 So, what's all this then? This is AI: The Somnium Files, a visual novel / puzzle type game by Spike Chunsoft, released for the PS4, the Switch and the PC in September of 2019. It was directed by Kotaro Uchikoshi. That Uchikoshi? That Uchikoshi - most known for directing the Zero Escape series and mind-melting plots and twists therein. So what's this game about? Well, as far as gameplay is concerned, we're looking at a game that mixes the investigation segments from Danganronpa (look around an area from a fixed position, checking out items in the scene and talking to people) with strange puzzle segments where you have to search for solutions to problems in people's dreams, with all the bizarre dream logic that follows from that. It actually works really well. As for the story, you play detective Kaname Date, an investigator with a cybereye that has a revolutionary AI named Aiba (short for AI-Ball - get it, AI-Ball, eye ball?) in it that helps him in his investigations. Date and Aiba begin the game investigating a murder, and things just repeatedly escalate from there. It's an Uchikoshi game. Expect poo poo to get nuts. Also expect lots of AI / eye puns. And what about the LP? In a departure from what I usually do, this LP will be done in video form with subtitled commentary. I thought a lot about it, and I eventually came to the conclusion that this format has more benefits than a standard VLP (the voiceacting is really good and the game is a lot more "active" - there's a lot going on that is more difficult to convey in screenshots) and also avoids some serious drawbacks (the dialogue headshots use the same 3D models as the characters themselves, meaning there is no sprite rip, meaning I would've had to manually cut out all those expressions, meaning I would've thrown myself out a window halfway through). I will obviously be editing when necessary. Spoiler pol- NO NO NO NO NO! NO SPOILERS EVER! And don't even think about being cute about it. I can tell. I've been that fucker that gets cute about spoilers. I've been him several times within my own LPs. I know. No spoilers, not even under tags. Anyway, with that said, let's get going.                                                                                             
TheMcD fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Sep 9, 2020 |
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Oct 22, 2019 20:28
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AweStriker posted:You sure do pick great stopping points. I can't wait to watch the second video. So far, I've just been taking what the game is giving me, since it does fairly regularly give me new chapters to use as stopping points. Though there definitely will be some chapters where we'll need more than one video to get through later on. Some of them are definitely more beefy.
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Oct 23, 2019 10:32
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inscrutable horse posted:This game looks super weird and interesting, but your subtitles are a bit confusing. They're kinda small in relation to the size of the screen, and the game's own text, particularly when both you and the game are competing for my attention; it can get pretty hectic when I have to jump between the middle and the bottom of the screen every other second. The text size is a problem? I know I've been bad about keeping the text on screen and my subtitles separate, and I've been trying to be better about that in the second video, and since this is my first shot at subtitled VLPing, I'm entirely open to continue workshopping my methods if something comes up, but I haven't heard anything about the text in and of itself being too small so far. I thought it was only very slightly smaller compared to the game's text.
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Oct 25, 2019 20:20
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inscrutable horse posted:Not small in such a way as to be hard to read, but they... It's hard to explain, but they *feel* small. It's something about how they're between the very bottom of the screen and the text-box, which makes it feel like it's been squeezed in with the barest of margins. It's entirely subjective, I'll admit Well, I do see what you mean, but it seems like this is a problem I can't do a lot about. I could move the subtitles entirely to the top of the screen, which is less crowded, making them "sub"titles in name only, but that exacerbates the disconnect between in-game text and also screws with things when there is something at the top (like the hint on what to do in the Somnia). Here's an attempt to change things up a bit:  I increased the text size from 30px to 35px, reinforced the outline and shadow to make it jump more, and changed the vertical offset from 10px to 20px.  Alternatively, here's the same thing with 30px font size, which would probably make it easier for me to remake the earlier episodes (the larger font size might mean that some lines go over two lines now and that would look absolutely horrible, I'm pretty sure). I feel like I don't want to just straight up jam my subtitles into the text box's screen real estate, because that would look even more crowded. Would something like this improve things?
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Oct 25, 2019 21:41
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Alright, so here's a new video. However, it's like two minutes long - it's checking out the other options we've missed in Date's Somnium, and there weren't a lot. So, going forward, videos with green color will be those where we check out the things we missed in our main run in the Somnia. It's now the first using the new subtitle settings, however there's only like four lines. I'll make the next main video with these new settings as well, and if that looks good, I'll replace the first two videos with new versions with the new subtitle settings. EDIT: Never mind. Apparently I rendered this poo poo wrong. I'll re-do this. EDIT AGAIN: Fixed now! I just uploaded the wrong video because I have like a billion files laying around. TheMcD fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Oct 25, 2019 |
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Oct 25, 2019 23:36
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New mainline video! We're going to have a chat with our boss and take a look at her rather unique office. Also, our eyeball has something important to say. As a note, I mention this in the video, but just as a rule, when I just looked at an item and then look at the same item again and say something in subtitles, you can ignore the game text at that point because it's just a repetition of what the item is that we already saw. It just gives a good opportunity to throw in a comment. Also, I remade the first two episodes with the new subtitle style:  
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Oct 27, 2019 20:51
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biosterous posted:The boss keeps crossing and recrossing her legs like she really needs to pee Alas, everybody is going to have to deal with Date staring gormlessly at his surroundings for like fifteen minutes like an rear end in a top hat before he ever actually starts a conversation. Because ~extra dialogue~!
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Oct 28, 2019 19:44
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mateo360 posted:So I bought this game on Switch shortly after this LP started (at full price and then of course it went on sale like two days later) and I am loving this so far. It'll be great when like 80% of the people in this thread have already beaten this game.
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Nov 1, 2019 00:17
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Hey y'all, you might've noticed gently caress all has happened in this thread for a few weeks! To make a long story short, I got sick for a bit, had the dosage of one of my medications upped as a precaution so things don't get worse, and that then led to me getting hospitalized with acute kidney failure directly caused by that medication for like two weeks. Whoops. Anyway, I'm back out of the hospital and while I'm still recovering, I should be starting to work on this again in the near future.
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Nov 21, 2019 13:07
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 And we're officially back! This time, we're going to check out Matsushita Diner, hot on the trail of Ota Matsushita, who called in the screaming at Bloom Park, and then we'll see where that takes us.
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Nov 28, 2019 22:05
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klafbang posted:The gently caress? I was guessing 12 from the video. Nah, a 12-year old wouldn't be the "aspiring (read: unpublished and completely unknown) writer that's totally going to make it some day" or the "lusts after idols and white knights them on the Internet" type. That's definitely more of a late teens / early 20s thing. Also, I might as well tell you now, this game has a lot of dirty humor going on. You may or may not be OK with how they continue to deal with the subject matter, but there's definitely not going to be less of it going forward.
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Nov 30, 2019 01:25
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whitehelm posted:I think now's a good time to mention that Spike Chunsoft created an official youtube channel for A-set (with both a Japanese and English version) to promote the game, releasing "vlogs" weekly over the first half of 2019. I'm not going to link it here right now because the videos are full of minor spoilers (future locations, character backstory, etc) but it's not hard to find if you don't care about that. It even includes A-set LPing early parts of the game with Ota as a guest. Yeah, I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to do with that, because I haven't seen anything of that beyond a few bits, but apparently it was part of a whole ARG leading up to the release of the game and poo poo. I figure it'd be for the best if we leave that whole stuff be for now and revisit it much later down the line - because if we look at it now, we'd just have to revisit it anyway to look back at it with the new knowledge we've gained throughout the game. Capfalcon posted:Just started episode three and... there's a lot going on in that room. There is something to be said for Boss's idea of "we're so far underground it gets depressing, so I'm going to liven the poo poo out of my office as hard as I can". And boy, did she succeed. Tau Wedel posted:Cute little Easter egg I noticed: one of the images shown on the screen in the Lemniscate lobby is the scratch-off poster from Virtue's Last Reward. Huh, I didn't notice that. I did notice a few more blatant Zero Escape easter eggs that show up later in the game, though. Uchi loves him some references.
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Dec 1, 2019 02:18
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 Time for a new video! This time, we'll be dragging along an idol to a crime scene because she's blackmailing us, and things go from there. Furthermore, as I mention at the end of the episode, I have a poll for you! Now, I would prefer it if you didn't answer this poll if you know why the choices are what they are - i.E. if you've already played this game. Here's the poll!
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Dec 5, 2019 23:12
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Hwurmp posted:Aiba could have deleted A-set's video the whole time, but was too busy laughing. I interpreted it more as even Aiba being powerless against the might of  THE CLOUD , but that works as well.
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Dec 6, 2019 19:40
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Alright, let's call the poll here. Flying Balloons has been declared the preferred answer by the thread with 22 votes versus the 19 votes that Lifting Things gained. I will be recording the next set of footage tomorrow and probably getting the next video out this week.
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Dec 12, 2019 18:22
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 Short video this time so I can split the last part of saikAI from the actual Psync. So we'll just have a chat with Boss and Pewter, get ready for the Psync with Mizuki, and learn something about Pewter's preferences in more ways than one.
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Dec 15, 2019 16:28
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Aumanor posted:I'm listening to Date listing all the uses for Psync and all I can think of is "this poo poo is straight out of collective wet dreams of every dictator who ever lived". SSNeoman posted:I'm sure we'll touch on aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalll the ways this can be abused at length at one point. Well, it could be worse. We could still be in Root Double, where Senses Sympathy is less "we can poke around in your subconscious through pseudo-dreams and maybe find something" and more "we can read your mind, copy its entire contents perfectly and then rewrite your memories to whatever we want to". Now that's some dictator wet dream poo poo. Apart from the whole "if you do it too much, you eventually turn into a force of malice that turns everybody in range into a murder-crazed maniac" thing. But, y'know, eggs, omelettes, all that.
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Dec 16, 2019 21:05
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 New video! This time, we're actually doing the Psync with Mizuki in an attempt to heal her and find something regarding that whole murder business. Also, as a direct result of the choices you've made, we get to experience one of the most unpleasant parts of the game! Yayifications!
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Dec 17, 2019 22:21
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A thought occurred to me - I seem to be building a case in becoming a premier LPer in the "child abuse" genre. Between the test subjects (most of all Subject N) in Root Double, the Warriors of Hope in Ultra Despair Girls, and now Mizuki here, it seems like the topic just keeps coming up.
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Dec 20, 2019 12:44
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Two videos at once! ...that are shorter together than most other videos alone.  First, we go back to the Psync with Mizuki for some odds and ends, and then we'll go and check out the files in the second video. Also, I'm doing a thread contest! The fact that the game crashed twice on me during the simple process of picking out the last few actions we hadn't done in that Psync made me realize that my crash counter is going way up. So, why not let you guess and make a game out of it? So, this is going to be real simple: Guess the number the Crash Counter will be at at the end of the LP. Should a tiebreaker be necessary, then I'll come up with something down the line. It might be completely arbitrary. It might have something to do with baseball. Who knows. Your reward will be an avatar change, with a choice of either getting a certificate and doing it yourself, or letting me surprise you with something of my own creation. Alternatively, if you feel like it, this could also be a platinum upgrade or similar stuff. Now, get to guessing! As a reminder, the current Crash Counter is 4.
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Dec 23, 2019 20:43
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whitehelm posted:Almost forgot to mention, you're already missing a file. There's an "unagi" entry in the appendix that only unlocks if you tell Mizuki you'll take her out for unagi in the dialogue choice before you Psync with her. It was the last one I unlocked, having to google for it. I might go back and pick up those I missed at the end of the game using a guide. If I tried to get everything in one run or kept backtracking after every chapter, it'd probably turn into a nightmare to keep track of. Better to do a full playthrough, get a list of what I still need and then get those in one shot.
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Dec 26, 2019 15:13
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New video time! This time around, we find out if we managed to cure Mizuki's mental block and try to make something out of what we witnessed in her Somnium.
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Dec 29, 2019 17:22
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Oh, by the way, the Crash Counter Contest is still open. Check further upthread for details.
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Dec 29, 2019 20:58
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New video! Our investigation is kinda in a rut, but some development is going to come out of nowhere. Also, we get to talk with the best character for the first time. Also, another quick reminder - the Crash Counter Contest is still open, and all you have to do is pick the number you think the Crash Counter will be at at the end of the LP! It will be open until the next Somnium, which will be after three more videos.
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Jan 3, 2020 01:21
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klafbang posted:So, who sent the NILE message to Shoko? Wasn’t Misuki basically knocked out? Or did she just not speak, but were keepnig up with her Twitter? Seems like sending her a DM might have been more fruitful than the whole psync thing if that’s the case. I think you're mixing something up. As far as I've got it in my head, Shoko never got a NILE message - the only thing we know about Shoko's phone is that somebody called her right after she was killed and that it got stuck in a horse. Also, it was a burner and probably used for some sort of shady business. Mizuki got a message from Renju. mateo360 posted:I just learned that A-set's voice actress is going to be attending a con in my city in April. Time to get my copy signed You better practice your rhymes then. Have to be ready for an impromptu game of "A-set, You Bet!".
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Jan 4, 2020 01:57
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klafbang posted:Yah, you’re right. I meant teacher lady. A-set’s mom (I suck at names in general and foreign names does not make it better). Hitomi. Yeah, she got the message from Mizuki. Mizuki, waiting for nothing in the hospital after Date tried and failed to help her and Renju might've got her into this mess in the first place, turns to the last parental figure she has in her life - her homeroom teacher / friend's mother - for some sort of comfort. As for why they couldn't just write to communicate with Mizuki, a possible explanation is that at that time her trauma still sat too deep and she was still fixed on protecting Renju, so she might've just not communicated at all. They might've tried that offscreen alongside other methods before going to the Psync. She needed that time with Hitomi in order to break out of her trauma, and only then would she actually be able to give testimony for the murder. And it's not like the message Mizuki sent Hitomi had any real "substance", it was just a cry for help, which might've been a lot easier to bring out than anything directly relating to the scene of the murder. Note that there is nothing to really support this interpretation over others in the game. I'm just pulling poo poo out of my rear end that I think makes sense. I'm a Danganronpa fan, I have to be good at that.
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Jan 4, 2020 02:08
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Hwurmp posted:Here's something that might possibly spoil the contest but make recording easier: Oh, believe me, I tried. Back when I first played this game, I spent a few hours trying all sorts of poo poo trying to make this loving game crash less, but nope, it wasn't to be. Whatever my setup is, it's apparently cursed.
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Jan 7, 2020 18:13
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New video excitement! This time, we'll visit my favorite location in the game and invoke one of the four parts of the thread title for the first time.
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Jan 8, 2020 18:50
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SSNeoman posted:Yo nobody told me Date could actually kick rear end what the hell? Date's got hidden depths. In more ways than one. Tau Wedel posted:Something very strange is going on when Date first talks about Rohan. He says "That... can't be right. The chairman of the Kumakuras is Rohan.". This is immediately followed by the "flashback" effect, the same one used when Date remembered playing with Iris when she was a kid, but no flashback happens. He then says "You aren't the chairman." and for that line, and only that line, Date's left eye is closed. Through the entire game so far, Date's left eye has only been closed when Aiba is physically separated from him; this is the first (and so far only) exception. What does that signify? Did Aiba do something in that moment to prevent Date from remembering something? Is that why she's so quick to inform him of Rohan's death and Moma's succession, something that both of them really should have known before they even entered the building? You know, I'd absolutely be lying if I said that I picked up on that in either of my playthroughs. That's what's great about LPing games like this and Root Double, which center the plot around deep-reaching mysteries that only slowly become unraveled, but leave minor hints around early on that you probably won't pick up on unless you replay the game and really pay attention. Not that this means that you're on the right track in noticing this as something off. I could just be loving with you. I enjoy loving with people. Like when I deliberately withheld the correct option from the thread vote in Root Double just so I could have both choices run into a non-golden ending and leave at least somebody confused. Like I said in that thread - I'm a prick, is what I'm getting at.
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Jan 13, 2020 01:42
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New video time! This time, we check up on Renju, get some legendary voice acting, learn more about Date's preferences in women and get a major breakthrough in our case! Stuff's happening!
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Jan 15, 2020 23:00
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I do like the tack this game is taking with the maid cafe, that being that the maids' motto might as well be "we're here to act cute and take every last bit of money the customer has in his pocket by exploiting his desire to be loved". There's an honesty in there I appreciate.
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Jan 18, 2020 19:32
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New video... stuff. Felicitations? Yayifications? Whatever. This So guy seems pretty drat suspicious, so we pay him a visit. Things... escalate from there.
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Jan 22, 2020 19:04
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So, today should've been an update day. But, like a loving idiot, I only now realized the footage I recorded on the weekend and would write subs for today has no audio. So yeah, I'll have to re-record the footage on the weekend and see that I can not gently caress up this time around. So the new video will be delayed until next weekend at the least, possibly next Monday or Tuesday. Fun fact: The footage had absolutely no crashes in So's Somnium. Surely, I will now get a billion crashes on the re-do.
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Jan 29, 2020 19:00
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New video time! It's time to head into So's Somnium and try to find a new lead.
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Feb 2, 2020 23:50
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SSNeoman posted:k why did we do all that? what was the point? We didn't learn anything and it didn't bring us closer to the villain. The idea of the Somnium is to look into the person's subconscious and figure out what they might be hiding. What we found in So's subconscious was a scene of somebody that might be So himself stabbing Iris multiple times in front of the cold storage warehouse, which matches up exactly with the corpse we found. What this tells us is that, say, So wasn't just involved in some shady drug deals in the warehouse or that kind of stuff and might be trying to hide that from us, or is just being the average politician with a billion skeletons in his closet. It's essentially confirming to us that suspecting So and investigating him is the right direction.
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Feb 3, 2020 18:52
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Alright, might as well post this before I start working on the next video. Less than three minutes of files. Yay! But yeah, I'm working on the next video and will post it when as soon as it's done. I'm not just going to let you sit on this for a week.
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Feb 8, 2020 23:57
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And here's an actual update. Now that we've gotten some information out of So's Somnium, even if we're not really 100% on anything, we now get to figure out our next steps.
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Feb 9, 2020 23:27
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Yeah, there's a few of those scattered around the game. I guess somebody was asleep at the proof listening wheel.
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Feb 11, 2020 22:39
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New video! It's time to kick off another investigation phase, and this time we'll be checking out the warehouse again, drop in on So again, and have an extended chat with Hitomi.
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Feb 12, 2020 23:40
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Tau Wedel posted:Huh. Date asks Aiba whether #89 has any connection to "the Cyclops Serial Killings", and I'm pretty sure we haven't heard that term before. Presumably that's the crime that Boss thought Shoko's murder could be a copy of; the name would fit with a series of murders in which the victims had one eye removed. She very specifically didn't want to tell Date about it, though, so it's odd that he brings it up now. Maybe it would've come up earlier if we'd gone down another path? Feels like an oversight. Just to clear the air a bit to not encourage wild speculation that's going entirely in the wrong direction: Basically, people generally know about the Cyclops Serial Killings, and we know (or, well, technically don't know yet, but this isn't information that is being kept secret from us, it just hasn't been brought up yet and would've indeed already come up on the other branch) that they are "the case from six years ago". And of course the reason they're the Cyclops Serial Killings is because the victims had one eye removed, just like with Shoko, yeah. Doesn't take a Sherlock to make that connection - a Date is enough. What we don't know is any real pertinent information beyond that. Including information like "who did it", "do we even know who did it" and "if we do know, are they in prison, dead, still at large, what". That's all the stuff Boss was saying was super mega classified.
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Feb 15, 2020 01:05
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