#v ;;glitch in the matrix (ddlc)

[thelotusthief]

Glitch in the Matrix (DDLC verse info)

After the events of Strikers, Ichinose contacted Ren about rumors of a possibly malevolent, sentient AI in a game.  The details were scarce, but they managed to cobble together enough to figure out where to find it.  Not wanting another EMMA incident, Ren had informed the other Phantom Thieves but ended up going in alone.

Sophia had found a gateway into the game similar to how they got into the Metaverse and helped Ren through it.  But during the transition, his communication line to her went dead.  The transition was not like into the Metaverse at all.  He arrived in his usual clothes, but the transition to digital had gone wrong- or perhaps right depending on what the creator of the portal into the world had intended.  Ren’s memories were wiped except for the very basic things he’d need as a background character in the game, and he’d mostly been going through the motions since.

Part of the memory wipe involved the system trying to get rid of Arsène, though it only worked to separate his data out of Ren’s character file when it was created.  Arsène has his own character file, tossed in with the junk data in the game.  Someone like Monika (or the developers of the game) who has access to the system would, in fact, be able to get the file and put it back into Ren’s, which barring some serious coding and work, is the only way Ren’s memories would fully return.

Despite that he’s incomplete, Ren is still an actual human, not a digital character.  Because of this, while he does mostly follow the rules of the game because he doesn’t know anything else, he’d be able to resist any forced system changes (though not successfully for the most part unless his memory has been returned).  He does have moments of clarity that the world isn’t how it should be (that all the students but select ones tend to be quiet and non-invasive on the events around them, some things that would only be shown artificially in the game are more like stage props than real items etc).

And even without Arsène, his character file harbors evidence of the Phantom Thieves in the form of an encoded message that translates to their catchphrase, “Take Your Heart.”

[thelotusthief]

((Will try to expand on this, but Ren's DDLC verse basically goes that people in the real world had become aware of the existence of another sentient AI within the "game" and having dealt with EMMA Ren ends up using Sophia's help to enter and check it out. Unfortunately, he loses contact with Sophia and the transition to a character in the game wiped a lot of his memory.))

[thelotusthief]

((Going with the theme of character files in DDLC having things hidden in them, if one were to investigate Ren's, they'd find just a mass of numbers. ROT13, which translated into letters still doesn't make sense until you realize each letter is five letters ahead in the English alphabet.

And decrypting it just gives the reader "Take Your Heart."))