Board 8 > AI: The Somnium Files - A KCF Playthrough Topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

To my knowledge, it has been two years since my previous playthrough topic (Zero Time Dilemma), so maybe it is fitting I return with this game. I know very little about AI: TSF other than it being a bizarre crime/mystery game whose game director is the same person behind the Zero Escape series. I purposely chose to go in virtually blind, so hopefully that is the way to go.
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I've always been fond of carnival music, but this carnival has seen better days. Oh, a dead body further puts a damper on things. Was her eyeball torn out? Yuck! For her sake, I hope it was postmortem.I saw the two with the umbrellas standing a short distance away from the body, but I guess they weren't the culprits (OR ARE THEY!?) and are law enforcement. Leave it to Japan to have women's uniforms/clothing choices be totally inappropriate for the situation. At least I don't think that wearing such a short dress with a bright red jacket is standard murder scene attire, regardless of her rank. Boss, as she is being called, states this might be a copycat killing.

The victim is one Nadami Shoko, or is it Shoko Nadami? I don't know if the translation kept it in the original last name/first name order or converted it to the opposite. I will probably call her Shoko for now. Anyway, she died from blood loss from abdominal wounds. ToD is estimated to be around 5 PM.

This, uh, cyclops bear just appeared. Aiba's the name. The spinal cord is a little creepy. There's also this cringey fanboyish, but at least I was able to derive some humor out of him by repeatedly asking for his name. I doubt he is still a fan of me. I don't know if it was intentional or not to keep referring to him as inspector despite knowing his name is Kagami. Seeing as his face was obscured, he will either not appear again after leaving the scene, or his face will become super important later.
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Tag!

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Her given name is Shoko and her family name is Nadami. IIRC there is some inconsistency at times regarding going given name first or family name first but if they put the family name first there will be a comma before the given name. So the text likely said "Nadami, Shoko".
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Did they lift sound effects straight from the Zero Escape series? The attempt of opening the column where some living being is in sounded exactly like the failed attempts of opening one of the metal doors in 999. It's not a complaint though, I loved that sounded effect. It was just an observation. The person inside the column (I have never heard of anyone call the middle portion of carousel a column, but I am also not sure I have ever heard anyone call it anything), was apparently a girl named Mizuki. She's holding the presumable murder weapon (what is with ice picks being a common murder weapon. Do most households have one? I honestly don't know anybody with one in their house). Seeing her hair color as being blue in the hospital, I am confused why they would obscure that back at the crime scene. They didn't obscure any other coloring as far as I'm aware.

What the fuck is this shit!? Is this girl in some bizarre whatever outfit this is trying to dance or something? This is the "alter ego" of that gelatinous cyclops bear. Ha, calling her a fluorescent shrimp is actually a dead-on insult. Good thinking!

Another sound effect that was seemingly lifted from a Zero Escape game. The sound effect that the mental locks made reminded me of the sound in VLR when the voting results were about to be shown.

Ooh, this movement control is nice. I mean it isn't anything special relative to video games, but I like being able to control something. This also reminds me that it is nice that...checks sources...Uchikoshi was given an animation budget because not only does character movement look smooth, but the often trippy visual effects can be mesmerizing.
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Well, I know this is Date's dream world, or something along those lines, but I feel like this couch skeleton isn't there just to be a weird set decoration. There was later on another couch a woman who briefly appeared.

Why did Date seemed surprised that there are flowers with a woman's name? Man, if Iris sets him off, wait until he reads a flower encyclopedia.

The skeleton came back, and this time, or maybe it always did, with a bloody left eye socket. I'm sensing a connection between that and Shoko's death and/or Date's unknown incident where he lost his left eye. I'm having fun with Aiba fucking around with objects, but I hope my dumb curiosity didn't mess things up by having her hit the skeleton because I hadn't messed with the wine and maybe another object.

Another person briefly appeared. It was a man this time, but Date referred to him as an old man. Is he like 14 or something because unless he views every adult as an old man, I don't know how you could call him that solely based on the back of his head.

Aiba is delivering lines like, and I am paraphrasing here, "ventilating some crooks with this hot magnum." She is too precious, and I want her in every scene. In what may be my biggest regret all game, I chose to simply use the gun as a key for the door. I can't imagine asking Aiba to shoot the door not being hilarious.

On the other side of the door was the girl on the couch earlier now dead on the floor, and the "old man" who appears to be in his 30s.
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Boss is wild. It does not appear that she was joking that Mario the police mannequin is her childhood friend. A flag girl for RC auto racing, wishing to marry an entire boyband, and saying a rug that Google currency conversion states cost the department $92 million means she might give Aiba a run for her money.

Oh fucking fantastic, another protagonist with a memory problem. I wonder if there is a worse narrative crutch out there than that. Oh, and he doesn't own a cellphone either. How swell. Well this keeps getting stranger. Apparently, Mizuki has been living with Date for some time, and they make it sound as if Mizuki is the Shoko's daughter.

I was kind of hoping that continuing to press Boss about "the case" from six years ago would actually result in a sexual harassment claim, and that I would receive a bad end, if this game even has those. The bad endings have been host to many of my favorite moments in the Zero Escape games!

They said that the original phone call to the police to alert them of the body was made by a payphone. That gets me to wondering two things. One is what year this takes place. The second is the state of payphones in Japan (I don't know if they explicitly stated this game took place in the real world and in Japan, but I am assuming so until notified otherwise).
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I decided to check out the various files in the menu. They actually have one for Dork, and they used the term loser to define it lol. My main reason for looking was actually for the characters. Date is apparently my age, so I am so confused about him calling someone seemingly around his age an old man. Does this memory condition make him believe he is a child again? This Mizuki girl he is looking after raises some real red flags here.

She loves emotionally attacking the very man standing between her and a series of foster homes and...metal pipes? What the fuck is up with her parents, prior to, you know, her mother's murder? Her parents divorced years ago, and she ended up living with Mizuki illegally. Do they just like love her just enough to not want to see her in foster homes but not enough to want to take care of and raise her in any way, shape, or form?

Overall, I am liking how this seems to be an overall older cast. It's refreshing to see this out of a Japanese game.

I don't know who this Pewter guy is, but he dresses like he's a villain in something. I hope it's that and not he's super into cosplay or something dumb like that.

I quit just before heading out to meet this Ota person who made the call to whatever the Japanese emergency number is, but WTF at this 12-year-old looking boy claiming to be 24.
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You can replay segments if you miss a dialogue choice you wanted to check out

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tag

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LordoftheMorons posted...

You can replay segments if you miss a dialogue choice you wanted to check out

Not sure how that works for investigating items as I know certain items get referenced a lot if you checked them previously. The high stool, plant, and lucky cat statue do it off the top of my head.

fun game. I was gonna do a playthrough topic a month or two ago, but I suck at writing my thoughts down

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Tag

This is a good game!
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At this diner, the proprietor's scarf is covering the decisive letters on her shirt, but I believe it says "Hipster," which is bad enough on its own, but looks worse when it is a middle-aged person wearing it. She also needs some work on her marketing skills as nobody wants to try a dish containing something called Mayum's Black Sauce.

When Pewter programmed Aiba, did he just pick random objects and words that she would have knowledge of? It's kind of a weird choice for something so sophisticated to think a chair is a jellyfish.

When they had me use x-ray vision on the contents of the package, I was expecting the worst (not cut-up bodyparts but something extremely pervy), so I was pleasantly surprised.

lol Mayumi jokes about needing the calendar to know what day of the week it is, but the it is the wrong month and year. Come to think of it, I am starting to suspect something is very off about her. Given her husband's face is obscured in the family photo, the anachronistic objects in the restaurant, and through speaking with Mayumi, I think that the husband has left the family long ago, whether through death or abandonment.

Does Date drive a Dodge Challenger? I was getting Driver: San Francisco vibes seeing it zoom by. This would be a game that would borrow its Shift ability.
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So what, this "24" year old guy just sits in this empty lobby all day looking up nerd shit on the internet since he allegedly is no longer in school? I hardly know the person, but I don't think I will ever accept the game saying he is 24 assuming they don't retract that claim on their own.

There's this promotional video playing in the lobby, and Date says that it doesn't contain anything dirty as this company isn't like that. From what I saw, which included the swimsuit model from the VLR poster, it seemed like they were unapologetically going for titillating material there. I'm going to chalk this up to being a Japanese standard thing. Immediately after, I check out their magazine rack and one is something along the lines of How to Take A Girl Home in Two Minutes. Still think that Date?

I fucking hate Ota. He is insufferable and actually creates phantom drama on Twitter (sorry, To->Twitter) to make him look impressive to girl he is obsessed with. Barf! He's even a giant wussbag that ran away when he saw Shoko's corpse (let's ignore that I almost certainly wouldn't handle it well if I saw a human corpse at night set up like that)! I can't believe that they teased me with the options of punching and kicking him only to be "stopped" by Aiba.

Back to important stuff, Shoko was killed before Mizuki got there, as expected.

I don't know if this was a joke or not, but Aiba mentioned something about Date's dosage. Given we know nothing about his medical condition, I don't know what to think about that line.
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tag
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Ah, so the other character illustrated in color on the box art is A-Set. That must mean she's super important. She and Ota played a game called shadows. I have no idea what transpired, but I hate Ota more, and it gave A-Set a poor early impression.

I am getting more confused about this Mizuki/Date living arrangement. Date doesn't really talk to Mizuki, so who is even the main parental figure in that girl's life then?

Jeez, A-Set towers over Ota. I'm 5'6", and I feel like I would tower over him too! A-Set had a nutty plan to force Date to take her to a crime scene. Is Boss the most sane woman in this game? It's probably Shoko, but she's dead soooo...

A-Set described what an idol, or at least the kind that she is (I know nothing about idols except they sing), does, and they are basically catered to the exact kind of people that Ota is.

Well A-Set claiming to be a clairvoyant came out of left field. She immediately took it back claiming to be a joke, but I have played some of this director's former games. I will not be fooled! Thank god she told me her real name, Iris. I didn't want to call her A-Set all game. Hmm, maybe this is related to why Date responded the way that he did when told the flower in his dream world was an iris.
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Welcome to Japanese Culture 202, enjoy your stay.

KCF0107 posted...

She and Ota played a game called shadows. I have no idea what transpired, but I hate Ota more, and it gave A-Set a poor early impression.

this was exactly my reaction
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While I don't think recalling memories, at least not in my experience, are normally predated by a loss of color in your vision and hearing, it appears that Date may have known Iris in his past. Given the file says he is 30 and Iris is 18, something doesn't line up as she looked 6-9 in that segment, and those weren't the hands of an 18-21-year-old man. Well Aiba shortly after says that Aiba might not be the age she is listed as, so that makes me feel better...maybe? It sure as hell doesn't clarify anything!

No Iris, I was not looking at the pole and thinking about asking you to pole dance. Everyone is insane! I was feeling a slow connection to Date in this crazy world, but then he demonstrates he is just like everyone else with his irrational hatred of benches and desire to burn them.

Hmm, I think Date and this serial killer incident was six years ago, so the chemical accident in this K-something district from eight years ago probably is unrelated. Probably.

Iris is a fan of Egyptian culture/deities. It is the second time Wadjet was brought up, so I'm guessing that this is the source of Wadjet Eye Games' logo. I learned something!

They didn't complete this thought, but I am assuming that the lack of blood on the carousel horse that Shoko was tied too meant she was killed elsewhere. Given she was under a decent part of the carousel's roof while it was raining hard, that checks out.

Dropping Iris off at her house, a woman appeared from somewhere inside the house, and I am pretty sure that she's the one who ended up dead on a floor in the dream world. I don't have a good look from where I am at, but I think it is the same room too.
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I have been slow to get things going in this game, but I think I am getting close to when things start to open up and branch out. I could still be playing what others would consider to be the intro. My file says that I have roughly 2:30 of game time, but I know some of that has been spent pausing and writing thoughts down. I also know that from the time I went into Boss' office earlier and the time I left spanned 40 minutes. I pretty much clicked everything. I did the same inside the diner, but sadly I also got stuck in the diner. I didn't see the knife for the longest time, even after Date made a reference to her knife several times.
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The localization in the game is generally pretty good, but there are some parts, usually the optional investigation stuff where the jokes just don't land. Lots of Japanese puns that are hard to translate.

And of course all the themes of "AI", "ai" and "eye" that's maybe a little more obvious in Japanese. Ay ay ay

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Investigate the shoebox if you haven't already.

Tag so I don't actually have to play this

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Who gets off from smelling shoes? Date man, you are slipping. I thought we could have a connection in this crazy world! Near the shoe rack is this mysterious pink and white object that I also found in a nearby bookcase. I'm not sure if that is an Easter egg reference to something else or of actual importance to this game. Shortly after, I scouted out the sound system, and Date I think was referring to the male genetelia? I don't know, it was super fucking weird because who the hell looks at a sound system and thinks that. It became uncomfortably gross once he begged an 18-year-old to say I like them big or whatever. I hope this is by far Date's worst moment.

Continuing to Ignore the hosts to scour the room some more, the kitchen is home to probably my favorite moment of the game thus far. It was a long joke, but Aiba's animals in the refrigerator had an amazing payoff. The last thing I looked at was this cushion. Somehow this random thing is the one object that sticks out to Date from his dream when I don't remember it at all.

Talking to Iris and her mom, Hitomi, didn't reveal much. I guess the interesting thing is that the father isn't in the picture as Hitomi seemingly went through the pregnancy alone. My original guess that the man from the dream being the husband/father will remain on hold for now.

Back in the Challenger, I hope there are more moments like this (I spy game) when Aiba is outside of Date so he can have conversations with himself in self-mocking tones.
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I think I am at the point to where I should probably just stop trying to understand the family dynamic of Mizuki/Shoko/Renju and the setup involving Date and accept everything is arbitrarily dumb and complicated because Renju has always been the legal guardian since the divorce.

So now I know where part of the title comes from. Somnium is Latin for dream. I probably should have guessed that from insomnia.

Finally, we doing the first psync! Oh shit, we have six real-time minutes. My lack of history in anime, RPGs, and just Japanese media in genre is starting to show as I have no idea what they were referencing when Aiba entered like some "naked cybernetic futuristic assassin."

Uh, I thought we had already established that Shoko was not killed at the park, so I don't know why Aiba/Date are saying otherwise.

We are stepping things up a notch from the tutorial with three mental locks this time. I need to take care of the lightning, birdcage encasing the carousel, and reach Mizuki if I am analyzing the situation correctly. Let's get to work!
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KCF0107 posted...

"naked cybernetic futuristic assassin."

Terminator?

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Awesome, we begin with carousel horses writhing in pain from being skewered.

I know this is the first psync and everything, but I have little idea what I am doing, so it feels great that my first action of pulling out the ice pick has the lightning redirected and thus unlocking a mental lock. Since that unearthed the control room, I figured that was as good of a place as any to go to next. Inside were two birdcages. The one on the left had a torn up photo of a younger Mizuki. The other had a bunch of balloons. I had no idea which one to pick, but my gut told me the balloons, and I had Aiba lift it up. I had her blow up the deflated balloon on the ground, and that apparently took care of the second mental lock. I'm going to pat myself on the back for these extremely lucky hunches!

The third one was when I ran into a bit of a wall. I had plenty of time, so I was willing to take chances on actions, and I wasted a lot of time. With the floating panda head, I had Aiba wear it, then slap it before making the correct decision to kick it. At first, I thought that I failed as kicking it launched the carousel with Mizuki in it to god knows where, so I assumed Mizuki was one with the clouds now.

Where the carousel once was is Iris laying in the middle of what turned out to be ice (I originally wrote it down as mysterious light-colored goop) with a ton of stab wounds to her back. I honestly would not have guessed it as Iris since I have only seen here with the animal ear accessory, so I have a hard time visualizing the true look of her hair.

Some phantom argument between Shoko and Mizuki went on before Mizuki and the carousel came crashing back down. Continuing to waste all the time I had banked due to making good decisions before, I messed with the speaker. I finally went up to Mizuki, wasted another action, and finally got it through my head that the high time-consuming actions are probably a safer bet to do. Saying kind words (with Shoko's voice) was the final piece of the puzzle.

All three mental locks unlocked with 52.47 seconds to spare.
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LordoftheMorons posted...

Terminator?

Well I feel dumb being both way off base and having seen that movie before.
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Shit, this didn't heal her. I wonder if that was scripted regardless or one or multiple of the wrong decisions I made in the psync did this. I looked at the flowchart, and it is showing the first deviation was from the results of the psync. I obviously don't know all the flowchart events, but I have a feeling that the deviation for this, as well as any future psync, is about passing/failing the psync, and if I failed, a bad end would soon follow.

Hmm, so Date turned down playing Minecraf...I mean ShovelForge with Iris but "relented" when she instead asked to go on a date. Way to take the highroad and be professional.

So Aiba is a fucking snitch in telling Boss about Iris visiting the crime scene. Aiba has no loyalty to her partner. I shall not forget this!

Going to back to Bloom Park for what I believe is the fifth time, including psyncs, I noticed Aiba in the corner of the screen and thought nothing of it. I didn't realize it was highly unusual, and I am glad that I ended up going with the Date gives out a shrilly scream option. Make that voice actor earn it!

There was a smartphone inside one of the carousel horses, and they referred to it as a rental phone. Are those common in Japan or is this just a convenient plot device or what? My first guess before they brought up it being a rental was a burner phone, but a burner phone is obviously not the same thing as a rental phone.

The dissonance from having a fully formed character but given tons of dialogue and action choices can result in some frustrating moments. Date being a dumbass by immediate saying he was with the police while calling the one number from the rental phone's call log is an example of this.
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I have a bad feeling as we head back to the Sagan residence. Iris is okay, but Hitomi left abruptly and in a panic after receiving a text message. As an aside, I don't know what NILE is, but I am guessing it is either a social media platform as opposed to a particular IM proprietary technology. I didn't like it when Aiba mentioned nothing bad happened to Iris yet. With the Sagan gals being dead in each of the dream/psync segments, I'm not feeling too good about all of this.

We had another prime opportunity for Date mockingly talking to himself while in Boss' office. I had to click on him many times to finally get him to do it, and neither Boss nor Aiba provided any commentary. I want my time back.

Back to the case, the phone we found was Shoko's. She may or may not be complicit in white collar crime that also involves the Yakuza. Renju was injured in a car crash. If I am reading between the lines correctly, it is the same crash from the report we heard in the car. And maybe he was at fault? I forgot if they said if multiple people were injured. I just remember that the person believed to be responsible for the crash was driving some sort of truck, and they had to be transported to the hospital.

I don't know if the flowchart will have deviations other than psyncing-related stuff, but I am considering my options of where to go next seriously. I can visit Renju at the hospital, Mizuki at Date's place, or I can see Mama at her bar. I like taking options that presumably introduce me to new characters. I really haven't met the real Mizuki, but I don't know of her condition, so that's out. I technically haven't met Renju either, but I know nothing about Mama, so I'm going to the bar.
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Well, going to see an information broker at a bar was not what I expected. I only met one person, and I learned virtually nothing. Time will tell if this significant other of Renju's that gave him a watch (that Date damaged) will play a role.

I guess this wasn't a one-choice type of deal and will probably end up going to see Renju and Mizuki in this trip. I can also visit the Yakuza, but I want to hold off on that. Going to visit Renju at the hospital was also a bust. Going 0-2 feels so awesome. I did get a chance to speak with his valley girl receptionist at Luminescent...errr Lusitania...uh Lithosphere...whatever his fucking company is. I guess he hasn't been at work for a little while. He owns a maid cafe? I am assuming that's where all employees are dressed like butlers and maids, for whatever reason.

Whatever, I don't give a shit. I'm going to see hopefully Mizuki now but knowing my luck, she tied her phone to a cat or something to throw us off her trail. Based on the thumbnail from the map menu, Date lives at a former orphanage that had to shut down due to burn damage. I'm sure he got a sweet ass deal. Well, uh, Hitomi is here. Nice to know she is alive and well though. Mizuki is pumping iron in the back. She has her voice back too. This is weird.

So Hitomi is Mizuki's teacher. The look Date gave when Hitomi was talking about what I presume is a porno magazine underneath the rug was priceless. I wish all the juvenile dirty jokes were like that. Hmm, Mizuki just has an iron pipe lying around. It's her favorite too. You know what, I thought maybe she liked iron pipes as a sort of self-defense weapon, but she didn't bring one with her to Bloom Park, so I am very suspicious of her. I don't like how she holds it in the concept art photo album either.
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There are usually two ways to pass a psync which lead to path splits

I think going for the left path first (the opposite of what you are on now) is a better way to experience the story, but thats just me.

Hitomi's arm injury was the result of a house invasion shooting six years ago (I'm sure this isn't the last major event having taken place six years ago). They showed the image of her corpse from Date's dream again, and it sort of checks out since the wound appears to be on her right shoulder where the iron plate is. I don't like how she phrased it while she was talking about it. "The story is" leaves a lot of room for interpretation, such as she isn't quite sure what happened as was told what happened from law enforcement or something.

Renju was the one who asked Mizuki to go to Bloom Park, which leads me to believe he knew Shoko was in trouble but couldn't make it there himself. I think it is kind of weird that Renju moved for the sole purpose of making sure that Mizuki had Hitomi as her elementary teacher. Maybe that a Japan thing because usually parents care about the school district their kid goes to and not any specific teacher.

I would rather delay whatever cringey crap is going to happen at the maid cafe, so I think it is telling I want to take my chances with the Yakuza. I may not be a criminal mastermind, but doesn't crime 101 teach you to look legitimate to outsiders? I come into this office that looks legit from a decoration standpoint, but the first guy I see it sitting down holding a knife, and he and some other bozo immediately give me shit. After showing the shitheads who is boss, I find out the middle-aged head honcho likes em young as he is a fan of Iris. While the shadows game with Ota and Iris only filled me with rage, playing shadows with this guy was hilarious. I think the voice actor really sold it well.

I'm not sure how relevant the backstory and medical explanation for the Kamakura head's late older brother is, and Zero Escape was home to a bunch of random concepts that ultimately had little or no meaning to the events at hand or at large, but I guess that I have little choice but keep it in mind. What do you know, this all started six years ago too.
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I went to the maid cafe, Sunfish Pocket, and of course this is the kind of place Ota visits. Please let me bail. Ugh, Date is sexually harassing the employees too, and I feel even worse having earned a trophy for it. Ota shows me a video of Iris leaving in a hurry after someone rings the doorbell. Lots of characters are disappearing to unknown places in the middle of the night. Surely, things will end badly for at least one of them. Iris is tempting fate to hoist that inevitable conclusion onto someone else.

So the employees feed the customers themselves here. Yippee. If you really are 24 Ota, have some self respect! After leaving there as fast as I could, I find out Aiba put a plastic bag full of flour in the glove compartment. I can't say Date doesn't deserve it.

I'm not sure if this is procedurally generated, but to be safe and have some sort of digital record, the Aiba's self destruct code is 41205, her favorite number. I would bet that at least one path makes use of this.

Date was going to call the number from Shoko's call log again, and I didn't like any of the options of where to call from. In a moment that shows I am obviously not a cop, I thought all options sucked, but apparently calling from Shoko's phone number was not a terrible idea and ultimately worked. The other number belongs to a Congressman Sejima, and I stopped at the earliest opportunity in front of his house.
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handsomeboy2012 posted...

There are usually two ways to pass a psync which lead to path splits

I think going for the left path first (the opposite of what you are on now) is a better way to experience the story, but thats just me.

I'm just going to do things naturally instead of forcing me into a specific path. Eventually, I will experience all the paths, but I like things to be authentic to me in my first go-around.
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such a good game!

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KCF0107 posted...

Well I feel dumb being both way off base and having seen that movie before.

Eh. I thought it was Metal Gear based on the way she entered but I guess Terminator did it first.

KCF0107 posted...

Awesome, we begin with carousel horses writhing in pain from being skewered.

They never explain how the horses got up there in reality.

I did the left hand path as well. I feel like the story progression is going to feel totally different

demonfang178 posted...

They never explain how the horses got up there in reality.

They do. It's vandals. Bloom Park is in the off-limits Kabasaki district

KCF0107 posted...

Shortly after, I scouted out the sound system, and Date I think was referring to the male genetelia? I don't know, it was super fucking weird because who the hell looks at a sound system and thinks that.

Yeah thats the localization weirdness I was talking about. That was originally a pun on the japanese word for stereo. There's a lot of that stuff in the investigation sequences. Localization is hard, and this game's translation isn't quite Ace Attorney level

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DeepsPraw posted...

They do. It's vandals. Bloom Park is in the off-limits Kabasaki district

That's who. How do you get horses impaled on a pike that's about 15 feet and shoots nearly straight up? I guess you could use a tall ladder but seems like a lot of work for a simple prank.

For the record, NILE is ersatz LINE, which, by my understanding, is basically the Japanese alternative to Discord (Though also a fair bit older)

KCF0107 posted...

I'm just going to do things naturally instead of forcing me into a specific path. Eventually, I will experience all the paths, but I like things to be authentic to me in my first go-around.

this is the only way to play tbh
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Reg posted...

For the record, NILE is ersatz LINE, which, by my understanding, is basically the Japanese alternative to Discord (Though also a fair bit older)

I always knew LINE as a instant messaging app. With lots of "stickers".

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Well this trip out to Sejima's went nowhere. I had to leave my favorite bodyguards to tail the congressman's activities, namely going to a warehouse late at night, as politicians do. This is totally not going to be an issue that Aiba's batteries ran out just before entering the warehouse.

I didn't notice the ice at first, so I wasn't sure if the visible air was due to cold temperatures or something more of the misty/foggy variety. Hmm, there is this lone cart in the middle with a nondescript covering over a lumpy object. Obviously there's a cake or something else nice and pleasant under it. What, it's a dead body? Who could have guessed that? Oh fuck, it's Iris. I guess shit's getting real now.

Kind of a tame interrogation with Sejima if you ask me. Aiba unable to confirm stuff because of battery loss came up, but it didn't seem important. I guess by game time, it probably has been a while, but it feels like I just came out of a psync. I got through it last time, so let's see if I can do it again this time. I do want to point out that even with ABIS being a clandestine organization that has some leeway with legal prodcedure, I would be truly shocked that forcefully inducing Sejima, a politician no less, into a coma and massively invading his privacy by psyncing with him without his permission isn't going to be a massive human rights nightmare in the near future. I mean, you pretty much have to silence Sejima after this right?

Aiba comes barreling in driving a forklift like an insane person and spinning out like its a bumper car only for her to come out and smugly say, "Did you witness my superior driving technique?" Psyncing-version Aiba is the best.
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There's an Iris sighting...oh look, she's getting stabbed repeatedly by a purplish-blue figure. It's a very audible murder too. I can do without hearing the squishy stab wounds over and over. There are four mental locks this time, and I have absolutely no clue what to do other than prevent Iris from being stabbed. I do not like my chances.

I figured with all these warehouse doors, one of them would be needed, but that was a giant waste of time. I instead used the somehow still operational forklift and the "Drift King" managed to crash it into the harbor. I saw the price of said action was 2 skulls, which doesn't bode well. I had Aiba put her hand in the portal, which made it humongous and knock the crate into the water. One lock down.

Oh, now one of these warehouse doors helps me. I whiffed on my first two actions regarding the lever (raised and lowered) before the "fighting game combo" one worked. I even said before that going with the most time-consuming action usually works, but it seemed too dumb to be the correct choice. That further cleared the path for Iris, but with two locks down and two to go, I only have 50 seconds.

I opened a warehouse door that was slightly ajar, and that made Iris small enough to gain some distance from her attacker. That's three mental locks down, but I unfortunately ran out of time with that action. Oh, I am being forced to beat the psync (trademark pending). That makes me curious how the path diverged in the flowchart from the first psync.
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This is probably around the point where you might need a little strategy to get through psyncs (e.g. using timies, dumping bad timies on cheap actions, etc)

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Even though I knew what to do for the first three locks, I was absolutely stumped for the final one, so I failed once again. It was on my third attempt that I realized I could go through the warehouse door I opened for the portal for Iris to become small. Unfortunately, I had accidentally clicked the wrong promt earlier with the lever, so I ran out of time so as I was about to reach the control box on the opposite side of the warehouse door. On my fourth attempt, I finally got through that pesky fourth lock. Aiba became big and knocked the assailant into the ocean. Predictably fake Iris found giant Aiba scary and continued to run.

Outside of the psync, its was explicitly stated that Boss may have "contaminated" the psyncing process by inadvertently providing key info to Sejima prior to syncing that affected his dream. Uh, did everyone forget the interrogation? We literally showed him Iris' face and informed him of her time of death. What I did find intriguing was that we only showed her face, yet in his dream, her entire body was recreated accurately.

In a major twist, Iris' body is not at the scene, and she was alive and well at her house. Not Iris' body? Date has a different theory in that actions in psyncing change the past. Knowing Zero Escape, I'm inclined to go with Date here.

Since someone mentioned they might have trouble following along since I apparently went on a different path than most people do, I will try and remember to write down the days when they appear on the screen. I just remembered them being obnoxiously written (like in terms of letter capitalization) and either using fake or Japanese words.
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LordoftheMorons posted...

This is probably around the point where you might need a little strategy to get through psyncs (e.g. using timies, dumping bad timies on cheap actions, etc)

I did start using the 1/2 time thing for the crane lever since it was normally 2 minutes. They never exactly explained that well, so I was forced to trial and error in terms of what each timies did and how to correctly use them.
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Once I got the hang of it, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the strategy of using timies in the Psyncs. They made for pretty interesting puzzles at times.
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KCF0107 posted...

I whiffed on my first two actions regarding the lever (raised and lowered) before the "fighting game combo" one worked. I even said before that going with the most time-consuming action usually works, but it seemed too dumb to be the correct choice

I did this exact same thing lol
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