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Yeah, I can totally understand being burned out with the LP, especially having to transcribe all the dialogue by hand. Like some others said, if it's not too much to ask I'd love to see like a couple paragraph summary of the rest of the plot in spoiler tags, since like others I just wanted to see the revelations of the overall plot and got bored of seeing only character hangout scenes and the same game repeated with a different person dying each time. Which isn't your fault of course, since it seems like with the structure of the game you have to blindly play through all routes until you can piece together the password (which I'm pretty sure is "Ad astra per aspera" (sp?).)Mix. posted:
Fun fact about the voice acting which I remember from years ago when I worked on the game, and what the heck maybe it's ok to share here since it's funny. Originally the game was going to be Japanese dub only, even though it's an English game written by English speakers for an English audience, where most (?) of the characters are not Japanese. There were originally 2 writers/directors, and the one who left the project early on was like, and I quote, "We're adding an English dub over my dead body!!" Like I can understand preferring subbed anime over dubs, but that's just silly.
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Oct 18, 2022 04:12
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| # ? May 3, 2024 18:37 |
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Item Getter posted:Fun fact about the voice acting which I remember from years ago when I worked on the game, and what the heck maybe it's ok to share here since it's funny.  what
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Oct 18, 2022 04:29
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whoooooo boy
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Oct 18, 2022 05:33
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Quoi?
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Oct 18, 2022 05:39
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Definitely would like to see an Cliffs Notes type summary for the simple reason that leaving a story unfinished bothers me even if I am assured the actual provided ending is unsatisfying, but certainly no need to continue doing the full length updates as it was already clear that the game is heavily repetitive and clumsy to boot.
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Oct 18, 2022 06:51
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honestly the japanese-only makes perfect sense to me in terms of the kind of appeal they were hoping to gain for themselves. there's a lot of VN fans who diss anything not originally made in Japan, and a lot of developers who fervently hope they can trick players into not realising they're NOT Japanese.
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Oct 18, 2022 13:56
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I totally understand burning out on this; add one more to a vote of "I'd love to find out what happens", even if it's to complain that it's bad. I think at the very least if you return to this you can skip hangout scenes; even with the likable characters, there just isn't that much interesting going on. That said Zodiac Trial is pretty interested so far so I won't complain about more of your focus going there.
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Oct 18, 2022 15:52
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Item Getter posted:Fun fact about the voice acting which I remember from years ago when I worked on the game, and what the heck maybe it's ok to share here since it's funny. lol, and I cannot stress this enough, lmao But yeah, I was having fun playing "how would I do this differently" and treating it as a learning exercise, but I'm perfectly happy to read a Cliff's Notes. Dai's great and I liked the twins and Katashi, but not enough to carry everything else. Glad to hear you're at least having fun with the other LP 
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Oct 18, 2022 16:38
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Yeah, at least the dev that stuck to the project till the end realized it was a really dumb idea, but it went far enough that the demo for Kickstarter backers was Japanese VA only.
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Oct 19, 2022 03:26
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I'm in the weird LP-reader bucket where I will read/watch LPs for games that no one, the LPer, the audience, or myself, seem to enjoy. This did fall into that category, as I was slow to catch up on updates with this knowing not much would change. At the same time, "we play so you don't have to" is something I appreciate, so I'm willing to read even the terrible stuff because someone went out of their way to show how terrible it was. Why make all that effort be in vain? I can join in on the suffering since I'm such an avid LP consumer anyway. You've successfully accomplished showing off the game here. Doing the cliff notes/abridged version with choice screenshots and dialogue from anything you happened to find funny and/or horrifying and/or gripe-worthy would be appreciated though. You can even ditch the audience participation fully because really, what are we gaining by forcing you to consult us? You could ram multiple random routes together in a single abridged update if you want.
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Oct 19, 2022 04:13
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First summary part coming tomorrow. 
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Oct 24, 2022 16:47
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Mix. posted:First summary part coming tomorrow. Godspeed 
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Oct 24, 2022 22:47
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Barring some revelations about the structure coming in the summaries, I think it's safe to say at this point: this game was always doomed. Even setting aside the writing (the problems of which are more about priorities than quality), structurally I don't think this game was ever going to work. It's biggest clear influence is Virtue's Last Reward: you have a branching story based on the results of the major setpiece decisions (the games here, the Nonary Game voting in VLR), with it being set up as a puzzle the pieces of which you are gaining across multiple timelines and eventually putting everything together to finally reach a satisfying conclusion. It's a decent setup, and if there's one thing QS isn't lacking it's a neat premise, but the problem is there doesn't seem to be enough plot and revelations for the number branches the game has. So, the natural solution would be to cut down on the branches, right? Except the game also needs to be a dating sim, and is split across two different protagonists, so you can't, because you need a branch for each of those, and then some dead ends along the branches. Which maybe wouldn't be a problem, but here we run into the writing problems: there's not enough depth to any of the characters to warrant exploring them, and none of them grow or change in the course of their routes. Which is odd to me, because I suspect the game's other major influence is Dangan Ronpa, what with a sadistic antagonist running a murder game with a special focus put on uniquely executing the losers of said game in various awful ways. But DR generally gets the character interactions--most of the cast has more going on with them, and the growth and development of the survivors is a major focus of the story. And that's where these influences clash. Multiple routes means you can't develop the characters in meaningful ways because any development will get undone when you explore another route, you can only uncover things you didn't know about the characters. It might've been possible to make this work, but it would have taken some fantastic writing and well-fleshed out characters, and that wasn't going to happen from a group that, say, wants Japanese voice acting seemingly solely because their main influences are Japanese games. In a less ambitious, better structured game, the writing would have been passable--it has its moments! It can genuinely be fun and charming at times, and occasionally very poignant. I hold of one of the Shizuka scenes as a particularly good example, where she laments that she was so obsessive about gaming that she couldn't just take an evening to enjoy her best friend's favorite movie with him. If that had been the kind of writing throughout the game, and if branches had been pared down to just ones that were essential, we could've had a hit. As it is, though, everything's spread too thin, the game comes across as tedious, the kind where you'd be skipping even new dialogue to try and get to anything meaningful, and that's not great for a sci-fi mystery deathgame visual novel. Sorry for the lengthy post, but just wanted to show that in spite of it not working out this game did provoke some amount of thought about it (if not in the way it probably intended).
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Oct 25, 2022 17:40
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ZCKaiser posted:And that's where these influences clash. Multiple routes means you can't develop the characters in meaningful ways because any development will get undone when you explore another route, you can only uncover things you didn't know about the characters. It might've been possible to make this work, but it would have taken some fantastic writing and well-fleshed out characters, and that wasn't going to happen from a group that, say, wants Japanese voice acting seemingly solely because their main influences are Japanese games. You might be interested in Gnosia, which does a lot of this concept better. There's a stalled out LP of it if you wanted to get a feel for it - it's essentially a game of Mafia with a consistent cast but randomly-assigned roles so it plays out differently each time. The characters all have a variety of scenes that can trigger when you meet the right conditions to reveal more about who they are. It's not the deepest set of relationships in the world but it plays out a lot better than QS does in my eyes, and I think it helps that it has a lot less writing. You get the special scenes to learn more about who they are and they feel impactful partly because you just don't see very many of them and most of the time you spend with them is in the actual gameplay. And it gets away with that because there's actual gameplay; the games are fully simulated rather than just being set up for one of three or so specific outcomes. That, and for the sake of pacing Gnosia really doesn't belabour the deaths. They're treated as casually as deaths in a game of Mafia generally are. From that comparison I feel like Quantum Suicide suffers badly from just having too much without doing anything with it. There's a poo poo ton of scenes with characters that don't really lead anywhere or say anything but take up your time anyway, and it makes everything such a grind because it leads you to just straight up skipping through text even for scenes that are new to you because you know they're just not going to be that interesting.
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Oct 25, 2022 18:20
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Part One: The Rest of Male Jordan's Non-True Routes content warning: child death We left off having finished the game of Bidding Wars, which resulted in Yoshiki's death, which put us onto M!Jordan's Nikolas route. The rest of the route basically plays out like the rest, culminating in a scene where Nikolas, like every love interest, asks Jordan to spend time with him (and you get the choice of turning him down or accepting, but as is the case with almost every single time this happens, there is no reason to turn him down).  Regardless of which choice you make, after all is said and done Jordan ends up falling asleep in the Lab, waking up later to find the watch is active (which we by now would have obviously realized is tied to the black hole proxmity, though how/why is still a mystery). If we press the button, Jordan transports to a different dimension...  In this different dimension, we meet a new Everett crewmate named Daniel, who is an engineer like Katashi and Yoshiki. He gets maybe six lines total and thus has basically no character to speak of, whoops! In this dimension, like many of the others, Jordan's parents died years ago; we also learn in this dimension that Jordan gave up on their dimensional research over two years ago. In addition to these changes, we discover Jordan has a wife- Shizuka's older sister, Takako, who is still alive in this timeline- or at least, she was, up until last week when she was executed in the Deletion Game. If you were hoping to get any more characterization or fleshing out about her sister, well, sucks to be you, you'll have to settle for just having her name! In his confusion, Jordan finds his way to this dimension's Jordan's quarters; there, he finds the box where the pocket watch would normally be stored, containing only a single note...  This dimension's Jordan has already left, permanently, on a mission to find a timeline where Takako is still alive and he can replace his lost wife. He provides one piece of the code, 'aspera', and also apologizes to the Jordan that finds this, as it is very likely that they have walked into their own death- the game this week is Make 10, and Jordan was given the 5 card, which means nobody is interested in partnering up with him. Assuming the pocket watch is missing (it is), there is no way for our Jordan to survive. Our Jordan attempts to locate the pocket watch, tearing the Lab apart for any sign of where this dimension's Jordan was when he used it, but he soon feels a prick in his neck...  ...As the rest of this dimension's crew have indeed already partnered up and told Dai they've chosen to sacrifice Jordan to get the round over with- seeing it as a mercy killing of sorts, due to their Jordan's failure to recover from his wife's death. Dead End.  When we don't press the button, things continue as normal- almost like pressing the button is 95% of the time a Dead End! Wow!  Anyway, like every other route, Jordan decides to go see that route's love interest for advice on the watch. Jordan decides to immediately go and wake Nikolas up at 4:30am, for some reason. He makes Nikolas some tea in the Kitchen and shows him the lit-up watch. Nikolas says 'well, just think on it, I guess?' and the scene ends with Jordan promising to let Nikolas know if he decides to push the button. Jordan returns to his quarters, falls asleep, and stays asleep until Dai wakes the crew up so she can assign them their roles in Vampire Children. There's a conversation about how Jordan has been having trouble sleeping- unfortunately, this detail will never come up again despite being a recurring theme for this route, so I'm not sure why it's had so much time devoted to talking about how little sleep Jordan's been getting and how much he's been oversleeping.  Anyway, Jordan's not the vampire- but I bet you can guess who IS the vampire this time around! That's right, it's Nikolas! He, of course, asks us to team up (specifically because he does not want to partner with Beatrix, due to her terrible poker face and the fact that the two would be placed under suspicion immediately in the first round if they bred), and we do get the choice of rejecting him, though if we do the game skips the whole 'Ai tells us we have to put the password in RIGHT NOW' thing and you just get the Bad Ending immediately, because how dare we realize how terribly designed this game is for the Vampire and not want to get involved Either way, if we agree, Ai comes and asks us to put the code in! But we don't have the code yet! Oh no! Well, we're hungry, so Jordan decides to go to the Kitchen and grab something to eat before the game. Grabbing some cake from the fridge, he makes his way to the Dining Hall...  ...where the entire crew is dead, somehow! Why? gently caress you for asking! Dai appears only to be shellshocked by what she's witnessing, and immediately leaves the room so she can alter the ship's course into the black hole- having gone into a near catatonic state upon seeing Kimiko dead. Bad Ending – Nikolas (M)We might as well get the other route out of the way for M!Jordan before moving over to his female counterpart, so let's go back and get onto Beatrix's route instead! This requires us to pick different options in the Bidding War game so that we win the round instead, resulting in Katashi's execution. Hey, surprise surprise, it's also an execution we've already seen- the one where he's roasted to death and the game shows a super tasteless fanservice CG for it!   This route's Jordan is, for some reason, convinced he is personally responsible for Katashi's death, instead of, you know, the homicidal AI putting on the death games. Beatrix appears out of nowhere while he's moping in his quarters, and she basically mocks him openly for thinking he's to blame for all of this (from his arrival to him accidentally talking to Katashi).  We are given the choice of staying in our quarters and moping or leaving to follow her; if Jordan tries to stay in his quarters, Beatrix goes and gets Nikolas and the two of them team up to get him to stop blaming himself for every single thing that's gone wrong, as that is both unproductive but also factually incorrect. Beatrix gets fed up with Jordan's selfishness and leaves, and Nikolas continues to console Jordan until Dai shows up. This is also the first time a scene has had more than three people involved in conversations at the same location aside from the actual Deletion Games since the Prologue stuff- sorry, it's just really sinking in how isolated this whole loving game is and how little this crew that supposedly cares about each other and spends time together is actually ever shown spending time together. Anyway, if we choose to follow Beatrix, we don't get that scene with multiple people at all, and instead get another one on one scene with Beatrix in the Kitchen, where she's already in the process of making food for the whole crew. Weirdly enough, this scene ends pretty quickly with nothing much of note being talked about before Dai appears- it's honestly kind of bonkers that the choice that gets you more story is the one where you DON'T go to spend time with the supposed love interest.  Anyway, Beatrix tells Dai she's going to hell, and Dai has a witty response about how she can't go to hell because her creators were human and therefore, due to not being created by any god, she's exempt. She also mentions 'her parents are humans and were pretty poor at parenting', which COULD sound like a clue to what her deal is, but we all know by now that this game has a bad habit of writing bits that sound important but are not. The next game is Vampire Children. It's now the next day, because this game is also allergic to showing a full day off start to finish and just kind of arbitrarily uses its day system whenever it needs to transition scenes. We can instead assume the cast are all interacting and having fun and developing their characters, just off screen where we can't see it. Anyway, it's time for our route-mandated scene with Kimiko worrying about the black hole, but there's literally nothing to show here, as it's LITERALLY THE SAME SCENE WE GOT ON A DIFFERENT ROUTE ALREADY.   We will instead pick up at the route-mandated 'Jordan tries to work in the Lab but the love interest wants to hang out' section, this time it's Beatrix, who just straight up tells Jordan 'hey I think that research is bullshit and is a dead end and your parents never intended for you to pick it back up, which is why your time would be better spent having fun before the next Deletion Game'. If we turn her down to continue the research, she takes it personally, as she was actually looking for someone to help distract her from her own fear about what will happen the next day.  If we agree to spend time with her, we go to the farm and feed and pet the animals. That's all! This is literally barely a scene, it's functionally just 'you two had fun and Beatrix affirmed her desire to not take life for granted if Dai is dealt with' and then oops its the next day already. Jordan attempts to reach out to Ai to ask what time it is, but oh hey, it's Dai, who is apparently currently in control and using her power as the ship's Ai to mess with a different crew member every hour. She gets mad at Jordan for using Ai as a glorified watch, to which we get this bit of haha funny dialogue:  I think this is supposed to be a dig at the background CG when the lights are on, because it has a clock and the clock never changes?  Kind of a weird thing to include in your VN, but hey, what do I know? Anyway the watch is on so we can press the button now, which leads to... ...a dimension with another new crew member, Bonnie, who has some, uh, interesting sprites:    I think she's a vampire. Also, her VA is very obviously one of Dai's VAs but trying to speak in a higher register. Anyway, these two women give us one of the final pieces of the puzzle- specifically, “the deactivation code is made up of five words, and that one of the clue pieces is 'per'”. We then move to the Dining Room for the next Deletion Game- and wow, our wishes are answered, it's a Deletion Game we haven't seen before!  Jordan fails to guess correctly and is executed immediately. No, really. That's it. You were expecting something interesting to happen? In this game? Dead End. It's about at this point that I came to the realization that I think I really loving hate this game. In any case, time to go back and not push the button! After we do not do that, we instead go to the Vogels' quarters to speak to Beatrix. Nikolas is there and already awake (and a little put off by Jordan coming around to speak to his sister in the early morning for seemingly no reason), but agrees to give the two space after Jordan explains it's about the pocket watch, for... some reason. This scene is.... basically nothing? You can either wake up Beatrix to get her advice (which is mostly 'just push it, stupid'), or you can give up and talk to Nikolas outside instead (whose advice is 'aren't scientists used to having to do things they don't know the outcome for?', so pretty much the same as Beatrix). Jordan returns to his quarters.  Jordan is also not the vampire here. To literally nobody's surprise, Beatrix is! Wow!  Beatrix wants to pair with Jordan because she has a plan to ensure Nikolas survives, but doing so will require her to partner with someone who isn't Nikolas (and implies she won't be telling him she's the Vampire at any point, either). We can turn her down here, but there's literally no difference besides her getting furious and implying she's going to make sure we die in the Deletion Game. (The game doesn't allow for that, so I have no clue how she would manage that.)Same scene with Ai and the server room, you should know the drill by now. Jordan decides to take a bath before the start of the Deletion Game, but upon entering the Bath area...  Oh noooooo everyone's mysteriously dead and also in the Bath for some reason? Dai shows up and ribs Jordan for 'not waiting until the Deletion Game', but quickly alerts him to the fact that someone is still alive and just around the corner.  Oh hey.  Confirmation on that other Bad End from ages ago that yes, there are two Kimikos sometimes, I guess! Took long enough!  Ironically, this is one of the few interesting Bad Ends where we actually get information! Specifically, that Dai's “prime directive” is that Kimiko stays alive... and that, despite Kimiko seemingly still being alive in front of her, she also can see the evidence of this Kimiko killing the Kimiko she was required to keep alive, meaning she's failed. Will this be extrapolated on at any point? Place your bets now!  Unfortunately, Jordan has already been stabbed in the gut, and is bleeding to death on the floor when this is all taking place. That being said, Dai breaks persona completely and apologizes to him, which is the last thing he hears. Bad Ending – Beatrix (M) Tune in next summary to see what happens with Female Jordan on the rest of her non-true routes! 
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Oct 25, 2022 18:24
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Jinkies. It's coming through your narration just how much you don't like this game.
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Oct 25, 2022 18:54
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its more that i haven't really had justification to criticize so its been bottled up I agree w/ a lot of takes that there was a lot of potential here that was just kind of lit on fire, I think if there had been stronger management/structure and a willingness to kill your darlings conceptually this would've released in a better state
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Oct 25, 2022 19:05
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Yeesh, it was fairly obvious from the LP that no actual set pieces were changing but these summaries show it in depth. It can't be fun to play through the same story a dozen times with only minor changes in order to get more actually fleshed out content (assuming that the true end isn't just fluff, too) - VLR had the decency of having the story be reasonably unique between the different routes IMO.
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Oct 25, 2022 19:05
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One of the weirdest sticking points of the game is how blasé everyone is about the death game. If the crew was all staying isolated from each other as, say, a defense mechanism due to the neverending death games, ramping up the distrust and paranoia as things went on, it would make sense that in each route we are largely only interacting with one person whose trust we've gained. But the crew never seems to try and do anything about it, the consensus being to try and go about as normal as best they can and just hope Dai stops, I guess. No one questions why it's still going on after one death when it supposedly triggered by a resource crisis, no one tries to figure literally anything about what's going on, everyone just goes along with it.Tenebrais posted:You might be interested in Gnosia, which does a lot of this concept better. There's a stalled out LP of it if you wanted to get a feel for it - it's essentially a game of Mafia with a consistent cast but randomly-assigned roles so it plays out differently each time. The characters all have a variety of scenes that can trigger when you meet the right conditions to reveal more about who they are. It's not the deepest set of relationships in the world but it plays out a lot better than QS does in my eyes, and I think it helps that it has a lot less writing. You get the special scenes to learn more about who they are and they feel impactful partly because you just don't see very many of them and most of the time you spend with them is in the actual gameplay. And it gets away with that because there's actual gameplay; the games are fully simulated rather than just being set up for one of three or so specific outcomes. That, and for the sake of pacing Gnosia really doesn't belabour the deaths. They're treated as casually as deaths in a game of Mafia generally are. I've actually played and finished Gnosia. It's really good! And yeah, it definitely has a less is more writing style, with a bigger cast that is mostly characterized through the half-dozen or so events that they star in and their behavior and lines in the procedural gameplay. It does make the deaths less impactful, but that works with the time loop nature of the game. It's much more about the mystery of what everyone's deal is and what is going on than it is about the outcomes of any individual game.
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Oct 25, 2022 19:42
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Don't worry Mix., I just made you an auto-updater for these summaries (not related to the secret make update button from the LP Forum):pre:public void makeUpdate(Character m_route, Jordan f){
while(!overrideCode.IsComplete()){
current_game.execute(m_route.DesignatedVictim);
current_game.Game=DeletionGame.VampireChildren;
m_route.HaveFluffScenes(f, player.input());
m_dai.beTheBest();
if(f.pressTheButton(player.input())){
f.travelDimension(m_route.BadEndDimension);
if(!m_route.BadEndDimension.JokeEnd)
overrideCode.Add(m_route.CodePart);
f.kill();
laughAt(player);
}
else{
m_kimiko.killEveryone();
f.kill();
laughAt(player);
}
}
}
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Oct 25, 2022 22:02
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ZCKaiser posted:I've actually played and finished Gnosia. It's really good! And yeah, it definitely has a less is more writing style Showing up Quantum Suicide isn't a super high bar to clear, but Gnosia also does a much better job than Chrono Cross at making you care about the main leads' relationship during all the alternate universe hijinks. As for this update, maybe this is an homage to the "Welp, everyone's dead" ending in VLR...?
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Oct 25, 2022 22:09
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Quackles posted:It's coming through your narration just how much you don't like this game. Bifauxnen posted:As for this update, maybe this is an homage to the "Welp, everyone's dead" ending in VLR...? This is basically just straight out of nowhere - no in-universe explanation, nothing emotionally that would indicate it (e.g., someone openly homicidal, somebody who's visibly depressed, somebody visibly despairing to the point that they might just snap, etc), nothing. Just "hey, you're all dead".
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Oct 25, 2022 22:35
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Yeah, the best thing I can say for these two endings is "At least it wasn't Jordan and their partner getting killed by failing at Vampire Children again.", which is not a high bar to clear. It would probably work better to combine the fail state of pressing the button with the fail state of losing the game, as in, Jordan chooses not to press the button, code input, Vampire Children, Jordan transports themselves (plus their partner?) to an alternate universe where stuff happens, codes are learned and they die. At least that way the dead ends would be slightly different and there'd be only half of them.
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Oct 26, 2022 05:37
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Unless there's an amazing payoff for it later on, it sure seems like a big waste of development resources to let you travel between dimensions at all.
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Oct 26, 2022 10:23
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Item Getter posted:Unless there's an amazing payoff for it later on, it sure seems like a big waste of development resources to let you travel between dimensions at all. Where else were they gonna put all those Kickstarter backers, huh?
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Oct 26, 2022 14:08
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mycelia posted:Where else were they gonna put all those Kickstarter backers, huh? Oh gosh it didn't dawn on me until now, but of course that's where all the one-off character designs from dead ends came from. 
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Oct 26, 2022 14:23
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Podima posted:Oh gosh it didn't dawn on me until now, but of course that's where all the one-off character designs from dead ends came from. I didn't mention it in my big effort post because it was speculation, but yeah I suspect a lot of this game's problems come from kickstarter stretch goal bloat.
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Oct 26, 2022 14:53
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Podima posted:Oh gosh it didn't dawn on me until now, but of course that's where all the one-off character designs from dead ends came from. Yeah, that and "MC" / Moltencherry from the one alternate dimension is the game's lead writer/developer.
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Oct 26, 2022 17:32
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Podima posted:Oh gosh it didn't dawn on me until now, but of course that's where all the one-off character designs from dead ends came from. Ohhhh. Now it all makes sense...
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Oct 26, 2022 17:47
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Podima posted:Oh gosh it didn't dawn on me until now, but of course that's where all the one-off character designs from dead ends came from. Oof. I really struggle to think of a single game where I've a) known there was backer content tiers and b) thought it ended up adding to the game. Obviously this does verge on No True Scotsman - it's entirely possible that it has worked sometimes and I just didn't know because when it works it's not extremely obtrusive like it is in things like Pillars of Eternity or apparently here.
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Oct 27, 2022 06:40
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Does it count as adding to the game if many players think the backer-designed character is cute and want to date them?
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Oct 27, 2022 14:44
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Not gonna lie, I was so turned off by the character designs and art style that I stopped reading after the first or second update. The only reason I know what just happened in the thread is because I saw it while namesearching Pokemon Reborn.
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Oct 27, 2022 15:34
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gegi posted:Does it count as adding to the game if many players think the backer-designed character is cute and want to date them? Hopefully.
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Oct 27, 2022 15:59
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malkav11 posted:Oof. I really struggle to think of a single game where I've a) known there was backer content tiers and b) thought it ended up adding to the game. It didn't really ADD to the game, but it didn't take away from it in Hollow Knight imo. The graveyard in the Resting Ground were kickstarter backer contents, iirc.
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Oct 27, 2022 17:19
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Part Two: The Rest of Female Jordan's Non-True Routes Alright, now it's time to finish up the rest of F!Jordan's stuff. We're going to be starting with Logiship, again, and picking our final victim for this game. Now that we're at the end, I guess I should talk about how these games break down mechanically, huh? Logiship is pretty straightforward- you can pick any number between 1 and 9, but numbers 1-4 will correlate to every single possible outcome, so it's really just a matter of figuring out which ties to which and that's it. Easy peasy.  Anyway, the person that has to die for the Vogels' routes on F!Jordan's side is Katashi. But hey, good news! It's not the bad execution that we've already had to see twice! This time it's a different one! Katashi is getting thrown out the airlock. But before he's executed, Shizuka runs in, carrying a carton of strawberries she grabbed from the Kitchen- as they're Katashi's favorite, and she wants him to enjoy them one last time before he's executed.  I feel like Jordan had a dream about this exact event happening in one of the other routes? Eh, whatever. If the game isn't gonna do anything about it I'm not gonna stress too much about it either. Feels like another hook for a possible plot thing that never amounted to anything.The next morning, Jordan is still in bed, having barely slept due to the events of the previous day. She is torn between staying in bed or getting up for breakfast; this is the split point to determine who we spend time with, but obviously we're gonna be seeing both halves because we want to be thorough!  If she decides to stay in bed, she gets some more sleep, but wakes up to find Nikolas sitting on the edge of her bed watching her, which is... really loving creepy??? When questioned, he explains that he and Beatrix can bypass locks for personal quarters in case someone experiences a medical emergency while their quarters are locked. As for why he's there, he notes that he was concerned for her after Katashi's execution and, unlike the rest of the crew, Jordan is new. Therefore, she doesn't really have any defined relationships with anyone else- so it would be likely nobody else would come to check on her. He stresses that she can trust him, and that he intends to do his best to ensure both her and Beatrix survive the Deletion Game; Jordan is somewhat wary of him still, believing he could be setting her up to be a pawn or disposable teammate, but again, let's be real, that would be an interesting set up for a route, so obviously it's not going to happen.  If she decides to get out of bed and get something to eat, she heads to the Kitchen to find Beatrix preparing food. She's preparing salad, for some reason, and Jordan decides to help her chop the vegetables for it. There are a few options we can ask about, all revolving around stress, but most responses result in Beatrix flirting with Jordan (and one option, uh, directly references masturbation for some reason? Weirdly adult out of nowhere considering how besides the occasional fanservice this game has been bizarrely chaste/romance-less, so honestly I'm a little relieved I didn't have to decide whether to actually type this stuff out or not. There is some interesting character stuff for the question you can ask about food that reduces stress- Beatrix ends up talking about how both their parents were Medical, like her and Nikolas (which we know from the one conversation with Kimiko is because parents are required to raise their children to fill the same role they themselves do), but she also talks about how her father was a specialist in natural medicine and using organic stuff to help with treatment. Anyway, Dai pages everyone over the intercom to come to the Dining Room for the next Deletion Game announcement. It's Bidding Wars! What a surprise!  The teams are what Dai says here. I think Yoshiki was a favorite of the devs considering how much “airtime” he seems to get in routes that aren't his. There's literally no point in going over the 'how can we win this' conversation considering this would be the /sixth/ time we would have to hear our teammates muse about how we could win this; I will say though that Nikolas does theorize that if communication happens, both teams will be punished, so it's kinda funny at least one route has someone pick up on that. The next day, Jordan decides she needs help from someone else about the watch problem, and, like every other route before this, we get to talk to one of our three teammates.  The Yoshiki option is for the most part a conversation we've already seen, but this route's Yoshiki is by far the smartest of all the routes, because he realizes on his own that giving Ai hardlight capabilities would be bad with Dai around. Otherwise, we show him the watch and talk about our parents, he talks about his parents in turn, and when we tell him about what the watch can do he actually lets down the bubbly personality for a second and asks if it would let him visit a timeline where his parents are still alive... which would've been good characterization if he actually had a character in any of the previous timelines. C'est la vie.  If we go to see Beatrix, she's in the Laundry Room, one of the locations on the ship that gets the least foot traffic in this game. Honestly feels like most of the hangouts in this game are in Quarters, the Kitchen, the Rec Room, and maybe the Farm if it's Katashi. Real missed opportunity, if I'm being honest. Anyway, like the screenshot says, she's doing laundry since Kimiko can't. They do talk about the watch, but nothing really comes of it- instead, Beatrix talks about how even before the Everett being in the medical field has ran in the Vogels for generations- spanning long before Beatrix or her mother were even born. Her mother, however, was the first to become a doctor instead of just a nurse before getting chosen to be a part of the first generation crew on the Everett.  If they talk about the possible resources that could be gained, Beatrix brings up the fact that the Deletion Game was originally triggered by Jordan's arrival, and that the fact that the games are still going means that she feels it was never just about the resources- while, logically, their father's death should've stopped things, the fact they're still going means Dai decided there was some other reason to keep killing, and it's not just the fact that Dai can shut off her empathy programming at will.  If we go to see Nikolas, he's in the Kitchen attempting to cook... something. We already know from previous routes that he's TERRIBLE at cooking, to the point Jordan can smell the burning long before she even arrives. To take their mind off the fact that they lost their primary cook with Katashi's death, Jordan brings up the watch. Nikolas theorizes that the watch itself may be more of an alert for when it's possible to change, not necessarily the thing doing it itself, and jokes about how we could use the watch to inflict our Dai on a different timeline and solve the problem that way.  There is one other dialogue option that gives us some much needed backstory, though, and it's if Jordan wonders why her parents would be investigating alternate realities to solve 'the resource crisis' if they had no idea the resource crisis would be happening/Dai would happen. This prompts Nikolas explains the situation on Earth before the Everett left... Basically, when the Everett Mission was first prepared, Earth was already at a point where it could not sustain human life sufficiently anymore. Overpopulation, environmental disasters, government corruption, unsafe drinking water, less and less capacity to grow crops, the list goes on. Jordan's parents had started their research long before they ever set foot on the Everett because they were trying to find a way of reaching out to alternate Earths, with the hope of finding an Earth where things went right. This could in turn find a way to get resources coming in from alternate realities (or possibly find one where tech had advanced that could reverse the damage in time). The Everett, meanwhile, was functionally just a hedging of bets, one of several attempts at finding ways to perpetuate the human race. Nikolas also drops a bombshell here that I have been sitting on this entire LP because I could not remember when the gently caress it's brought up but I knew it had to come up EVENTUALLY and I am VERY UPSET it took this long...  loving ELON MUSK IS DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE EVERETT AND ITS MISSION IN THIS GAME'S UNIVERSE.   I guess that's ONE way of describing Elon and his bullshit. This whole section is honestly kind of insane, where Nikolas just goes on and on about how Musk Industries is private rather than being tied to any specific government or politicians, and I quote, “they weren't corrupt and could not be bought off”. ...I really don't have any followup here, this broke my brain again just like it did when I first hit this dialogue section like a loving speedbump so let's just move on to the next section.Skipping the section where Ai tells us that we can input the code into any device/terminal at this time, Jordan wakes up the next day having come down with some kind of cold. She decides whether she should go to the Medical Bay to get checked out, or if she should just go take a warm Bath and hope that that she feels better just from that.  If she decides to not risk it and goes to the Medical Bay, Nikolas is there and he promptly checks her vitals and determines she's coming down with a cold. He determines that she needs to stay in the Medical Bay until it passes so as few people as possible catch it from her. You're given the option of asking for a drink, more blankets, or for Nikolas to join you (wink) but none of these choices matter or give any worthwhile character development. Interestingly, though, if you do pick this choice, Jordan wakes up to Dai's voice in the Medical Bay in the next scene, which I think makes this the only branch to have that. That's neat, at least. (this is probably the most cheesecake this game ever gets so fair warning  ) If she decides to go take a hot bath and hope that does the trick, she encounters Beatrix already in one of the tubs, who asks Jordan to wash her back for her. We're actually given the option of saying either her or Nikolas- or just going “now's not a good time for romance”, at which point she teases Jordan for not giving it much thought and offers to “help her find a crush”. If you say Nikolas, she immediately jumps on the opportunity to tease Jordan about it, and if you say Beatrix, she winks and goes 'well of course you do', and flirts with Jordan by asking if they can make this “a regular thing”. There is no other character development (or even any substantial fluff) in this scene otherwise.  Regardless of which choice you make, Jordan finds herself being woken up at 5am by Dai's voice over the intercom- that's right, it's time for someone to have broken the rules and spoke to the other team! In this timeline, it's Yoshiki that broke the rules- he encountered Melody, who... somehow got lost on this spaceship she's spent her whole life aboard.  Well, whatever.Oh boy, it's time to do Bidding Wars! We're just going to follow the same order we did with Male Jordan- Nikolas, then Beatrix. Since this is the last time we're touching Bidding Wars, I can now confirm that the way this game is set up there are three options every single time, but you just pick the top option all three times or the bottom option all three times you are guaranteed to go down one or the other path, every time. (Picking the middle option every single time will guarantee Jordan is executed.) I'm not sure if this was intended, considering the math breaks at multiple points, but I also don't know how you consistently guarantee that pathing works for every single instance of this game.  For Nikolas' route, the person who is executed is Yoshiki. It's the electrocution one, so we can skip that. The only difference this time around is that Vladimir is here for it this time, and he has a moment where he apologizes to Yoshiki and thanks him for breaking the rules to help Melody, even if it resulted in his death.   The morning after, Jordan finds herself unable to sleep and decides to go to the one other place that almost never gets used in this game, the gym, to try and take her mind off things. She ends up falling asleep while taking a break, only to wake up to find Nikolas there. He reassures her that she wasn't responsible for Yoshiki's death, and when asked if she makes a habit of sleeping in weird places Jordan remembers a brief memory from before her parents took her and left the Everett, where she fell asleep in one of the dryers in the Laundry Room. Jordan decides to go take a shower before breakfast...  ...only for Dai to show up in the shower with her like a loving creep  Jordan plays it off by asking if Dai came to take a shower, and when pressed by Dai on why she would ask about a thing she knows Dai can't do, Jordan mentions that she finds showers relaxing and was making a reference to that. Dai in turn begins questioning her, because she can't believe Jordan would even pretend to care about Dai. Jordan's response is 'well, there's no benefit in being antagonistic', which Dai takes as flirting because of how emotionally restrained and logical of a response it is. She thus agrees to let Jordan finish the shower and dressed before going to the Dining Room for the next Deletion Game.The next game is Vampire Children.  The next morning, Jordan is having trouble sleeping, and she resorts to trying to count sheep because she once heard it helps you fall asleep. Ai interrupts to ask what she's doing, and after being reassured that Jordan is doing okay besides lack of sleep, she informs Jordan that Kimiko wants to speak to her. We already know why.  On her way back to her Quarters, Jordan decides she wants to get a glass of warm milk to hopefully help her settle down again so she can sleep. She encounters Nikolas in the Kitchen, who suggests she go take a warm shower first, as that could help with falling asleep. He offers to bring the milk back to her Quarters for her, while she's showering. After doing so, she asks him why he's still up at this hour, and he confesses that he was also woken up by the Captain's vital signs being elevated. He was going to check on Kimiko, too, but saw that Jordan was already with her, so he decided to just get a snack and then head back to bed.  The next day, Jordan attempts to figure out the watch once more, and Nikolas comes to fill the role of 'love interest who wants to hang out instead', as usual. This time, he's invited her to a private dinner of just the two of them. As they eat, Nikolas talks about how his mother taught him to make pasta by hand, because he should learn to cook something if he ever wants to woo a woman. He confesses it's the only thing he's actually capable of cooking, because otherwise the cooking was meant to be left to the Ikari family line. Jordan also quickly realizes that despite his pride in making it by hand, he still can't cook for poo poo and the food is borderline inedible, but she does her best to choke it down. As their dinner continues, several topics can come up, like asking Nikolas what he would've considered for a career if the ship hierarchy hadn't dictated he be in Medical (His answer was 'I would still want to be in Medical', for the record), or if sharing the role with Beatrix is fun (it is, but he feels like he ends up doing the bulk of the regular day-to-day work; he's fine with this, though, because Beatrix operates under pressure much better so in a medical emergency she's the better doctor). They ultimately spend the rest of the night talking and getting to know each other better.  At her Quarters, Jordan begins preparing for bed, but sees a small package Beatrix left for her, thanking her for humoring Nikolas and spending the evening with him. The package contains food that Beatrix snuck out for her, which is enough to satisfy Jordan's stomach until the next morning.  Jordan has a dream about Nikolas and Katashi boxing, for some reason. This scene is a literal non sequitur- maybe it's supposed to be fanservice because they're shirtless? Who knows. In any case, it's enough to wake Jordan up, at which point she realizes that the watch is active.  If she presses the button, she is transported to a timeline where the Everett is already seemingly in crisis. Before Jordan can even recover, two men run into the room and lock it behind them...  Their names are Nathaniel and Zubi. We quickly learn through their hasty conversation that “she” has killed Yoshiki and this timeline's Jordan. Upon seeing our Jordan, however, Zubi quickly picks up on the fact that she's from another dimension that managed to get the pocket watch working.  They quickly bring Jordan up to speed- that Kimiko seems to have gone wild “seemingly out of nowhere” and is killing everyone she encounters; the two came in here to hide from her and figure out a plan. However, Kimiko's voice quickly comes on over the intercom, where she addresses Jordan directly, stating she knows our Jordan has arrived on the ship.  And we get the confirmation that the Kimiko speaking here is also from another timeline. She tells Jordan that if she gives herself up, Kimiko will spare the other two. They briefly consider whether it'd be worth it to sacrifice Jordan, but decide to face Kimiko together, as it's a 3v1.  However, this timeline's Kimiko is still alive, and is taken off guard by what's happening. Nathaniel and Zubi capture her without much effort, thinking she is the Kimiko that has been killing people, which creates enough of an opening for the other Kimiko to come up behind Jordan and stab her in the back of the neck, killing her quickly. Dead End.  If she decides to not press the button, she instead goes and wakes Nikolas (and Beatrix, unintentionally) up to ask about it. He turns the question back around on her, however, saying that she's ultimately looking for him to reaffirm the choice she's already made, to not push the button. He says that for now, she should take the decision as already being made- that she won't push the button right now, and if the time comes where she should push it she can re-evaluate at that point. Regardless of what choices she makes, he'll support her.  Anyway, Jordan's the Vampire this time. Yipee. We get given the option of going solo or partnering with someone, but if we go solo we immediately go to the Bad Ending- don't even get a choice of entering the code in. If we choose to partner with someone, we get the option of Vladimir, Kimiko, Shizuka, and Nikolas. However, Kimiko and Shizuka are already partnering up, and Vladimir rejects us outright because he doesn't want to risk Melody losing her father. Picking any of those three ALSO immediately skip us to the Bad Ending- literally the only way to get the option to enter the code is to agree to partner with Nikolas. That said, going to partner with Nikolas means we also end up revealing ourselves to Beatrix, because “they're a package deal” and they agree to both help Jordan out, even if only Nikolas is actually the one with his neck on the line here. That said, for once someone actually proposes a new idea- what if the partner and the vampire DON'T PARTNER IN ROUND ONE FOR ONCE! A radical idea, for sure, but it just might work.Nikolas's idea is that he and Beatrix should breed in Round One, because it's what everyone expects regardless of whether they're the vampire or not, and to do otherwise would be a pretty massive tell that Something Is Up. Instead, in Round Two, one of them will breed with Jordan, and the other will breed with whoever Jordan picks in Round One. This ensures that the person Jordan breeds with in Round One will die while the one who breeds with them in Round Two will already have produced at least one human child, and thus if they can get through all three rounds with nothing going wrong will also in turn survive the round without any issue. They as a group also agree that Vladimir and Melody are both completely out, meaning the one they would have to intentionally kill is either Kimiko or Shizuka; Nikolas says that Shizuka would be the better choice as she's more “disposable”, at least in regards of what role they fill aboard the ship. They tell Jordan to head out so the other crew members don't get suspicious, but before leaving Nikolas holds her back and thanks her for trusting the both of them with her secret...  ...before sending her off with a kiss on the forehead. Which might as well be second base with how romance-less this VN has been otherwise. In any case, Jordan returns to her quarters to find Ai waiting for her; we know the drill by now.  All of the lights aboard the ship have gone out when Jordan exits the server room. She eventually comes across one room still lit up- the Dining Hall.  Where I guess everyone's already dead, again, but different this time? Dai still blames Jordan for this, and argues that she couldn't have done this herself, because they've all been killed via stabbing, and she literally has no physical presence. She also confirms that her programming prevents her from harming the captain in any way- even she can't override that.  However, Dai argues that Ai forced control for a short duration, meaning Dai was blind the whole time, and when she regained control, everyone was dead. Therefore, to her logic, Jordan being the only surviving crew member means that only Jordan could have done this, and therefore the ship's mission has failed completely. She promptly seals the door to the Dining Room and begins self-termination of the AI system altogether, which will in turn shut off the life support system that is reliant on the AI to keep running. Bad Ending – Nikolas (F)  We have one more path to go down, and that's Beatrix. We have to win the game of Bidding Wars, and doing so results in Shizuka's elimination. This elimination is... the most gruesome one in the game, and it REALLY comes out of loving nowhere- when I first played the game it literally caught me off guard to the point I had to stop playing for a moment because I'd gotten used to the deaths being pretty light otherwise, for this kind of VN. Like, it's bad enough I'm putting it behind a spoiler, so you can choose to skip it if you're squeamish about body horror: she is executed by using a surgical drill (the kind used to drill bone) to implale her through her forehead until the drill bit is far enough into her head it resembles a unicorn horn.  So yeah, I'm not showing the illustration for that. If this game had set a precedent for violent executions like others in the genre, maybe, but not this time. Jordan understandably gets very little sleep that night, and eventually decides to get up and be ready by the time Dai would come. However, Dai says she has a surprise for her, and tells Jordan to follow her, actively leading her to the Engineering Bay...  ...and promptly tells Jordan that she's being exempted from the next Deletion Game, having actively locked her into the Engineering Bay! Woah there game, that's a pretty big divergence from the formula, are you sure you can handle this? Dai's even set up holographic screens that let Jordan see every room or hallway in the entire ship.  Dai claims that she's “restored” the previous executed crew members in an attempt to make the next round more engaging, and shuts down any questions as to how she's pulled this off. She claims that she's disappointed by the crew in how the game has gone on thus far, and intends to step things up a bit. She states that she's noticed how the rest of the crew have began to accept Jordan into their fold as a full crew member, and she intends to capitalize on that by forcing the crew to fight to the death, with the last surviving member being allowed to live with Jordan...  ...and if they don't comply, Jordan will be executed instead. Kimiko protests this, but quickly finds herself impaled in the back of the neck with a screwdriver that Yoshiki had been holding. Kimiko dies instantly. The rest of the crew scatter to seek a weapon- Katashi runs to the Kitchen to find a knife, but is ambushed by Shizuka, who uses her backpack to impale him until he is still. The cycle of violence continues until, a few hours later, the only survivors are the Vogel twins.  And the two of them end up killing each other.  Leaving Dai seemingly as the only survivor, but without warning...  ...the power goes out. And with it, one last figure rises from the ductwork at the back of the Engineering Bay...  …  Actually, it was all a dream, and the game just for some reason decided to put an entire update's worth of text devoted to it when none of the other routes have this kind of divergence. The game is actively trolling us at this point by going 'look, look, we COULD do weird different things with these routes, but we aren't GONNA!' Anyway, back to the status quo! Beatrix is there, as Ai alerted her and Nikolas about Jordan's fluctuating vitals due to the stress she was experiencing from the nightmare. She explains she didn't wake Jordan up so that Jordan's subconscious could process whatever it was that was causing the nightmare in the first place. Beatrix offers to take Jordan's clothes, which are sweat-soaked, and put them in one of the washers in the Laundry Room. We get a choice of response here, but the choice doesn't really affect much besides who takes the clothes to the Laundry Room. (...and one of them literally implies that Beatrix wanted to do this so she could SMELL JORDAN'S SWEAT ) If we end up taking the clothes to the laundry ourselves, we get an extra scene where Jordan encounters Kimiko there, and the two have a conversation about Shizuka- specifically, she talks about how the two were a lot closer when they were younger, but drifted apart as they grew older and their personalities started to become more incompatible- specifically, Kimiko's obsession with productiveness and Shizuka's desire for freedom and slacking off were too different for the two to see eye to eye.  After her execution the night before, when helping Nikolas with the body, Kimiko discovered that her unicorn backpack had a hole in it, but Shizuka seemingly couldn't feel like she could approach Kimiko about fixing it due to their strained relationship. Even though it's too late, Kimiko came to the Laundry Room to use the sewing machines to fix it, as her own way of processing her grief over Shizuka's death and the fact she was unable to reconcile their distance beforehand.  Once Jordan arrives in the Baths, regardless of if she saw Kimiko or not, Dai is already there waiting for her, and informs her that she wants Jordan in the Dining Room so she can tell the crew the next game. She also refuses to let Jordan go get dressed first, meaning Jordan is required to go to the meeting while she is wearing nothing but a towel.  This feels kind of disgustingly exploitative, personally, so I'm going to skip to the next scene, since we already know the next game is Vampire Children. The next scene picks up the following day, where Jordan wakes up on her own, having slept surprisingly well. She takes a moment to stare out her window at the space beyond, which is where Kimiko finds her- for once, she's come to fetch Jordan herself for the requisite black hole discussion.  Except this time, Dai crashes the discussion pretty much immediately, and we actually get another chance to ask her some questions. When pressed, she reveals the reason she enjoys the death games so much is because the crew are playing for something irreplaceable- life itself. Death is final, everlasting, and unrecoverable, and the threat of death is humanity's one true motivation in her eyes. It makes the crew play harder, so they have more to lose. I feel like this conversation would be more impactful if the games weren't as shallow as they are in this VN.  She also briefly mentions her programming in regards to the game, and outright says, and I quote, “I never said I like playing games with you- I simply want to.” She then immediately course corrects and says that actually, she does like playing the games, because murdering people is fun. Either way, she leaves again, and the conversation continues on to be the same exact one we've already seen nine times prior.  After getting some more sleep, Jordan wakes up feeling significantly worse than she did when talking with Kimiko. She decides to go to the Baths to clean herself up and hope it helps her wake up, but runs into Beatrix there. We get the same 'hang out or keep working' choice, except this time it's 'join Beatrix in a bath and relax' or 'shower fast and get to work'. Obviously, choosing to not spend time with her is the copout option and skips ahead. Also obviously, choosing to hang out means we end up in one of the communal baths with Beatrix, which results in the CG I posted above again, so no need to repeat that. Instead, Beatrix goads us into gossiping about the other crew- specifically, she asks who we want to get some dirt on, and we get options. If we choose Vladimir, she tells a story about the two of them drinking together and how she accidentally grabbed a bottle of water instead of vodka when their first bottle ran out. That's it. If we choose Yoshiki, she laughs about how we picked a hard one for her, considering how Yoshiki is open to a fault, but eventually she remembers when Yoshiki was a kid he used to never stop saying he was capable of seeing “energy” and his parents seemed to be encouraging of this. I wonder if this was meant to be expanded on and just never was? And, lastly, if we choose Kimiko, Beatrix approves, but the only dirt she has is about a time Kimiko accidentally sewed a shirt the wrong way and kept making the same mistake no matter how many times she unpicked it. Beatrix mentions it stood out to her because it was the only time she'd ever seen Kimiko truly lose her cool. Early the next morning, Jordan wakes up and finds the watch working, like usual.  If she presses the button, she winds up in a timeline where everyone is pirates! That's funny, right? So random!  We even get a pirate Ai!  I wonder how many of these people that we will never see again are Kickstarter patrons? Anyway, we're thrown out the airlock because we're considered a stowaway. No pocket watches to be found here- Jordan and her parents were never crew members. Dead End.  If we don't push the button, instead Dai shows up because she saw we were awake and was bored and wanted to pester someone.  That said, she actually pestered Beatrix (and I guess by extension Nikolas) while this conversation was going on, which ultimately gives Jordan a great opportunity to ask about the pocket watch. When Jordan expresses her concern over pressing the button without knowing what it could do (and thus making it very possible she could die if she chose to use it), Beatrix forbids her from using the pocket watch until further notice, for her own safety.  Anyway, Jordan isn't the vampire this time. It's Beatrix- but she's partnered with Nikolas this timeline. However, she's come to tell Jordan, so Jordan can ensure that she's not killed as a result of the game- the three are functionally going to be working together. Beatrix says that she wanted Jordan to be her partner for the game, but realizes that it would draw suspicion, so this is the safer option for all three. You're given the option of turning her down, but if you do so she literally loving kills Jordan with a syringe of poison to “tie up loose ends”, so that's great!  After agreeing to team up, we get the scene with Ai and the chance to input the code. After failing to do so, all the lights go out and Jordan is left stumbling around in the dark. However, she quickly hears Melody's scream in the distance, and runs as fast as she can until she finds...  Oh nooooo everyone's violently dead yet again. It's another Kimiko, again, as Jordan quickly finds out upon being stabbed in the back yet again. Bad Ending – Beatrix (F)Next summary, we will see all of the Non-True Good Endings for all of the love interests we have pursued thus far! Place your bets on how long these endings actually end up being!
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Oct 27, 2022 17:56
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Ok that last shot of Melody during the dream sequence got an actual guffaw out of me for real. Also  the random Elon shout-out, how bizarre.
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Oct 27, 2022 18:05
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I don't know what's worse, the Musk thing or that battle royale sequence all being a loving dream.
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Oct 27, 2022 18:13
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Ah. Hm. Yes. These are all things that happened.
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Oct 27, 2022 18:16
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the bit about the original japanese-only VA and the musk fellating out of nowhere are the most engaged I've been with this game in a while lol
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Oct 27, 2022 18:28
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Tbh, it really feels like the game has so much more potential than it got…
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Oct 27, 2022 19:17
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