Without Love, It Cannot Be Seen - Let's Play Umineko

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Without Love, It Cannot Be Seen - Let's Play Umineko

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

KataraniSword posted:

Well, I mean, six people are still dead. I don't think that's much of a treat for anyone except Beatrice, Kinzo, and maybe Rosa being the only adult heir of Kinzo's left currently.

George is in his 20s, isn't he? I'm sure Kinzo being the flavor of asswaffle that he is would probably skip over women in the inheritance.

This also gives George a very clear motive--especially given the obvious leap of deduction is "Someone is trying to frame Rosa (or 𝙱𝚎𝚊𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚌𝚎???)" with the Maria thing.

e: it could, of course, be witches

# ¿ Oct 31, 2016 21:06

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 22:09

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

Without love, it cannot be seen.

"It" being a muscular butler with the head of a goat, evidently

# ¿ Nov 5, 2016 14:19

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

resurgam40 posted:

That stuck out to me too... I wonder if she, or part of her, really did love Kinzo, or wanted to believe that his love was real, and not some crazed obsession for power, glory, and/or the end of his loneliness. She really went completely crazy at the prospect that some loves are real...Provided that's the impetus, it seems we have yet another victim of abuse in the narrative, more evidence of a monster created by monstrous behavior.

That at least, is more easy for me to swallow than the drat goatmen and schoolgirl-stakes that showed up again this episode, egad. It would help if it didn't seem so at odds with the entire feel of the first episode.

That's the central challenge of this game though, isn't it? In the same way that it's daring you to solve the mystery without resorting to magic, it also asks you to read between the goatmen into the people-problems they represent.

But also, anime is good.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2016 17:12

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

ProfessorProf posted:

No.

e: Well, sort of. Enough clues will be provided to solve it without knowing Japanese, in theory.

Will we be given a helpful indicator, either by the game or by you, when all the pieces are in place to reasonably guess? Or is that spoiling too much?

# ¿ Dec 19, 2016 17:06

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

CottonWolf posted:

The head has always made me think of Kinzo, considering he's the family head, but that seems both too literal, and if we're assuming murder isn't necessarily required, I have no idea what it would mean.

Especially considering Kinzo wasn't even killed during the second game.

Despite all the warnings, it feels a little more solvable from this perspective, especially because "you could get the door but not the key"--which means the physical location of the gold, as people were guessing, is SOMEWHERE we've either seen or heard about in the story so far; most likely on Rokkenjima unless Kinzo has a collaborator and it's stashed with his secret favorite child. But even then, it should still be on the island--how would it be fair if they couldn't feasibly find it during the game?

e: Though if the sacrifices have to follow the epitaph, that's an interesting way of looking at it, isn't it? That the first death is the "head" from which the "river" of blood flows, and the people that were killed were selected for reasons known to that game's killer.

Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Dec 19, 2016

# ¿ Dec 19, 2016 22:15

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

I don't know, the coast only seems likely if it has to do with a literal river and the riddle is about sea currents or fish migration patterns or something equally weird and obscure. If it's a metaphorical river, then it could be anywhere!

Then again, "the path from Kuwadorian to the mansion" is as good a "river" as any.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 18:53

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

Maybe nobody consistently lived there and it was just a place where Kinzo could scamper off to and sleep in sight of his mountain of gold.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 02:13

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

So this is it, huh. Even if Eva wasn't the first murderer, she's almost guaranteed to be behind the rest of them, between her need for the gold and spite for her family--at least, that's what I'm reading into that line about the ceremony needing to go on.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 14:35

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

Deveritas posted:

The epitaph says "sacrifice the six chosen by the key," not "sacrifice the ones chosen by the six keys," so I'd go with "udrlo", instead. ("Quilian" has two "I"s but only one "L".)

That even gives us a letter for each "On the Xth twilight, gouge the Y and kill". Now, if we could only figure out what that means...

up, down, right, left... over? A set of directions, or combination to some sort of lock?

# ¿ Dec 23, 2016 00:35

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

My bets are still on Eva or Hideyoshi as killer in this particular twilight; they're both separate from the rest of the family, with a clear vantage point to Rosa, and a billion-dollar motive. Either one of them could improvise a way down from the window and shoot away.

The only question is: Is Eva's fever part of the "magical" plot (in which case, as far as Battler-perspective reasoning is concerned, it isn't happening)... or the "mundane" plot, in which case Hideyoshi is the killer, spurred on by Eva blabbing about the gold in a fever dream.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2016 20:02

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

oath2order posted:

We have a bonus update coming up in the episode break that will tell the story of Lambda and Beatrice meeting for the first time. Please look forward to it.

Good, because it threw me a little with Strawberry having to work through Beato--if she can make someone an Endless Witch, why not do it to herself to beat Bernkastel?

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 22:07

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

Rodyle posted:

Bern trashed her in Higurashi

Right, that's the confusing part. We have the whole rock-(super) paper-scissors thing, where Beato in this case is the rock... but if the paper can produce a rock out of whole cloth, how is it not already super paper, or a rock-paper hybrid impervious to scissors? Why the proxy?

e: Now I'm half-thinking it'll come out that Beato made Bern a witch and Bern made Lambda a witch and we have a weirdo escher triangle of magical patronage.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 22:24

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

When everyone is a witch, nobody will try and disprove witches because it means they pop out of existence too.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 17:25

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

KataraniSword posted:

So it's worth noting that the Google Translated rendition of this TIP was shared in spoiler chat before it ended up here. It was magic in its own way.

Let us all suffer in the sea of beautiful homicide art, goons and witches alike.

I remain thoroughly caught up in mystery dwarfs.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2017 09:37

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

I'm sure there's a pro wrestling gif somewhere for what just happened with Rosa.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2017 15:02

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

Yeah, Kinzo defs killed his family. His second option couldn't have been anything but Beatrice, and in "get rid of one to save the other two" it's almost really a win/win for him, I can't imagine the Ushiromiya tradition of being horrible people was any less strong in the 30s.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2017 16:22

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

Fabulousvillain posted:

I have no clue who Battler and Maria's second choice might be, so I'll just guess what choices would be taken. Battler would pick number one cause he seems like the heroically stupid type given the opportunity. Jessica would pick number two since she thinks Kanon would understand her choice and accept it. George would pick number three since he's madly in love with Shanon and Beatrice has been foreshadowing him having a dark side to him and that seems like a good opportunity to show it. Maria would pick number three because she has no one left and witches are real, so get hosed.

Maria is a hard one. You could argue very strongly for #2 being Rosa, and also very strongly against that--maybe it's "Rosa, without the bad witch in her?"

# ¿ Feb 24, 2017 20:39

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

avoraciopoctules posted:

Yeah, I definitely agree. I started just skimming like a third of the way in because it felt like the game was just regurgitating the same stuff it already said.

Why not use this opportunity to elaborate on why the Sumaderas want all this money when they're already well off enough to have super-illegal gun murder squads?

Is it to get ahead of their rivals and "win" at capitalism? Are they so terrified of going broke that they'll do anything to increase their fortune in case it suddenly starts to vanish? Is the profit motive entirely incidental to the family drama, as kind of gets implied here?

I'd think that the Teatime Terrors would be a little more interested in Old Man Kinzo's secret gold stash. Or moving Ange away from her backup. Even if their boss solely cares about the abuse narrative, wouldn't one of them want to suggest taking their prisoner more secure or preserving possible treasure clues.

I feel like the moral here is "Kasumi is 100% doing this out of a personal grudge against Kyrie, all on her own time and expense, because whether they're adopted into the family or not, and whether they want to or not, Ushiromiyas ruin everything they touch." It's almost plausible as an extension of Beatrice's argument, that the whole family deserved to be wiped out like it was because odds were good that even the grandchildren would find a way to expand the black hole of DESIRE.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2017 20:55