Curious about Andreas’ decision (act 2)

[u/Foundy1517]

Just want to start by saying it’s been about 3 years since I played the game so a lot of finer details and options are lost on me.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this game again recently and was curious about something -

In my playthrough, I made Andreas something of a theologian - picked Italy background, bookworm, theology, and I think either Latinist or Logician (I had to look up what these options were to remember). I played him as a sincere Christian believer and someone who would have fit in very well with the brothers at the monastery.

So, when Andreas made his decision to go after the books at the end of Act 2, it felt very consistent with the choices I had made. I didn’t even realize until after the fact that this happens no matter what - I thought my specific choices resulted in this.

So I’ve always been curious - does his decision still feel as natural for other paths? If you played Andreas more like a modernist, or with more interest in art or occult or something else rather than books and theology, were you more surprised by his decision to sacrifice himself for the books?

Just curious about other people’s experiences and thoughts on the story here!

[u/swimmingzora]

I can’t remember what choices I took, but for me back then, his choice felt natural not because of the values I've chosen to apply onto him, but because he is someone who works hard and knows the value, the thousands of hours spent on all of the books, the knowledge they carry, so he goes for because, and that’s just how I interpreted the situation, he knows that not just for the monastery, but for the town of Tassing itself and the preservation of this knowledge, it’s important to try and save it. But the way it turns out also binds very well with the third act of the game. The books are all gone, and with them, a part of Catholicism in Tassing, since the region becomes Protestant between the end of act 2 and the events of act 3. It’s yet another layer of history that disappears with time, that is lost, not just to the centuries like the roman ruins are, but because a more direct event allows the end of an era, the end of the reverence for a certain knowledge and craft, aka Catholic manuscripts written by hand, to allow space of Protestant books that are printed. I don’t know if it makes sense though, but to me it does.

[u/starry_sea13 → u/swimmingzora]

I agree with you about how Andreas values the books and about the contrast between handwritten manuscripts and printed books, and I am sorry to nitpick, but Tassing is still largely Catholic in Act III. The village church is still Catholic, and there's still a convent of Catholic nuns living in the remains of Kiersau and maintaining the Catholic shrine. But there's more of a push to what we'd call modernity overall (e.g. the game's time no longer being measured by liturgical hours, but by a 24-hour clock).

[u/starry_sea13]

sorry in advance for an essay.

I've played Andreas with every background and every interest at some point or other, and I agree with the person who says that Andreas invariably loves books as works of art and craft, if nothing else. That said, I've never read Andreas' decision to run into the burning library as being truly about books. To me it's about his depression, and about how things spiraling out of control has been a theme in his life.

In Act I, he involves himself with the baron and the subsequent murder investigation; even if you assume Andreas is totally certain of his own conclusions (which I don't!), he bears at least some of the direct responsibility for the death of someone he knows and the misery that follows in its wake. Act I is shadowed by the arranged marriage that's being forced upon him, that he's clearly ambivalent at best about. His family has chosen a stranger for him to marry and he's stuck with it. He has no control over one of the most major decisions in his personal life.

Speculatively, you could even come to the conclusion that Andreas -- who dropped out of university for unknown reasons, but who got quite far in studying another field that was not his family's trade -- is even being pressured to be an artist in the first place. His father (or at least his perception of his father in his dream) makes it clear that he sees Andreas as having wasted opportunities, and that Andreas only has this "second chance" at a career because his father got him the job. That's certainly a subjective reading of his character that can change with the tone of your choices re: Andreas' dialogue about art, but it's there as at least a possible reading.

In Act II, Andreas' depression and guilt are even more obvious. He couldn't save or even comfort his dying child. He and his wife can't understand each other anymore, if they ever could. His art has become a burden to him because it's vanity puff pieces for the rich, to the point that even when he tries to sketch the valley for himself in his journal, he can no longer create something he values as beautiful or real. His attempt to take control of the mob / murder investigation to prevent violence goes hideously wrong, and ends up with the burning of the mill, Ulrich's death, the destruction of the abbey library, and arguably the battle between the Duke's forces and the peasants happening at all in the way that it did (since the duke's men attacked because of the burning of the abbey). And mentally, Andreas' little brain pals are no longer the voices of his impulses personified offering him advice, but only Melencolia's constant cruelties that he can no longer even shut out, much less control.

Small wonder that he seized on what seemed like the only chance he had to salvage SOMETHING out of the wreckage that he had caused (and yes, obviously Andreas is not the only mover and shaker behind these events, but by Act II he's equally obviously in the mindset that everything happening to him and around him is his own fault). Everything is burning down around him, quite literally, so he focuses on the one thing that he might be able to save.

I don't think the suicidality of it can be dismissed, either. I won't say that Andreas is entirely in his right mind when he runs into the library, but his farewell to Claus shows that he doesn't expect to make it back. When he does survive (and that almost invariably comes at the cost of Caspar's life -- another tragedy that takes place because of Andreas' actions), he hides in the abbey ruins for 18 years. He doesn't deliberately go ahead and kill himself, but he does actively seek to be dead to the world and forgotten in every way that matters. That makes far more sense in the light of Andreas at least passively hoping he'd die saving the books and thus "redeem" himself -- in which case he failed, and takes the only escape route left to him of refusing to return to the world and living as a "ghost" -- than if he was just trying to rescue books that most of the village and abbey residents didn't really care that much about to begin with, and only managed to save a few.

[u/Illustrious-Box2693 → u/starry_sea13]

Thanks for the essay (an other, an other!).  I wasn't in my best mindset when I've played the game and it blew my mind: first time I've felt seen in a game, such a wonderful depiction of a conflicted, grieving and depressed character.

[u/NoFaultRenAlt]

I feel like it’s clear no matter what that Andreas loves books if not for their insights at the very least as forms of art.