Lurker > andylt

WarThaNemesis2 posted...

Metroid could be a launch title for Switch 2, but it won't be the launch title. That'll be one of Mario/Zelda, and of course Mario Kart.

Has Mario Kart ever been a launch title?

SHINE_GET_64 posted...

Metroid Prime 4 incoming

no

Many of those lines are perfectly fine. I'm beginning to wonder if this is all rather exaggerated and it's just a regular bad movie.

-
Luke

OK I've thought about it, and I think the main reason I'm not feeling this twist so much is that it by design distances you from the characters in this world. There's no emotional connection there because this isn't a twist for the characters (not nearly to the same magnitude), the game-y aspect to it is all there is. In the past this series has tried to weave both gameplay and story together for its major reveals, but here that doesn't really happen. It's a big reveal of course, but what does it actually mean for the story or the characters? I've had the wool pulled over my eyes successfully the whole game, but how does this reveal impact anything going forward? Delta is the villain, but how does him having been there from the start alter anything? What can even happen now, he villain monologues and we stop him? Or he's secretly doing things for The Greater Good (no I do not buy that ridiculous '6 billion murders to stop a terrorist' as a greater good, and if that was the goal then he'd instigate the pandemic with the deadly virus he apparently has just lying around, there'd be no need to go through any of this). I guess I'll find out!

Bitto posted...

2) The status screen tracks Q's status, not Sean. This is most clear in the Diana/Sigma ending where Q is alive (exactly when the children are birthed) but Sean is dead.

Ha, I'd noticed Q being listed as alive when he should be dead, but after Sean's reveal I assumed it was due to his robot body not being technically killed by knife/gun wounds, and that he only died if the execution trigger was pulled.

Bitto posted...

4) Similarly to how Nonary game suggests 9 participants, this is the Decision game. Deci also means "ten." There's also the X-passes, with X being 10.

So is Sean an official member of Team Q or not? He has no X-passes, and his portrait isn't listed, but he does have a bracelet and gets moved around with the rest of them.

I finish the other standoff ending and complete the force quit boxes. How did Carlos know the Latin password? Even with the shifting, he wasn't there when Zero said it, it was the other two. Anyway after sitting around for an hour he assaults Akane, I assume to bait Junpei into beating him half-dead so he can shift but come on there must be a better way to accomplish that >_> He then takes the two behind the bar, probably to reveal some secrets away from Zero's eye (how do we know there's not a security camera back there?).

Team Q open up the computer, and we have to take Sean's head off again despite already needing those numbers to unlock the code to open the computer we just opened. OK! Sean explains how he can jump too by being a quantum computer, and that maybe we're all quantum computers. It's really weird watching this scene knowing Q is sat just off camera at any given time. Do the others never even glance at him? They never include him in the gang when they're talking to each other? I know he's supposed to be blind and deaf but at least acknowledge his existence in the room!

Each team has a scene open up, I think all I have left now is the endgame. If the past two games have taught me anything, it's that I'm in for a wild ride right up to the finish line!

Hm, some of the hints are neat, and I did note some of the inconsistencies earlier but thought it was merely pointing to Q (by which I mean Sean) as Zero. Maybe the oddly done reveal is unfairly influencing me but I still have questions. Why does Eric, the most paranoid man in the world, not ever accuse 'Q' of murder or deception? They knew this guy for five days, then the world was turned upside down and he didn't think maybe he was lying about the blind/deaf aspect? I guess there's a reason they kept the more perceptive cast members out of Team Q, but still, Eric's waving his gun at everybody except this one guy. And in the standoff, would he not kill the defenceless old man so he and Mira can get to safety? It would seem in character for Eric, imo.

Also, the teams are named after their leader, right? So when we're making decisions in Team Q, are we playing as Q or as 'Sean'? Sometimes it has to be Sean, but I'd have thought the execution at least should be decided by the leader.

And I thought The Character Formerly Known As Q had no memory at all, but I guess he knew the name Sean and told the other two offscreen? I was under the impression the name Sean was entirely unknown until Zero brought it up in that one ending.

The character portraits in the library- is the one for Sean actually for Q?

I dunno, I like aspects of this, but I need to be convinced some more. It's reminding me a bit of Sigma's age reveal in VLR, in that it relies on the game withholding a huge amount of information from the player and selectively framing things purely to make the twist land even if it doesn't fit with the characters ingame.

Also sidenote but when Mira killed Junpei did she rip his heart out? I didn't think she did but it would be weird for her not to.

OK I'm gonna skim through the rest to get to the big deal- Carlos goads Eric to shoot him, and we have a bunch of shifting timelines. Zero mentions being dead in a timeline where Team Q was executed, so I wonder again if he is Q. Junpei and Akane get in the transporters, and Carlos ices Seanclone into the machine. I wonder why he doesn't shift into another timeline where the teleporter is active, but I guess he does that later on. Also J&A should still be inside the teleporter pods so I guess that's more alternate timeline deaths to add to the pile.

Zero explains himself sorta to Junpei and Akane in another timeline. He is Brother, the leader of Free the Soul, and pretty clearly Delta. He shifted to 1904 as a baby. He wants to kill 6 billion people to get one super terrorist dead, so they can't kill the other 2 billion. It's all very silly. There's an anagram and Akane can't spell the word Delta, and it takes the two ages to realise Q is still alive in this timeline. Also Akane's parents died because of the snail story, because... idk, I guess that's why Zero brought her here?

Carlos heroically arrives in his firefighter getup, and then Akane and Junpei are mad at him because this is the doomed timeline. Akane then decides the only possible course of action here is to go through the VLR gameplan, and sorry for rushing through this but honestly I don't buy these actions from the characters, the writers clearly had an endpoint here and shoved the characters there by any means necessary. Just shift to another history like you always do!

Right, now to the real what-the-fuckery. Team Q has another scene available, and Eric still has his gun. We open Q's helmet, and then have to type in Zero's identity. I type in Delta, because of course that's who he is, and... Q points directly at the camera. Eric calls Q Sean, and a random fucking old guy in a wheelchair was sat in the camera's viewpoint and nobody is surprised by his presence and he confirms he is actually Delta and Zero. What????????? Some more revelations hit, I guess this guy was there the whole time and he's the Q from Team Q? We get the code for the supercomputer and Delta can forcibly manipulate people's movements (alienhand!). He calls Diana mom and I laugh as the game fades to black.

Ok... what? Really, what? Was I not supposed to get Zero's identity at this point? Or is this how this reveal is supposed to go? If so it's done so bizarrely, I feel like I missed a scene somewhere else, but I don't see where I could. I assume this tracks with the past, but watching all the characters talk like this old guy has always been there (and Eric suddenly referring to Sean by name) made me feel insane. I need to stop and think about this.

Uhhhhhh wondering if I did something in the wrong order here, because what the hell

I liked Vamp, but didn't see the point of continuing after 'beating' the main game or whatever.

I adored all 3 Spyros as a kid, no idea how well they hold up. Great music at the very least!

I look forward to playing Tears and seeing how long it takes me to figure out if the writer is responsible for C team or Q team.

The only thing I know about this series is the kickass theme song (which they've remixed obviously), and that video that's a montage of Jean fainting and Scott shouting her name.

Interesting. I did not know that, thanks. Was this the case for the other games, too? I know they were more interconnected but did writers get assigned certain characters etc, I've heard of that happening before.

And do you know the other two writers of this game and what else they've done?

up!

Every time you insisted on calling her Madame Web it made me chuckle. What a silly name.

Carlos jumps to the timeline where he killed Akane, and writes a note for Q-team. I wonder why he saw their past earlier? Q team receives the message, and sees a locked yellow door like the one in the locker room, only with no place to input a code. We do see 'twins birthday' written on the bottom... one of Phi's X-passes was 'twin'! But I don't know her birthday. Mira was also awake when she was strangled to death, and has blood and skin of the killer on her nails. No DNA testing room?

The next open path takes us back to stranded Diana and Sigma, and this... is an extraordinary sequence. I really like it right from the start, there's a different vibe here from the rest of the game (and trilogy, really). Instead of running around at breakneck pace amid constant threats of death, with the game ended everything grinds to a halt. For better and worse. Some of the conversations between the pair here feel much more real, for want of a better word, than the usual character interactions we get. Whether it's Diana talking about enjoying the peace and tranquility of an enclosed bunker, Sigma talking about Diana's abusive ex-husband, or drunken Diana calling Sigma a coward, the slaps, these scenes are terrific. The pair eventually drop all their barriers and find comfort in each others' arms. I really like Sigma's speech before they embrace.

They have sex, and of course Diana gets pregnant. Diana gives birth to twins, and OK it's easy to see how this gets sci-fied up again but watching Di and Sig duplicate their babies to a better world, knowing that the children they have right now and they themselves will starve to death imminently... it's a lot to take. This must be particularly heavy for Sigma, having been down this road with Diana before. It'll be interesting to watch past scenes knowing Sigma's already been in a long term relationship with her in his past.

But yeah, an A+ ending. D+Siggy are the best couple, if Luna couldn't be in this game they at least did right by her memory. (This also shows up how childish Akane+Junpei are as a romantic pair lol)

I wonder how Phi will react upon learning that her name and brooch are in some sort of a predestination paradox. She'll probably love it. And then there's Delta, who jumps right up to #1 candidate for Zero, unless Delta's somehow one of the other characters... nah I don't think any of the 9 could fit.

But we aren't done there. In another timeline, inputting the twins' birth date at the locker room door is a success (that goes unquestioned by both Diana and Sig), and we have a fairly morbid reunion between the whole gang. Did Q not meet the others in the very opening of the game? They act like none of them have met him, I'll have to rewatch the start. Diana and Sigma face their own dead bodies as well as Phi's, Junpei's, and Akane's, and Zero plays a clip to frame Carlos as the killer of everyone.

In comes a confrontation with Eric's shotgun, and I am confused- Eric didn't shoot the lock of D-room's lounge, how did Carlos get to D area from C, etc, but all is soon illuminated. This scene starts with an interrogation, but halfway through Diana becomes a genius. She explains, to the gang's and my incredible shock, that there was only ever one 'ward' the whole time! We've all been in the same area, sharing the same lounge, and the times on our watches are lies. This explains why we've never had a scene between 13:30 and 18:00, or 19:30 and 00:00 because the other teams were awake while we slept! Ah!! I love this twist, I'm a bit annoyed at myself for not thinking of it but it's terrific. And as the cherry on top, the flowchart has now automatically shifted to show the linear times.

I do wonder why the walls of the lounge shifted between teams, and why the times were lies. Zero must have planned for the three teams to meet up at some point, or there'd be no need to differentiate the lounge layout other than tricking the player.

After this route closes for now, I input the brooch and blue bird and get a heartwarming family reunion without words. I can't think of a better way to end the day. Wow, these were all really fun sequences! I know people tend to be down on this game but I love pretty much everything that I saw tonight. A big day for Diana! Her and Sigma are hands down the MVPs of this game so far. I can't wait to see what happens next!

Aaaah these twists!!

ZeroSignal posted...

At the expense of beating the REAL GOTY, RE2

Looking at the bracket, AI beat 3 games in overtime too lol, so RE2 or Baba or Yooka-Laylee (or Ring Fit) could've made that final instead! 2019 has so many good games tbf.

MZero posted...

AI: The Somnium Files (I don't even know what this is)

Sci-Fi VN by the Zero Escape folks. I liked it! Surprised it made it to the final, though.

-
Godot

OK but after 500 false dice rolls I would feel nothing but annoyance at Uchikoshi in particular.

Is Uchikoshi the real Zero?

Lmao that sounds about right. But surely in that case they'd let you roll the dice six times or only need two to match up or something, 1/216 would be miserable odds even if you got lucky! I'm imagining people speedrunning this hypothetical game now.

Does this mean no more Naughty Dog remasters in the next 12 months? Are they sure???

Yes LS, join the Game Pass Crew

When going for the wrong ending in Monty Hall I had to redo as sticking was the right answer lol.

Seems like most of the chance games are accurate then. That's pretty cool, but does make the dice roll stand out.

I'm almost impressed at how Rotten Tomatoes has managed to put together a collection of positive quotes to make this look less derided:
https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/madame-web-first-reviews/

Winners I haven't played:
Super Mario RPG
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Persona 4
Super Smash Bros for Wii U
Rocket League
Dark Souls III
Disco Elysium
Hades
Elden Ring
Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Disco and Hades are on my backlog so I'll play them this year. I'm interested in DS3, Elden Ring, maybe the Marios sometime, not so much the rest. Rocket League winning '15 is still shocking to me! I played Smash 3DS but I didn't own a Wii U *shrug*

Runners up:
Kingdom Hearts
Devil May Cry 3
Kingdom Hearts II
Uncharted 3
Borderlands 2
South Park: Stick of Truth
Bloodborne
God of War
Final Fantasy 7 Remake
Resident Evil Village
Baldur's Gate 3

In my defence, most of these are PS exclusive.

ZeroSignal posted...

While true, I basically grouped them together because of region and gameplay. Yellow is pretty much Red/Blue with Pikachu. Otherwise we'd have probably had four straight years of Pokemon winning (maybe not 2001)

Fair, I didn't think of that. I suppose Spyro 2 is lucky Yellow wasn't eligible

LiquidOshawott posted...

off the top of my head Hades/Elden Ring/Outer Wilds/Obra Dinn/Death Stranding/Alan Wake 2/Divinity OS 1+2/3 Houses/Hollow Knight/Bug Fables/Cyberpunk/Post 6 RE/Yakuza 4 onwards all come to mind, maybe others when I think of them. Rebirth also comes out later this month and I have it preordered

I can relate to this, there are Too Many Video Games. I propose a year without new releases so we can all catch up.

I have played next to nothing from 2023 so cannot judge. Surprised Hi-Fi did as well as it did, though!

I have played 18 of the 28 winning games, that's better than I expected! (and two more are on my backlog) Also I know this is very nitpicky but Pokemon Yellow and Crystal didn't come out the same year as RB/GS right?

LiquidOshawott posted...

Maybe I will buy Baldurs Gate 3 but uh, the other games on my backlog are pretty embarassing

What other games :O

I'm always down for a pokemon contest.

Oh duh, I had just been told about Crash Keys again too.

I finish off all the alternative dead end routes I had left, including voting the wrong teams in the decision game. I like how incredibly unfazed Phi is in the execution chamber lol.

A new fragment opened up somewhere along the way without me noticing, and it's a big one! Q wakes up postgame and gets a long chat with Zero, where we learn Q is actually a quantum computer that is newly 'born' into the world in a body based off of a dead child named Sean. There's also a bunch of other Sean clones who do Zero's busywork in the game. I can't say I feel bad about not figuring that one out! Sean appears to be the child who died when the surgeon couldn't get to work to operate on him in the snail story.

The computer apparently contains all of the infinite realities within space, so I guess there's a chance this whole game is set in a virtual reality. Q is given two choices- die, or be split into a virtual happy ever after and remaining in the current world. Poor Q. To top it all off, in one ending Q removes his helmet (6140-4091 to remind me later), and we see he has no head at all. Well... jeez. That's rough, and a great body horror moment. I like these reveals for the time being, they add intrigue and fit in with some of the discrepancies noticed so far. My guess is that Zero is the senior citizen who befriended Sean, and this is somehow their way of making Sean's dream a reality, but I don't know how everyone else (except Mira I guess) fits in with that.

Q's helmet code is not the code needed for the force quit box, oh dear, so it's time to go a-searching again. Out of desperation I eventually reach the dice roll scene again, and it works this time! I assume I didn't get incredibly lucky and it's scripted to work like this, but I am nearly as pleased as Junpei at this result. Akane is a party pooper and wonders if this is the history that God abandoned (good line), and before long we're in a new puzzle room (yay!), with a nuclear reactor.

After the puzzle I get the achievement for beating all quests, so I guess this was the last puzzle room :( But it's time for an AB game! Yay! Very convenient how Akane knocked herself out right at the perfect moment, I wonder how Zero managed to pull that off.

Junpei is so obviously going to betray us for Akane, but Carlos is an honourable man, and I've never picked Betray first time around and I'm not about to start here. He of course does betray us, and I'm honestly pretty pissed off at how casually he reacts to the triple-murder result. Akane would never forgive you for that! Heading back and swapping our choice, we get a quick rehash of that defining VLR moment where Alice's vote changes with the timeline and Sigma acknowledges it. It doesn't land as hard here of course, especially as Akane doesn't get injected with the kill drug immediately and comes in to massacre Carlos. Well, I suppose that's true to VLR too, when Sigma would always be punished for betraying his way to 9 points but nobody else ever faced consequences for doing the same!

Carlos shifts to another timeline and we all sit down and have a long chat about A Sci Fi Movie Legally Distinct From Back to the Future. I like Akane here, she loves talking about this stuff but there's still hints of her cutthroat side. Man, imagine how long a convo between young Akane and Phi would be. What nonsense theories would they arrive at? Anyway, Akane goes out of her way to mention how she believes shifting timelines involves swapping places with the person in the other timeline, and how it's kind of like killing the other person. And then we proceed to do exactly that, like, 3 times in a 10 minute time span.

Did the shifts always work like this? I don't remember them being so... simple, but here everyone is zipping around wherever they like and jumping together like it's a little game. It's fun, but definitely lowers the stakes going forward. We zap to the failed dice timeline, Junpei plans a traumatic horrible scheme to get some X-passes, then we jump again to the successful one. Akane is mad at Jumpy for being reckless and putting her through that, and I kind of get her point but also she did something not too dissimilar by turning the nuclear reactor into a bomb and forcing us all to shift. Why did she insist we start shifting in the first place, there was no urgency to do so at that moment. Also I'm not sure how Akane shifted from the failed dice timeline, she wasn't in any danger at that point.

Regardless, Junpei and Akane have a nice reunion and I'm becoming more convinced these two are a toxic couple who should probably stay away from each other for their own sakes and for everyone else's safety. I have mixed feelings about Junpei's characterisation in this game, I like him being a jaded former hero in theory but I don't like how cruel he can be, and the J/A relationship isn't particularly landing for me.

Zero spoils the fun and a Seanclone comes to exterminate us. Carlos has a strange flash of info about Q team, then jumps himself away to some other timeline. From the map, it's not the timeline where we saw him come in to save the other two earlier, but that's for next time.

Tidus
-

True, but that only makes this game's Zero seem even weaker! Or maybe not, depending on who/what it winds up being.

The three new paths all involve the Force Quit boxes from ages ago. Each team's box is in a different predicament but all paths require some kind of password to go forward. To my shame, I cannot think of any answer here beyond Phi's brooch for one of Team D's key items. Not sure if I have to rewatch some scenes or go through some alternate paths I've missed, so I try the latter.

Most of the scenes I hadn't done are indeed empty game overs, I also try the dice roll again and fail again. I'm starting to worry that I may have to do that one the hard way >_> But for now, we have the 'kill everyone' choices in the Decontamination rooms. These are not remotely pleasant to do, especially how we have to watch the showers turn on and hear everyone's screams three separate times, but I see no other route ahead. Rating how bad I feel after making the characters push the button: Diana > Carlos > Q

Everybody is appropriately horrified for a few minutes, but before you know it we're back at it with the lengthy discussions of pseudoscience and paradoxes. Ah, it's been a while! This is just like being in 999 again, only instead of the inappropriateness of chatting casually while on a death countdown, there's the new inappropriateness of chatting casually right after murdering six people. OK, to be fair, Akane's discussion of parasitic snails and the like is clearly to try and help Carlos cope, but Phi's alien hand left brain/right brain mumbo jumbo is obviously doing nothing to help Diana's mental state and she just likes talking about this shit.

Q team discuss the Sleeping Beauty paradox and memetpsychosis while trying to free Gab. This is the only route where he's locked up, and I feel a bit bad for thinking this but why did nobody suggest breaking his leg or cutting it off or something instead of abandoning him, surely there was something in one of the rooms! All three routes end in the same broad strokes- the viewpoint character staying behind while their companions escape- but I like that each of them has a different reason.

For Q, well, he doesn't really know his reason. He's still very much a question mark, and the more the game holds off on revealing things with him the more sure I get that he is gonna be the key character in the plot. The X-passes we get for Q here are Age and Self, which are both drawing up blanks for me (other notable X-passes: Junpei has Quark, so Zero must be aware of the future timeline, and Phi has Twin. Akane has Key, but when doesn't she have something up her sleeve!).

For Diana it's presumably guilt, though for a second I think we're in for a massive twist when Zero applauds her acting. But no, they're simply taunting her, and I have to admit Zero is pretty neat in this scene. Good job! Diana herself displays her weird shifty jumpy memory again in this sequence, and it seems like her 'powers' work a bit differently to the other characters'. Hm.

Carlos, on the other hand, receives some kind of blue message from above (A shift? jump?), and heroically declares he's going to rescue the others before running straight at a brick wall while the game fades to black. Lol.

As I go to quit the game I notice the very first scene is glowing blue on the flowchart, so that's where I'll go next time. If that doesn't work... well, let's hope it doesn't take me more than 216 tries on the dice roll.

I realise in the next room that we've not had any scene take place between 13:30 and 18:00. Either we really were asleep for those 4.5 hours, or there's gonna be more earlier fragments that open up later on.

Team D are in the Healing Room, which is really cool looking. One of the best puzzle rooms so far, for sure. Once we're done, there's a fun decision on whether to press a button that says 'do not press this button'. Diana doesn't press it, of course, and we get some more bonding between Diana and Sigma. Sigma explains the plot of VLR again ("I'll sum it up in one sentence: I dunno"), and we get a second mention of Diana not remembering who she voted for in the opening. Very interesting, Q and Carlos haven't had moments like this.

Things take a left turn as a shadowy figure approaches, and what follows is maybe my fav sequence in the game so far. Sigma enters hero mode, and then has an excellent death scene with Lun- Dian- Luna. Luna mention aw yeah! Kyle mention!! That music box theme again!!! There's a great speech from Siggy, all the best character moments seem to happen when they're dying. Phi has a decent death shortly afterwards too, and I think my theory that Diana and Sigma are Phi's parents is holding a fair amount of water. I expect a tragic end where Diana is the sole survivor, but the game switches on me once more and she gets knifed. We are unfortunately forced to watch her die on the floor. Poor Diana :(

I see why everyone loves D team so much, go VLR crew! I head back and push the button, and that is hands down the funniest game over sequence yet. A really strong start to today! Also, this bothered me so I went back to check, and this timeline is the one where Mira stabbed Eric and Q... but Q's name isn't read out on the death list! A major detail. ...But his name has been mentioned before as a casualty, so it's not like he's immune. No idea how this implicates the killer, but it's surely very important.

I strangely get the achievement for all quest files here, when there's still so much of the game left. I guess we don't get hints anymore?

...Or maybe we're low on puzzles. Our next fragment has Q team sat in the decontamination room chatting away, and we don't get a puzzle. Zero comes in with some new ultimatum, we obviously don't press the button, and off to bed we go. I then realise that the other two scenes I have left are the exact same thing with the other teams. Did these open up without me realising or did I somehow manage to leave all three of these til last by coincidence? Again, I swear I've not looked anything up >_>

C team's scene is all about Junpei's changes over this past year, and his hostility towards Akane and the world. I absolutely buy his jaded behaviour given the trauma he experienced a year ago, but I don't know if we needed him to be a super detective on top of that to make him so uncaring towards all humanity. Maybe. We get shout-outs for some of the 999 crew, which is nice.

I figure I might as well finish off the set, though D team doesn't offer anything particularly enlightening. Diana's confused memory over the vote is brought up properly this time, and Sigma and Phi go over some of the VLR plot again. OK this stuff must be very relevant to the overall story of this game with how often we're getting the history/future explained, I'm pleased about that. Amusingly Diana says 'we've gotta trust the other teams!!' and then we have a chance to immediately push the button anyway.

I have to say Zero comes across as pretty pathetic and desperate with their attempts to get us all to kill each other here. Not a very intimidating figure, this go-around.

We've now gone through all the fragments and one more has opened up for each team! Woo we must be getting to the real stuff soon.

None of these characters have been in SMFFFC so they can't be that good.

Sidenote who the heck is Chadley

Zigzagoon posted...

Stamp

Not a character

After that Mira scene, I go back through a few other alternate paths I hadn't bothered with. First we let Phi burn in the incinerator, which is a surprisingly touching scene. Though maybe my emotions are being manipulated by Luna's music box theme playing in the background (!). It's a great sequence for Phi, and the flashback between her and Diana has me guessing that she is Sigma and Diana's daughter. Is that possible? I don't remember how much of her backstory we learned in VLR.

Q declines to inject Rad-6 in another path, and teaches the gang about the virus. Mira stashes a vial for herself, and Eric attempts to speak to Gab.

Lastly, Diana declines to transport with Sigma. I assumed she'd sit back while he gets into the machine alone, but no, she manages to explode everything again. Lol at this running gag, do not let Diana take things into her own hands.

Back to the new fragments, Team C is absent Junpei in the pantry. I like the one on one scenes in this game. This puzzle is horrifying only because there's pieces of Junpei scattered around and the other two don't even consider that it might be a real body. Carlos and Akane freak out, obviously, and after sitting for a while Akane decides Carlos must be the killer and goes full chainsaw mode. We get some more of Carlos' backstory, and he really does seem to be every bit the clean cut hero he first appears. His internal monologue does nothing to dispel that notion, so I've no idea how he connects to everything else here. The only answers the game seems to accept for Junpei's murderer are Akane and Carlos, both of which lead to downer scenes as you'd imagine. Why is everyone in this game so quick to jump to murder!

A scan of the flowchart shows an untapped '!' after Sigma goes to detonate the bomb, which I assumed I'd somehow missed. But as things go on it becomes clear the scene must've unlocked after I saw Mira stash the Rad-6. This ultimately leads to the VLR timeline, the final trigger being Diana's kindness to her friends. A nice touch, but I thought the point of this whole game would be to undo that pandemic! It appears to be reduced to a single possible timeline instead. Weird, but there are two more ? scenes taking place after this ending so there's surely more to come.

NFUN posted...

dude snom gets ice scales and can use eviolite. that's 90 special defense. literally unkillable

Abilities and Held Items aren't a thing in Let's Go

I am concerned that there will be more what the fuck Mira moments on this level

I was considering another option for gen 8 (Yamper, Applin), but who could resist a game with a massive Snom on the cover?

Before we get to that, today's first route is with D team. Phi is stuck in the incinerator, somehow. This is a particularly easy room but I like the idea of splitting the team in two for the puzzles. At the end of the puzzle, Zero recites their favourite tale of the dead woman and the snail, and helpfully points out that 6 total people were killed (the same that we need to be killed in this game! That had passed me by). Or 6 billion, whatever. Diana has to decide whether to shoot Sigma or not, and Sigma spends an awfully long time explaining the very simple odds to say we should shoot him. I do, and he dies, and Diana is so horrified she commits suicide to be with him. Oof! Poor Diana.

I notice on the flowchart it specifies this end as Shot: Live, so instead of not shooting I go back and do it again... and what do you know, it's a blank! (Please don't tell me this means I have to do that 99.5% probability one hundreds of times >_>) Then we suddenly all collapse with that poison, until Gab comes to the rescue (walking as slowly as possible, I might add) with the antidote from earlier. Phi takes this opportunity to be an absolute idiot, saying we maybe shouldn't take the meds in case it's a trap. Sigma eventually points out that uh we're dying anyway Phi why the fuck would we not take this. I know she doesn't trust people but this was a very silly sequence for Phi, come on now.

We take the antidote, live, and Phi reveals her hair is naturally red. In most other games this would be a light piece of fluff but in this one I assume this will be crucially important later on.

That ends this route, and team Q's next destination is... Zero's office? That Eric stumbled across? I'd be suspicious of him but I don't think he has the capability to lie. Cool place! Q's memory is briefly triggered by the innocuous question 'do you like to read', I'm noting this for later. It certainly seems like he does! I like the weird faces on the wall from the status screen, this is the first time we see Q's and I enjoy the comments. Also probably relevant that since team C is linked to guns and we've had the gatling guns in the rec room, team Q should look out for arrows and D for acid.

After the puzzle, we are in a standoff. I choose to kill nobody of course, and Eric responds by shooting an unarmed child at point blank range with the heavily powered grenade launcher that we just used 5 minutes ago. Eric, man, you've got to stop killing Q if you want me to like you. It's your biggest flaw. Eric and Mira survive unscathed and walk to their freedom, until Mira gets frustrated and kills him. Honestly, not even upset.

I try a few other names in the kill screen- interestingly trying Q prompts the game to tell me to type Q's real name, so there's a bookmark for a later time. Typing 'myself' results in a message that I can't commit suicide, though, so I dunno what that's about. I decide to type Eric, assuming it's a quick game over, but this somehow leads to a full ending. Maybe I should go back and fill in the blanks of other fragments that I assumed were empty game overs!

Mira reveals her psychotic backstory. She has never known emotions, and after taking her mother's words too literally, she decided to start stealing hearts to understand emotion and experience joy. Mira is the serial killer we heard about previously, and she's been with Eric as she's convinced there's gonna be something special about his heart. OK, her design works better when she's a soulless murderer covered in blood. I wonder if she killed Eric in that other ending because he revealed the truth about his smiles, and she had nothing left to learn about him. I find it sweet that his final words were to forgive her, almost makes me want to forgive Eric for the repeatedly-murdering-a-child thing.

We get another X-pass from Eric (poor), and Carlos (fight) though we don't get one for Q in either of the other endings where he dies (I try killing Mira after this but Eric dies again). Mira and Q live happily ever after, or something like that.

I, uh, am surprised by this. We've had reasons to think there's something off with Mira, to put it mildly, but I didn't think the game would reveal something this big this early. If Zero is so obsessed with that woman's death, surely Mira is the one they'd be trying to hurt? (I'm assuming the first woman she killed is the woman from the snail story) But of course, she's incapable of being hurt emotionally, so what is all this for? The story of the deaths is likely just a metaphor then, not a driving motive.

The truth is invisible, indeed.

what the fuck mira

The partner pokes can't evolve in these games! (which is why I found Eevee to be a baffling choice in the first place given that evolution is its whole thing)

MrSmartGuy posted...

Another thing that works for that prompt is to simply let the timer run out. It leads to the same cutscene because "you didn't know" what to type.

That is neat, I like that.

I powered through some more after the last update, I was in the mood tonight and had the time!

With Team Q we get our first but surely not last Radical-6 mention of the game! Also another virus with a 100% mortality rate. Zero sure likes telling stories about the heart ripper killer or whatever their name was from 17 years ago, and some woman who died. After the puzzle we have to choose whether to inject ourselves with Rad-6 or not. It's a neat choice, I decide to go for it and to my surprise Q's reasoning is the same as my own, way to go game.

This appears to be the correct choice, and leads to another story about Eric's sad childhood and why he smiles all the time. If he wasn't prone to murdering children I might really like him! It's a great bonding scene between the trio... that takes a sudden turn when Mira starts laughing at Eric's painful reveal. And then she says something about not guessing the right way to react. And then she kills Eric and Q with a scalpel, and starts laughing some more. I, uh... what? Huh?? Suicidal tendencies are a symptom of Rad-6, could the combined Rad-6 + FBR have created a murderous impulse instead? Or does Mira have some deeper issues going on? Why she suddenly decides to murder her boyfriend, I haven't a clue. I certainly didn't see that coming.

Team C then spends time in the rec room. Carlos tells a snippet of his backstory, urging Junpei to speak his mind while they're still alive as Jumpy stares at a ring (hm). I spend too long in this room because it takes me forever to notice the cigarettes on the bar. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise though, as upon victory we are rewarded by being gunned down. OK!

You know, I would almost respect this game if the goal here is to roll these dice hundreds of times until the odds go our way. Almost. I don't think they're quite that sadistic though, so I'll leave this be until we have more info or our super psychic timeline powers trigger or something.

I briefly pop back on the game after reading MSG's post to try some answers for Mira's killer. I was thinking what else I could type- someone else, a stranger, nobody, the strangler, anyone, but the idea I landed on is to type 'I dont know'. And sure enough, it works! Even without an apostrophe on the keyboard! Thank you for the hint :) Q starts bawling and that is enough to break Eric's rage and calm him down. We then get another story from him, recounting his and Mira's relationship. She reminds him of his mother (hmmmmm), and oddly enough he doesn't mention any sudden murderous tendencies of hers. The route locks off for no good reason, and that's that for tonight!

FWIW I'm playing with Japanese audio so there is a lot of reading for me still lol. The EU 3DS release of VLR didn't support English audio so I decided to stay consistent.

MrSmartGuy posted...

This "decision" is kinda weird, because it certainly makes you feel like you need to actually know the answer to this before you get it right, but you don't, and a ton of people get stuck here. You can totally answer that from the very beginning.
Continuation of previous section, but includes a hint:
Just put yourself in Q's shoes and do or say what you think he might actually do or say.

Gotcha, I'll accuse Gab :)

Next up, Team D (sans Phi) head to a cool looking transporter room. The mechanics of the dimension-traveling here remind me a lot of another sci fi game. As it happens, this fragment comes directly after the one I last played on the flowchart, what are the chances! I promise I didn't look that up.

I work out the puzzle mathematically and later realise you can tell some of the numbered cards by the lines/dots on the pictures oops. Afterwards, Sigma pushes a random button (lol) which sends us to a different timeline, and we wind up in a locker room. I like the banter between Sigma and Diana, the callbacks to his cat talk, him wearing a bucket on his head, the two of them repeatedly walking into the enclosed shower room, Diana thinking her singing triggered the music box, this is a fun room! We come to a locked door that requires an 8-digit password I doubt I have yet, and so ends this little journey.

We then have to head to the other Sigma and Diana who were left behind, Sigma seems a bit confused but he at least has a grasp on the basics of the duplication=/=teleportation idea. Nothing we can do here, so over to team Q.

We're a duo again as Eric and Q are in a pod room. The puzzles here are basic but I enjoy spinning the room around, and the two guys have a nice convo where Q explains how this world and these people are all he knows and Eric settles down a little for the first time. It's a sweet scene, though it doesn't last long. After the puzzle is done, we find Mira's body (I still cannot take her character design seriously), and Eric freaks out over a childhood incident where I surmise his dad killed his brother Chris and forced Eric to shove his body into a lake. That's pretty messed up, and so is witnessing Junpei's disembodied head and then watching Carlos brutally murdering Akane (?!), but I don't think it justifies Eric pointing a shotgun at a child and murdering him. So much for the bonding!

I try a couple of different names to keep Q alive- Zero and Eric don't work, and a couple of others provide a unique response but it doesn't look like I can keep this fragment going for the time being.

Checking in with Team C, it... turns out we're poisoned. OK! Junpei cannot even begin to give a fuck about Zero's stories, and I like this turn for him. He teases coming here to do something, I wonder what. We pick the right antidote, though Akane does most of the work for us, and have a good old talk about morphogenetic fields. Everybody's favourite topic, right, Junpei?

After another dead end, it's back to Team D. Phi is with us this time, in this game's version of Gaulem Bay. The rooms here are vaguely reminiscent of the previous games but I don't see why they're all put together like this, what could the purpose be... Seeing robots triggers Sigma, and I wonder if he's remembering Luna. After fending off a very annoying meme robot named Betty, Sigma and Diana have a nice chat and we get some more of his backstory. He does mention Luna, yay! And a woman named D, who I don't think we knew about from VLR.

I wonder if Diana is (or will become) the 'D' that Luna is eventually based on. They have similar mannerisms and voice (as best I can remember), and the appearance is passable with this new artstyle. It would explain why these two get along so well. Or maybe Diana is the next robot that comes after ABC. On second thought, it's probably best I don't start randomly accusing everyone of being a robot again >_> Either way, I'm happy Luna hasn't been forgotten.

We have some silly bomb shenanigans and I wonder why everybody believes Zero about Team Q's location, given the very strong incentive for Zero to stop the bomb going off here. Though I'm sure it's all a part of the plan, there wouldn't be a bomb around if setting it off wasn't within the parameters of the game. I go both routes here, Sigma turns on his Hero Mode in one path and the other has Diana stun both her teammates and then fail miserably, lol.

And just in case they're relevant, here's the X-passes we've been given in the diff routes so far:
June, Jump, Virgin, Blue, Red, Milk
Eye, Kill, Fool
Fire, Crash, Five

I'm enjoying myself well enough so far, though it's a little hard to get invested when we have to switch routes so frequently.

Let's Go Plusle and Minun
Let's Go Buizel and Riolu
Let's Go Litleo and Skiddo
Let's Go Rockruff and Mimikyu
Let's Go Wooloo and Snom

That is a pretty random selection of pokemon. Barbaracle? Whismur???

Glad to see some fans of the game, hopefully I'll be one of them!

foolm0r0n posted...

Tag and also have you played Ever17?

I have not! The only Uchikoshi games I've played are 999, VLR, and the first Somnium Files.

Attorney at

I did not know that about Cinccino, how odd. And I thought the Zoroark failed mascot thing would make this more likely, not less!