She's No Ghost, But She Is Hauntingly Beautiful.

[rionaleonhart]

More 13 Sentinels rambling! The main plot developments I discuss here are from Juro's route (which I've now finished!), Hijiyama's and Gouto's.



Juro was already thoroughly up my street as a character, and now I find out that his 'best friend' is in fact an alternate-universe version of himself only he can see, who keeps erasing and rewriting his memories for his own ends. I genuinely cannot believe this game exists and I had no part in its creation.

'Am I... going to disappear?' I am enjoying Juro's understandable existential terror enormously.

Very intrigued by Izumi and Morimura shifting back to 2089 and living outside society together for several years, with no way to prove their citizenship. Some excellent weird isolation there. I imagine this is the Izumi who eventually tells Morimura he's in love with her?

Fuyusaka has a crush on Yuki! (Fuyusaka has a crush on everyone, frankly.)

Sector 4 is 'another colony'? Sector 4, i.e. 1985?

I hugely enjoyed the Jpop in the final battle of the second area, and I'd have loved to have that sort of soundtrack for all the fighting.

Getting to see the moment Izumi transferred himself into Kurabe's nanomachines and created Shiba and overwrote his memory: great, great, great stuff.

So we're a human colony living in a simulated environment, and the environment designer got lazy and repurposed a bunch of code from a robot battle simulator? I genuinely love this as an explanation for why robots keep attacking the city. That's magnificent.

I realise that there was disagreement about the best era to simulate, but I have to question the decision to kick off one of the colonies shortly before the Second World War. 2188 Miura, you cannot doom this colony to conflict and food shortages just because you're a war fanboy.

You may have destroyed the last effort to preserve humanity with your coding techniques, Okino, but your relationship with Hijiyama is still delightful, at least.

(I was so pleased to unlock Hijiyama again. I'd missed this dynamic! Although the yakisoba pan change quest was a bit of a struggle.)

I love how smug Tomi is to have blackmail material.

HOW WAS MORIMURA 'CURRENTLY OUT OF THE COUNTRY' IN THE LAST 2105-ERA LOOP

EXCUSE ME, 426 AND FLUFFY ARE THE SAME ENTITY?

Aww, it's nice to see Juro Kurabe reach an amicable point with the past version of himself who's been living inside him and manipulating his memories. What a weird relationship. I'm enjoying it.

'He's a talking cat who's here to save the world.'
'What the shit are you talking about?'

I laughed aloud when I saw Hijiyama had bought four yakisoba pan. Live your dream, Hijiyama.

I enjoy Ida's incredibly bitter 2188 log. 'Because someone thought it'd be a great idea to give that guy senior admin ID.'

'Due to the incompatibility of the violent memories of Izumi that Morimura transplanted and the gentle artificial personality that Tamao created, Kurabe nearly had a breakdown.' Excellent. I'm so pleased.

As I mentioned in my last entry, I've been pondering a fic in which each character has a scene devoted to their own psychological breakdown. Juro's capacity for breakdowns in particular, though, is so rich that I'm not sure I can explore it to my satisfaction in a single scene of a larger fic. Maybe I need to write a fic focusing entirely on what a disaster Juro is.

I don't understand or approve of this 'oh, 426 Izumi didn't really kill the kids' business. If he didn't kill the kids, why is Kurabe struggling with memories of shooting them? Morimura's guilt over shooting him when he didn't kill them is interesting, I suppose, but I'm way more interested in Izumi/Kurabe having to deal with the horror of intentionally, cold-bloodedly killing all his friends when they're guilty of nothing in their control.

I feel canon is inconsistent on this point, so I choose to disregard the version of canon that's less interesting to me. You can't take my child murder away from me, 13 Sentinels.



I'm going to miss this game when I've finished it.

Comments

[pict]

You can't take my child murder away from me, 13 Sentinels.

... okay, full disclosure, I copied this line into the reply window with the intent of some sort of pithy rejoinder and then just stared at it for several minutes like, 'yup, that's fair.' In my defense, I didn't get any sleep last night. And I can't be bothered to delete it, but I've decided that writing this explanation is somehow less effort? I don't know, man.

This is the first entry of yours I've read on this particular subject. I have no idea what's going on but I want to play this game now. It sounds wild. Does it do time travel better than the best game ever, Final Fantasy XII-2?

[rionaleonhart]

I almost didn't include that 'child murder' line and then concluded I might as well be honest about who I am as a person.

This game is incredible and I heartily recommend playing it. Its approach to storytelling is basically to go 'why waste time with setup when you could just be going top speed at all times?' and then throw five hundred plot revelations into your face.

I can definitely say that, like Final Fantasy XIII-2's 'IF YOU CHANGE THE FUTURE YOU CHANGE THE PAST', 13 Sentinels has an approach to time travel I haven't seen before.

[pict]

'IF YOU CHANGE THE FUTURE YOU CHANGE THE PAST'

wait, what

[rionaleonhart]

Although of course that's XIII-2, rather than XII-2.

[pict]

Ma'am, that is not a naturally occurring hair colour.

I will definitely add 13 Sentinels to my list! Final Fantasy XIII-2, not so much. Jury's still out on XII-2.

[pict]

I got the roman numeral wrong and now I can't go back and edit it. It is going to haunt me.

[batman]

I am so delighted you have finished Juro's route and so understand why I have been giggling behind my hand every time you talk about how Juro is a character tailored just for you, because boy is he. Literally when you were talking about your plans for breakdown fic I was like "oh man, Riona is going to be so pleased that there's a one-line mention of Juro's canonical breakdown which hasn't been explored in sufficient detail and absolutely should be". I personally like that he has an inferiority complex with himself too, because that's gold.

I was spoiled by Fluffy and Shiba being the same person, as well as 426, because I spent a lot of time playing Devil Survivor 2 and Trails of Cold Steel, and so can recognise Ben Diskin's voice pretty well at this point. This did work against me though, because Juro is voiced by Chris Hackney!

Also Hijiyama is an inspiration to us all. Live out your dreams, Hijiyama, and get as many yakisoba pan as you can carry, which may be a lot because you're committed.

[rionaleonhart]

I love that Juro was clearly perfect for me from the start and then just kept getting more perfect.

Literally when you were talking about your plans for breakdown fic I was like "oh man, Riona is going to be so pleased that there's a one-line mention of Juro's canonical breakdown which hasn't been explored in sufficient detail and absolutely should be".

YEP. When I came across that line in the Mystery Files, I went, 'Oh, that's the thing batman said would be 100,000,000,000% relevant to my interests.' (You were correct.)