[SPOILERS] Story and Narrative Discussion

[Bullitbikini]

I am so happy to see so many people discussing the game, but i am very curious about everyone's thoughts on the narrative, lore, and storytelling.

We wanted Sense to mix a dark-souls/bloodborne style of lore with the notes and journals of Resident Evil 1, and see if players would enjoy piecing together the fragments. We are really interested in how many different takes on the story there are and how many people came close to the truth, especially with the cultural elements that are pretty uncommon in games.

I'd like to know what you think happened in the Chong Sing Building, what Mei's connection and larger story is, and anything you think we can do to improve on our storytelling for future projects!

Please be as harsh on the critique as you feel necessary, and feel free to speculate wildly!

[Lily]

Well personally I think Fei Fei's hate for her father caused her to go down a dark path and caused her to set up all that darkness. But her motivation is where I'm lost. It seems she wanted to do it purely out of hatred. Also the ending didn't make much sense (but that just might be me) Is Mei alive? Or is she.. Dragged to where Fei Fei is?

[Bullitbikini]

Originally posted by CyberPunk:

Well personally I think Fei Fei's hate for her father caused her to go down a dark path and caused her to set up all that darkness. But her motivation is where I'm lost. It seems she wanted to do it purely out of hatred. Also the ending didn't make much sense (but that just might be me) Is Mei alive? Or is she.. Dragged to where Fei Fei is?

I don't want to give anything away, but you are close on many points!

[cynthx]

There's a woman spirit who shows up a lot, with more grotesque features than Fei Fei. Is that Mei's mom?! Why is she there? I didn't catch much of her other than the glimpses, as though she was baiting Mei or maybe guiding her? I hope to learn more about her

[Bullitbikini]

Originally posted by cynthx:

There's a woman spirit who shows up a lot, with more grotesque features than Fei Fei. Is that Mei's mom?! Why is she there? I didn't catch much of her other than the glimpses, as though she was baiting Mei or maybe guiding her? I hope to learn more about her

There are several ghosts we included just for extra scares, but one specific ghost shows up in 2 places and is very connected to Fei Fei and Dr Lai,

[Genomac]

why the soda thanos snapped me

[Bullitbikini]

Originally posted by Genomac:

why the soda thanos snapped me

soda is bad for you!

[SandWITCH]

there's female ghost spirit in 204 after you make offering, i guess she's connected with mei, judging by her hair similliar with mei's sister Maiko

[Genomac]

I am a fan of subtlety and theory-crafting and don't want my hands held on thing like that.but the revelation Mei had about Brian as an implied relative came off kinda as a blink and you missed it kind of feel. the few bits of spoken dialogue in the game are all placed properly except just that particular one, at that particular time felt off.

if that's what was intended fine.
if not. then maybe some kinda note or journal entry that can really drive that point home that it is a point of interest, not from Mei perspective but the player. Because after that interaction there was nothing else to emphasize or dispel that theory.

as is there is no weight to why feifei lured her there, if thats is the case without it tying back to Brian. or why Mei is ghost hunting with cute doggo on the true ending, if that is the case(maybe a hun). without it tying back to the note mei sister found the Yotsuya arc.

Did Brian murder everyone and leave. is Mei in the same family tree as Brian. how many first daughters did that clan have. did those daughter experience what Mei is going through. was feifei trying to possess Mei body. will Mei's "the man"(maybe father) spill the beans. will LP and Jiangshi ever find rest.



my brain go:
the Taoist say you are our only hope. at that point my brain go, i dont know why me guess i can put some spirits at rest.

finding out Brian maybe a relative. at that point my brain go, i got roped into this by the sins of the father and how did i end up in this place to begin with.

finding the pda in Feifei"s room. at that point my brain go, why is this here why is it covered in dust why is it my chat logs. where is oni-bi, who is oni-bi, is feifei oni-bi, did i get catfished by a ghost, i got baited by bisexual spookies but why, were pda a thing way back then, (after i beat the game)Yotsuya says yes.(maybe bug)

i guess all this will be explained in the next game ;)
-brought to you by conversational writing gang

[SandWITCH]

@genomac Mei Finding the pda in Fei Fei's room probably have connection with the beginning of the game when mei in the train when she drop the pda and said "the dream so real"

and in secret ending with the dog her eyes now purple, i don't know maybe;
she change it because destroyed last time,
or it's have connected with "saparated souls"

[OneOfMany]

First thing: so far i haven't started NG+.

As for Fei Fei's reasons to do what she did:
Initially she started resenting her father because he didn't have time to bond with her during the first few years of her life. This resentment increased even more once they had to temporarily flee Hong Kong, because the HK-Police started to crack down upon Triads in general.
This got massivly boosted by the spirits of her Father's victims influencing her, telling her what a monster he'd been till that point.

What triggered her to finally go on a rampage was her father trying to redeem himself, which she couldn't accept. Since we find shell casings fitting the type of gun we found in her flat, me best guess would be her starting to mercilessly gun down anyone attending her Wedding-Party in her father's casino.

[dgresevfan]

Originally posted by Squigly:

Well personally I think Fei Fei's hate for her father caused her to go down a dark path and caused her to set up all that darkness. But her motivation is where I'm lost. It seems she wanted to do it purely out of hatred. Also the ending didn't make much sense (but that just might be me) Is Mei alive? Or is she.. Dragged to where Fei Fei is?

This is the same as me. I couldn't work out what Fei Fei did this for. Also didn't make the connection that she did the actual shooting.


Couldn't work out what the bit with the PDA was meant to mean. I assumed the PDA/dream thing in the train was basically an excuse for a new game plus. But what about the PDA in that scene near the end of the game?

[Mammoth Tank]

I'm mainly going to comment on the way the journal notes were fed to the player. I personally greatly enjoyed going back through previously discovered diary and note entries as new information was discovered. Often a name or date would appear in new text that I remember glancing over prior and would dive back into the notes to reread and compare with new awareness. I would, however, recommend adding a bit more of the CyberPunk feel by having journal notes searchable by keywords. Say I want to isolate all notes relevant to a Name, sort of akin to the "Her Story" game database search mechanism.

That would actually be one of my main issues with the game was the lack of utilizing the CyberPunk augmented human components outside of the beginning and ending segments. The fact that Mei was an augmented human never played a part in the gameplay or story.

[Bullitbikini]

Originally posted by Rip3001:

I'm mainly going to comment on the way the journal notes were fed to the player. I personally greatly enjoyed going back through previously discovered diary and note entries as new information was discovered. Often a name or date would appear in new text that I remember glancing over prior and would dive back into the notes to reread and compare with new awareness. I would, however, recommend adding a bit more of the CyberPunk feel by having journal notes searchable by keywords. Say I want to isolate all notes relevant to a Name, sort of akin to the "Her Story" game database search mechanism.

That would actually be one of my main issues with the game was the lack of utilizing the CyberPunk augmented human components outside of the beginning and ending segments. The fact that Mei was an augmented human never played a part in the gameplay or story.

This would proabbl be a nightmare for my coder to do but I LOVE the idea. Will feed it to him for our next project and see what he can do! Awesome suggestion.

[Mammoth Tank]

Originally posted by Bullitbikini:

This would proabbl be a nightmare for my coder to do but I LOVE the idea. Will feed it to him for our next project and see what he can do! Awesome suggestion.

I might suggest using the existing "purple text" summary method currently employed for highlighting and summarizing flagged puzzle keywords. These could appear at the beginning of story-rich notes. Clever flavor text could sell the CyberPunk aesthetic while not requiring any additional changes to the existing engine.

Example:

Document 0127

[color] Shirotech Data Analysis - -
Persons of Interest:
Jin Mei
Robert Kilger
RogueK1LL3r69
Date Ranges:
03/16/84 - 12/31/84 [/color]

-Document Body-

[Captain TraggPirarchBan]

Waiting for sequel, where Maiko goes to beat up Fei Fei again and return part of Mei's soul, i guess