Deep inside the dark depths of my Orpheus: Let's Play Echo Night

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Deep inside the dark depths of my Orpheus: Let's Play Echo Night

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Shei-kun: Dec 2, 2011; Screw you, physics!

Goddamn, Crea's a badass, going down like that.

Also, RIP Rockwell family line.

# ? Apr 24, 2016 02:21

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# ? May 16, 2024 02:50

Hirayuki: Mar 28, 2010

For as well as the game was translated otherwise, it bugs me that no one thought to correct "Crea" to "Claire" (or "Clare" or whatever).

# ? Apr 24, 2016 04:06

discworld is all I read: Apr 7, 2009; DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

Hirayuki posted:

For as well as the game was translated otherwise, it bugs me that no one thought to correct "Crea" to "Claire" (or "Clare" or whatever).

It's still better than Sistina Ratline. I'm still utterly confused by the last names in the game.

# ? Apr 24, 2016 04:25

discworld is all I read: Apr 7, 2009; DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

Here's the ending because why not?

Also because I never showed it off and it's somewhat interesting, here's what happens if you die: Let's Play Echo Night- Bonus 3: Game Over

And finally I don't know if it'd be worth doing the sequel; I'd finding it interesting but considering the response this got I doubt others would.

# ? Apr 24, 2016 07:28

Red Bones: Aug 9, 2012; "I think he's a bad enough person to stay ghost through his sheer love of child-killing."

Thanks for LPing this! I wasn't really sure if this game would go anywhere, honestly, because it feels kinda disjointed and abrupt at times, but I feel like it really came together and ended up having a very good ending. I like the way the writing doesn't feel the need to overexplain - the old book just flat out tells you that nobody knows where the stone is actually from, and you only find out if you collect all the astral pieces that it's maybe just given to people by the devil? But even that is never stated outright. And I was genuinely surprised when you finally reach William and he's just a spent old man. What is the sequel like?

# ? Apr 24, 2016 10:16

discworld is all I read: Apr 7, 2009; DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

Red Bones posted:

Thanks for LPing this! I wasn't really sure if this game would go anywhere, honestly, because it feels kinda disjointed and abrupt at times, but I feel like it really came together and ended up having a very good ending. I like the way the writing doesn't feel the need to overexplain - the old book just flat out tells you that nobody knows where the stone is actually from, and you only find out if you collect all the astral pieces that it's maybe just given to people by the devil? But even that is never stated outright. And I was genuinely surprised when you finally reach William and he's just a spent old man. What is the sequel like?

I've only played a little bit of it, but it seems to be more of the same. I think you're still playing Richard from this game but now you've got a girlfriend who's gone missing and this all leads to a large spooky mansion and a girl locked away inside a glass coffin that looks a lot like your missing girlfriend. Also within the first ten minutes of the game someone gets straight up shot in the face. But the overall game play is still very much the same; no combat and you interact with ghosts to solve their woes and free them while trying to solve a greater mystery going on. If anything I'd especially want to show it off because the fan translation was only finished as of last year, so I don't think many have gotten to experience the game.

And yeah, as far as I can tell the medium was actually a demonic force that was probably the personification of the red stone itself and that it wasn't really bestowing power but instead forcing it's will onto people to perform evil acts and ritualistic sacrifices in the guise of being able to control one's fate. I felt this was especially evident for Richard's father as his voice changed once the stone fully took over and kudos to the voice actor for doing such a bang-up job with that. Either way, I think this is another great overlooked game by From and I'm glad I was able to show it off.

# ? Apr 24, 2016 11:00

coleman francis: Aug 8, 2007; Tap tap
The ketchup bottle
None will come
Then axolotl; Hair Elf

Thanks for the lp niggurath. I really love this game.

I know the red stone was controlling Richard and is hungry for them souls, but offing a police officer as a first act seems a bit foolish. People are gonna start looking for him right off the bat.

Don't know why this thread was so dead, you get just as many views on youtube as your other lp's. Sorry I wasn't more lively, I'm just null at expressing thoughts and impressions thru writing.

I wonder if ghost ocean liners are less expensive than material boats.

# ? Apr 24, 2016 15:43

discworld is all I read: Apr 7, 2009; DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

coleman francis posted:

Thanks for the lp niggurath. I really love this game.

I know the red stone was controlling Richard and is hungry for them souls, but offing a police officer as a first act seems a bit foolish. People are gonna start looking for him right off the bat.

Don't know why this thread was so dead, you get just as many views on youtube as your other lp's. Sorry I wasn't more lively, I'm just null at expressing thoughts and impressions thru writing.

I wonder if ghost ocean liners are less expensive than material boats.

Awww, Coleman, that wasn't anything directed at you or anyone; just me feeling ways and things. And I think that the stone probably knows what to do to get rid of dead bodies and keeping it's hosts alive. It seems to have been doing it for quite some time if the game is to be believed, especially if the original king who had been using it in the 1400's had been murdering folks for a while.

# ? Apr 24, 2016 20:36

SystemLogoff: Feb 19, 2011; End Session?

Even though I did not post much, I did love this LP.

It was a nice cruse of death and ghosts.

# ? Apr 25, 2016 06:36

ElTipejoLoco: Feb 27, 2013; Let me fix your avisynth scripts! It'll only take me a couple horus.

Congrats on finishing Echo Night!

_{I thought the thread was silent because goons have started resorting to only checking the currently stickied New LP announcement thread and Niggurath has neglected to post his new LPs in it since its inception.}

# ? Apr 25, 2016 08:41

discworld is all I read: Apr 7, 2009; DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

ElTipejoLoco posted:

Congrats on finishing Echo Night!

_{I thought the thread was silent because goons have started resorting to only checking the currently stickied New LP announcement thread and Niggurath has neglected to post his new LPs in it since its inception.}

It's was honestly a super fun game to play through and while I was doing it I was also pretty much streaming it to my good ol' friend Deceitful Penguin who is not normally a fan of horror games, but found this one to be an overall pleasant experience (even though he's especially afraid of ghosts). I think on it's surface the game's story does a good job of giving the player a fairly unique location and then expanding upon that by allowing the player to manipulate the past in some attempt to set tortured souls free, and it allowed even more unique variances in locales (ranging from long abandoned golds mines used for sacrificial body dumping to past paced train rides with our bloodthirsty father losing his arm over a duel for a powerful demonic stone). But even beyond that we have a story of intrigue and romance locked away on board a time locked cruise ship, where our main focal point of evil turns out to be a senile old codger who's attack dogs are nothing more than souls that he's managed to drain the last bits of humanity from and where he himself probably doesn't even want to live his powerful, fated existence any longer.

This leaves me even more curious to play the sequel more than I have since I think the story will probably remain as good there, and from what I know of Echo Night Beyond (the third installment)....well needless to say that also has a great story behind it as well. A part of me though thinks I should hit up the lady that did the Mizzurna Falls translation and see if it'd be cool if I did some better videos for that considering the oddity that entire game is.

edit:
Also something that struck me odd in retrospect is that I don't think we ever learn how William Rockwell came under the ownership for the stone himself. The original Rockwell to get it was Allen, but was the stone passed down from son to son or was it a case where certain family members would become enraptured by the power and try to take it for themselves? Maybe that means that Arthur and Hilda Rockwell's plan to murder William was less of an altruistic one and more to gain control over the stone themselves, and maybe that's the inevitable catch with the stone. That while it probably wants to keep itself going and getting fed souls, it's not really sustainable within a single family since they'll all end up murdering each other. If anything I am fairly certain that the Rockwell family stone was one kept within their bloodline and over the course of time considering that the old king's soul was a part of it, and the way the medium talked there could never really be multiple red stones out there at once. So it all worked out for the demonic force considering that the Rockwells were coming to an end that we were there to make a new one for the Osmond family.

discworld is all I read fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Apr 25, 2016

# ? Apr 25, 2016 09:05

ElTipejoLoco: Feb 27, 2013; Let me fix your avisynth scripts! It'll only take me a couple horus.

Wait, Echo Night counts as a horror game? It feels very much like just a first-person-point-and-click-adventure experiment... that just happens to contain ghosts. I mean, most of the ghosts in question are harmless, and even the harmful ones are mostly stationary. And with the random weather in the outdoor segments of the Orpheus, it felt more surreal than tense to me in those parts.

Pondering the little bits of games is usually neat, but I find that for things of a clearly magical nature in the pre-2000s-"everything must set up a sequel"-era it's actually alright to just leave the loose ends as they are.

I mean, it's interesting to hypothesize about how the first Rockwell even learned of the Red Stone Knife the King had, or whether or not there was a more medieval process in its creation where a regular old caravel ship or some other isolated structure became the prison for several souls that would eventually pass on to become the astral pieces required to create it, or what happened to the cemetery graves-keeper (the only one of Williams co-conspirators that isn't shown to perish in-game), etc. But ultimately none of them really need answering for the enjoyment of the game.

There's also the loose end about what made either or both the main character and his father able to travel to the past and interfere with events, or why there needed to be a painting, ghost, or vision as a catalyst on top of that. Was it the blue stone after all? Was it all just the initial painting made by the dad? Was just being a relative to a blue stone owner enough?

I don't think it matters ultimately, though it does seem interesting that the knife apparently has some reality altering powers since it managed to break down a car and replace its trunk's contents with itself for the sake of continuing its bloodlust. At that point I'm surprised it didn't just stab itself into the police man and cut-out the player character middle-man.

Anyway, plot aside: Gameplay-wise I was surprised when the game automatically combined both blue stone pieces without your intervention. I thought some of the ending variations and the dialogue were hinting that the outcome would change depending on whether or not you chose between half and half blue and red stones or just both halves of the blue stone. I was also a little surprised that it didn't turn out that you were the cause of the bookshelf toppling onto the first hired goon, since the camera angle on the vision seemed to be hinting that there was enough space for a person to hide behind the wobbly-mid-deus-ex-machina-earthquake.

I guess I'm also surprised that the Equipped Item mechanic only saw two uses, with the rubber gloves and dapper suit. I kind of expected you to have to switch out from the suit to the gloves when handling the valve in the engine room, actually. So yeah, Echo Night as a whole just seems to be a neat experiment.

# ? Apr 25, 2016 10:19

Thesaya: May 17, 2011; I am a Plant.

ElTipejoLoco posted:

Congrats on finishing Echo Night!

_{I thought the thread was silent because goons have started resorting to only checking the currently stickied New LP announcement thread and Niggurath has neglected to post his new LPs in it since its inception.}

This was the case for me. It is easy to get spoiled.

# ? Apr 25, 2016 18:36

Hirayuki: Mar 28, 2010

The RSS feed is a good way to find out about new LPs without the LPer having to do anything beyond posting his or her thread.

# ? Apr 25, 2016 18:42

Deceitful Penguin: Feb 16, 2011

I were pretty spooked at that there last king ghost and it constantly reminded me of Amnesia, because you were rotating items around and rummaging through drawers, which are the main things that define Swedish Horror. That and playing Chess with death.

And I don't post here because all my neat thoughts are transmitted directly via skype to my buddy, so I only repeat the very few things I remember. Like metal gear jokes and things.

The sequel looks ok, btw, but is all in Japanese, which is pretty funny. And there's no longer rankings for the player that do nothing but either stroke yer ego or make you feel like big ol dummy.

# ? Apr 26, 2016 01:13

YOTC: Nov 18, 2005; Damn stupid newbie

I watched the whole thing. I just didn't have much to say on the game. There weren't any really huge twists or anything to discuss.

# ? Apr 26, 2016 01:39

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# ? May 16, 2024 02:50

Red Bones: Aug 9, 2012; "I think he's a bad enough person to stay ghost through his sheer love of child-killing."

ElTipejoLoco posted:

Wait, Echo Night counts as a horror game? It feels very much like just a first-person-point-and-click-adventure experiment... that just happens to contain ghosts. I mean, most of the ghosts in question are harmless, and even the harmful ones are mostly stationary. And with the random weather in the outdoor segments of the Orpheus, it felt more surreal than tense to me in those parts.

Pondering the little bits of games is usually neat, but I find that for things of a clearly magical nature in the pre-2000s-"everything must set up a sequel"-era it's actually alright to just leave the loose ends as they are.

I mean, it's interesting to hypothesize about how the first Rockwell even learned of the Red Stone Knife the King had, or whether or not there was a more medieval process in its creation where a regular old caravel ship or some other isolated structure became the prison for several souls that would eventually pass on to become the astral pieces required to create it, or what happened to the cemetery graves-keeper (the only one of Williams co-conspirators that isn't shown to perish in-game), etc. But ultimately none of them really need answering for the enjoyment of the game.

There's also the loose end about what made either or both the main character and his father able to travel to the past and interfere with events, or why there needed to be a painting, ghost, or vision as a catalyst on top of that. Was it the blue stone after all? Was it all just the initial painting made by the dad? Was just being a relative to a blue stone owner enough?

I don't think it matters ultimately, though it does seem interesting that the knife apparently has some reality altering powers since it managed to break down a car and replace its trunk's contents with itself for the sake of continuing its bloodlust. At that point I'm surprised it didn't just stab itself into the police man and cut-out the player character middle-man.

I agree that it doesn't really matter that the game doesn't explain everything. The game is pretty consistent about what supernatural stuff is 'possible' and what isn't, so the game not explaining how the red stone works or how William got hold of it don't hurt the story so much as they give it the tone of you, the player character, being completely out of your depth, someone who showed up long after the party was already over and now doesn't have the chance to learn all the details. You can answer all the questions for yourself without needing to break the logic of the story in order to do so, and I think that's what matters if you're leaving details out of a narrative.

# ? Apr 26, 2016 08:38

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Deep inside the dark depths of my Orpheus: Let's Play Echo Night

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