Just finished it myself. This game wrecked me.

I spent two hours enjoying the arctic scenery, for no reason at all except that it felt good to be sharing this time with my brother. That last scene on the bridge, with the northern lights dancing in the sky, I stayed there for almost half an hour, just thinking about my life and about all the beauty in the world.

I had no idea what horrors lay just ahead.

The trap, the fight, the wound -- the desperate climb. The certainty of purpose. The loss.

And then the numbing, awful, horrible logistics of making final arrangements for this body. Dragging it. Dumping it. Shoveling dirt on top of it over, and over, and over, and over. I had long since forgotten I was playing a game by this point. I was completely lost in grief.

And then the resolve kicked in. The need to complete the mission. Medicine in hand, prepared for the long and awful grind back home. I felt so fragile and alone in that moment, facing the prospect of crossing all of that dangerous terrain alone.

The soaring relief of the gryphon. Spirited away across that landscape, racing against the clock. I couldn't bear the thought that I'd get home moments too late to deliver the medicine.

The storm, the swim, the climb. Discovering, to my surprise, that my brother's strength is inside me. Overcoming. Standing tall, a man at last.

I wept.

As someone who lost a close family member as a child, I can tell you, those last few moments hit home hard. When Little Brother discovered the strength inside himself...I've had that moment in my own life, I lived through that.

But the moment that struck me most if all came after the credits. The game returns to the home screen. There's Little Brother, up o the cliff, overlooking a beautiful sunset. Autumn leaves are falling, and the ocean is stretching out.

A little sailboat appeared, drifting away from the shore, and I watched it for a long, long time. It disappears into the mist, and you think it's gone forever -- but suddenly it's coming back.

For awhile you think it might just come ashore again -- but it slips away behind the rocks. Wherever it has gone, we cannot follow.