Mother 3 Chapter 3 Analysis

Hello and welcome to a multi-part series where I dissect each chapter of Mother 3. Please be sure to check out previous entries! Also, I will be spoiling. Last part here.

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So after Duster gets seperated from his unlikely trio of a brash princess and abusive father, where does the players POV shift?

To a monkey.

More specifically, the animal companion of the mysterious mustachioed man who we only saw for twenty seconds in Chapter 2! This is what I love about Mother 3. It takes the formula of something like Dragon Quest IV or Wild Arms, and ramps up the narrative importance of each character. No disrespect to the other two games I mentioned, but Mother 3 does a far better job of making the player at the very least intrigued in each story it’s setting up.

Our main monkey is adorably named Salsa. Unfortunately for Salsa, his monkey girlfriend has been kidnapped by the bizarre pig-mask people from Chapter 1&2. He’s been strapped with a collar which can electrocute him if activated by his mustache-glad partner- Fasaad. I use the word “partner” very loosely because Fasaad is the biggest piece of shit we’ve seen in the entire game so far.

Our cute and temporary protagonist Salsa is sadly a victim of constant animal abuse. Fasaad is very flippant with the electrifying device he owns. He’ll shock Salsa even if he does exactly what he was asked to do.

We learned in Chapter 2 that a mysterious peddler man gave a villager a bundle of “money”. Nobody in Tazmily knows what money even is! In Chapter 3 we finally get to put the two puzzle pieces together. Fasaad is a conman, and he’s trying to trick the entirety of Tazmily Village into falling under his spell. What’s his spell per se? One of capitalism, consumerism, and technology. Fasaad gives a speech in the middle of Tazmily with poor Salsa by his side. He convinces a few villagers that true happiness is attainable if they want it. All they have to do is raise their hands.

Four villagers raise their hands. The next day, Salsa is instructed to deliver four parcels to their houses. Now usually, I would consider this to be some uninteresting padding- and it is. But luckily it doesn’t take very long. Maybe 6-7 minutes at most. And the game does this clever thing of having one of the villagers cancel their orders; it makes the player feel a little relieved and like they just made double the progress in one delivery.

The packages contain “Happy Boxes”. A Happy Box is essentially a computer. And of course, we slowly start to see more and more villagers become mesmerized by these computers.

I’d also like to note one more key difference I realized from Mother 1 and EarthBound. In those games, most NPCs say bizarre or silly one liners. But in Mother 3, things are much more typical. It’s more “RPG” speak, if you will. NPCs will usually say things that make contextual sense. It doesn’t seem noteworthy at first because this is how NPCs speak in 99% of games. But this is the Mother series we’re talking about!

Fasaad steals the money he gave to a villager, causing a public outrage in the town square. Just a few days ago Tazmily Village was described as a peaceful place with no crime. All it took was one bundle of money to disrupt that.

Listen, I’m a sucker for anti-consumerism and anti-technology messaging. Those are both two things I try to limit in my life. But I’m a human being, and I fall under the temptation of overuse of the internet and Amazon. It sucks, but it’s reality. There’s a fairy tale quality to many of my favorite games, and I think Mother 3 can be read as a fairy tale:

“There once was a village that knew nothing of sadness and anger. A village of total peace. And then, an outside man came and introduced the villagers to money and electronic distraction. And thus, chaos was born.”

I love it!

From a gameplay point of view, Chapter 3 is much easier and simpler than Chapter 2. We have far less battles and the bosses we get are easier to finish off. Salsa meets Kumatora, who with her psychic powers is able to understand that Salsa is in a terrible situation. She and Wess free Salsa from his enslavement. Fasaad finds out and chases the trio into the forest. The same forest that was on fire in Chapter 1. At a certain point it seems like Fasaad has the three of them cornered and ready to take them down. Who comes to the rescue? Why, it’s the crybaby Lucas from Chapter 1. The boy who just lost his mother and whose brother ran away. Lucas summons two dragos with a single whistle. The mama drago chases Fasaad and his pig mask crew out of the forest.

The chapter rounds out with Kumatora, Salsa, and Wess deciding to go find Duster. Lucas wants to tag along but Wess convinces him otherwise.

Overall I think Chapter 3 does a phenomenal job as setting the final seeds of the story. In Chapter 1 we learned of the initial pain of Flint and his sons. The first real tragedy of Tazmily village. We meet these poor wild animals that have forcibly been turned into cyborgs. We meet the strange pig mask enemies. We see that they have the same Instant Revitalization Machines that Dr. Andonuts from EarthBound had. In Chapter 2 we see a mysterious needle in Osohe Castle and meet the psychic tomboyish princess. We also see the Egg of Light which holds all of the worlds secrets. In Chapter 3, an outsider conman known as Fasaad takes advantage of the recently crippled Tazmily Village by promising them happiness. This “happiness” comes in the form of currency and technology.

The final seeds have been planted. All that’s left is to see how they grow. The prologue is over.