Update 15: Stupidity In Action
Yes, yes it was. We now need to go attempt to meet with him, only…
There’s this asshole in the way.
: “How about we play you for the chance to see him? Put the decision in the hands of the Mistress of Fortune.”
Now, if you’ll remember from all of one update ago, Batu said that all of the gambling in Goldpaw is believed to be rigged. In fact, Roland himself saw mere seconds ago that the die on the statue is rigged.
The game makes a big deal out of this - the guard all but tells us to go and save before we do anything.
For this point in the game, 1000 guilders is actually a fairly sizeable sum of money. Most enemies at this point are still dropping money in the single or low double digits. Right now, we have about 3000 guilders, but most of that came from chests or selling all of the junk equipment I picked up off-screen.
The game goes into a short explanation of how this works, but it’s basically a modified version of cee-lo, which you might’ve seen in Suikoden or Yakuza. In theory, the way it works is that this dipshit rolls two dice, and then Evan gets the chance to gamble on whether the sum of those two dice plus a third one will be greater than/equal to (“Red”) or less than (“Black”) 11. All 1s counts as Red, while all 6s counts as Black.
So, if this is your first time playing Ni no Kuni 2, you might think “Oh shit, this is going to be one of those Leisure Suit Larry moments where you have to play the slot machine to get enough money to actually finish the game and can game over on the slots”. That’s actually kind of how I thought, even though on the whole the game is generally not that much of a dick. The guard will actually repeat the rules if you ask.
Strangely, though, there’s no mention of what happens if the dice land on exactly 11.
: “They seem fair enough. Slightly in our favor, if anything.”
: “That’s a fine set o’ dice there, matey. They’ll be worth a pretty penny, I shouldn’t wonder.”
Anyway, he starts us off by rolling two dice.
At 7, we theoretically have a 50/50 shot at being right - a 1, 2, or 3 will make Black win, while a 4, 5, or 6 will make Red win. Now, we’ve already seen that the big statue is rigged. Care to guess what happens next? I picked Black, by the way.
The die comes up a one, and then in a very un-natural fashion the third die shifts back to six, causing us to lose. I couldn’t really capture it very well here, but we actually have to do this two more times. No, seriously.
: “Oh no, we lost! Uh… might you consider playing another round?”
Now at this point, Roland, being the responsible adult in the party, should probably step in and stop the ten year old boy from gambling any more. But no.
Aaaaand… Evan’s already a gambling addict.
: “What are you doing, Evan?!”
: “Go on, son! Waste all of Roland’s money on dice games! Slash his tires! Maim! Burn! Kill!”
The second time around, the guard will roll two ones. Naturally, you’d take the non-sucker bet that has a 5/6 chance of winning. Instead though…
Who would’ve guessed that a guy using loaded dice would… keep using the loaded dice to win? The game really hits you over the head with this. We actually do it one more time, and you can more or less guess how that goes.
This is actually a Lupin III plot, by the way. This entire section of the game rips off a lot from Lupin (which Hayao Miyazaki and some other Ghibli employees worked on before Ghibli existed).
: “I’ll do it this time!”
: “Seriously, Evan, are you a complete numbskull?! Give up!”
: “Wh- but I’m doing so well!”
So now Evan gets tasked with stealing a diamond from some Chinese mafia guy who keeps it in a safe that has been eaten by a shark that lives in a skyscraper that gets pulled around Tokyo by helicopter. He spends the entire episode getting it, gives it to the dog, who pulls off his mask to reveal he’s actually Fujiko Mine in disguise. Evan then walks away and points out to Batu that he replaced the diamond with a diamond-shaped explosive. Fujiko loses the fake diamond in the breeze and it explodes on Zenigata, who was sitting in the sewers the entire time. Roll credits.
: “Ten million?! Ye dog, ye! T’was only a thousand a minute ago!”
: “W-we don’t have anywhere near that much!”
So yeah, this guy is just straight up playing Yu-gi-oh now.
So yeah, these little shits are called duebills, and even though we never saw a single one on our way into town, we’ll now see that most people in Goldpaw have one.
: “So, about that dice game - I couldn’t help noticing something fishy about how the third die was moving.”
: “You spotted it too! I was thinking the exact same thing.”
: “Really?”
: “Heh, I was so lost in the game there, it slipped me notice, I have to say.”
: “It wouldn’t surprise me if there were more to that die than meets the eye.”
: “The swab said they was special dice, only for bigwigs or somesuch, did he not?”
: “If we could get our hands on one, we might be able to find some proof that he was cheating.”
: “Why don’t we take a look at the casino? The government runs it, right? So it’ll be full of government employees - and dice.”
: “Motion seconded!”
: “Erm… thirded!”
I think what Roland is thinking of is his state department, since that would explain how New York got nuked with zero warning and without him having any idea who or why, but sure.
We now have a new objective. There’s a trip door right outside the casino, but I actually forgot to grab it on the way in. Even if we had it, it’d be locked right now.
So you might be asking “Isn’t this just a single really, really long cutscene?” and you’d be absolutely right. This entire scene from the point where we entered Goldpaw to where I saved after I took the screenshots for this update is about 40 minutes long. I’m going to skip the inside of the casino, because it’s just reiterating what we already know.
: “And it seems they really are a little fishy…”
Batu just picks up the idiot ball and eats it. Seriously though, the game might as well be a VN at this point.
: “… You didn’t, did you? Oh, you did, you big wally!”
: “Gah! I couldn’t help meself! Stand by an’ watch while there’s fun to be had? That ain’t me way, girlie!”
: “Aaand how much did you lose exactly, if youell excuse me a little pry.”
: “Oh, ah… mere pennies, little feller, mere pennies!”
: “Pff. Well, let’s forget about our friend the genius here for a moment, shall we? There’s something I want to show you. I can’t do it here, though. Shall we take this somewhere a little quieter?”
The casino isn’t actually that far from the inn, but we can get there “instantly” after a load screen if we use the trip door.
: “Heh, heh! Your favorite little scallywag only went and swiped herself a dice!”
: “You mean you… stole one?”
: “Pah! Stole, borrowed, whatever helps you sleep at night.”
For some reason, none of these shots turned out that great, but Tani shows us the mystery of the dice.
Basically, each side is a button that when pressed, causes the die to come up on that side.
: “This is how they’ve been doing it, huh?”
: “The scurvy mutt blockin’ our path to Pugnacius had the selfsame dice, so he did!”
: “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go and tell him his secret is out!”
: “He’ll just deny it. Besides, it’s better he doesn’t know that we have it for now.”
: “I see where youer goin’! Very crafty! I likes it.”
There’s a scene of Lofty mumbling with the party just before this, so that’s the context.
Next time, we’ll give the guard a taste of his own rigged dice game.