Night in the Woods and the bird on the porch
One of the smallest, least significant exchanges in Night in the Woods turns out to be a microcosm of the entire game, culminating in the tiniest bit of hope.
Night in the Woods just released for Nintendo Switch last week, meaning plenty of latecomers to the game are discovering Possum Springs for the first time now. Even though Night in the Woods was celebrated after its early 2017 release, I didn’t get around to playing it through until last month on PC. I, like many, was struck by the overtly and realistically flawed cast of characters, the sharp political and social commentary, and especially by the importance of seemingly small player choices.
(Warning: Major spoilers for the entirety of Night in the Woods, a game I recommend you play, up ahead)
What you get out of Night in the Woods depends heavily on how much time you spend bopping about Possum Springs and talking to its residents on a daily basis. There are several achievements tied to storylines and conversations you can only get by visiting certain characters daily. By building these relationships, you learn more about Mae, her family, and the town itself.
I spoke to every single character in town that I could; every single day. A few, such as Selmers and Mae’s mom up at the church offered arcs of growth that culminated in meaningful scenes and Steam achievements. Some conversations are one-offs with characters that appear one day and are gone the next. And there are a few other daily conversations that change meaningfully over time. One was the talk of the Smelters fan friends outside the bar. And the other was this mean old bird:
This guy never leaves his porch. And he also doesn’t want Mae on that porch with him. She might track mud on it. She might scare the squirrels or his dog. Every day, I spoke with this jerk, and every day for the first half of the game or so, he implicitly or explicitly told Mae to stay off his porch. He may very well have had good reasons for not wanting Mae around to begin with. Mae has a reputation in Possum Springs, and even if the reasons are sad and not really Mae’s fault, those who don’t know that would understandably react poorly to her just wandering into her personal space. But he also doesn’t want the teacher neighbor on it, near it, or crashing into it (perhaps the last one is understandable, too), so we can infer his porch protectiveness applies to any outsider:
What’s wonderful about this grumpy bird is that he and his porch are a small-scale version of one of the central problems in Possum Springs. Possum Springs is in a fragile state. Businesses are leaving, the coal mines are shut down, and children are moving away to bigger and better things. The older residents are disgruntled and full of “remember when”-s and “back in my day”-s. As you find out in the climax of the game, one of the ways some of these folks intend to bring back those alleged glory days involves eliminating anyone they see as an outsider. Anyone who doesn’t belong, doesn’t fit, and isn’t a part of an established family must be sacrificed (quite literally) to preserve Possum Springs.
Night in the Woods does an excellent job evoking sympathy and empathy for the problems the residents face without apologizing for the folks who decide to throw people into a pit because they think it will fix things. Mae, the hero of the story, does “beat the bad guys” in a way, but it’s mostly an accident. And even if immediately problematic individuals aren’t coming back, their attitudes remain, sleeping quietly in the residents like the monster in the mine, waiting for someone to rediscover it. Mae isn’t some hero savior of Possum Springs. She has plenty of her own problems that she can’t solve, so it’s a bit of a harsh lesson at the end of Night in the Woods to discover that, really, not much will change on a large scale. There are no easy answers, certainly not for average individuals. A taco place moves in, and that’s the only real good news.
But then there’s the bird on the porch. I kept coming back and talking to him every day, and after multiple reprimands and frustrated reasons he did not want me around, I started to get lines like this:
Huh.
Bird on the Porch never became overtly friendly toward Mae. But his lines changed. First, the tone of his reprimands tipped from hostile “get off my porch”-isms to “here is why I care about the porch.” Then, he stopped mentioning the porch altogether. We weren’t friends, but he made small-talk like someone might make with a neighbor they see in passing.
And therein lies Mae’s power. Mae can do exactly two things in Night in the Woods: Jump on telephone wires and talk to people. So much over the course of the game is completely out of Mae’s paws. Shops come and go. Bruce is rejected even if Mae talks to him and Pastor Kate every single day. Casey is dead, and Mae can’t save him. But by talking to the residents of Possum Springs, Mae can open up her world a little bit wider, and in turn, open up the worlds of those around her. By finishing certain conversations at the end of the game, you can give your father a symbol of hope, reassure your mother, offer a lonely sports fan a moment of connection, and help a grouchy bird be a little more tolerant of other people stepping into his universe.
I wish empathy and human connection on an individual level went farther than they did to solve our problems. Night in the Woods is a stern reminder that video game happy sappy endings may feel good, but they’re often not grounded in anything. Despite being populated by anthropomorphic animals, my visit to Possum Springs was one of the most realistic video game experiences I’ve had, especially as someone who has lived in Kansas her entire life and seen small towns just like this. I’m privileged enough to be safe at the moment from people with poisonous attitudes about those who don’t “belong,” but by virtue or vice of my upbringing, I also sit at the table with them sometimes. And even though I, like Mae, “belong” enough not to be thrown into the pit, I’m still terrified to open my mouth to defend those who don’t. I shouldn’t be.
The gradual turn of the bird on the porch doesn’t save Possum Springs from economic decay. But I can’t help but feel that maybe, at the beginning of the game, he was more on the side of the specters in the coal mines than on Mae’s, and by the end, Mae’s persistence might have softened him a bit. I know, for those for whom the pit in the mines is a real danger, it seems a shallow platitude to encourage people to step off their porch and talk to people. But Mae only has two powers (jumping and talking), and those make a small difference. It’s a grave but hopeful reminder that I, with more powers than that, can make a larger one if I’m not afraid to use them.
The views expressed in this article explicitly belong to the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of, nor should be attributed to, App Trigger or FanSided as an organization.





