Board 8 > Umineko Playthrough Topic Final Part

(+) Yeah! (+)

I lied last time when I said it would "presumably" be the final topic. (Quite fitting for this game though, if you think about it...)

Reports say we have about 3 hours left before reaching the conclusion of episode 8.

Parts 1 to 8 are archived here, roughly one topic per episode:
http://zyxyzarchive.x10host.com/index_delsumi.html

Thank you Zyxyz!

Once I complete the game later today, the floodgates will open and full game spoilers (and opinions) will finally be completely allowed. We're nearly there.

Spectation topic here: (All spoilers allowed)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/77401344

If you haven't played the game, back out now.

Please, allow me to tag.
---

lambda and bern fight with giant candy orbs as goat pirate ships descend upon the golden land

i'm basically just clicking ahead without really reading anything at this point

lambda admits she's being "lying" to bern about her power level all along. bern says she knew. they seem angry at each other. they angrily say they will love each other to death.

it's, uh

something

insert commentary here

i think the point ultimately is that these two are witches - they live on a different plane of existence and they have an entirely different set of morals and life views that we, as humans, can never comprehend. so it's not possible to make sense of how they feel about each other, truly. it's not love and it's not hate - it's some mix of them that exists only on a 4d plane that we can't see.

when i play this umineko fighting game i am maining erika with dat scythe

Erika's pirate hat special is <good> too.
---

Sceptilesolar posted...

Erika's pirate hat special is <good> too.

hontou ni?!

and so lambda pretends to be a candy, bern eats her, and the candy expands into a sugary universe in her stomach and bursts

someone remind me why i'm still playing this game...

i mean, this is the risk you run into when you create a game that has a hidden genre

i signed up for this game expecting a murder mystery

and half the game is magical fantasy witch battles

i'm really... not into that.

https://snag.gy/HzhmpU.jpg

ya go my krauss-chan

for a second i honestly thought the game was going to address the logic of how kanon exists

with a goat saying kanon is an illusion created by jessica

but then jessica just says "but i brought him to school and people saw him!" and kicks the goats to death

https://snag.gy/q0PsLu.jpg

wahahahahaha

all of the goats gonna raise 5 spots in the rankings just for saying this <3

fuck george

https://snag.gy/5ws6ie.jpg

oh come on goat-kun, she was fucking rich. you were doing so well.

man, they are bringing out so much awesome new artwork for this final battle

like, it really can't be overstated how good the ps3 art is. damn.

like, wow:

https://snag.gy/YIAgrB.jpg

i'd make this my desktop wallpaper except that i'm not having fucking maria and rosa as my wallpaper

i'm sure there must be a website that shows all the artwork from all 3 versions? i'd love to browse through it afterwards and compare (and just remember all the amazing ps3 art)

see, when a fight sequence like this one actually has the characters confronting each other about things from their character arcs (i.e. the way erika is fighting each person one on one by reminding them of all their flaws, and the character then retorts) it's 100% cool, I'm super down for it because it's combining character development with action (admittedly in a forced way, but whatever, i like cheesy shit), so this action sequence is A+ for me. it's when there's just fighting with absolutely no character stuff that i check out. i only play games or watch things for the character development. (or, in this case, also for the mysteries and twists) action is meaningless to me unless it incorporates character.

the thing that's sort of interesting is

this chapter in particular is framing the game as if the whole thing was about ange's journey of acknowledging the past in order to move forward with her life

i.e. a correct interpretation of the game could be "all of this imaginary stuff is just a metaphor for the vast battle going on in ange's mind as she tried to process what happened and how to handle it"

and that'd totally line up -

except for the fact that a large focus of the game is the relationship between battler and beatrice. battler being the main character can be justified by saying that he is ange's brother, so of course she's focus her internal conflict (which the game is a fantastical illustration of) through his PoV. but the fact that so much of the game is about battler being in love with beatrice and stuff, doesn't quite line up, because i doubt ange's mind would spend so much time churning around the details of battler and shannon's love affair, and ange wouldn't decide that the real reason for all the deaths was because of that... right?

eh. it still mostly works.

there's also the fact, of course, that ange only enters the game at the very end of episode 3. personally, i don't really have a problem with that - i like stories that do narratively interesting things like have the main character only actually show up halfway through. but i don't know if you can justify saying ange is the "main character", even with that? but i do think you can argue (since the game gives no clear answer) that she is the one who comes up with the entire meta storyline, or at least, that the meta storyline is a metaphor for her thoughts.

but calling her the main character would be weakened not only by the fact she only shows up at the end of episode 3, but that she misses episode 5, plays a very passive role in 6, and is only in the tea party of 7.

though of course, you could argue that if the meta world is all representative of her inner struggle, then she was technically "in" every chapter, because it's all depictions of the way her mind is trying to work through things.

interesting stuff and i'll be curious to read the many essays i'm sure exist about it.

https://snag.gy/ksoRgW.jpg

so, what, a "piece" is not actually a technical term with an objective definition, it's just a word witches use to feel superior to humans?

oho

i actually thought this wasn't going to happen since it hadn't yet -

but lambda is going to strike at featherine's memory device and try to get her personality and appearance to change

could there be a twist after all?!

could featherine's current memories be fake, and she is actually ________?!?!?!

who will she transform into if the memory device gets attacked?!

don't let me down, umineko.

well, still, after featherine being built up earlier as "the cruelest withc of all time" (or w/e bern called her), it is only fair to have her involved in one action sequence. i'll allow it.

lol, that's actually a pretty clever "fight" scene. aurora just freezes time, writes that lambdadelta dies, and so, she's dead. killed by "something"

god, it'd be the ultimate fucking twist if you just said "when featherine's memory headband gets bugged, she appears as someone else and has wrong memories/personality. we've assumed that this is her original form, and that if the headband gets attacked, she'll change. but... what if the headband is bugged right now... and this isn't her real form?!"

then you fix the headband and have featherine reveal that her true form all along was _________

get it together ryuukishi, that's how you write a twist!

you could build it up so well too

you'd have a character use an attack against featherine that is guaranteed to make her headband bug out

the attack would work succesfully

and the characters would say "i don't get it! we used the attack on her headband that should cause it to be bugged! why is nothing changing?!"

"it can't be bugged.... because it already is bugged!"

dramatic scary music plays

"t-then... that could only mean..."

etc

tfw when you realize all the times i speculateda bout what the meta world was and what "piece" meant and etc, and people posted to give ideas and i was like "GUYS DON'T TALK ABOUT THINGS THE GAME HASN'T TOLD ME YET" not realizing the game was never going to explain it and your guess is as good as mine LOL

Erika reports that the Golden Land has been destroyed.

This is a "blow" to Ange because her goal was to leave before knowing if it was destroyed or not, so she could always believe it continues to exist.

But wasn't the real message of this episode that any truth can exist anyway? That even if this Golden Land is destroyed, it was just one gameboard, one fragment, and others exist? The memories it represented still exist?

Or that you could "deny" Erika's statement that it was destroyed. That's Erika's truth, but it doesn't have to be yours

etc

So this shouldn't really matter, y'know?

but that's just me trying to make sense of something that is deliberately written to not make sense, so don't worry about it

Beato, as a golden apple, gets sliced in half, and dies. For real. Totally. For realz. Definitely dead. Won't be appearing again for the next 2 hours I have left. Gone. For sure.

To further the "interpretation" I mentioned earlier

It is said that when a human is about to die, their whole life flashes before their eyes

You could suggest, perhaps, that the entirety of Umineko, and it's entire meta world... is what flashes through Ange's mind in the time between when she jumps off the roof, and when she lands on the ground

In that flash, she has to decide if she wants to live... or not. If she wants to die, her body will acknowledge it and drop limply to her death. If she decides (as the coin is in the air) that she actually wants to live after all, she will survive.

Maybe.

maybe Featherine's true form is Ange, and that segment of Hachijo Ikuka/Hachijo Tohya really was meaningful, because they are the same person, and Ange is the one who writes all the fragments and stories as her own way of keeping her family alive...

so the message of umineko is... that even if literally the entire world believes one thing, and there's overwhelming evidence of it, you can still choose to hold on to your own belief, and its okay?!

umineko - official game of the anti-vaxxers

gasp! beatrice is back!

but she died!

https://snag.gy/Flt0Hh.jpg

13 minutes, for those counting

that's how long you're gone when you die for all of eternity in umineko

hell, i'm pretty sure when lambda died for all of eternity earlier she was gone for less than 10 minutes. less than 5 even

and when ange finally died earlier, she literally was in the very next scene!

where tf does the term "Endless Nine" even come from

did you just put together a cool poetic adjective with a random noun and think that means you can use it as a term??????

so, gold truth = a truth that someone believes above all else

essentially?

maybe?

the thing is, there have been only two uses of gold truth in the game unless i'm forgetting one

in episode 6, yes, it was "You created candy out of a cup. It was a splendid bit of magic." which is definitely someone stating a truth they "believe" (even though its, y'know, not true)

but when battler used in episode 5, didn't he just use it to say, like, "Kinzo is dead"?????? kind of different then...

I do expect to see one final gold truth here, at least before the episode ends

something like Ange using the gold to say "My family is alive and will never die" or w/e

handsomeboy2012 posted...

15. Bernkatsel
Its nice to have a witch thats not evil or screwing people over.... nevermind. I had an inkling shes just like the others which is not what I want to see.

hahaha... have fun, pal.

https://snag.gy/y25kx8.jpg

i am not at all surprised that this is the final puzzle.

very fitting. great choice.

(spoilers for all videogames) and much better than sudoku =P

Hm. I wonder if this leads to two different endings?

But, for now, I will choose...

Magic.

I think I said way back during episode 3 that it'd be very fitting if the game, which was all about denying magic, ultimately ended with the viewer wanting Battler to accept magic

Then episode 3... did that, but it was all a lie, but it wasn't? And then episodes 4, 5, and 6 basically retreaded all the same themes episode 3 had, but ultimately, we still get here in the end.

That's not a bad thing, of course - the conclusion of a story should be foreshadowed and should make sense based on everything that led to it. And this story was always about Battler actually coming to accept magic.

the dialogue after making the choice being so vague and open-ended implies there is no difference based on which I chose. but that's fine - it's not about that.

And so, against all odds, the two people who stay behing to close the door are... Battler and Eva.

I told you Eva was the author's favourite =P Look at how huge a role she got compared to the other parents!

Truly, though, Eva represents the importance of this fairy tale world with its golden truth...

In the real world, Eva is a cruel horribly woman who abuses her adopted daughter and dies bitter and alone

But if you just choose to believe... you can choose to believe that she regrets it - that she loved Ange - that she only acted that way because she was hurt - that she was innocent all along.

Not that Eva's a saint - far from it, lol. But it's up to each of us to decide exactly where she falls on the scale.

Hacihjo (Ryuukishi, basically...) announces to the crowd that she's actually not going to reveal the truth at all.

The crowd (Umineko fans) are angry

lol

I can only imagine how pissed off some people must've been at this =P

The narration explains that people considered Hachijo's whole thing to be a scam (aka people will call Umineko a scam now) but that because of how lame it was, it'll all least make people not want to show interest in it anymore (aka fans who will stop caring about the game)

but of course, the narration says, the cat box is now eternal and Rokkenjima will never find peace

(until the manga reveals everything, apparently)

Dels posted...

Hm. I wonder if this leads to two different endings?

But, for now, I will choose...

Magic.

Interesting!
---