Post-Traumatic Growth in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

By Josué Cardona

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons has what may be the best representation of post-traumatic growth I have ever seen in a video game. 

Post traumatic growth is what happens when a person ends up stronger after and because of a traumatic event in their life. Sometimes an event affects us negatively over the long-term, such as having a consistent fear of driving after a car accident. Sometimes we go through things and we simply move on and heal over time. But other times a powerful event changes us and makes us stronger. 

Video games play with this idea consistently. In many games you get stronger over time and the journey is often triggered by a big event. But I’ve never experienced such powerful emotions playing a game. Brothers is very special. Let me explain why.

Brothers starts with a young boy named Naiee kneeling in front of a gravestone. We see a flashback of Naiee in a boat during a storm. His mother is in the water, drowning, trying to get back on the boat. Naiee is calling for help but no one is near. The mother reaches up toward the boat and Naiee grabs her arms and tries to pull her up.  But he can’t. The mother falls back into the water and sinks out of view. 

Immediately after the flashback, Naiee’s older brother Nyaa is yelling for you to come to him. He needs help getting the boys’ father to the doctor. The father is so sick that he can’t walk so you put him on a cart and you learn that your first task in the game is to use both brothers, working together, to get your father to the doctor. 

That is what happens during the first few minutes of Brothers:  A Tale of Two Sons.

Upon reaching the doctor you learn that your father is dying and his only hope is what looks like a plant or a tree drawn on parchment. The doctor tasks the brothers with finding this plant so they can save their father. This is where Naiee and Nyaa’s adventure begins.

To appreciate what happens later in the game, it is important to understand what the controls are like. In my case, I played it on a Playstation 3 and the controller looks like this: 

You control both brothers simultaneously, one with each hand: One analog stick and one shoulder button per brother. So your thumbs control each character’s movement and your index fingers controls their actions. Your right hand controls the younger brother and your left hand controls the older brother. This is one of the most exciting things about the game but it is also very confusing at times. Regardless, just remember that you control both characters simultaneously at all times. 

Finally, the younger brother is afraid of water and is unable to swim. (We don’t know if his fear of water resulted from his mother’s death or if he was always afraid of water.) Whenever you come upon water, you need to swim with your left hand (older brother) and use your right hand (younger brother) to hold on to the older brother. It is not as confusing to do in the game as it is to put it in writing.

At this point, if you are interested in playing this game at all, I suggest you stop reading and play it for yourself. It is available on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Steam.The game can be completed in about 3 hours if you don’t stop to do everything and simply follow the story. I’m going to spoil later parts in the game now because that is where you see the post-traumatic growth.

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The game is beautiful and you see a lot of amazing places on your journey. Throughout the game you see how the two brothers are different and you see what their relationship is like. They call to each other, they react differently to different people, and the example of how one brother helps the other swim across water is representative of their relationship. 

Phew… 

So at this point I was really hoping that I got the chance to save the father because I did not want to imagine Naiee all alone after everything he’s been through. But first, we need to make it all the way back and we came a long way to get here. Thankfully, Naiee gets some help and you are able to make it back home, to where the game began. Except that things look different now because you arrive in the middle of a storm, similar to the one seen in Naiee’s flashback of his mother’s death.

You can see the doctor’s office in the distance. As you start moving toward it you realize… Naiee is all alone. You are only controlling the game with your right hand. The left hand does nothing and you can feel a sense of emptiness. You can’t really take your left hand off the controller and you are so used to using both hands to do everything that you can actually feel that Nyaa is missing. If you stand still and try an action with your left hand, Naiee reacts by dropping his head and shoulders. 

You then come upon two ledges that the brothers previously jumped independently, side-by-side, without each others help. But seeing both sides available reminds you that Nyaa isn’t there. As Naiee jumps you can almost imagine Nyaa there but of course, he’s not.

A little further up you come across a body of water… and Naiee drops to his knees, seemingly defeated. 

But the spirit of his mother appears and motions to him to keep moving forward. He stands up. He moves toward the water and stops right before it gets deep. You move the right analog stick and Naiee won’t budge. He just shakes his head, afraid, paralyzed. Until… you press Nyaa’s action button…

When you press the left action button, the camera pulls in close to Naiee, he doesn’t seem afraid anymore, and the controller starts to vibrate. I pushed forward with Naiee and he began to swim across. Every obstacle from now on, obstacles that Naiee could never traverse alone, were possible to overcome by tapping into this newly-gained strength. By remembering his brother. By adding Nyaa’s strength to his own. 

I think there are a few ways to interpret what the game designers did here but I see it as post-traumatic growth. Despite everything that has happened to him, Naiee keeps going. In fact, Naiee is now much stronger. Perhaps  pressing the left action button represents remembering Nyaa and everything he taught you. Perhaps it is Naiee’s way of honoring a promise to his brother to make it and save his father. Maybe Naiee has decided that he’s not letting anyone else in his life die so the left button becomes his “determination” button. Although every challenge can now be overcome by pulling the left trigger, my favorite thing that it does now is cause Naiee to slow down if he’s running, stand up taller, and make him look more confident. 

I thought that burying Nyaa was very emotional but it was nothing compared to that moment when I (as Naiee) learned I was stronger than I realized. It’s difficult to explain how amazing it felt to discover all this strength where there was once emptiness and sadness. To feel the controller shake and have the camera zoom in on you as you overcome challenges you were once unable to deal with alone is one of the best payoffs ever in a video game.

The game’s developers finish the game off perfectly by showing us a scene in which Naiee and his father visit his mother and brother’s gravestones. The father is overcome by grief, collapses, and cries. Naiee, on the other hand, is shown standing up straight, with a look on his face that I can only describe as calm.