Return of the Obra Dinn is a good example of "Protagonist exists for no other reason than to be historian, to document the bad things that happened to the people that were here" but done right instead of boring.
I think this game would have benefitted from obscuring some things until an important reveal. If the maw is connected to sadness what they could have done is either make it so the player kills maw and later realizing it kills sadness too or have the maw at some point be killable and then later showing sadness being dead implying that's why it was possible. Some kind of mystery could have been nice. In the first part I thought even a nice idea would be completely obscuring the other world entirely. Although at that point it kind of becomes a different game entirely where you're not sure if the protagonist is insane.
Maybe this is a bizarre qualm, but if you insist on having a split screen mechanic where the protagonist looks alone in one world/like they are talking to themselves, it is a waste to not have someone else in game observe it. Because there's no one to observe it, it is… Utterly useless?
Not to suggest that this game was any good, but when the other Inner Children showed up in the Thomas segments, they also had death masks, so I don't think having one has anything to do with whether or not Lily was dead. Why do they have death masks? The same reason for every other choice in this game: fuck if I know.
RE: why Thomas seemed more interesting was also just that Spirit Thomas was a far more interesting character, even if it was only because he was a character that knew what he wanted to do and was trying to do it. He was a change of pace and a little bit of excitement in a game full of drudgery, even if mechanically not much changed.
I will say the game is impressive in at least one way. No matter what, when I thought it couldn't get worse, it kept getting worse. Right up until the end, the worst bit of writing of all.
I am kind of shocked at that ending. Not in a good way, mind. Just… how bad is it that they somehow decided to go with something WORSE than a "Press X to kill, Press B to Suicide" binary choice that decides if you get the "Good Ending" or "Bad Ending"?
(You can Press A to shoot the Maw too but that's just a normal game over and you have to pick again.)
Thank you for this playthrough SGF. It's a shame microsoft has padded the pockets of a bunch of reviewers to basically blow this game when the reality is that the game blows, not to even mention how its portrayal of trauma and people who go through it is actually harmful and stigmatizing. I'm sure we'll get proper horror games one day… One day.
First, thank you SGF for your LP and your review. Excellent quality as always.
Second, what a lazy, terrible ending. I could spend several hours going over every single thing that would be needed to improve this game to a passable state, but I'd rather just cover the ending. The way the rest of the game is written and paced, I think multiple endings would serve it well. Let me lay out some choices.
For starters, I would include one last spirit Thomas section before the sisters reunite. He said he was going to hold off the Maw, and there was a huge narrative beat about him knocking out Marianne so you damn well need to provide proof that he didn't just run away. When we first meet Thomas the game seems to imply that his spirit form has has a great deal of autonomy compared to Marianne (who's spirit just seems to have no capacity for independent thought or action), so it would be nice to see that yes, spirit Thomas made good on his promise and didn't just run away to save his own skin.
So you have a Boss battle of sorts with the Maw, the exact details of the mechanic are not important (obviously try to make it entertaining), but the outcome is. This is a very important fight, so put in a checkpoint before it begins. The player's performance determines what endings are available, so you don't want them having to schlep to get back to the beginning so they can easily make more attempts to get all the endings. The first path happens if the player does very poorly. The Maw destroys Spirit Thomas and he is not present when the demon catches up with the sisters. If the player does well enough, he incapacitates the Maw and joins his daughters in the second path of endings.
As an extra reward for a player that does well in the Maw fight, the sisters have more dialogue reconnecting with each other (how they've been, future plans, etc. Lily's answers in this case would be genuine wishful thinking, since her demon feels more distant for the time they are speaking.) Then the semi-triumphant Spirit Thomas appears and you get some interesting dialogue between himself and Lily. Then the Maw bursts onto the scene and Spirit Thomas leaps to his daughter's defense and is clearly going to lose this time because the Maw is so close to what it wants and is invigorated. Lily makes her mercy killing request to Marianne, urging her to do it while there is still time. Marianne can choose to kill Lily as she asked, which destroys the Maw and saves Thomas. Shoot herself, which results in Thomas' destruction, Lily sobbing at the lake, and the Maw smashing the forest in frustration. Marianne can attempt to shoot the Maw, which wastes time, resulting in Thomas being slain and then the game proceeding as if he had done very badly in the boss battle. Finally the anime ending, where Marianne throws the pistol in the lake and rushes to help her father fight the demon, but they still can't seem to destroy it. Lily, seeing her family fighting her own inner demon, finally confronts her old trauma and helps them silence it forever. While some would call this ending sappy, it is still bittersweet. Many people were killed because of her, so while this is the "good" ending, it is not all sunshine and roses.
If Thomas is not present, the game ends much as it did in the ending we got, with two notable differences. Marianne is given an actual prompt considering her decisions. She can kill Lily, herself as the actual game provides. There are two extra options. Shooting the Maw results in a non-standard game over similar to the previous parts of the game, and the player is allowed to reload an autosave back to that decision tree. The final choice of this path is attempt to quell the Maw herself. In this case the game would re-use the Maw battle and replace Spirit Thomas' model with Marianne's (she would use a fungus version of whatever attacks Thomas used, or perhaps a re-colored version depending on budget constraints.) If the player does well, Marianne seemingly does the impossible and destroys the Maw, however a slasher film style bit at the end could tease that the creature will be back! If Marianne does poorly Lily takes her own life, leaving Marianne gasping for breath after a Maw strangling and down one father and one sister (arguably the worst ending of all). In this path the teaser of Spirit Thomas walking around does not play, and it could be considered non-canonical since the devs seemed to want to give themselves some hype for a sequel (fat chance of that)!
Assuming I was allowed to fix the rest of the game, these endings and other improvements could make for a more enjoyable experience. Thanks for reading my thoughts.
The Maw standing on the pier respecting the hostage negotiation style standoff… so funny.
Return of the Obra Dinn is a good example of "Protagonist exists for no other reason than to be historian, to document the bad things that happened to the people that were here" but done right instead of boring.
Have we already talked about the fact that those parents really named their daughters Lilianne and Marianne?
You know it's a quality horror game when it has to outright tell you what everything means – Can't leave things up for interpretation!
hahahahaha are you fucking kidding me
I think this game would have benefitted from obscuring some things until an important reveal. If the maw is connected to sadness what they could have done is either make it so the player kills maw and later realizing it kills sadness too or have the maw at some point be killable and then later showing sadness being dead implying that's why it was possible. Some kind of mystery could have been nice. In the first part I thought even a nice idea would be completely obscuring the other world entirely. Although at that point it kind of becomes a different game entirely where you're not sure if the protagonist is insane.
Maybe this is a bizarre qualm, but if you insist on having a split screen mechanic where the protagonist looks alone in one world/like they are talking to themselves, it is a waste to not have someone else in game observe it. Because there's no one to observe it, it is… Utterly useless?
That pun was the perfect ending to a terrible game.
Not to suggest that this game was any good, but when the other Inner Children showed up in the Thomas segments, they also had death masks, so I don't think having one has anything to do with whether or not Lily was dead. Why do they have death masks? The same reason for every other choice in this game: fuck if I know.
Did SGF play stream Homecoming at some point? I can't find it on youtube.
RE: why Thomas seemed more interesting was also just that Spirit Thomas was a far more interesting character, even if it was only because he was a character that knew what he wanted to do and was trying to do it. He was a change of pace and a little bit of excitement in a game full of drudgery, even if mechanically not much changed.
I will say the game is impressive in at least one way. No matter what, when I thought it couldn't get worse, it kept getting worse. Right up until the end, the worst bit of writing of all.
About the bolt cutters and the slow razor blade/skin walls, my suspicion is they are mostly to hide loading screens.
I am kind of shocked at that ending. Not in a good way, mind. Just… how bad is it that they somehow decided to go with something WORSE than a "Press X to kill, Press B to Suicide" binary choice that decides if you get the "Good Ending" or "Bad Ending"?
(You can Press A to shoot the Maw too but that's just a normal game over and you have to pick again.)
I cannot take my eyes off of Lilianne's mouth
why is it so small
Thank you for this playthrough SGF. It's a shame microsoft has padded the pockets of a bunch of reviewers to basically blow this game when the reality is that the game blows, not to even mention how its portrayal of trauma and people who go through it is actually harmful and stigmatizing.
I'm sure we'll get proper horror games one day… One day.
First, thank you SGF for your LP and your review. Excellent quality as always.
Second, what a lazy, terrible ending. I could spend several hours going over every single thing that would be needed to improve this game to a passable state, but I'd rather just cover the ending. The way the rest of the game is written and paced, I think multiple endings would serve it well. Let me lay out some choices.
For starters, I would include one last spirit Thomas section before the sisters reunite. He said he was going to hold off the Maw, and there was a huge narrative beat about him knocking out Marianne so you damn well need to provide proof that he didn't just run away. When we first meet Thomas the game seems to imply that his spirit form has has a great deal of autonomy compared to Marianne (who's spirit just seems to have no capacity for independent thought or action), so it would be nice to see that yes, spirit Thomas made good on his promise and didn't just run away to save his own skin.
So you have a Boss battle of sorts with the Maw, the exact details of the mechanic are not important (obviously try to make it entertaining), but the outcome is. This is a very important fight, so put in a checkpoint before it begins. The player's performance determines what endings are available, so you don't want them having to schlep to get back to the beginning so they can easily make more attempts to get all the endings. The first path happens if the player does very poorly. The Maw destroys Spirit Thomas and he is not present when the demon catches up with the sisters. If the player does well enough, he incapacitates the Maw and joins his daughters in the second path of endings.
As an extra reward for a player that does well in the Maw fight, the sisters have more dialogue reconnecting with each other (how they've been, future plans, etc. Lily's answers in this case would be genuine wishful thinking, since her demon feels more distant for the time they are speaking.) Then the semi-triumphant Spirit Thomas appears and you get some interesting dialogue between himself and Lily. Then the Maw bursts onto the scene and Spirit Thomas leaps to his daughter's defense and is clearly going to lose this time because the Maw is so close to what it wants and is invigorated. Lily makes her mercy killing request to Marianne, urging her to do it while there is still time. Marianne can choose to kill Lily as she asked, which destroys the Maw and saves Thomas. Shoot herself, which results in Thomas' destruction, Lily sobbing at the lake, and the Maw smashing the forest in frustration. Marianne can attempt to shoot the Maw, which wastes time, resulting in Thomas being slain and then the game proceeding as if he had done very badly in the boss battle. Finally the anime ending, where Marianne throws the pistol in the lake and rushes to help her father fight the demon, but they still can't seem to destroy it. Lily, seeing her family fighting her own inner demon, finally confronts her old trauma and helps them silence it forever. While some would call this ending sappy, it is still bittersweet. Many people were killed because of her, so while this is the "good" ending, it is not all sunshine and roses.
If Thomas is not present, the game ends much as it did in the ending we got, with two notable differences. Marianne is given an actual prompt considering her decisions. She can kill Lily, herself as the actual game provides. There are two extra options. Shooting the Maw results in a non-standard game over similar to the previous parts of the game, and the player is allowed to reload an autosave back to that decision tree. The final choice of this path is attempt to quell the Maw herself. In this case the game would re-use the Maw battle and replace Spirit Thomas' model with Marianne's (she would use a fungus version of whatever attacks Thomas used, or perhaps a re-colored version depending on budget constraints.) If the player does well, Marianne seemingly does the impossible and destroys the Maw, however a slasher film style bit at the end could tease that the creature will be back! If Marianne does poorly Lily takes her own life, leaving Marianne gasping for breath after a Maw strangling and down one father and one sister (arguably the worst ending of all). In this path the teaser of Spirit Thomas walking around does not play, and it could be considered non-canonical since the devs seemed to want to give themselves some hype for a sequel (fat chance of that)!
Assuming I was allowed to fix the rest of the game, these endings and other improvements could make for a more enjoyable experience. Thanks for reading my thoughts.
I actually enjoyed this as an urban exploration simulator and I appreciate the seven videos we got to spend together immersed in the setting.
thanks for your extended thoughts on the game at the end sgf 🙂 you put it much more eloquently than the jumbled thoughts in my head
Thank you for playing and sharing with us, SGF! May the next game you play be more enjoyable!