gaspIt was several years ago that I played Clock Tower 3. Filled to the brim with gruesome serial killers and running around in a weaponless panic, the game had plenty of material to keep the player on its toes. The protagonist, Alyssa Hamilton, fights a series of supernaturally possessed killers in order to release the murderous spirit residing within them. However, once the game was coming to a close, it seemed the game was less about a quivering teenager trying to defeat the forces of evil and more about how much her grandfather, Dick, seemed to be in love with her.
And not just her- her grandfather expressed much love for his own daughter, Nancy, and her abilities during her time as a rooter (extinguishers of evil, they typically peak at age 15 and then lose their powers by age 20). Then Nancy got married and gave birth to Alyssa, giving Dick yet another young rooter female to cast his admiration and obsessions on once Nancy fell out of his favor.
Dick is not the first man to do this according to the game's story. One of his distant relatives, Lord Darcy Burroughs, was seemingly obsessed with his own daughter. In fact, he planned to kill her on her 15th Birthday, cut out her heart, drink her blood, and become an entity (a spirit which possesses serial killers, causing them to murder and then feeding off the life energy of their victims). In his way, he could be "one" with her for eternity. However, his daughter was killed right before her 15th birthday, causing Lord Burroughs to go into a murderous rage resulting in the death of nearly everyone, including his wife, with the exception of his son (who seemed to have been completely ignored considering how important he was up until the point his father went off the deep end). This son was then the man who Dick descended from.
Dick and Darcy share the same obsession with rooters in their family, so much so that they lose affection for their wives and the daughters who are no longer rooters. And how creepy is that considering Dick and Darcy were over 50 during their parts of the story? Ew. Dick intends to carry out the ritual Lord Burroughs never got to carry out, this time with Alyssa.
"Peaking" at the age of 15, the root (bad pun, I know) of the Rooters' power to extinguish evil correlates with their chastity and the height of their physical and sexual development (according to the game, it's all downhill from there for the Rooters). Women who do not fit into that age category will probably have their heads chopped off or smashed in during the course of the game. I haven't come to any clear conclusions on what the game is saying, if anything. Is the game story making a value judgment about virginal purity? Is it fetishizing the pubescent female? I don't know, but it looks like there are at least two characters in the game who do.
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