I found it kind of unbelievable that "20% of players" finished Farewell. On Steam at least, only 37.5% beat the base game, 30% collect the first Crystal Heart, and 8.4% beat Farewell. I'm assuming that 8.4% makes 20% of those who own the Celeste DLC.

Even 8.4% seems bizarrely high. For those who don't know, it's very very hard to do. The game builds very difficult levels out of separate "screens", which are small and ruthless platforming challenges. The mercy is in that dying in a screen brings you back to the start of the screen.

Just starting Farewell requires collecting crystal hearts from the hard-mode "B-side" levels, the easiest of which are harder than the hardest levels from the base game. And collecting the crystal hearts means beating an extra hard, optional side-screen in the already very difficult B-sides.

The mercy is made crueler in that the B-sides are composed of very long and unforgiving, Kaizo-inspired screens. Here is the B-side of Chapter 7. Spoilers.

I'm a dedicated Gamer Who Is Good At Games, and Celeste is my type of thing, but the final levels became physically taxing to the point I had to stop playing because of how much pain my hands were in. I never beat Farewell.

Farwell is DLC for the most Fucked Up Sickos of the world, dedicated masters of the craft of sitting on ones ass for MANY hours to play a Video Jame. It introduces many new mechanics requiring pixel-perfect execution a screen later.

But in seriousness, this quote from the article stuck out:

“During Celeste’s development, I did not know that Madeline or myself were trans. During the Farewell DLC’s development, I began to form a hunch. Post-development, I now know that we both are.”

It's hard to explain, but this always made a lot of sense. This clicks, but I wouldn't have been able to explain why. The design of the levels and the challenges of the platforming are meant to be symbolic of Madeline's personal journey. Designing the hard levels just right must necessarily mean reflecting what Celeste is going through.

Farewell isn't just a bunch of very hard screens, it starts a new narrative, past the conclusion of the prior, with having Madeline handle newfound grief.

When the pride flags showed up in the letsplay I saw of Farewell, I chalked that up to "Cool, pride! Madeline sure isn't trans-coded but I appreciate it." Then the dev came out as trans and said Madeline is trans and that was great. I went back and completed it with assist mode. :)

So, I really like this writeup. It helps dig into the why the "pre-egg-crack Celeste dev realized she was trans when making Farewell" clicked so well.

Back to the difficulty rants: It turns out my assessment of Farewell was completely wrong. The hardcore Celesters out there think it's easy. There are C sides? D sides? E sides, F sides? Z sides? My idea of "pixel perfect" is a joke to Celeste fans? This is the Z-side?

Anyways, Celeste is a good game and this is a really good writeup.

If you haven't played Celeste, it's still very good.

If the difficult of Celeste turns you off, you should know it has a fantastic accessibility mode called "Assist mode". It's what allowed me to enjoy Farewell. The only change it makes is adding a small icon

If you have played Celeste but the difficulty turned you off, you should know it has a great Assist mode (accessibility mode), and they've added some options since launch. I beat finally Farewell with Infinite Stamina and Dash Assist enabled (which freezes the game while you hold the dash button).

Assist Mode doesn't penalize you in any way, and you can unlock all the achievements in it. The only difference is that it adds a small stamp to your save file.

... Which probably explains why 8.4% of players beat Farewell! I'm one of them! :D