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Jusantis a unique experience centered around climbing up a mountain called the Tower to reach a goal you slowly learn about throughout the game. The game does not feature any spoken dialogue, with the only characters being the main character you control and the mysterious small water creature you carry with you.
Instead, the story is told through letters that are found hidden around the Tower left by the past inhabitants. Since these are hidden, and interlink with the environment, understanding the story of Jusant can be tricky. So, what is going on in Jusant, and how does your character link to the past?
Spoilers Ahead
What Is Jusant’s Story?
In Jusant,the world has stopped turning, meaning the sun is stuck in one position,and a side effect of this isa complete lack of rain.
Through letters, you learn thatthe Tower used to be surrounded by waterand home to multiple sailing communities that had to move up and down the Tower with the tide.
However, with the lack of rain,the area around the Tower turned into a desert, and the residents of the tower were left with the choice to risk staying or risk leaving. This is the main crisis we can learn about through reading the letters throughout the Tower.
While the lifestyle of the past residents changes depending on how high you get,everyone was struggling with the choice to stay or leave, and being forced to adapt their way of life to the growing scarcity of water.
Giant whale-like creatures that are known as ballastsbecome more common the higher you get up, and they seem to be linked to the lack of water.
To fully understand the story of Jusant, you need to understandwhat life on the Tower was like, the story of Bianca — who wrote her own series of separate letters— and the story you play out throughout the game.
Life On The Tower
You do not need to read every letter on the Tower to understand what life was like for the residents, butthe more you read, the more you learn about the different culturesthroughout the different regions of the Tower, and how this affected how people coped.
All of the writing found in Jusant takes placeafter the water has left and the Tower is surrounded by a desert.
The phenomenon of the water leaving isoccasionally referred to as the Jusant. At the start of the game, you are explicitly shown thatJusant means a receding tide in Frenchand as the game progresses, the importance of this term becomes more and more apparent.
At the time most of the letters are being written,it has been a long time since the desert around the Tower was formed, andonly the elders on the Tower remember the presence of water, and, by extension, rain.
There is one letter where a character is chatting to another one about telling their child a story about rain, but since they had never seen it in their lifetime,they didn’t know if the concept of water falling from the sky was just a myth from elders.
Even before the Jusant,life on the Tower is focused more around vertical travel than horizontal.A prime example of this ispeople using pebblebacks to travel around, whether it is up, down or on the ground.
Throughout the game, you can use these same pebblebacks to help traverse the map, but you can alsoread stories of the residents of the Tower riding on bigger pebblebacks to migratethrough the desert away from the Tower.
While it is never explicitly stated that the world has stopped turning, it can be picked up on using contextual clues,like never referring to day and night, and mentioning that the seasons never change. By using these clues, it can be surmised thatthe world once turned(since they have a concept of seasons)but it has since stopped.
Throughout the Tower, you’re able to see howthe lifestyle of the residents crumbled as the lack of water became more and more of an issue, whether that is not being able to sustain businesses, or having to leave since there is no way to grow food.
You can see howthis led to families being split up, with more stubborn members choosing to stay on the Tower, while others making the tough decision to leave.
The sense of uncertainty is palpable by reading the letters throughout the Tower, with people trying to remain hopeful, but unable to maintain life in their home anymore. The sense of uncertainty is easiest to understand when reading the logs left by Bianca.
Bianca’s Story
While there is a grander narrative at play throughout Jusant,a sub-story that you follow in chronological order is Bianca’s journey.
Like the character you control,Bianca was heading up the Tower too, after being persuaded by a friend and having a thirst for adventure, wanting to learn the truth about the Tower and the Jusant.
You can first read her log near the end of Chapter 1, with the lighthouse being where she lived, and after thisyou are essentially following the same path up she took.
You seeBianca’s emotional development throughout her journey, as well as insights into the characters she meets and travels with.
It is melancholic reading her story — there is no human life left in the Tower, and the higher up she went, the lesser her chances of survival were.
Bianca is excited to start her adventure asshe is convinced to climb up in a letter from her friend Eme. On her journey,she is quickly joined by Mette, who is younger than her, and Sol. who is older.
At the start, they get along well and are excited to learn more about the Tower as they climb up together as a group. A while into their journey,they run into a farming couple, Arlo and Beka, who are obviously struggling thanks to the lack of water.
This is also where youfirst hear about the ballasts, and how a lot of people believe that they are a myth, but the further up the Tower you get, the more people believe in them.
There is alsoa rumour that the ballasts are responsible for stealing the water.
It is not explicitly stated that Arlo and Beka join Bianca’s group, but you soon learn that they did. Not long after,Bianca finally reunites with Eme, the friend who first convinced her to travel up.
After the happy reunion, Eme introduces Bianca tothe legend of the Piper, a figure who was thought to play music and bring the rain, but you also hear that maybe the Piper is just playing to celebrate the rain.
This intrigues Bianca, who is the most interested in learning about the potential relationship between the ballasts and the Piper.
It is again uncertain if Eme joins Bianca and the others on their journey, but not long after,Bianca reports that she is anxious after realizing that the others in her group intend to hunt the ballastsinstead of just study them like she intends to.
She notes that.whenever they discuss the ballasts, the others are sharpening harpoons and carrying nets.
It is not long after this that Bianca shareshow lacking in energy Mette has been as they progressedon their climb, and you later learn that Mette left the group soon after. Just as the group, especially Bianca, are wondering if they should head back down too,they encounter a storm, likely in the area you play through in Chapter 5 with its strong winds.
You learn thatBeka fell off the mountain at some point and the group are mourning her.As the group gets higher, they learn about how harsh life is the higher you go, with the people who living there being abandoned by those lower due to the unsafe winds. However,the tone changes once the group finally see a ballastand become hopeful.
The giant creature impresses them all, butBianca is the only one that doesn’t want to hunt them, with the rest thinking they are essentially giant water tanks, and they need to kill them to survive.
Much to her dismay, after she attempts to stop them,the group leave to hunt the ballast, but never return.Bianca lives the rest of her life reflecting near the top of the Towernear the end location of Chapter 5.
She describes thatshe saw many ballasts, and they were never aggressiveand just seemed curious of her. Her last message claims thatshe has no regrets, but that she knows things on the Tower need to change.
The Piper And The Baby Ballast
Once you understand Bianca’s story,contextualizing the events you play throughthen makes a lot more sense.
While it is never explicitly stated,the character you play as is the Piper from the legend Eme told Bianca, and you need to find the lighthouses around the Tower, and play your shell there toreactivate the Tower and work with the native Ballasts.
The Piper is traveling with a baby ballast, andit needs to echo while you are playing the horn to properly activate the different points in the Tower.
There are five of these outposts you find as you adventure throughout the Tower, and by the fourth one,you awaken a fully grown ballastthat you can ride to the very top of the Tower.
Once at the top of the Tower, you find a pillar which points directly at agiant sphere of waterthat was hidden from ground by the clouds.
With the help of your almost frozen baby ballast, you are able toawaken the last lighthouse, which leads to it finally raining. This then awakens the other ballasts that had been hiding at the top of the Tower, andyour baby ballast flies off to join them, as your adventure together has come to an end.
This final part of the Tower being activated can be assumed tohave started the world’s rotation again, andthe ballasts will be able to help spread water around like they used to.
What We Still Don’t Know
Even after playing through Jusant, reading every letter, examining each piece of ancient artwork, and finding all of Bianca’s logs,there are still some gaps in Jusant’s story.
However, this is likely intentional, with the developers not wanting every detail of their games' world to be explicitly explained, and leave the minutia up to interpretation.
For example, it’s still unclear why the ballasts went into hiding, or why the Jusant happened,but it can be assumed that maybe it had something to do with hunting. There are plenty of other gaps like this, but through examination of Jusant’s world, the answers can be assumed.
Next:Games To Play If You Like Jusant
