YIIKES! Let's Dunk on YIIK: A Plagiarism RPG

[Timrod]

: We’ve got a very lengthy cutscene coming up, so I figured what I’d show first is finishing the sidequest. There’s two solutions to it: you can either deliver it to a guy in South Town, or deliver it to an identical guy standing outside the university. As it turns out, the cutscenes are basically the same save for one detail.

: As with everything else in this game, the cutscene is stupidly overwritten, so I’ll pare it down a bit.

: “She wanted you to have this.”

: The reward for finishing it the other way is identical, only her “soul is finally free”. Whatever. This will bring our party up to level 25 - though I could go higher if I felt like clearing out all the monster dens.

: Back outside of the tunnel dungeon, we find a single cabin on top of the mountain. As it turns out, I’m pretty sure you can’t come back here without going through the whole dungeon again. There’s a few chests around with money in them.

: Strangely, the game starts using this other chest model and I don’t know why.

: I know this is supposed to be based off some celebrity, only I don’t know who.

: “And Chondra, did you get even more beautiful? Always changing for the better, you two.”

: “I brought my friends Alex, Michael, and Rory, with me. They wanted to check out your record collection and see if you could help them locate an album.”

: I like how they not only do an Oxford comma in that last line, but add one after Rory for no apparent reason.

: Thanks for reiterating that, Claudio, I might’ve forgotten the plot thread we’ve been following for the last hour.

: “We’ve been looking for it for a while… we’ve been to literally ten record shops. Claudio says you’ve got quite the collection?”

: “I do indeed. So what sort of music interests young people these days?”

: “Err… I mean, I’m not really into metal. I mean, it’s cool.”

: “That’s more of Vella’s thing I think… with the eyeliner and choker.”

: “Who is this enchanting young woman…? Is she here as well?”

: “Nah, she isn’t here. She threw a hissy fit when she found out we were looking for this record.”

: “Hissy fit…? Do people even say that?”

: Mark sounds like a creep, but also no, the last time I heard someone say hissy fit it was a 60+ year old elementary school teacher.

: “I don’t believe they do. So what sort of music are you into, Alex?”

: I have absolutely no idea what the fuck he’s talking about.

: “Ah, I don’t think I have anything like that. Perhaps you’ve noticed my collection of guitars?”

: “Yeah, I think I saw it on my way in. Do you play?”

: “I do.”

: What I like about this is how the Allansons were either on too tight of a budget or maybe were just too lazy to get the artist who did the portraits for this to do one of Chondra where she’s not doing a weird arm stretch thing.

: “That was long before you could even walk. Hell, I was a kid then.”

: “THE POWER OF METAL UNITES ALL.”

: “You see, heavy metal is the aural manifestation of all things good and powerful in this world.”

: This sounds like a line they probably ripped from that Metalocalypse show or whatever. I never watched any of that.

: Uh… what?

: “With the power of the metal gods channeling through my guitar strings, I was able to bring peace and prosperity to the Middle East!”

: “Well, he got our cousin home.”

: “Yes, I did. Okay, I got ahead of myself. I brought peace to one family, whose son had been taken captive. It’s a harrowing tale filled with adventure and intrigue!”

: I hate Mark so fucking much. I didn’t think it was possible to be a bigger tool than Alex, but clearly I was wrong.

: “Yeah, I don’t know if we really have time for that… and besides, like I said, I’m not really all that into metal. With all the… bad fashions… and… teased hair. It’s all so… '80s.”

: Yes, this is the 90s, when music was about things.

: “Yeah, I’m going to pretend that you don’t mean to imply that heavy metal can’t be about things. Clearly you have never heard the soaring scream of the guitar paired in a perfect counterpart to an orchestra, accompanied by the sound of a trillion angels.”

: “You, my dear boy, must listen to my greatest hit: 'Murder Run: … and Melancholia Reigns Unbroken.”

: “It’s a lot less depressing than it sounds. All of Mark’s music is like that. He has albums and albums filled with skeletons and decaying corpses, but somehow he manages to make music that speaks to the soul.”

: You might ask where they’re going with all this, and the answer is absolutely fucking nowhere. In fact, this entire cutscene is about to drop in relevance again.

: “One of Mark’s tracks were featured in some pretty great animes!”

: No, I’m not having a stroke, the grammar in that last sentence makes no sense.

: “Dragon of Thy Delusion and Powered by Delirium were featured in my second-favorite anime Panic! Control.”

: Why. Just why.

: “This is something I only bring out when friends are over. It’s called Da Hong Pao. It’s a world-famous tea, exceptionally rare and difficult to come by.”

: I sure do love repeating things with slightly different phrasing in the same sentence.

: “The bushes that produced this tea are reportedly over 1,000 years old. Make sure you don’t spill a drop. This is very special tea.”

: This reminds me of a scene in The Water Margin where a couple of the protagonists are at an inn and complimenting the owner on her meat dumplings only to find out that she’s a cannibal.

: “Where did you get this? It’s amazing.”

: “It is amazing right? Can’t explain to you in detail how all these circumstances are related. It would be a very long, and very complicated story. And I mean no disrespect to you when I say this, it would be virtually impossible for you at this stage, young man, to understand.”

: Great! Way to pivot and end this stupid off-topic conversation that has no bearing on the plot of the game. Just what I like to see-

: Nope, he’s gonna fucking do it anyway! Fuck you, Andrew Allanson! Prepare for something that sounds like it came out of a Rudyard Kipling novel published in 1914.

: “I had a partner, a very good man, who became ill in his mid-thirties. At the time, I considered myself to be very worldly. I lived for the dirt under my feet, but I also did not believe in the supernatural in any form.”

: “Alas, my partner came down with a severe stomach cancer that began to claim his life. He was a spiritual man, one might say, and he believed in miracles. His faith and failing body led to the ending of our friendship.”

: Oh, phew. For a minute, I thought they might’ve written a gay character into the plot, but they sure dodged that bullet.

: “He was gone for many weeks when I received a letter from him. The letter was scribbled in the handwriting of a dying man. It featured coordinates, that upon further inspection in my atlas, proved to be in the mountains of India. So I began my journey.”

: “At the top, I found my friend - my friend, who only a few weeks ago had been on the brink of death, had been cured through the power of water.”

: This story is, I’m pretty sure, stolen wholesale from… I think Roald Dahl, but I might be wrong on that. All I remember is reading a story once where the main character was British and went to India to learn of the mystic powers of yoga or some shit and was told he couldn’t use them for personal gain but then did so anyway. If I remember right it ends with him using it to stop himself having a stroke.

: “The water boiled in the particular style of pots, created by the Doddabetta Yogis, is said to have amazing healing powers. Now, when my friend had regained his strength tenfold, I was in shock.”

: “I longed to take a sample of this drink back to an American laboratory where it would be tested and ultimately turned into a cure.”

: “But I was told that the last bush bearing the tea had burnt up in a forest fire. Naturally, I demanded proof.”

: … Didn’t you just say they used water?

: “There was no evidence that any such fire ever occurred. Angered, furious, and on the point of striking the Yogis, my friend had to take me away.”

: Also, is it just me or does Mark have a Hitler moustache?

: “In India, I’ve always felt an incredible glow of joy. On our last day, before we were to return, the earth gave out beneath my feet and I was stuck.”

: “Soon a storm came. The storm was so bad I feared it would wipe away the mountain, and I would be stuck in a landslide.”

: And then what, you had to sail through the changing ocean tides and handle the seasons of your life?

: No! No, they really don’t! None of this is at all interesting! At best, you’re plagiarizing Roald Dahl. At worst, it’s fucking boring and pointless!

: I think we just found the main backer of the Juicero right here.

:“I believe I would have died on that mountain had it not been for him. I hold true to the fact that he survived his cancer so he could save me.”

: “Wow. That’s a fascinating story, man. Really, this is an amazing cup of tea.”

: “Yeah. You know, it’s valued at $3,000 an ounce.”

: choking

: Remember Michael, guys? The character who was struggling to be relevant even when he was our only party member? And here I thought Ni no Kuni 2 did a bad job keeping characters relevant.

: “So what did you kids come for? How can I help you?”

: “That name - it sounds so familiar. How did you find out about this mystical LP?”

: “I found the jacket - here, I have it with me.”

: “Yes. But didn’t you know this already? It’s on the cover. Did you even read it?”

: “I, uh–”

: “Suddenly, everything made sense. Well, at least a little bit of sense - Vella, the keytar, her ability to fight with sound. Clearly she was a musician and the creator of this record. How stupid I had been. I told her about the record and she must have assumed I’d read the title closely. Vella Wilde, probably a stage name.”

: “Did I say something wrong? You uh, kinda stopped talking there for a while, and looked all deep in thought.”

: “I just realized something.”

: The Allansons weren’t going to draw a line at ripping off Personas 3 and 4. No, they’re going to rip off Persona 5 as well. As soon as that first line comes out, the Mind Dungeon music starts playing in the background.

: “Damn. So you don’t have it?”

: “No, how could I? It hasn’t come out yet. Check the date on the back of it. See the sticker? Do not sell until January 1st, 2000. Since I’m not a time traveler - well, at least not in this life - I couldn’t possibly have this record.”

: Stop it! Stop fucking doing that!

: “You kids should pay closer attention to your record jackets. They have lots of useful information on them!”

: “Thanks a lot, Mark. I know where to find this record now.”

: “WHAT!? YOU DO!? HOW?”

: So, what’s about to follow is a pointless recap that takes… about 15 or 16 text boxes up. I’m going to skip it, because I think we’ve all had just about enough of this game repeating itself.

: “Got on his bike one day to go to our neighbor’s, seven houses up the street, and he just vanished.”

: “Never came back. We looked for him for months. Dad never stopped. Still hands out flyers at the grocery store every Sunday. He even got an artist to draw him aged.”

: “Were there ever any leads or anything?”

: “No one really ever investigated it. Sure, they looked around for him, and for a week they had a task force. They had one guy they suspected, but every lead fell through.”

: “Yeah, it’s just – it’s complicated, Alex.”

: “I don’t remember this being on the news or anything and you’re from Wind Town, right? That’s like an hour outside of Frankton. How the hell didn’t this get national coverage?”

: “Isn’t it obvious, man? Same reason no one gives a shit about Semi ‘Sammy’ Pak.”

: “I’m sure if Aaron had been a beautiful white woman, everyone would have cared that he vanished. Everyone would have had a candlelight vigil and a moment of silence, but that’s just not how these things work.”

: Or, you know, the fact that Sammy was dead the entire time.

: I’m also not really sure why Claudio and Chondra both exist as separate characters. I feel like they could’ve been combined into one.

: “Alex, don’t you think Sammy’s parents tried to get some attention for their daughter’s disappearance? It’s not that easy. Those people you see on TV are the people who can make a great story for the press.”

: This could easily be another tagline for this game. “YIIK: I don’t think I ever gave it any thought.”

: “Yeah, man. That’s just how they get away with it. People like you don’t think about it. And people like us? It’s all we ever get to think about: where our kid brothers went.”

: Typo count: 6+

: “And they aren’t really talking about it for awareness. You guys get off on it in a way, don’t you? Some fantasy about being the white knight swooping in and saving the exotic Korean girl. Phftt.”

: “Haha. Easy now. Okay okay, let’s go find this record!!! Where uh, do we do that again?”

: This turned out to be another one of those “What does Denny do?” conversations. Note that Alex hasn’t said shit about where the record is.

: “Not a day goes by where I don’t think about him. And you know what’s really funny? I don’t even remember what he looks like. We have a few old photos, but most of them he just looks like every other kid to me.”

: “Round faced, happy, playing video games or falling off a bike.”

: “You don’t remember ANYTHING about him?”

: “No, I don’t think so. I think I only remember what people tell me about him. And you know what’s funny? He was my twin brother. I was a minute older than him.”

: "Claudio still gets frustrated with me sometimes. ‘You’re his twin, can’t you feel him out there!?’ or ‘Don’t you have special twin powers that let you know if he’s in pain!?’ "

: No, because then it’d be that movie “I Know Who Killed Me” with post-drug issues Lindsay Lohan. I’ve seen parts of it.

: “I don’t believe in that stuff. Well, not usually. Sometimes I do. It’s in those moments that I really do think he isn’t out there anymore. If there was a connection, I’d feel something.”

: “And since there is nothing there, he must be gone. Sometimes people just vanish. They’re there one moment and gone the next. Bad people take them. They fall into sewers. But life has to move on.”

: “It’s harder for my parents, I think, since they made him and whatever. But Claudio? I don’t think he’ll ever move on. It’s all he thinks about.”

: …huh? Oh, I’m sorry, I must’ve fallen asleep during that goddamn shit conversation. Let’s just keep going. Maybe if I keep believing, this game will have actual gameplay and stop being the equivalent of a Neil Breen movie. By the way, we’re over seven hours into this game now.

: The fastest route to Frankton is going to Flag Town and taking the bus.

: “As I walked across the chewing gum and popcorn-covered floor, I imagined what the title of my quest would be if my life was a video game.”

: The Adventures of Dipshit Man, the Most Boring Man in the Universe.

: “Quickly it was becoming ‘Apology Quest’ or ‘Legend of Please Forgive Me’.”

: Douchebag no Densetsu: Fushigi no “Why Does this Game Exist” no Nazo.

: “I wondered how many other people I’d have to say I’m sorry to before I found Sammy, if that’s even where life was taking me.”

: Life’s taking you straight into a dumpster, where you belong.

: Lately, Sammy was not at the forefront of my thoughts. I wanted to find her, and I really wanted her to be safe."

: Typos: 7.

: “I came here to say I’m sorry. In my infinite arrogance and constant thinking of myself I didn’t look at the record properly.”

: “I had no idea you created it. I had no idea it would upset you. So basically, if you’ll still be my friend, I’d very much like that.”

: “Haha. Okay, great. I expected to do more begging.”

: “Don’t push your luck. Just let it go.”

: “They told her about their brother. Rory talked about his sister. Michael talked about his college fears. And I just listened. I never expected to find such an amazing group of friends so close to home. It was a great feeling.”

: You know what I could really go for right now? You know that scene in Hotline Miami 2 where it shows the bearded guy walking out of his store and right into a nuclear explosion? That, but with Alex.

: “And now came the tricky part - to ask her to go inside of the Mind Dungeon with me and look for the record.”

: “So, I was wondering if you could tell us about the record. The one you made.”

: “What’s there to tell? In my previous reality, I made a record. Pretty simple.”

: By the way, this DEFINITELY breaks the record for longest cutscene in this game so far. It’s well over 40 minutes long.

: “Can you tell us why a record jacket from the album you made in another reality that was set to be released next year was found in this reality?”

: It was right here that I was immediately able to predict exactly where this plot is going. Vella is from a dimension where Y2K ended the world. I haven’t read ahead in the plot, but I just know I’m right.

: “There are reasons I wanted to escape.”

: “Yeah, no, I get it. Just – I wonder if it’s somehow linked to everything going on.”

: “I’m telling you Alex, you’re looking for puzzle pieces where there is no puzzle. You’re talking like there is some cosmic plan here. What exactly do you think is going on here?”

: “It’s just – it’s all so weird. Sammy disappearing, me meeting you, then Rory, Chondra and Claudio. We’re all linked --”

: “Fine. If it will make you stop sulking, I’ll go with you into the Mind Dungeon. I’d like to know why my record is here myself.”

: “I’m a little confused here, guys. How the hell does Alex know the record is in your Mind Dungeon?”

: “Because I know she’s trying not to think about it, and the things we try not to think about always end up on our minds.”

: “That seems like more of a stretch than the link between Sammy and the record to me. But sure, I’ve got nothing else to do. Let’s get inside Vella’s head!”

We now have a choice. I levelled everyone (but Alex, because I’m hoping we can find more entities to farm for stat-ups) to 26. I’ll let the thread decide who to bring. If you really want to make me suffer, we can bring Rory and Chondra.

: In the meantime, let’s go do a little bit of scouting. I mean, how bad could it be?

: Gee, it sure is Persona 4 around here. As in, it’s a direct ripoff of the TV world.

: Okay, so far it looks… pretty much like a blatant ripoff of Persona 4, only not done nearly as well.

: There’s an NPC we can talk to by the stage, but I’ll wait until next time for that. Let’s just keep going left.

: FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK! Not only do I hate the fact that they associated VA-11 with this pile of garbage, but they have the stupid robot from Read Only Memories on there. ROM was basically the answer to the question “What if SNATCHER was shit?”

Next time, we’ll explore the TV world and attempt to find Teddie.

[Riley]

the hindsight with VA-11 HALL-A is particularly painful

I know this is supposed to be based off some celebrity, only I don’t know who.

who would be my guess too

[Chowder]

I was actually thinking Michael Bolton myself. With Kurt Cobain’s hair. Am I giving the devs too much credit for assuming it would be music-related given the context?

FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK! Not only do I hate the fact that they associated VA-11 with this pile of garbage, but they have the stupid robot from Read Only Memories on there. ROM was basically the answer to the question “What if SNATCHER was shit?”

You know what maybe your next project should be an LP of VA-11 Hall-A. The last time someone tried around here they found it as self-absorbed and thoughtless as you’re finding Yiik, and dull to boot; they had to give up partway through. Maybe someone who likes it can make it to the end, and explain why they find it engaging.

Don’t go shittin’ on ROM if you’re going to praise Valhalla though; it is certainly not without its flaws but if you said “one of these is going in the incinerator” I wouldn’t even wait for you to finish your sentence.

[Timrod]

The site ate my post edit a few times, but here’s a video version of everything that is in this update and then some.

: Vella’s Mind Dungeon is EXTREMELY badly designed, though they do exactly one neat thing in it. The first thing we want to do is talk to this assclown.

: The very first thing we want to do is come over here and drop the panda. The stage manager will give you a hint that you need to get in someone’s way. You’ll notice the Vella on a skateboard just above where Alex is. She skates around the table area on a pre-set path.

: For reference, I didn’t do this until after I had already visited all of the things that we need to do this for.

: “It’s too dangerous for me. I’m scarred for life now. Thanks for that.”

: The skateboard makes Alex move very quickly in one direction. The only problem is that he can’t stop until he hits something, but it’s pretty good for reducing travel times.

: There’s a total of nine doors in this dungeon (but not nine persons or nine hours, because that game was actually okay apart from the digital root gambit). There’s these two…

: Four over here…

: And three over here. We want to go into this red door first.

: The red door leads to a heal room, which will be very important due to how we want to handle all of the enemies in this dungeon. The chests have a new weapon for Vella and… I think money.

: The next door we want to do is this one. We only want to go halfway in right now - in the video I go all the way in which was a mistake.

: To the right is this dungeon’s gimmick: skateboard ramps. What we’re here for is behind that door.

: This is a key item we’ll need for… you can probably guess.

: This is the next door we want to handle, because it has a key item behind it and also because we only need to go inside once.

: Beyond the door is a generic horror movie set that is absolutely not 100% post-consumer recycled assets from Alex’s house, no sir.

: The bookcases in back have $5 each in them, and there’s a fight I simply had Alex LP Toss his way through. The way we set up Alex’s stats, LP toss will kill any enemy in this dungeon in one hit.

: Nothing important in here, but you can check the fridge for a couple of okay healing items.

: This is what we came here for.

: Next up is the dark blue door two north of the Sammy room. We want to skip the green one for now because there’s nothing we can do there yet.

: This room is so badly designed that the devs actually posted a guide on how to get through it. See those three switches on the floor? You’d think that we’d need to find something to put on one, then use Panda and Alex to press the other two. I already defeated all the enemies here, except…

: There’s a mimic. This one has about the same amount of HP but hits far less hard and far less often than the one in the last dungeon. Unfortunately, it only awards 10 EXP instead of 100.

: So anyway, when I tried this room the first time, I assumed that ladder in the back was supposed to be used to hold down the third switch. Nope! Let me show you the solution.

: What you have to do, against all common sense, is have the panda on one switch, Alex on another, and then use Dali to hit the last one. Considering that every other time we’ve ever had to hit a switch with Dali it was a toggle and not a weighted switch… yeah.

: From there, we put the ladder up against the staircase and drop the panda on that newly-spawned platform.

: It’s simply a matter of lining Alex up with the panda and skateboard jumping over the hole.

: The door brings us to the Vella room, which has all four of the musicians we need to find. The middle room you might recognize from those cutscenes with the hooded figures.

: “Do me a favor. When my solo comes up, turn the volume down. We can pretend it was a technical error. I hate having to do these stupid shows.”

: Now, there’s a sort of neat thing that isn’t at all original that the game does here. The background music for Vella’s mind dungeon changes slightly every time we find a new Vella. Bassist Vella changes it the least.

: Up next is the door directly north of the dark blue door we were just in. This is where we need the door piece we found in the Sammy room.

: We need to do this for one of the other doors. There’s like… fifteen textboxes of the baby crying, and I’m not going to transcribe that shit.

: Now we need to backtrack into the first room we were in. Jumping the first ramp brings us to this door, which is an event flag we need to set for a “puzzle” in that green door on the right side that we skipped.

So, I had the rest of this update done, and then the site ate my goddamn post edit. Second time this has happened to me. I’m just going to give this the Tim Fuckley treatment and gloss over everything. It’s funnier that way. Laugh at my goddamn pain.

: There’s three stupid plot flags we need to get in order to pass a quiz about Vella in one of the rooms. This is one of them.

: So anyway, earlier I said that I handled combat in a very particular way in this dungeon. That way is using LP Toss, which instantly kills anything it hits due to Alex’s high strength stat. He also has the highest PP of anyone in the party. By the way, I also found out that EP Strike is completely useless. It actually does less damage than LP Toss does, and only does it to a single target while at the same time costing 2 more PP. The formula here is “do battles until Alex runs out of PP, run to healing room, repeat”.

: At the end of the room, past a couple more skateboard jumps, is Bathtub Vella, who also happens to be the guitarist we need to find. We need the baby blanket to give her… so she can use it as a towel.

: One of the other doors has Drum Vella, who wants a drink.

: To finish this, we have to go to this robot that looks nothing like Jill Stingray from VA-11 Hall-A and… go clear a room of monsters. By the way, Jill would know that only three people work at the bar: her, Dana, and the guy whose name I forgot.

: The loading dock is through the door in the back. marked “EXIT”.

: This room is a big fuckoff maze and I hate it. We have to kill all the enemies (not a big deal) but also find two more plot flag Vellas to get quiz answers from. There’s a weapon in here somewhere I got on my first playthrough but forgot on this run - it’s garbage anyway. It’s a record for Alex that comes with -10 HP and doesn’t have as good of a combo potential.

: Vella is afraid of being fat. Haha it’s funny because the joke is that she puts on a complex appearance but in reality she’s such a basic bitch that you could use her to neutralize sulfuric acid.

: Also she dunks on Alex if you have him examine the scale.

: The fun part is that NOTHING IN THIS DUNGEON MATTERS. Vella is going to tell us her fucking life story the second we leave this dungeon, and none of this is at all relevant.

: What’s funny about this is how this cameo of Jill is absolutely nothing like what she’s like in her own game. This is a line she uses - to herself. In VA-11, she works as a bartender at a bar that is about to be closed by the giant international conglomerate that owns every bar in the world, and thus her entire job is pointless.

: I’m seriously considering taking this LP to SA and never looking back. Seriously, I had an ENTIRE UPDATE ready with dialog and everything and then the site ate it. Anyway, welcome to the shitty piano room which has no reason to exist. The hands damage you if they touch you but it doesn’t matter because by this point we’ve cleared every enemy out of the dungeon anyway.

: I had a joke here in my original update about how I wished this was like that Junji Ito story with the balloons that look like people and they try to hang the person they look like.

: Anyway, the stupid balloon asks three questions before we get through to the last Vella we need to collect. You can get these right but unless you have the plot flags set it doesn’t work.

: You know what this site needs? A thing like that LP Test Poster thing I can’t get because I don’t have an SA account, or at least a “Hey are you sure you want to post this?” prompt so I don’t wind up posting half the update early because my mouse fucks up.

: Pointless busy work! Is this Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean or what? I didn’t have a Baten Kaitos joke in this spot originally but I just read an LP of it and this is exactly the kind of thing that game would do only you’d have like 8 seconds to do it before the scale rots in your inventory and turns into a bird.

: I didn’t show it because again, it’s in the video and I just want this update to be over, but Vella (the real one) has to volunteer to sing because… I dunno. There’s an actual song here with vocals but they covered it with booing which is real fucking dumb.

: More importantly, once we do this, the curtains open. I have questions, questions like why couldn’t Vella just open that herself? Why is her mind dungeon so different from Alex’s? Why does this segment exist at all other than to be a Persona ripoff? Why is there no bossfight?

: Also why are there so many goddamn hooded Alexes here?

: Next update, we’ll finish this bullshit and then hit another 40 minutes of cutscene.

[RJWaters2]

Oh, “Poke” Flute. As in, you poke someone with it. That’s not as bad as I opened this text box to complain.

Also this area just makes me want to play Psychonauts instead.

[Timrod]

: Okay, that last update is over. Thank god for that. Moving on…

: “She pretended it had to do with not knowing what would happen after we broadcast the record, but I knew something else was wrong.”

: “I think it’s obvious. You want us to listen to music and Alex’s spoiled ass has the best sound system out of the six of us.”

: “That’s actually correct. Back in my reality, I had written an album - this album. But, I guess you already knew that. Anyway, just listen. I hope you enjoy what I made.”

: The song that starts playing here isn’t bad, since none of the music in this game was done by the Allansons (as far as I know) but it kind of makes no sense. The lyrics are entirely in Japanese and it’s supposed to be Vella singing it so… yeah.

: This is like that one time at work when the system was down for the entire day and I almost fell asleep listening to Rush.

: There are fifteen Vellas here, and most of them have nothing important to say, but I’m going to transcribe it anyway.

: “I don’t think I should have played this… everyone is going to hate my song!”

: “The guy who I wrote this for… I wonder what he’s up to?”

: “I hope this isn’t as bad as I think it is…”

: “Can you hear my heart? It’s caling.”

: “This is what music from my reality sounds like. Pretty different from yours, huh?”

: Honestly, the song sounds like generic mid-2000s techno with Japanese lyrics over it.

: “Do you think I’ll ever feel the way I felt when I wrote this song? I don’t ever want to feel that way.”

: “I don’t think I ever loved that guy.”

: “Which of me is your favorite? I think you’re my favorite you.”

: Haha, Final Fantasy 13 joke… so funny.

: “Just don’t be awkward about it. Don’t tell me that it’s beautiful like me. Please, just appreciate my art.”

: “My appearance doesn’t matter… only what I make. You know?”

: Oh, that’s good to know. This game has slowly warped me into an amorphous blob that knows only hatred.

: “Like, I appreciate you for who you are. Yes, you’re kinda a brat… but Alex, you’re really not that bad. I bet there is a reason why you are the way you are.”

: If I had to guess, it’s because he’s written by the Allansons, though I’d probably make him a colossal douchebag just off appearance alone.

: “Just like there is a reason I am the way I am. We spend so much time of our journey learning about all of our friends… why don’t we ever ask about you?”

: Because Alex is a boring manchild whose entire personality and character motivation is a gaping void in the sorry excuse for a plot this game has?

: “Who are you? Where did YOU come from? How did you get to be the way you are…? I think that’s what this song is about. Sorry I lied.”

: I like how Chondra is taking her headphones off as if to say she was never listening in the first place.

: “Yeah, really nice.”

: “Better than I could do.”

: My life! It’s now or never! I ain’t gonna live forever! I just want to live while I’m alive!

: Oh boy, is this one of those judgment circles? Shun her! Shun her from society, for her taste in music sucks!

: “The music had shown us a side of Vella that we had never expected to see - a sort of vulnerable side.”

: “I felt compelled to chase after her, to tell her the music was beautiful, and that she was incredible, but my feet didn’t move.”

: “I remained as still and silent as everyone else. My body motionless, I surveyed everyone’s eyes, willing my brain to bind with theirs and GET what they had been thinking.”

: “Had they all hated it? What had triggered such a lack of enthusiasm?”

: “Let her know it was great.”

: “If this is Vella’s album, why was a guy singing on it?”

: I have no idea what the fuck he’s talking about. If you go back to the last update and watch the video, the voice singing is pretty clearly female.

: “I almost cried.”

: “I hope she’s okay.”

: When we get outside, the town is suddenly Halloween for no reason. There’s no explanation given - unless we had a timeskip from April to October without anyone mentioning it.

: Either that or Alex’s house is in Silent Hill again.

: We could go right to the arcade, but… if we go near Michael’s house, there’s a sidequest we can do only at night.

: I assumed I could just LP Toss my way through the fight, and I was sorely mistaken. The cone enemies go down in one hit, but the stop sign is a miniboss.

: By the way, I found out the hard way that the stop sign men have a fucking annoying gimmick. If they hit you, even if you successfully defend, the character that gets hit is stunned and loses a turn. I almost died on this fight.

: Oh boy, we’re doing this shit, aren’t we.

: “But I want you to promise not to judge me.”

: “I won’t judge you.”

: “I have come to understand certain things, things I know to be true, things that I know others wouldn’t understand unless they had experienced them.”

: You mean like how science has proven that all Skittles actually taste the same, and it’s just our brains expecting the flavors to be different that makes them seemingly have different flavors?

: “The link between our bodies and physical space is strong, but it is nothing compared to the link between our minds and physical space. Our bodies exist as a visual representation of our minds. They are nothing more.”

: Bull fucking horseshit, if this was true I’d have both laser eyes and chainsaw hands.

: “Every mind has the capability of transcending physical form. Many do, even if they do not realize it.”

: Basically what they’re doing here is setting up the whole “transcending your physical form” thing as a euphemism for suicide.

: “The very nature of physical reality is VERY unphysical. Humans have evolved to ignore the complexities and realities of the universe by using physical form to protect themselves from the harshness of existence.”

: This sounds like something they stole out of a freshman philosophy textbook, but I checked and it doesn’t appear to have been - or if it has, it’s from a physical book.

: “To cope, we developed corporeal form. The use of physical form is not unlike leaving the light off at all times, obstructing the undesirables in the room. Do you understand what I am saying so far?”

: That you’re trying really hard to be deep by spouting pseudo-intellectual bullshit? Yeah.

: “More or less. Please continue.”

: “When I entered your reality, I was a much different person than I am now. My reality was much worse than this one. I was a girl who was entirely lost. From a young age, people thrust their expectations on me. They believed I was destined for artistic greatness.”

: So… what you’re saying is that you’re Doogie Howser, only without the part where Neil Patrick Harris had a career after that show?

: “I was, for all intents and purposes, a disappointment. Picture for a moment being a young girl who can’t do wrong.”

: “Everything I created, everything I said impressed those around me. I was the perfect child artist, but that’s all I ever was. When I became an adult, my body grew, but my artistry remained childlike.”

: “I considered quitting piano, considered removing myself from art altogether, but something pulled me back. Somewhere along the course of my life, I had developed an artist’s mentality.”

: “I knew I wasn’t a good adult artist, but I was still compelled to create. And with each new thing I tried, I disappointed those around me.”

: Honestly, I’m starting to wonder if this isn’t just one of the Allansons’ life stories re-packaged.

: “At 3:02 AM, I walked into a music club in the city. He was on stage, playing to a small but enthusiastic audience. Each note he played on his guitar seemed to tell me something that I had always known, but had never really understood.”

: You know what would’ve been cool? If they had a segment where you play as Vella experiencing this instead of just… telling us about it. Also, who the fuck remembers exact times like that?

: After he finished, I knew that I had to speak with him. It wasn’t before long that we became both romantically and artistically involved."

: That “wasn’t before long” bit isn’t my mistake.

: “It was as if knowing him had somehow broken the seal around my mind that was preventing me from creating something worthwhile. The lack of refinement to his playing freed me from the confines of rhythmic and artistic regularity.”

: “Never before had I given myself to someone so literally and spiritually before. Together, we wrote ‘A Distant Voice’ and I knew that I still had the hopes of being, not only a good artist, but an interesting human being.”

: Honestly, I was pretty much falling asleep when I got to this part, and now I’m falling asleep again transcribing it.

: “At 3:02 PM, his daughter had come home and found us together. He hadn’t yet told his children about me. I was a much younger woman. He followed her out and into a coffee shop. I waited for them to return, hating myself more and more for entering his life and making it difficult.”

: “I waited there until 3:02 AM, completely beside myself. And the strange thing is, he never returned. He never came back to his own apartment. I stayed there for a few days, knowing he’d have to come back eventually. And he simply never did.”

: “I called his friends, I called his manager, and they all said they hadn’t seen him. Just like that, he slipped through the cracks of my reality, and never returned.”

: Seriously, what the fuck is it with that date?

: “A minute into the first concert I had put on since his disappearance. I had refused to do our music live or release ‘A Distant Voice’ until I had seen him again. Finally, legal pressure forced me to schedule a release for May 22nd, 1999, with a year-long tour to promote it.”

: Okay, we fucking get it! The guy was a dick!

: “This girl was not his daughter, though she was probably his daughter’s age. I left the stage and receded into myself. The man who placed his arms around that young woman was not the same man who placed his arms around me so many times. It couldn’t have been.”

: “The man I knew would not have put on such a display of affection knowing it could hurt someone so much.”

: “When the separation happened, it was almost immediate. It was so sudden that the painful moments leading up to it felt trivial. I was just my mind and I had left my physical body behind.”

: “I floated until I found a reality that seemed different from mine - hoping to find a reality that contained the HIM I knew, hoping that he had fallen into this reality and we could be together again.”

: Okay, so basically you killed yourself because you figured life was like the ending to Looper. Got it.

: “Was his voice the one we heard on the record?”

: “No. No, it wasn’t. I don’t know whose voice we heard. I was so nervous sharing that music with you guys, I almost didn’t realize it wasn’t me singing! haha…”

: So wait… let me get this straight here. You put out a record under your name on which you didn’t even perform? I mean, plagiarism is what I’d expect from this game, but still.

: “Well, everyone loved it. It was amazing.”

: “Really? I can never tell what people think when I show them my songs.”

: I was going to put this to a vote, but then I realized… nah. We’re playing as a giant douchebag who may or may not be influenced by his voiceactor. Let’s pick the option we all know he’d pick.

: “Yeah, no, it’s cool. Let’s just… let’s go back inside and… whatever. Just not that whatever.”

: Why do I have a strange feeling that this guy she was going on about is Alex’s isekai counterpart?

: I know this is boring as hell, but trust me, by the end of this update we are going to hit this game’s dark world mom moment. It was so bad that I actually had to stop recording, that’s how fucking stunned I was.

: I’m going to skip some textboxes here because I REALLY want to get to this particular scene. We get to spend the next few minutes walking back through the radio tower maze for a third time. No new enemies, no new treasure, just the same goddamn maze.

: “For myself, it was in days since Sammy had been missing. For Michael, it was days until school began and he lost his freedom.”

: For me, it’s days until I’m done playing this godawful game.

: “For Vella, time was measured in music - a careless and overwhelming existence where the aural world carried more weight than the physical world.”

: “For Claudio and Rory, it was days since their siblings vanished from their lives. For Chondra, I think it was days unti lshe could escape counting days since her little brother’s disappearance.”

: “But for all of us, time moved at the same rate - calculating days until we found a way to feel important.”

: For the record, I said no.

: Meet The Essentia 2000, a robot who is absolutely not, in any way, a complete ripoff of Aigis from Persona 3.

: We are immediately thrust into battle with her versus two Soul Survivors.

: Unlike everyone else, The Essentia 2000 does not have a "defend’ command. Instead, she can charge her health back up by wasting a turn. This command doesn’t work in this battle.

: Her skills also cost health, as she has no PP bar. Self Destruct kills her, while M. Launcher takes 50% of her HP.

: Her QTE is surprisingly hard to hit. I didn’t have infinite time energy on, but I probably should’ve because she does no damage unless her combo is maxed and doing that is pretty difficult. Also, isn’t this just that stupid pizza-cutter sword from Final Fantasy Tactics A2?

: She also has a machine gun in her chest, in case the fact that she’s literally Aigis isn’t hammered home hard enough.

: “I–”

: “HOLY SHIT!! DID YOU GUYS SEE THAT!?”

: “See what exactly? You guys put on the record and went into an epileptic fit.”

: “It would’ve been funny in any other context.”

: By that, Alex means the realdoll he ordered.

: “Woman made of plastic? What does that mean, Alex?”

: “She’s like, an android or something. But she’s, like, plastic.”

: “That’s happened to you before?!”

: “Yeah, like, once or twice. It’s been a recurring dream or… something.”

: “But the Entities that were behind the camera… she destroyed them so easily and that wasn’t Banish she was using.”

: “If she could destroy the Entities that easily, I don’t think there is much danger she could be in.”

: “But we need to find her!!! That’s why the Entity who was living with me had us play the record right? To wake her up!?”

: “I agree. You’re right, but what’s actually going on here? What is she? I–”

: “You okay?”

: “Yeah, I am. But – forget it, never mind. I can’t really explain it yet - it’s just a feeling. Give me some time and maybe I’ll be able to put it into words.”

: Did ANYONE read this fucking script before release? Anyone at all?

: Anyway, here comes the dark world mom moment. This was so out there that I had to stop recording.

: “What’s up?”

: “I was wondering if we could go somewhere and talk for a bit? There’s been something on my mind and… yeah.”

: So this comes absolutely out of fucking nowhere. I had no idea this was coming, and what I figured is that I’d put it up for a vote in the thread. Only… there hadn’t been any save points between when I saved after the conversation with Vella on the swingset and now, and I really wanted to just find a save point - so I figured hey, what the hell, I’ll just pick the top one in case that’s what people pick, and if they go the other way I can always go back.

: Here’s my logic of picking this option. I assumed that Rory had a character sidequest or something that we could do to get bonus EXP. I was very wrong.

: “Well, I’ve just been real depressed lately. Thinking about my sister, my parents, just how much life is going to change from now on. My sister was a lot younger than me, but she really was my best friend.”

: “And now that she’s gone, I feel aimless. We had plans, things we wanted to do in the future, places we wanted to go, movies that we wanted to see, new games to play together.”

: “And now, none of that will happen. Sometimes I wish – You know what I mean, right?”

: Just wait for it. What you are about to see is the moment when this game hits rock fucking bottom.

: “Bad things happen. But life has to move on, right? You don’t have your sister anymore, but you have all of us - Michael, me, Vella, Chondra, Claudio. We can’t replace your sister, but we’re happy that you’re still here. If you had become a soul survivor, then we’d never have met you and that’s really depressing.”

: I mean, technically he DID become a soul survivor, but whatever.

: “I’m not the best with these sorts of things, but basically I’m saying, I’m happy we met you.”

: Are you ready… for YIIK… to attempt to implement a gay romance option? And are you ready for them to do it in the worst, most insulting way possible?

: Yep. We’ve just hit rock bottom. Oh wait, no we haven’t, I haven’t hit confirm on that yet.

: Sorry, NOW we’ve hit rock bottom. The following picture pretty much sums up exactly what I did when I saw this shit.

: That’s about all I could take of this game for right now. Next time, we’ll listen to a… 32-textbox monologue… followed by what I can only assume is this game finding a drill so it can continue trying to go deeper.

[Riley]

I felt physical pain seeing those two scenes, holy shit. Holy shit Yiik team.

[RJWaters2]

Ah you’re doing a 100% rejected kiss attempts run, bold.

[LaZodiac]

I’ve been lurking this thread at work because I was bored and

I had things to say about this game. I could probably, if I really truly wanted, rip this game to shreds line by line.

Then the game just dead ass lets you try to kiss two characters, one girl and one guy, and the end result in both cases is the characters 1000% shooting you down and pretty clearly hating the fuck out of you as a result and I’m just left awe-struck at the depths of idiocy this game will go through.

I feel like if this game was just slightly to the left of “absolutely trash” instead of standing in it up to it’s waist, it might actually be good. If it had even the faintest hint of self-awareness, it’d reveal itself to be a meta-textual thing about how self insert fantasies, about looking at tragic moments online and inserting ourselves into it is a dangerous, toxic behavior.

But there is no self awareness here. There is not even the slightest hint of it. This is just banal, endless garbage as far as the eye can see. It’s mechanically worthless and writing wise one of the dullest, most non-existence thing I’ve ever experienced. It’s actually horrifying that people might like this.

[GrandmaParty]

Also note: It’s “Kiss Vella” and “Try to Kiss Rory”.

[DoubleMayCare]

: This is a very long, very awkward cutscene, and as much as I WANT to skip it, I need to show this entire thing off. I also ran each and every one of these lines to check for plagiarism - they were awkward enough that I thought they might be plagiarized, but they’re not.

So I know this is a long time ago and honestly my eyes glazed over for most of this game, but I need to point out:

This whole sequence is clearly “inspired” by the events in After Dark. The language is altered, but the intention is the same. The matter-of-fact tone, using an omniscient “we,” directing an “imaginary camera” around an unconscious woman… And look, there’s a TV in the room, doing something, oooOOOOOooo. It’s not directly plagiarism, but it’s definitely a rip-off. I know it’s been well-established, but Andrew’s a hack.

[Timrod]

: This was a fun update, and by fun I mean I was confused as all hell and managed to softlock the game a fourth time after going through several minutes of cutscenes and without saving.

: This is why we don’t use the skateboard at the radio tower. I was up here doing a sidequest (it’s real dumb but gets you 100 EXP and a decent accessory) and got stuck here because the skateboard pushed me through geometry. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled cutscenes.

: I do have a save file before I tried to have Alex kiss Rory. This will be important. However, this cutscene is exactly the same regardless of what we did with Rory - I’d know that because I did this twice.

: “I love my mother and I love my sister, my cousins, my female friends.”

: Don’t kid yourself Alex, you have no female friends. You have no friends in general.

: “I love them, but not in a way that’s filled with the romantic sense of love. I’ve had seven girlfriends throughout college and high school. None of them lasted long and I never minded when things were over.”

: Calling bullshit on this.

: “Something funny happened that night when I went to bed. I had a dream again. Yes, it was about the android, but she wasn’t trapped inside a moving van. She was free, and human.”

: “In my dream, I knew her very well. We had been together for a long time. We weren’t old, we didn’t get old. I knew inside my heart how well she treated me.”

: “Inside my dream world, she entered my dreams - she entered my thoughts. She filled up every part of my mind, even the parts I wanted to hide away.”

: “She was like the old Bruce Lee quote, ‘Be like water.’ She was my water, rushing into all the cracks. Nothing could have hidden from her. But I didn’t mind. She didn’t judge. She didn’t have a place to judge.”

: “She, unlike all other humans, was aware of human flaws. She didn’t pretend we didn’t think about hatred, violence, jealousy, sex. I was a person- she got that.”

: “Now if only she was, too. She is, and always will be, a woman made of plastic. I know how funny this sounds. Trust me, I do. How can a woman made of plastic be loved so much by a real flesh and blood human?”

: “Someone had flipped a switch inside my brain and I now understood something I wasn’t capable of understanding before.”

: Alex finally learns what bisexual means.

: “I felt a weird joy inside me, like I had a secret no one else was allowed to know, a secret that was meant only for my ears, and it was the android who told me.”

: “But it couldn’t – I tried to recall the dream but it was already slipping away, to the periphery of my mind.”

: “I couldn’t remember specific scenes, but I could remember the feelings the dream had given me and I knew they wouldn’t be leaving me.”

: “I thought about Michael, then Rory, then Claudio, and Chondra. I had no desire to see any of them. I thought about Vella, then Sammy, and I felt weird, like I had done something wrong, as if I had wronged them somehow in the dream.”

: Gee, I dunno, maybe because you tried to kiss her last night?

: The game never tells us this directly, but overnight time has skipped from June to October.

: I got really fucking confused at this whole section. We still don’t know where exactly it is that Vella lives - in fact, we don’t know where Claudio and Chondra live either. The answer is…

: Nope, not the arcade.

: She’s been sitting at this same place for the past four months.

: This sounds like a line from Mood Rings by Relient K. That song sucks just as much today as it did when I was in high school.

: “Of course it doesn’t. Probably because I get so sad to see it go. I like Thanksgiving. That’s always fun.”

: She sounds like one of the people on those dumbshit reality shows.

: “But, like, Christmas, that’s always depressing. The celebration always makes me feel uncomfortable. Like are you really happy or are you just pretending because it’s Christmas?”

: What does this have to do with fucking anything!? What is the fucking point? WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT?

: “It always meant seeing my friends again, but I guess starting school again sucks. You know, I haven’t thought about school since last winter, or spring, whenever it was.”

: “I don’t miss tests or any of that shit, but I miss learning. I was good at school.”

: He’s so good at school that it took him five and a half years to finish college.

: “I’m not a genius, but I’m great at writing, philosophy, psych. I don’t think I’m great at anything that helps real life though. Maybe dreaming. I have a lot of dreams, things I want to happen.”

: SHUT THE FUCK UP! God, shut up! What the fuck is the point of this conversation?

: “Now if only they’d be grounded in reality.”

: “That we’re sad sacks?”

: “Haha, something like that.”

: “Can I ask you a serious question?”

: “Go for it, Ginger Boy.”

: “What was your world like? The one you came from.”

: “You know, I don’t think anyone has asked me that since I’ve been here. Wow! I try not to think about my old reality, but it really wasn’t all that bad. Things are mostly the same. We had more cows though. Lots of cows.”

: “My mother would love your thrash metal. We also didn’t say ‘The Nineties’. We called it the ‘End Times’. Isn’t that funny? We all joked that 2000 would be the end of the world.”

: This is like that one joke from The Simpsons where Abe talks about how the Germans stole the English word for “twenty” so they had to use “tickety”, only not nearly as funny as that was.

: “That and - well, this is going to sound weird - but we don’t look at death the same way. In this reality, death is like giving up or making a mistake. How can you fault someone for dying?”

: “We all publicly acknowledge that when someone dies, you’re sad for yourself, not for them. That, and–”

: “What is it?”

: This entire segment is basically one giant fucking exposition dump. You know what would’ve been way more interesting? Actually visiting Vella’s reality and getting to see it for ourselves.

: “I’ve spoken to her once a month for the past twelve years. There are phones, special phones. You put in money, dial the social security number of your loved one, and for three minutes you can speak to them.”

: This sounds like a neat concept but it kinda falls apart when you realize that it wouldn’t work outside the US because there are still a good deal of countries that don’t use national ID numbers.

: “You can talk to them about anything, with one exception. Under no circumstances are you allowed to ask about where they are and how they’re feeling. If you do, they lose their phone privileges forever and you have a ten year hold on your account.”

: “What? Like, for real?”

: I’m like, 90% sure that she’s just fucking with him.

: “I had my first dream the night before I met you.”

: “Must be fate.”

: “We also don’t have fate where I come from. I think we never put ourselves in that sort of box. You might take away your own freedom by even pretending things like that might exist.”

: “I don’t have the talent with words to explain it. It’s something you should see for yourself.”

: I feel like this was originally intended to be a dialog menu thing where you could pick questions to ask, but then they turned it into an unskippable cutscene.

: “What!? Leave my body? I don’t think I could ever.”

: “Maybe not, but-- okay, look at it this way. Before I travelled the Soul Space, I was a different person - someone who got hurt by someone - someone who believed they were loved unconditionally.”

: That’s gonna be a flag from the refs, Jim. Looks like they’re calling a 5-yard penalty on number 22 for abuse of hyphens.

: When I was out there, I realized unconditional love exists, but only as something to strive for. It’s just a concept. There is no way to actually put it into practice. We can say we love someone unconditionally and we can act like we do, but it’s not to judge people for what they did to you, or someone else. To accept someone for being human."

: That… is some cynical bullshit.

: “We’re all human. We all have flaws. We all hurt each other. But is that the thing to be fixated on? And I do believe unconditional love exists.”

: I haven’t been to church since I was a kid, but this sounds like something you’d hear in church.

: “Oh? Have you felt it before then?”

: I was kind of hoping Alex would go full-on Jack Chick right here and just be like “Yes I have, Vella. I felt it from Jesus. You gave up your soul and you’re going to hell.”

: “So what if I have?”

: “From who? What’s her name?”

: “I don’t know. It’s just – I had this dream, and in this dream I was loved unconditionally. Whoever loved me loved my flaws and loved my mistakes as much as they loved the things worth making me loved. Is that so hard to believe?”

: “Ha! Sounds like a dream. So who was she? Spit it out. Was it Sammy Pak?”

: “No, I don’t think so. Maybe it was. Maybe it was you. Maybe it was the android in the van.”

: “Well, I think you’re a lazy ass half the time, so I don’t think I’m the one to love you unconditionally. But yes, keep chasing the missing girl who entered the Soul Space. I’m sure, when you finally find her, she’d love you unconditionally.”

: “Hey, that’s not fair. Also, Sammy is out there. She isn’t in the Soul Space. I can – I can feel her out there.”

: “Hmm. Maybe you’re feeling her out there in the Soul Space.”

: “Maybe. So Vella, what the hell are we going to do about finding the android? She’s trapped in the van and–”

: The gameplay bit after this cutscene confused the FUCK out of me, and this is one of the reasons why. The game tells us to go check ONISM, which led me in a circle until I looked up what to do.

: “Rory made a thread pointing out a mysterious van in all the most recent and believable posts. And here is a strange one for you. In one of the photos of Sammy Pak, there is a van.”

: “He asked everyone who sees the van to reply to the thread and post the location so we can check it out.”

: “Wait. Are you serious!? How did I NOT see this!? Holy crap. Okay, I need to go back and check. Wow! This is perfect. So that means she is around here then!!”

: “Well, I mean, vans have wheels, so it could be far away, but yeah, it could be.”

: Comma abuse. Ten yard penalty, offense, number 22. The game will remain on third down.

: “We’re going to need a car! How else can we catch up to it!? Do you have a car!?”

: “No. You’re forgetting I’ve lived in this reality for a year. How do you expect me to even have a license? I don’t even have a social security number and I make minimum wage at an arcade.”

: Here’s something I really don’t quite understand. The way Vella implies that the whole “giving up your body” thing works, if you become a soul the only way to get a body back is to find a different dimension where one of your isekai realm counterparts did the same thing. Did the Vella in this dimension not have an SSN, or is this Silent Hill 2 now and she was born from a wish?

: “Damn. I wonder if Mom would let me borrow hers.”

: What’s funny is that Claudio doesn’t own a van. You’ll see what I’m talking about in just a minute. He drives a Jeep.

: “He’s a bit older than us, so it makes sense. I think he’s in his late twenties. You should spend some time with him and Chondra, really get to know them first. Not usually a good idea to ask for rides unless you really know someone, at least where I come from.”

: I mean, it’s not like they’ve known each other since summer or anything.

: “Yeah, good idea. You know, this is going to sound a bit weird. Lately I’ve felt like I don’t even know my own reality. The more I think about it, nothing is as I remembered.”

: “When I was a kid, things felt different. Pre-college Alex’s life was so much more simple. I never noticed all of these things - all of these strange, strange things.”

: “That’s how I felt right before I left my reality. Maybe you’re starting to get it? Whatever it is.”

: Thank god that bullshit’s over. I’m going to go ahead and gloss over most of the upcoming exposition dump because I think we’ve all had enough of that for one update.

: So yeah, as you can see, no van.

: The game will also make kind of a big deal that Rory isn’t around. I wonder what’s up with that?

: On the way back to Alex’s house, I stopped and used the Mind Dungeon to level up. This actually wound up not being canon due to the softlock you saw at the top of the update. One thing I discovered is that if you pick all of the doors and talk to Marlene, Marlene will open them all for you at once.

: Here we are at Floor 29, with just enough EXP to hit 30.

: “Things… yeah, things will be fine. Your mom is a good mom. She’s… yeah, look…”

: “You know I’m your dad, and I’ll always be your dad… so yeah… don’t forget that.”

: “Look… things might be tough… but, yeah… uhm… crap, I’m terrible at this. Sometimes adults realize that they made mistakes… and sometimes… their mistakes cost a lot of money, and require a lot of food… and educations…”

: I fucking knew it! Alex is canonically a goddamn mistake.

: “And some adults, like your mother, are better at providing for these mistakes than fathers. Look, you’re lucky that your mom is smart. Smarter than I am.”

: “Anyway, sometimes the realization of these mistakes leads you to following other mistakes halfway across the country in hope of finding some dream… a youthful dream with nice legs. Only, those legs aren’t as smart as your mom’s, but man…”

: “Try not to make the same mistakes I made… okay?”

: I like the idea that Alex dresses like his dad even though he knows his dad was an asshole. I also like the idea that his dad saw Alex and immediately knew his son was going to be a colossal douche and a self-insert and ran away so he wouldn’t have to be in this game.

: The next thing we have to do is check the computer. Now, all of these locations are on the world map. It would make a lot of sense to just take the bus and walk over. That’s what I did when I was recording this, and that’s… actually not what you’re supposed to do. I definitely wasn’t the only person confused by this because there are a number of posts on the Steam forum for this game asking what the shit you’re supposed to do here.

: What you’re supposed to do is find Chondra and Michael. If you come by this area on the way to meet up with Vella, neither of them will be here - they only spawn once you’ve looked at the computer.

: Chondra’s plot dump consists of her letting you ask two questions. The bottom option pisses her off, while the top two are basically her thinkpiece about how she went to Japan once.

: This plot dump is almost as long as the one we just had with Vella, so there’s a good reason I’m not posting all of it. Those three should be enough to get the point.

: Michael also doesn’t have a lot to say. However…

: “Nah, never bothered to get it. We can swing by and pick him up on the way if we want.”

: Yeah, I mean, why bother to get his number when clearly all he wanted was to make out? The game is making a really big deal about Rory here. I wonder if… nah, there’s no way our actions have consequences.

: So, there’s a whole bunch of places we can stop. The only ones that are important are the Bowling Alley and the Mall. Gee, the game REALLY wants us to see Rory though.

: We’ll head to Wind Town first to pick up Rory.

: “It’s Alex and the gang.”

: “More like Chondra and the gang. You think you’re that important, don’t you?”

: “It’s Chondra and the gang. We’re going to check out some of the leads about that weird van. You want to come with us?”

: The water tower is completely pointless. It’s located behind the overpass, and there’s no van near it.

: This is the reservoir.

: “So is it worth swimming out there and checking it out?”

: Next stop, the bowling alley. We REALLY don’t want to miss this because it has an encounter that is annoying, but worth it. The encounter vanishes if we finish this segment without hitting it. I also have no idea why it’s perpetually night time at the bowling alley.

: This is the Flasher. He has an assload of HP, and has a full-party attack that hits for a good amount of damage and poisons on hit. I kind of forgot to level up again on this take after hitting the softlock.

: Even without levelling up, this guy is pretty easy, even though only Alex is doing any sort of damage to it. He also awards 200 EXP, which would mean that had I levelled everyone up, they’d be level 31 right now.

: Yeah, I said the same thing about this game and its developers.

: Here’s the gas station. There’s nothing of note here apart from the fact that you can clip Alex into the building. This doesn’t cause a softlock, surprisingly. I didn’t bother going to the University because there’s nothing there (most likely) and also because I wound up going to the spot that ends this chapter first on accident.

: “I can’t believe it! We actually found it!”

: “The first step is to calm down. Let’s all get around the van and then one of us will knock. Let’s be ready to fight since we don’t know what’s inside!”

: I mean, if you think about it, is there any reason we’re doing this?

: “Doesn’t anyone else find this a little odd?”

: “So the Soul Survivors are working with the mall rats…”

: “Don’t be stupid! Something isn’t right here. Okay, so those kids have the keys to the van. The only course of action is to track them down and ask them nicely for them.”

: “And when they say no, we kick their twelve year old goth butts!”

: “Wait, can anyone pick a lock here?”

: This entire “joke” is stolen straight out of Telltale’s Walking Dead game - except there, it was used to show that Kenny was in fact a redneck.

: “And don’t pretend you didn’t think it! So, to answer your racist-ass question, I CANNOT PICK A LOCK. Well, at least not a car lock. I went through a Sherlock Holmes phase and learned to pick basic locks.”

: Great. Let’s just move on to another segment where a bunch of people get stuck.

: Inside the mall, there’s a sequence where you have to chase after the rat-people. They have a couple of spots they can hide, and one of them is absolute bullshit.

: See this? You can barely see a rat tail sticking out of the garbage can. I had to look up where this was because I couldn’t see it.

: After four or five hiding spots, the rat-person will eventually leave out the rear exit door.

: Mistake number one, I forgot to re-level and we just walked into a boss fight. Mistake number two, I should’ve replaced Claudio with Chondra. Why, you ask?

: This is the Gothic Entity, our second real boss fight after the Golden Alpaca several hours ago. The Gothic Entity is a kick in the dick unless you have Chondra with you.

: The boss opens the fight by draining everyone to 1HP. This is unavoidable - no QTE, no nothing.

: It then follows up with a full-party attack that will do 15 fucking damage if it hits. Now, if you have Chondra, you can heal everyone up to full using a single Ambrosia. Unfortunately, I didn’t have Chondra, so I had to use everyone’s next turn immediately healing up. Somehow, no one died.

: I missed a button prompt and wound up healing Vella twice instead of Claudio. The boss took its turn and did this. In this state, the boss is invincible and has to be banished to take damage again.

: On Claudio’s turn, I got ballsy and figured I’d just attack. This was the first attack I was able to get off in this fight, after three full turns had passed.

: If it wasn’t for Alex and his LP Toss, this fight would probably take upwards of 40 minutes of just chipping away at the boss and dodging as much as possible.

: This was how I ended the fight. Vella died from the multiple 15-damage party attacks, and Alex only barely survived to get one last LP Toss in.

: That about does it for this update. Next time, Alex will meet the robot in person.

[Timrod]

Time for a quick mailbag update.

I felt physical pain seeing those two scenes, holy shit. Holy shit Yiik team.

Yeah, I got to that point not knowing what was coming and I was like “Am I going to go there? Do I want to give the viewers a choice?” and then I went “You know what, I’m going to do exactly what Alex would do and pick the worst possible option.” I also feel like I’ve never seen a game before that lets you attempt to kiss a character without knowing what their orientation is.

I’ve been lurking this thread at work because I was bored and

I had things to say about this game. I could probably, if I really truly wanted, rip this game to shreds line by line.

Then the game just dead ass lets you try to kiss two characters, one girl and one guy, and the end result in both cases is the characters 1000% shooting you down and pretty clearly hating the fuck out of you as a result and I’m just left awe-struck at the depths of idiocy this game will go through.

I feel like if this game was just slightly to the left of “absolutely trash” instead of standing in it up to it’s waist, it might actually be good. If it had even the faintest hint of self-awareness, it’d reveal itself to be a meta-textual thing about how self insert fantasies, about looking at tragic moments online and inserting ourselves into it is a dangerous, toxic behavior.

But there is no self awareness here. There is not even the slightest hint of it. This is just banal, endless garbage as far as the eye can see. It’s mechanically worthless and writing wise one of the dullest, most non-existence thing I’ve ever experienced. It’s actually horrifying that people might like this.

Trust me, I would LOVE to see someone take this concept and make something good out of it. You’re right in that I would love to see a remake of this where it turns out that Alex made the entire thing with Sammy getting taken up (removing the stupid paranormal shit), and the idiots on the internet just wholesale fell for it. Have a scene where Alex is leading a group of people to investigate a possible sighting, only to get arrested and told at the police station that they found Sammy dead three days ago and that his band of idiots might’ve stopped them from getting to her in time.

This whole sequence is clearly “inspired” by the events in After Dark. The language is altered, but the intention is the same. The matter-of-fact tone, using an omniscient “we,” directing an “imaginary camera” around an unconscious woman… And look, there’s a TV in the room, doing something, oooOOOOOooo . It’s not directly plagiarism, but it’s definitely a rip-off. I know it’s been well-established, but Andrew’s a hack.

I’ve never read After Dark. I just bought a copy for like $7, so I’ll give it a read. It’s probably better than that godawful Gabriel Knight novelization I bought from the last LP.

Ah you’re doing a 100% rejected kiss attempts run, bold.

There is no speedrun page for this, but I feel like if Spore Spawn races are a thing in Super Metroid there should absolutely be a leaderboard for getting to that spot.

[Chowder]

“First off, good job for assuming the black guy can pick locks. Also, yes, the black guy can pick locks, but the plot says you have to go have a boss fight.”

This sounds like a neat concept but it kinda falls apart when you realize that it wouldn’t work outside the US because there are still a good deal of countries that don’t use national ID numbers.

Nah, Andrew’s showing his ignorance again.

Technically, the Social Security number is not a national ID number. It’s used as one, but it wasn’t designed to be one and it’s very poorly secured for the purpose; it was literally only ever intended to track what you paid into or withdrew from your social security account. In fact, the SSN isn’t even universal, there are a bunch of exceptions (most notably a number of anabaptist religious sects; you can’t call grandma if you’re Amish, I guess). Ironically the US has no actual, official national ID card, which puts it in a minority. Most other countries in the world have compulsory ID cards and a number of the ones that don’t have optional ones (the wikipedia page on the topic says that the passport card is our de facto noncompulsory ID card but no one’s ever asked for my passport card before, so…). Presumably the US is just barely included in the program, using the SSN in the same stopgap manner as in real life. Other countries probably have much more robust necromantic services; pre-paying for phone time, packages that allow for longer conversations, appealing the “permanent phone loss” decision. Postmortem pizza delivery.

[Nidoking]

The “point” of the water tower scene is for Rory to deliver the rest of the Elisa Lam story. If you didn’t talk to him there, good for you. If you just decided to leave that out to spare everyone… also good for you.

[LaZodiac]

As a writer the “oh bet you thought the black guy can’t pick lock” scene in this game made me vomit in my mouth. Not the first time this game has done this, but this is the most noteworthy time of it. God, not only is it extremely, awfully racist, a bad version of a good ass joke from Telltale, it’s also just actually written really poorly! It’s disgusting to look at with my eyes in every way possible.

Truth be told, in my “this but good” idea, Alex just straight up is the one that killed Sammy. He’s obsessed with her to such a degree that I feel like that might be the case even in this shitty version of the game.

Oh also a thing to keep in mind for The Future tm: draft your posts in a word program or something first. That way if the forum farts or has to update you won’t lose any progress. I realize you’re probably doing this already, but I wanted to put it out as a suggestion.

[Riley]

Those Mall Rats are giving me a “is this lifted from South Park” vibe, specifically the Vampire Kids. Great.

Yeah, I got to that point not knowing what was coming and I was like “Am I going to go there? Do I want to give the viewers a choice?” and then I went “You know what, I’m going to do exactly what Alex would do and pick the worst possible option.” I also feel like I’ve never seen a game before that lets you attempt to kiss a character without knowing what their orientation is.

it’s also a lot more uncomfortable after Christopher Niosi’s shit came to light like holy shit

[Timrod]

: So uh, before I start this update, I’d like to point out that I was JUST NOW made aware that there are already two VLPs of this game done by people on SA. I don’t have an SA account, thus I had no idea that they existed. One of them is done with the game, the other is… maybe about an hour or two ahead of where we’ll be at the end of this update.

: I know that there’s not really that much left - with any luck, I’ll have this done before Ni no Kuni 1 gets re-released so I can do that. Still, I wish I had known this BEFORE I started a godawful SSLP of something that had already been VLPed twice by people better at this than I am. Apologies to both GrandmaParty and Diacorn.

: “Why was I so convinced finding this android was such a good thing? Why was I putting myself in danger like this?”

: “A lot of times, I felt like I was an airplane circling the landing strip waiting for clearance, waiting for a purpose.”

: I really want to see a video in the style of one of those “REAL LAWYER REACTS TO ACE ATTORNEY” videos that Youtube’s shitty algorithm always puts in my recommended videos, only it’s an English teacher responding to Alex’s monologues.

: “Maybe I was Alex, Android Hunter. No, that didn’t make sense. Alex, Soul Survivor hunter? Still not right.”

: This sounds like something taken straight out of this one kids book I read to a little girl when I was still doing volunteer reading. The book was called… I want to say Sophie the Awesome, but I might be wrong there. Congrats Allansons, you can write at a second-grade level.

: “What do you see? Anything interesting?”

: “She’s incredible.”

: “In…credible?”

: I think this screen transition is meant to symbolize the fact that Alex has now gone so far up his own ass that he has finally come out the other side.

: When I read this, I immediately thought of that one line from The Room with the random lady who tells Tommy Wiseau’s character that he’s her favorite customer.

: “I imagine you are wondering who I am, why I know your name, and where we are going.”

: I mean, yeah I’m kinda wondering where the fuck this plot is going myself. It hasn’t really gone anywhere in the past nine hours or so.

: “I think it is necessary that I first introduce myself. I am The Essentia 2000.”

: “I exist in all realities simultaneously and can account for all parallel versions of my soul. Now, for the questions that is burning away at you the most: how do I know your name?”

: “You and I have met time and time again.”

: “This is the part where you say ‘I’ve never met you before!’ and then silently add ‘Except in my dreams’. This can and will be explained.”

: “Many months ago, you had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of a Miss Semi Pak. Semi had begun the process of leaving her physical form behind.”

: “When you met her, she had already made up her mind to leave her body and enter into the place between places, the Soul Space. You disrupted her transition. Shortly after, you witnessed two Soul Survivors taking her away.”

: “Those two entities were that two-thirds of her soul that had transitioned - two injured parts that hadn’t begun to heal.”

: I feel like this is a colossal ass-pull, even for this plot.

: “I was there. I am Semi and Semi is me. When one soul leaves a reality, another can freely enter. The only requirement necessary is having some relation to the departing soul, whether it’s being a parallel version of the departing or having an emotional connection to the departing.”

: “When Semi left your reality, I entered. Before that, this physical form was destroyed, captured, and held prisoner by the two entities that you just defeated in combat.”

: This is another thing I feel the game never really explains well enough. Was Vella just wrong when she said that soul-people don’t give a fuck? I mean, I sort of get why Sammy got kidnapped - that was basically her kidnapping herself - but why do they care about the robot?

: “Ever since then I had tried to return, but as my physical form still held trace amounts of my conciousness, I had to wait until Semi, THIS reality’s version of me, died or escaped into the Soul Space.”

: “I lived with you for weeks as I gained my strength. Finally, I was able to appear to you and guide you to the radio tower. I needed you to find my physical form so that I could speak with you.”

: “But what did-”

: “-- Vella’s record have to do with my physical form? I am glad to see you are keeping up with all of my robotic exposition.”

: Lady, this entire GAME has been nothing but robotic exposition.

: So uh, is it safe to say that you’re every woman? It’s all in you? Every one from A to Z?

: “I do not mean to imply that I go by all of these names and that I happen to share the name of two women in your life. I am explicitly saying that I am them and they are me.”

: Stop stealing from Persona, you fucks!

: “You’re going to have to explain how this is all possible.”

: “First, I will begin with the dreams you had of me. As a spirit, we are not restrained by physical barriers. However, without a body, it is impossible to astral project.”

: “When you slept, I was able to enter inside of your vessel and use it to launch my spiritual form out into the world to seek my physical body.”

: “I am sorry that I violated you in such a way, but it was the only way for me to find my body and make physical contact with you.”

: Sounds like something Chris Niosi would say.

: “Adjacent to your reality is another that contains someone with the same soul as yourself. In one reality, I am Serna Yemima, a Palestinian girl on the run from financial trouble.”

: “In another, I am Vella Wilde, a talented musician whose only setback is the pressure I put on myself.”

: “In all realities, I am The Essentia 2000, a pan-dimensional android made of plastic created so that I can better understand myself in all of my realities.”

: Welcome to uh… the vore dimension? That model is just fucking hideous.

: Please bear with me as I take you on a tour of my parallel lives."

: “Where exactly are we going?”

: “We are going into a very dangerous place - my Dungeon of the Mind. Here I will share with you my other selves. I am doing this in hopes that you will one day understand the nature of reality.”

: “Why do you feel that I need to understand the ‘nature of reality’?”

: And now, we’ve gone from the Vore Dimension to… machine cancer hell. If it were me, I’d be lighting this place on fire.

: “I feared separation from my own body, so I created the Essentia 2000… except it wasn’t THAT me, Naila El-Amin, who brought the plastic ME into existence.”

: “I came to be, through the intellect of another me, a Vladimira Tesar… in that reality, I was a Russian woman with similar goals, sans the severe sorrow and physical fatigue.”

: “As the Essentia 2000, I explored the Soul Space and became aware of all of the different versions of myself. The Essentia 2000, the Essentia 1999, and the yet to be created Essentia 28-90.”

: “So you mean to say that Vella and Sammy share the same soul? But they are not the same person.”

: Uh. Yeah, she kinda said that several minutes ago.

: Essentially, yes. We have the capacity to be anything that we’d like to be. More often than not, we get to be the thing we least want to be."

: “If you’d join me now, I’d like to take you on a journey - a journey so that you can better know Sammy, Vella, Naila, and the other versions of myself. In doing so, I think you mean learn something that you so desperately need to know.”

: So right after this part, I levelled up. What I didn’t know is that one of the existing VLPs somehow got into the game’s code and found out how all the stats work. Apparently, Luck is the best stat. Who’d have thought? It doesn’t matter much though, because as soon as we got in here and I levelled up, something fucking broke with the battle system.

: Our first stop is this pile of crap that has a key in it.

: This dungeon hurts to look at. This isn’t even as bad as it gets, but there’s an annoying static effect all over everything.

: The broken wall just has an item in it, so let’s get into a battle so I can show off how badly I managed to break the battle system. I have no idea whether it’s intentional or not, but I did play ahead a little bit past the end of this dungeon and I think it isn’t.

: This dungeon has a bunch of new enemy types, including the brains in a jar (they have a stun attack) and the frankensteins which… fucked if I know because we’re about to snap the game in two.

: See this? This is ONE LP TOSS. 371 damage is enough to kill this thing about three times over, and by the end of this dungeon, Alex was hitting for almost 900 damage with it. I think what happened is that there’s something incredibly broken about the way LP Toss scales with stats (most likely Strength) that causes it to ball out of control after Strength hits a certain number. The best part is that I didn’t have the Ultima LP equipped at this point. From what I’ve heard, the damage formulas in this game are massively fucked up.

: Pretty much every room in this dungeon is a stupid, badly-designed puzzle. Some are more badly designed than others. I’m not even going to talk about the stupid pun.

: This room has these weird hands sticking out of the ground. Interacting with them makes them rotate a quarter turn. If they’re pointing at a thing of bollards, the bollards will lower to let us past.

: The wall wants us to fetch her some limbs, which is going to be the central theme of this dungeon.

: You can pretty much guess how all the fights go here, I’m just showing off a new enemy type. Again, you barely notice anything because of how fucked LP Toss is. By the way, one thing I found out pretty quickly is that Essentia SUCKS. See, Essentia can’t heal the way everyone else does - she needs a special type of healing item that are rare and expensive. The only other way she can heal is through using the “Charge” command, which lets you charge for a number of turns to regain HP (Maximum of 5). However… if you finish the battle before then, she gets reduced to 1 HP.

: We can access I think two different doors in this place right now, but we want to do this one first. Thankfully, I happened to go in here first.

: This room fucking hurts to look at. There’s a lot of flashing bullshit and it just… sucks.

: There’s a puzzle in this room that I figured out on my own. The game will outright tell you how to solve it if you go down the hall, but I guessed it out. See the footprints on the floor? We have to follow those.

: The ghost spawns a combat with another new enemy type - the Millennium Bug. These cause poison if they hit you, but we have the utter brokenness that is LP Toss.

: A key gets left behind, which we then need to put into a locked door just off-screen from this position.

: I should mention that these stupid tunnel effects take like… 15 seconds each. They’re pretty clearly masking a load screen.

: You know… wasn’t this the one that the robot said was supposed to be Palestinian?

: She then has a mental breakdown for like seven textboxes that I’m not even going to bother posting. Fuck this game.

: This room took me a minute to figure out, because it sucks from a design perspective. This is where you get warped immediately after that last cutscene.

: What you have to do is hit the left switch, then use the Amp on the statue.

: We’ve found what I believe to be the final tool - the Flamethrower. The flamethrower does exactly two things: it melts giant candles and lights torches.

: The two chests hidden behind the candles in this room just have some PP restoration items in them.

: If we go to the end of that last room we were in, there’s six torches around an altar. You can probably guess what comes next.

: We have all the tools we need to clear the dungeon, and we can melt these candles to go upstairs … but we don’t have a key for the door at the top. Instead…

: I sure hope this is prophetic, because goddamn that’d be fun to watch.

: We can also take the dead body’s right arm. This is the only body part we don’t have to do a puzzle to get. What I find hilarious is that Alex has no reaction whatsoever to seeing himself dead on the ground.

: Our next destination is behind those rocks over there.

: This room is EXTREMELY badly designed. It has a gimmick that the game explains - but only AFTER you’ve figured out what the gimmick is. So naturally, your first instinct would be to light the torches.

: Nope! If you do that, you can’t do anything. No, the solution here is about as fucking dumb as it gets.

: So, let me explain what the gimmick is. When the lights are off, the border around the edges of the room disappears, and it allows you to wrap around to the other side. I had to find the guide the developers put up to figure out what the fuck the deal with it was - at one point I figured you had to drop down from somewhere else to flip a switch or something.

: The problem is that most of the chests and switches in this room can’t be accessed unless the lights are on. These chests have around a thousand dollars and some healing items, with the one on the left containing a 9-volt, which heals Essentia to full.

: In the middle is this fucker, who explains the gimmick… after you’ve already figured about half of it out. Also, that would be typo number nine.

: There are a couple of okay chests in this room. This one has a Platinum Bracelet, which gives one more HP than the Gold Bracelet does. I equipped it to Alex because his HP is the lowest out of any of the party members. Not that it matters.

: There’s also a fur lined coat up here, which is still only marginally better than the Camo Jacket we picked up for Alex at the start of the game. I equipped it even though it lowers his strength by one - at this point, we don’t give a fuck.

: The goal is to press a couple of switches to lower some bollards and then wind up here, where you can grab the key we need for the main room.

: Leaving this room puts us up here, where we can create a shortcut. I don’t know why you’d want to do this unless you missed chests or something.

: This is the third puzzle room of this dungeon. It looks complex, but is actually pretty simple - the guide from the dev lists like 50 steps and I skipped a bunch of them. The goal here is to go to the right first.

: See that brown switch? The brown switches turn the wind from the giant masks on and off, which opens up different routes for you to take the moving platforms through. We need to get this one first to open the door up top.

: The problem is that while the door is open, we can’t actually get there unless we turn on a mask right in front of it. That’s what the left side is for. The right side chest has an Ambrosia in it. I’d describe all of the steps I needed to take to do this, but I did the left side first. If you do that, you have to do the left side twice because hitting this switch stops you from accessing the right side. As long as you hit all the brown switches you encounter and do the right side first, this is easy.

: “We are not born the same year. We do not, obviously, die at the same time. As Naila El-Amin, I was a mother of three, a very intelligent scientist living in Sweden.”

: “My children, whose names I will not reveal to you for various reasons, lived with their father.”

: “He took his anger out on the men who worked for him. And they feared him.”

: “I was very lonely. I met a man, whom I loved very much. I gave myself to him in every way possible. I forgot about my children, my husband, my life back home.”

: I’ve seen some hentai in my day, and this sounds like a line from an h-manga.

: “When I was with him, I forgot my name. I forgot my purpose. This relationship lasted six weeks and then he vanished. Gone.”

: So is it just me, or is there a pattern of Essentia or whoever having very poor taste in men?

: “I returned home, prepared to tell my husband everything, but he wasn’t there. My children were gone too.”

: “I felt myself becoming increasingly ill, and I deteriorated over the next days. Finally, I saw a doctor and was informed I had a terminal illness. Then I began to develop my android self, The Essentia 2000.”

: You ever just have such bad taste in men that you develop cancer?

: Immediately after the cutscene, we get warped to this room with the severed left arm in it. That’s three body parts down, one to go.

: To progress, we now have to turn that blue hand in the ground so it points to this hand, and then use this hand to open that barred door just north of Alex’s position.

: This room has toxic goo in it, but we can avoid it by walking around the edges just so.

: One switch and one poorly-hidden button later, and we can cross the bridge to…

: A giant comb. We need to carry this back to a door that was north of where we entered this room.

: This particular spot shows off one of the more poorly-designed aspects of this dungeon. See those pillars in the middle, with what look like vines on them?

: We can Amp those to get to the door behind them.

: This is the final big bullshit puzzle of this dungeon. It’s a maze where certain platforms have skateboard ramps between them, and there’s also light bridges.

: You can’t see it very well, but there’s two doors we need to bring to the faces at the very top. One is in the top-left corner, the other in the bottom-right.

: The first thing I did was go around collecting all the chests, of which there are quite a few. The most notable is this mimic, which is one tile up and one tile right of your starting position.

: One LP Toss erased it, giving us a free level up.

: The mimic drops some money and a Football Helmet, which gives Alex some pretty decent stats. We want to equip this because there’s a chance we’ll miss an enemy with LP Toss in a multi-enemy fight, and Alex is pretty low on HP.

: There’s a switch just below where the red door is that shifts the bridges so that we can get the red door in place.

: The platform next to the mimic also contains a new weapon for Alex.

: Anyway, after some more bridge shifting we eventually get the green door into place. You have to do two switches I think, one to get the green door to the middle of the right side and a second to get it up to the door.

: “The memories here are very painful. So please bear with me as I can only tell parts of the story.”

: “I lived as a young girl with my parents in Pontresina, Switzerland. I had four brothers. My brothers and I rarely spoke, as I was much younger than them.”

: This entire dungeon feels like one of the dumb stories Drebin tells you in MGS4 after you kill a member of the Beauty & Beast Corps.

: “My father was always away on business and my mother was a teacher at my local school. I spent most of my time alone, wandering the Pontresina Valley. I dreamed about writing and other worlds.”

: “In that valley, I found another world - the world of my other selves. Getting lost in solitude is the quickest way to other-worldliness.”

: “Someone who is surrounded by others can achieve this, but only if they are selfless. If you so love another person that you could follow them from the world itself, you can truly see the wonders of all the universes.”

: I’ll just cut the rest of that out. We have another big monologue coming up.

: This room has a series of puzzles that have no real reason to exist.

: There are two of these sets of switches - one on the right of the guillotine and one on the left.

: This room has two torches in it. Lighting one but not the other will open one set of bollards, while lighting both will allow access to the chest. The chest has a new weapon for Vella that we’re probably never going to see because of how broken LP Toss is.

: The executioner wants us to find people to kill. The one we’re looking for in this room is directly at the bottom.

: Not pictured: carrying the guy back to the guillotine, then carrying his severed head to the statue on the top.

: The other side is equally stupid. There’s a poison pool that we can just barely skirt around.

: I really, really do not understand what the fuck the point of this is, or why we need to do it twice.

: We need a third victim, and there are no more volunteers, so let’s just watch Alex die.

: Unfortunately, he doesn’t die and we instead unlock the final door out of this shithole.

: The masks will blow Alex off the ledge if he walks by, but we have to do that to progress.

: It might not be obvious what to do here, but what you have to do is follow the hands to the outline.

: Just gotta make a trip to the freaky glue room and then open the door with the comb. The game will warn you to save first, and I actually did, in addition to levelling Alex up a bunch. What I learned is that while all your party members will get a full heal on level up, Alex does not.

: “These machines - they’re so familiar. And yet, something feels wrong.”

: “Is it safe to approach him?”

: “I cannot say. I would never harm you, Alex. But it is logical to assume that one of my many parallel lives may have some reason.”

: This is Yuzu Imajo. Yuzu is a Japanese soldier who comes completely out of left field. It’s never explained what his deal is (as far as I know) or why he hates Alex so much other than for the perfectly obvious reasons.

: “Somehow you look different. So many lives wasted, taken, and experimented on in hopes of obtaining this moment. And now that I’m looking at you, I don’t know if I should love you or hate you.”

: “To kill you, in the way that you killed me time and time again, has been my only dream, my only waking thought for the past fifty lifetimes.”

: Something tells me that if Alex started a fight with this guy in any universe that doesn’t involve LP Toss being an instakill, he’d kick Alex’s ass.

: “What’s he talking about?”

: “What did I do? What’s wrong with you, man?”

: “Everything was taken because of YOU! You bastard! I lost everything - my research, my wife, my kids. And all for what?! For you!? What the hell were you worth!”

: “Alex, I can’t recall this life. For some reason, it’s blocked off to me. There is a void in my mind. There are white spots where I should see this life on the astral plane.”

: I don’t understand it any better than you do. Honestly, my brain had long since shut off by this point. What it kind of reminds me of is the intro to Senator Armstrong in Metal Gear Rising.

: “Alex, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to say such terrible things. Come here. Let me hug you. Let me say I’m sorry in your ear.”

: If there was an option to hug him, I would ABSOLUTELY force Alex to do it.

: “What!? Get away from me!”

: Welcome to a boss fight that is going to be as boring as the rest of this game.

: Yuzu starts the fight by healing himself for around 30 HP before we even get to go.

: Alex goes right after him and LP Tosses, killing him in a single hit.

: But what’s this? A second form using a meme that wasn’t concocted until sometime in the 2010s?

: Yuzu shows back up in a battle mech, because of course he does.

: Levelling up strength by somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 points caused LP Toss to go from 350 damage to 843, killing Yuzu in a single hit once again.

There’s a bunch more exposition I don’t feel like typing out, so that’ll do it for this update. Next update, we’ll learn about Alex’s destiny and… well, we’ll learn that actions have consequences.

[LaZodiac]

Okay so… ignoring the fact that there is just so much contradictory in the whole “Semi got dragged into soul space by two thirds of herself” or whatever the fuck, I really, truly must say that this entire segment of the game is… basically the worst it’s ever been.

The idea that Vella is Alt-Semi is a thing I kinda guessed since they were both vaguely Asian. I didn’t expect them to go this balls to the wall stupid about it though. The idea that your alternate selves are not the exact same age or even gender as you is… interesting, but feels like a mistake.

But the presentation of all of this, especially given Alex is the one responsible for all of their lives being ruined, and seemingly Alex is always Alex no matter the reality, makes for one of if not the worst presentations of a thing I’ve ever seen. If this really is near the end, I CANNOT tell, because not one fucking thing has actually happened in the plot.

Also, side note. The writer is so bad I doubt they’d even notice or care, but saying that the only thing holding Vella back from stardom is her own self confidence is fucked up given the entire reason she did a soul suicide is because she fell in love with a manipulative bastard pedophile.

[Riley]

I know the “can’t use conventional healing on an android” thing is more common in tabletop games but I can’t help but think this case in particular was “”“inspired”"" by Phantasy Star IV, but with much worse alternative methods