loading . . . GoldenSunArtInitiative: Isolation; a Dark Dawn critical analysis Today, December 2nd 2025 is the 15th Anniversary of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn being released (in Australia, so if you're there, it's your turn to celebrate). To be straightforward, when Golden Sun and The Lost Age came out, most players myself included were pre-teens or teenagers. When Dark Dawn arrived, us longtime players did not connect with the new game as positively. While you can point to the story and mechanics, the points of no return and the cliffhanger, I wish to offer an additional reason as to why for many longtime players of the original Golden Sun games, Dark Dawn did not make us feel the same.Nostalgia hits different for a lot of us. Revisiting media as an adult which you first encountered as a child has the potential to create a wide variety of emotion. Elation at rediscovering an old friend, or confusion at what you ever saw in this back in the day. Warm memories of play based on that thing you saw at your grandparent's house over the summer, revulsion at the sight of blood returning (despite being otherwise indifferent to blood on camera) from that one scene in that one movie and only that one scene. Laughter at figuring out a joke meant for the "grown ups" that went over your head back then, turning something off because it reminds you of abuse you were going through at the time. Identifying the causal and often unintentional racism or homophobia in a lot of media from that era. Noticing a plot point being ripped off in some other unrelated show made many years later. Sadness that you can't feel the same way about something again. Joy that you never stopped loving this thing that meant something to you.I'll offer my own experience with the series here, the history prior to Jass Kells. If you want to skip all of that juicy backstory and get to the main argument, don't expand the following and just keep reading everything below the break. [READ-MORE]The original Golden Sun came out in 2001, and whatever your feelings and memories are, mine are linked to growing up with this game. I have a bizarre and unique gaming journey, so I do not expect anyone to understand, but from the moment I saw the box on a shelf in a music store at a mall (you know, that place that used to exist to sell CDs) I obsessed about it so much that without realizing it, I had annoyed my way into a parent buying the game for me in exchange for handing over all of my pocket money at the time so that we would stop driving to a store just to find out I didn't have enough saved up (but I could still look at the game box artwork...this may have been a sign). Did I care that I was penniless? Nope. Did I realize how annoying I was being? Not at the time. The game was in my hand, and that was what was important then. Despite playing it enough to have reasonably worn it out by now, my cartridge is still working.Other pieces of media have great importance for me too, or may be more formative. Golden Sun as a series has simply been with me longer than most other pieces of media. It was a new world I could escape to, and no one else was there but the characters brought to pixelated life. I would play in private, and no one would judge me. Perhaps I would have continued to watch anime, or any number of things I abandoned in the years after Golden Sun coming into my life, since I was made to feel bad about myself. This is when I stopped making art for fun on my own; from this point on it would only be for required classes where having fun with art was the least important aspect to getting a good grade. Maybe that's why my grades in art classes tended to be bad. Golden Sun stayed with me because it was something which I could be quiet and enter its world from the device I held in my hand, without shame or anyone else's permission. As the Steely Dan song says, "Any world that I'm welcome to, is better than the one I come from."Shortly after being able to play Golden Sun I began to be abused more regularly in my life. Some, but not all of this came from being placed in a small school isolated away from anyone I knew, supposedly for my own good. I didn't know these new people in my class, and our interests were and grew more and more apart. The bullying that occurred was something I was told I deserved and would receive no protection from because it was something I somehow brought on myself for choosing being different. I thought I was following the advice to be yourself. It would seem that who I was was not the the right kind of person. My behaviors began to become destructive, and in hindsight I had very good teachers for those behaviors; it may be residual but I still view myself as an unkind person. This was the setting I was in when The Lost Age came out.Flash forward from the dark times, and Dark Dawn was released out in the middle of my own deprogramming, away from the environment that was producing a broken person. This was still during The Great Recession; occasional food insecurity was popping up, plus an awakening of what could now be called dysphoria...what kind? That's confidential. I was beginning to figure some things out about myself (which is still a work in progress in the best way possible) and all of a sudden, this next installment of Golden Sun is announced? In other words, Golden Sun games first were released when I was a child, and most recently saw an entry released when I was legally an adult. I think this is the case for many players who have experienced all three games. [/READ-MORE] Reception in 2010 was mixed, and we won't go into why when it comes to design and game-play; that doesn't matter here. One thing I wish I had at the time, was a community to talk about Dark Dawn with. My internet and computer skills are somewhat limited; partially from upbringing and how I am wired, so I did not have an online presence during the early days of Golden Sun fandom, outside of observing. Even during Dark Dawn, I stayed in the shadows, although I did have something of a presence. Opening up takes work. When it comes to how the original games were built, one feature missing from Dark Dawn is the Battle Arena. This was not a critical component and you can play the game just fine without it, but it was an extra way to engage with Golden Sun with a friend. You know, besides looking over their shoulder, or advising how to handle a particular moment they are stuck on, or arguing about how exactly you pronounce "Agatio". This was a time when games came with physical booklets in the box, and you could readily buy a guidebook filled with pictures that you and your friends could look at and admire the artwork...while rehashing the argument about how to pronounce "Agatio". Despite the environment I was in during the years following Golden Sun and The Lost Age being released, I did have one schoolmate who I could talk with about the games, and sometimes someone out in the wild or at a week long summer program. In my life, I have never met another person face to face who has played Dark Dawn. Admittedly, Dark Dawn did not sell nearly as many copies as the originals. That said, for longtime players such as myself, what we did not have with Dark Dawn was the community. Having an online community is wonderful, especially when the alternative is none at all. The power of face to face cannot be understated either. When the originals came out, we were kids, and for those of us who were stricken with the Golden Sun brain rot, we grew up with these games and with in person friends who did as well. Dark Dawn landed when we were adults, struggling with unemployment or bad jobs, university studies, relationships, and perhaps most relevant to how we experienced Dark Dawn, isolation. Many of us had no contact with former friends, or would only see a social media update occasionally. As kids, we could spend an hour on the landline telephone chatting about Pokémon until our 8:30 bedtime. As an adult, are there better things to do than nerd out about a video game? Sure, maybe. Probably. Why do you care what someone else does for a hobby? The one friend I had in school who also played Golden Sun? Dropped out of university, moved away, had a kid, and took up manual labor in a trade. This was very much in contrast to what their parents wanted for them, and personally, I miss them every day. To give a time-frame, this occurred around the time Dark Dawn was released, and I haven't seen them in all these years (and even a while before that). Did they ever play the game? Even if we were in contact, at the time we would not have been in a place to drop everything and chat about this game, its flaws and triumphs, or theorize where things could go from here. There are so any other things we could talk about as well. This is life, and growing up. Dark Dawn arrived when many of us were expected to no longer have hobbies. It was work, study, the end. Grown ups don't have hobbies in the minds of some people. We cannot let that attitude take hold. We played the originals as kids, and as much as you want to feel about something the way you did back then, it's not always possible. But if you have the people in your life to go through the experience with? That can make the difference. Dark Dawn came out at a time when many fans of the originals were increasingly isolated, meaning the few who played the game were no longer in proximity with anyone with whom they could interact with and process it; what you liked, why you didn't, open your eyes to something you missed or reevaluate something from a new perspective. Gaming technology limitations at the time were also apart of this. We are more connected now via devices, but still not very close. Since the Golden Sun Art Initiative began, my appreciation for Dark Dawn has grown since it has meant talking or writing back and forth about the game with others. 15 years since Dark Dawn came out. Perhaps some day some of us will meet up and nerd out in person, like we are all pre-teens obsessing about this imperfect piece of media we liked, flaws and all. See you there! https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/6932403
