Norco and the Weight of Living in an Oil Town
A few years ago I played the dialogue focused, point and click game Norco by Louisiana game studio Geography of Robots. Norco is essentially a book disguised as a video game. In it, you explore the town of Norco in a dystopian near-future as you unravel the mystery around the death of the main character’s mother, as well as the disappearance of her brother.
Norco is dense, speaking to subjects of family, religious zealotry, person hood, and anxieties felt by the working class. In the years since I first played Norco I’ve found that it has stayed with me in a way that it is rare for games to do. Broadly speaking, stories shape us as people, influencing our worldviews and allowing us to evolve and change as we grow with the world around us (one could say we carry their weight). Norco specifically resonates with me for one major reason: Norco is an oil town.
The first screen of the game shows the oil refinery that sits beside Norco. A sprawling mass that swallows the landscape around it. Industrial processes burn and churn, creating a haze that settles over the small town. Much of the narrative focuses on this refinery and the impact it has had on the people of the town and environment. If you live in Norco, you cannot escape the refinery. The refinery is everything. Frankly, the refinery is the only reason for the existence of the town. All of the capital flows into and out of the beast. You either get comfortable with that and work for the oil company, or you leave. The narrative is focused around a character who tried to leave it all behind, but ended up getting sucked back in after the death of her mother. This is a familiar experience to anyone who grew up in a small town that was based around one industry (maybe not the specifics but the general pull of the small town you grew up in never really fades away). No matter where you go, you carry a piece of the town with you, it sticks to you, like the pollution from the refinery sticks to the inside of your lungs. It leaves you with a choice: reject all you have ever known, or end up being pulled back.
All of these elements, the cyberpunk dystopia, the religious imagery, the depiction of a town in delicate balance, paint a compelling picture. But to me, what is most compelling about all of it is that Norco is a real place.
I live in the Canadian province of Alberta.
My provincial government has made it clear time and time again that our mandate, that our responsibility, is oil. We dig up the sludge and we sell it. The byproduct of this is greenhouse gasses and vast pools of ichor for wildlife to wander into. It’s not all major ecological nightmares, though. We also have smaller scale issues like leaving derelict oil pumps scattered around our province then harping on about how we need to maintain the natural beauty of our landscape.
If oil isn't your cup of tea, though, don’t worry! We’re also pretty big fans of selling our mountains to coal miners from Australia. We’re willing to sell anything for the right price.
And like, that’s how it is. My life, my being, the very infrastructure of the place in which I live is all a consequence of the oil.
But it’s killing the planet. 
How do you reconcile with that? With a culture that is built entirely upon resource extraction? My parents live next to a fucking refinery. My friend lives in a beautiful part of our city, close to nature and with a view of our serene river valley, and of the fucking refinery. How do you contend with the sprawling mass that consumes everything around it? It takes and takes, and gives just enough back to make those it takes from happy for the privilege.
On a personal level I try to distance myself politically and professionally from it all, but I cannot negate the fact that this is my home. I carry this place with me, I carry the pollution in my lungs.
In Alberta, Like in Norco, we are beholden to the private interests of resource extractors. And any damage they do is just the cost of doing business.
In 2024’s Threshold by Julien Eveillé, you take the role of a worker atop a mountain. The specifics aren’t important but you make sure the train runs at the correct speed to deliver something* across the border. Threshold is another narratively dense game brimming with metaphor and symbolism, but what I want to hone in on is the choice the game gives you when you launch a new save: what country you are in.
The choice makes no material difference. The only things that change are what flag the player sees around the game’s worksite and what the name of the mountain you are on is. The location isn't really the point, but it makes you choose anyway. It could be anywhere. This work will happen and continue happening. It doesn’t matter where you live, you are in some way connected.
I’ve spent a fair bit of time and quite a few worlds being… despondent here. It’s easy in these difficult times to be pessimistic. Things are rough right now and are not looking to get any easier. So why write this? Because Norco has stayed with me. Not just because of the setting, but because when it makes its way to the end, it gives you the choice to say no. To cast off the guilt of the past and to choose to break away from the structures that would do harm. Yes, it’s more complicated than that. It’s not a happy ending, really. Life isn’t that simple. But the important thing is that you get to choose
I’ve tried to replay Norco, but I find it too heavy. Threshold, likewise, is an emotionally taxing experience. Both beg for a narrative deep dive but that’s not really what I’m here for. Elements like the influence of religion on blue collar populations and the way extremist groups use economic uncertainty to take advantage of people warrant a great exploration that I am capable of giving. These themes, these realities, can be seen in the fictional universe of Norco and in the analogue example of Alberta. The similarities go deep and you could write a dissertation on the cultural ramifications of industry and how that is explored in fiction.
Reaching out into the void is tiring and difficult, lord knows I am not a poster™ or even overly vocal in general. As the world burns around us it can be difficult to figure out what we can do to fix it. And like, I don’t have the answer to that. I’m not going to say “do this and we can fix our shit”. But it’s important to at least feel like it’s possible. Focus on the small things around us. On our communities, and the needs of the people in those communities. By carrying that weight.
By rejecting the ennui we can do better. By choosing to say no to the cynicism and the power structures which make us feel trapped and helpless we become empowered in a small way. By rejecting the poison of the system around us we can do better. We can clear our lungs.