Multiple Kotaku readers told me you could actually go back and find out what happened to the Mountain Goat. I tried several times and searched Eklemata, but never could find her.

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That was, until I replayed the scene (I have a save file there), climbed up from the cliff, but accidentally fell back down the hole I emerged from. I realized I could do the same at a later point in the game. I loaded my file near the end, trekked all the way back to Eklemata, then found the pit where I’d left the goat.

I was devastated to find the Mountain Goat’s body next to her husband, frozen in the snow. Despite her reassurances, she had not been able to escape. It had been three years since I first played the game, and now, finding their bodies together, I felt so sad.

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The fact that the developers at Quintet added this optional scene instead of cutting the goat sprites out or blocking off the area seemed cruel. But it only emphasized the personal stakes in the game and how the developers refused to give pat resolutions or unrealistic happy endings. Death can’t be cheated, even in a videogame.

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Terranigma is full of tragic moments like this, from the twisted machinations of the scientist Beruga, to the guilt ridden Christopher Colombus, as well as the destruction of the game’s developers, Quintet. Even the ending is a symbolic flight over the planet as Ark prepares for his death and gazes at the world he helped bring back.

Terranigma made me think a lot about life and existence, how painful creation is, and how our choices affect those around us. In my earlier retrospective, I called Terranigma a “a requiem of history and humanity, a dark assemblage of surprisingly tragic events for a 16-bit game that goes beyond the normal RPG tropes… Ark’s impending demise doesn’t fill us with regret, but hope, because the civilization will go on despite your death and flourish. Terranigma lives on in our imaginations.”

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It’s a testament to Quintet’s bold choices that I still linger on Terranigma and mourn those goats.