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Actually the goal is to make a game that’s entirely about things happening, thus has no reason to delve into the opinions and personal lives of most characters.
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Apr 5, 2019 03:09
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Be Depressive posted:Thanks for this, yeah I’m not sure how it will work out, I’ll continue working on the proof of concept. The first two “games” we are making have no characters and are kind of myst/zork like. Read this as myst/zonk likes and for some unknown reason my brain interpreted this as Myst/Bonk like, and I was briefly really, really interested in a cross between Myst and Bonk.
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Apr 5, 2019 03:11
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John Lee posted:and for some unknown reason my brain interpreted this as Myst/Bonk like, and I was briefly really, really interested in a cross between Myst and Bonk. Bonk would absolutely headbutt a grue.
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Apr 5, 2019 03:37
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Be Depressive posted:Actually the goal is to make a game that’s entirely about things happening, thus has no reason to delve into the opinions and personal lives of most characters. If you have a great story you want to tell, by all means try it. But long-format stuff generally exists to spend more time getting to know characters better, not to just read two million words of things happening.
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Apr 5, 2019 03:50
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Thanks! I don’t usually have a clear plan on how to do the game - my goal is to learn - but I see a hole in the market for excellent traditional genre fiction that would broadly appeal to the niche market. I’d like to fill that hole. At this point I am not sure how - I built 2/3 of a game in Twine and am working on the finishing touches, all using art and photos and codes by myself. It will be online for free soon. I want to make one more game in Twine using the code I already made, then start with RenPy and hopefully be able to hire a full time artist and programmer so I can just do the music and story. It’s not anime at all. Both projects are low budget, niche experiments. But I have the perfect plot for a visual novel and I want it to appeal to the broadest possible audience because the story is CRAZY and people will flip out about it, NYT coverage, guaranteed sales. If it’s good. It has to be good. So I am posting here to ask for advice. What do you want out of a visual novel? I know what I like but I’m kind of weird and can’t rely on that as an accurate reading of what everyone else likes.
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Apr 5, 2019 04:03
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You'll never make something everyone likes! I personally like humor, the sense that you have no idea what will happen, a big mystery with a series of smaller mysteries that are resolved throughout the narrative, extreme plot twists, and a pleasant sense of repetition to make the narrative comfortable despite the craziness. If there's a romantic angle I want the obvious best fit for the main character, because it feels rewarding to be right. If there's a villain I want to like them. But what I like more than anything are disgusting genius characters like Nagito (DR2) and Erika (Umineko). You'll get different answers from everyone and you can't even trust that these answers are accurate. If you ask any writer for advice, they'll tell you to read more, not to ask your readers' opinions.
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Apr 5, 2019 04:57
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I don't really like "everything is political" because it leads to dumb rhetorical gotchas like "well is puyo puyo political" but it'd be better to say that you can't understand art without the cultural context of the creator or the player, ty folks (to put it another way its an argument that should be a starting point, and not a punchline to end discussion) Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Apr 5, 2019 |
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Apr 5, 2019 05:12
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Be Depressive posted:Actually the goal is to make a game that’s entirely about things happening, thus has no reason to delve into the opinions and personal lives of most characters. Plots which are just "a bunch of things happened" tend to be very boring fyi
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Apr 5, 2019 05:13
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Feels Villeneuve posted:Plots which are just "a bunch of things happened" tend to be very boring fyi Well the idea is you would have stories that take place in a short period of time - say 12 hours - and in that time you’re going to be dealing with the life threatening situation and not spend much time discussing politics or the structure of the world around you. Be Depressive fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Apr 5, 2019 |
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Apr 5, 2019 05:44
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NikkolasKing posted:I honestly don't know. I don't know anything about the game, I just have seen it mentioned on r/otomegames a few times where surveys are posted where fans ask various companies to localize it but it will never happen because the company that made it refuse to do so. Ok, sorry. So basically Rejet seems to have some anti-foreign sentiments. It's a bit speculative, but it wouldn't be the first time some small jp company might have them. They have refused having their game localized officially by Aksys, and seemed to be strongly against it. I think they once said its because western people won't buy stuff and just pirate, and once speculated that one of their games was doing bad because of piracy.... which makes no sense since if it was never released on the west then s company doesn't really have the right to say it failed there due to piracy. Whatever their anti-foreign sentiment is really due to them thinking all non-Japanese people only pirate, or thinking their games would be heavily criticized (if they reached enough notoriety they def would) is up to debate.
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Apr 5, 2019 08:21
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Feels Villeneuve posted:I don't really like "everything is political" because it leads to dumb rhetorical gotchas like "well is puyo puyo political" but it'd be better to say that you can't understand art without the cultural context of the creator or the player, ty folks It's an oversimplification because yeah some games have no story at all, but it's usually an attempt to try and break through the blindspots in people's heads where they don't recognise that what they see as normal and no statement whatsoever is NOT in fact normal to everyone else in the world. (Not lecturing you because you know this, going off on the subject because someone else in the thread didn't seem to.) An author who was raised in a strict Southern family, taught to call all adults ma'am and sir, and given the belt every time he misbehaved, is probably going to write a very different depiction of childhood life than some others would, and not necessarily think he was delivering any kind of message when he showed that. You can even imagine it leaking into a game as a choice where you "have" to wallop someone or else they go wild and bad end, and that this would seem totally reasonable to some players and utterly horrifying to others. Many of the most "wtf" moments in japanese VNs are not things that come across as being intended as statements, but are said just casually, like the author took them for granted. (Of course, there ARE japanese games that talk about gender roles and gay rights and so on as well.) As for the VN audience in the west being female, it absolutely depends WHICH VN audience and how you ask. There's been big swings back and forth. Certain sections of the fandom skew very female, and for a while there were even articles being published talking about how VNs were obviously an inherently female medium - like books, the author said, because reading is feminine and men are too active and vital to sit and read things. (?) Then the western market shifted to allow more 18+ games to be sold and now people are yammering on again about how VNs are a male thing and always have been. Mobile phone VNs in the west skew heavily female afaik. Console releases I'm not sure but I think there's a higher proportion of otome on the Vita than there is on PC?
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Apr 5, 2019 09:29
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Feels Villeneuve posted:aren't explicit dating sim VNs pretty rare these days? like the ones which are actually about choosing what to do on a date Yeah dating sim is a specific subgenre (the most well known are probably the Tokimeki Memorial series). 99% of the games called dating sims in the english speaking world really aren't, even if you end up dating one of the girls(or boys) in the end. Persona 4 is more of a "dating sim" than most visual novels. Tamba fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Apr 5, 2019 |
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Apr 5, 2019 10:15
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Anyone played Song of Memories? The PS4 version is going cheap and I wondered if it was any better than the generic harem thing it looked.
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Apr 5, 2019 13:45
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gegi posted:Mobile phone VNs in the west skew heavily female afaik. Console releases I'm not sure but I think there's a higher proportion of otome on the Vita than there is on PC? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp-rugIDifg I'd love to have more and better data on all of this.
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Apr 5, 2019 13:53
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NikkolasKing posted:I honestly don't know. I don't know anything about the game, I just have seen it mentioned on r/otomegames a few times where surveys are posted where fans ask various companies to localize it but it will never happen because the company that made it refuse to do so. Rejet games would give otome game a bad look due to the extreme content and iirc a dev mentioned they couldn't localize anything that'd be supporting abusive relationships. Dialovers, in particular, is spinoff from a drama cd series where there's TL and game summaries if you ever want to know why it's so infamous. Also, it's a console and MG doesn't do console games. Not to mention it's super meh for the actual game.
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Apr 5, 2019 17:19
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Sakurazuka posted:Anyone played Song of Memories? The PS4 version is going cheap and I wondered if it was any better than the generic harem thing it looked. It's not terrible but not amazing either. The combat system seemed to be a really shoehorned way of adding 'gameplay' to the mix. The animation engine is pretty cool though and I'm glad they let you mess around with it in extra features mode. Personally I need to go back and finish the route where you are dating Tyler Durden.
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Apr 5, 2019 18:34
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Ryoga posted:Personally I need to go back and finish the route where you are dating Tyler Durden. Oh I bet that goes real well
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Apr 5, 2019 21:23
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Two things I dislike about Japanese VNs that seem to be the case due to them being part of "the larger anime culture": - lovely editing. Though sometimes I wonder if you essentially Stockholm syndrome yourself into liking a piece of work over the course of tens of hours. - Anime bullshit. Specifically character ages/depictions. Not necessarily protagonist being chosen one or whatever. Look, I'd like to say Muv-Luv is a great piece of work but there are so many lovely disclaimers you need to throw about : major Muv-Luv spoilers ahead 1. Hilariously uneven gender ratio in the story 2. Disgusting "pilot" bodysuits/outfits 3. literal children fighting aliens for whatever shoehorned reasons One of the major reasons I actually like Steins;Gate is that even with his stupid chuuni personality Okabe (And Daru) actually go to college so it isn't your dumb high school hijinks yet again
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Apr 5, 2019 23:15
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Oh hey umineko chapter 3 done. I really love how the game repeatedly makes you rethink your impressions of characters, I hated almost the entire family other than Kyrie, and maybe Natshui when she was doing her Momma Bear act in ch1, and then they're all shooting the poo poo with each other for virtually all of chapter 3 and I ended up liking them all. Except Rosa who still sucks. re: ch3 speculation, I'll have to look back but someone other than Eva had to have poisoned Nanjo, right? that's the one theory that fits the suspiciously worded "the weapon was used at point blank range while Nanjo looked the culprit in the eyes text, and it would allow for him dropping dead any amount of time later In any case I'm getting the impression that this is more of a Hercule Poirot thing where character motivations are a better clue than physical evidence for the actual culprit(s) Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Apr 6, 2019 |
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Apr 6, 2019 04:50
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also people brought this up earlier but I think the rules about the narration are something like any event which happens when "real world" Battler or possibly one of the non-victim characters (because they can tell Battler about it) isn't observing it can't be said to reliably have happened but I'm not sure if that entirely works.
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Apr 6, 2019 05:03
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Dessel posted:Two things I dislike about Japanese VNs that seem to be the case due to them being part of "the larger anime culture": I 100% agree with this. I enjoy Muv-Luv but would not recommend it to anyone not already in the "anime ecosystem". There are too many disclaimers. Even then it's a hard sell: just make it through two mediocre dating VNs that last tens of hours and then you can get to the good part! Steins is better but not enough to break free of it's own shackles. On the other hand, I kind of come to Vans for their specific brand of tropes. Otherwise I'd just read novels.
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Apr 6, 2019 06:10
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The second 'mediocre dating VN' was my favourite part of Muv Luv though.
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Apr 6, 2019 06:18
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I liked it a lot more than the first one for sure.
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Apr 6, 2019 06:38
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Even with the anime chunni stuff Steins premise of "weirdo conspiracy theorist accidentally invents an actual time machine" would be a good book in basically any medium
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Apr 6, 2019 06:56
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Yeah I think Steins has to be one of the VNs most recommendable to average people (if we're not counting stuff like Ace Attorney). Probably Fata Morgana is number one in that respect, even considering the relatively anime first gate. I'd put 07th expansion up there if it weren't for ridiculous levels of 
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Apr 6, 2019 07:58
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Yeah. I liked Steins and loved Umineko but I either only recommend them to people already used to "the anime ecosystem", or just try to disclaimer it all ahead of time. Fatal Morgana I have rec'ed to people normally, same for Ace Attorney.
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Apr 6, 2019 12:23
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Feels Villeneuve posted:re: ch3 speculation, I'll have to look back but someone other than Eva had to have poisoned Nanjo, right? that's the one theory that fits the suspiciously worded "the weapon was used at point blank range while Nanjo looked the culprit in the eyes text, and it would allow for him dropping dead any amount of time later
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Apr 6, 2019 14:11
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Feels Villeneuve posted:Even with the anime chunni stuff Steins premise of "weirdo conspiracy theorist accidentally invents an actual time machine" would be a good book in basically any medium A bunch of teenagers accidentally discover time travel while experimenting on a banana in a microwave . After making small changes to the timestream they become stalked by an international conspiracy and are forced to improvise. Perfect story. Sells itself. Edit: it could be the premise for a Dan Schneider show even
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Apr 6, 2019 14:13
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Muvluv is so steeped in genre pastiche and references that I feel like being for people already into particular genres of anime is the intention. e: Also taking an eroge to task for lacking mainsteam appeal seems misguided, lol. Some of them are able to go all-ages with nobody being the wiser, but when you've dedicated yourself to working within a niche inside a niche inside a etc., it's easy to imagine how that ends up permeating the whole. Motto fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Apr 6, 2019 |
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Apr 6, 2019 14:49
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Umineko ch4, a few hours in but after reading these adorable Maria scenes and there's zero chance this episode isn't going to completely wreck me by the end is there e) ok Google search "unimeko sakutaro culprit theory Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Apr 6, 2019 |
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Apr 6, 2019 18:11
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Meallan posted:Yeah. I liked Steins and loved Umineko but I either only recommend them to people already used to "the anime ecosystem", or just try to disclaimer it all ahead of time. To be honest fate is more anime than Steingate by a decent margin. Ace Attorney is more anime than most anime
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Apr 6, 2019 18:48
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Speaking of Ace Attorney, the trilogy is coming out in a few days! You can preorder a copy of it on Green Man Gaming for 21% off!
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Apr 6, 2019 18:53
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also it's not discounted but if you have Japanese eshop points you can buy it immediately on the Japanese Nintendo eshop, it includes the English language option and actually defaults to it if installed on an English language Switch 
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Apr 6, 2019 18:59
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Rosa does indeed suck. Just completely awful in every way.
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Apr 6, 2019 21:06
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CharlestheHammer posted:To be honest fate is more anime than Steingate by a decent margin. It definitely is! But, I don't know, there are some troupes of anime I feel i dig more than others, and within my friend group this holds as well. So, for example, while Ace Attorney is probably the most anime out of the series I mentioned, it's also the one I can freely rec the most. You don't have to like *anime* to enjoy Ace Attorney, but steins and umineko do feel like they aren't going to land well with people who don't like the genre.
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Apr 6, 2019 23:50
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428 Shibuya Scramble was really entertaining, unexpectedly emotional at times, and I was invested in the characters by the end. Haven't started on any of the bonus content yet, but looking forward to the bigger plot related ones. A little amused and disappointed about (major spoilers) Aya Kamiki's music playing almost no role in the story at all. I guess it was a big red herring to make you think Osawa is being mind controlled by the music. But nope, he's just a schoolgirl at heart. (Along with Rumi's dad, I believe?) Some of the final chapter choices were annoying because of zero indication which ones pertained to getting the True Ending. Had to use a guide for that. Didn't even know there were multiple endings at first, so I was touched when Osawa did his thing in the Normal ending. Then the True ending threw in that twist at the end with Canaan, whoa. Gotta check out the bonus Canaan content soon. Also I had no idea the Canaan anime was related to this story. Think I watched a couple episodes back when it came out and then forgot about it for a decade. Probably should go back and watch it! But yeah overall a fun romp and I see myself maybe hunting down the bad endings, with a guide of course.
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Apr 7, 2019 06:12
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Heroic Yoshimitsu posted:Rosa does indeed suck. Just completely awful in every way. The fact that her abuse of Maria is on such a grounded, realistic scale makes it even more terrifying somehow btw, the way I'm interpreting things so far: all four games are "real" in the sense that they're different ways the Rokkenjima incident could have played out, meaning it's very likely that multiple characters had independent plots to kill when they entered the island, and random chance played out from there. Also Real Battler is the "observer", meaning nothing he doesn't witness is reliable information (eg Kanon lightsabre duels, none of the characters who died showing up in red on the tips screen until Ch4 Tea Party, etc) Also Ch4 ??? was great. Bernkastel and Lambdadelta pointing out that literally none of Battler's theories made any sense was hilarious after that climactic tea party Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Apr 7, 2019 |
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Apr 7, 2019 07:45
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428 Shibuya Scramble endgame material hahaha the Canaan bonus story has Kinoko Nasu written all over it, through and through. That was fun. The anime Alphard's age didn't seem to match up with the live action one though? 
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Apr 7, 2019 12:49
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btw there's something strange about the Umineko ch3 killings why is everyone in the story concerned about Nanjo's death, which, ok, unsolvable method who cares, but not George's? Just from the context of the story it seems extraordinarily unlikely that Eva would have included George in a mass killing spree, especially since part of it hinged on her husband being an accomplice w/r/t establishing an alibi for her. like to me George's death is clearly the one from that chapter that sticks out the most, especially given that her paranoia later was framed as her being accused by the media of being George's murderer when she clearly loved him Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Apr 7, 2019 |
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Apr 7, 2019 14:17
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by the way, i'm guessing this is a fairly minor mystery in the grand scheme of things (so it'll probably end up being the key to everything but) Unimeko Chapter 4: Ange found another Sakutaro doll in the fisherman's house, right? Meaning Rosa lied when she said she knitted him herself, which sounds like a thing she'd do e) anyway, possible culprits from where I am so far 1) Kinzo - Extremely doubtful - Given that Kinzo is dead at the start of every game, there's almost no possibility he's directly responsible, though he could potentially have done something like order his servants to carry out the murders after his death 2) Krauss/Natshui - possible/doubtful - Krauss possibly has a motive if his scheme to hide Kinzo's death was discovered, leading him to try to eliminate his siblings, but he seems to be fairly incompetent to pull off a scheme like that. I don't think Krauss would willingly murder Jessica. Additionally, any mass murder scheme would require careful planning, while the discovery of Kinzo's death didn't seem to be something he expected to happen. Natshui seems devoted to the family to an almost pathological extent making it very unlikely for her to murder them all. One big point in favor for Krauss though - Using Kinzo's body would require knowledge that he was already dead, which would only apply to Krauss, Natshui and likely the servants. 3) Eva/Hideyoshi - Possible - Eva was the only survivor, though by a narrative/meta reading this actually makes her very unlikely to be the actual culprit. It seems very likely that she did murder at least a few people in her "game" (in particular, Rosa/Maria) after she discovered the gold, possibly due to an argument/etc, but it's extremely unlikely she would have killed her husband or George, as her affection for them seems genuine. It seems extremely unlikely that Hideyoshi would have participated willingly in a mass murder. 4) Rudolf/Kyrie - Possible, but neither character has really been explored to the extent that most of the other parents have, so I'm holding for further details on them. Of the parents, they're the second most likely to participate in a scheme where their "son" dies, after Rosa. 5) Rosa - Maybe. Rosa is clearly smarter than she appears, and it's possible that she bears deep trauma from her position as a mocked younger sibling. It's even possible that she may have been willing to kill Maria. However, her status as one of the initial deaths in a few games is a strike against her since it seems like every game is a possible "real" way the incident could have played out, though the 1998 Ange one (where she was possibly killed by Eva) seems like the "real" one. 6) Any of the children - Extremely unlikely. I'm just going to assume the game wouldn't have the good reputation it had if it pulls a Roger Ackroyd and has Battler as the culprit. 7) The servants, collectively - Possible, but I need more information. It seems very likely that whoever did murder everyone used the servants as accomplices, though, I can't fully discount a theory where they acted to kill the family collectively to steal the gold. I also don't think Shannon would have participated in the killing of George, though I'll need to go back over her various deaths to see if something makes sense (i.e. she was killed for trying to stop the murders/warn George). The servants also control the master keys, which seems extremely significant. A big point in favor for them is the same as Krauss - they would almost certainly have to had been willing accomplices in covering up Kinzo's death, meaning they would have been able to use his body to fake his murder. In the closed-room ring murders, I don't believe it's ever stated that the bodies were ever fully examined, meaning a possible solution is that the servants who died were faking it, especially if Nanjo was involved. 8) Nanjo - Don't know enough about him to decide, but it seems unlikely for him to have acted on his own. It *does* seem likely that he may have been an accomplice to fake someone's death, though this doesn't necessarily make him a participant (i.e. And Then There Were None, where the doctor fakes the culprit's death but was under the impression that this was to fool the culprit). Given that he's Kinzo's doctor, he clearly is a party to the plot to hide his death, though, so that's a point in favor for him, but I can't figure out any reason he'd kill everyone other than the fairly unsatisfying "he was trying to steal all the gold". 9) Kanon - Listing Kanon separately because his deaths make him one of the most suspicious people in the game. In the first game, he's one of the only victims not to immediately die, which is a large outlier in every game so far. His death in the first game is the most likely to have been faked by Nanjo as an accomplice. His death in the closed-circle murders could possibly have been faked as well, as Nanjo was still alive. In two games his body was never discovered. This means that in all four games so far it's entirely possible that Kanon never actually died. In those games, "Kanon" is announced to have died via red text, making me wonder if the real "Kanon" died prior to the start of the game, and the Kanon on the island is an imposter, though I don't actually know what the significance of this would be without further information about character backgrounds. Kanon is still a bit of a cypher, though, so I don't have enough knowledge of his motivations to say either way. Much like Shannon/George, it seems hard to believe he'd willingly murder Jessica. 10) Unknown person x - unlikely, given the metafictional reasoning that it would be dumb. 11) It was a witch - well obviously it was a witch. Magic is real 12) Sakutaro - Points in favor - Sakutaro is a scary lion which can eat people. Points against - Sakutaro is too cute to murder people. He has an alibi because Eva killed him prior to the Rokkenjima incident. Since Sakutaro wasn't actually homemade, possible that an evil Sakutaro imposter doll manipulated Maria into killing everyone and since the third game seems the most significant in the sense that it "really" happened from the point of view of 1998 Ange, here's what I think the sequence of events were. 1) Some of the servants, likely with the assistance of Nanjo, and possibly under the direction of Rosa created the closed circle murders. At least some (most likely Kanon, and likely Shannon as well) of the culprits faked their death. 2) Eva independently discovered the gold. On the way back, she ran into Rosa and became suspicious that she was the culprit. 3) Eva faked a fever, and with the help of Hideyoshi, she escaped the guest house to confront Rosa when she left. She killed Rosa (possibly by accident) and killed Maria, who was a witness. 4) Kyrie, believing Hideyoshi and Eva to be the culprits (due to the cigarette) called them into the mansion to confront him. At this time, a gunfight happened where Eva was the only survivor. 5) Eva, increasingly frantic at being discovered as a killer, returned to the guesthouse and murdered the two remaining servants by an unknown method. 6) The culprit (Kanon?) independently killed George upon his return to the mansion. I'm not sure why George returned to the mansion, IIRC he was lured by Nanjo, I think? Nanjo was then killed by the remaining servant culprit(s) after Jessica was injured. Since it's possible that "Kanon" is some kind of an imposter, this would fulfill the "Kanon is dead" red text. 7) Eva, by now believing she had been found out, kills Battler. Armed, it's possible that she was able to kill the remaining culprits. Not sure what happened after that, or why Jessica's body moved to the lounge, though. anyway if i'm totally off track or forgetting something major lemme know Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Apr 7, 2019 |
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Apr 7, 2019 16:05
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