back from what Porky did to him, guiding him to his family.  Allowing him to finally rest after being forced to live half-alive for many years.  The best laid plans finally undone with a simple act of pure, unadulterated love.  And it is that same love Lucas uses to pull the final needle and fix all that is broken.  Literally, the psychic power that Lucas wields is titled "PK Love".  Love overcomes hatred, and finally, at the end of Mother 3, the cycle is broken.  Porky is a prisoner of his own machinations, he left behind no successor.  Giygas is long gone.  And our heroes are allowed to create a new world, one of love.  Claus being called home by his mother is the end of the Mother series.  The end of a cycle that fed through countless universes and three whole games.  The ending of a story.

If Mother 4 were ever to be made, I'm sure it would be good.  It may even be great.  It won't be made for what it's worth, Itoi understands the narrative he wrote is done and like I said, he has been out of the games industry for decades.  The only way it is likely to happen is if somehow Nintendo gets ahold of the Mother franchise and decides to greenlight a new game since it is one of their big iconic franchises, which is also unlikely.  But I don't think a Mother 4 would ever work out ultimately.  Because what Mother is, that's done.  It's a beautiful story of love overcoming all told over three games, one that has reached its conclusion.

A Mother 4 would, at best, be "a fun Mother game" and at worst would actively take away from the trilogy by its existence.  A story that ended now suddenly having no ending.  To continue Mother would only serve to weaken it.  There shouldn't be an official Mother 4.  To do so would be gravely misunderstanding what Mother is, what it meant to accomplish, and how it accomplished it.  It would be against everything Mother stands for.  And this trilogy is too important to just get thrown to the wayside like that, to be turned into yet another avenue for "content" for a major game company.  I understand it's tempting sometimes, sometimes I sit there and wish there was more.  More of this thing I love.  But it needed to end, and it's good that it ended.  It's stronger because it ended.