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davidspackage posted:
this game is compelling, but i am chuckling at how much of an idiot the protagonist comes off as because they can't assume you read all the notes. *clicks on lunar dream apparatus, which we have read dozens of papers about heretofore* "huh, i have to figure out what this thing is for. why did he even make this, what does it do?" you mean other than make your subconscious visible like those 20 papers said?
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Dec 10, 2017 08:29
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| # ? May 7, 2024 21:04 |
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By the way, a lot of the background stuff in the game is real. Lafcadio Hearn, translator of Japanese stories, is real, and one of those stories, the Snow Woman story found early on, is too. The ideomotor effect is a thing. The tempest prognosticator, which lets you determine weather conditions with leeches climbing up inside bottles, is real. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the less relevant newspaper clippings are taken from real 60s newspapers too.OutofSight posted:Do you really have to hide in the eldritch device, that ascends human consciousness or are there alternate escape routes? You can only succesfully hide in the Lunar Dream apparatus. Like my earlier encounter with the masked figure, there's a lot of spots you can try to hide, but you'll be found, or if you for instance try the same floor grate you came up through, Rebecca'll say it's stuck. Lamest is trying to climb up to the attic, because I think you just stand up there and they tell you you're dead without showing the figure climbing up too.
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Dec 10, 2017 09:16
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I kind of face-palmed when I saw the 'hide' option. Yes, I know that narratively we want to use the thing, but... couldn't they have messed with the pacing of that so that we weren't trying to use it as safety, but for investigating instead? Eugh.
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Dec 10, 2017 09:47
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The device seems similar to an isolation tank. I've always wanted to try one.
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Dec 10, 2017 10:27
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Glazius posted:I suppose at this point it just comes down to opportunity. Who had the chance to kill? Spoilering speculation, no need to read if you don't have any interest into playing guess who did it right now: Josie has been my guess for a bit. I thought "Bullard"/Lowry killed her father and stole his identity though, just stealing it after a death that wasn't his fault lacks the same punch. Still, we don't know whether she knows how "Bullard" got his identity. I do believe she knows that "Bullard"/Lowry isn't her father though, and that the dream thing is what helped her put together the pieces. If she thinks Lowry had a hand in her father's death that's definitely motive, and the timing of when he got killed makes the most sense - it's not long after she went through the procedure, I think, but before the success got published (meaning the vultures would want to wait until after fame/money started rolling in, and we don't know that original woodcutter knew it was finished). The woodcutter that's chasing us around has always struck me as having a female build, so much so that I thought it strange that everyone was referring to them as male. I think Josie saw the Woodcutter identity as a convenient way to throw suspicion off of herself if no one bought "natural causes" as cause of death. This theory also explains why Josie hasn't done any of the things "Bullard" wanted her to do - get the research, destroy the traces, etc. - she doesn't want to do anything he told her anymore, so we're left to pick up all these pieces.
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Dec 11, 2017 07:42
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Becky resurfaces and puts the final pieces of the puzzle together! And that's Dead Secret, with all its available endings.
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Dec 12, 2017 19:57
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My own thoughts on the game: Going in, I was expecting / hoping for a more conventional classic murder mystery, without the added baggage of the supernatural element (which doesn't really build into much anyway). I was kind of disappointed with how unconvincing most of the suspects end up being - Cynthia is most easily discarded because she's so two-dimensional, Wellington is too obviously a coward. Yet despite that, you don't get any piece of solid evidence that directly implicates either Bobby or Josie. In my first run, I picked Bobby, because when forced to choose, I speculated Josie might've had the idea to kill him, but Bobby actually did the deed for her. Apparently you have to reason that Josie did it herself simply because she had the most reason to, "Bullard" having killed her mother to preserve his fake identity. Rebecca's insistence on examining the basement freezer as a final goal is kind of strange too. She adds the objective after reading a note from Bullard specifically saying that he "already cleaned out the freezer", hence there's nothing there. And indeed there isn't, when you get there. Only if you've gathered all the previous "musings" - the hidden handprints that prompt Rebecca to muse on her investigations - she draws the conclusion that Josie killed Bullard by trapping him in the freezer, and then moving his body into his office. Criticism aside, it's a pretty atmospheric game with some tense moments, but it doesn't really manage to become a proper whodunnit.
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Dec 12, 2017 20:10
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To clarify on something I said earlier. Josie's been living in her secret attic hidey-hole since the murder. Which is why the candles are lit and there's a bed up there. Still doesn't really explain who Woodcutter is, though, since Josie took the identity after her trip through the lunar dream machine which was after Bullard moved up to his house due to threats from Woodcutter. Also yes Rebecca is an idiot for investigating an empty freezer.
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Dec 12, 2017 20:24
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davidspackage posted:Criticism aside, it's a pretty atmospheric game with some tense moments, but it doesn't really manage to become a proper whodunnit. Hmm, it's tense, sure, but I feel like a lot of the tension comes from fairly cheap devices with no purpose. What was the meaning of the creepy monkey doll? Are we supposed to believe Josie is just moving it around to be creepy for no other reason? Why does Josie spare Patricia when she finds her hiding in the ideofocal chamber, when she's apparently totally willing to just murder her directly in all the previous encounters? What does the lunar dream machine actually do? The only thing that changes after we get in it is we get brief hallucinations of oni-mask Bullard without the monkey mask now. What even happened at the end there? Why does picking the right murderer make the difference between Patricia dying and living? Why is the house on fire? Are we supposed to believe Josie set it and then somehow trapped herself under the debris? What happened in the freezer there? Josie snuck up on Patricia, startled her into... some sort of hallucinogenic fugue state? And then walked off without laying a hand on her or even closing the freezer door, somehow hauled the giant metal lunar dream pod to the basement, put the snow woman mask in it for some reason, then set fire to the house and then messed around in the house until some beams fell on her? Neat start, shame about the complete flop of an ending.
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Dec 12, 2017 20:31
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The Ideofocal chamber is supposed to basically give you mask-sight without the mask. Because you're listening to your subconcious. After josie went in she remembered that she saw her mother being murdered, and that her Murderer was Lowry/bullard. that's when she wrote the "Bloodbloodbloodbloodblood" chapter of the book. Also, after you walk out of the freezer the layout of the house is completely different. Even beyond the fact that the walls are just floating in a brown void and the masks are hanging on nothing. So i think the lunar dream water heater with the mask in it and the freezer popping up out of the ground with the tengu man in it are just your brain going ideofocally nuts on you.
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Dec 12, 2017 20:41
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I should mention that, going by the documents and dates the game provides, Josie never went into the Lunar Dream device. It's a full moon when Rebecca goes in, and the documents in which Bullard talks about prepping for the first run - when there'll be a full moon - are only like 1 or 2 weeks earlier. So Josie would simply have drawn her conclusions from her own and Bobby's research. And yeah, the ending? I figure, Josie finally torched the house to cover her tracks, lingered too long, and then things started exploding. The nonsensical bits, I agree, are meant to be more in your head. Kurieg posted:Still doesn't really explain who Woodcutter is, though, since Josie took the identity after her trip through the lunar dream machine which was after Bullard moved up to his house due to threats from Woodcutter. Woodcutter is still just Wellington. He used that name to harass Bullard through his notes, until Bullard figured out it was him and told him to cut that poo poo out. Rebecca wrongly concluded the masked person was Woodcutter. davidspackage fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Dec 12, 2017 |
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Dec 12, 2017 21:40
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Here's a question that was REALLY bothering me. Is there ANY reason to use that record? I'm all like, 'YOU KNOW THERE'S A MURDERER ABOUT LADY' when you started playing the record. Also, another thing bothering me is that after you escape from the basement still area there really is no reason at all to stick around. You get no new information as any new conclusions are just ones that Rebecca draws herself. Which she could easily do in her car while she's driving away. That one is just kind of 'video game logic' where you have to stick around for the story to unfold.
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Dec 12, 2017 21:54
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Thanks for showing us this game. The exploring of a mundane, but empty house is the stronger part. Good sound design there, too. Later the game tries to work with some kind of symbolism. I still don't get the use of the masks. There are clearly "Noh" theatre masks, but i don't understand, if they do reflect on the role of that character in the story, some visual gimmick with Bullard's studies of traditional japanese culture or some game writer's pet kink. wikipedia posted:There are four major categories of Noh performers: shite, waki, kyōgen, and hayashi.[15] Endings: I can only agree with or repeat the others' words in the spoiler discussion. Lots of symbolism and some plot hooks, that don't lead anywhere.
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Dec 12, 2017 22:02
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Keldulas posted:Here's a question that was REALLY bothering me. No reason, no. I actually forgot to put the record on the first time I recorded that part, and had to Frankenstein-edit it in later. There is one final bit of the puzzle you get from returning to the house: who Rosanna Turner is, and what happened to her. What is nice is that at that point, literally every area of the game where you might've missed a document is available to you for clean-up. A sequel is apparently in the works, but all that has been shown is a teaser with some recycled assets, chief among which is the same masked enemy. Which, considering their identity, would make zero sense for a sequel. davidspackage fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Dec 12, 2017 |
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Dec 12, 2017 22:28
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So then the Lunar dreaming machine worked on our heroine right? I hope they make a sequel to at least further explore what that means, what it did to her. Ending a game is hard, I don't know why devolopers ever do it. Thanks for the LP mr. package.
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Dec 13, 2017 01:30
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Just got caught up on this and it seems like a cool little game, pretty effective at being tense and atmospheric, and even though the plot wasn't the world's most brilliant mystery I enjoyed the ride. Also, I would read the absolute poo poo out of The Crystal Cave.
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Dec 15, 2017 04:19
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...man, I wasn't being serious. But I suppose the means of death and the basement freezer should have been more of a clue.
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Dec 15, 2017 05:12
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