Rite of Resurrection | Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo (Ep. 146) - Pixel Project Radio: A Video Game Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio, the video game discussions
podcast where we do deep dives and analyze all of
our favorite games and some of yours too. Introduce self, Well,
that's me, I'm Rick, and today we're starting play through
one Route one maybe of paranorma site the Seven Mysteries
of Hanjo, a game that is part visual novel, part

(00:35):
adventure game, part mystery thriller, and I'm looking forward to
talking about it. As always, upfront, I've got to thank
the patrons. The patrons are a wonderful group of folks
that believe in the show and want to support the
show to keep seeing more work come out on this end,
and I can't thank them enough. If you want to
be like these fine folks, if you appreciate the show
and want to show your support, you can head on
over to patreon dot com slash pixel Project Radio. You

(00:59):
can find all about what's going on over there. Here.
This month's episode about Mortal Kombat nineteen ninety five, that
amazing cheesy action movie. And you know, we can support
your favorite indie creator, which is me. Maybe it's not,
though that's fine too. I think I used that joke
on the last episode. I gotta stop. I've got a
guest with me, first timer on the show and the

(01:19):
person that actually convinced me to play this game at first.
We've got Michael from the Bits of Time podcast. Michael,
thanks for joining me, Man.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Of course, Yeah, I forgot. I did introduce this game
to you, So I'm so excited to talk about it
because I don't really know anybody else that's played it.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Well, you sort of introduced it to me. I heard
about this first on Triple Click from Kirk Hamilton, another
saxophonist too. So like Kirk, if you're listening to this,
like I'm sure you are, hit me up, man, come
on to my show. It'll it'll be great for me
and probably won't even be a blip on the radar
for Triple Click.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
But I heard Kirk singing the praises of this game,
and then you and I well, and then I appeared
on your show talking about visual novels and this was
one of your favorites that you had brought up and mentioned,
and that kind of gave me the kick in the
rear to start this. It had been sitting in my
Steam library for a while. I knew that I wanted
to get to it. Wasn't quite sure when, and I did,

(02:19):
and now here we are. That's kind of my history
with this. What about you? Did you play this upon release?

Speaker 2 (02:26):
I did. I can't remember where I first saw it.
I don't know if it was I was just browsing
IGN or something. I can't really remember. What stuck out
to me is it was published by square Enix. I
was like Square Enix making a visual novel, so that
immediately kind of hooked me. And then I looked at
kind of the route in the style, the style of
the game is kind of what jumped out for me,

(02:48):
and yeah, I finish it right on release.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, this is a very stylistic visual novel. It is
a stylized experience. You know, when we say stylized visual novel,
I think a lot of folks are going to immediately
think of Donan Rampa, And it's not quite like that.
That's more of like a pop horror art esthetic. This
is much closer, appropriately enough, to something like The World

(03:12):
Ends with You if you've ever played those games. It
has a kind of noir comic book tinged feel, but
also a little bit anime. It's cool. We'll talk about
it here in a little bit. As we mentioned paranormosite,
this is primarily a visual novel, but it's got some
mystery thriller DNA. It's got some adventure game DNA in

(03:34):
It came out in twenty twenty three in March on
the PC in the Switch. Full credits you can find
them on IMDb, on the wiki, or you can beat
the game of Note developed by Zene. It's xee N
published as you said, Michael, by Square Enix directors Takenari
Ishiyama and Yoshihito Okuno. Ishiyama was also the writer has

(03:56):
a writing credit. This was produced by Kazihiro Kawakami and
Kazuma Oshu, art by again Kobayashi and Junko Sumi Mizu.
Composer hidin or Iwasaki. This is, you know, broad thoughts
up front. I wanted to like this a lot more
than I actually did. I think I'm a lot cooler

(04:16):
on this than you are, Michael. I liked it, okay.
It tries to do some tricks that I think. I
think they wanted it to be more interesting than it
ended up being, and they really believed in it, and
they took some swings, but it just did not land
at all for me. In some areas, I like the

(04:37):
game quite fine. I had a good time going through
it from top to bottom. It's a pretty breezy experience.
It's not too long, I want to say, somewhere between
like ten and fifteen hours. Maybe it's not egregious, but
you know, this wasn't the mind blowing experience that some
of its more dedicated fans convinced me. It might be.
Had a good time, did not blow me away.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
How that's going to be interesting to talk about. I
think the one thing when I come into visual novels,
I generally want to be blown away by, like the
twists and whatever. I don't think this game has an
amazing story. I think it just has really good moments,
and I feel like it's just a lot more. It's
a lot different than other visual novels I've played. I

(05:21):
think that's it was more of a refreshing game versus
like the best game you're ever gonna play if you're
gonna read a visual novel.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
That's a good point about the moments. It really does
live on the moments that it wants to get to
and the in between, the intermediary not so much that
is definitely a choice that writers can make whenever they're
crafting a story. I think it works. We'll talk about
it whenever we get farther in. Upfront, First of all,

(05:52):
if you're a new listener, welcome, glad that you're here.
How this show usually works. We give our overarching thoughts
up top in the preamble, the preface talk. We're going
to talk about the development history. We'll talk about the visuals, music,
things like that, and then we'll get into the story.
Before we get into the story, we won't give any

(06:13):
spoilers to anything. Once we get to the story, spoilers
full on now. I debated about how I wanted to
do this, and here's where I landed. I really went
back and forth with myself. Here's what we're going to do.
We are going to talk through the opening prologue. There
is a prologue chapter that you play through. We are
going to talk through that like we always do on
the show. After that, we are just going to talk

(06:36):
about the story as a whole. And here's why. There
are a total of technically, actually if you count the prologue,
five routes that we go through in this game. And
just like the Quarry, it bounces back and forth a
lot between the routes between different perspectives, and that for
listeners that listen to the Quarry episode can remember back then,

(06:59):
I really did not like how that turned out. I've
been vocal about that. Bouncing back and forth between perspectives
is perfectly fine whenever you're doing a work, but it's
kind of anathema to how I like to do this podcast,
or I should say, to the effectiveness of how I
like to do this podcast doesn't work so well. They
should have consulted me so to prevent that, to prevent

(07:20):
the pacing from grinding to a halt with a bunch
of and then, and then, and then, meanwhile, meanwhile, meanwhile, meanwhile,
not to mention having to go back and say, okay,
they learned this, which recontextualizes this way back here, we're
just going to talk about that part as a whole.
I really did go back and forth on that too, man,
because like I get very self conscious about how I
make those decisions on the show. You know, part of

(07:41):
me really just wants to do everything the same way,
have total uniformity, so listeners know what they're getting every
time they come here on the other hand, I am
not a product, you know, I am not a brand.
I'm allowed to have some deviations based on my wants.
I am a person. So if you are one of

(08:01):
the small few that might get upset that we're not
doing a beat by beat of the story, you know,
I'm sorry. I hope you understand why I'm choosing not to.
But I think it'll still be fun to talk through
this game the experiences, analyze some writing, talk about some
visuals and aesthetics. I think it'll still be a good time.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Oh one hundred percent. I feel like I agree with
your deviations to your norm because that's how I would
talk about this game overall.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
So let's talk a little bit about the development. I
didn't take too much down here. This was developed by Square.
It wasn't dropped with a ton of fanfare. They didn't
promote this super heavily. You might be thinking, well, Square Enix,
I mean, surely they have the budget for that. Surely
they do, I'm sure. But this, like The Quiet Man,

(08:49):
this was a game that was just not put on
front Street, not blared over the alarms. They didn't put
out a bunch of promotional materials saying play this game.
I did find an interview. There is an RPG site,
RPG site dot net. They did an interview with Ishiyama, Iwasaki, Kobayashi,
and Oshu. That site is garbage, hot garbage. It runs

(09:10):
about as bad as the wikifandom sites.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
Do Have you ever browsed those in between? Yes?

Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, man, they run real bad. They brick up a
computer real quick. But I did take down some quotes
that I wanted to sprinkle throughout here. I'll pacete that
link in the episode description. But this first one, there's
a question directed to Ishiyama about his general inspirations toward
Paranormal Site, and I think that's going to give some
insight into what this game is. So they asked, mister Ishiyama,

(09:40):
what inspired you to create Paranormal Site the Seven Mysteries
of Hanjo? How did you arrive at the concept of
making it a horror adventure title? Were there any significant
challenges you faced early on when writing the script for it?
And Ishiyama, again the director and the writer, or at
least the directing credit and the writing credit, said this.
He says, quote, I was aware that this project would
be subject to many restrictions from the early stages of planning,

(10:03):
so decided that in order to create a high quality title,
it would be best for it to be an adventure game,
given my experience with the genre. We went with horror
because I thought it would be most suited for live streams,
and incorporated the Seven Mysteries of Hanjo from Sumita City,
Tokyo as a subject, as I felt basing the project
on existing folklore would make it more realistic. The first

(10:25):
challenge in writing the script was thinking of how to
incorporate big surprises that take advantage of the video game medium.
End quote. So a couple of interesting things in here, What.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Do you think about the uh would be subject to
many restrictions. Do you think that's because Square Enix as
a whole would be like pushing back that we're not
gonna put this much money into a visual novel game.
Is that what they're he's trying to get at, you know?

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Maybe? I mean Square Enix lately has also just been
the powerhouse of Final Fantasy seven and to a lesser
degree sixteen and to a lesser degree, Kingdom Hearts. So
I would imagine that's maybe where the restrictions would come from.
Maybe it's also the marketability of a visual novel, or
the fact that it's going for a more mature, not
necessarily graphic, but potentially graphic, horrific and gory genre like horror.

(11:17):
Maybe that's where he was coming from. He didn't elaborate
on that very much in that interview.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
M Yeah, because at this time period, you know how
you said they didn't put much fanfare out there and
putting money towards marketing. I feel like Square Enix around
this time did that with a lot of games. Oh yeah,
I think it was the Star Star Ocean game. It
was what is that real time strategy game deal Field Chronicle?

(11:44):
Like they just threw everything out there right then, it's
like you gotta space them out a little bit.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yeah, that's right. I forgot all about do you Field Chronicle?
Is that any good?

Speaker 2 (11:53):
I own it, but haven't played it. I keep telling
myself I'm going to one of these days the story.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
Of my life. Man. I own it, I don't play it.
That's one of the interesting things in that little snippet. Also,
the fact that Horror was a choice largely influenced by
live streams I thought was very interesting. This is I
think the first game that I've covered on this show
where live streams were cited as an actual influence, and

(12:19):
I don't know about you, but that would have scared
me off of this game for a while. I find
the stream bait category of games as being totally uninteresting
and vapid and dumb. No, oh my god, No, this
is not the first one. I think at Dead of

(12:42):
Night was sort of made to be a stream game.
That was an early early episode on the show. It
was one of the only games we've ever done that
I absolutely hated playing this game. I did not hate
playing to be clear, and I don't think the live
stream influence really stands out when you're playing through this.
I wouldn't have even known that that was a thought
had I not read this interview.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yeah, I was gonna concur with that, because I don't
know what in this game would be that unless you
count some of the minimal jump scares. I really don't
know what that line of thinking was when developing this game.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Yeah, you think of stream bait, you think of a
live stream game, you think of a game that is
made with the intent to be stream streamed. I mean,
obviously five Nights at Freddy's. If we're thinking horror games.
That's the first thing you think of, right, And that's
fun and exciting because you get to see other people's
adrenaline get pumping and them get jump scared. That's how
that genre lives and dies, right, is the reactions of

(13:37):
the streamers. This isn't really that game. It's not demanding
reactions out of you, at least not in that way. Plus,
there is a lot a lot of file reading in
this game.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
That's a good point. That doesn't seem like something that
would be really conducive to live streaming. Like, I don't know,
I wouldn't watch somebody livestream of visual novel if that's
just no.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
Indeed, I mean I use this word earlier. I don't
know why this word is sticking in my brain today,
but like this kind of almost seems like the anathema
of streaming. It seems totally at odds, totally against the
idea of what makes streaming fun. I agree with you, man,
I would not live stream that either. Discoelysium maybe, but

(14:20):
even then probably not. Well, partly because that's just a
very intimate kind of game, imo, But I'm with you.
I don't like watching people live stream text heavy games,
partly because a lot of people don't. I don't want
to watch people act if they can't do it. You know,
it's either the enthusiasm's not there, or the enthusiasm is there,

(14:41):
but it's like, okay, buddy, relax. You know. I don't know.
Maybe I'm being.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Rude or facetious.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'm just being a curmudgeon.
But you have to do a lot of file reading
in this game. If you want to engage with the lore,
you can certainly go through this without reading the files.
And you know, to be fair, a lot of the
files are like on Sumita City or on the history
of that soap company he Haku soaps in here that's

(15:09):
not necessarily pertinent to your understanding of the story. It's
just there for world building. But there is a lot
of it. A significant amount of what this game is
and its story lies in the files, and that's just
not something I would want to watch on a live stream. Yes, same,
I did want to mention too. I had said earlier

(15:32):
that this game is kind of a hodgepodge of visual novel,
adventure game and mystery game. I my and I'd be
curious to hear if you agree with this, Michael, My
feelings on this is that it doesn't really commit to
any one of these too strongly visual novel maybe at
the most, but it doesn't try to be any one

(15:54):
of these to any strong degree. And as such, for me,
you know, it kind of sits in this gray, soggy
middle area where it sometimes it doesn't know what it's
trying to be. The examples that I give and I
don't know where in the notes I give this, but like,
it's a visual novel first and foremost, I think. But

(16:15):
the problem is is it doesn't want to commit to that.
So the routes in this game, even though there are
technically multiple endings, you are really on rails for most
of this You kind of cannot miss a lot of
what this game has to offer. Ninety five percent of
this game you cannot miss. There are no routes like

(16:36):
you would expect in a visual novel, like a heroin
route or whatever. None of that. The choices don't really matter.
And the biggest one if you get to a bad ending,
there's this narrator character that we'll talk about. He comes
up and just kind of says, oh, try it again. Champ.
He'll do it better this time, right, you know, so

(16:57):
like and so like. You know, the adventure thing. So
it's point and click adventure. It does that a little bit.
You know, there are no puzzles really. The puzzles that
are there are kind of weak. Mystery, you know, there
is a mystery. It starts to tumble all over itself
and kind of crumble in on to itself as they
try to make it more complex than I think the
story and world can handle. And you know, I mean,

(17:20):
we can debate whether it's as effective as Dung and
Rampa for things like characters and whatever. But my perception
of this is it just it doesn't fully commit to anything.
It doesn't really know what it wants to be. It's enjoyable,
but it kind of if we were to look at
it as a visual novel, as a horror game, as
a point and click adventure, it just doesn't rise to

(17:40):
the top of any of those for me.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
All right, So that was a lot. Let me I'm sorry,
It's totally fine. Let me dissect that a little bit.
I would say I agree and slightly disagree. So definitely
the point and click adventure. I think it's fun to
kind of go around the environment and you scroll passed.
I played this on my switch, so it was nice
and portable mode, but I don't think it did anything

(18:05):
and that aspect that would make me be like, oh yeah,
this is a standout in the point and click adventure genre.
I think there is a good blend of horror and
visual novel. And I think when you talked about the
route thing, how it's pretty easy to unlock. That's actually
a positive in my head, because I don't like being

(18:26):
too tedious with things when trying to figure out, oh,
I have to unlock this character's route. Let me do
all this stuff, okay, rewind my rewind, my save and whatever.
So I actually kind of like that now. That kind
of goes in hand with me being a little bit
more a like, what was the word you used, breezy
to get through. I think that combined is kind of nice.

(18:48):
That's why it's kind of, in my head, almost a
great introductory visual novel because it's not too complicated. There
is a lot of different style of things going on.
Whether it does it to the best or not, well
obviously or we know where you stand. I think that
is I think that is the bonus of it where

(19:09):
it is a little bit shorter, You're gonna get a
lot of different things in one package, even if it
doesn't do all those things excellently.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Yeah. No, absolutely, And I want to be clear too,
I don't think it's a con that it doesn't exceed
in any of these categories. I don't think every game
needs to be the best at what it's trying to do.
But I think the indecision it comes off to me
as indecision as a sort of they work. I have
to be honest, the routes thing. I generally follow walkthroughs

(19:39):
for visual novels anyway, so you know, it's kind of
a moot point that I'm making that I'm making this,
but even still it is pretty unreals And to that end,
I agree with you. I think this is a great
introduction to what visual novels could be, or what visual
novels are, you know, And I mean pairing this with
something like don and Rampa to those two are both

(20:00):
very very excellent beginner visual novels, I think, especially if
you're looking for something that's a little grittier, a little
more horror tinged interesting.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
I'm torn about Dona. This is not Don garompa podcast.
But is that a good introductory visual novel? I wonder.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
I think so.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
Some of the concepts I think are maybe just a
little too much for some people. But then again, that
horror style mystery really does it's a great starting point
for most people. So yeah, maybe maybe you're right. Maybe
you're right.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
Let's talk a little bit about how this game plays
in the hands you played on Switch. I play on
PC and my Legion GO. So I played a little handheld,
a little mouse and keyboard visual novel first and foremot
there's a lot of reading. You were going to see
a lot of character sprites that are changing every few
lines to reflect emotion. There are routes. There are a

(21:17):
total of five. Technically, there is a prologue, three main
character routes, and one other character route that's unlocked later.
We'll talk about those characters here in a little bit. Largely,
I liked all the characters for the most part. I
think it's a pretty likable caste. The puzzles, they're a

(21:39):
little weak, and this game does try to be meta
in some of its aspects. Now, this was something that
you had mentioned right away when we were talking about
this on your show. You had mentioned the meta aspect
right away, and to be fair, the meta aspect is
right in the very beginning of this game, right in
the open. Yes, it does that for you head on.
It does the trick where it's like, you know, what's

(22:00):
your name and you write rick and then he said, oh,
so your name is buddink because buddnk is my name
on Steam and it's supposed to give you this big
chok oh. He can read my computer files, you know
games like I'm thinking, I think back to I'm scared,
like pre Steam days. I'm scared, like would read your
computer files and put files on your desktop. The scariest
thing in the early two thousands that could ever be

(22:22):
done is the computer doing things to your computer. Is
the computer being alive. You don't want to mess with
computer because computer is alive. You want to kill computer.
That's kind of the point of these kinds of games.
Not really, not in paranormous, but it starts off with
that meta aspect. I'm really torn on whether or not

(22:43):
I think this is fine or really unnecessary. I'm really torn,
and we can't really talk about that without talking about
the ending. So we're gonna hold on that for a
little bit just broad overview. Does it work for you?
I'm pretty sure I remember were you saying that it
really worked for you? Am? I? Right?

Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah? I really The initial one right there reminds me
of like Melicure solid Psychomantis, where he's just reading off
your memory card stuff like that. I like those little moments. Now,
that's not what I love about the kind of manipulation
that you do when some of the puzzles. When I
think about the game as a whole, it's more clever

(23:23):
in some aspects now when it's when you're debating, like
actual puzzles. I've played a lot of Escape room style ones.
It's nothing like that. But I think some of the
things that this game does with between the UI and
the actual trying to get past certain checkpoints roadblocks is
clever to me, you.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Know I I wouldn't disagree with clever. I whenever it
showed its full hand at the very end and it
showed you the cards it was holding it, cute was
the word that I kept thinking of, not in like
a derogatory way, but like I'm thinking back to some
of the tricks that it pulled throughout and I'm thinking Okay,
you know that's cute. I like that. That's that's pretty

(24:03):
pretty nice, those seemingly random moments that happened that they
were they were thinking ahead. I again, we'll talk about
that when we get to the ending. It we kind
of can't talk about it without spoilers. No, there's another
piece of the interview that I put in here. Ishiyama again,
he says this. He says quote. Actually, I'm not very

(24:23):
good with horror myself. He laughs. I decided at the
beginning that the horror element would be an added spice,
and the story itself would hinge on it being a
mystery in which players uncover secrets to reveal the mastermind
behind it all. Now I keep saying I think I've
said horror a few times. That kind of just slips
off the tongue when you're talking about mysteries and thrillers,

(24:44):
especially games like this. This game's really not scary. There
are a few jump scares that pissed me off, but like,
it's not it's not a horror game. It's not. It's
it's tense, but it's not scary.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Tense is the better word for it. There is a
certain route and a certain scene in particular that freaked
me out a little bit, But I'm kind of a
whist when it comes to these things. Outside of those
couple of jump scares. Yeah, I wouldn't consider this a
horr It's more like a thriller with some darker moments.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
Yeah, totally, I would agree, and that's not a con.
I think it works well. I think that them leaning
into the mystery was a big boon to the story
they were trying to tell. It made it exciting. It
added a sense of excitement, especially considering three of your
characters are detectives. Four actually, now that I'm thinking about it,

(25:41):
are detectives. A lot of detectives in this game. Who
would have guessed in the mystery novel that there are
lots for detectives for Sherlock's count of four we mentioned.
This isn't like other vns. It's not a route specific.
There are diversions, there are sort of what if this
happened and scenarios in here, but no routes really. Those

(26:04):
are more so like ending scenes or you know, we'll
get there one thing. And this kind of ties into
the visuals too. One thing that makes this game stand
out to me is it has a full three sixty
degree environment, which is markedly different than most visual novels.
You can drag the mouse or use the right stick
if you're playing on switch or something. You can move

(26:27):
all around in a full circle and see the full environment.
And this is used several times in the story to
progress the story and to get lore and solve puzzles.
This was great. I loved this specifically because, like, as
we'll talk about in a second, the visuals are really
really nice, but I thought this added a level of
immersion that I, just to be honest, wasn't expecting.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yeah, and I think they use this cleverly in one
scene where it was kind of a jump scare right
at the very beginning. Oh so I like. I like
that aspect of it. When I said that this game
doesn't feel like the click place click adventure part too much,
or like doesn't dive in as far as I want
it to, this aspect is awesome though, Yeah, because it does.

(27:08):
It kind of emerges you in the entire world. And again,
there's some pretty cool scenery that you're going to be
going to.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yes, before we get into the scenery, do you want
to talk about the puzzles? A little bit and how
this game sort of handles puzzles.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, why not, we can go that way.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
So this game handles puzzles. There's no like it. It's
not silent Hill. You know, you're not going to read
a poem about like on the first day she was wed,
and then it's like, oh, that's the wedding ring on
the first finger. It's nothing like that. That's actually from Signalis,
which is coming up on shit, it's nothing like that.
It's more so you will be given like a list

(27:46):
of dialogue options, and to answer the question that's being
asked of you, you have to check your files. That's
one way it presents. Those are pretty low stakes because
if you get them wrong, nothing really happens at work.
They just say no, it's not that, it's this, and
then you move on at vest or this could be

(28:06):
flip flopped. I guess, depending on how you look at it,
they might also just say nope, try again, and then
you just get to pick again and it just keeps
going until you get it right. And you know, in
those cases they might say, huh, it took you this
many times to get it right. How about that, and
nothing happens.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
Yeah, I wonder if that was brought on to be
more accessible and because they're trying to do so many genres,
even though they want to spice it up at the
horror elements. I wonder if this was almost like an afterthought,
but not really don't. I don't know. These type of
puzzles are strange. I like it when it's a roadblock
and you have to do something in the menus in

(28:42):
a different way. I don't want it to spoil anything.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
No, no, no, we're right there. We might as well talk
about that, and for what it's worth, I kind of
think we're both in agreement on this. They wanted to
focus on the story that they were trying to tell,
you know, the detective mystery, and I think adding too
many puzzles that real stumpers of a puzzle, real head scratchers,
you know, that would have killed the pacing in a

(29:05):
way that they probably didn't want to do. Yeah, but no,
you mentioned the sort of meta puzzles that involve going
into menus and stuff. Why don't you take the lead
on that, tell us all about it.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
So basically, in this world, there are people that are
cursed and they'll be doing different powers against you. So
these people are going around killing people. It's not a spoiler.
We'll get into the mystery of it all. But what's
cool about it is, for example, this one person might
use something that when it creates a sound, it will
kill you as the player. So what you can do

(29:38):
is go into the menu and mute that specific character
and no longer and now no longer that power hurts them,
hurts you. And I think this game does that enough
throughout the experience that I'm like, oh, this is clever.
Oh that's clever. Trying to get past the roadblocks and
using actually using the menu, I thought was such a
clever idea. It is.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
It's very neat. You had mentioned that everybody that there
are a handful of folks in this world that are cursed.
That's right. It's kind of a Saturday Morning Power Rangers
or Pokemon kind of deal where it's like, I've got
this curse and this is what this curse does. Well,
I've got this curse and this is weak to this,
and uh, my curse is better because there's like a

(30:20):
nine of them. Oh yeah, by the way, this pulls
some Kingdom Hearts bullshit. Organization thirteen has fourteen members it's
the Seven Mysteries of Hanjo. There are actually nine or
thirteen of them, so okay, sure everybody in the game
comments on it too. They're like, that's weird. Huh. Anyway, Yeah,
it's like, going on, dog, you're writing the game. Why

(30:41):
did you do it that way? I don't know. Seven
mysteries just rolls off the tongue, real nice. Nine miss
is not as good.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
Yeah, it's close.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
Oh well they should have consulted you. I don't know. Yeah,
apparently that one in particular that you're mentioning. There's one
curse where if you hear the sound of whatever in
your head, that's how the curse gets you and you're dead.
And what's interesting is you can go into your menu
at any time, into the settings, and you can see
that there's a slider for voice volume, and you can

(31:11):
say to yourself, wait a second, this game doesn't have
any voice acting. Why is this here? And you can
do that from the very beginning.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Dude, I don't know what. I never even did the
connection to that. Yeah, that's ridiculous. I've never even thought
about that.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, it's clever. It's a clever little thing, and I
like that. I thought that was really cool, And what's
really neat about it is it ties into an ending
twist where your character doesn't know what's going on. They're
just like, I don't understand this. I can't focus on
it right now though, because there's a murder going on.
You know whatever. That was neat. There's another way they

(31:46):
do this too, where you will be going dutta dut
da all the way through and you end up dying
too bad, so sad, and you get kicked back to
the narrator we're going to talk about him soon, and
he says, you know, oh so bad. Why don't you
tell the character to do this? You know? Now you
know how that curse works. Is there anything in your

(32:07):
inventory that you might want to get rid of? And
he gives you sort of hints, and then you can
go into the inventory whenever the appropriate time comes ditch
the item that would trigger the curse. The character on
screen is like, why do I have this thought to
throw this away? Oh well, and then you just do
it and that's how you progress through that puzzle. Pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
I do like that it works for me a lot,
and it's doing a lot of the heavy lifting too.
I feel like for me when I think back on
this game. That's what I'm focusing on.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
Yeah, it's some of them are really nice. It doesn't
do it as often as I wish it well. Actually,
now that I say it out loud, I feel like
if they did it more, it might become a little
too self insistent. Yeah, and it might get really stale.
I feel like the diminishing returns on this would be
quite high. So maybe they did strike the perfect balance.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
Actually, yeah, you got to have you have to be
reserved and something that's that cool. Otherwise, well to me,
that's that cool. Otherwise. Yeah, overstays is welcome really quickly. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
He mentioned that the horror is a spice, This too
is like a spice. And I'm not the person to
ask I douse my ship in hot sauce like crazy.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
I'm not.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
I'm not a spice moderator. I'm a I'm a full
fledged dump the bottle kind of guy. Spicy Caliente. We

(33:54):
mentioned the visuals. We gotta talk visuals. This game is
really it has a very unique style. It's really terrific.
What I love about the art direction here is that
they have this thick comic book style outlining to characters,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
Yeah, that was the standout thing. It almost like emboldens
them as a character. What a cool There's just not
games that look like this.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Yeah yeah, yeah. The characters themselves, I mean, they don't
look like newspaper comics, but they have the outlinings of
like newspaper comics, very bold, dark lines to outline their figure.
And this contrasts with the backgrounds that are a little
bit more mellow, a little brushed, a little more opaque,
not quite watercolors like you would see in like Grease

(34:41):
for example, another game that we just talked about. But
it seems like, you know, if the characters were drawn
with pens and markers, the backgrounds were done with like brushes,
you know, paint, paint and computer you know whatever, paint
and pencil rather than just like marker. And does that
make sense?

Speaker 2 (35:01):
Am I?

Speaker 1 (35:01):
Am I making sense here?

Speaker 2 (35:03):
Yeah, Like the backgrounds are more muted and the characters
are standing out because of their the thick lines outlining them.
And I feel like that makes it very retro feeling.
I know they're going for a time period piece as well,
so that fit in conjunction.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
Yeah, yeah, it is a retro piece and to that end,
this takes place in the eighties, so the styles are
pretty reminiscent. Well, I don't know, it seems like it's
reminiscent to me. You know, you've got your standard salarymen,
You've got your gene jack guy, You've got a delinquent girl.

(35:39):
Even actually one of the guys even has like a
pompadora that was like US fifties Japanese eighties kind of
hair style. It's really nice. There's also it gives you
this CRT filter. This this is presented to you as
if it were a play or a television drama taking
place on this CRT television set, which the narrator at

(35:59):
the very beginning says like, this is a television They
used to be big in bulky like this, Can you imagine?
And I was like, can you imagine?

Speaker 2 (36:07):
I have one in my basement right now. I have
two of them.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
Do not say the old magic to me, which is
what was written.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Oh my gosh when those bulbs went out.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
But the CRT filter is really really subtle, and it,
oh my gosh, it works for me so well. The
curving at the edge of the screen is so slight
that you don't notice it unless you're looking at it,
and it gets that not scan line. But you know
how if you look really close at a CRT you
start to see like the rainbow sort of effect over everything.

(36:40):
It's got that just a little bit. It is so
so clever, so subtle, clever, subtle, subtle.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
Yeah, it's those little things that just add up to
an experience that's fun and different for me. And again,
there's just not nothing that looks like this. Even though yes,
these are anime style characters, they're so different. They're more reserved,
even though there's you know, the pompador and whatever. But
I think that combination of all that just makes it
more effective.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
There are some things that look a little similar to this.
The first credit that gets put out for visuals is
Agen koba Yashi along with Junko Sumi Mizu. But kobad Yashi,
I believe was the character designer for the World Ends
with You and Neo The World Ends with You. Have
you played those games before?

Speaker 2 (37:25):
I've played The World Ends with You. We actually did
a podcast episode on that one, and I've started Neo,
but I need to get back to it. I don't
see the similarities though, between those two.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
There is a seed of that in Paranormal Sight. I
can see it. It's it's more, it's more angular, and
it's a little more like Burger King nineties kind of
character designs, with like you know, the bright purple vests
and like the spiky hair.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
That is the best way to describe that. Ever, I've
never thought of that. It's so good. I love that
game too, but man that I'm gonna steal that it eventually.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Paranormosite is more mature than that, for sure. Yes, yeah,
but it's a similar sort of art family, you know,
family of art history. I think Kobeyashi also did the
Kingdom Hearts re releases. I don't really see a lot
of that in here outside of just the general anime aesthetic.
But you know, your mileage may vary. I guess. We

(38:23):
talked about the CRT Hugh, we talked about the brushed backgrounds.
I want to just give another shout out to the
set design on this. I love a pre rendered background.
I love a pre rendered background. I love a pre
rendered background, and the pre rendered backgrounds here look fantastic.
They all look hand drawn. I'm pretty sure they're hand drawn.
Pretty sure everything is. I don't know though, and the

(38:45):
way it contrasts with the bold outlines and colors of
the characters. The colors of the background are bold too,
but they're just subdued a little bit, so they're always
contrasting with the foreground characters. There's never a question as
to who's a character and who's blending in, or what's
important and what's blending in, And just universally, I love
all of these, whether it's just a banal street corner

(39:07):
or whether it's like this horrific room full of gore
and crime scene, every location pretty much was cool to me.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
Yeah, you're one of my people. I love pre under backgrounds.
They are almost a lost art at this point. I mean,
it's so rare that we get them anymore. And I'm
waiting for like the indie influx to try their hand
at this. And I guess you could almost say this
is that I guess I don't know what you consider
this on a budget.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
Level, you know, but little Indie square Enix them against
the world.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
Yeah, you know, I do. You know. I have a
soft spot for Japan in general. But even if you
didn't have that, these locations are cool just because of
the pre rendered backgrounds and combination with the retro art
and the thicker lines of the characters, and yeah, you
don't have a trouble. You know what you're gonna click on,
because yeah, it's standing out. There's a nice but just

(40:00):
a position between the characters themselves and the background, which
pre render backgrounds have always been good for. Granted, it
can be hard to navigate, but you don't worry about
that this game.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
No you don't. The character designs themselves look pretty good too.
Nobody is super outlandish, you know when we keep saying
that this is like adjacent to anime, and I worry
that people get the wrong idea, Like have you ever
seen one of those memes where it's like, gee, I
wonder who the main character is and it's just an
anime classroom full of normal people and one person in
like a red get up and big blue hair.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (40:33):
Exactly, It's not like that, like two of the main
characters are just normal schoolgirls. There's a detective. The detective's
partner is literally just black pants or maybe like khaki pants,
white shirt, Like nobody is nobody looks ridiculous, and that
I mean, that's also something that I chalk up to

(40:54):
being a not a con, being a pro for like
first time visual novel folks. That anime aesthetic I've heard
from a lot of peace people that don't like the
genre is the number one reason they always say, like, yeah,
I just don't like the anime aesthetic. If that's you,
this this might be a good you know, ease into it.
You know, a little bit of sugar with the medicine
never hurt nobody, you know.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
I don't know, but yeah, that I can follow that analogy.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Oh, come on, Mary Poppins. You know Mary Poppins, Oh
I do. Apparently a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine
go down in the most delightful way.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
In the most delightful way. Yeah, I feel like that's
apparently it's been long enough that I've not I don't
actually know if I've ever seen that movie fully through.
So I think I think, yeah, the anime part of
it is it's more like a slice of life, but
obviously not nearly as vibrant or anything like that. But again,

(41:46):
you're not going to be getting the Burger King nineties
aesthetic from previous games.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, nor are you going to get the
in your face kind of what if Andy Warhol was
twisted of like Donan Rapa. You know, yes, it really is.
It's really kind of like a you know, a superhero Well,
I don't want to say superhero comic and make you
think this is like superheroes, but it's it's kind of
like a Marvel comic meets anime. It's anime, but it's

(42:12):
you know, it's subdued. It's mature.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
I don't even know if that's the right way. It's
more like a non vibrant Sunday morning cartoons in the
newspaper brought to life.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
Sure, yeah, I I distinctly remember there were one or
two newspaper comics that came in the Sunday issues that
were always like hyper realistically drawn. And then, you know,
I said, I don't care about this shit. Gimme Hagar
the Horrible and Garfield, you know, directly underneath it.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
I can't remember the name of that comic though. It
was like it was like a series comic where it
was like drawn in like a legitimate.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yeah, I remember that style.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
My grandma loved it.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
The one I always liked was Get Fuzzy. I think
that was the name of it. It was a cat and
dog one.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
Oh I love get Fuzzy.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
That is the name. Okay, cool unlocked A just unlocking
an old school moment.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
Right now, one more thing before we move on to
music and sound. Speaking of the eighties aesthetic, there is
a collectithon element to this game. It's totally optional, but
you can find these stickers all around. I think there's
twenty in all, and they are called the mocking Birds.
The mocking birds in this universe are a series of

(43:22):
birds dressed up as eighties delinquents from Japan. Mocking Birds
is two words, you know. They're rude two. They're a
bunch of dude birds with rude two, you know. And
they are universally amazing. I love every single one of these.
They're all named after puns.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
It's such a strange collectible that's so outside of what
the game is presenting. I think that's why it works
even better, because it just doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
Like, for example, one's name is Hi ku h I
g h CO. And they're all like wearing, you know,
leather jackets, are dressed like bikers. They've got pompadoors. One
is caw coffiny love it.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
So it's so dumb but so good.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
There's one of them that sounds like a Kojima character. Oh,
foul con man. Falcon Man, foul conman, straight out of
Kojima's book Quacketude. Yeah, these are a budgy Mary instead
of bloody Mary. These are great. I love these so much.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
Hey, yeah, they don't. It's just an extra thing that
you can do. Obviously, if you want a hundred hundred
percent complete the game, you had to find all a twenty,
which I did do, but it doesn't grant you anything.
It's just a fun little side thing to hunt around
while you're you know, using that three hundred and sixty
degree camera. There you go.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
Yeah, and that's really all it is. It's good fun.
I think I missed like two by the end. I
was pretty bummed about it, especially because I got the
one that's a real pain in the ass where you
just have to keep visiting the lottery shop over and
over and eventually.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
It's just FREng yep, the only one that does it.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
Let's talk music and sound. It took a little while
for this soundtrack to grow on me, but it did.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
That's good. I mean, you're gonna have way more knowledge
of this obviously, but I think it does well with
the horror element when you get into those few scenes,
and I think it does. I don't know what track
it is. When you're in an encounter and it's becoming tense,
that music works.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. Narratively, they looked at horror
as kind of a spice to be really parsimonious with.
There is a ten dollars word for you, a parsimonious.
It means particularly of money, to be a little bit stingy.
But you can use it however you want terms of like,
you know, holding back reserved. This sucks. Who listens to this?

(46:07):
They I think they went a little further with the
horror into the music. There's a lot more of that.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
You know.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
We keep using dung and Ramp as a touchstone because
it's convenient and it's well known that soundtrack is really rude,
it's really brash, it's really high energy, high octane. This
is not it's it's more stylistically diverse than dung and rrampa.
For sure. It's not afraid to be a little quiet.
It's not afraid to use some found sounds. It's I

(46:37):
you know, I really liked it again. Composed by hiden
Nori Iwasaki also did Left Live, Final, Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.
There's a throwback Oh Remastered, I should say, as well
as Adventures of mana remake also has a credit as
the synth programmer on the bouncer amazing really Yes, Yes,
he's royalty. Do you have any standout tracks that you

(47:01):
can remember?

Speaker 2 (47:03):
I wish i'd had a list in front of me.
The main theme is interesting, but I don't think that's
the one. There's one that has this like rising tension
going on, but it has like almost like bells in
the background.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
I think I'm wondering if you're not thinking of the
track titled Suspicion, which is the one that plays whenever
you're like going through the facts that you know and
you're like, well, I wonder how this refers to the
relates to the right of resurrection, And it's kind of
got the.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
Bound that thing whatever you just did, it's got, you know, it's.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
Got your typical horror mystery elements. It's got your rhythmic pitch, percussion,
a melody in this high like vocal bell like instrument, string, Austinado.
It's it's really good. I think one of the most
popular tracks from this one. There are two, but one
of them is the Storyteller's theme, really, which is like
that this Russian and fired waltz that's heavily featuring an

(48:02):
accordion with the melody on. I think it's a clarinet.
I don't think I looked up a bunch of other
folk instruments. I don't think it's anything like that. I
think it's just a clarinet. Accordions are used all the
time in folk music and their various brethren like the Contratina, Bendonian,
the Russian bayon, or however you pronounce it. Really really cool.

(48:23):
It's such a catchy little melody.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
Yeah, the accordion really stands out in that track, and
I feel like it fits well with that character and
the oddness of it. For some reason, that pairing the mask,
the crt and the accordion, they all kind of just
mesh together to be just off kilter enough where you're like,
this is weird but also cool. It is.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
It's very quirky, off kilter, very out of place in
what we're about to experience. And I think, you know,
so too is our narrator. This ost though, it's it's
very diverse. There's like some songwriter style piano guitar tracks,
there's some orchestra stuff, some jazz city pop, oh funk

(49:04):
kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
Yeah, there's like a really cool one with the Detectives.
I forgot about that track. That That one's again a
little bit out of the norm, which this game does,
I guess more often than I think. Between the mocking Birds,
the Storyteller. Now, some of the music, it's kind of
just got that weird.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
Flavor to it. That track that you're thinking of is
crime Busting with a smile. That's the title. Oh yeah, dude,
You're immediately hit with that funk guitar, heavy wah pedal
on the funk guitar. You get the brassy trumpet and
electric guitar doing like dual leads. You got that horn
section backing them up. It is just it is grooten
and busting ass. It is great.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
That reminds me of like eighties style, Like when I
think of they wanted to do a time period piece
that fits so.

Speaker 1 (49:48):
Well, Oh totally, you think of like the eighties, like
that was that was after you know, jazz started moving
into like a more funk and I don't want to
say like widely accepted, that's not what I mean, but
like more into popular like jazz rock, jazz funk, you know,
Weather Report and things like that. Maynard Ferguson totally, it's awesome,

(50:08):
it's really cool. I also really liked MEO's theme Psychic Girl.
It's got this like really nice harpsichord patch kind of
like floating between major and minors, like this female vocal
just soaring above it all. Really nice curse echoes. That's
the one that plays every time you get a curse
echo with that just leads off with that huge low

(50:31):
piano note, and it's got the I think the reversed
sound effects to give you that kind of reverse symbol
hit that like back masking kind of thing. And the
chanting that's just really rhythmic and noisy.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
Yeah, it's a good yeah, good touchstone for every single
time that that happens during the story. I kind of
like when obviously games write themes for characters all the time,
but I like when they have themes for certain things
that always happen.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
They did in that interview, they did ask Iwasaki about
the soundtrack, they asked. They asked, let's talk about the
distinct various musical styles and Paranorma site. I loved the
game's soundtrack and appreciated that not all the music was
eerie and scary despite being a horror adventure title. Can
you share with us some of your thoughts when working
on paranorm sites music? What makes it different from RPG's

(51:38):
like Stranger of Paradise, Iwasaki answered, They said, quote, I'm
glad you enjoyed the soundtrack. The following are some of
the things that kept in mind. One scatter synthesizer sounds
throughout that would make players feel scared or uneasy just
by listening to them. Two incorporate the essence of the
music from the late show up period the nineteen eighties.
Three easy to understand melodies that appealed emotions. I think

(52:01):
they did that. And four above all, give top priority
to the director's wishes parentheses. This is important. I don't
know if that's a joke.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
Yeah, that's it's hard to read it, you know, because
I'm not listening to the person saying it as well.
But that's an odd one. I feel like it might
be it's got to be like an inside joke.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
I may be at the most tongue in cheek, because
I mean, there's a point to be made there. If
a composer doesn't have a full scope of the creative vision,
of the storyboarding, of the in depth character writing that's
going on, they might miswrite a scene. You know, so really,
I mean, the creative director does have that widest amount
of knowledge and would probably be the best person to say, no,

(52:44):
actually we don't need something quite so eerie here. We
just need something a little unsettling. Or no, actually here
we need more funk guitar and more wah and make
that trumpet scream, you know, always more funk. Yeah, that
that RPG site in is really really nice. If you can,
you know, get through that terrible site on your computer,

(53:04):
it's really nice to look at. So now we're gonna
get into the story. Just so you all know what
we're gonna do. First, before we talk story story, we're
gonna give a broad overview of what's going on.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
You know.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
Just I realized we didn't do that. That's on me.
But after that we'll get into the prologue and we'll
talk through the story spoilers abound after this, so if
you wanted to jump off, now is the time. I
encourage you to stick around because it's going to be
a good time. And then stick around. Towards the end
you can hear all about Bits of Time, which is
Michael's podcast. Anything else to add before we jump into

(53:38):
the story of Paranorma site.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
No, let's do it all right.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
Let's go across these handful of eventful nights in Sumita
City and talk all about the seven Mysteries of Hanjo
in Paranorma site. So just broad overview of this story.

(54:14):
Here curses are appearing. Seven Mysteries of Honjo. It's actually real.
This is based on a very real thing in Honju
on folklore. What it is is these cursed stones are
going around and people are getting a hold of them,
and these cursed stones have the power to kill. Once
you have enough souls what are called soul dregs, which

(54:37):
are obtained from a person's soul. After you kill them,
you can perform the rite of resurrection, which allows you
to bring somebody back from the dead. So you can
imagine these people are getting these cursed stones. They're out
and about, they're wanting to kill so they can get
all of the soul dregs to themselves and bring back
their loved ones or whatever. You can imagine that that's
going to drive a lot of people to do things

(54:57):
that they might not otherwise do, drives them past the
point of morality. And we've got a handful of do gooders,
knuckleheads and school children going around trying to stop this
murderous rampage. Mysteries abound. I think that's a decent overview.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yeah, and I feel like that's a solid hook. You
want to kill the other people so you can bring
somebody back, and so you assume that some people are
gonna have some tragic backstory where they want to bring
somebody back to life. And I feel like that simple
bit that mystery, I mean, that's almost not even the
mystery part of it. That's enough hook to get me
to keep going.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
One of the character's motivations is laughably stupid.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
Oh my gosh, we'll get to that one.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
Yes, let's talk about what happens when you boot this up.
So you boot this up and you're introduced to the storyteller.
He's a man in a long black coat and hat
maroon gloves and is wearing what looks like a red
kimono or a robe underneath of his coat. He has
long white hair, and notably, he's wearing a mask, a
mask that cuts off at the mouth and gives the
appearance of a smiling old man. Now I looked into this,

(56:02):
what I think this might be. I think this is
a reference to a Japanese style of theater called no
just in English will be pronounced n H. Let's say
it's this classical dance tradition in Japan. I think I
read that it's the oldest that's still performed. I'm not
sure it's relation to kibuki. I think it came before kibuki,
not one hundred percent on that. But it's a stage production.

(56:24):
It can feature musical accompaniment, and it utilizes masks for
the performers. These masks are very stylized, you know, like
it has to be in theater so everybody in the
room can see. And some of them do cut off
at the chin area like they do here.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
So is that connection just that you're interacting with the
CRT you have the CRT filter. He's telling the story,
so he's just using the mask because it's theater like.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
Well, I think so there's another type of theater, the
Kilgan that developed alongside the no, so much so that
it was kind of performed during interludes during the NO.
My reading about it, it seems to be more comedic
in style, but there was I think I read this
there was often a narrator involved in those, so it

(57:15):
might just be a sort of subtle nod to that.
It also sets up this idea that what we're about
to see is a story that takes place. It's a
TV drama, it's a story, and we're being led through
the drama. We are an audience member to this tale.
You know. It's setting it up in this grandiloquent way
that we are about to see this grand story, this

(57:36):
big production, and we are going to be an audience member.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
I could see that when you think about the music
choices for the storyteller theme in general, that fits a
little bit more too. But yeah, maybe it's not that deep.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
I guess, well, whether it's deep or not, I think
it's effective, or at least it's effective to me. I
think sometimes those play within a play or that game
within a game kind of deal that can be a
little bit trite, a little bit almost approaching self parody.

(58:11):
It doesn't always work for me. It does work for
me here. Maybe it's just because it's presented as like
an old you know, a retro TV kind of drama.
I don't know. Nothing about this stood out to me
as being negative.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
Yeah, I would say, like game when I said, it's
not that deep. I like everything they're doing. I love
the storyteller. It's just so random, and I think, going
back to what you were saying about it maybe being trite,
I feel like if a game does that, you're a
game within a game or whatever it is, or the
meta part of it. If you've played like just a
handful of those games, like three of those games, it

(58:46):
becomes like, oh, okay, I've seen this before and it
kind of loses its value.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
Yes, that ties into the ending of this which that
is probably the strongest iteration of your mileage may vary
that's in this game. I don't know if everybody felt
this way. I kind of see the ending as being
very polarizing with what it wanted to try and do.
We'll get there, but for now, the storyteller, he explained

(59:12):
some basic functions auto save, how the files and options works,
and he asks for your name, and as we said before,
he asks your name, you type it. The music cuts
out and he said, did you say insert your Steam name,
PlayStation name, Nintendo account name here? Did you say bud Dink?
And you know you're supposed to go, oh my god.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
Do you know what works better in this instance? Though?
I think because they cut the music out and it's
kind of a close up of his face, that little
extra bit works for me.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
And the close up of the face with the mask
on too. You know, you're getting flashbacks to the movie
The Strangers, one of my favorite horror movies, and you're like,
oh shit, this is creepy. Yeah, it does get abandoned
a little quickly. The meta element again comes back into
the ending. Your mileage may vary. After he gets your
we start the story and here's how he leads us

(01:00:03):
in from antiquity to present day. Regardless of how society
and civilization evolve, death has been a constant presence that
none have ever escaped, whether it is one' zone or
that of someone close. Death is always a difficult thing
to accept. This is an immutable reality, a value shared
by all, no matter the age in which they live in.
Fact Oral traditions reflecting people's fears and prayers regarding death

(01:00:27):
still remain ghosts, spirits, and so on. Similarly, in attempt
to defy death, many curses, rituals, and customs have been born,
from burning spirit incense to summoning the souls of the dead.
Some of those secret arts are still being passed down
to this day. And this is when he gives you,
the player, the question, if you had the power to
do so, would you bring someone back from the dead?

(01:00:49):
And if memory serves I think all of the answers
are yes. But you know, yes, as long as it
didn't hurt anybody. Yes, at any cost, Yes, as long
as there's absolutely no consequences. Is there a no in
there in this first brush from memory?

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
I don't think there is.

Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
I don't think so either, But at any rate, he
asks you that, and we're introduced to the main character,
Sho go ok.

Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
Wait, are you just gonna go past it? What's the
answer to that question for you? Rick?

Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
Would I bring someone back?

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Well?

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
I can't choose the answer no because it's not an
option for me, So I choose yes, as long as
there's no consequences.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
Okay, so like in real life, you would not bring
somebody back from the dead.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
No, I think I've read enough sci fi and horror
stuff to know that I should not be trying to
play god with the natural laws of the universe. I
would not try and bring somebody back.

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
That's probably a safer bet.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Are you saying you would?

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
I think I would.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Yeah, even after everything we've seen with show Go and
Harraway and everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
Oh, that's true. But you know, it doesn't have to
be like that, right, Our reality could be different, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
To this game's credit, it does that trope that brings
somebody back from the dead in a very interesting but
kind of like a just a tiny little twist that
I wasn't expecting, And I was like, you know, that
is kind of a cool way to do it, And
it's kind of closer to this like cosmic idea of
reincarnation too, which if anything exists, it's probably something like that,

(01:02:18):
not like just straight up like I'm the reincarnation of
Richard Petty from NASCAR or something or whatever. I don't know.
I don't know why I pulled Richard Petty.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
I'm not I was about to say that is a
random one to pull.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
I'm not even a NASCAR guy, man, I don't watch
that shit. I don't know. We're introduced to show Go Okie.
He's a twenty something year old he's our mc our
main character, and he's out here with Yoko Fukunaga, a
bubbly twenty three year old girl with a deep interest
in the occult that you met recently. The two of

(01:02:49):
you are in Kinshibori Park, Tokyo around midnight. The game
starts with her waking you up you passed out or
something like that, and she gives you the tutorio of
how to look around in this three sixty degree environment.
When you turn around, like about face, she is right
up into the camera, a mini jump scare, which actually
begins this game's perplexing relationship with cinematography. They really really

(01:03:14):
really like putting the characters faces very close to the camera,
like full screen.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
One of my favorite ones is later, where I think
it's June. The detective comes out from like behind a
tree and scared the living crad. I was like, how
we're in broad daylight, but you still scared me that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
That is pretty cool how they did it though. When
you turn around and she's just right there. They do
that a couple of times throughout here. Another thing that
they do a lot is characters will do duck faces
quite a bit like duck lips, you know, like we
used to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
Very odd, very odd.

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):
I cannot remember if I put it in the notes.
I swear that they talked about that in the interview.
I can't remember for sure. I might have put it
in here. We'll see sho goo. He says that he's
got a for bubbly girls interested in the occult, and
I have to agree finally a protagonist onto which I
can project myself.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
You're the bubbly one, or you like the bullye I.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
Like them bubbly. What can I say? The two of
you are there for the right of resurrection. So this
is this, it's not really a mcguffin. It is what
everybody is chasing throughout this game, the right of resurrection. Well,
let's actually go on, because I think I explained this here.
You kind of in your fainting fit, you forgot you know,

(01:04:31):
you're taking a second to get your bearings. A flashback
fills you in the two of them had a meet
cute like a couple weeks ago Yoko tells Shogo that
she's looking for the Whispering Canal, one of the Seven
Mysteries of Hanjo, for the purposes of the right of resurrection.
So the seven mysteries, these are urban legends that grew
out of the Ato period, were passed down through word

(01:04:53):
of mouth. They're telephone games, you know, And they even
comment on that in here. The original stories are probably
a little different from the urban legends. They grew, they mutated,
they became in Belsh overtime, and the occult craze of
the eighties kept them alive in a very kind of evil,
mysterious way. There are also more than ten. Sure, fuck it?

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
Why not? Hey that? You know what? I think? I
understand why they have that in there now, right, Maybe
because of how the storytelling goes. You know, what do
you tell a story? Oh, you missed certain things already evolves.
Maybe that's why they chose that drought.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
I mean, if we're going to use any in universe explanation,
that's it, right, you know the telephone game. Oh I
heard that there were seven, Well I heard from my
cousin it's actually nine. Well, my uncle he works at
he hawkoed Nintendo and he said that there's actually only five.
You know that kind of deal. Yeah, he Hawko Nintendo
sponsor us the most famous of them. There are seven.

(01:05:53):
We've got the Whispering Canal, the Fool's Procession, the Beckoning Light,
the Haunting Clappers, the ever Green Beach, the Tycho of Sugaru,
the foot Washing Mansion, the One Sided Read, and the
ever Burning Lantern. That's more than seven whatever. Those are
the ones that have curses attached to them in this story.

(01:06:13):
We don't necessarily need to go over every single one
in detail because the game doesn't really either. But let's
take a look at the Whispering Canal, Right, So every
curse is going to have a couple of things attached
to it in the files. It's going to explain the folklore,
it's going to explain the curse mechanisms, and then it'll

(01:06:35):
explain the actual origin that's tied to this event known
as the Honjo Incident. For the Whispering Canal, it says
many fishermen once gathered here on this section of the
canal that ran through Honjo as their days came to
a close, and the fishermen gathered up their cases. A
terrifying voice would rise up from the canal whispering, leave

(01:06:56):
it behind. Those who ignored the voice found themselves unable
to and they're previously full baskets of fish emptied, they
would then be dragged into the canal, never to return.
Curse power for this one, that's the urban legend. The
curse power kills by drowning anyone who leaves the curse
bearer behind. So that's the kind of curses we're dealing with.

(01:07:16):
You've got these conditions like turn your back on this person,
leave them behind. Another one is anybody who lies to
you can be a victim of your curse. Another one is,
you know, like we said, to anybody that hears the voice,
what's another one, anybody that has an element that can
produce fire, like a lighter or a match on them.

(01:07:38):
It's stuff like that. Like that's the Pokemon aspect of it, right,
or the Power Rangers aspect, where everybody's got like a
Saturday morning kind of power attached to their curse. You
know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
Yeah, I've never I didn't make that connection when I
was playing this, but just because it's a little bit more,
you know, I'm gonna get stomped to death by these
feet or whatever the hell. But it is kind of like, okay,
here's a how do I counter it with?

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
Be?

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
Okay, I can't. I don't have be seduci, but I
do like that you have to utilize that in the
game mechanics as well. And nicely you have all those
files and you're like, oh, this does this. Let's rack
my brain. How can I use what's either in the
environment or what I've learned to get past these roadblocks?

Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
Exactly the rate of resurrection? This is self explanatory, but
a forbridden act, a forbidden act said to have been
concocted by a famous on yoji from the past. On yoji.
Just think of like an ancient version of a politician.
Kind of that gets you close enough. There's a rumor
that a manuscript called the Record of Fates detailing the

(01:08:42):
Right was recently discovered by hideki Araishi, a local historian
who also teaches at the local high school, Kamogatsa High School.
There's a rumor that the Right is older than the
legends itself and is what ultimately led to the Seven Mysteries.
This is why Yoko, our bubbly little girl, and those
that we're about to meet are searching for the mysteries,
So you're probably thinking seven Mysteries of Hanjo, Right of

(01:09:05):
Resurrection on Miyoji Record of Fates, Record of Fates, yin scroll.
There are a lot of proper nouns in this game.
Uh yeah, yeah, there are. There's really no way around that.
You just got to read the files.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
They're throwing a lot of proper nouns at you. Throughout
this entire conversation with Yoko. She is making these really
bizarre jokes about alcohol and this. This has got to
be a localization thing. I don't know that they talk about,
you know, alcohol in this way in Japanese like spirits
and spirits you know in English, like Shogo must have

(01:09:40):
a strong colerance because his spirit sense is so high.
And she keeps saying like, I bet you could slam
back a few Moscow mules and hold your liquor like
they She makes these jokes constantly, and it's it's really
really clumsy, like this is far and away. I think
this is the worst writing in the game, and they
lead off with it, which is just a really bizarre mistake.

(01:10:03):
I almost tapped out whenever I was reading this, I
was like, I can't do this for another thirteen hours,
Like this sucks. The writing is never like amazing in
this game, but it gets much better from this liken'.
I don't know who thought this was a good idea.
The gist is like, what they want you to know
is that Shogo has high spirit sense. You know, he's
attuned to be occult. Why they keep making these fucking

(01:10:24):
puns is just beyond me. Even Shogo is like, what
are you talking about?

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):
You know? Yeah? I always thought I was like missing
something where she was supposed to be bubbly, so she's
just maybe she's trying to distract herself. But I think
it's supposed to tell the player or something as well.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:41):
Yeah, I don't know. I think, you know, I think
maybe they just wanted to make her seem a little
bit awkward and weird. Maybe, yeah, like kind of like
kind of dorky, you know. I mean again, your mileage
may vary. Not for me, didn't work for me, might
work for you. Yoko at some point will suddenly get

(01:11:02):
extremely spooked and she screams in terror that something's behind you.
There's just no talking her down. You turn around, there's
nothing there. This will continue until you notice the icon
on the top left that says pressed left trigger. You
cannot continue without pressing it. This is actually a point

(01:11:23):
like you cannot continue without pressing it. I tried, knowing
what I know after finishing it, you can't, so you
press it. There's a sort of audio visual reaction, like
a filter and sound. And when you turn around, Yoko
is crumpled on the ground. Dead water is pooled in
her mouth, leaking out from her eyes and nose. She's
been killed by this curse. Shogo freaks out and he

(01:11:44):
notices a keychain thing on the ground. And this is
our first run in with the cursed stone. Every single
one of these curses has a curse stone attached to it.
This death scene was more graphic than I was expecting,
Like it's not it's not graphic, like there's not blood
and distended guts and bio or anything. But it is
much more gruesome than the art style would have you believe.

(01:12:06):
Until you see it, you.

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
Know it's striking in a very creepy sort of way.
I was totally caught off guard, bought it by it,
and I was like, oh, I'm gonna like this game.
I do that immediately, and.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
They do a little bit of the dunge and rafa
thing where they like, you know, do multiple camera shots
of it. The screen kind of shakes a little bit,
the music gets very loud, and uh, what do you
call it? Discordant. This is also where the jump jump
scare with the shriek happens, like just a straight up
like little girl shriek. I hate it. I don't know

(01:12:39):
why they did that. I mean, I know why they
did it. They want it, you know, live streaming, right,
they want the reaction. I guess yeah, fucking jump scares man.
We also see the specter of the whistling canal here,
whistling canal, whispering canal, just whistling down. You don't whistle
while you take your fish. If you don't whistle while

(01:12:59):
you work, the seven dwarves will come and stomp you
out of death. That's this cursed stone. This is where
we get, you know, shog is the curse is absorbed
into show Go because he picks up the stone and because,
as we'll come to learn, he desperately wants to bring
Yoko back. More on that in a second. It tells you,
you know, how the curse works. Every time somebody absorbs

(01:13:23):
a curse, they see the curses spirit and they see
these quotes on screen that kind of relate to the
background of the curse. And they also there's there's a
there's a quote that I didn't take down that says, like,
you know, a murderous rage seeps into me like thick
black tar. Just really good horror imagery like that, you know,

(01:13:44):
M yeah, I don't know, really striking introduction to the curses, and.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
I think a very striking opening minus the you know,
the clumsy spirit thing. You have your three sixty camera,
you have a little jump scare, you have you know,
you're surrounded by this interesting art and you're just wondering
why these people are out here, and then the dead
body appears. You're like, all right, cool, and then you
have the curse stuff. So a nice introduction where you're

(01:14:09):
like all right, and we'll get to the what happens
right after this too, where it just all right, I'm ready, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:14:15):
One quick thing about what happens right after this too.
You kind of have to just buy into the writing,
like the writing is serviceable. You just got to buy
into the fact that this is you know, it's a thriller.
You know, you're not supposed to be analyzing this story.
Shogo immediately decides that he is going to seek out
other curse bearers and kill them living human beings, to

(01:14:36):
resurrect this random girl that he met about a month
ago and went on a date with.

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
Okay, sure, whatever, man, bubbly occult ladies, they just wrap
you around your finger.

Speaker 1 (01:14:47):
You know, listen, I like him too, but I'm not
going to kill folks for him. Yeah, that's at least
after date four man.

Speaker 2 (01:14:53):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 (01:14:55):
It's true. We've all been there. It's true. This is
actually a pretty cool little intest reduction to the rest
of the characters.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
Though.

Speaker 1 (01:15:01):
As we're going through with shog we get to meet
the other main characters that we're going to have throughout
the game, and spoiler alert, we kill them. We kill
the rest of our main characters. In this prologue, you
first encounter to Kumi Umioka. He is an executive at
your company. This is kind of like a red herring.

(01:15:23):
He shows up, he's acting very creepy. He's out here
at night. He just so he knows who you are.
But you don't really know him. And he's like, I
know that you're a curse bearer. I won't tell anybody
that you killed Yoko if you just give me your
curse stone and you kind of you know your curse
can kill anybody that turns around. You say, oh, man,
I should tell you, you know, after you talk to him
for a little bit, I should tell you I called

(01:15:44):
the police. You're not gonna want to be here, man,
And he's like, huh, damn, damn you And he turns
around and you kill him. Interestingly enough, I'm curious. Did
you notice this your first time through? You don't have
to press the left trigger this time.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
Oh I wonder why that is?

Speaker 1 (01:16:01):
Mm hmm, yeah, well I think you know. Actually he's
not one of our three protags. He's like I said,
he's the red Herring Showgo is going to track down
and kill ours soon to be three protags. Now though
kind of unceremoniously. You just meet him, you kind of

(01:16:21):
talk to them for a second, you realize who they are. Yeah,
and he doesn't even think about it. He just does
it again. Wild, absolutely wild. They lead off with the
worst writing. It gets better show gos Stone fills up
seemingly explodes and he dies, and this is when we
get this interlude with the storyteller who explains the concept

(01:16:43):
of the story chart to you. You know, anybody that's
played a visual novel knows about the story chart. It
branches off depending on what rouch you're on. The routes
here are very short, basically just like ending scenarios like this,
And he's like, you know, what does he say? He asks,
if we know how many people show Goo has killed?
This is kind of one of the meta elements. It
changes each and every time depending on how many times

(01:17:05):
you press the left trigger, depending on how many times
you let Sho go do it, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:17:11):
Yeah, I kind of like that bit. And obviously it
ending with the character you think might be in the
game dies, so you're like, all right, I'm met both
these characters. Everybody's just dying. What's that game actually gonna
be about?

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
So using the story chart, we can go back. We
can prevent Yoko's death. You know, we are playing god
in this TV drama. Instead of turning around when Yoko
starts to get freaked out, we don't take our eyes
off of her. This is the first time, you know,
we get the option to select you know, don't turn around,
and Shogo will think to himself, huh, why am I
thinking that? Why am I thinking don't turn around? And
then you can just be like, you know, just who cares?

(01:17:47):
Just don't do it? And he's like, okay, this doesn't
pay off until the end. I kind of like it.
We never take her eyes off her. This leads us,
you know, she stays alive. This leads us to an
epilogue scene after they part, show Go lies dead. No
matter what happens, Fate's wheel is always going to have
show Go dead and buried.

Speaker 2 (01:18:08):
Which is an interesting way to start it where you're like, okay,
so you think the whole point of it is to
keep the girl alive, but then the guy dies, so
you're like, okay, yeah, what what's what's going on?

Speaker 1 (01:18:47):
And that's the prologue. Then the three routes open up
of our three protagonists, the three people that we killed,
and I gotta admit, whenever I saw that it was
the three people that we killed, I was like, Okay,
that's that's pretty cool. I don't know where this is
going now, but that's the prologue, you know, that's the hook.
From here, we go through each of the routes. Now again,

(01:19:08):
the reason that we're not doing these beat by beat
is because one, they bounce back and forth, like different
conditions have to be met in Route A to produce
and to proceed in Route B. You know, they go
back and forth. Just playing through one route, even after
you beat the game straight through, does not give you
a full story picture, so you have to go back
and forth. I don't like how that feels in this

(01:19:30):
podcast medium. So let's just talk about the rest of
the story as a whole. So which character do you
want to start with.

Speaker 2 (01:19:38):
Michael, I want to make one clarific. I need Alaric
correct me.

Speaker 1 (01:19:42):
Oh, let me correct you. No, who's correcting? Who? Who's on?

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
First?

Speaker 1 (01:19:45):
Speak?

Speaker 2 (01:19:46):
Speak man, Little Avid Costello going on?

Speaker 1 (01:19:49):
All right, they're the seventh and eighth Kurse Stones. You
don't want to know. You don't want to know how
to activate theirs.

Speaker 2 (01:19:57):
When you say, I know you don't like it for
the media, did you like the branching story and the
going back and forth when you're actually playing the game.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. As a narrative device, I
like it just fine. I just don't think it works
for this specific style of podcasting, which, believe me, I
do not pick games just because I think they'll be
good on the podcast. Not all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:20:19):
Anyway, I figured that's what it was, and I think
you even might have mentioned that earlier. But oh on
that clarification.

Speaker 1 (01:20:24):
No, Yeah, I think it's cool going back and forth
between each of them. You get different points of view.
I like it. I think it's good.

Speaker 2 (01:20:32):
I think we've got to start with the detectives. I mean,
there's more in one detect this game. But I'll let
you pick what you think I'm meaning.

Speaker 1 (01:20:39):
Okay, yeah, I'm guessing you mean Sitsumi and Ario.

Speaker 2 (01:20:43):
You are correct, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:20:45):
These I mean, if there is a fan favorite, it's
got to be these two. They've got this buddy cop dynamic.
Sitsumi is like a fifty grustled, fifty year old grustled cop.
They're both on the police force. He's kind of grustled.
He's no nonsense. He's a bit of a curmudgeon and
a veteran. Yeah, the veteran. Ario is his like twenty
something year old, right eyed, bushy tailed, hopelessly naive, go

(01:21:07):
get am attitude, little assistant, always making jokes, about him
being senile and losing his memory, like to the point
where it kind of grinds the dialogue to a halt
as he keeps making these jokes and Sutsumi is just like, ah,
you don't have any respect. Why would you say that?
And they just do it again and again and again.
But they've i mean, they've got a buddy cop thing

(01:21:28):
going on, you know, good cup, bad cop kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:21:31):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:21:32):
And interestingly, it's Sutsumi that gets his curse stone, it's
not Areo. But the two of them do work together throughout.

Speaker 2 (01:21:39):
Yeah. I thought that was a nice twist because I
thought they would both be having it. But again, yeah,
it's over done the good cop bad cop. I mean,
it's not really good cop gap backup. It's more the
buddy system like you're talking about. But this pairing just
just works for me.

Speaker 1 (01:21:53):
Oh yeah yeah. And I mean, and I mean they've
got some of the best music in the game too,
with the solving cases, with the smile.

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:22:01):
Yeah, they've just got a really lovable but lovable dynamic.
I mean, yeah, the writing is sometimes kind of clumsy,
but it works. They're very likable. It's interesting, they're they're
investigating the death of another police officer named Hajime Yoshimi,
who was closer to Ario. Like they weren't BFFs, but
they would go drinking, like they knew each other, they

(01:22:21):
liked each other. But it Suitsui that gets the curse stone,
even though like he doesn't have a stake in bringing
anybody back necessarily.

Speaker 2 (01:22:30):
Yeah, he has different He has a different uh we'll
call it story beat for himself, including his family. But
I thought that was interesting that the main death doesn't
tie back to him.

Speaker 1 (01:22:43):
Yeah it is. I mean I think they wanted to
highlight his relationship with his daughter and how that ties
into everything probably and of course with the culprit. We
should say. In addition to this going on, there is
an escaped serial killer that actually, like they did a
they do it right up in the files about this.

(01:23:03):
This serial killer went on a killing spree of children
some twenty years previous, like pretty gruesome, grizzly stuff. And
he breaks out of jet well he doesn't break out,
He gets out on you know parole, good natured parole
after twenty years and immediately just calls up to sue
me on a payphone and starts fucking with him and
saying like, hey, I have a cursed stone. It lets

(01:23:24):
me kill hundreds of people and you're all fucking dead.
I hate you, you know. It's it's that kind of
you know, get out of Jaie trope, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:23:32):
Yeah, like here's the main bag. Even though I did
kind of like it, even though it is a little
bit overdone, I think, yeah, I think that angle helps
with the cursed Stone with to sue you that sound wrong,
but I think June's part kind of makes sense when

(01:23:52):
you think about you want them each to have a
like a tent pole moment in the story, and I
feel like if you gave them both the curse stone
to kind of fuddle that a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:24:04):
Yeah, yeah, totally totally. The two of them together are
going through they're trying to collect the curse stones to
put a stop to all of this. They don't necessarily
want to revive their fallen comrade. They want to get
these stones because people are killing other people, and you know,
they're police. They at least at this period of time
in Japan, they want to help the community of novel concepts.

(01:24:27):
So they're going around and they're not using it. Notably,
he threatens to use it to a few people. Like
there's this one guy, this well dressed young kid in
a sweater that's got a curse stone. I don't remember
his name offhand, but he shows up in a couple routes.
He is the one that you had mentioned, Michael, where
you turn the volume down to get past his curse.

Speaker 2 (01:24:49):
Yes, that little dweb guy. I don't like him.

Speaker 1 (01:24:53):
I can't remember his name, spineless guy, but he factors
into a couple of these, and you know, we end
up taking his curse stone from him. We don't hurt him.
I think what Sitsumi says is like, yeah, I'll report
it and they'll take him in, you know, to hold him,
to question him, things like that.

Speaker 2 (01:25:09):
And I like that bit, because, yeah, if we don't
having at least one set of characters in this, that's
not going around like I just want to kill everybody,
you know, like the prologue. We don't need that for
every character.

Speaker 1 (01:25:21):
Well, notably, there's only one character that's really well, maybe two,
but only one of our characters that's like that, susue me.
It's so convenient. His curse stone will trigger if somebody
lies to him, like knowingly tries to deceive him. Like
perfect detective, pretty damn on the nose for a cop.
But he I mean, and he just straight up tells

(01:25:42):
people this. He's like, yeah, I've got a curse stone.
If you try to lie to me, it's going to activate.
You know what do you want?

Speaker 2 (01:25:46):
You want to die?

Speaker 1 (01:25:47):
Or do you want to bet through this?

Speaker 2 (01:25:49):
I love that they do that. He's just putting all
his cards on the table right away, like all right,
let's just do this. You know, I do.

Speaker 1 (01:25:55):
I do like him. I do like there they go through,
solve them crimes, be a force for good. They end
up teaming up, funny enough with Oh, by the way,
the two of them Sitsu Me and you know by
extension June Ario are on the Paranormal Division. You know
they're working this case because it's part of the Paranormal Division,

(01:26:15):
you know, curse stones, things like that, And they, funny enough,
get tied up with another character in another route, Neo,
and she is the sort of deuteragonist, the second secondary
character to the protagonist of Yacko. How do you feel
about Yacko and Neo? Did you like these two?

Speaker 2 (01:26:35):
I did, because this gave me a little bit more
of that horror element, spooky paranormal stuff. I mean, using
the why can't think Wuiji board and all that. Like,
I like this kind of stuff, and I feel like
having different age groups really helped that this character party
we have going on here, and I like that they're

(01:26:56):
not the typical type casted character, Like Yako is, like
she's kind of fit and athletic, but she's not like,
I don't know how to describe it, she's not type casted.

Speaker 1 (01:27:08):
She's generally like a do gooder heart of gold, but
every so often she like rolls up her sleeves and
she's like, I'm about to kick some ass, and you're like,
where did this come from?

Speaker 2 (01:27:17):
I know, she pouts her lips and does the duck
face and you're like, who is this girl? But again,
when all these characters interact, because I think June also
knows Richter, which is the other private investigator, and I'm like,
I like that all these characters start intertwining in their stories.

Speaker 1 (01:27:34):
Yeah, speaking of intertwining, they intertwine Yako and Mio do
with Sutsumi in Ario because Mio is a special operative
and unpaid worker as they call her. With the with
the paranormal division. She's got very high spirit sense, so
she can like, she's very good at solving paranormal crimes,
and she's underpaid or not paid because she's still in school,

(01:27:57):
you know, labor violation. She's friends with Yako. Yako's a
good friend best friend. Michio Shiraishi recently died by suicide
in an event that totally shocked the school. The story
is she jumped off the roof. There was talk that
her grades were going down because she was in an
abusive household. The whole community kind of knew about her dad,

(01:28:21):
her stepfather being crazy abusive to her and her mother.
They don't know how deep that goes, but that's the
sort of story around and presumably why she jumped off
the roof. And Yako and Mio when we start with them,
they're in the school at midnight, playing with a Wigi board,
like you said, trying to figure out, like you know,

(01:28:41):
spirit of the Ouiji board. Did Michio really die by suicide?
The answer they say, no, no, it was an accident,
so that kind of starts their investigation. They're like, Okay,
why in the world, how in the world did Michio die?
And once Yako gets the cursed stone here in this
miss in the school at midnight. Yacko is like determined

(01:29:04):
to bring her back. Mio keeps saying, this is a
bad idea. You know, you're gonna have to kill people,
and Yaco's like, I'm just gonna feel it out. If
it happens, it happens. I don't want to, but you know,
if it happens, who knows. But we're bringing Ichio back.
That's kind of their angle.

Speaker 2 (01:29:18):
It's a very teenage youth like thought process, like, ah,
let's just do it. You know. She's burst in with
that attitude and passion, so it kind of makes sense
for her character.

Speaker 1 (01:29:30):
Yeah, she I like that She's not like outright going
to look for people to kill. Though. There's one scene
where she sees a delinquent schoolgirl in the school at
night with a teacher and there has been rumors about
the teacher and she thinks that something funny is going on,
that that teacher is trying to take advantage of the girl,
which makes Yacko furious. And you actually do get a

(01:29:52):
little prompt in the corner you can trigger your curse,
or at least so you think if you trigger it,
nothing actually happens. The end result he is the same
either way, which is kind of what I was saying
at the beginning, like, choices don't really matter here. You're
kind of on a roller coaster ride. You can't really
change the track too much. But yeah, Yako is not bloodthirsty,

(01:30:14):
but every so often she has this intense sense of justice.
How did you feel about them teaming up with the detectives?

Speaker 2 (01:30:22):
I love. I don't know what it is about games
where separate characters are intertwining with other main ish characters,
and I feel like, well, one, this is where it
gets one of the bigger jump scares for me from June,
which I'm not happy with in the park, but again,
I feel like it makes sense because one, she's linked
to the investigation all about the paranormal. And I like

(01:30:45):
the dynamic of June and Yako in particular because they're
both kind of a little bit more passionate than their counterparts,
so they kind of feed off each other.

Speaker 1 (01:30:54):
It's also cool to the three of them kind of
gang up on sitsue me a lot. You know, Yak
and Areo are kind of, you know, jovial and cheerful.
Mio is a little more reserved. She's a very shy girl.
She's a transfer student. She transfers around a lot because
she works with the paranormal division. She kind of just

(01:31:14):
goes to whatever school needs help with, you know, paranormal cases.
But she's still like she's a schoolgirl at heart. Like
her and Yako. Whenever they get like excited about something,
like when they first meets it to me, Ario like
makes a joke to try and get them to talk
to us the police, because you know who wants to
talk to the police. They you know, to bribe them.

(01:31:34):
Arios like, oh, the boss will buy us all sushi.
And he's like, wait what, I didn't agree to this,
And they all get kind of giddy and happy and
kind of teaming up against him, and he's just like
you kids. It's a cute dynamic.

Speaker 2 (01:31:45):
I worked for me a lot, the old school veteran
guy with the young crowd. Always it is a win.

Speaker 1 (01:31:51):
It makes me wonder if they did go out for
expensive sushi because this game, like the timeline of this
is not it's only a couple of days.

Speaker 2 (01:31:58):
Right, yeah, I think is another strong selling point for it.
I like when games are don't take place in a
long period of time just because it well not Okay,
not all the time, but I find that this worked
for this specific story.

Speaker 1 (01:32:13):
Yeah, it also works too. Once it's daytime, the curses
can't be cast. There's a lot of lore stuff we're
not going into. The curses are stronger at night because
of this ridiculously named spell called the Feast of Shadows
that makes the curses way more powerful and potent that

(01:32:34):
somebody behind the scenes is casting to get everybody to
cast the Right of Resurrection, Like there's a puppet master
behind all of this, and like, I don't mean to
diminish it or be reductive, but like, again, there's no
easy way to do this as a beat by beat
without sprawling in into multiple episodes, which like, yeah, we
could have done, but again, it's going to be going

(01:32:55):
back and forth. I don't know. Again for the couple
of you that are out there listening, disappointed by that
decision and sorry, but it's still fun to talk about
the game. Do you want to talk about our last

(01:33:38):
of the main routes?

Speaker 2 (01:33:41):
Yeah, I think this one is the more tragic one
out of all of them, and I feel like it
has a more somber tone. Minus you have Richter, so
it kind of has that balance a little bit, maybe
not balance, it's you know, it's teetering that way.

Speaker 1 (01:33:57):
Extremely tragic, and I probably the most interesting of the bunch.
I think this is my favorite main character for sure.
This is a woman named Harraway. Her route is also
unique in that it begins immediately with her getting her
cursed stone. She's consulting with this private detective, private eye

(01:34:20):
named Richter, who's wearing this ridiculous white puffy shirt and
like a white feather cap kind of thing. He's just
he's so flamboyant, but you know, it keeps up the
theme of like main character and a sidekick kind of
deal her whole deal. The reason she's consulting with him

(01:34:41):
is her son. Her child's son was kidnapped and murdered
some time ago, like kidnapped by a kidnapper who was
calling the police and taunting them. The police's ineptitude is
actually what caused the guy to never get caught, and
he ended up chopping up her, like literally chopping up

(01:35:02):
her son. And because of that police ineptitude, she has
a deep, deep distrust of the police, so she is
from the start, she immediately says that she is all
four using this curse. If she can bring her son back,
she will kill, and she is upfront about that immediately.

(01:35:22):
She's just like, yeah, I will kill. And Richter is like, now, ma'am,
you better not do that. I'm gonna be along with
you and we're gonna make sure you don't do that.
And she's just like, would it be such a terrible
thing after what I've endured? Would it be so bad?
Like she is? It is really fucking tragic what happened
to her. I can totally understand her viewpoint too, Like
she is, and she's clearly depicted as still being in

(01:35:45):
the grieving process. Her eyes look very sullen, like she
is not getting much sleep, her hair is very disheveled,
she has a very meek body language, very clearly still
in the depths of grief. Tragic character. I love this,
this whole route.

Speaker 2 (01:36:01):
I feel like what really sells it to is the
no music when she's sitting alone in her just giant
looking mansion, so she's well off and you can just
kind of almost feel the bitterness and grief just staying
with her. I feel like the dynamic of her with Richter.
Obviously she doesn't like the police, so she you know,

(01:36:21):
you introduce this other character that's a private investigator, it
just really works. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:36:27):
Yeah, he's determined to figure out who was responsible for
her son's death. He is an ex police detective. He
left the force because he wanted to help people like
this and not get caught up in like bureaucratic paperwork
and stuff like that. He wanted to make like real change,
so he became a PI. He's kind of like he
knows to sue me an aero. They're not like at odds,

(01:36:48):
but they're also not friendly either, you know, like they're
very clearly different different groups trying to solve different things.

Speaker 2 (01:36:56):
I think June was in the academy with Richter as well,
so yeah, they're connections. So they're acquaintances.

Speaker 1 (01:37:03):
Yeah yeah, and he really wants to find the murderer,
figure out, you know, what exactly happened to with this
whole case. And she's along for the ride. She's like, yeah,
I hope you find something, but also I will kill
people to bring him back. And he's like, now, man,
you better not do.

Speaker 2 (01:37:19):
That, don't You don't want to do it, But.

Speaker 1 (01:37:22):
Like she kind of talks him into helping her like obliquely,
like He's like, well, you know, I'll let you know
if I see anybody, and if I think they're a
curse bearer, I guess I'll tell you.

Speaker 2 (01:37:33):
Like he's so complicit in all of this, yeah, aid
and betting.

Speaker 1 (01:37:37):
Yeah, in no court of law would he be deemed innocent.
It's it's very funny what I do.

Speaker 2 (01:37:44):
Like about this dynamic. Then you have the two detectives
that are trying to save everybody and solve the case.
You have her that just wants to kill everybody to
get hurt what she wants, and then you have the
girls in the middle kind of like split the difference,
Like Yako kind of understand all that Mio is gonna
help her. I like that. They're different enough, but they're

(01:38:04):
all you know, they're all gonna intertwine obviously.

Speaker 1 (01:38:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaking of the girls, there is a
plot point where we realize that Michio was not killed
not She did not die by suicide, She did not
jump off the roof. She was wildly depressed because she
was being sexually abused by her stepfather, who was a
real piece of fucking shit, also beating her mom. So like,

(01:38:28):
she did have a bad home life, but she did
not die by suicide. She was hit by a speeding
van that was being driven by that sweater chuckle fuck
that we had mentioned earlier with the the cursed stone
that you have Tarro Utaho, I.

Speaker 2 (01:38:43):
Think that's it, actually is that is that his name?

Speaker 1 (01:38:45):
I think so where you have to turn down the
voice volume to like uh outsmart him?

Speaker 2 (01:38:51):
He was.

Speaker 1 (01:38:52):
It was a hit and run. You know, she hit
him or he hit her, and that's how she died.
There is a plot point where she possesses and this
is set up from the beginning. They talk about possessions
and how like you know people that are possessed, they
don't even know it most of the time. And you know,
if the spirit had a really close connection to them,
sometimes they can take over the body for brief periods

(01:39:13):
of time, and that happens with Yako. And there's like
one ending where Yako comes back alive and kills u Tarro,
which is a bad ending. They immediately take you back
and say, now try again.

Speaker 2 (01:39:24):
Which she should be allowed to kill him.

Speaker 1 (01:39:26):
Yeah, he's a real piece of work. But that's that's
a plot point, Like she gets possessed. What are you
feeling about that?

Speaker 2 (01:39:34):
I don't love that, even though I know it's a
thing that happens a lot in especially horror adjacent things.
I don't like one that there's no real way for
the character themselves to know that they were possessed. I
don't like that bit because it just kind of creates
a convenience for storytelling reasons.

Speaker 1 (01:39:56):
I you know, you might be right. I actually kind
of did like it though, because when, like when Yako
finds out that she's being possessed, she's like, she freaks out.
She's like, oh my god. That means like I was
kind of complicit and you know this person dying. Oh
my god, like I didn't want this. Then, like she's
freaking out. She's like the consequences of these actions are
on me now, Like wait a minute, wait a minute.

Speaker 2 (01:40:19):
Yes, I guess the way they handle it specifically in
a broad terms, I don't like it, but this one.

Speaker 1 (01:40:25):
I'm okay with. No, yeah, no, that's totally fair. I'm
not telling you that you're wrong. I What I also
like too is at some point they exercise her on
a stare master. No, I'm just kidding. They get the
demon out of her. You know, Mio leads this and
she's like, you know, we have to let Michio rest basically,
and we got to get her out of you. And

(01:40:46):
they do that, and it's like way more touching than
I was expecting. Like, uh, Yako and Michio get to
like meet in this sort of world between the living
and the dead, and they get to like have their
final good vies. It's really touched.

Speaker 2 (01:41:00):
Yeah, and I feel like that is a nice cap
to her story. I was gonna say something more, but
I don't remember what the fuck I was gonna say,
so apaily with.

Speaker 1 (01:41:08):
That, Yeah, yeah, it's nice. After after that, they're kind
of full on with like helping the detectives, you know,
put a stop to this cursed stone stuff. Now, speaking
of the detectives, we I mean, we've got to talk
about Satsumi's daughter. She plays a huge role in this.
Do you remember her name? Is it Ayana or is
it a yame a yame yame ayam Tono.

Speaker 2 (01:41:31):
Yes, Yeah, she's a university student and she's kind of flighty.
She's flighty for a reason, I feel like to throw
people off.

Speaker 1 (01:41:40):
Yes, Now you mentioned she's a university student, and we
mentioned her last name's Tono. So two things. One, she
took a new name. She her backstory is that she
was adopted by Sutsumi. It's even crazier than that. When
we I mean we're past spoiler in this episode, it's
not going to be too much longer. The Right of Resurrection,

(01:42:03):
the way it works is it's not just an instant reincarnation. Nejima,
this serial killer that was doing the child killings before,
was doing all of that to get soul dregs to
bring his fiance back. And how it worked was she
was reborn, but her soul was put into this newborn
baby that I'm pretty sure was birthed out of one

(01:42:24):
of the corpses, which is just fucking brutal. Yes, so
she was reborn into this baby. Her soul's in there
and she has no idea who he is, so like
he got his wish, but now there's this baby that
needs to be taken care of. Really tragic. I really
like how they handle that rebirth aspect. It's just a
little twist, but it's like, yeah, would you be okay
with somebody being resurrected if it meant they were a

(01:42:47):
new person in a new body and they never knew
who you are? Are you going to admit that that
is a purely selfish thing from your point of view.
Just to have the satisfaction of knowing you brought them
back is basically I think what it's asked. I love it.
I think it's a cool twist, and.

Speaker 2 (01:43:02):
I think it really makes it's at odds with what
the serial killer wanted because obviously he loved his fiance,
but now he has a baby, so it's like those
are two very different things.

Speaker 1 (01:43:14):
Yeah, they make plenty of They made plenty of rom
com movies about you know, an unexpected baby.

Speaker 2 (01:43:19):
Ooh what?

Speaker 1 (01:43:20):
And this is not that you also mentioned that she
is a UNI student. She is an art student. Particularly,
she is an art student of Ukiyoa, which is that
style of woodblock painting. The most famous ukio a painter
artist that we would probably know is a guy by
the name of Hokusai. If you've ever seen the painting,

(01:43:42):
the very famous painting that I'm pretty sure Ed Hardy
in the two thousands co opted into his shitty shirts.
You know, is Ed Hardy still up?

Speaker 2 (01:43:49):
Oh? The Wave, the Wave?

Speaker 1 (01:43:51):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's not talk about Ed Hardy. Yes,
the Great Wave off Kanagawa. That is his most famous.
Fun fact, did you know he's also very famous for
one of the earliest tentacle porn paintings. I did not
know that, but you know, yes, I think it's I
think it's called the Dream of the Fisherman's Wife or something.

(01:44:14):
It's you know, I'm not trying to be crass about it,
like there's it's a very interesting work, but it's very
much a woman being pleasured by octopus and uh, you know,
it does say a.

Speaker 2 (01:44:24):
Lot about her to tread listen, it says a.

Speaker 1 (01:44:26):
Lot about like sexual moras at the time and norms,
and but it's also an octopus pleasuring a woman.

Speaker 2 (01:44:34):
So I mean, I don't know water themes. There's a
lot of water themes.

Speaker 1 (01:44:38):
It's Japan, man, you know there's water everywhere, that's true,
plenty to drink. You know, that poet didn't know what
he was talking about. But she is obsessed, ayam Tono
is with this guy, and literally that's why she is
pursuing the right. She wants to bring him back because
can't you just imagine like what he could have done
in the real world. Now, he wasn't done giving yet,

(01:44:59):
and that is the most fucking vapid sophomoric choice of motivation. Ever,
and like I think the characters kind of get that,
Like nobody is like, yeah, that's a good idea tono, like.

Speaker 2 (01:45:11):
Yeah, I love that. Her father's just like, what are
you kidding me? That's why you're doing this.

Speaker 1 (01:45:19):
It's it's absurd, And she's manipulating. Her character is kind
of cool though, like she deeply hates the police because
of her dad, you know, Sutsumi, but she's manipulating Utarro
because and she's just like, yeah, I don't like him,
but he's spineless and he does what I say because
he wants to date me. So like I'm trying to
get the curse stones and once he gets enough, I'm
just gonna take it from him and you know, do

(01:45:39):
my thing. She's kind of ruthless, kind of sociopathic in
that way. Pretty cool character, but she's estrange from her father.
You know, she left. I don't quite remember why do
you remember why she left?

Speaker 2 (01:45:52):
I think it was something to either do with his
long work hours and the mom and I can't remember
what the pivotal point was or like the breaking point.

Speaker 1 (01:46:01):
Yeah, it was something like that, like neglectful childhood.

Speaker 2 (01:46:04):
Oh, I think it was also about her being adopted,
like she found that out later. I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 1 (01:46:11):
Yes, And that comes to a head. They in the
very end of the game have this really climactic moment
the two of them meet for the first time in years,
like she actively avoids him, Ario kind of fucking makes
fun of him all the time. He's just like, you
don't even know where your daughter lives, man, she must
hate you. And he's just like, why would you say.

Speaker 2 (01:46:28):
That to me?

Speaker 1 (01:46:29):
Man?

Speaker 2 (01:46:30):
I know?

Speaker 1 (01:46:31):
But they have this climactic showdown. They both have curse stones.
They are both like, look, I'll use it, like I
don't want to, but I will. And they have this
climactic showdown where it's like, you know, did you help
Negima with the murders? Did you kill him? And she's like, no,
I didn't, and yes I did kill him. You know.
He said he was gonna hurt me, Like, what do
you want me to do? I'm gonna kill again to

(01:46:53):
bring this guy back, And he's just like that's the
most insane thing I've ever heard. What are you doing?
But it's this big climactic moment where she's just like,
you have to tell me the truth. If you don't
I'm gonna be able to use my curse and kill you.
Am I adopted?

Speaker 2 (01:47:08):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:47:08):
Am I your real daughter? And it's this climactic, dramatic
moment where I mean, and I think you can say no,
but it plays out the same way where you're just like,
no matter what, you are our daughter. You know you
might not be our flesh of blood, but like we
raised you, we loved you like you are ours. And
it's this emotional moment, but it feels just so unearned

(01:47:31):
to me, like they did not set this up in
any way for it to succeed. They highlighted that, yes,
like she hates her father and him, like the most
they did with him is like, yeah, I think about her.
I hope she's doing well. It sucks that she's a strange,
but like, what are you gonna do? They really just
did not set this up to succeed. This whole ending

(01:47:52):
sequence between them fell so flat for me. It was
really disappointing.

Speaker 2 (01:47:58):
I think the part that worked for me is on
his end. I feel like he is trying to like
call back home, talk to the why, figure out where
the daughter is so there's at least enough breadcrumbs there
and I do like his like what he's known for
of being kind of like a distant He doesn't show
much emotions, you know, to like June and everybody. So

(01:48:20):
him standing up for like, okay, you are my daughter,
and even though that will end up killing him, he
stand on that. But I agree on the flip side,
the daughter has just one stupid motivations and two unearned
on her part, so it makes his part not as good.
So it I love conceptually, I love the idea, the execution.

(01:48:44):
There wasn't enough to build up to this moment totally.

Speaker 1 (01:48:47):
Yeah, well said Another thing too, is like this is
their only interaction in the game, Like had they worked
up to it, like them having tense interactions before, back
and forth, like a blowout somewhere in between, Like if
they would have set it up a little better, this
could have landed more. Because as it is, they're trusting
the viewers to put a lot of that backstory together

(01:49:08):
in their head even though it's not conveyed to them,
which isn't a bad thing. But if you're not going
to give any backstory outside of just the premise, you've
got to work a little harder on stage to build
up that relationship. You can't just bring us into the
climax immediately and expect it to have the same emotional weight.
I think, And I could be wrong. I'm not saying

(01:49:28):
that I'm right, but that's how it came off to me.
So this whole grandiose ending where like she uses his
curse on him, she uses her curse on him because
like she perceives this as lying, like you know, you
adopted me, you won't even be honest to me right now,
Like how could you are the skum of the earth.
I hate the police, I hate you. And this is
the only time in the game where somebody doesn't immediately

(01:49:49):
die by getting hit by a curse. Like he's standing there,
you know, bloody and beaten, making his last proclamations like no,
you may have been adopted, but I love you so much.
That kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:50:01):
That moment really good. It works, But again, it would
work better if they just I get it that they
wanted to have these characters all meet and you finally
figure out the connection. Oh that's his daughter, YadA YadA.
But because we didn't have enough before that, again, it
doesn't make the moment as strong.

Speaker 1 (01:50:19):
Now, correct me, If I'm wrong too. He does die
like in the canonical ending of the game. Well, let
me rephrase that, the ending that does not involve the
secret true ending, like he still dies, right, Like, this
isn't just a branch off path.

Speaker 2 (01:50:34):
I'm pretty positive that is correct, because I kept going
back and forth when I was read, going through this
a little bit and kind of jumping around in certain chapters.
I went through this scene again to make sure. But
I don't know because of where it's placed in the timeline.
Does this technically get overwritten? I don't really know.

Speaker 1 (01:50:54):
Yeah, I don't know. They play with overwriting a lot too.
And speaking of and speaking of the time, we should
probably talk about the ending, the basic ending you get

(01:51:28):
to the end, the gist of it is. I know
we skipped over a lot. I'm sorry again. The on
meoji left behind. His name is Samon. He left behind
this scroll called the Record of Fates yin scroll that
explains how to stop the seven Mysteries the Curses because
he knew that this was going to cause trouble. He
wanted to leave it behind for people to stop it

(01:51:48):
in the future. And the way to do that is
you have to unite. What is it? His mind, spirit
and body and bring it together and it'll stop the curse. Basically,
now in the basic ending, that's Mio and Ario figuring
all of this out. This is after Tatsumi dies. They
meet Yako. I'm not Yako. They meet Yoko from the beginning,

(01:52:10):
the one that we thought, the one that we saved.
Remember whenever we overwrote the original timeline, we saved her.
She comes up, she's acting weird as shit. So the
two of them, they're just like, let's get away from her.
They turn around, and she gets them with the curse, which,
like in retrospect then I'm thinking maybe the spirit thing,
the spirit puns she was trying to get show Goo
to turn around. Maybe, Like that's about as charitable as

(01:52:33):
I can be with that, you know, given who they
really are, you know what I mean? Yeah, I guess, so, yeah,
that's gotta be the reason.

Speaker 2 (01:52:39):
Right, I honestly don't know because I still don't get
that part of the beginning.

Speaker 1 (01:52:44):
So, I mean, but that's that signifies Yoko as the mastermind.
She's been pulling this since the beginning. You get kicked
back to the narrator and he's just like, well, what
an unfortunate turn of events, but can you figure out
how to change it? This is the only time where
you go back to the story chart. Typically, if you
go back, any scene that has a different branching path

(01:53:04):
that you haven't explored will be lit up. This time
it does not. This is the only time it doesn't
do that. You have to go all the way back
to the beginning with show Go. In one of the
early scenes, you can see this is I think this
is directly after Yoko died. I think, yes, it is,
because the Hojaku soapskuy is walking towards you. But you

(01:53:25):
see this will of the Wisp in the background, and
it's there in the first playthrough too. I don't think
you can interact with it, or maybe you can.

Speaker 2 (01:53:33):
But you can't. Oh, I don't think you can.

Speaker 1 (01:53:35):
Okay, But it is there though, because I remember seeing
it my first play through and I'm like, what the
hell is this? But it's there, and if you interact
with it enough, it'll come towards you and you touch
it and you get kicked back to the narrator and
he's like, Okay, you figured it out, but just to
make sure that you didn't get here by accident, let
me just ask you. He knowledge checks you. He's like,
have you been paying attention? Take my quiz and find

(01:53:56):
out results. Enter your email for results one ninety nine
a month you get the premium. But he asks you
these questions, you know, like, oh fudge, do you remember
the questions he asks off hand before? Like the last
big one, No.

Speaker 2 (01:54:10):
I know, it's how many people are dead or died? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:54:14):
Killed? Well, the big one is he asks how many
people did sho Go kill? And that answer can change because,
like the whole thing, remember in the beginning, you have
to press the left trigger. That's you as the player
initiating that curse. After that, you can actually not press
it and Shogo will still kill people. Yes, so that's
sho Go doing it. So there's a differentiation between you

(01:54:36):
and shog which ends up to this very end point.
You know these three the mind, spruit, and body of
that own Meog of Salmon. The body is sho Go.
Shogo is his direct descendant and this is confirmed in
like the files, I'm pretty sure. But he also has
strong spirit sense. That's the body, the mind or the spirit,

(01:54:58):
I can't remember which one is the curse stone and
that's the will of the wisp, right, that's that. That's
why it came to you. So that's that, and then
that leaves the last one again, I don't remember if
it's mind or spirit whatever. The last one is the
reincarnation of Saman and that's when the reveal is it's
you the player. Yeah, no, we got this a little

(01:55:21):
mixed up in our conversation. Remember when we were talking earlier,
we had mentioned that it was set up as a
precedent in this game that spiritual possessions occur, and that
when they occur, the person being possessed often doesn't even
know that it's going on. It's set up in the
game that if the spirit and the person being possessed
had a strong relationship, that the spirit could then carry

(01:55:43):
out different actions, more in depth, actions, take more control. Basically,
point is, spiritual possession can occur, the possess doesn't necessarily
know that it's happening. That was set up, and that's
what's happening here in the fiction. Saman's spirit is possessing
you the player and is getting you to enact change

(01:56:04):
on all of these goings on, getting you to enact
change with Shogo telling him to not turn around, getting
you to enact change, to tell him to pitch his lighter,
so Haraway's curse stone doesn't get him. Telling Harroway to
do things, telling Sitsumi to do things, telling Yako and
Mio to do things. That is the game's big twist,

(01:56:24):
not that you are the reincarnation of Simon, as we
erroneously said, but that Samon's spirit has possessed you, the player,
and you didn't even know it. How dare you? Anyway,
let's get back to the show.

Speaker 2 (01:56:39):
I can't decide if I like that, like, I like
that this the baby is the daughter of the lover
or not the loved daughter is a reincarnation of the
fiance right and is.

Speaker 1 (01:56:53):
Also cool and is also a yame tono. By the way,
I don't think we mentioned that.

Speaker 2 (01:56:57):
Oh yeah, h yes, yes, I like that. Ass back
to Like, then, that's why Tatsuya is like, uh, so
atsu was his name again?

Speaker 1 (01:57:06):
Tsu me?

Speaker 2 (01:57:07):
Yeah to sue me. I want to keep calling him
tatsu you and I don't know why. Uh, that's why
he's so protective of that he knew that. Actually, do
we know if he knows that that was the daughter
or the reincarnation from that period? I can't even remember
that part.

Speaker 1 (01:57:23):
I think he learns it here and he's very, very
shocked by it, as he should be.

Speaker 2 (01:57:29):
Yes, now what I don't like they have this spin
about the reincarnation, But why does it have to be
us the player?

Speaker 1 (01:57:38):
For meta you know, meta reasons. I really think that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:57:42):
I mean, yeah, it could be. Is that simple. I
feel like it works with the characters in the story.
I don't know if I like it from a yeah,
a quote unquote meta sort of way.

Speaker 1 (01:57:52):
Yeah, this it's it's gonna be divisive as to whether
this lands or not. If you're listening this far, I'm
sure you've played it, or maybe you're you just really
like shown you don't mind being spoiled. I don't know, man,
I think this is a little bit too silly, like
verging towards silly, like absurd verging towards silly. I will say.
I do like how it recontextualizes, like throughout the game,

(01:58:14):
whenever you get to directly influence what's happening, and the
characters are like, why am I thinking that? And then
they're just like, well, I don't know why I'm thinking this,
but maybe I'll just do that. I like that.

Speaker 2 (01:58:25):
Yeah, that's a nice little bow to that piece of it.
But I feel like the other reveals of who the
serial killer is, who's the daughter, who, some of people's
motivations to do things, I feel like that is a
stronger reveal than this.

Speaker 1 (01:58:41):
Oh totally. This is like, it's just such a bizarre
turn of events to say that you are the reincarnation
of this on Yogi. It's also just kind of a
silly concept, you know, to think that me and my
boxers in Pennsylvania, some fat ass bald guy is the
reincarnation of a Japanese in an ancient Japanese on mioji.

(01:59:03):
Come on, man, I'm being a little bit facetious here,
and I'm being a little bit silly for comedy. You
know that's you know, that's comedy, baby, But I don't know,
it verges on being silly. But this, this might be
the reason though, Like I'm not poopooing this. This might
be the reason somebody loves this game. This might might
have put the bow on the whole thing for somebody
out there. You know.

Speaker 2 (01:59:24):
Oh like when we were talking about if you've seen
this a handful of times, you know it can wow you, right, yeah, yeah,
I guess if this is the first time you've seen that,
maybe it would work. And I don't disparage that. I mean, conceptually,
it's an interesting choice, and I kind of see why
they would want to go that route. I feel like

(01:59:45):
it undermines some of the game itself or some of
the reveals at least.

Speaker 1 (01:59:50):
I agree one thing that we didn't mention in the
background of all this, there was an adversary of Salmon.
So there's this whole Honjo incident that we talked to.
And what it is it ties together these seven stories
or these nine stories, ten stories. However many in the
seven mysteries, you'd think seven just kidding Tetsu, you know,

(02:00:10):
Mora was here. I can smell them. But it ties
together all of the origin stories of those into one
big story centered around this on Miyoji and one of
his ops at the time, like one of his nemeses,
and that nemesis is reborn as Yoko the girl from
the beginning, which is why I was thinking, like maybe

(02:00:30):
when Yoko's saying all this batshit stupid stuff about spirits,
she's trying to get Shogo to turn around and leave
because she knows that he's the reincarnation, and she's like, well,
I'm going to kill him before he kills me, you
know what I mean? I think maybe?

Speaker 2 (02:00:46):
Yeah, I wonder why they didn't choose I mean, maybe
it's too obvious that the serial killer was that reincarnation,
but I guess it kind of makes more sense. You
want to that's too simple, right?

Speaker 1 (02:00:57):
Wait? Who is the serial killer reincarnate of?

Speaker 2 (02:01:00):
Like if they went that route like adversary, like that
would make sense in my head. But maybe that's too simple.
So Havevn't it be this bubbly just girl that you
just meant the mute meet cute girl. Maybe you know what,
maybe that's why the desires are so strong too. In
the beginning of you know this show, Joe, just like

(02:01:22):
I'm just gonna kill everybody because of all this reincarnation
blah blah blah.

Speaker 1 (02:01:26):
Uh it's possible. It's it's also possible too, Like you know,
the quote unquote Cannon timeline is when you save Yoko,
but if you let her die, which well, actually no,
that's not even right. Oh my god. These freaking time
travel stories always break my brain down because what happens here,
you know, is you realize that you had to have
killed Yoko. Like, after you answer all of the narrator's questions,

(02:01:49):
he's like, good, you understand the story. I'll let you
play again. Like Jesus Man, you go back to Showgo,
Shoga remembers everything. He's like, oh my God, like it
had to happen this way. And the the ending then
is kind of anti climactic. The ending then goes through
the other six protagonists, you know, each of the three routes,
and basically nothing happens like Harroway, Like it opens with Harroway.

(02:02:13):
You know. Richter's like, Mammary, you okay, and she's like, oh,
I just had the weirdest dream, and you know, they
just talk about finding what happened to their son, Sitsumi
in Ario just kind of keep on going with the police.

Speaker 2 (02:02:23):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:02:24):
It's kind of just an all's well, that ends well
kind of ending.

Speaker 2 (02:02:28):
So then that I guess I answers our previous question.
He does survive then because he never has that encounter
with his adopted daughter.

Speaker 1 (02:02:36):
Right, yes, yes, yes, yes. What I meant to ask
before was like the other ending that's not this one,
you know, the final ending that's not this Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:02:46):
Yeah, not the true ending. I don't know which one
he considered the true ending.

Speaker 1 (02:02:50):
What I was really asking was did he survive the
curse beat down? That's what I couldn't remember. He didn't
die right away though, right well, right, yeah, that's I
didn't like that either, Like they've shown these curses to
be extraordinarily deadly, and it just so happens he survives
because we have to get the eye love you've seen.
I don't.

Speaker 2 (02:03:10):
I don't know, man, do you think do you maybe
it's because you know he was it wasn't a lie.

Speaker 1 (02:03:16):
Technically, well no, because.

Speaker 2 (02:03:20):
His I mean technically it was a lie.

Speaker 1 (02:03:22):
His stone is lying her stone, Tono's stone, I Ton's
was anybody that tries to deceive her, like they they
pull that semantic mix up there, so like you know,
if you try to like misdirect her with something, you know,
she can fuck you up, which I guess technically he did.

Speaker 2 (02:03:43):
Technically this whole.

Speaker 1 (02:03:45):
Game is a series of like, well, technically this is true.

Speaker 3 (02:03:49):
That's a good point, right.

Speaker 1 (02:04:09):
Yeah, I mean that's par enormous site. It sounds like,
you know, I'm surprised that you kind of are so
lukewarm on the ending. I kind of thought that you
would have loved it.

Speaker 2 (02:04:18):
I like the true ending just doesn't do enough for me,
where when I like the true ending of most visual novels,
where it's either really emotionally impactful or like there I
just want to go and cry type of thing, Like
I want it to either have a really cool twist
and it's gonna make me think. I don't think about

(02:04:39):
this ending. I think about the previous ending a little
bit more, and I like the whole reincarnation aspect. But
I don't like this spot. That's why.

Speaker 1 (02:04:48):
And I'm curious, would you flat out recommend this to
anybody or like, do you think this is I mean
you've said at the top you think this is a
good intro visual novel.

Speaker 2 (02:04:56):
Right, Yeah, Honestly, I still, even with my qualms with it,
I really liked this game. I think it's again I
want more people to play it too. Maybe they'll make
a sequel or a sequel like game and hopefully they'll
learn some of the kinks. And again, it's shorter for
a visual novel. I mean, I think it took me
seven hours to get to the first ending, and then

(02:05:18):
it took me just under fourteen hours to find the
true ending. So I mean, in that aspect, I think
i'd recommend it to most people.

Speaker 1 (02:05:27):
Yeah, it's not long, it goes down pretty easy. Some
of the chapters are a little longer than what I
would have liked, but I mean you can save literally anytime.
It's pretty forgiving in that way.

Speaker 2 (02:05:38):
And I think what I really like about it too,
I think you mentioned too, is just the character makeup.
I think they're fun and a lot of visual novels
I feel like have two over the top characters or
just ones that don't are kind of too flat. And
I think each of these characters one they are kind
of a little bit type castid here and there, but
I feel like they have just a little bit more

(02:05:59):
going on.

Speaker 1 (02:06:01):
Not always the best though.

Speaker 2 (02:06:03):
With some motivations, but I feel like it's a strong
cast of characters. There are some high moments and it's
clever where I'm just like, yeah, I like it.

Speaker 1 (02:06:12):
Right, This isn't a visual novel where you've got the Sundare,
you've got the little sister archetype, you've got the tomboy. Yeah,
those are the visual novels I read later on after
the lights go out, that's Grandpa time. You remember. That's
like they used to do that on like Hey Arnold
and Rugrats, where like Grandpa Lou would bring out lonely

(02:06:32):
space fictions and he'd be like, oh, that's for when
you sprouts go to bed.

Speaker 2 (02:06:38):
Yeah, and I love those style of visual novels too,
but I feel like if you're I feel like this
one can be a little bit more broad again, doesn't
have that typical anime art style. I feel like this
game has a lot of things going for it, it
just didn't all come together totally. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:06:56):
I whether or not the landing is sticked is a
your mileage may vary kind of deal. The things that
it does well, you know, the likable characters, the art style,
the music, the environments. It does that well and if
that keeps you around to the end. You know, whether
or not you like the crazy meta stuff and the

(02:07:16):
story that takes so many twists and turns that it
starts to get a little bit over stimulating. Your mileage
may vary. But if you come for the stuff you
like and see it out, you might have a good time.
I agree, I recommend this. It's a good time. It's
a fun time.

Speaker 2 (02:07:33):
Yeah, it's no crazy twistful Stein's Gate like visual novel
like you have to play this, but honestly, I think
you'll have a good time with it.

Speaker 1 (02:07:42):
Yep here here, So that's Paranormal site. I gotta thank you, man.
I appreciate you coming on first time, hopefully not the
last time. I mean it depends on if you think
if you had a good time, but you always had
a great time. Yeah, Man, always welcome back. And speaking
of talked a little bit about ParaNorman sit on your
show before, as well as some other visual novels. We

(02:08:04):
like your show Bits of Time. Now, I did not
get a chance to speak with your co host, Larry,
but I did you know Matt, our friend mutual friend
Matt was there and we talked visual novels. So Bits
of Time? Do you want to tell our listeners a
little bit about what Bits of Time is and recommend
any episodes as a good first introduction to them.

Speaker 2 (02:08:25):
Sure, and I want to say yes, I will come
on your show again. Absolutely. The one thing with Larry
doesn't always love visual novels or longer RPGs, and I
don't have a lot of places to talk about that
my YouTube channel. But so it's I'm always. I love
this kind of stuff, the deep dive stuff, and plus
just talk about moments is so much fun to me.

(02:08:45):
So yep, I do co host Bits of Time with
my older brother Larry. Our goal was kind of to
make it like you're dropping into a conversation about a game,
and I think we've gotten there. If you want some
episode recommendations, I think you would like listener of the Rick,
I would do that. Yes, yeah, yeah, I know. I
was trying to pick a clever way to wrap it

(02:09:07):
into I just could you just name your name's right there.
So our Thirteen Sentinels episode that we did quite a
while ago, and our to the Moon episode, the ending
of to the Moon episode kind of became a therapy
session for us. It was great. We also do a
YouTube channel which just crossed thirty two hundred subscribers, which
is a lot of fun. And since you're you like

(02:09:28):
going into deep and story stuff, we I did a
retrospective on Breath of Fire four for the PlayStation one
and that was a lot of fun to do. It
took me way too long to make, but I've had
a lot of fun with those. I also have done
legendre Grun and East eight, and I have a couple
more in the pipeline.

Speaker 1 (02:09:45):
Oh yeah, big fan of legend Rare Goon. Breath of
Fire is on my list for hopefully this coming year
to go through all of those.

Speaker 2 (02:09:51):
Oh all of them?

Speaker 1 (02:09:53):
Wow? Okay, the first four anyway, I don't know if
there's more than that.

Speaker 2 (02:09:56):
There's a fifth one and a sixth one, but we
don't talk about six one just mobile at fifth one
is very different from the rest of the series.

Speaker 1 (02:10:03):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (02:10:04):
What I do like about our bits time is the
podcast and the YouTube are basically like ninety five percent different.
It's a lot more work, but we try to do
something different.

Speaker 1 (02:10:12):
Yeah, very cool. I definitely recommend checking out. I'm not
as familiar with your YouTube presence, but I can definitely
recommend the podcast. It's a good time. Thirteen Sentinels is great,
so as to the Moon, you can check out their podcast.
You can find the links to that in the description
it's going to be in Michael's campsite dot bio link.
You can also find Michael's books that he's written in

(02:10:34):
their book called Aila and the Consumed.

Speaker 2 (02:10:38):
Please do working on other stuff right now.

Speaker 1 (02:10:40):
A couple of links. You can check those out. And
buy them if you're so inclined. But once again, thank
you Michael for stopping by. Really really appreciate it. Thank
you listeners for sticking around through this episode of The
Rick otherwise known as Pixel Project Radio. That's the subname
of this podcast. I took the name of the show

(02:11:00):
as the host. I am The Rick, and you are.
You know, thanks for sticking around. I hope you enjoyed
the show. We'll see you next time. We're signing off
for now.

Speaker 2 (02:11:10):
Take care,

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Rite of Resurrection | Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo (Ep. 146)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Rite of Resurrection | Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo (Ep. 146)