: 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.