: After a long… five minutes or so of job searching, Alex returns home in the middle of the day to go to bed, which is perfectly normal for someone in their twenties. But first, the phone!
: “I couldn’t deal with this. I was going to unplug this phone. I winced every time the stupid thing rang.”
: I like how the developers were just too goddamn lazy to make a reskin of Alex in pajamas, or just a blanket or something.
: “It was a weird dream - the sort of dream that shouldn’t be scary because the imagery is actually pretty tame.”
: “But still, no matter what I did, I just couldn’t shake the feeling the dream gave me the next morning.”
: “Yes, we are. You and I. We observe her motionless form, and discuss the state of her condition.”
: Okay, wait, what the fuck? Since when does the player have any agency whatsoever in this game? Are they trying to “compensate” for the way Alex has no character motivation by just saying “oh he’s like that because you’re controlling him”?
I could understand if this was a thing that had been done throughout the game, like in Baten Kaitos where you’re playing not as the protagonist but as yourself, but to call it up now out of fucking nowhere as if we’ve had any kind of agency AT ALL is just… bad.
: “We’re not doctors in the dream. We have no intention of helping her. But at the same time, I don’t think we want to hurt her.”
: “There is a third person there, but she doesn’t speak. In fact, we never see her face. I think she is judging us. In a way, you and I are trying to impress her.”
: I’m obviously not going to replay the entire game just to get to this point again, but I know when I did the opening the second time (with people’s input) I randomed the gender question and it landed on female.
: The other thing I think I hate about this is that he implies the viewer isn’t normally female, which I can imagine is probably really offensive to trans people.
: Oh look, it’s that entity from the jump scares that happened a few times earlier on. This is another design decision where I just want to shake the developer and go “What the everloving fuck were you thinking when you did this?”
: So for starters, this part is incredibly counterintuitive. I wound up Mike Dawsoning my way out of it. What we have to do, for no obvious reason, is go to the kitchen.
: “I don’t know if you’ve noticed. I certainly did. In fact, I’d been trying to ignore it all along.”
: “It followed me around. It was lurking in the corner of my eyes at all times.”
: What I also hate about this is that he makes this thing seem scary when they go on and tell you it isn’t really MEANT to be scary.
: “I don’t think that was it. Something told me the figure wasn’t bad. It had been here a while. Haven’t you noticed it?”
: “It had been here since I returned home from college. Maybe even before.”
: The thing is, I’m pretty sure I know what this thing is meant to be. It’s his mother’s Soul Survivor. You can tell because it goes into all these places we can imagine Alex’s mother going (it sits on the couch in the same spot she was, and goes to places you can imagine her going). Keep in mind that pretty much everything I knew about this game in advance happened before the Golden Alpaca fight. I know NOTHING about the plot.
: And if it’s his mother’s Soul Survivor, I’m guessing that means his mother is like Vella, which means this is rapidly turning into Ni no Kuni 1.
: “I think I needed to speak with it. It was materialized. It was no longer transparent. Was it an entity? Why the hell was it living in my house?”
: That’s another thing I don’t get. If you knew this thing was in your house, why would you not tell Vella about it?
: “This isn’t even a real TV show!! DO YOU EVEN SPEAK ENGLISH!?”
: “Strong silent type, I see. Okay, what to do, what to do?”
: This is where shit gets even more confusing. You’d think that we’d want to leave the house. Instead, we want to go to Alex’s bedroom.
: Then, we want to bring the ghost to the kitchen, where the back door is mysteriously open.
: Remember when I said we weren’t supposed to be at the radio station yet? The reason I knew is because I had recorded this part before the last update hit. Thankfully, this means it’ll be way less of a pain in the ass with all of the “puzzles” solved and enemies dead.
: The maze is somehow more annoying the second time, because you have to follow the ghost. Every few seconds, it’ll stop and do a 5 or 6 second animation of it teleporting short distances to show you where to go. Shit’s irritating.
: “Everything came down to this night, in the end – what I would do next, you know.”
: “I didn’t have to follow the entity here, but I’m glad I did.”
: “I couldn’t imagine life if I hadn’t, but maybe there wouldn’t be life if I hadn’t.”
: Alex acting like he’s a generic Chosen One.
: And of course, more self-fellation by the Allanson brothers.
: “I knew what the entity wanted. It wanted me to play the record, to drop the needle, to broadcast the lush and soaring tunes of this masterful LP for the world to hear.”
: “Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself. I didn’t know that exactly, but I had my suspicions.”
: “Hey, not my fault. Do you know where it is? Does it have to be this record? What about one of the others?”
: “You CAN talk. Okay, fair enough, what do you want me to do?”
: “Oh great, now you’re mute! Look, I’ll swing into town in the morning and see if they have this record, this ‘Mystical Ultima LP Legend’ or whatever.”
: Well, let’s see. He’s a manchild, a complete douchenozzle, a blatant author self-insert…
: “Hey, don’t pretend that you wouldn’t have done the same! It’s, like, morbid curiosity and whatnot.”
: “I wanted to see what it wanted, why it’s been living with us.”
: "Har har. So, I’m going to go knock on Michael’s door and swing to town, see if I can find this ‘Mystical Ultima LP Legend’ ".
: No! That’s the entire point! Alex is a completely unlikable asshole! He’s Mao from Disgaea 3 only worse!
: “Hey, easy. Why are you always trying to make me feel bad? Anyway, I’ll pay him a visit. You’ll see. No one is mad at me. They’ve just been busy.”
: Well, let’s just go to Michael’s house, which the game pointed out to us is right next door, and…
: You know, this image of four Alexes in hoods surrounding a character from an over-rated JRPG is kind of like a one-image summary of how this game was written.
: I don’t really like FF7 anymore - not since Square-Enix tried to turn it into a multimedia franchise with movies and shit. Advent Children was a goddamn mistake, so was Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis Core. Still, this just offends me. The hooded Alexes do have stuff to say and disappear once you’ve talked to all of them but fuck that nonsense.
: Let’s just advance the plot, and…
: I think this is supposed to be something to freak the player out, but my first thought was that Michael hired a girl to answer his door and tell Alex that he never lived here.
: “That was weird. I’ve known Michael forever, and I swear to God he always lived in that house. I needed to relax. I was letting all the paranormal get to me.”
: Technically, the house next door is Alex’s house, but we want this one.
: “Nothing to worry about, see? Stupid Panda. He’s just sick, probably.”
: You might think we want to go see Vella or something, but we want to go to the record store first.
: “Let me check. Na, we don’t have it. It’s like - yeah, I think it’s like, sold out, dude.”
: “Damn. Okay, anyway, can you order it?”
: “Uh, the manager has to do that.”
: “But don’t you pick the indie music here? You literally just said that.”
: “Hey man, lay off. Look, if you want something good, you can check out the Wind Town music shop.”
: Oh look, the Allansons got 1999 confused with 1950 again.
: “Hey, what do you want?”
: “Can you get away from work for a bit? It’s, like – it’s about Sammy, and the entities, and all that stuff.”
: “How long do I need to be away for?”
: “Not long. Just need to run to Wind Town! So like, 3-4 hours, tops?”
: “Are you serious? Y – you want me to just walk away from my job for 3-4 hours?”
: What a fucking asshole!
: “I need the money, Alex.”
: “Hey, I’ll pay you. What do you make an hour? Like minimum wage? I’ll give you the $30.”
: What’s funny is, not only is Alex an asshole but also they’re wrong on the amount. The federal minimum wage in 1999 was $5.15 an hour, meaning it’d be more like $20.
: “Alex, you don’t get it, do you? You have no idea what hard work is. You don’t get having a purpose besides your own stupid whims.”
: Wait, what? What the fuck? This game takes place in fucking New Jersey? Okay, so, hopefully there’s someone reading this who is good at game modding. Can you please, for the love of God, make a mod for this game that replaces all of the characters with the cast of Jersey Shore? And also edit the dialog so it’s in that accent they all have?
: “Sure, it got my DDR game to be amazing, but I’m used to honing my skills to something with more of a purpose.”
: “One day, Alex, when you finally GET A JOB, you’ll understand how everything can’t be ‘conspiracies’ and ‘missing mysterious girls’ all the time!!!”
: “Okay. Yeah, I get it.”
: By the way, this LP is sponsored by Uncle Charlie’s Quality Used Cars of North Bergen, New Jersey. Uncle Charlie’s - best used cars allowed by state law! Now only 51% mafia-owned! You need a car? Come see Uncle Charlie. You need someone whacked? Come see Uncle Charlie!
: “No, I get it. That’s how you feel about me. Nothing I can do to change it.”
: I’ve read some things by the people who accuse Chris Niosi of abusing them, and this sounds EXACTLY like something he’d do.
: “Get over yourself, Alex. Could you be any more of an entitled little brat!?”
: “Last night an entity was in my house. I followed it to an old radio tower, and there I found THIS.”
: “…What the hell?!”
: “Yeah, the entity was IN MY HOUSE --”
: “No, not that. I don’t care about that. That happens all the time.”
: “This – this has to be a joke. Are you screwing with me? Where did you get that?”
: “I told you, it was in the radio tower.”
: “But HOW did it get HERE?”
: “What? I–”
: “But don’t you think this is all connected? Sammy vanishing, me meeting you, Rory, the entity appearing in my house!?”
: “Sometimes a record is just a record and an entity just lives in your house. Don’t try and connect everything together like there is some giant cosmic plan.”
: “Look, don’t look for that record.”
: “Oh, I’m going to. You really can’t stop me.”
: “I–”
: “If you find it, just leave me out of it. I want nothing to do with it.”
: “What, do you like, really REALLY hate this band or something?”
: “Alex, just get the hell out of here. I don’t want to see you for a while.”
: “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
: “What do you mean?”
: “Your mom said you’ve been under the weather when I stopped by this morning.”
: “Oh, yeah. cough What’re you up to?”
: “While we’re there, why don’t we stop in and check on Rory? Make sure he doesn’t hate y- our guts.”
: “I almost got defensive. I almost pointed out how Rory endangered our lives with his stupid attention-seeking lie, but I let it go. At least externally.”
: So, on the way to Wind Town, I found a glitch that is going to give us a pretty significant (read: six level-ups) power boost. I was able to replicate it through reloading my save and replaying this part.
: See that little grove of trees directly south of Wind Town? That’s where the glitch occurs. The glitch only exists while the game is in this specific state: if we go to Wind Town (or go back to Frankton) it won’t be there when we come back.
: Around that area, there’s a number of random encounters - which as far as I understood it was something that wasn’t supposed to happen in this game. These enemies are level 15.
: There’s also these crown rats, which do significantly more damage - they hit Alex for 7 if he doesn’t dodge. Thankfully, all I had to do was LP toss at them and they died.
: What I noticed is that the encounters do a cycle: you hit the group of two rats and a smile, then the crown rats, then an encounter with a bat and two shit piles. I was able to get six full level-ups out of this, bringing Michael to level 21.
: “Want to hit up the record place, and if we have time go see Rory?”
: “Uh, I think we should see Rory first since that’s more important. Geez, dude.”
: “I’ve got the record jacket, but not the record. Any idea if it’s in stock?”
: “Mystical Ultima LP Legend… that hast o be by far one of the greatest records ever recorded. It’s other-worldly.”
: “So you’ve heard of it!?”
: “No man, that’s out there. In the ether. That sounds like it’s from a different world. Just by the name alone I can tell it’s amazing.”
: “Any idea where we can get it? Can’t you like, order us a copy or something?”
: “Let me check the record catalog. Does it have to be on vinyl?”
: “I don’t really care. I suppose I’d prefer it to be. More of an authentic sound, you know?”
: I’d just like to point out that I have David Bowie’s entire discography in FLACs that were ripped from vinyls by some German guy with too much time on his hands. The files are over 1GB each and sound no different than a regular-ass FLAC rip of a CD.
: “Yeah, but only if you’re playing from a tube amp. You have a tube amp, right? If you don’t, it’s like you’re only --”
: “Hearing half the song!”
: These dumbfucks remind me of this picture I saw once from an “audiophile convention” where they had a setup with cables that had roughly three foot thick shielding on them. Shit was fucking insane.
: “Hmm… uh, yeah. We don’t have it in our catalog. But we have two sister stores that probably will. They’re both East of here. If they don’t have it, I KNOW they’ll at least know where to get it.”
: “A quest for great music is always a worthy one, man. I think you’ll find this is worth it in the end.”
: “So they’re both East of here? Any specific directions?”
: “There is a strip mall east of here. That’s the closest one. The one after that is Northeast a bit. It’s a standalone building. It’s our flagship store, so I doubt you’ll miss it. Good luck, guys!”
: “He doesn’t get a lot of visitors. Why don’t you come inside?”
: “Oh, you guys. Yeah, Mom. I’m gonna take them downstairs. Come on.”
: “You sure you don’t want to come in and have something to eat?”
: “Leave them alone, Mom!”
: “Wow, Rory! Your mom is all legs.”
: This… is this supposed to be a joke? I’m pretty sure this is supposed to be a reference to Welcome to Night Vale, which makes sense because that podcast sucks.
: I picked the top option because we all know that’s what Alex’s VA tried to do IRL.
: “Look man, I was out of line the other day. I was scared. I don’t know what came over me. So I’m hoping you can forgive me, and we can be friends.”
: “Also, I was wrong to lie to you guys. You had a valid point.”
: “So, we’re trying to track down this record. You want to come with us?”
: Oh boy, Rory’s back! Hooray. I fucking hate him, and how much fucking pointless dialogue there is this update. I really hope you’re enjoying all this pointless dialogue, by the way, because guess what the next 30 minutes of this game is?
Next time, we’ll watch half an hour of pointless cutscenes, visit a new town, get two new party members, and… maybe find the plot? In any case, I accidentally posted half this update early and I don’t feel like transcribing the rest of this trash right now.