Well, this sure is a grim way to start a game. There’s a lot of animations here that I couldn’t accurately capture with screenshots, so I made a video!
Not even a minute into the game and we’re already dead and talking to a teddy bear. Even the protagonist of Demon’s Souls lasted longer - not by much, mind you, but still longer.
… And now we’re in a room with some random kid. What the hell is going on here?
: “I mean… welcome back.” : “Come over here to talk to me. Telepathy wears me out.” : “Yeah… I’d be confused if I were you. How much do you remember?” : “… … ..” : “Nothing, huh? Well, I have some bad news. You’re dead. In fact, you were murdered.” : “But, your soul hung on to this world. And before it faded away completely, I brought it back.” : “It was actually really close… I almost failed.”
Kid, I think something bad has ALREADY happened to someone on this ship.
: “I don’t know how, but we’re heading into a living nightmare.” : “I can’t prevent it from happening myself. I’m just a kid, and the other adults won’t listen to me.”
So this is the part where he tells us we have to go use the Nexus to get our body back and then go slay some demons, right? That’s always how this kind of thing goes.
: “Not having a body has its perks, though.” : “You might be able to get inside people. Read their minds, take control of them.” : “If you can use other people to investigate, you might be able to figure out who killed you, and why.”
A cat jumps down through an air vent in the wall, and we’re introduced to this game’s main schtick: using other people’s bodies for fun and profit.
By moving on top of people, the ghost can possess them by quickly tapping the possession button. There’s actually a bit of a sequence break we could do here - but for sake of completion, I’m not going to do it.
There are two levels of possession, which are kind of poorly named. For sake of clarity, I’m going to call one method “quick possession” and the other “total control”. Paulo has a pretty good explanation for how it works.
: “But if you understand a person at a basic level, you should still be able to influence them.” : “You could guide them along and nudge them to do things, but you would be sharing their body, not stealing it.” : “For example, you wouldn’t be able to use their voice to talk about things they have no awareness of.” : “However, if you completely understand someone’s will, you should be able to take full control of them.” : “You could hijack their body and speak through their voice. I don’t expect that level of control would come easily, though.”
So, remember how I said in the title post that while this game has a really neat concept, the writing isn’t always where it should be? The possession mechanic is one of the few things that kind of doesn’t make a lot of sense - you’ll see what I mean later on, when we get to possessing actual people.
: “As expected, something as simple as a cat would be easy to take control of.” : “Well? How do you like your new body?” : “Admittedly, it will be hard to do much if you can’t even speak English…” : “But you will need it to leave this room.”
So as a ghost, we have another mechanic that only really applies to this particular room. Due to the ghost’s fragile connection to reality, we can’t simply phase through the door to Paulo’s room.
: “I’d open the door for you, but I think it’s important that you get the hang of doing things on your own.”
With that, we have everything we need to leave this room.
Each possessable character has a special ability. The cat actually has two: it can fit through small spaces (including the air vents) and it can jump. The special abilities are sadly kind of under-utilized: they only really matter a handful of times, but it’s still kind of a neat addition.
As soon as we exit the air vent, the music changes to something much more upbeat.
A random blonde-haired man spaces out to music in the middle of a hallway.
Meet Alton. Alton is a random-ass DJ.. who works on a ferry for some reason. The other guy, Marcurio, is the ship’s head chef.
: “You are? What’s going on?” : “Oh. Uh, nothing. Nothing really. You finished up at the diner?” : “Pretty much, dinner hours are over. I’m gonna go back up and clean the kitchen, though.” : “You really like staying in the kitchen after hours, huh? I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen you turn in.” : "My shift in the observation room is over, so I’m gonna kick back and relax!’ : “Was there something you needed?” : “Oh, that’s right, I just remembered. I was looking for Sue. She’s probably off hours too, right?” : “Yeah, of course.” : “Any idea where she went?” : “No.” : “Oh, okay. I just thought… she looked kind of upset earlier today, didn’t she?” : “Maybe. I wouldn’t know.” : “I was just curious what was up.” : “Probably nothing.” : “Oh. Well, maybe I’ll stop by her room to check on her, just in case.” : “Knock yourself out. I’m going to clean the kitchen now.” : “Would that be weird? I don’t know…”
Alton then goes upstairs to find Sue, leaving the cat to prowl around the lower deck of the ship.
Just north of where we encountered Alton is the rest room. The rest room is this game’s equivalent of the hint stand from Earthbound - but for right now, there’s an obvious thing we should be doing. Also, notice the little signs and pieces of paper underneath each door. Someone with the initial “-F” has signed notes under most of the doors leading to occupied rooms telling us who is in each room. Unfortunately, the only door we can open as the cat is the one we came out of Paulo’s room from. Speaking of which, Paulo barricades his door immediately after talking to us. None of the human characters can enter his room - only the ghost itself or the cat can.
Anyway, let’s just follow Alton upstairs, and..
We unlock our first possessable character! Alton is about as useful as you’d expect a DJ to be on a ship - that’s not to say he’s a badly written character, it’s just that he’s among the least useful gameplay wise.
His special ability is the one shared by all millennials - putting on his headphones and standing around.
Picking “Something Upbeat” changes the music back to the main theme that plays throughout the ship - it’s the one I linked to above that you should probably listen to. Picking “Something Modern” on the other hand..
Next time, we’ll go check on Sue and see what life is like as a DJ aboard a cruise ship.
The OST is freely available from the composer’s Bandcamp page. The songs are good, but they get way overused.