Josef Fares, the director behind The Game Awards 2021 Game of the Year winner It Takes Two, was cooking in 2013 when he made his directorial debut with Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. I appreciated the game when I first played it 11 years ago, but age, wisdom, and life experience made it hit all the harder in 2024.
The remake, which launched on February 28, recaptures all the magic and frustrations of the original. There’s not much new here beyond a nice visual touch-up and an optional cooperative mode (which the game warns you away from as it’s not the intended experience). But even if I find the actual business necessity of a remake questionable here, I can’t deny that Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons’ finale is still a devastating, breathtaking gut-punch that’s worth revisiting 11 years later.
Brothers is about two teenage boys named Naiee and Naia, who embark on a journey to bring back water from the Tree of Life to save their father from a deadly ailment. The trek from their village is a perilous one, and I’d forgotten just how dark Brothers gets in some segments. As the older brother, Naia protects Naiee against the horrors of the game’s dark fantasy world. He’s the stronger of the two, and thus the go-to for acts of strength like pulling heavy levers. Naiee is able to squeeze into smaller areas thanks to his smaller stature, but he also can’t swim and has to ride on his brother’s back when they travel through water. So, both brothers have to rely on each other at different points to make it through their adventure.
Brothers is the video-game equivalent of patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time. The game’s control scheme maps both brothers to one side of your controller, with the left analog stick and trigger corresponding to the older brother, and the right moving the younger. You control both boys at the same time, and a lot of the game’s challenge comes from recalibrating yourself with every movement as the brothers move across the screen. If that sounds frustrating, it’s because it very much is, but it’s also what makes it rewarding.
Actions that are second nature in other games, like climbing the side of a cliff, become mental exercises as you meticulously reorient with each movement. When playing Brothers, I constantly find myself moving the boys to be on the corresponding side of the screen just because my brain has trouble reconciling that the character I control with my right hand is on the opposite side of the screen. This gives the game a methodical pace that makes it satisfying when you finally pull off an elaborate maneuver.
All of this—the mindbending control scheme, the brothers’ respective talents, and the emotional touchstone of relying on each other—comes to a head in Brothers’ final chapter. After having trusted a young woman to help them reach the Tree of Life, Naia becomes smitten and begins to follow her to what she convinces him is a shortcut. When Naiee is suspicious, his older brother dismisses his worries. Then the turn comes, and it’s revealed that this woman is a spider-like monster who lured them into her web.
Through cooperation and proper hand-eye coordination on the player’s part, the two are able to overcome her and rip off her legs one by one. But just as the battle seems won, she impales Naia with one of her remaining limbs. There isn’t much time, but if the brothers can reach the Tree of Life before he bleeds out, Naiee may be able to save him. You spend these next few minutes only controlling Naiee as his older brother waits at the bottom of the tree. Using only the right side of the controller, you make your way up to a small pool of water in the branches of the tree and fill up a bottle. But by the time you reach Naia, he’s already gone.
What follows is a brutal burial scene in which developer Starbreeze Studio makes you meticulously drag Naia’s body into a hole and cover it with dirt. By the time I had him halfway to the grave, I was a sobbing mess. But that’s not the most affecting part of Brothers’ ending. It’s the final playable segment—a payoff that builds over the course of the entire game.
Upon arriving back home in his village, you realize how much Naiee had to rely on Naia just to leave this place to start their journey. There are bodies of water he can’t swim across, levers he can’t pull, and cliffs he can’t ascend by himself. Now he’s alone, but has no choice but to push forward.
At first, only pressing the right side of the controller only gets you so far. Swimming wasn’t part of Naiee’s moveset, but it was part of his brother’s. Then it clicks. Holding down the left trigger, which has signified everything his brother could do that he couldn’t, makes him desperately paddle across the water. It’s not as graceful as his Naia’s swimming, but like a guiding hand on his shoulder, pushing down the left trigger makes him try to do what he’s seen his brother do a dozen times throughout the game. The same is true for when he has to pull a lever to get across a chasm and leap to reach a ladder he couldn’t quite touch at the beginning of the game.
In the end, Naiee is able to save his father, but the two spend the game’s final moments grieving over the graves of Naia and their mother. It is a tragedy laced with a bittersweet truth anyone who has grieved another person knows all too well. We are all made up of pieces of those we’ve known, loved, and lost. When I go, I wonder what parts of me others will see in my siblings, or if they go first, what parts of my brother and sisters will people see in me? Will I embody my brother’s strength or my sister’s empathy? Would my niece and nephews hear their mother in my laugh? I try not to think about losing my siblings, but it’s been 11 years since I first played Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and I think about death a lot more than I did back then. But it is at least a reminder that no one is ever really gone. Pieces of them are just lodged in the hearts of everyone they’ve ever known.
