Es

Es
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## Whisper bubble

 — Es in "Self-Discovery Begins" dialogue

**Es** is a young lady who appears in *Alter Ego*. Her role is to guide the player, commonly referred to by her as the 'wanderer', through self-discovery, whilst learning about herself in the process.

## Appearance

Es‘s appearance is that of a young woman with long dark hair, braided and swept to her left. She wears elaborate and Victorian-era-style formal European attire, along with a pair of white gloves. Her height and weight are unknown.

## Personality

For most of the story, she seems calm and collected, even though she expresses her distaste for Ego Rex and will occasionally dwell on her destructive impulses. She is extremely lonely, something made clear within the ID and Alter Ego routes. She struggles with conformity and her own desires, and it is easy for her to begin to reject the world or for her to reject herself, each leading to the ID and Superego routes, respectively.

## Story

Within the ID route, Es begins to go mentally insane, as her destructive impulses consume her and she begins to believe that the world around her and the characters within it (the player and Ego Rex) are nothing more than dreams and figments of her imagination, outright calling the player a delusion once she is at the end of the ID route.

Within the Superego (SE) route, she begins to see herself as evil and unclean and ends up disappearing as a result of her desire to stop existing as she succumbs to Ego Rex's wishes.

Within the Alter Ego (AE) route, she admits to having dreams about the other two routes and is deeply afflicted as to what they mean. She compares her life to the picture books that are read during some of the personality tests. By the end, she accepts herself and tries to find a way where she can be herself as well as accept the world she is living in.

## Relationships

* **The Player:** To the player, Es acts like a guide, helping them understand themselves through personality tests until the third act. Es questions themselves and their relationship to the player throughout the first two acts, however, will still conduct personality tests with the player.
	+ Within the ID route, she begins to see the player as a delusion or a dream, and refers to them as her hope. When its time to reset the route, Es will call the player a delusion, beg them not to leave, and will tell them to repeat their mistakes once more.
	+ Within the Super-Ego Route, she begins to see herself as unclean and evil and will talk to the player about this. By the end, she sees herself as the villain of the player's story and disappears, begging them to help her.
	+ Within the Alter Ego route, the player helps her see that she does not have to reject the world or herself and she continues her road of self-discovery with the player.
	+ In Alter Ego Extra Content, she appears to have feelings for the player, admitting that she loves the player.

* **Ego Rex:** Es has a deep-seethed hatred for Ego Rex as they constantly berate her for her impulses. They constantly tell Es to conform, which often annoys her more, as well as calling her a mistake and a failure. In the ID route, Es desires to kill Ego Rex for the conformist behavior they try to force upon her. Within the Super Ego route, Es talks about having dreams about Ego Rex, and begging them for forgiveness.
	+ Despite Ego Rex's mutual disdain for Es, they seem to approve of and accept the Alter Ego ending, warning the player that by restarting the route, the player will rob Es of her happy ending. It is unknown if Ego Rex continues to interact with Es upon achieving that ending.

## Trivia

* In the game's prototype, Es would apparently give you the option to gamble EGO to unlock the personality assessments if the player didn't want to wait.
* Es likely represents the id in Freudian Psychology. The id is an interesting aspect of the human psychic apparatus, that which contains the human‘s innate desires, needs, and impulses. She is shown to act according to Sigmund Freud’s Pleasure Principle, which is what an id operates under. In fact, the German word for the id is “Es”.
* According to Wikipedia: Freud borrowed the term “das Es” from Georg Groddeck, a German physician to whose unconventional ideas Freud was much attracted (Groddeck’s translators render the term in English also as “the It”).
* Friedrich Nietzsche, who is thought to have influenced Freud also often used the German pronoun das Es. Freud’s English translator indeed used the Latin word ‘id’.

## External Links

Images of ALTER EGO's Earliest Stages in Development