- Dec 31, 2020
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- Thread starter Nine of Swords
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- Nov 11, 2020
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When I played the chapter 4, I didn't see the scene where a delicious feast was to be ruined by some spam...
But I see now this was just postpone in chapter 5.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why Nine?
Why are you so cruel with me?
Why let me think I have escaped the terrible fate of being witness to such a horrible scene, just to stab me in the back in chapter 5.
What I have done to you to deserve such mistreatment?
- Jun 20, 2022
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I just started this and...do the achievements work? I mean, I know I did the first two but nothing showed up.
They should work for sure; which platform are you on and which achievements did you get? Did you get the popup notification?
- Sep 18, 2021
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Okay, self-imposed exile after a new update to avoid talking too much about spoilers over. Time to infinite wall o' text post once more! 
But first some general admin from posts I never got back to reply to:
First, B tells you she was actively monitoring Lisa for a while, and the implication is that the only reason she revealed herself to you was because Lisa had died. But then the later scene where you see Rami (the Area 42 drummer) in the diner, she has a line where she says "You know how Bara felt about Lisa!"
Which kind of implies B's interest in Lisa was more than just professional. But she presumably never acted on it if we believe B when she tells us she's still a virgin (and possibly more importantly, if we believe Monica's revelation that Lisa seemed to still be too hung up on us to get involved with other people, or Luna mentioning that Lisa had finally decided to try and get back together with us right before she died).
Or to put it another way, if I watch a movie and am critical of a scene from a technical perspective, I can criticize how the director chose to light a particular scene, the angles and filters they used, why they made the decisions they did, and potentially suggest ways to fix it. But if I'm completely ignorant of film production I can still fairly accurately say "This scene is too fucking dark." Even if I don't know anything about food, I can still tell from a single bite whether or not something is too salty, too spicy, too mushy, or, you know, entirely made out of dog turd. Sure, having a deeper technical understanding can make for a more interesting and deeper analysis, but it isn't necessary.
You can still offer constructive criticism without understanding the technical details. Saying a scene is too dark and should be lightened is still constructive even if the person can't give the technical details of HOW to light it. Saying a dialogue flag in a Ren'Py game doesn't seem to be firing correctly can be constructive criticism even if the person doesn't know how to code themselves. And so on.
Something presented as entertainment can always be appreciated and judged even with an "amateur" eye. Which is why retorts like "I don't see you making a [insert creative work here]" aren't really valid counter arguments. You don't need to be a chef to be critical of the food one cooks. You don't need to be a director to point out when one makes a bad movie.
I'd say the real key isn't whether or not the critic is technically skilled in the field, it's whether or not they're being polite about it or a total dickhead. There are ways to present opinions without coming across like an abusive jerk. There are even ways to be a helpful critic offering creative positive criticism that makes a product better even if you don't understand the minutiae of the creation technique involved. If anything, a polite layperson's opinions might be of far more value than the criticism of someone who has technical grounding but who are also a complete dick about it.
That potentially makes YOU the motive for multiple possible suspects (from how things are described it definitely seems like Becki had/has a strong interest in you and always disliked Lisa, but Tara's someone else who had it bad for you and only made a move once Lisa was gone), but it also makes getting back together with you a potential motive for others (Lisa was dating Monica, who theoretically might not be keen on getting dumped so Lisa could get back together with her ex, and depending on how you read B's relationship with Lisa she might have been jealous to some degree as well).
I think for nearly every one of my suspects (of which I have one major one and two slightly lesser possibilities), knowing Lisa was planning on contacting you became the trigger for her death, and not the overarching threat of the Cult of the Void starting a war between supernaturals by exploiting their paranoia. Though for at least one of those two suspects, it isn't purely romantic impulses that caused that specific decision to be the trigger...
But first some general admin from posts I never got back to reply to:
I was actually conflating two things in my head.
First, B tells you she was actively monitoring Lisa for a while, and the implication is that the only reason she revealed herself to you was because Lisa had died. But then the later scene where you see Rami (the Area 42 drummer) in the diner, she has a line where she says "You know how Bara felt about Lisa!"
Which kind of implies B's interest in Lisa was more than just professional. But she presumably never acted on it if we believe B when she tells us she's still a virgin (and possibly more importantly, if we believe Monica's revelation that Lisa seemed to still be too hung up on us to get involved with other people, or Luna mentioning that Lisa had finally decided to try and get back together with us right before she died).
True, but that only matters if the criticism is intended to be technical in nature, as opposed to aesthetic or appreciative.
Or to put it another way, if I watch a movie and am critical of a scene from a technical perspective, I can criticize how the director chose to light a particular scene, the angles and filters they used, why they made the decisions they did, and potentially suggest ways to fix it. But if I'm completely ignorant of film production I can still fairly accurately say "This scene is too fucking dark." Even if I don't know anything about food, I can still tell from a single bite whether or not something is too salty, too spicy, too mushy, or, you know, entirely made out of dog turd. Sure, having a deeper technical understanding can make for a more interesting and deeper analysis, but it isn't necessary.
You can still offer constructive criticism without understanding the technical details. Saying a scene is too dark and should be lightened is still constructive even if the person can't give the technical details of HOW to light it. Saying a dialogue flag in a Ren'Py game doesn't seem to be firing correctly can be constructive criticism even if the person doesn't know how to code themselves. And so on.
Something presented as entertainment can always be appreciated and judged even with an "amateur" eye. Which is why retorts like "I don't see you making a [insert creative work here]" aren't really valid counter arguments. You don't need to be a chef to be critical of the food one cooks. You don't need to be a director to point out when one makes a bad movie.
I'd say the real key isn't whether or not the critic is technically skilled in the field, it's whether or not they're being polite about it or a total dickhead. There are ways to present opinions without coming across like an abusive jerk. There are even ways to be a helpful critic offering creative positive criticism that makes a product better even if you don't understand the minutiae of the creation technique involved. If anything, a polite layperson's opinions might be of far more value than the criticism of someone who has technical grounding but who are also a complete dick about it.
Depending on your dialogue choices, you can be told that Lisa was planning to contact you and try to bring you back into her life (most likely to get back together with you). Almost immediately after she states this intention (and before she actually has a chance to do so), she is murdered.
That potentially makes YOU the motive for multiple possible suspects (from how things are described it definitely seems like Becki had/has a strong interest in you and always disliked Lisa, but Tara's someone else who had it bad for you and only made a move once Lisa was gone), but it also makes getting back together with you a potential motive for others (Lisa was dating Monica, who theoretically might not be keen on getting dumped so Lisa could get back together with her ex, and depending on how you read B's relationship with Lisa she might have been jealous to some degree as well).
I think for nearly every one of my suspects (of which I have one major one and two slightly lesser possibilities), knowing Lisa was planning on contacting you became the trigger for her death, and not the overarching threat of the Cult of the Void starting a war between supernaturals by exploiting their paranoia. Though for at least one of those two suspects, it isn't purely romantic impulses that caused that specific decision to be the trigger...
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- Sep 18, 2021
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Some quick observations:
1) I missed this on the first playthrough, but caught it on my recent replay. When discussing Sylvia's security measures before the heist, we're told three people have high level access: Sylvia, Aiden, and Romalina Delanto. We're further told that Romalina is "probably" the technical consultant who installed the security because she has system admin privileges, and that she probably won't be at the party (which comes across as a "this character is not important, nothing to see here" sort of line). But then that's immediately followed up by Sophia mentioning that while documentation for her company exists, documentation for her does not. Which seemingly implies she's a supernatural of some kind, and potentially subtle enough to manipulate the data (in the same way Rain keeps her greenhouse out of public records).
While Romalina has yet to appear (and may not even appear in this story at all), it feels like that was way too blatant a clue to just ignore. To paraphrase Mr. Chekhov (no, not that one), "If a writer is going out of their way to namedrop a character in a way that seems suspicious, it's probably not just a random meaningless detail."
It's possible it was just a red herring of sorts of course, but it feels like a deliberate red herring wouldn't have been dismissed out of hand so quickly. And it feels odd for Nine to bring up that much unless it means something.
2) When Ennai shows up at your house, you ask him how he knew where to find you, and he's dismissive about it. But since he mentions that saying a Celestial's name allows them to sort of "hear" you and know you're talking about them, it might conceivably also let them know where to find you. When you're talking to Sophia and B, you can mention his name (and if you don't but allude to his nickname, Sophia will say it), which could potentially be how he found you (though if you tell them he never said his name, it never comes up, yet he still finds you, so it's probably not the canonical answer).
For that matter, "B" eventually tells you multiple names and gives you the option to decide which one you prefer to use. But that raises a different question. If nicknames count as names (and they probably should), then any time anyone on Earth says the letter "B", B should be aware of it. Which is mildly crazy. Unless names only count when used as a name - so if you say "B" while thinking of B she would hear it, but if you say something like "A little from Column A, a little from Column B", she wouldn't because the context is wrong.
3) Finding out that Lisa's "ghost" was able to keep watching us (sort of) even after she faded out takes on an entirely new connotation when I remembered having sex with Tara on the couch shortly afterward. Awkward!
This is actually a discussion that started way back when Agatha Christie wrote "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd", which a lot of mystery fans complained about at the time because the narrator is constantly lying to the reader.
One of the criticisms of Heavy Rain is that the character you're talking about does stuff even while alone that aren't really in-character for how they would react (because they know they're the murderer). Which kind of makes it feel like the story is just lying to you, and thus isn't really presenting a "fair" mystery for you to solve.
It's the same sort of criticism that crops up when mysteries don't present vital clues until the very end of the story (or even during the actual summation after the reveal), which is something they complain about in "Murder by Death" (a great movie for anyone who likes mysteries but who've never seen it).
My mom just turned to me and kind of stared for a bit and was like "...did you see this before?" And I was like "No, but it's obvious!" And it kind of was - in a way, being a kid meant I could hyperfocus on the "He was stabbed a dozen times, each stab having different force and angles" clue, and ignore all the extraneous details and red herrings and conflicting motives and distractions. A man gets stabbed a dozen different ways and there's about a dozen different suspects - 2 and 2 start adding up to 4 pretty quick. That's really all the evidence I needed.
I will continue to gloat about that one until my very deathbed.
To try and explain that differently, my main idea is whether or not someone designing a game in Ren'Py has to do each scene individually with both graphics and dialogue, or if they can focus on dialogue and not include any graphics at all (or just use something simple as a placeholder) before going back later to add graphics and animations in.
I'm mostly kind of curious if it would be possible for a dev to literally code out the entirety of the script for a game with no art, then go back later and add art in. And whether or not a dev could theoretically code out their entire game from start to finish but still carve it up into pieces to release episodically.
I know the odds of me ever working on a game of my own are pretty much nil, but I do think about the logistics of it on the technical side.
1) I missed this on the first playthrough, but caught it on my recent replay. When discussing Sylvia's security measures before the heist, we're told three people have high level access: Sylvia, Aiden, and Romalina Delanto. We're further told that Romalina is "probably" the technical consultant who installed the security because she has system admin privileges, and that she probably won't be at the party (which comes across as a "this character is not important, nothing to see here" sort of line). But then that's immediately followed up by Sophia mentioning that while documentation for her company exists, documentation for her does not. Which seemingly implies she's a supernatural of some kind, and potentially subtle enough to manipulate the data (in the same way Rain keeps her greenhouse out of public records).
While Romalina has yet to appear (and may not even appear in this story at all), it feels like that was way too blatant a clue to just ignore. To paraphrase Mr. Chekhov (no, not that one), "If a writer is going out of their way to namedrop a character in a way that seems suspicious, it's probably not just a random meaningless detail."
It's possible it was just a red herring of sorts of course, but it feels like a deliberate red herring wouldn't have been dismissed out of hand so quickly. And it feels odd for Nine to bring up that much unless it means something.
2) When Ennai shows up at your house, you ask him how he knew where to find you, and he's dismissive about it. But since he mentions that saying a Celestial's name allows them to sort of "hear" you and know you're talking about them, it might conceivably also let them know where to find you. When you're talking to Sophia and B, you can mention his name (and if you don't but allude to his nickname, Sophia will say it), which could potentially be how he found you (though if you tell them he never said his name, it never comes up, yet he still finds you, so it's probably not the canonical answer).
For that matter, "B" eventually tells you multiple names and gives you the option to decide which one you prefer to use. But that raises a different question. If nicknames count as names (and they probably should), then any time anyone on Earth says the letter "B", B should be aware of it. Which is mildly crazy. Unless names only count when used as a name - so if you say "B" while thinking of B she would hear it, but if you say something like "A little from Column A, a little from Column B", she wouldn't because the context is wrong.
3) Finding out that Lisa's "ghost" was able to keep watching us (sort of) even after she faded out takes on an entirely new connotation when I remembered having sex with Tara on the couch shortly afterward. Awkward!
That's where the "unreliable narrator" trope comes into play. The main problem with it is that a lot of mystery fans hate it and think it's cheap and unfair, because it tampers with the information the player has access to, and thus makes it difficult to genuinely solve the murder as part of the audience. Characters can be wrong about evidence they discover, but anything presented objectively to the audience (and especially character thoughts if those are perceivable) should always be honest and truthful. Because the only lens the audience has to examine evidence is through whatever the writer chooses to tell them, a "fair" mystery needs to avoid concealing or lying about vital clues that are necessary to solve the mystery.
This is actually a discussion that started way back when Agatha Christie wrote "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd", which a lot of mystery fans complained about at the time because the narrator is constantly lying to the reader.
One of the criticisms of Heavy Rain is that the character you're talking about does stuff even while alone that aren't really in-character for how they would react (because they know they're the murderer). Which kind of makes it feel like the story is just lying to you, and thus isn't really presenting a "fair" mystery for you to solve.
It's the same sort of criticism that crops up when mysteries don't present vital clues until the very end of the story (or even during the actual summation after the reveal), which is something they complain about in "Murder by Death" (a great movie for anyone who likes mysteries but who've never seen it).
When I was a kid (I was maybe like 5-6), my parents were watching Murder on the Orient Express and I was kind of in the room only half paying attention and probably not understanding tons of stuff because I was too young, but about halfway through the movie I blurted out "They all did it!"One of the earliest novels I read as a kid is "Death in the Clouds"!
My mom just turned to me and kind of stared for a bit and was like "...did you see this before?" And I was like "No, but it's obvious!" And it kind of was - in a way, being a kid meant I could hyperfocus on the "He was stabbed a dozen times, each stab having different force and angles" clue, and ignore all the extraneous details and red herrings and conflicting motives and distractions. A man gets stabbed a dozen different ways and there's about a dozen different suspects - 2 and 2 start adding up to 4 pretty quick. That's really all the evidence I needed.
I will continue to gloat about that one until my very deathbed.
This actually reminds me of a question I've had in the past but never really gotten around to asking any devs - when coding a game in Ren'Py, is there a specific order of operations that needs to be followed, or can the dev sort of jump around a bit?
To try and explain that differently, my main idea is whether or not someone designing a game in Ren'Py has to do each scene individually with both graphics and dialogue, or if they can focus on dialogue and not include any graphics at all (or just use something simple as a placeholder) before going back later to add graphics and animations in.
I'm mostly kind of curious if it would be possible for a dev to literally code out the entirety of the script for a game with no art, then go back later and add art in. And whether or not a dev could theoretically code out their entire game from start to finish but still carve it up into pieces to release episodically.
I know the odds of me ever working on a game of my own are pretty much nil, but I do think about the logistics of it on the technical side.
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- Jun 20, 2022
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I just feel the need to point out -- or clarify -- for those who haven't seen the movie and might be interested, a little bit of context about this information that might have been misunderstood, that also gives insight into the tone of the movie.
The people complaining about the trope weren't the people watching the movie "Murder by Death" ... it's a character IN the movie complaining to the cadre of "detectives" that are featured players in the story ... characters that are analogous to famous early-1900s detective novels and movies such as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, Hercule Perot stories, The Thin Man, Sam Spade from The Maltise Falcon, etc.
Also, if you've only seen Alec Guiness in Star Wars or Bridge on the River Kwai, that alone is a reason to watch this movie.
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- Aug 3, 2021
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That is an invalid argument, yes (unless it's something like "anyone could make this better than you"). But that is because people other than creators can also be knowledgeable about the subject matter even if you are an amateur. Also remember that there are different types of knowledge that may only be relevant in certain contexts; technical matters on how to make the work, knowledge about the creative process, knowledge about the stress and pressure coming when people expect you to deliver, knowledge about the genre, knowledge about writing useful criticisms, knowledge about the subject matter of the work and last and the most important: knowledge about the work itself. Being able to create a work yourself doesn't mean you have knowledge about the game itself and so on. There is a lot of criticism of games here from people (or is it bots?) that haven't even read the description of the game in question.
But these are still applying knowledge. If you have only eaten the same gruel for the past 10 years you are going to think real food is delicious even if everyone else think it is "too salty" or "too spicy". And people have physical differences making the sensations perceived by them differ on a fundamental level. One person's "too spicy" is another person's "doesn't taste anything". And these are still on a very low level. As for "too dark", much of the time you will get half of the audience saying it is too dark and the other half saying it is too light. And then you realize it is because of how light it is in the room they are in. If you don't have that knowledge "too dark" is not useful information.
That depends a whole lot of the context the criticism is made in. If you are talking directly to the creator you should probably not be a dickhead (although you can still be farily blunt). If you are making a professional review for a newspaper you shouldn't consider the feelings of the creator; your obligation is toward your readers and if the work is a turd you should let the readers know that rather than being vague about it.
Anyway, I don't think we have that differing opinions. I just stress that having knowledge make it possible to make criticism much more interesting and valuable.
- Sep 18, 2021
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He prefers to be known as Rita.
I'd agree we're mostly saying the same things, just focused on different sides of the coin.
Yeah, but even then there are ways to present a factual or subjective review of something (and accurately point out flaws), while still not being a jerk about it.
In some ways that can be as simple as not conflating the creation with the creator. It can also include not being performative in your review (ie, telling lots of jokes or deliberately being insulting for humorous effect). In a sense, HOW you say something can have more of an effect than WHAT you're saying.
But obviously the more disconnected you get from the creator of a work, the greater the temptation grows to turn criticism into mocking, hyperbolic statements, or outright insults, if only because it's easy to feel like you're not actually talking to/about a real person at that point. And because those kinds of reviews tend to be popular.
- Jun 20, 2022
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DON'T TURN AROUND! || But why, Sam? || 'Cause I think ... I'm gonna cry ...
Man, I love that movie.
Man, I love that movie.
- Aug 3, 2021
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I find it to be an excellent reminder to use your critical thinking while reading. After all, so much of what we read and hear are unreliable narrators.
And here we have a great example of an unreliable narrator.
I wonder how your mom would retell that story.It was a mistake to use professional reviews as example. Professional reviews are entertainment and has always been. Not to mention that reviewers can be bought to say that a rival is bad and yourself good. With regards to mocking, it is not only critics that mock creators; it is not rare for creators to mock critics within their work.
You are right that one need not be a jerk about it. But I still think it is ok or even wanted to be very blunt and not mince your words because of the creator's feelings. And it is only relevant to be blunt about the work. Using personal attacks against the creator is never ok in my book.
There's no real specific order of operations needed. The way I've settled in to doing it is this:
- Write the dialogue and narration for everything but the sex scenes - this makes what I call the "script".
- Add the code to the script. It's here that I note what specific renders need to be made.
- Do the renders. If a render proves to be too hard to pull off, I may need to edit the script a little bit.
- Render the sex parts.
- Write the script and code around what the sex parts ended up being.
- Jul 5, 2021
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Gonna have to look for this coming up and DVR it. GREAT movie.
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Only a few more days to wait. Gotta keep it together.
- Jun 20, 2022
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Yea ... I paid to always have access to it (have DVD and got bought digital copy)
- Sep 18, 2021
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Yeah, but the problem is that, in life, you almost always have ways to counter-verify. If you hear a newscast and are suspicious of its accuracy, you can potentially look for other news sources. If someone gives you an eyewitness account of something, you can always ask other people if they experienced the same thing.
In fiction, you are being given precisely one POV, and no others exist. You lack any tools to verify anything you're being told, because nothing exists outside of what you're told. Which is why it is generally accepted that the author has an obligation to accurately present information to the audience. Especially in mystery, where many people are reading specifically because they want to try and solve the mystery before the main character does. Lying is essentially "cheating".
If someone tells you their car is red in real life, you can look at their car. If I write a novel and tell you that the main character's car is red, there's no way to prove otherwise. If it later becomes a plot-point in the story that the killer drove a blue car, and as the author I simply ignore what I told you, I create a plot-point. If I admit I lied, it creates an antagonistic relationship with the audience. Done poorly, it can fully break immersion and lead the audience to become completely apathetic towards your story.
You can use an unreliable narrator to tell an interesting story, but it isn't necessarily a fair mystery story if you don't give the reader (or viewer, or player, etc) the tools to detect your falsehoods.
You can have characters lie. You can have characters discover information that is later proved to be false. But if you're presenting information as fact as a disembodied narrator, most readers/viewers will feel cheated if you later admit that you were lying the whole time.
The other thing to keep in mind is whether or not you're narrating as objective third-person or in a more documentarian style (ie, is someone explicitly telling the story in your story, or are you presenting it as omniscient narration). With the former you can at least somewhat justify the narrator lying (because you are presenting them as a character within the story itself), but in the latter case it is more akin to the universe itself lying to you.
Ultimately, it kind of comes down to whether or not you've given the audience the tools necessary to realize you're lying. You can't just shrug and go "Oh well, the audience should have been more critical and aware!" if you've given them absolutely no hints or evidence they can use to solve the mystery, you've written a bad mystery.
She tells it the same way. I'm an awesomely reliable narrator.And here we have a great example of an unreliable narrator.
But that just proves my point. In the real world, you can ask my mother for her version of the story. In a fictional story you wouldn't have the option to go get other POVs to determine whether or not I'm lying. You can only judge reality by the information the author chooses to give you.
- Aug 3, 2021
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That is true of course.
How about an historical event in a small town or village where the only primary source is an account from a village elder or vicar or similar? That should be fairly similar.
It was too long ago I read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, so I don't remember how it is presented that we are reading a written account from a person involved in the case. If it is clear that is the case and is written in a way such a testimonial would be written it I won't have a problem. But if it is written largely as any other murder mystery, it becomes hard to realize what is going on.
From that point of view I think Dorothy Sayers's The Documents in the Case is more interesting since it is very clear that what you are reading are (mostly) letters between the participants. But there it is multiple unreliable narrators.