Summary
: I’m doing this update on the same week as Shadow Hearts because I was inspired by a couple of things.
: The first would be the translator and typesetter on 4chan’s /a/ board who are continuing to do high-quality, inspired translations of a manga called Yofukashi no Uta, despite the announcement of an official “translation” that is “simultaneously” published (read: a day late) with the Japanese release. The official translation is done by underpaid translators and sucks shit.
: The second would be that the group doing a manga called Hatarakanai Futari (eng: “The Jobless Siblings”) put out eight pages instead of their usual seven, and I really like Hatarakanai Futari.
: We’re going to skip Matchmaker for right now and do the first Placebo chapter. I played through the first Matchmaker chapter and my recording fucked up, and it’s not that interesting anyway. That’s probably because Suda did not write Matchmaker.
: “Nagare” is the Japanese word for “Flow”, but it’s also used when describing the passage of time. The dictionary mentions a usage meaning “People who stay together after the end of an event” and that definitely also applies.
: “Disposition is a difficult thing. For example, even if you became unclear as to exactly who you were, something automatically makes you move.”
: It’s not only the reactions that happen inside your own body, but even your external surroundings undergo faint chemical reactions, and it all gets jumbled together to create your current situation."
: “Words like ‘fate’ are a bit of an exaggeration. It’s something more sensitive, more ordinary. But, like the iron shackles chained to a prisoner’s ankles, it’s also something extremely cold and inflexible.”
: Meet Tokio, again. In this game, he’s basically Chris Redfield. I should mention that Placebo is once again written by Masahi Ooka, the same writer from The Silver Case’s Placebo arc.
: I feel like Ooka made an explosive leap in writing skill halfway through The Silver Case, and now he is fully on his shit.
: Tokio’s options are a bit different than Uehamster’s.
: I saw this and I fucking smiled. Tokio came back for Red after all - and since I think this is meant to be the same boat from Flower, Sun and Rain, he probably got Red before he left the 24th Ward.
: Those are all our options. Let’s start out by Looking.
: And now let’s pick the only real option here and talk to Red.
: One thing I think they could’ve done better is to give the Placebo chapters a more distinct visual style from Correctness, the way they were in The Silver Case. I actually really liked how they did that.
: “Where?”
: “Used to…”
: “This place.. where is this…?”
: I checked the script to see if it gives you a hint as to who this is Tokio is talking to, and it lists the name as “Nazo”, which is the Japanese word for “Mystery”.
: “Boat?”
: “Don’t.. don’t do that… don’t pull me out…”
: “I’m sleepy.. just let me fucking sleep…”
: " ‘Cautionary notes’? Don’t make me fucking laugh. Those are goddamn ‘orders’…"
: “Anyway! Don’t order me around. Don’t prepare anything. Directions, guidance, orders… I don’t need that shit. Leave me alone.”
: “Why’s that?”
: “The fuck does that even mean?”
: “This is bullshit…”
: “And you, what about you? Are you not an enemy? You saying you’re an ally?”
: “I… who am I…?”
: “Dentist…”
: “Is it.. him? No way…”
: We have control now, but there’s not a whole lot we can do - even using Look just has Tokio ellipse at us.
: Instead, we have to use the “Computer” command. Once we’re on the computer, the menu changes to the same options it had in The Silver Case.
: If you’ll recall, Slash was Tokio’s hacker contact in The Silver Case. She was killed by Enzawa/The Bat in Ai, but somehow uploaded herself to the internet.
: The chats are formatted like the ones from Kamuidrome, and so I’ll be transcribing them the same way. The yellow text is Tokio, the orange is Slash.
Tokio: thats hella expensive
Slash: transfer confirmed. but too bad!
Tokio: what?
Slash: you cant talk to girls with just a password.
Tokio: what are you saying?
Slash: you dont get it? you need points to talk. everyone knows this.
Tokio: you make me pay 100k and then pull this shit?
: What does an AI need money for, anyway?
Slash: i have a question
Tokio: what?
Slash: how come youre looking for the “goddess”?
Tokio: why are you asking?
Slash: just curious
Tokio: just kinda horny is all
Slash: you wanna get your nut off. nice!
Tokio: whats nice about that?
: I miss when I was doing a game about not being horny.
Slash: ok, take a memo of the following
Slash: the pirate site is called quarter
Slash: youre gonna log in and talk to a girl named “miru”
Slash: miru is one of quarters top 3 perfs
Tokio: hold up. whats a perf?
Slash: performer
Tokio: what kind of performance?
Slash: her performance is online virtual conversation with a stranger
Tokio: virtual conversation? or virtual stranger?
: Did Tokio just make an attempt at humor? Maybe he really did break his Kamui programming.
Slash: either one could be right
Slash: anyway. miru knows the password for “goddess”
Slash: all i can get you is 10 points
Slash: also just be aware that theyre illegal points so if the admins find out youre screwed.
Slash: theyre special points you can only use today
Slash: 1 point = 1 minute
Tokio: so 10 minutes
Slash: i got one condition if you want these points though
Slash: just so you know ill be monitoring your PC
Tokio: what the hell
Slash: i got nothing going on right now. ill watch
Tokio: fine. whatever
Slash: miru has no mic, but she has a camera
Slash: shes kinda super moody and can get cranky and lose her shit real easy
Slash: so basically shes got a real shitty personality
Slash: how funny is that? thats what people pay to see
Tokio: whatever. go ahead and laugh while you peep
: I hope you wrote that password down. This is why I do screenshot LPs.
: Yep. We’ve got to input the password using what is possibly one of the most awkward text-entry methods ever devised. That’s Suda for you.
: Miru is a dialog puzzle. Each time she asks you to respond, you have three options. Let’s see what happens if we pick the first one.
: We then get kicked out of the chatroom and have to restart the whole dialog tree.
: The good news is that once you know what the right answer is, the game highlights it. I’m going to only pick correct answers from here on out, except near the end.
: I do like that Tokio is still using the TurtleGuy username he’s been using since The Silver Case.
Miru: You have something you want to ask me, don’t you?
: I will say that I fucked up almost every possible option trying to find the right one.
Miru: It’s even easier to tell this way
TurtleGuy: i see
Miru: You’re gonna run out of points, you know? Whose password do you want?
: You would think that the correct answer would be “Goddess”, but it’s not.
: So basically, she’s a hostess only without the “having to physically interact with customers” part.
Miru: But her rates are ridiculously high. You could buy this necklace with a single point. Anymore questions?
: This feels like Suda somehow foresaw the whole ChatGPT thing. In fact, I think there are already dipshits trying to make what would effectively be an “real” version of Goddess.
: For reference, both the original game and the re-release happened years before even the first iteration of GPT was a thing.
: This is where we use the “Goddess” option.
: Again, might want to write that one down. Now, what if we picked the wrong option when she asked if we had any more questions? Usually, we’d get a generic response, but..
Miru: Having the same shitty, boring conversations!!! It makes me wanna puke. I actually do puke sometimes.
Miru: I mentioned the flow of the text, right? When I look at it, more and more and more and more, I feel like that flow is making me dirtier and dirtier."
Miru: All these thoughts, and wishes and hopes and dreams and all this shit
Miru: It comes pouring out through the net. It pours out of the monitor and gets on my skin and it’s just disgusting. I feel like I’m about to die.
: Well, we’ve gotten what we need out of Miru. Ordinarily, I would end the update here, but I want to do the next part because it’s kinda hilarious.
: Placebo is really shaping up to be the best part of this game, and it kind of makes me want to ignore Matchmaker altogether and just do the original Correctness/Placebo routes.
: Part of the problem I have with Matchmaker is that if we had done Matchmaker first, this would feel a lot more like Yume or Hana because we’d already kinda know the plot.
: Again, for reference, the orange text is Slash and the yellow is Tokio.
Slash: first you find one of “goddess’” clients
Slash: one who is scheduled to log in at 11 tonight
Slash: we already have the password which is the hardest part, so now you just need the user name
Slash: thisll be easy to look up
Tokio: easy?
Slash: like ive already found it
: This part admittedly doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, unless it’s some kind of system where your user name is acting as a password and all the “passwords” are the same.
: I mean, otherwise, how would Miru know which account the password would work on?
Tokio: easy?
Slash: like ive already found it
Tokio: how the hell do you do that?
Slash: dont underestimate 25th ward net researchers
Tokio: a bunch of creepy neckbeard hermits you mean
Slash: then, at the time scheduled for the real client
Tokio: i use that user name to log in, right?
Slash: yeah. except kinda different
Tokio: different how?
Slash: when a single user name has multiple logins it gets automatically locked out
Tokio: so i wont be able to chat then
Slash: yeah, regardless of who logs in first
Tokio: so what do i do?
Slash: you gotta make sure the real client cant log in
Tokio: is that possible?
Slash: if you put your mind to it
: Now, you would think that Tokio would lure the client out and, I dunno, tie him up or bash him over the head or something - but oh no, we’re about to do something much, much dumber than that.
: One nice but kind of annoying upgrade is that you can manually scroll through Tokio’s emails now. It’s annoying with this one because there’s no indicator you can scroll - I did it by accident.
: Girlfriend: Not Found. We have our mark. Let’s see how Tokio executes this, and I assure you, this is a Frank-level plan. We are about to witness Tokio’s own Ninja Art of Unlocking.
: We can now log out of the computer and get underway.
: We get these weird text scrolls, which I assume are Tokio’s new diary, in between locations. I’ll type these out like I did with the diary entries in The Silver Case.
Evening in Comoros
Ten 34-karat diamonds spin around in the sky as they show me a vision.
A fixed star in its terminal phase, that is to say, a white dwarf, is mainly composed of carbon. This carbon, under extremely high pressure, crystallizes and becomes a huge diamond, 4000 kilometers in diameter.
The diamonds tell me that this place is so cold, so dark, so far away.
Dark and far. And spinning. Something tells me that I understand what it is. That was my vision.
: For reference, the Comoros are a group of islands off the coast of Africa, between the mainland and Madagascar. Most of them are a sovereign country that used to be a French colony - except for one that is still a French territory to this day.
: "I’d like to speak with you about Quarter. You know, about the website, Quarter. You’re one of “Goddess’ " valued customers, right? Wait, hold on. Don’t hang up.”
: “Unfortunately, I can’t get into detail over the phone. Mail? No, I’m afraid not. I mean, that will leave evidence, right?”
: “Sounds suspicious? Well, that’s understandable. I mean, if I were you, I’d think so, too. But think about it for a second. Who tries selling people shit over the phone like this in this day and age? Right?”
: “So if you don’t trust me, you can just blow me off. Listen up, I’m only gonna say this once. I’ve got information on “Goddess” for you and you alone. I’ll be waiting under the clock tower in Area 7 in ten minutes.”
: I don’t know that I’d call that a clock tower, but okay.
: “Ah, so you’re Yagisawa, huh?”
: “Um, yeah…”
: “Sorry for having you come all the way out here like this.”
: “So what’s this… event?”
: “Huh?”
: “Uh, so like…”
: “Like…?”
: “Like, tonight, there’s some kind of guerrilla event, right?”
: “Guerrilla event?”
: “I’ve heard of them!”
: “Of what?”
: “They do these events every once in a while, right? If you keep coming back as a repeat customer, the chances are super slim, but you can win a chance to participate, right? Oh, but wait a second!”
: “Is this all legit? Are you really the Quarter admin?”
: “Yeah, that’s right. You’re quick on the uptake.”
: This is Frank-level strategy right here.
: “Really, like, for reals?”
: “Yup.”
: “Seriously for reals?!”
: “For reals.”
: “Pr-prove it!”
: “It’s YOUWAKU. That’s right, isn’t it?”
: Now, I’d like to point out that Tokio doesn’t know Yagisawa’s username, so he is getting by on sheer Frank power.
: “Oh snap! So it is true! This is like a dream! So like, what do I need to do next?!”
: “If you want to take part in this special, amazing event, then at 11 o’clock tonight, you need to log in with a different name and password.”
: “O-Ok.”
: “I’ll tell you now.”
: “Huh, wai-…”
: “Nope, you can’t write it down. That’ll leave evidence.”
: “Then…”
: “You have to burn it into your brain cells.”
: “OK.”
: “Ready? Your user name is..”
: “OK.”
: I would have asked Salty Vanilla to do a shot of Frank being somewhere in the background and nodding in approval, but I already have other plans for him.
: “And the password is a bit long.”
: “I’ll burn it into my brain cells.”
: This is what that locked door scene at the start of From the New World should’ve been. Johnny asks the kid how to open the door and he goes “Oh, it’s easy, you just put in the password…”
: And then the game cuts to Frank, who is now the main character. Thirty hours later, you can go back to the theater and find Johnny still there trying to figure out how to put the password in.
: “I can’t memorize that!”
: “Memorize it! It’s a special, amazing event with “Goddess”, you know.”
: “O-Ok…”
: "I’ll tell you just one more time. You ready? It’s ‘aqwsedrftgyhujikolp’.
: I’m kind of surprised that Ooka didn’t have Tokio give him a different password the second time.
: We’ll see how well Tokio’s scheme works in the next update. By the way, I have some new pics from Salty Vanilla I’ve been meaning to post:
: Here’s Uehamster teaching Shiroyabu the critical difference between a mailman and a hitman. We’ll run into someone else who has trouble identifying hitmen in the next update, when we meet the Goddess.