I see what you mean about drowning women on cover art, Farla.
I heard people on the internet say this was a good game so I checked out an LP. I really should have learned my lesson after Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors, especially because it was recommended by people who liked Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors and was cowritten by the guy who wrote Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors, but here we are. At least my bad habits generate angry reviews for your entertainment.
Ever17 is not a good game, or a good story, or a good anything. I do think, however, it could easily reach “so bad it’s good” territory, because the plot is hilarious.
This thing honestly reads like self-parody. It’s got all the worst elements of 999 turned up to 11, with a terrible dating sim framework and anime melodrama shoehorned in. The whole thing is utter nonsense – the plot had to be twisted into pretzels to accommodate Uchikochi’s trademark nonsense twists – and yet it still manages to be unbelievably boring. The prologue is kind of interesting – things start slow and then all of a sudden one of the protagonists goes totally nuts and we veer into mindscrew territory, while at the same time the other protagonist meets a Mysterious Girl™ while everything falls into chaos around him, then the perspective switch image plays for both of them simultaneously so are they like the same person and what’s going on?! …Then the rest of the game is just playing tag, whining about having to eat chicken sandwiches, twiddling your thumbs, and listening to characters babble about something the author read in a pseudoscience magazine once. All this happens while the characters are told they’re going to die horribly in a week, by the way, but they don’t actually do anything about it because that would be too close to having an actual plot I guess. Then all of a sudden, stuff happens on the final day that’s simultaneously foreshadowed with a sledgehammer and comes out of nowhere. It also only happens for about twenty minutes, because we couldn’t possibly have dispersed the plot over a reasonable length of time, that would have interrupted those riveting discussions about chicken sandwiches.
Then you get to do it all again! You see, there are two protagonists and you get to pick which one you play as. Slightly different things happen in each route, but they still share the same (vapid) structure. You need to get every ending for both characters and then play through again in order to unlock the “true end” route, which is where all the plot was hiding. Clearly these are brilliant creators we are working with here; they know how to artificially inflate a game’s length to justify a larger price tag like pros.
So let’s talk about those endings! This is where the dating sim comes in; they all center around one of the women in the cover art up there. (Technically one of them is true end only but whatever.) They’re supposed to add plot and uniqueness to having to replay the same story four times, but most of them are a lazy slapdash of romance cliches, and most of the actual information in them is crappy foreshadowing for the true end anyway. The first protagonist I read about, a typical perverted teenage jerkface called Takeshi, was bad enough to make me ragequit the LP for months before the comments on my Exogenesis review convinced me to look at it again. His love interests are a painfully textbook tsundere (her quote in the opening movie is literally “Don’t act like I’m your friend, alright?”) and a robot. Whatever you’re imagining, it’s worse.
The first route I read was Tsundere’s, which was bad enough – she hits so many obvious points that I was certain this writer famed for his mindblowing twists had a twist in store and nope, once Takeshi has a single conversation with her she’s fawning all over him. Takeshi then proceeds to ignore all her opinions, tell her her (strawman nihilist) beliefs are stupid, and steamroller over her every time she tells him not to do something. How romantic. This culminates in him making a heroic sacrifice to save her while she cries and screams at him not to because she places no value on her own life and doesn’t want anyone to suffer for her sake. His only response is to trick her into letting him go, then tell her she’s an idiot before he does it anyway. Don’t worry though, you get to personally save him in the final route, because this is a person who deserves to be saved through an incredibly convoluted and dangerous plan.
But that’s got nothing on Robot Girl’s route. Robot Girl’s route is insane.
It begins with How Do You Emotions, because robot, even though she seemed perfectly capable of expressing emotions and a human personality up to this point, but I guess if the woman is capable of doing or learning anything on her own it’s not a romance. The sequence is absolutely cringe-worthy and I skipped over most of it. The next day, the pivotal event of Tsundere’s route happens but Takeshi fails to sweet-talk her so she rapes him in a fit of hysteria, because LOL women so crazy.
Or, perhaps I should say, to any reasonable observer it looks like she rapes him, but apparently the game doesn’t consider it that. Immediately afterward the story skips to the next day, Takeshi’s totally fine, and this is his only response to the idea of having another private conversation with Tsundere:
Yes, “awkward”. That is clearly the problem here. And yes, that was the CG for that scene, but it’s totally not rape! You see, Robot Girl finds out about it and tries to murder him for cheating on him because Hell hath no fury etc., and instead of pointing out that Tsundere wasn’t giving him many options, he just sighs melodramatically and stutters about how he can’t deny it and he’s so terrible, so apparently he honestly believes that he had a choice there!
And the whole time I’m just sitting there like
What really amazes me is that there’s not even a token attempt at rationalization here. There’s not even a single line of internal narration where Takeshi explains why it was his fault because [insert gender stereotype here], it’s like the game just assumes you already know it’s a fact of the world that men can’t get raped so it doesn’t even have to bother. Is this a Japan thing???
And then Robot Girl’s AI breaks because thinking about Takeshi makes her so irrational and Takeshi has to fix her by being a condescending prick. So congratulations, writers, in the span of a few scenes you have managed to insult and trivialize both genders simultaneously! That takes effort. And of course the ending of the route is also stupid – Takeshi kills himself in a meaningless sacrifice just so he can make out with a hologram – but honestly that’s kind of a footnote in comparison.
Now in fairness, this is a bit of a low blow – where I looked, even fans of the game were quick to point out how awful Robot Girl’s route is – but I think it’s still important to point out that when this game is bad, it’s really really bad.
The second protagonist (amnesiac boy, because original writers these people are not) is much more tolerable. He’s introverted, less of a jerk, and less perverted. That’s not to say his routes are good per se, but they’re certainly leagues ahead of Takeshi’s. The game has the good sense to evaporate all sexual tension after the sibling reveal in his sister’s route (though she immediately becomes a pathetic damsel in distress who needs his help for everything, and she only calls him “brother” instead of revealing his name which is incredibly contrived), and I actually thought You’s route was the best in the game (true end route included). She’s the only character with a personality that isn’t a shallow dating sim cliche, she’s willing to criticize the protagonist, she has an actual plot and backstory beyond pseudoscience infodumps, and I felt her good/bad end distinction was the only one that made sense. (The way her ending dangles all the answers in front of you and then inexplicably refuses to provide them is infuriating, though.)
Then you finally get to the final route and it’s bonkers, in a bad way. Everyone insists that yeah the main game is crap but the ending makes it all worth it!!!!! and no, no it doesn’t. To start with, it’s a fusion of the four routes, so there wasn’t even any point to playing through them beforehand since the canon timeline is special and different. You get to see all the pertinent infodump scenes all over again too, so there’s really no reason why the game couldn’t have just started there instead of forcing people to go through hours of filler.
The big reveal is that you weren’t actually playing as Takeshi and Amnesiac, you were playing as a magic time ghost who piggybacked off of them (except Amnesiac got totally taken over by you for some reason). Supposedly the magic time ghost is supposed to be you, the player, but immediately after the reveal this interesting concept is hilariously and spectacularly ruined because they give the magic time ghost lines of his own. (Yes, “him” – the ghost also gets a defined gender, because as we all know girls never play video games.) I don’t think I need to explain why this is ridiculous. Also, the reason you have to play through two different filler stories before getting to the real one is because the two different protagonists’ stories actually happened two decades apart, not simultaneously like you’re led to believe, and this “trick” summons magic time ghosts because it just does, okay?
The entire point of this stupidly overcomplicated plot is to save Takeshi from dying in the past, because that is definitely something I care about, and it does so in the laziest way possible. You may think that it involves ghost you possessing past Takeshi and getting him to do something less stupid, since it’s within your power to nudge events with VN-style choices and a logical extension of the player metaphor would be for the ritual to supercharge you with the power to add decision points where there were none before, especially since that’s exactly how you get onto the final route in the first place. You would be wrong! Ghost you somehow goes down to the bottom of the ocean (without possessing anybody, even though I thought possession was the only way time ghosts could see into the 3D world) after Takeshi’s drowned, then somehow projects his son’s spirit from the future back in time to straight-up resurrect him (seriously, the narration doesn’t even try to pretend he wasn’t already dead) with THE POWER OF LOVE, then he somehow swims ~50 ft on the ocean floor to an underwater lab to seal himself in cryosleep. He is totally fine after all this, because.
Then there’s a really strained and contrived sequence that’s basically just a massive infodump delivered by ghost you saying that Takeshi has to stay in cryosleep for 17 years (which will make Tsundere and her kids grow up with lives of poverty and suffering) because otherwise it would cause a time paradox, even though the second event could easily happen with him existing but off-camera. Heck, go full-on stable time loop and have him be there for the second event in the flesh! (The actual solution to the discrepancy is to have Amnesiac from the first event pretend to be Takeshi, because that leads to more twist potential and is therefore the superior option, clearly.) But no, while we’re time traveling to set right what once went wrong, let’s not actually do anything to alleviate people’s suffering. Tsundere’s pain doesn’t matter as long as she eventually gets her abusive boyfriend back after two decades of despair. ALL PROBLEMS SOLVED FOREVER.
Oh, and to retrieve Takeshi in the future, ghost you takes a sub to the ocean floor haha no that would be too reasonable, instead he grabs something heavy and dives, after which the body he’s possessing is totally fine because ???. This is the point where I became convinced the writers were just tired of this monstrosity and wanted to wrap it up in the most ridiculous way they could think of, perhaps to see if anyone would call them out on it. It’s just impossible to take anything seriously. This is what I mean when I say it reads like self-parody: the twists are among the most overly-convoluted and absurd things I’ve ever read, the solutions are even more nonsensical, and yet there’s not a smidgen of self-awareness anywhere. When the game lectures you about its dissertation in pseudoscience that makes all of this totally plausible no really you guys, it is 100% serious. If the game was willing to be a bit tongue-in-cheek about these things, I might be able to roll with it better (Dangan Ronpa‘s a good example of this), but it keeps telling me how super-serious it is while it dons bunny ears and prances about on a unicorn and my willing suspension of disbelief just atomizes.
The “foreshadowing” that was supposed to provide plot in the filler routes is also terrible. It’s the kind of foreshadowing that makes sense in retrospect but isn’t specific enough to help you actually put the pieces together ahead of time. It’s teasing and nothing more. Plus it makes the actual reveals absurd – you can just see the writers going “oh crap we didn’t foreshadow this, let’s have a flashback to the real alternate timeline and cram it in after the fact”. Like, why couldn’t Kaburaki have revealed his name in Takeshi’s route? Why? What does it possibly add other than pointlessly drawing out the mystery? It just makes the execution of the reveal in the final route nonsensical (“Yes you’ve figured it out, I’m not Takeshi, I’m [person you never heard about]!” then immediate flashback to the version of Takeshi’s route you never played where Amnesiac remembers he’s Person You Never Heard About for no reason). And maybe if You had given the spiel about her clone baby originally it would have been possible to guess the time gap twist without being clairvoyant, but nope. Why give people the information they need to speculate properly, it’s not like this is a mystery story! (The contrivances needed to uphold the mysteries are also ludicrous, like that date the masterminds should have no control over just happening to look like it was 17 years earlier if you read it backwards.)
And this is a bit nitpicky, but I was annoyed at the reveal that the only non-pretty characters were actually bishonen all along. I originally thought the character art was actually somewhat original, especially for a dating sim, and then nope, time to revert to cliche after that breath of fresh air. Combined with Cure making everyone pretty and youthful forever it’s a little creepy.
And that final romance plot, auggghh. No I do not want to simultaneously be the little girl’s brother and boyfriend, why are you doing this game whyyyyy.
…And I’m not going to talk about the soap opera melodrama because I don’t even know where to begin and this is long enough already, but there’s soap opera melodrama too. Yeah.
…
Well.
I think this is an interesting insight into Uchikochi’s writing style: he seems to come up with some interesting ideas for twists first, and then writes backwards. The story serves the twists, not the other way around, which is a terrible way to write. Instead of a solid plot that logically builds towards some cool twists, we get a boring non-plot where all we can do is wait exasperatedly for the twists to pop up. It’s putting all your eggs in one very tiny basket that not everyone will even see. The response to logistical snarls (like having to repeat the same boring story four and a half times) is to insist they’re necessary and then ignore them instead of trying to write around them in favor of a more cohesive experience. All he seems to care about is the destination; fine-tuning the journey to provide a consistent level of quality doesn’t seem to be a concept he believes in. (Although, let’s be real, even the destination was a train wreck here.) There are some interesting ideas here, but they’re all botched (partially because of the extreme plot compression) and definitely not worth trudging through hours of nothing for. I’m of the opinion that you can make the individual set-up stories build to a greater whole, but they have to be complete stories that stand on their own as well. (Not totally invalidating them in the one true timeline also helps.) Trudging through obvious filler because the creator arbitrarily decided to lock you out of the real plot is never fun.
What’s also weird is that the crazy twists weren’t even necessary. The closed circle with looming, abstract danger is an old but perfectly fine plot idea, yet Uchikochi seems to believe he has to introduce this tangled web of overcomplicated crap to make the story worthwhile. To be honest, I think I would prefer a version of his stories without the crazy ending reveals that instead had a more psychological, character-based focus. Honestly, that’s a big part of why I was so disappointed by 999: the description led me to expect the latter and it seemed to be going in that route for a while, but then it abruptly veered into something else, just like with this game. I felt cheated. A plot twist is one thing; swerving the direction of the story into another genre entirely at the last minute is something altogether different.
(Also, hoooly crap self-plagiarism. Between Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors and Virtue’s Last Reward literally every twist from this game was reused in some way (though done better)… unless some of those ideas were the other guy’s and not Uchikochi’s, in which case it’s actual plagiarism.)
In conclusion, this game is whack and I have no idea why people love it so much. The only thing that’s not terrible about it is the music.
Now. Ever17 is the second part of a larger series. I’ve heard even fans admit that the first one is terrible so I’m not touching it, but I have heard interesting things about Remember11, the next game. Apparently it’s not a dating sim and the format is the reverse of typical Uchikochi style, with an excellent story and terrible ending, only it was later rereleased with a better ending or something? I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m tempted to look at it – I don’t have high expectations, but worst-case scenario, I’ll get to write scathing words about a beloved piece of art on the internet again. If anyone’s familiar with Remember11, do comment.
Uchikoshi isn’t the main writer for Ever17, so it’s unreasonable to blame much of anything on him. Actually, it’s the reverse; he took the ideas originally written by Takumi Nakazawa and repackaged them to make 999. That’s why you identify his style in Ever17.
As for Remember11, Uchikoshi didn’t have any input in that one and it isn’t a dating sim in any respect, but it’s much more of a mind screw than Ever17 or 999 is, and I don’t think you’re very fond of the genre, so I would not recommend it.
Huh, really? I knew he was a secondary writer, but everyone talked about Ever17 as an “Uchikochi game” and so many of the ideas were so similar to the ones in Zero Escape that I assumed he was the influence for those. Did he get the pseudoscience mindscrew ideas for the other guy? I assumed the other writer was responsible for things like the overall plot and dating sim stuff while Uchikochi did the mindscrews, since the dating sim aspects are absent from his own games while the mindscrews got even bigger prominence. And I’m pretty sure he claims ownership of the Blick Winkel idea at least, given that there was a Twitter post a while back saying the unknown entity in VLR’s epilogue was him.
As for Remember11, Uchikoshi didn’t have any input in that one
Interest piqued.
and it isn’t a dating sim in any respect
…Cautiously optimistic…
but it’s much more of a mind screw than Ever17 or 999 is
…Cripes, seriously? How is that even possible? Maybe I’ll just watch a Youtube playthrough if I have a lot of time on my hands some day, then.
I arrive in the future to say that because I’m an idiot I watched an LP of Remember11 and now I want those hours of my life back. I suppose I should have known that when people said there was no ending, they meant it literally.
They seriously sold people an incomplete product? Their solution to disagreeing on how to end it was to just flat-out not end it? Is there no level to which these hacks will not stoop? I was really hoping the meta elements I was spoiled on (that the player is the villain and the game is meant to trap you in an infinite loop) would at least be interesting, but they’re not even ever explicitly brought up and make no sense anyway? I hate everything.
I would have paid for a liveblog of this.
I doubt it’d have been very entertaining. Remember11 is mostly just extremely misogynistic and very, very boring because the writers wouldn’t know what pacing was if it punched them in the face.
Also, I’m never touching anything related to Uchikochi ever again.
I think the best part is that this is exactly two years later. Intentional?
Oh, I didn’t even notice that. That is an impressive coincidence.
You didn’t even notice? Can it be? You’re Blick Winkel, the time ghost who needed to be fooled into thinking he was in the past or something?
PLEASE tell me the character’s actual name is Blick Winkel.
Yeah, it’s almost certainly some kind of Rip van Winkle reference, but… yes. Blick Winkel. I just… don’t even.
It’s literally just German for ‘Perspective’. It’s just literally straight out what he’s suppose to be. Not even making it metaphorical like Personlichkeit from Oriignal Generation.
Although, would you or anyone else be interested in a liveblog of Zero Time Dilemma (the final game in the 999 series)? I’ve already seen it so no blind reactions, but unlike Remember11 it is a pretty wild and hilarious trainwreck. I might even be able to get multiple posts out of it.
yessss I still regret the untimely demise of Ember’s 999 LP.
I never commented on this, but I did want to say you hit on the head my biggest problems with this and 999– you can’t just switch genres in the middle of a story.
There’s this idea in detective fiction called “fair play,” whose rules vary but the basic idea is always that the author can’t withhold vital information from the audience in the name of “suspense.” I feel like this is the biggest violation of that rule possible– the entire genre is being withheld. That doesn’t make me go, “OH SHIT WHAT A TWIST I AM BLOWN AWAY,” it makes me go, “Screw you, game, this isn’t the story I signed up for.”
(edit: Also, wow, this is literally the exact same plot as 999. That’s ballsy.)
Apparently Virtue’s Last Reward gleefully lists all of the mystery rules it breaks because pointing out your story is a load of shit is good writing!
While there is an obtainable file in that game that explains what Knox’s Ten Commandments are, it never goes in-depth and they never get discussed in-game either as far as I recall.
And while the game does break those rules, it’s not trying to masquerade as a regular mystery story either so it’s somewhat easier to digest.
Oh ok. I heard about that from someone who loved the game, so I assumed he wasn’t wrong.
Right.
I searched around a bit and went through my saves and did found one moment, so I guess that I was slightly wrong.
(Minor spoiler ahead)
It’s a brief exchange within a scene in which one character questions the fact that MC is using knowledge from another timeline in his reasoning, calling it being “against the rules” (namely, Knox’s 6th). MC then asks if she’s referring to Knox and responds with this…
Does it really matter if it’s against the rules or fair? The truth is the truth.
Let’s say that Incident P happens, and after that the timeline splits into Timeline A and Timeline B. I don’t think it’s unfair to base a theory in Timeline A on information found in Timeline B. After all, A and B both came from the same place – P.
[…]
…after which they go back to topic they were originally talking about.
That sounds… kind of out of nowhere, to be honest. Both the question and the answer.
EDIT: Like, his answer is weird because Knox’s Rules actually say that that is allowed because the clues were presented. The big complaint about Ever17 and 999 is that the clues aren’t presented and are often lied about.
It’s a bit out of nowhere, but it still flows better than it seems out of context.
Also, you’re right in that it’s allowed since that exchange doesn’t refer to an actual instance of the rules being broken. It only seems that way to the character who asked about it in the first place, hence the discussion.
I think that the intent was to break the rules by the letter yet remain true to their spirit. How well the game actually manages to do so is questionable. (Two reveals in particular come to mind).
It still sounds pretty random and not well-thought out. Knox rules apply only to the meta logic. They’re about building a narrative, not living in one.
Sixth rule specifically forbids accidents and random hunches from helping the detective. Basically, it says that if your detective just happened to walk into a bar at the right time to overhear a conversation about the murder, it’s a shitty plot point and you shouldn’t do it.
On the other hand, if an actual detective happened to walk into a bar at the right time, said detective should totally follow the lead and bless the lucky stars for a break because who cares if catching the culprit makes for an exciting story in real life?
Basically, unless the characters literally exist outside their own story and comment on its narrative, Knox rules are irrelevant to them.
Now, the 4-dimensional ghost from Ever17 commenting on the story violating “no supernatural agencies” and “no doubles” rules because he feels cheated would be legit. As would be Ever17 characters discussing the rules because they’re worried the ghost won’t stick around unless sufficiently entertained (to enforce the connection with the player). Basically, you need to venture into metafiction to justify such things.
I’m also not quite sure how it even applies to the situation at hand unless the knowledge from another timeline was obtained via an accident or by following intuition rather than logical reasoning (in which case that being a different timeline is still irrelevant).
If anything, the game should worry more about Van Dine’s rules, most of which it seems to violate.
Especially 14th one:
” 14. The method of murder, and the means of detecting it, must be rational and scientific. That is to say, pseudo-science and
purely imaginative and speculative devices are not to be tolerated
in the roman policier.”
I’m also not quite sure how it even applies to the situation at hand unless the knowledge from another timeline was obtained via an accident or by following intuition rather than logical reasoning (in which case that being a different timeline is still irrelevant).
It might seem like it doesn’t apply because my brains are trash and meant 8th instead of 6th.
So, the clue was acted upon without first presenting or describing it to the reader*? Like, the character just proclaims “I know shit from another timeline, trust me” and doesn’t actually say what that stuff is?
In this case, yes, it’s a violation of the eightieth rule, and in general a sign of bad plotting. Characters who are mysterious for the sake of being mysterious are often very annoying.
It can be pulled off in some cases, especially in multiple timelines scenarios where we see the character at some point trying to disclose everything with disastrous results, but it fails more often than not.
*Both are valid clues. In the first case, the clue is something like “the window was closed from the inside,” while in the latter case it’s “character X says the window was closed from the inside.” The character may lie, of course, in which case there should be a reason for the reader to doubt them, but otherwise either can be used.
No, the reader had to play through that timeline first before they could get to the part which I was talking about.
I already explained in my earlier post that it wasn’t an instance of the story breaking the rules but that a character in the game feels like the MC did since the character in question cannot travel between different timelines. I brought it up because it was the only instance in the game where character’s discussed Knox’s Commandments which is what Nerem was talking about in the first place.
Thanks for the clarification.
So, yeah, the characters don’t appear to have any reason to care about Knox rules to begin with, and the game doesn’t even actually break this specific rule (in this instance, at least).
Addressing the fourth one – “No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.” – would have made more sense.
It breaks it if you consider each character route as an individual story.
Also, Incident P that the MC was talking about was a murder, so I think that that was the logic behind bringing the rules up in the first place.
Also also, if the addressed rule had to be changed, it would be changed to the 2nd one since the timeline-jumping is explained as a psychic power (ie. preternatural agencies).
“It breaks it if you consider each character route as an individual story.”
The rules apply only to meta logic, though. They have weight only for the readers and the author. And from the reader’s perspective, the knowledge of the first timeline is necessary to access the second one, unless you deliberately skipped the former.
As such, even if you treat the routes as separate stories, your knowledge of the alternative events can be safely assumed. Fiction generally doesn’t feel the need to explain that people may die when you shoot them, for example, because most people reading fiction know it, so having a gun be a murder weapon doesn’t violate the fourth rule, even though technically it’s a complex device.
“Also, Incident P that the MC was talking about was a murder, so I think
that that was the logic behind bringing the rules up in the first place.”
Probably, but why do they care? Stupid accidents (like a criminal forgetting his passport on the scene of crime) help solve cases from time to time, and the police doesn’t complain they violate Knox rules.
It would make sense if the characters themselves thought of the events as a story rather than reality they live in, or if they were up against a villain obsessed with classic mysteries, so they knew the crime was Knox-complaint.
I guess I can see it being done as light banter, if one of the characters was a fan of classic mysteries and another was needling the first over current mystery not fitting the proper rules, but it does feel more like the author commenting on the rules through the characters without regard to how natural it looks.
The phenomenon is actually not uncommon across fiction. You see it in characters commenting on how in a story, such and such things would have happened, but THIS IS REALITY,. so something else happens (for example, see Harry Dresden with his insistence that his werewolves are not like movie werewolves, and also nobody knows about the real magic). And, more often than not, it’s pretty immersion-breaking: we are reminded that we’re reading a story, nothing we observe is actually happening, so there’s no reason to care.
That’s the big problem with casual comments leaning on the fourth wall, and it takes great effort to make them worthwhile.
“Also also, if the addressed rule had to be changed, it would be changed
to the 2nd one since the timeline-jumping is explained as a psychic
power (ie. preternatural agencies).”
Hm, yes, fair point. By the time of the comment readers were aware of basic properties of the plot device, from what I understand, so the problem lies in replacing the logic of common sense with internal logic created by the authors, thus rigging the game, rather than withholding the information outright, which is the problem with complex devices.
Could you elaborate on the reveals, if it isn’t too much?
Nerem: By gum I am going to wring something good out of my watching Remember11, so I’ll answer this. The full scene they’re talking about is on YouTube and can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCJ_eddvNzk&index=68&list=PLlGhPWJFXLZG2Mb-JUXPt6w2UAYuPpMqZ#t=06m04s
I don’t actually think it’s too unreasonable — the other character doesn’t actually ever explicitly mention Knox’s rules, but the MC does explicitly say that bringing them up at that point would be stupid. I always saw it as more of a minor tongue-in-cheek Easter egg. (I also have a pet theory that VLR’s writers performed a coup and quarantined Uchikochi in the ending sections while they wrote the actual story, so that may have even been a swipe at his insistence on bringing up irrelevant crap all the time.)
(The bigger problem is that this is actually foreshadowing, because a big (stupid) twist of VLR is that the actions you take in the future do change the past, which is probably why it was brought up in the first place. But that is the fault of the true end and not the Luna end which is the best most wonderful ending and doesn’t deserve this.)
The thing I think you might be confusing this with is that there’s an optional file you can get from one of the puzzle rooms, which does nothing but list Knox’s ten commandments, with the implication being you’re supposed to notice all the ones 999 broke, which proves he’s a great writer because you loved 999 right??? That was way more pretentious, but the really bad part (the insistence that the games break them in word but not in spirit) only comes from the fanbase desperately trying to convince themselves Uchikochi is a good writer.
I haven’t played VLR ‘cuz it seems like more awful 999/Ever17 nonsense, so I can’t really tell you, it was just my friend (who is a huge fan) telling me about it.
… I do want to hear long rants about how bad Remember17 was though.
I would really recommend watching an LP of VLR if you have spare time. I found it shockingly good. The characters are actually engaging and the psychological dynamics of being trapped in a death game are actually explored, which is really all I ever wanted. I even think it works better as a mystery; I’m following an LP thread currently, and they figured out basically every twist when they were like halfway through. There is actually enough information to go off of instead of you just having to wait for the nonsense magic explanation every time.
And unfortunately, Remember11 was not even notably bad, just incredibly boring. The main characters are trapped in the same location the entire game and just twiddle their thumbs until a guy comes to rescue them, basically. You can make an effective story about that if the characters are actually interesting and engaging, but they weren’t. They weren’t even hatable enough for me to want them all to die by the end, I just… didn’t care. I think the only notably bad parts would have been the wacky pseudoscience twist, but that part was never written. Oh, the final explanation for the rescue does rely really heavily on stable time loops, which I hate, but that’s not enough for a full rant.
What’s this about an unwritten part?
According to Wikipedia, Uchikochi and his co-writer couldn’t agree on how to end the story, so they just… didn’t. There was supposed to be a true end that explained all the mysteries left after the normal ending, but now there isn’t. Of course, they still charged people the price of a full game because they’re classy like that.
There was a PSP rerelease a while back that was supposed to include the true ending, but apparently they couldn’t even remember what it was supposed to be, so I guess nothing of value was lost.
I would really recommend watching an LP of VLR if you have spare time. I found it shockingly good.
Whoa, really? :O I’ve toyed with the idea of playing VLR, just because the basic premise of the plot sounds like catnip to me (…okay, and because even though I couldn’t stand 999’s writing I loved its stupid puns), but I always told myself not to bother, because presumably it would just disappoint me the same way 999 did in having cool ideas ruined by painfully clunky execution. But if someone who had similar issues with 999 recommends it, maybe I’ll actually check it out.
Oh, the cool ideas still have terrible execution. It seriously tries to tell you that your actions in the future can affect the past because something something Schrodinger’s Box. The thing is I don’t care because for once in Uchikochi’s games there is an actual plot instead of just waiting impatiently for the final reveal. You’ll probably still find the ending pretty meh, but I think the character and psychological drama leading up to that point is good enough to make it worth it. And it really is best to play it yourself because the choices are actually meaningful and the order in which you learn things kind of creates a wholly unique narrative for you.
If you’re on the fence I’d recommend watching
up until the first roadblock (the password for the computer) — I think that’s the best-written part of the game, so if you don’t like it you don’t need to bother with the rest.
…ahah. Of course they are; what was I thinking? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Still, the premise’s potential for interesting cast and psychological tension was the main thing that pinged me, so I’ll probably give it a try sometime. (Whenever the friend I loaned my PSVita to remembers to return it, anyway.)
Oh wait, there actually is one thing about Remember11 I want to rant about.
The basic gameplay mechanic, if it can be called that, is that the two protagonists, Kokoro and Satoru, switch bodies at certain intervals. This means they can never really interact directly, but they can get an understanding of each other through the actions they take and by leaving messages for each other. You get to see into both of their heads briefly in the prologue, but then you have to play through the game as Kokoro before you can play as Satoru (Kokoro’s route is total waste of time while Satoru is the one who gets all the reveals and stuff, but that’s another topic).
The Big Twist (TM) is that Satoru is not actually Satoru, but Self, a character like Blick Winkel who is an analogy for the player. The real Satoru died in the prologue shortly after Self attached to him; so while Kokoro is a full person who’s simply sharing headspace with you, “Satoru” is an empty vessel inhabited only by you. You only think you’re Satoru because the character you followed in the prologue was him. The way you’re supposed to figure this out is that “Satoru” has amnesia (of course), and the only things he remembers about himself are things you learned about him on the Kokoro route (one of the characters on Kokoro’s side is his girlfriend and dumps a ton of exposition about him at one point). His personality is also pretty much exactly like how Kokoro imagined him to be (except in a few scenes where it’s revealed he was lying to her about certain things because the writers are idiots). And like… I actually think that’s a halfway decent idea: there’s a character who you think is a real person, but who is actually a construct based on the idealistic image you built of them. That’s good material for a dramatic reveal.
The problem is that you only know those things about him because he told you himself. The two protagonists influence each others’ stories when they swap bodies, and Kokoro’s idea of his personality is based on the actions she learns he took in her body. Satoru even leaves messages for Kokoro, which is how she learns how he talks. So it’s a recursive paradox: you were only able to construct the personality that performed those actions because you already witnessed him performing those actions. How does that make any sense? Maybe it could work if his personality is built picemeal, with him being extremely passive in the beginning and only taking action after Kokoro thinks “I bet he would do this right now”, but that’s not what happens. Stable time loops are bad and these writers should feel bad for using them.
(Further muddling things is the fact that “Satoru” remembers a personal memory on his route that Kokoro did not learn about, which makes absolutely no sense and in conclusion I hate everything.)