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ngc-5194 · 11 months

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yknow i could very easily accept someone not liking the mobile kh games if people actually gave... understandable reasons??

mostly i've heard that they're 'inaccesable'. which. they're in general more accessable since the console they run on is a phone, a device more people have than a ps4. though, granted, it is the offline version of both games only.

however, if you don't have a phone, have limited space on your phone, or are uninterested in a mostly unplayable game, all of which are understandable, there are cutscene compilations (ux (story important, all), dr) available on youtube too!

if the lots of reading is the issue then there is a completely dubbed version of the cutscenes of ux and you can easily find voiced playthroughs of both union x and dark road on youtube as well.

(for instance, here is a playthrough of dark road that i watched as my phone needed repairs by the time i had caught up with the series enough to move onto khdr. but, of course, there are many more options if you simply search up 'kingdom hearts [dark road/union x] playthrough' on youtube. find whichever one suits the kind of videos you like to watch best!)

if you don't have the time to sit through all of the cutscenes, there are summaries also avaliable! here is a video one for union x, and though unfortunately i can't find a similar one for dark road, it is also always acceptable to just read the wiki section on the story of the game! (here is the union x wiki section as well)

the other major complaint i've heard is that it's 'too confusing' or that the story 'doesn't make sense in parts'.

to which i first must ask, what part of kingdom hearts does make sense to you then? many many signifigant, heavily important parts of this series can be the most mind boggling things you have ever read or heard. so much so that we are known as the fans of that overly complex and insane disney game. that is what we are known for!!

and more to an actual point, there are many many people out there in this fandom who would be thrilled to talk to you about parts of the plot you found confusing. who have posts pages and pages long on minute details.

we are all fans of this weird ass game series and we all can. i don't know. help each other, newcomers and people who have been here awhile alike. us fans who like the mobile games are no different. we are willing to share and help and explain anything you need.

and as for the take that the mobile games are 'unimportant'.

strelitzia, someone deeply important to marluxia, larxene, and ventus' backstories, is seemingly implied to be one of the main characters in kh4 and if you have no knowledge of union x, then you likely have zero idea who she is.

the foretellers and the master of masters are being set up as potential villians in the next arc of the series. all of these characters were introduced in union x, four years before back cover released. and while yes, back cover gives the perspective of the foretellers more while union x is from the eyes of the keykids, there are many interactions with the foretellers in union x, beyond the scope of back cover, that are deeply important to the plot and establishment of their characters.

while yes, dark road has drastically less set up for the future in it, as all of the characters featured are now dead, it gives a lot of depth to xehanort and eraqus both. eraqus' behaviours and motivations are given reason—not necessarily morally good ones, and certainly not ones that always provide justification for his actions, but actual fully defined reasons for it all.

as it has always been with kh, every game is important to understand the story. you couldn't simply play kh1 kh2 and kh3 and expect to understand everything, and you can not expect to understand everything if you don't at least know surface level of the stories of the mobile games too.

you do not have to play them yourself. they do not have to be your favourite games in the series. if you are reading this and you hate them, you can stay not liking them even for all i care.

but you have to accept that they are important to the plot of the series. that they can not simply be ignored if you want to grasp the entire story of kingdom hearts.

#kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts union x #khux #kingdom hearts dark road #khdr #khuxdr #long post #SORRY #i am just. can barely stand it here anymore #like. you're perfectly allowed to just Not Like them. thats literally fine. who cares #but at least just come out and SAY that you just dont like them #stop burrying it behind 'it's not important and it's a phone game waah wah'#just say you don't like the games. i really don't care if you hate them with all your heart and soul. just. stop being a coward. and Say It #anyway. uh. who wants to talk about khml with me :3

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governmentintelligence · 4 months

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less a theory and more drawing connections

i literally dont know whats compelling me to make this post, but i was watching the game theory on indigo park/uniquegeese's reaction to the game theory on indigo park, and when unique mentioned that there's stuff people haven't caught on to or mentioned....

spoilers, i guess? and i have links to all the timestamps in youtube videos im using linked on the images themselves.

I thought a bit about the lloyd's limo's sign that's in storage. and the lloyd statue that's in storage.

(ID: screenshot from Youtube of backstage space Mane Stage in Indigo Park, with gold statue of Lloyd amids storage boxes with his hand outstretched and holding a microphone)

the lloyd statue very clearly looks like it used to be where rambley is now. holding isaac indigo's hand at the entrance.

that implies that the rambley statue isn't the original, and that lloyd used to be the one holding isaac's hand.

(ID: screenshot from Youtube playthrough showing golden statue of Isaac Indigo holding Rambley the Ractoon's hand and waving his other, mimicing the Disney partner's statue)

similarly, in the intro cut scene historical footage of isaac on the park's opening day, a mural of lloyd is on the wall at the entrance. when the player character visits the park, the mural in that location is of rambley.

you can really see it highlighted in this screenshot from the intro scene, as the camera zooms out from the historical footage and shows the present day indigo park website.

(ID: screenshot from Youtube playthrough of intro cutscene. Two monitors sit on desk, one showing black and white footage of Isaac Indigo speaking in front of Indigo Park's entrance on opening day, with Lloyd mural behind him. Second monitor shows website for booking Indigo Park stay with an image of the park's entrance on the website, showing that the mural behind Isaac now has Rambley.)

now, there are a few other allusions to rambley having taken over after lloyd. the painting of them both shaking hands is really reminiscent of the painting in disney's winnie the pooh ride, showing owl shaking hands with mr toad while mr toad passes along the deed to the ride. that painting is an allusion to how the winnie the pooh ride replaced the ride "mr toad's wild ride," so passing the deed is literally passing along the baton.

another is the player character's comment when you view the lloyd plush — "I feel like as a kid, Indigo used Lloyd a lot more."

what i feel is more foreshadowing to why the change between lloyd and rambley was made, however, comes from this sign that's also in the mane stage's backstage. it's sideways and the screengrab isn't the best, but it reads "Lloyd's Limos".

(ID: screenshot from Youtube playthrough, where a dirty sign reading "Lloyd's Limos" can be read between the bars of a metal frame shelf)

the idea of a limo ride immediately reminded me of Disney's California Adventure's infamous Superstar Limo which, to make a long story short, sucked ass. it was such a monumental failure of a ride for quite a few reasons and i'd recommend Defunctland's video on why it all went tits up, but the tl;dr for our purposes is just that it sucked. it was not received well by park attendees and was closed in less than a year after opening.

the comparison makes me really curious to know just what kind of ride lloyd's limos was, but knowing that lloyd had a ride that then flopped feels as if he was the main mascot until he flopped. similar to superstar limo, the entirety of california adventures was received pretty poorly upon opening.

maybe a similar expansion or rebranding was done at indigo park, while lloyd was losing popularity, and that's what prompted the switch? and maybe there's now a return to retro happening for indigo fans, as suggested by the retro lloyd plush (but not of other characters)?

either way, i feel like i haven't seen a lot of people point out the Lloyd's Limos sign and its potential ties to the old Superstar Limo ride, but i do feel like that's hugely intentional. same as the handshake painting's clear nod forward the owl and mr toad painting at the parks. im interested in seeing how these similarities might be foreshadowing or otherwise connected to the lore!!

#indigo park #lloyd the lion #idk what else to tag this as honestly #rambley the racoon #maybe people have pointed this out and im just out of the loop but like. it annihilated me that gametheory didn't point this out lmao #in a weird way it's benefiting to know a bit of disney parks lore while analysing this game

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eldragon-x · 4 months

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should i play a pokemon mystery dungeon game? i only have a switch atm and the only one they have is Rescue Team DX

ive only really played the main series of pokemon so far so i dont know anything about the pmd games but lots of people seem to like them and being a pokemon sounds cool and i miss pokepark

ANON. ANON YES YOU SHOULD PLAY POKEMON MYSTERY DUNGEON if you like plot driven games because pmd is basically pokemon for story-driven games enjoyers.

I havent played Rescue Team DX buuut as far as I know the story is basically the same as the original Rescue Teams plus it functions better so youre not missing out on this one unless you'd like to see how the old game looks with the 2d pixel style.

Explorers is the fan favorite and deserves it tbh. It has the strongest story which probably has the darkest tone and while you can play Explorers of Darkness or Time, Explorers of Sky has much more mechanics, Dungeons, and storybeats, including Special Episode 5 which is one of my favorite things in the PMD series. However physical copies of Sky are expensive as shit so you might wanna look for a rom or just play Time/Darkness and check out the extra story stuff on youtube. There's whole cutscene compilations of those.

Gates to Infinity is the first 3D PMD title, my personal favorite, and criminally underrated even within the community. I admit the gameplay is kinda bad but it has the best cast of characters and a really moving story about hope and nihilism and the importance of community. It also lets you build your own Pokemon Paradise with shops and fields around your house which is fun and Munna is one of my favorite characters of all time in anything ever please for the love of god give gates to infinity a chance even if you just watch a playthrough if you dont wanna deal with the gameplay i fucking love gates to infinity

Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon is the final installment before we got the Rescue Team remake. The plot can get kinda messy but its still really enjoyable and has a unique charm and imo the best soundtrack in the series alongside Explorers of Sky. If you get into the series I'd ask you to get to this one last as the stakes get high, theres references to past games, and the ending hits harder when youre familiar with the series (though its not required to understand the story).

#pmd

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tactax-art · 1 year

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I enjoy your Ghostsoap art and posts but I don’t play video games. I want to get into the ship/fandom but don’t know where to start. Any help would be appreciated ❤️ Thanks

Welcome to the fandom I guess :D I'm putting my reply under the read more (and have a sleepy Ghost, just cause :)

Disclaimer, I've only gotten into this in february, it's been uuuh 2 months. I'm not a canon-phile, but i do like to know that basics, despite not playing games a lot either.

I did start with just the soapghost scenes (x), but after that i wanted to know what the heck is going on with the plot so I went for the full one.

First off, what confused the hell out of me until I asked a friend: There are two iterations of CoD:Modern Warfare2, the 2009 one and the 2022 reboot. They carried over characters, but seem to have revamped both them and the plot (though idk how much they changed the plot).

I'd recommend watching the movie style playthroughs (cutscenes + only story/dialogue relevants of gameplay) on youtube, this is the one I watched (x). (I get motion sick when watching fps 'lets play's, but this one was alright, probably because there's lots of cutscene breaks!)

There are also of course their wiki entries Soap & Ghost.

Regarding the preboots again, here's some stuff that is pretty commonly referenced in fic and art but it's actually from the 09 canon: everyone canon dies, Soap being captain, soap's eyebrow scar, soap being an artist/keeping a journal, ALL of ghosts backstory (afaik we got nothing on 22!ghost).

Hope this helped!

#tactaxtalks #cod #cod mw2 #cod ghost

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p5x-theories · 1 year

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I’ve skimmed enough playthrough videos of the beta at this point that I think I can give kind of a rundown of what plot we get from it at this point! Since there’s no official translation, I’m leaning on what happens visually, along with the bits and pieces of context I can understand from the Japanese voice acting (in scenes that have it), and taking into consideration what I’ve seen of some rough translations people have attempted. Contrary to this blog’s name, this post is going to have as little speculation as possible, and stick to confirmed facts.

Disclaimer: I have done some skimming of the gameplay, as I don’t have the time to sit and watch an entire 5+ hour video (let alone multiple) unfortunately. This covers the scenes + the gist, but doesn’t have all the finer details.

Two things to note about the beta: 1) Some scenes seem like they’re cut/missing right now. At times it’ll cut to a screen with just text, which I think explains what happens in between proper game cutscenes, but I can’t read Chinese so I can’t confirm that or cover whatever information those contain. 2) It appears the beta only lets you get as far in as shortly after completing the first Palace, which is apparently about 5.5 hours or so of story content.

The game starts with the protagonist in class at Kokatsu Academy, with a teacher, Kumi Katayama, having the students fill out a form (that sounds like it has something to do with their futures). This form is where you input the protagonist’s name in the game.

After this, the protagonist falls asleep, and wakes up in the Velvet Room for the first time.

He’s only there briefly, before being woken up by Motoha Arai.

Katayama comes over and reprimands them, then collects the forms.

After getting out of class, the protagonist steps out into the hallway, and runs into some girls gossiping. They mention something about a “phantom”.

Another student comes over to interrupt them, and says something to them that makes them bow in apology to both her and the protagonist before running off, calling her “Tanemura-senpai”. She tells them not to run in the hallway.

As the protagonist goes to leave, he walks by Luffy atop the shoe lockers. Luffy says something (to himself) like “Is it really him?”, with kind of a skeptical tone.

The protagonist boards a train at the station.

Something happens after he gets on the train- it’s only described in text, so I’m not sure what- and when the protagonist opens his eyes, he’s sitting in what we can recognize as a rest stop in Mementos, facing Luffy.

Luffy starts to lead the protagonist out of Mementos...

... but they run into some shadows. While Luffy handles them at first, some start to slip by him, and target the protagonist.

This leads to his awakening, of which there’s a video of uploaded by Faz on Youtube, and probably better to just watch rather than reading a play-by-play haha.

After that, Luffy gives a battle tutorial, then they proceed onward, still trying to get out of Mementos. Close to the exit, though, they run into some kind of boss shadow or something- certainly not a shadow we’ve seen before.

They take care of it, then finally leave Mementos, emerging in Shibuya station. Luffy parts ways with the protagonist for now... but Motoha sees the protagonist standing there and seems surprised.

The protagonist heads home and goes to sleep, dreaming of the Velvet Room again. The next morning, he’s awoken by Luffy tapping his head.

Luffy’s Confidant is established.

As the protagonist goes to leave his house, he receives some texts from his mother.

Outside his house, he runs into Kayo Toyama, who apparently knew him when he was younger and comments that he’s grown up into a handsome man, in that tone of a family friend or relative being surprised at how big you’ve gotten since they last saw you.

After talking to her, he heads to school, and runs into Merope in Shibuya station, who contemplates the Rise poster there before turning it into a Velvet Room door.

On the train ride, he overhears some more female students from Kokatsu gossiping, possibly about him. When he steps off the train, he realizes he’s lost something, only to have another Kokatsu student (that’s voiced) approach him and hand him whatever it was.

At school, the protagonist has a math class with Katayama, who asks him a question (similar to how the teachers in P3, P4, and P5 all do).

At the start of lunch break, Motoha talks to the protagonist, and mentions something about person riding a bicycle and a train. She also talks about some kind of website, and asks the protagonist about how he disappeared from a train yesterday and reappeared in Shibuya (explaining her surprise at seeing him in Shibuya station).

Before he can answer, though, the girl in the pink sweater from earlier walks up, and asks Motoha about having lunch together. Motoha apologizes for asking something weird and leaves, but we get a glimpse of her phone, which has the MetaNav on it.

Once Motoha and her friend are gone, Luffy flies over to the window, with a sign telling the protagonist to come to the roof.

When the protagonist steps out into the hallway to do so, Motoha’s friend comes back, and introduces herself as Tomoko [Last Name] from Class D, though I’ve admittedly had trouble figuring out exactly what she says her last name is. It may be Noge, considering it’s written as 野毛.

On the roof, the protagonist runs into a guy eating instant ramen, who says nothing and leaves once he sees the protagonist standing there.

Luffy flies in, and says he’ll answer the protagonist’s questions. He talks about Mementos and shadows. He also says something about phantom thieves, but in the more general sense of being a phantom thief, not as if Luffy’s referring to the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. Then he flies off, and the protagonist leaves the roof, but literally runs into Motoha, who apologizes and says something like she was “lost in thought”. Somehow she has his phone (possibly he dropped it when they ran into each other?), and she gives it back to him, except she wants to ask him something...

... but then Tanemura from earlier (who Motoha refers to as “Riko-senpai”, making her full name Riko Tanemura) shows up, and talks to Motoha for a moment. She and Motoha leave, and game jumps ahead to the end of the school day.

The protagonist exits their classroom, but Motoha stays behind, looking at her phone. She comments to herself that she noticed the protagonist had the same app (presumably the MetaNav app) as her phone does, and also says something about his disappearance from the train again. Tomoko then approaches her and asks about going somewhere together.

We cut to the protagonist arriving in Shibuya station, where Luffy flies over to him and immediately crawls into his bag.

Luffy gives some kind of explanation for why he went into the bag that I can’t follow, and says something about a target named Takeyuki Kiuchi, who the camera cuts to show running into a lady and apologizing.

Then going out of his way to run into a Kokatsu student.

Luffy explains something about how Palace rulers work, I think, in addition to saying Kiuchi is one.

As the protagonist leaves the station, Motoha runs through the ticket gate, having just missed him. She wonders what the protagonist was doing, then seems to recognize Kiuchi, but Tomoko runs up to her, and asks what’s wrong.

Motoha brushes the question off, and they leave.

Back to the protagonist and Luffy, Luffy talks more about phantom thievery, and asks the protagonist something about whether he’s ready to become a phantom thief, I think. When the protagonist says yes, Luffy says they’re headed to Mementos.

In Mementos, Luffy says the protagonist needs a codename, and suggests Wonder, then says his own codename is Cattle. As they start to run off, Wonder gets pulled into the Velvet Room by Merope, and gets the teammate gacha tutorial as well as the start of Merope’s confidant. Once he leaves, Luffy demonstrates his ability to turn into a car.

While Wonder and Cattle are traveling around Mementos, Motoha and Tomoko talk more in the real world, and Kiuchi notices them.

The game cuts back to Wonder and Cattle in Mementos, and Cattle explains that the thing behind him (it looks like a larger version of the portals that led to people’s personal shadows that hadn’t developed their own Palaces in P5) is the entrance to Kiuchi’s Palace, there’s no mistaking it.

They enter Kiuchi’s Palace, but can’t get very far before running into an obstacle- they can’t get up to an opening that’ll get them into the stadium.

After returning to the real world, Luffy talks to the protagonist some more, probably about how they’re going to get in, and I think says something about crafting. Then Kayo shows up again, and after the protagonist says something to her, she mentions the secondhand shop in Yongen-Jaya (where you could get the TV, game console, and laptop in P5).

Following her suggestion, Luffy and the protagonist head to Yongen-Jaya, and the old man who runs the secondhand shop gives the protagonist what I think is a crafting table/crafting set.

Meanwhile, Motoha and Tomoko eat and chat at Big Burger, where Motoha calls her awesome for something apparently related to baseball. Tomoko also mentions something about a person, and Motoha asks if the person goes to Kokatsu Academy, and if Tomoko likes (as in has a crush on) whoever it is.

The protagonist and Luffy return home, and Luffy talks about infiltration tools (presumably in relation to the crafting topic that came up earlier). Once they have infiltration tools, they can go back into Kiuchi’s Palace.

The crafting tutorial comes up, and the protagonist makes a grappling hook.

That night, the protagonist visits the Velvet Room again. In the morning, he wakes up to Luffy again.

The protagonist heads to the train station, but there’s been some kind of accident that Tomoko was involved in (that’s her on the other side of the door thing, you can see her pink sweater). Motoha is calling her name in distress as the protagonist walks up.

The officer pulls Motoha away, and asks if the protagonist is her friend. Leaving her with the protagonist, he walks away.

The protagonist and Motoha go somewhere else to talk, where she finally confronts him about disappearing from the train and reappearing in Shibuya station the other day. Luffy says something from within his hiding place in the protagonist’s bag, and Motoha reacts with surprise at the owl noises coming from his bag.

Another officer approaches them as she’s asking about the owl in confusion, and informs them that an ambulance is going to take Tomoko to the hospital. Motoha says she’ll go with Tomoko, and the protagonist heads to school.

Katayama addresses the class, and the students gossip, with at least one mentioning something about a “phantom” again. Motoha arrives in the middle of this, to Katayama’s surprise, and when asked, Motoha says she’s okay, before heading to her seat. She says she’ll wait for the protagonist on the rooftop at lunch.

At lunch, the ramen guy is once again sitting up there, and once again leaves without saying anything when he sees Motoha and the protagonist arrive (the text in the box isn’t a word, I think it’s a sound at most).

Motoha says Tomoko’s okay now, but now can’t participate in some kind of baseball thing that’s happening that she was originally going to be in (probably what they were talking about at Big Burger yesterday). She mentions Kiuchi by name, and then asks the protagonist about the purpose of the MetaNav app they both have on their phones. Luffy emerges from the protagonist’s bag, and Motoha asks about him again.

But this time, she can understand him, and introduces herself. He talks about the MetaNav, and stealing Kiuchi’s heart. After she leaves, the protagonist and Luffy head back into the Metaverse, and are now able to grapple up to the opening with ease.

As this happens, in the real world Motoha returns to where the accident with Tomoko was, thinking about her, when Kiuchi approaches her.

He says he remembers her, and Motoha responds to him angrily, mentioning Tomoko and saying she’ll take him to the police. He was probably responsible for the accident? He doesn’t seem too concerned about Motoha’s threat, and smugly replies to her before leaving. Motoha, distressed, wonders what she should do.

After this we cut back to Cattle and Wonder in the Palace, the gameplay for which I’m going to kind of skip over because it’s a lot of running through a Palace and fighting shadows- as I’m sure everyone reading this is familiar with- and I assume getting to know what particular brand of distorted person Kiuchi is, which I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to understand much of, if it’s even voiced. They of course eventually run into Kiuchi’s Shadow. Palace infiltration stuff, you get the gist.

Eventually, they discover Motoha here in the Palace, already taken captive by Kiuchi’s Shadow. This leads to Motoha’s awakening, which is another thing Faz on Youtube has uploaded a video of, and I once again recommend just watching that haha.

After her awakening, Wonder and Cattle take her out of the Palace, and head to Big Burger to talk.

None of this conversation is voiced, but I saw Kiuchi’s name in one of Motoha’s lines. After this scene, it cuts to a screen with Motoha Arai- codename Closer- unlocking as a teammate, not unlike if she’d been rolled in the gacha.

The protagonist heads home for the evening, and gets some text messages from Motoha, indicating they exchanged numbers here.

The next day, they talk after class, though this is again unvoiced.

Motoha, Luffy, and the protagonist head to Shibuya Central Street, where she leads them to Untouchable, and the weapon gacha is introduced. The player then gets free time to spend with Confidants, work at 777, etc. I’m not clear on whether it’s possible to go into the Metaverse this day or not.

The next day, the protagonist runs into Motoha at the station, much like what happens in P5 where teammates and the occasional other character will sometimes run into the protagonist in the morning before school and make some comment about current story events.

In school, some other NPC who isn’t voiced and doesn’t even have a talk portrait appears to talk to the class, and asks a question like a teacher would.

Motoha talks to the protagonist after school, and the Metaverse is able to be returned to. Interestingly, the map for Mementos strongly implies it has a set layout, in addition to containing the entrance to Kiuchi’s Palace, as it has the outlined red areas that haven’t been visited yet, like Palaces (but not Mementos) in P5 had.

In Mementos, after yet another tutorial battle, Wonder talks to a Pixie, and gets his first mask (just like Joker does). Before they can proceed into Mementos, he’s literally pulled into the Velvet Room by Merope, and he learns about Persona fusion.

There are also apparently some kind of challenge battles that can be run into in Mementos as well (in addition to Velvet Room challenge battles, like in P5R), with entrances like Palaces except purple instead of red. At least in one stream I found that tried one, the area the challenge battle took place in looked like a museum, though a bit different from Madarame’s Palace in P5.

Not sure if this ties into the plot later, so I’m mentioning that here just in case.

Anyway, back to the plot, after more exploration of Kiuchi’s Palace, they reach a big curtain with a heart on it.

After reaching this point, they have an unvoiced conversation and return to the real world. They talk for a bit there, still unvoiced, then go right back into the Palace and head for the curtain, which now opens.

They confront Kiuchi’s Shadow, who stands on the big stage (still no voiced dialogue, so I have no idea what they’re saying).

And then the boss fight begins. The first stage is just Shadow Kiuchi normally (or, as normal as you can call a Palace ruler).

But after he’s beaten, with another conversation, he turns more monstrous, as Palace rulers do in P5.

When he’s defeated, then he turns back into the more humanoid form, and breaks down into tears, the way the P5 Palace rulers typically become after beating their boss fight.

Closer talks to his Shadow, and then it does the animation like he’s returning to his real self. Cattle, meanwhile, is focused on this big gold baseball thing that seems to be Kiuchi’s treasure.

The Palace starts to shake, so Cattle turns into a car, and they load the Treasure into the trunk.

Then make their escape.

Back in the real world, the Treasure is what looks like a normally-sized gold baseball, but it’s honestly a little hard to tell. Luffy tosses it to the protagonist, who catches it.

And that seems to be the end of the actual game plot content available in the beta!

#persona #p5x #persona 5x #persona 5 the phantom x #game content #p5x spoilers #wonder #closer #cattle #motoha arai #luffy p5x #kumi katayama #wind #merope #moko #soy #takeyuki kiuchi #okyann

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kirbles · 1 year

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holy shit the voice acting and characterisation in bg3 hits so hard i need to type out my feelings

spoilers for bg3 and more specifically astarion's personal quest

i did astarion's personal quest in my first playthrough and also romanced him. he has some of the most fantastic voice acting in any game i've played. i love how his personal story plays out. his backstory and the way he acts towards you at the beginning, vs how he thanks you if you convince him not to ascend during the black mass and takes you to his gravestone. he is so emotionally compelling and i adore him

so i thought alright i'll go on youtube and check out some cutscenes if you ascend him and also romance him while he's a full vampire and. it actually physically hurt to watch and listen?

i'm genuinely surprised by my reaction because i generally like evil characters and antagonists. hell i'm a big fan of yanderes if that gives you any idea. i was unfamiliar with vampires in dnd but i read up on them and how they are essentially always evil. so that shouldn't be a problem for me. 'if evil why sexy?' and all that

but the way he talks about you if you're romancing him once he ascends is so possessive and dehumanising. he loses all traces of humanity. he turns into a completely different person from the one you meet and fall in love with. and i think the reason i'd generally be fine with all that but i'm not for astarion is BECAUSE it's astarion.

i invested in his story and romance so much that when i watched those cutscenes it just hurt a little. because you do so much for him and you fall in love and go through life and death with and for each other. i don't believe astarion never loved you if you were romancing him before he ascends but any trace of that love just goes away. sure he can favour you and be obsessed with you but it isn't LOVE.

you know it already but man does the voice acting put it across so well. and the change in little things like the pet names he gives you. he goes from 'darling' 'my dear' 'my love' to things like 'pet' and straight up 'spawn' like damn you went through so much only to turn into the man who hurt you

maybe i'll ascend him in a future playthrough but god. i didn't even do it myself and it was still rough to go through. i love him so much and want the best for him. and i do not think ascension is that.

#bg3 #bg3 spoilers #astarion #my posts

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stillness138 · 7 months

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can i ask for two characters: gezras of leyda and thaler? if not you can choose one of them xD

oooh nice, thanks! gonna do both

and cut it because it's gonna get long :D

Thaler

first impression:

i think i first saw him in gwent actually, and that was when 'silver spies' were still a thing. he was a pretty good card back then. only learned about his character once i watched a witcher 3 playthrough on youtube though. i don't recall it that well, but if i thought anything particular, it was probably "i hope he'll wash his hands at some point soon" because he's literally peeing at the start of the cutscene.

impression now:

he's cool! questionable hygiene aside, i love characters that have like, a thing? as in, a simple but fun premise or at least a surface reading. he's a spy, but very dedicated to the shoemaker cover, and that's how he manages to get by in an occupied land. i like that there's a little throughline with him about appearances often being deceiving. the shoes are one thing, but even further, he seems like a crude, self-serving bum, yet his loyality to Temeria is something so integral it's not even a question. This country really lucked out on devoted spies. Foltest was just that charismatic.

favorite thing about him:

willingness to do anything, no matter how uncomfortable, for the country. i think i like it because it's different from Roche's brand of servitude. again, cdpr is pretty good at writing ocs.

thinking about it now, he reminds me of a few guys i know. rural Temeria is, from an outside view, a cold, wet, kinda bleak bumfuck middle of nowhere, yet Thaler has this air of loving the physical country for what it is - he even mentions that he prefers the travelling more than a different cover like being an innkeep. like it doesn't bother him that it's cold, it seems he finds comfort in it in his own way. i find that kinda sweet.

least favorite thing:

seriously mate wash your hands 😭

i'd also rather cdpr didn't make him a vessel for racist jokes in the first game. (i swear i was looking for the exact clip where he talks about Azar and couldn't find it, i need to play the first game properly...)

favorite line/scene:

[how are you doing?] "A bit like a potato beetle. I keep quiet, stay outta trouble, and live on fucking potatoes."

i saw only a few scenes from witcher 1 and they were dubbed in czech, which adds to the hilarity of it to me, but his voice actor probably had a field day with it. "Nedělej si ze mě kurva srandu, seš zasranej amatér." [Geralt: will you play poker with me? Thaler: Don't fucking bullshit me, you're a goddamn amateur.]

favorite interaction he has with another character:

befriending and handling the three trolls. game Lambert has something to learn from him in that regard.

a character that I wish he would interact with more (or at all):

imagine if he appeared in the second game in any capacity, that would've been fun. in wild hunt, it's the same as with Roche: i wish the entire politics plotline was better. if i had to pick one character, it'd be Letho. there would be a lot of profanities but i actually believe Thaler would have more to say than even Roche at Kaer Morhen.

another character from another fandom that reminds me of him:

again i only know 5 things, and the only method acting spy in elder scrolls is Caius Cosades from Morrowind, whose similarities to Thaler pretty much end at taking a cover story too seriously.

as a side note though, i went to tv tropes to look at character lists in case i forgot about someone i actually do know, and in "sir swears-a-lot" subpage for videogame characters i found Thaler twice; gwent has its own separate mention. legends only.

a headcanon about him:

if Roche likes architecture, i think Thaler really enjoys music. maybe he even plays the lute. i'm also really curious about his youth and how he ended up a spy, but i do think it's quite different than Roche's background. i imagine he had a lot of friends as a kid and a comparably normal home life, but always showed talent for remembering what people say and for getting them to say even more.

a song that reminds me of him:

it's more vibes based than anything, but this czech song, most known from a movie. zmrzlinář means ice cream seller. it's all kinda... reminiscing, nostalgia and trying to find something nice or poetic in ordinary things (and in the case of the movie, in a shitty political regime). short movie version isn't on youtube, so i gotta upload it here.

an unpopular opinion about him:

this is less about the text and more meta, but i genuinely think he has a load of potential for exploring loyality, northern politics, motivation, and tropes or trope subversion (like the appearance thing i mentioned), but people sleep on him because Roche is right there. that's not to say dissecting Roche doesn't have merit - like i said, they're similar, but each has a different approach to what they do and what they believe.

favorite picture:

probably the gwent card. it says what it needs to and is surprisingly fun or even whimsical for a character most known for swearing on every third word. i think that's a neat choice though.

Gezras

first impression:

the cat school is, beside manticore, my favourite, so when the witcher expansion dropped i was curious who the leader will be next to Erland or Ivar. i wasn't disappointed. pretty sure i thought he's cute.

impression now:

*gently holds*

where Erland continued performing the trials to create a knightly order, Gezras and the growing cat school did it to protect themselves. it's the witcher dissected towards its core; a cycle of abuse maintained as something deemed necessary despite its harmfulness, out of desperation, out of a sense of belonging, out of losing touch with what's enough and what's too much.

and all that in pursuit of autonomy. Gezras; sold, experimented on, discarded, hunted. the fact the formula used on him was meant to suppress emotion yet ended up doing the opposite is a testament to that - this is about being treated as human. the trials are literally reclaimed, to strengthen other abandoned and thrown-out stray kids. to enact revenge. it's no wonder then that they'd seek refuge with the elves. the cat school was the one that took systemic oppression the most personally.

favorite thing about him:

that he's a unique exploration of the things i just mentioned. i find this very compelling and him relatable on that level, as an abuse survivor myself.

also his gwent card art and the bags under his eyes. that's relatable too.

least favorite thing:

it's meta again because i'm near incapable of judging the character without judging the writer: the little bit there is in gwent leans too much towards the edgy. he does have one voiceline about elven sages which i find especially interesting, but given that his trial ended up enhancing all emotions, if you want to show that somehow, give me rapid mood swings or something like that. gimme nuance!

this is me wanting every minor character to have dimensions.

favorite line/scene:

his flavor text; "Take a contract from Aen Seidhe over a dh'oine any day, as you’re far less likely to receive a knife between the ribs in place of coin."

favorite interaction he has with another character:

i think he actually has no lines or scenes with any named characters apart from the expansion key art where all the founders are together, because unlike the other three, he wasn't in the tabletop rpg books. i do however like his card's interaction with the bronze that happens to have my most favourite card art. there's awesome fanart about it too!

a character that I wish he would interact with more (or at all):

any named elf of his era, naturally, and especially the sages, but i am actually curious how he'd react to all of the other founders. Erland, i think i can imagine, but given both Arnaghad and Ivar ended up opposing Erland, that'd be more interesting. and even Iwan, the founder of manticore school as per the trpg, maybe he'd be the one Gezras would find most common ground with actually. If only for leaving the other three to their squabbles and seeking work and protection in a more equal society.

another character from another fandom that reminds me of him:

this is weird and i'm going to bring it up again, but Gezras reminds me of Allinall's work. weird because these are takes or adaptations of other media - particularly elder scrolls and berserk - but he specifically brings forth similar themes; conflicts of humans and elves, othering and otherness, cyclical abuse, coping mechanisms. the concrete characters i'm thinking of are Allinall's oc from the elder scrolls project and Rosine (and by extension the in-world fairytale character Peekaf) from the berserk project.

the nameless oc, mostly referred to as "One-Ear", had mixed parents, their human father cut their ear off in an attempt to hide their identity, even though their yellow sclera is undeniably elven. they join (or rather, their vulnerable state of trauma is exploited and they're indoctrinated by) a regime that aims to end material existence. Rosine is also a domestic abuse survivor, a village girl who comes across a promise of power in the form of an evil artifact that turns her into a moth-like elf monster. she starts devolving into bloodthirst and allows for horrible stuff to happen in order to maintain a fantasy of comfort and freedom.

a headcanon about him:

i didn't come up with it, but i love the idea that him and the saber-tooth tiger were buddies.

i think it's safe to assume that he's not actually from Leyda. if he was mutated at Stygga, he more likely was a local kid from Ebbing. I do also think he stayed in Dol Blathanna at some point when the school was wandering around, though.

and maybe that's too shallow, but i like to imagine he did genuinely enjoy being in nature. and if he ever conducted any trials by his own, he might've been notably good at herbology.

a song that reminds me of him:

'To Die' by Allinall (relating to One-Ear), and Peekaf Song (to Rosine).

as for more personal picks, my forever favourite, Nihilist Blues by Bring Me The Horizon (and Grimes); "do you mind if i'm exhumed?"

and Unraveled by Lorn, which is kinda ambient, but i like the harsher noises and associate it with my own search-for-identity oc.

an unpopular opinion about him:

Gezras is more interesting to me personally because of that focus on abuse, autonomy and revenge, and he's already a bit on the side because Erland and Arnaghad's conflict is at the forefront when this era of witchers comes up, but i think Ivar Evil-Eye needs even more love. despite being in the trpg, no one talks about him (he has that in common with Thaler i guess) and that's a disservice to the viper school as a whole, i think it's just as fascinating and has just as much unique and profound stuff to say as the cat school's story.

favorite picture:

his gwent card is in my top 20, but i especially like his reward tree portrait; it's the most detailed likeness we have. the mega tired eyes just draw me in.

#*spongebob time skip voice* it sure did get long lol #i hope it's comprehensible. i'd hesitate calling it character analysis because i perceive everything via vibes i think #but i sure do like ruminating on these little guys. hopefully it's at all enjoyable to read.#the witcher #shut up elis #ask game

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lutiaslayton · 2 years

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« Introduction || Masterlist || Next (coming soon!) »

Hello everybody! This playthrough is finally starting, and with it goes my sanity. I am playing on DS (French version but you will probably never see photos of it), mobile (UK version, I might sometimes give screenshots), and emulator for the Japanese “Friendly” version, of which I will provide the most footage.

The “Friendly” version is a re-release of the first DS games which added the furigana to the text, made all weekly puzzles available from the start instead of locking them out as downloadable content, and perhaps had a few other features I am not aware of. I only realised once I reached the title screen that this was not technically the original, but oh well. When I compared the DS, non-“Friendly” version of London Holiday with its mobile re-release version, the differences were completely anecdotic (the kanji 言 replaced with its hiragana spelling twice, and hint coins being renamed from ヒントメダル to ひらめきコイン, their current name); so I hope that the differences will be just as minor, because I unfortunately do not have the means currently to check them.

Major disclaimer:

I DO NOT SPEAK JAPANESE. KEEP THAT IN MIND. All my conclusions are based on what little stuff I know here and there about the language, but I am not at all a reliable reference in the subject. If you can speak Japanese, then please do feel free to correct me anytime, add details I forgot, etc. Thank you!

Important Note:

In the Japanese version, puzzles are consistently referred to as 「ナゾ」 (pronounced “nazo”), while 「ナゾトキ」 (pronounced “nazotoki”) will usually refer to the act of solving such a puzzle. Both expressions are written in katakana, which is in Japanese a way to emphasise words (kind of like italics, if you will). Normally, you would expect to find both expressions written as 「謎」 and 「謎解き」, but the fact that they are written in katakana instead will be interpreted here as “the characters are talking about something similar, but distinct from the original meaning of these expressions.” In other words, not all puzzles are the same, and a distinction must be made between simple riddles or mysteries, and 𝓹𝓾𝔃𝔃𝓵𝓮𝓼™.

I will try to consistently translate 「ナゾ」 as “puzzle” all throughout, and will use any other word if the Japanese version did not use this specific magic word (e.g. if the Japanese version uses the regular spelling 「謎」 instead of the katakana spelling). Therefore, when characters use the word 「ナゾ」, I will consider that they are talking about something far more specific than simply a “mystery.”

Why do I emphasise on such a nitpick? Because a big part of this lore analysis… is to try to define what a “puzzle” even is to begin with.

In this post and the future ones, if you find screenshots which have coloured text, the rule is basically this: red if it’s a “puzzle”, blue if it has a similar meaning but is not the same type of “puzzle” as the one we are most interested in.

Anyway. Digression aside, let’s get started!

HD Version only: The Extra Cutscene

I don’t have all that many things to say about it, since you can watch it on Youtube just fine and the Japanese version doesn’t have much to say that the English translations don’t say as well. Still, just a few things:

Layton has packed a very small suitcase, while Luke has filled the trunk of the Laytonmobile to the brim. Could it be that after Last Specter, Miracle Mask and especially Azran Legacy, Luke is expecting to have yet another long journey? After all, it is just around the very beginning of August, so he’s probably on summer vacations (and that is assuming he isn’t homeschooled anyway during the rest of the time; he definitely was during the time they were travelling around the world in the Bostonius).

Layton, on the other hand, does not seem to expect to stay in St. Mystere for long; but then again, we are talking about the man who, about three years earlier, went off to Misthallery without even packing anything and ended up having to stay there for a few days. (Speaking of… neither did Emmy, for that matter.)

Also, I could analyse the fact that in order to reach St. Mystere, they crossed the Thames, and that thanks to Diabolical Box, we know the approximate location of Gressenheller within London (~9 Earlham St., Westminster); however, I will not do that, because DearestHershel already made a video entirely dedicated to locating St. Mystere using these exact points and others, and I do not disagree with his conclusions.

Letter from Luke to the Player

🇯🇵 親愛なる友人｛プレーヤー｝　へ 🗺️ To my dear friend, {Player}, 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 To my dear friend, {Player},

🇯🇵 ボクたちが、あの日、あの町で体験したことは、誰にもいえない秘密になってしまったんだ。なぜなら、これは… 🗺️ What we experienced that day in that town has become a secret that we can’t tell anyone. This is because… 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 The things we saw that day in the village became a secret we would have to keep from everyone for the rest of our lives. Because, you see…

Nerd talk aside, I would personally consider this letter to not be canon in-universe, notably because Luke specifically states that he will never divulge the secret of St. Mystere… only to proceed to do exactly that in his letter. Also because of the fact that this letter being canon would imply that someone sharing the Player’s name exists in the Laytonverse and that Luke knows them well enough to want to share details of his cases to them, including this one.

Whether you decide to make your personal self-insert character canon or not, this still raises the question of just how many people are aware of what transpired in St. Mystere. Layton and Luke seemingly decided to not tell anything to anyone at all in order to protect Flora; Bruno and the inhabitants of St. Mystere have been aware of pretty much everything for years (perhaps less so in the case of the robots) and will keep doing their thing; and Don Paolo is quite unlikely to tell anyone either due to the fact that pretty much every plan he had for the town, its treasure, and its robots, ended in failure (and also, depending on how we interpret his character, he would also keep the secret for Flora’s sake).

And yet, there is something that has been bothering me for many years…

親愛なるレイトン教授へ

あれから数か月になりますが、教授、お元気ですか？一緒に仕事をしている仲間からレイトン教授が遺産相続騒動を解決したという話を耳にして思わず手紙を書いてしまいました。

タージェントから世界を救ったあのレイトン教授が単なる遺産相続のナゾトキの依頼を引き受けるなんて。まさか…と思いましたが、ナゾには目がない教授ですし、きっと知的好奇心を刺激される不思議な出来事だったんでしょうね。

Dear Professor Layton,

It’s already been months since then, hasn’t it? I hope you’re well. When I heard from my colleagues that Professor Layton had resolved an inheritance dispute, I couldn’t help but write a letter.

I couldn’t believe that the same Professor Layton who saved the world from Targent accepted the simple request of solving an inheritance puzzle! But since you always have a penchant for puzzles, it must have been a curious case and quite the intellectual workout.

This letter was written by Emmy Altava and was revealed in the Japan-exclusive Azran Legacy art book (For the translation, I borrowed the one made by @the-azran-legacies for the general style, but took the liberty of altering a few words when I felt like their translation was deviating a bit too much from the original text). Needless to say… If only at first glance, this is an issue. Not only did Emmy hear of the case, but she also heard of it from her journalist coworkers? Well, then again: perhaps what should be said here was that Layton did indeed talk about the case to the media (reluctantly so), but left it at “We solved an inheritance dispute in a remote village, it was boring, nothing to see here.” And perhaps the reason Emmy heard of it from her coworkers was either because Layton had not solved a single case between AL and CV, or because this case was simply a “really, there is nothing to see here, I promise” and some journalists are not buying it.

PS: Wild ass theory. In the original trilogy, Luke isn’t writing his letters to “the player.” He’s writing them to Emmy. And in the case of Curious Village, Emmy received Luke’s letter some time after she sent Layton her own. After all, did you know that while CV, DB and UF all start with Luke writing a letter to someone, there is not a single letter to the player in the prequel trilogy games? In fact, perhaps we could even theorise that Luke only got Emmy’s address thanks precisely to the letter she sent to Layton? And he decided to write her a letter explaining her the whole story after he finally got news from her?

Cutscene #01

There is not much to say about the cutscene itself, apart from the fact that the country road they are taking leads to absolutely nowhere else (which is precisely what Puzzle #001 is about), and that aside from said narrow country road, there is not a single human-made element around them for miles. My 2018 past self had already emphasised on that, but St. Mystere is consistently described as being particularly isolated and secluded (due to the fact that it has only one exit, and that the crank being stolen later will close that only exit).

The Car Scene

Phew! We finally made it past the, um… first two lines of dialogue in the game after the mobile cutscene. Wow. This is going to be a long ride, isn’t it.

I will not give the entirety of the dialogue, but I will show the parts that caught my attention:

🇯🇵 …２ヶ月前、資産家、アレン・ラインフォード氏が亡くなった。 🗺️ …Two months ago, the wealthy Allen Rhineford passed away. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 Two months ago, Baron Augustus Reinhold passed away. 🇯🇵 その後、彼の遺言状が開示されたが、そこには、実に興味深い内容が記されていた。 🗺️ Later, his will was disclosed, and it contained some really interesting details. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 Shortly after his death, his will was disclosed. The contents of it were fascinating, to say the least.

Baron Augustus Reinhold is actually named Allen Rhineford in the Japanese version, according to the romanised version of アレン・ラインフォード. Also, it is to be noted that the Japanese version does not seem to refer to him as a baron, at least not yet.

(EDIT: I mistakenly wrote it as Lineford, thinking that there was no official romanised version; however, there actually is one, and it is indeed Rhineford, not Lineford. The source is this Japanese wikipedia page, which gives the romanised names of the characters according to the Japanese version. My bad!)

He died two months earlier; or rather, his death was publicly announced two months earlier, as we will learn much later. Either case, the event Layton refers to took place more or less two months before the day they arrive in St. Mystere, which means that this would have happened around the end of May/beginning of June 1963.

🇯🇵 …我が一族の家宝、「黄金の果実」をこの町のどこかに隠してある。 🗺️ …My family's heirloom, the "Golden Fruit," is hidden somewhere in this town. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 "The Reinhold family treasure, the Golden Apple, is hidden somewhere within this village. 🇯🇵 「黄金の果実」を探しあてた者に、私が所有するすべての遺産を相続させる… 🗺️ Whoever finds the "Golden Fruit" will inherit all of my property… 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 To whomever successfully locates this treasure, I offer the whole of my estate."

Fun fact: the original Japanese version refers to the Golden Apple as 「黄金の果実」, meaning Golden Fruit, rather than specifically an apple.

🇯🇵 遺言の内容を知った一族の者たちは、その「黄金の果実」を、先を争うように探した。 🗺️ The members of the family, who knew the contents of the will, scrambled to find the "golden fruit". 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 Naturally, those who attended the reading of the will immediately set out in search of the Golden Apple. 🇯🇵 しかし、結局、誰も見つけることはできなかった。 🗺️ However, in the end, no one was able to find it. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 But in the end, everybody came back empty handed. 🇯🇵 そもそも、そんな家宝があったなんてことを誰ひとり聞いたことがなかったという。 🗺️ In the first place, no one had ever heard of such a family heirloom. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 It turns out that no one had even heard of such a treasure existing until its mention in the will.

The Japanese version specifies “family members,” while the English translation is more general—which could have implied that other unrelated people might have been present during the reading of the will (or at least, that is how I have interpreted it for years). It is a nitpick, since we are probably few to imagine that people from outside St. Mystere would have actually been present during the reading, if you think about it hard enough. But it is interesting to note that Layton is thus more or less saying here that the only people who bothered searching for the Golden Apple were the family members themselves, and that there is no clear mention of other outsiders coming to look for it.

If no outsider aside from Layton was warned, then this raises the question of just how Don Paolo came to hear about it in the first place… Current hypothesis is that he is stalking Layton and perhaps even reading his mail, simply put. There are dubious ways to read letters without opening them.

Did you notice that the scenery changes after Layton is finished explaining the basics of the case? It seems like the country road led them to go through a forest dense enough to block some of the sunlight. After Luke solves the puzzle, the background goes back to the brighter scenery.

🇯🇵 ああ。彼は莫大な財産をかけて、生涯最後のナゾを仕掛けたというわけだ。一体、何が目的なのかもわからない。 🗺️ Yes. He set up the last puzzle of his life with his vast fortune. I don't even know what the purpose is. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 Quite. Augustus Reinhold staked his entire fortune just to create one more puzzle before his death.

Hey, would you look at that! ナゾ has been said in a dubious context, you know what this means. Take a shot everybody (I’m joking. Please don’t. Tea is amazing but there are health issues related to drinking too much of it).

Joke aside, there is something else to note: depending on how the sentence is read (I do hope someone who can speak Japanese could help clarify), Layton might be either saying that the baron staked his fortune on that “last puzzle,” or that he used said fortune to set up the puzzle in question—or, most likely, both, given the fact that we have another case of “ok perhaps this isn’t magic but you literally have to be the richest person on Earth to pull this off” on our hands.

Additionally, in the Japanese version exclusively, Layton has this additional line: “I don’t even know what the purpose [behind the treasure hunt] is.” This line was most likely removed from the translations due to the lack of space.

In fact, there was another instance in which the translations had no choice but to add another dialogue box and split Luke’s dialogue in two! This happened in this case:

🇯🇵 確かに先生とは気が合いそうですね。ところで、「黄金の果実」っていったい何なのでしょうか？ 🗺️ I’m sure he would have gotten along with you. By the way, what exactly is the “golden fruit”? [1|2] 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 It certainly sounds like you two would’ve gotten along, Professor! [2|2] 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 By the way, just what is this Golden Apple anyhow?

To be honest, I believe that splitting this dialogue into two different dialogue boxes makes more sense, since they are two vastly different sentences and lack a clear transition.

🇯🇵 宝石なのか、骨董品なのか、それもまたナゾだよ。実に興味深い。 🗺️ Is it a jewel or an antique, that is also a puzzle. Really interesting. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 Some speculate it's a rare antique, while others say it could be a gem, yet its identity remains elusive. 🇯🇵 だけど、ルーク、私はこの一件に、他にも何かとてつもない秘密が隠されているような気がしてならないんだ。 🗺️ But, Luke, I can't help but feel that there are some other great secrets hidden in this case. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 But, Luke, I can't shake the feeling that this matter is linked to some larger mystery. Something huge.

So, have you noticed? The English translations have failed to account for the fact that Layton used the magic word in order to describe the nature of the Golden Apple. Just thought I would let you know, it would be a shame to forget to take a shot :p

Oh, and speaking of removing an important “puzzle” magic word through the translation, we have another one just a bit ahead:

🇯🇵 このナゾトキをラインフォード夫人に依頼されただけさ。 🗺️ I was commissionned by Mrs. Rhineford to do this puzzle solving. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 Augustus Reinhold's wife, Lady Dahlia, has asked me to investigate the situation.

Anyway. Layton “can’t shake the feeling” that there is a lot more to the Golden Apple puzzle than a simple treasure hunt. But what could possibly lead him to this feeling? Well… the fact that St. Mystere is so isolated, that the Golden Apple would be an heirloom whose existence is unknown to the members of the family which is supposed to own it, even the fact that Lady Dahlia Reinhold would contact him specifically, perhaps… are some ever so slightly peculiar details, I suppose. Not to mention, perhaps, one thing related to the map puzzle, depending on how the puzzle lore goes. All this is not necessarily enough to truly raise the red flags just yet, but enough to spark some curiosity and suspicion.

🇯🇵 先生、なんだかはりきってますね。考古学者でありながら、どんなナゾでも解決する名探偵、 🗺️ Professor, I'm kind of excited. The great detective who can solve any puzzle while being an archaeologist, 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 This is all so exciting! 🇯🇵 エルシャール・レイトン、さっそく現場へ急行ってわけですね！ 🗺️ Hershel Layton, rushed to the scene immediately! 🇺🇸 I hope St. Mystere is ready for the famous archeologist and puzzle-solving detective, Hershel Layton! 🇬🇧 I hope St Mystere is ready for the famous archaeologist and puzzle-solving detective, Hershel Layton!

Come on, Luke, you have seen much harder puzzles than this. Though, if I were to open a map and see this blatantly not-to-scale drawing instead, I too would have at least a little moment of surprise.

So… This is when the crazy talk really starts getting in. What are your thoughts? Luke is evidently shocked just at the mere sight of it, so I fear that the Doylist explanation “Luke actually is holding a regular map, it’s just that the players are shown the puzzle instead” seems out of the table. Somehow, Luke is able to take this paper, solve the puzzle on it, and deduce from this drawing real life directions for what is for him, currently, the middle of nowhere.

Strange, really strange… It is almost as if the drawing itself were less the key to figuring out the real life directions to take, and rather a gatekeep preventing whoever looks at it from accessing the true map until the puzzle is solved.

Hm? Ah, don’t mind me, I was just rambling. I have not seen enough evidence in this particular instance yet, so the hypothesis that Luke would be surprised less by the fact of seeing a puzzle, and more by the fact that he would find a puzzle that would do Lady Dahlia’s bidding, is at this stage baseless conjecture. I will just keep this little bit of speculation in the back of my mind and see if more evidence to confirm it shows up later, under similar but different circumstances. (Spoiler alert: it does happen regarding the puzzle lore, and it is even crazier than I expected.)

🇯🇵 その地図を解読しないと町には着けないらしい。 🗺️ It seems that you can't get to the town without deciphering this map. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 Lady Dahlia seems to have given us a test. We'll need to decipher this map in order to find the village. 🇯🇵 どうやら夫人は、私を試すつもりのようだ。 🗺️ It seems that she is going to test me. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 She wants to see if we're capable of cracking the mystery surrounding the Reinhold fortune. 🇯🇵 私が遺産の謎を解ける人物かどうか…君はどう思う？　ルーク。 🗺️ I wonder if I'm the one who can solve the mystery of the inheritance... What do you think, Luke? 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 Care to give it a go, Luke?

Um. Ahem. Excuse me? That last sentence is quite intriguing, all the more so since it could have used the puzzle magic word, but decided to go with the regular kanji spelling instead. Funny how it was not translated at all in the English versions… I can imagine why, but that is still surprising. This sort of reminds me of the cryptic sentences Layton will sometimes say in the prequel trilogy for no reason other than to sound cool and cryptic.

Anyway. We FINALLY reached the first puzzle! Yayyyyy… oh, dear.

So, uh… You know what? I think I will leave the actual puzzle for another time. This post has already been WAY longer than I anticipated and I am exhausted x’D I would rather go back to it with a clearer mind rather than rush it.

And that is all! Just getting to the first puzzle has been quite the adventure, and trying to keep track of so many languages at once made things even worse. To be honest, in the future I will probably drop all languages other than Japanese and US + UK, including dropping French despite the fact that it is my mother language, because searching through the files is not a short task… and because I did not even get to show them here at all anyway, so this was pretty much extra work for nothing.

I guess I will go back to them one day if I ever make my archiving work public, but that will be the question for another time. For now, the website I made for CV is for local use only, because uploading it and its assets would be quite the hassle (not to mention “arguably illegal…?” I have no idea here).

In either case, the Italian, Spanish and German versions are certain to be dropped when I will move to other games. The European version of Curious Village contains the data for all languages at once, but starting from Diabolical Box onwards, this will no longer be the case; so unless I were to get the roms for all EU languages each time, I wouldn’t be able to do the datamining if I wanted to.

Still, speaking of languages! There is one last thing I would like to share, and that is a thorough comparison between the US and UK versions. Here goes!

The differences are either nonexistent or subtle most of the time, but as we can see, there are a few differences still. So… Should I refer to the US and UK versions as two different languages? One language and a half? Eh. Who knows. I have been treating them as two entirely separate languages so far, just to be thorough.

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