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: Now that Roy has fulfilled his spirit quest or whatever dumb bullshit, there’s a meditation mat in his bag that he can use to go to the Game Over Zone.
: In the Game Over Zone, there’s a sidequest that involves talking to this guy five times, but each time you have to leave the area and come back.
: I went to walk to him, and then Roy fell into.. I have no idea what this is. Little did I know, it’s actually a softlock. This is the Bird Shrine, but an area of it that’s out of bounds.
: Now, this isn’t a softlock.. yet. We can go into Roy’s bag and meditate again to go back to the Game Over Zone - in fact, you can do this even if you’re already IN the Game Over Zone. However..
SOFTLOCK COUNTER: 7
: It is actually a softlock because now even if we talk to the Guide, we get sent back here and thus we cannot make it back to the world map. Thankfully, this somehow was not a save-breaking bug. I’m just as mystified as you are.
: The first couple of times, he makes small talk.
: While we’re up here, there’s a thing we can break to get a “Super Small Mermaid in a tiny bottle”. This is part of a collection sidequest that feeds into the bigger collection sidequest - that being the one we got the Rifle and Animal Capsule for.
: His third location (I talked to him once off-screen a few updates ago) is in the northwest part of the zone. There’s a “Sword of Color” here that we can pick up, but it never actually shows up in our inventory.
: Fourth location is through a red warp thing you can see from the center of the zone.
: The last one is through a warp. If you’re wondering what he’s saying, it’s dozens of text boxes about how he came here trying to find his wife and couldn’t and then he lost his face and now he’s not sure if she went to “heaven” and he didn’t, etc. I can transcribe it if people really want to see it.
: Anyway, he gives us the “Ubie Doll”, which is easily the most useless piece of equipment in this game.
: The doll gives Roy the ability to jump, so it’s basically the Roc’s Feather from Link’s Awakening. The thing is.. jumping is USELESS. It doesn’t let you access anything new, and you can’t use it to jump over enemies - in fact, doing so gives them a free hit on you.
: Even funnier is that if you use it in a town, Roy will do his game over death animation instead of a jumping one.
: And now we get the amazing Bivare segment of the game. The good news is that we can skip like, half of it.
: “Recently, she joined the Order of Ramsden (A secretive religious sect).”
: The traditional Allanson “tell, don’t show” technique at work.
: “When we last spoke it wasn’t on good terms. My ever growing doubts about the ‘after-life’ led to a long quarrel.”
TYPO COUNTER: 28
: “Hopefully I can get an audience with her. Last I heard she had taken a vow of silence - which might work out in my favor as she’ll be forced to listen.”
: “I don’t know what I intend to prove, but atleast I have proof of my beliefs.”
TYPO COUNTER: 29
: Bivare has a spear and his throwing knives.
: Now, what we’re supposed to do is get on that boat and sail to the next destination, but we can get there faster by just swimming.
: We can find a magnifying glass for Bivare north of the dock. It does nothing.
: There’s a big expanse of nothing on the other side, but if you just keep going to the right..
: You wind up at a path.
: The building we want is in the northwest corner.
: “It’s good to see you too, Agnes.”
: “…I’m happy you came. I was starting to miss that face of yours.”
: Yes I’m recycling icons from YIIK and yes it’s because I couldn’t think of a good joke to use for one. Also, didn’t he say she took a vow of silence?
: “Careful now. Don’t want to go giving me the wrong idea.”
: “HAR HAR, Mr. Guarder.”
: “It really is nice to see you. I traveled quite a while to get here, you know. Roy and I were at Egg Harbor.”
: “It’s lovely there this time of year. How is Roy doing?”
: This doesn’t sound at all like a nun who has just taken a vow of silence. If I had to write a character like that, I’d probably have them just speak in ellipses until Bivare starts making fucking sense.
: “As good as can be expected. His wife dies and he throws himself into his work. In typical Guarder fashion of course. He still hasn’t gone to see Jane’s parents.. not since the funeral, at least.”
TYPO COUNTER: 29
: “I see. It’s a shame. She was such a beautiful young woman. Don’t you think?”
: “Of course. She was one of my best friends. Neither of us will ever be the same.”
: I know he’s talking about Roy when he says neither of them will be the same, but the way he’s saying it makes it seem like he’s saying “Neither (Fucking Wife) nor I will ever be the same” and it’s like, no shit, she’s dead.
: “She’s in a better place now. Even if you don’t believe so.”
: “That’s why I’ve come. To talk to you about that.”
: “You don’t mean to seek spiritual advice from me do you, Biv? I never thought this day would come.”
: “Hey now, don’t get ahead of yourself. I’ve come to brag. I’ve seen it.”
: “You’ve seen what? The light?”
: Now, I know this game has no plot to speak of. It’s not clear what Roy or Bivare’s motivations are beyond “science!” and it’s not really clear why we’re doing anything at all. This scene though.. this scene is totally pointless. What’s it trying to do? What is the purpose of this scene?
: “!? What do you mean?”
: “Remember when Jane died and Roy was ranting - about colors and the after-life and all that?”
: “Well, we’ve been experimenting with it. And we can prove it exists. You see, Agnes, there exists another real filled with the most GLORIOUS colors.”
: “I would try and describe them… but there aren’t words to explain how amazing it is.”
TYPO COUNTER: 30
: “- you claim exists. But I can tell you that there is another world beyond this one. And it’s incredible.”
: “So you’ve come to mock me? We may not be together any more, but I thought you still respected me. You’re a real rotten bastard Bivare Guarder. Get out of here!”
: “Hey! Calm down Agnes! I’m here to tell you that I understand.”
: “Now I don’t know about your religion and other beliefs… but I can promise that there is a life beyond death.”
: “But how on earth do you know? What did you do?”
TYPO COUNTER: 31
TYPO COUNTER: 32 (2X TYPO COMBO!)
: “What is this complex device…?”
: “A knife.”
: “So you stabbed yourself to see the after-life? If it was that easy to come back from, someone would have done this ages ago!”
: Seriously though, what the fuck is the point of this scene? They’re talking about shit we’ve already seen for like, the third time now.
: “THIS is where it gets weird. Something happened with Roy when his wife died. For some reason, he can walk between our life and the next.”
: “I couldn’t think of a way to return, but then Roy appeared.. and he brought me back. It was incredible.”
: “… … I …”
: “You don’t believe me?”
: “It’s.. just…”
: “A little far fetched?”
: “It’s just unfair! Why does the agnostic scientist get to experience the glory of the afterlife and - and not the faithful like myself? This is madness.”
: No, this is Two Brothers.
: “Calm down… you’ll get there eventually I’m sure.”
: “And what do want from me? How can I help?”
TYPO COUNTER: 33
: Have you noticed something yet? This is almost the same conversation that Roy had with the professor at the dig site.
: “Your order has been around longer than most. It’s said that your faith has a leader.. someone who has lived longer than any other human or animal.”
: “I was wondering if you could tell me where they are.”
: “…”
: “I’m not going to cause trouble. I just want to speak with him. I want to see what I can learn.”
: God dammit. I’m not sure if this is worse than the whole Golden Alpaca thing or not.
: “Thank you Agnes.”
: “Of course. I am happy you believe.”
: “Any chance of you running off with me in search of adventure?”
: “…You know I can’t.”
: “Not even for science?”
: “Take care of yourself, Biv.. don’t kill yourself again. You’ll get to the after-life one day. Just don’t bring it on yourself.”
: And now we’re Roy again. I’m very surprised we didn’t have to backtrack through Road of Birds again.
: Our next destination is the poorly-signposted Narrow Way.
: It’s like, two screens long.
: See that little black thing following Mark? That’s a random encounter with enemies. Our next stop is the graveyard, because there is a hilariously broken sidequest there.
: The graveyard is fucking huge and also full of graves for what I assume are family members of the devs.
: The only reference I could find was a grave for Harry Mason, the protagonist of Silent Hill 1 who later dies in Silent Hill 3. Fuck you, Allanson! Keep your hands off Silent Hill!
: There’s a grave to the left of the entrance that has a key in it. It’s not immediately obvious what this does.
: There’s also one to the north-east that has a collectible in it.
TYPO COUNTER: 34
: I wasn’t sure about the names on the graves until I saw this one and a couple near it with the name “Alfaro”. Jose Alfaro and Tony Manfredonia were both composers on this game. They also did work for YIIK. We’ll talk about them in the post-mortem I’ll work on immediately after this update.
: If you have the Graveyard Key, Roy will stay here until it gets dark.
: There’s two underground mausoleums that will unlock, one in the north-east and one in the south-west. I think you have to do this one first but I didn’t really check.
: There’s another bottle mermaid to Roy’s left, but that’s not why we’re here.
: In one of the corners, kind of on the north-west side, is this jar that’s spewing smoke. You’re supposed to break it and fight a bunch of skeletons, but I had the spear equipped and couldn’t break it.
: These skeletons are different in that they throw fireballs and also are vulnerable to arrows when regular skeletons are not. I had to die and come back with the axe to finish them. By the way, if you die after destroying the jar, it resets your progress on the sidequest.
: The second mausoleum has a chest with a sidequest item in it. It’s through a gate which looks like it needs a switch to open, but you can just walk right through it.
: There’s also a great heart we can eat to bring our health maximum to either 120 or 140. I lost count. One thing I should mention: you see that sarcophagus behind Roy? If you hit those, skeletons come out. The thing is, the skeletons that come out aren’t always visible, so you can die from invisible skeletons.
: Once we destroy the jar in the second mausoleum (I forgot to capture it but it’s exactly the same) we can go to.. a hole in front of Fucking Wife’s grave.
: This is the “Fallen Hero”. He’s a boss without a health bar who sits in one spot and does nothing. I’m not even kidding.
: He has an orbiting skull that will damage you if it hits you, but.. other than that? He won’t move, won’t attack, and won’t do much of anything. He’s also immune to Roy’s attacks.
: You can damage him by pushing one of these bomb things near him. It has to be within a certain pixel range, and if you go too close the bomb teleports back to its starting location. You then have to finagle Roy into a spot where it’ll trigger the boss to raise his scythe.
: He’ll then charge forward into the bomb and take damage. The thing is, not all statues have bombs on them. It took me a second to realize this.
: You have to do this four times before he gives up. Now, you might ask why we couldn’t just trigger his attack and then swap places since the bombs are mounted on arrow statues - and the reason is that if you go too far away he drops his scythe immediately and just goes back to sitting still.
: “Who… what are you?”
: “I am.. I was a great warrior and a member of a sacred order. Our brotherhood wandered the realms maintaining peace, and protecting the innocent.”
: “When we discovered this land, our leader sensed the importance that it would play in the future. The task fell to me to guard this land, until such a time came when I was no longer needed.”
: “However, over the course of the years I grew restless and angry. Eventually my brothers returned, but our commander said that the events had not yet come to pass.”
: “As they turned to abandon me once more, I lashed out in my anger and murdered my leader.”
TYPO COUNTER: 35
TYPO COUNTER: 36 (2x Typo Combo!)
: “As the darkness closed in I swore that one day I would return to get my revenge. You asked who I am. I am an oath breaker, and murderer. I am the soul of the nobel warrior that I once was.”
TYPO COUNTER: 37 (3x Typo Combo!)
: “By defeating me you have helped me to finally overcome the anger that consumed who I was. The sun is about to rise, and when it does all the damage that was done above will be undone.”
: “I will finally move on. But before I do I ask that you take my old weapon.”
TYPO COUNTER: 38
TYPO COUNTER: 40 (3x Typo Combo!)
: I’m glad I did this to rack up the typo count, if nothing else. The scythe is special in that it’s a “color weapon”. As far as I can tell, that means nothing since I think all the weapons in this game actually do the same damage.
: Next time, we’ll progress with the “story” and uh, probably see some more softlocks and two dozen typos or something.