Celeste

How facing inner turmoil helped us climb a mountain

- Jon Bailes

You may well wonder why Madeline wants to climb Celeste Mountain. It’s clear from the moment we meet her that she is no mountaineer; she’s hardly even the outdoorsy type. She arrives at the base of Celeste because she feels conflicted, without quite knowing why or what about. Madeline is snappy and irritable, suffers from panic attacks, and needs to get out of her own head. Her chosen task feels almost masochistic, more like self-punishment for her sense of inadequacy than a healthy challenge. Which raises another question: if Madeline seeks out Celeste because she feels conflicted, what does that say about why we seek out Celeste?

Celeste is a game about coping with anxiety and depression, but also speaks to a deeper sense that we’re never quite aligned with ourselves. There’s always an itch we can never quite reach. It’s an idea that runs to the heart of psychoanalysis, back to Freud himself, and the discontent of repressing our drives for the sake of civilisation. So it’s no surprise if we invent challenges to escape, or in vague hope of finding our complete selves on the way. Celeste provides both. It can be an engrossing distraction, certainly, but its arduous ascent can lead to a kind of self-acceptance – if only we can recognise that our notions of achievement and wholeness may be the obstacles standing in the way.

On one level,