Board 8 > Signalis

(+) Yeah! (+)

Not far in, but so far is this a game of highs and lows. Extremely strong vision that I respect a lot. Excellent atmosphere, graphics, sound design, and overall sense of style. Recreates Silent Hill gameplay in a great way. This game has a ton of good ideas and is using all of them to effectiveness.

The hyper-limited inventory space almost ruins the entire experience. Even by survival horror standards, six slots (when there's tons of key items that take up space) is bananas. There's so much backtracking to the storage container that I can't stay on edge - the classic 'horror replaced by annoyance' issue. Tempted to use the setting option that extends your inventory space but that feels like losing somehow.

Also, while I like how the game combines several different cultures/languages so it's not just an English feel...that also kinda dilutes the horror when I don't know those languages. It keeps flashing German on screen during spooky moments and it means nothing to me. In general the game could stand to linger slightly longer on the flashes of text it shows, too.

Signalis is a masterpiece. I haven't become as obsessed with something this much in years TBH. Like, dug into hundreds of thousands of words of fanfiction after the fact obsessed. I just got my Vinyl Record copy of the OST last week! My phone case is a custom Signalis case. It took me over.

That said, if you're playing on console, yeah those 6 slots are rough! The PC version has gotten the patch that adds the option for 8 slots and key items not taking up slots, but I am not sure if the console versions have received that patch yet.

The English German Japanese fusion of the culture is absolutely a heavy part of the aesthetic, hopefully that grows on you.

I'm on PC. Been eyeing the extended inventory option for a while but I wanted to try to get the intended game experience, plus there's the whole lore thing about 6 items being government-mandated. Am probably going to tap out and take the extended inventory option though, the way they structured the base game is just too much. I'm also playing on Hard mode, so maybe that's part of the problem.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

The English German Japanese fusion of the culture is absolutely a heavy part of the aesthetic, hopefully that grows on you.

The aesthetic I really like, but I think some parts of it aren't conducive to the horror experience. Horror excels when it straddles the thin line of understanding something and not understanding something. Signalis often shows me information in another language that I 100% can't understand so it falls a bit flat.

At the moment I think this is going to end up being a game I don't completely love but am definitely glad I played. It's rare that media has this strong of a 'voice'. The developer knew the kind of experience they wanted to portray at every possible point.

Also some fucker stole my picture of girlfriend, he must die

All I will say on that front is that those aspects of the game are something the game doesn't WANT you to know yet.

I think the game is excellent horror, especially the further in you get, but the narrative actually impacted me MUCH more than the dread.

It's amazing how much more I'm enjoying this game with 2 extra item slots.

Also enjoying how the narrative is shaping up as the game progresses. Lots of little details for the player to piece together. Got emotionally affected by a random NPC which I didn't expect.

"Wherever it is I'm going, I'll wait for you there."

The EULE and the STAR ;_;

If you turn the music down super low you can here the EULE sobbing in the background.

The environmental storytelling in that room is simply amazing, and you can totally miss the room entirely.

Speaking of storytelling you can miss, that one android in the dark room below the big living quarters was also pretty messed up. I think one of my favorite things about the game overall is that paying attention pays off.

I definitely relate to your feelings. It was my biggest issue with the game as well. I don't play much survival horror, but I tried to think back to when I played the classic RE games, and I remember loving the backtracking due to limited inventory in REmake, yet here it just wasn't working, and I think it's because, like you said, there wasn't much tension to it, it was just a chore. Go down all these hallways, get 2 of the 4 items in this room, go back to storage, go right back to the room, get the last 2 items, go back to storage...

You're probably better off with the extra inventory. Didn't exist when I played.

Oops, accidentally clicked the save screen after I had already saved. Let me just exit out of:

"You will regret this."

Well jeez.

Fought the second boss. I had like 25 revolver ammo saved up, so it basically went like:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/a9c770a7.jpg

Stopping here for today now that I've entered the Silent Hill other world - I mean, uh, the mines. Have encountered the most terrifying enemy of all: 'No Map Data'.

Dels posted...

You're probably better off with the extra inventory. Didn't exist when I played.

I would actually recommend trying the game again with the extended inventory, assuming you didn't get very far. It makes a massive difference. At least to me.

I beat the game.

lol it took you a while to get that jumpscare. I got it in the first save room.

You really couldn't have picked a better time to switch to the 8 slots. As you have already noticed then game gets fucked around here.

Question: does the Flare Gun act like Thermite and permanently burn enemies? I probably should have asked this before I assumed as much and used it twice.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

As you have already noticed then game gets fucked around here.

I'm going to be completely screwed during my next session. My sense of direction in games is nonexistent. I have a distinct memory of someone watching me play Silent Hill back in the day and going "dude, why do you keep opening the map?" This new place has entrances and exits that don't even put you out the same direction you went in! Call me crazy, but I have a feeling I'm probably not supposed to be here.

Yep! The flare gun is a free burn on hit.

Don't be like me and hoard the "super" weapons, because they don't work on bosses. There's going to be a room in the next area that literally looks like a fucking joke by the devs to make you immediately turn around and never come back, but the Flare gun makes it so much easier.

Keeping this alive for when I can play again. Last few days have not been conducive to immersing myself in a game.

Bump. Should have time to play (maybe finish? not sure how long the game is) tomorrow.

Well I consider myself very lucky that I wrote down all the wall safe codes in a notepad file for easy use, then neglected to delete it.

I appreciate them giving you that in game method of taking photos, but realistically....I have a phone.

I alternate between using the module and my phone. The module is nice and immersive, but sometimes convenience trumps that lol.

Lots of theories floating around in my head about the plot, but stuff is coming together, especially after I looked back and read some old files.

"The meat grinder is broken. Should be safe to jump down!"

Dude not even James Sunderland would be down for this.

She made a promise.

Absolutely no way I would have gotten the butterfly puzzle without looking it up, and I knew the right way to 'solve' it too.

Lots of info getting dumped in files. Very unsettling info...

Finished the game, immediately went to the wiki to try and figure some details out. The wiki pages can't even agree on what's true. I think I'm in for a lore dive tonight.

Has the exact same reaction after finishing.

Which ending did you get?

Memory. Apparently to get a 'better' ending I was supposed to go around killing enemies, but I partially stopped doing that after they started reviving so I could save ammo.

Memory is the ending you think you want before you think about the game more deeply.

And then you inevitably realize it's the worst one you could get.

However I do think it's the best ending to see first.

I don't really have the time to replay games anymore, but that's what youtube is for.

Lore dive continuing. I now understand less about Alina Seo than I did before I started.

And that's not even beginning to get into Lilith Itou!

KamikazePotato posted...

I don't really have the time to replay games anymore, but that's what youtube is for.

Decided not to do this as it wouldn't have felt right. Reloaded an earlier save and manipulated some stats until I fulfilled the Promise ending.

Damn.

Promise is the final knife twist to grant release.

Artifact is a rabbit hole that is going to lead to even more brainworms than you have now, so watch at your own peril (you'd have to actually beat the game from scratch again anyways).

Current random thoughts.

The specific mechanics behind the respawn system is that Ariane rewrites a random nearby LSTR unit to have Elster's memories. That's why there's random bodies left behind despite time looping weirdness, especially in the elevator shaft where Adler pushes you.

Alina Seo DID exist, but the original her died decades ago. Then she gets revived as a sorta-ghost by Ariane due to memory shenanigans. And then metamorphosis'd into Ariane anyway. So Alina actually died twice before the game even starts. Bummer.

Despite being initially depicted as the antagonist, it's funny that Adler didn't actually do anything wrong. In fact he's 100% in the right if you fail to get the Promise ending.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Artifact is a rabbit hole that is going to lead to even more brainworms than you have now, so watch at your own peril (you'd have to actually beat the game from scratch again anyways).

I did look that one up, and I'm okay with ignoring it. Seems more like a reference to similar Silent Hill endings than something to focus on as part of the plot.

Speaking of Silent Hill references, Isa's death is a super good homage to Lisa Garland's death in SH1. I was actually expecting it to happen in that exact way because I had the reference pegged from the very beginning. Their names are only one letter off!

"I wear no mask."

The intro to Rotfront after jumping down, Cigarette Wife playing on the background, is in my top 10 video game moments of all time.

https://youtu.be/KZ-BbusMdkU?si=p0vd9FgBjBES6XH2

KamikazePotato posted...

it's funny that Adler didn't actually do anything wrong.

https://youtu.be/sphmmHYwJM0?si=DV4pewhA2Kkg4XVB

I actually decided to play the game because you posted music in a random topic recently and it sounded neat. I've had the Signalis icon on my desktop for a while now, and that was the final push I needed.

More thoughts.

I think the biggest thing I'm still wrapping my head around is location. For most of the last 1/3 of the game, I thought Ariane had crash-landed near the mines somehow. Turns out she just went flying out into space for HUNDREDS OF YEARS, and is still out there. Falke discovering the red gate below the mines was technically a different incident. Apparently Ariane was such a strong bioresonant that she reached them across the universe.

Although that ties nicely into the themes of their oppessive/repressive society. Bioresonance is the backbone of their civilization, and some people up top are even worried about what will happen when the few people capable of bioresonance die out. But they stifle Ariane at every turn, to the point where she can't explore her own interests, to the point where the only person who ever figures out she's bioresonant is an enemy spy. If they had allowed her to flourish, they could have had a new supreme leader to lead them into a golden age.

Instead she fucks off to deep space, gets cancer, gets put in cryosleep, and turns reality into meat moss. Whoops.

I'm glad you seem to have come around so much to the idea that the world is much more fascinating from a life perspective than it is an in the moment horror game.

Don't get me wrong, the game is plenty scary, but it ends up being far more structurally dense and built up to just be remembered for the jumps. The society of the game is more frightening to think about than the corrupted replikas.

The most terrifying part of the game, to me, is reading the Cycle 3000 letter, written so blunt and matter of fact by the Nation. Imagining what trading that was like, when they had only just been dancing....that's when I knew what Inwas experiencing was going to haunt me forever.

Through all the horror, the love is what stuck with me the most. The game has become a big of a saphic icon in the community and it's not hard to see why. It brought such unrelenting tragedy to it's universe, but it could never actually be broken. The promise was kept.

https://youtu.be/OJKk_hHApZI?si=hN0eZ5l1Yma6-vh0

For me the scariest part of the game was realizing that Persona Degradation is just a replika naturally growing and becoming their own person. Can't have that in a dystopia society full of cogs that are supposed to act in predictable ways. Don't worry, it's fine to decommission them - you can just make more.

Oh that's definitely the most horrifying part in the grand scheme of things!

I played the game for the first time basically in one go, for all intents and purposes, so I didn't absorb a lot of the finer details until afterwards.

The game intentionally tells you so little about the Empire, and what it does tell you is completely obfuscated by the unreliable narration of the Eusan Nation's texts as the victors, but it is hard to imagine how they could have been worse than the Nation....but we'll never really know.

I can't imagine the Empire was/is much better than the Eusan Nation. Would be fitting to the games' themes if the galaxy is just trading out one dystopia for another.

I kinda miss this game already.

My copy of The King in Yellow taunts me from my dresser.

As do my 20ish remaining downloaded ePubs from Ao3.

I'm not totally averse to fanfiction but I don't think it would quite work for Signalis for me. If anything, I think fanfiction is paradoxically best when it's exploring something with wasted potential. While Signalis isn't perfect, it essentially accomplished everything it set out to do.

I'll settle for my youtube algorithm being hijacked though.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=irs_XsDWI6o

Joetastic videos don't miss.

The Signalis animation community is pretty large. My favorite is easily Atelier/ARainyDancer.

https://youtube.com/@arainydancer?si=bZbsR_TYONFM5vUZ

This one I saw immediately after finishing the game though and it burned in me so much I sometimes forget some of the scenes in it weren't in the game.

https://youtu.be/m1Mnl7_NP2Q?si=tkp4PZ1Rulnc9YqD

Are you sure Signalis said everything it needed to say?

https://youtu.be/T1LMl-t2awA?si=3XH6WYdSrtPBrMXc

The people making fan videos are crazy talented. Haven't seen this kind of immediate passion for a game release in a while.

Definitely appreciating Signalis even more as time goes on. If I'd played it during my formative years, it might have had the same long-lasting effect on me as Silent Hill 2, which is basically the highest praise I can give a horror game.

For a game that's not very long, there's somehow a near endless amount of think to appreciate the more time goes by.

That's what 8 years of dev time by a 2 person team (primarily) does, I guess. The vision was truly realized.

8 years?? Indie devs are a different breed. Glad the investment seems to have paid off for them.

I listened to Cigarette Wife on repeat to help me break through writer's block last night.

Should probably stop inadvertently bumping this topic, but I don't feel ready to let this game go yet. Which is fitting I suppose.