[SPOILER] About the main plot twist

[Double-D]

SPOILER ALERT!!!




So, as it turned out, Sunny accidentally killed Mari. And he with the help of Basil managed to cover his tracks on that. And that's kinda stupid.
Don't get me wrong - I like the writing in the game. Problem is, as usual for the genre, everything is fine and dandy when plot builds suspence. When time comes for a big reveal - the story faceplants in a very awkward way. So, you mean to tell me, that a 12-years-old killed his sister by accident (with a 12-years-old eyewitness, no less), then same 12-years-old along with said eyewitness carried the dead body to the woods so they could hang that body on a tree branch and makes it all look like a suicide? For real? And then they have kept it all a secret for 4 years? Seriously? 12-years-old making the noose for his still warm dead sister? Is this real life?
What I'm saying - it is beyond any suspicion of disbelief. The plot was actually good when it was all vague - we knew something went very wrong in the Sunny's past, we knew Mari died and Basil and Sunny probably had something to do with that. And it was fine for the story purpose. What we've been told in the end is that the whole game we were playing as an irredeemable psychopath in a quest to find his extreme doormat flowerboy friend. The good ending looks even more ridiculous: sure, I caused my sister death, ruined my family, destroyed my friends, lied about it the whole time - but now it's A-Okay, I've beaten "The Dark Entity(c)" so now we can hold hands and move on.
I'm not saying the game is bad or something. I'm just saying that big reveal is overcomplicated and is trying way to hard. Simple lie in a vain of "She tripped and fell, I didn't have anything to do with that, right Basil?" would be more than enough. There's a line between "a scared kid in denial" and "a scared kid hanging a corpse of a close relative so that noone knows that he broke said relative neck", you know.

[Nixmachine]

Have to agree with you, the plot twist just felt a little weird. I would've liked if the plot twist just ended with Sunny and Basil knowing that Sunny actually pushed Mari down the stairs, and the rest of the friends just thought of it as an accident (without knowing that Sunny broke his violin, the fight between Sunny and Mari etc etc). Or in a different twisted way, like Sunny accidentally killing her when he moved Mari up the stairs with Basil and both of them decided to hide that fact

The "Staging up suicide" part just didn't click with me - kinda reminded me of reading weird Japanese mystery novels where stuff goes from 1 to 10 in just a few pages, which are fun to read but leaves you with the feeling of "what the hell did I just read" after seeing the ending

[DR. DEADHEAD]

Politely disagree. The magnitude of the event I think enhances the believability that Sunny and Basil would be traumatized by it all; Not to mention that in a situation like this they would be panicking like crazy, extremely in shock with their hearts pounding, and raced to do anything they could to make people think Sunny wasn't at fault. After all kids often get very paranoid when it comes to getting in trouble and tend to make irrational decisions driven by fear. The fact everyone most likely would've believed it was an accident doesn't matter, because Sunny doesn't know that, and to him this is the worst possible thing he could've done.
Also I didn't interpret the true ending as everything being okay but rather a huge weight being lifted, because while that event was still horrible at least everyone knows and Sunny and Basil can now start recovering properly from it. The game never shows us everyone's reactions for a reason and I think that's because it doesn't really matter; Sunny and Basil keeping this from everyone was due to a crippling fear of never being forgiven and forever being seen as monsters, but once Sunny faces his fears once and for all he comes to terms with the fact he has to reveal everything, for the sake of everyone, no matter what the response ends up being.
It's a bittersweet ending to a story that no matter how you look at it couldn't end on an all positive note.

[Double-D]

Originally posted by DO-CTOR:

Politely disagree. The magnitude of the event I think enhances the believability that Sunny and Basil would be traumatized by it all; Not to mention that in a situation like this they would be panicking like crazy, extremely in shock with their hearts pounding, and raced to do anything they could to make people think Sunny wasn't at fault. After all kids often get very paranoid when it comes to getting in trouble and tend to make irrational decisions driven by fear. The fact everyone most likely would've believed it was an accident doesn't matter, because Sunny doesn't know that, and to him this is the worst possible thing he could've done.
Also I didn't interpret the true ending as everything being okay but rather a huge weight being lifted, because while that event was still horrible at least everyone knows and Sunny and Basil can now start recovering properly from it. The game never shows us everyone's reactions for a reason and I think that's because it doesn't really matter; Sunny and Basil keeping this from everyone was due to a crippling fear of never being forgiven and forever being seen as monsters, but once Sunny faces his fears once and for all he comes to terms with the fact he has to reveal everything, for the sake of everyone, no matter what the response ends up being.
It's a bittersweet ending to a story that no matter how you look at it couldn't end on an all positive note.

You do have a point. Kids actually do tend to deny. "It's wasn't me! It's her fault!" - that would be the first reaction of a kid in a situation like this (and, let's be honest, a lot of adults don't grow out of this mindset). Still, that's the first reaction. Then what?
Sunny had to:
1) Make sure Mari is actually dead
2) Make a plan
3) Make Basil to agree to follow said plan
4) Carry the body to the suitable place
5) Make a noose (not that easy as one might think) and attach it to the branch
6) Lift up the body (Mari is 16, by the way, she's probably about 10 kilos heavier than any of the boys) and hang her
7) Make sure it all looks believable
All of that takes time and effort. The first impuls would be long gone by step 4, after that it's just cold determination. Now, I'm a grown up man and I surely would not have the guts do perform a stunt like this. And it's 12 years old kid we're talking about!
If it was a tale of a young psychopath, who killed someone and managed to get out free - fine, a shocking story is nothing new and well wtitten one is always welcome. Problem is - for that Sunny is portrayed too sympathetically, like a good kid, who did some honest mistake. If it's a story of redemption - it's a little tonaly deaf and all the subtelty goes out of the window with that big twist.
So the tale of accepting your own crime does not correspond well with the size of the crime itself, but that's my humble opinion.

[LV-04 "Leelee"]

The hanging was Basil's idea. And Basil was the one who tied the jump-rope.

[Double-D]

Originally posted by LV-04 "Leelee":

The hanging was Basil's idea. And Basil was the one who tied the jump-rope.

Missed that somehow. My bad.
Still - that just makes two of them. Also makes Basil even more of a wreck. I knew from the start something is reall ywrond with this one.

[DR. DEADHEAD]

Originally posted by Double-D:

You do have a point. Kids actually do tend to deny. "It's wasn't me! It's her fault!" - that would be the first reaction of a kid in a situation like this (and, let's be honest, a lot of adults don't grow out of this mindset). Still, that's the first reaction. Then what?
Sunny had to:
1) Make sure Mari is actually dead
2) Make a plan
3) Make Basil to agree to follow said plan
4) Carry the body to the suitable place
5) Make a noose (not that easy as one might think) and attach it to the branch
6) Lift up the body (Mari is 16, by the way, she's probably about 10 kilos heavier than any of the boys) and hang her
7) Make sure it all looks believable
All of that takes time and effort. The first impuls would be long gone by step 4, after that it's just cold determination. Now, I'm a grown up man and I surely would not have the guts do perform a stunt like this. And it's 12 years old kid we're talking about!
If it was a tale of a young psychopath, who killed someone and managed to get out free - fine, a shocking story is nothing new and well wtitten one is always welcome. Problem is - for that Sunny is portrayed too sympathetically, like a good kid, who did some honest mistake. If it's a story of redemption - it's a little tonaly deaf and all the subtelty goes out of the window with that big twist.
So the tale of accepting your own crime does not correspond well with the size of the crime itself, but that's my humble opinion.

1. They did make sure she was dead. In one of the photographs Sunny kept calling her name to no response while crying over her body.
2. It wasn't planned, like I said this was a spur-of-the-moment idea with all logic thrown out the window due to fear and panicking.
3. The hanging was Basil's idea in the first place, because he didn't want Sunny getting in trouble.
4. It's not like they carried Mari over their shoulder, the photographs show that they dragged her all the way to that spot. A body is heavy, yes, but while gripping both her arms like we see in the photograph it wouldn't be that hard for a twelve year old.
5 and 7. It was never stated or shown that the noose was made perfectly/professionally. On top of that, since Mari is already dead, the quality of the noose and whether or not it could actually kill wouldn't matter; anyone looking at the scene will assume she died from it. We're talking about people who more likely than not have never witnessed a hung body before, so as far as it looking "believable" goes I highly doubt they would know or even question it, since again, Mari's lifeless body is hanging and they could only assume one thing.
6. I don't think a teen's body would be that much weight for two boys to lift if they really tried, plus the photos never show them lifting her up so for all we know Basil could've wrapped the noose around her head before tying the other end to the tree.

I'll admit my argument for the sixth point is fairly weak, but in my opinion these are all a matter of casting some (or a lot) of believability aside to enjoy the story being told. I know that's easier said than done for people who like picking stories apart, but out of everything the writers wanted to tell with this game I doubt they were very concerned with whether or not the boys had a lot of physical strength.
And Sunny did make an honest mistake, the death itself was still an accident. Framing it as a hanging was his and Basil's purposeful wrongdoing, but on that front they're clearly shown to deeply regret it years later and are haunted by it. Redemption is very much possible when you regret your actions and are actively working to make up for them and improve yourself, and the true ending shows that for both Sunny and Basil. Omori (the character) embodies Sunny's belief that he is an irredeemable monster who shouldn't be forgiven and shouldn't even bother trying to make himself a better person, and when Sunny and Omori battled he left that side of him behind, because he knew deep down that once he revealed everything he'd have a much better time living with himself. The game isn't saying that what he did is okay because he's accepted it now; It's a story of self-worth about this kid overcoming anxiety and taking a step towards improving himself.

[Double-D]

I don't doubt that it is a story about overcoming one's inner demons. Problem is that while most of it is, no joke, well and mature written, the source of said demons just doesn't fit.
I simply don't buy that two kids can pull out something like that. Or actually - I'm sure there are kids that can. Far, far more troubled kids that don't have any regrets later. I think one Stephen King described the type in his books.
Those two? Violin playing, videogame loving nerd and literal flowerboy? Don't buy it, sorry.
A story of someone who ate a couple of babies, felt bad about it and overcome that feeling by travelling aroung colorful fantasy land doesn't really work.
As I said - make it about any other kind of guilt. Survivor guilt, "I could have helped but I cowarded out" guilt. Anything but making a pinata from your sister's corpse, 'cause that's not something you snap out of by hanging out with your friends for couple of days and having a lucid dream about killing rabbits for oysters.

[Serathis]

Yeah it's a bit forced, but we have sound in space in other games, this is not that much of a stretch. I mean a half decent shrink, social worker would have figured out that there is something very wrong with Sunny and Basil. Or you know... forensic expert would have figured out that you don't get bruises from hanging.

[lessthanoff]

"I simply don't buy that two kids can pull out something like that. Or actually - I'm sure there are kids that can. Far, far more troubled kids that don't have any regrets later. I think one Stephen King described the type in his books. Those two? Violin playing, videogame loving nerd and literal flowerboy? Don't buy it, sorry."

Please believe me when I say this isn't meant as an insult to you personally, but I kind of feel like this mentality is quite naive, and views human morality in a very simple, black and white manner. Humans are far more complex than this. The capability of doing something truly terrible is in all of us, and that includes both you and me, whether you would like to admit it or not. That's what I feel like the game is examining.

Also, an interesting parallel: Aubrey does the *exact* same thing Sunny did. Just like Sunny pushed Mari out of anger, causing her to fall down the stairs, Aubrey pushed Basil out of anger, causing him to fall into the lake. The difference, however, is that Basil lived, but *only* because Hero showed up. If he hadn't, not only would Basil have died, but Sunny would have likely died, too. Aubrey would have been responsible for two deaths.

In a completely hypothetical situation, if we replaced Kel with Kim, is it really this insane stretch to think that things could have played out in a similar way? Aubrey freaks out at what she did and then goes into emotional shock, and Kim realizes that her best friend is about to have her life ruined. So Kim proceeds to do whatever needs to be done to make Sunny and Basil's deaths appear like an accidental drowning. It's an ugly and terrible thing to think about, but the reality is that otherwise good and decent people have been shown to do terrible, awful things for what they, at the time, believe are good reasons (NieR is another game that explores this concept in depth).

It's easy to say you would never do what Sunny did. It's easy to say you would never do what Basil did. But that's because you have the luxury, I assume, of having never had to be in their position. The reality is, you probably don't know for sure how you would act in a situation like that until it's already too late.

"Anything but making a pinata from your sister's corpse, 'cause that's not something you snap out of by hanging out with your friends for couple of days and having a lucid dream about killing rabbits for oysters."

First off, Sunny doesn't get to the position he's in at the end of the game because of his dreams. In fact, it's the exact opposite. The dream world is what he created in order to escape and run away from what he did. It is not a mechanism he uses to overcome his guilt, but instead it is a barrier he created in order to avoid having to face the horrible reality of what he did. The point of the end, where he faces Omori (the ultimate representation of this dream-like escapism), is to stop running away from reality, and to instead face it, so he can accept what he did. Secondly, Sunny doesn't just "snap out" of his guilt and self-hate for what happened to Mari. He stops running away from his horrible action, by facing Omori, so that he can take the very first step (in what will inevitably be a long road of mental healing) to accept what he did to Mari (the first thing he does is start sobbing when he wakes up in the hospital). And him facing Omori isn't just for his sake. It's for the sake of his friends, too. Because he has a responsibility to tell them what happened, and he can't do that if he is escaping from reality.

In the end, maybe you just wanted this story to go in another direction. And that's totally fine. But this is what it chose to focus on, and I personally wouldn't have changed a single thing about it. And I guess one of the reasons why I appreciated the direction this story went, over going a much more safe, easy and low-hanging fruit direction, using one of your examples for what it could have been instead, is because it chose to examine the horrible, ugly side to an otherwise good person, as well as the destructive impact it had on both him and everyone around him. The extreme grotesqueness of it is meant to be uncomfortable. It's meant to make us look inwardly at ourselves, and really make us wonder if we're as good and morally virtuous as we all like to think we are. The fact that Basil and Sunny are portrayed to be, as you put it, a "Violin playing, videogame loving nerd and literal flowerboy" is deliberate for this purpose. Being good doesn't require a ton of effort when there is nothing to challenge it.

Again, there is ugliness in all of us, after all, whether we want to admit it or not.

That, to me, is compelling.

[lessthanoff]

Originally posted by Serathis:

Yeah it's a bit forced, but we have sound in space in other games, this is not that much of a stretch. I mean a half decent shrink, social worker would have figured out that there is something very wrong with Sunny and Basil. Or you know... forensic expert would have figured out that you don't get bruises from hanging.

Basil's parents are never home to know if there is something wrong with him. And Sunny's parents obviously didn't want to hire any sort of therapist, because there would be a huge risk of said therapist finding out what Sunny did.

Regarding the forensic aspect of it, I think it's safe to assume that Sunny's parents had a hand in covering up what happened to Mari, since it's heavily implied they both found out about it very quickly. It's not obvious what exactly they did, but his mother saying (paraphrasing) "I lost my only daughter, and you are my only son. I can't lose you as well" seems very much like there are steps being taken to protect him from the consequences of what he did.

[Lambda]

Originally posted by lessthanoff:

Originally posted by Serathis:

Yeah it's a bit forced, but we have sound in space in other games, this is not that much of a stretch. I mean a half decent shrink, social worker would have figured out that there is something very wrong with Sunny and Basil. Or you know... forensic expert would have figured out that you don't get bruises from hanging.

Basil's parents are never home to know if there is something wrong with him. And Sunny's parents obviously didn't want to hire any sort of therapist, because there would be a huge risk of said therapist finding out what Sunny did.

Regarding the forensic aspect of it, I think it's safe to assume that Sunny's parents had a hand in covering up what happened to Mari, since it's heavily implied they both found out about it very quickly. It's not obvious what exactly they did, but his mother saying (paraphrasing) "I lost my only daughter, and you are my only son. I can't lose you as well" seems very much like there are steps being taken to protect him from the consequences of what he did.

Plus, I believe in one of the black space entrances there is some dialogue from Sunny's father where he says "You are not my son" which implies that the Father knew, and likely got a divorce afterwards.

[Double-D]

Oh, boy.
I'm not saying that someone like Sunny couldn't do what he did initially. Pushing someone is not hard. His and Basil's reaction and later actions on the other hand... If anything is naive - it is to think that pulling out a scheme like that (morbid by any standards) and still be a "good kid that made a mistake" is possible. At least you headspace would not look like magic land with friendly everyone.
Aubrey did pretty much the same act - she pushed Basil into the pond. Problem is - we didn't see her reaction. Plus, there was someone who could help (yes, Sunny is not a great helper, but still). Something tells me she probably would call for help if she and Basil were alone. Or at least would not fish his body out of the water to make it look like suicide somehow. Also, falling into the pond from the pier is not something like falling down the stairs from the second floor.
I'll say it again: "It's not my fault, she tripped and fell to her death. Basil was here, he will tell you the same". Much more believable, doesn't portray these two as some cold schemers (I'll stand on that, what they did takes time and effort) and other part of the game, the one about accepting your own deeds doesn't stand out that much.
As for the Sunny's dad part - I'm sure he had suspicions at least. Again - if it was a simple lie - that one thing. Knowing that your son kileed your daughter and hanged her on a tree afterwards - that's a little too much for just "Screw this, I'm outta here", don't you think?
And for the final time - I'm not even saying that all this thing about covering your tracks is unbelievable. It is unbelievable in context of the rest of the game. Have you seen .flow? If I've been told that the protagonist of that game has done something like that - I'd totally buy it. Omori in comparisson is more like that short video about Pyro from Team Fortress.

[Sammy]

Originally posted by PK-Xen:

Originally posted by lessthanoff:

Basil's parents are never home to know if there is something wrong with him. And Sunny's parents obviously didn't want to hire any sort of therapist, because there would be a huge risk of said therapist finding out what Sunny did.

Regarding the forensic aspect of it, I think it's safe to assume that Sunny's parents had a hand in covering up what happened to Mari, since it's heavily implied they both found out about it very quickly. It's not obvious what exactly they did, but his mother saying (paraphrasing) "I lost my only daughter, and you are my only son. I can't lose you as well" seems very much like there are steps being taken to protect him from the consequences of what he did.

Plus, I believe in one of the black space entrances there is some dialogue from Sunny's father where he says "You are not my son" which implies that the Father knew, and likely got a divorce afterwards.

Just to add on the possible aspect of the parents knowing, there is a line from the mother in that space where she does something along the lines of "I lost my daughter. And you're my only son. I can't lose you too..."

[lessthanoff]

I can't help but feel like you didn't take in any of the points I made, since you're not really addressing them directly, and are instead just skirting around them (only addressing portions of what I brought up, while ignoring other portions - and then arguing against things I never even mentioned) to dig in deep on your already-established convictions. I'm kind of bummed you didn't even touch on my main point at all, which I felt like is the most important one: "The capability of doing something truly terrible is in all of us, and that includes both you and me, whether you would like to admit it or not. That's what I feel like the game is examining."

How confident are you, that you could never ever do such a thing, being in the same exact situation? Like I stated several times, it's easy to present yourself as a morally virtuous person who is incapable of doing anything like this when the strength of your morality has never been tested by such a horrible scenario.

"His and Basil's reaction and later actions on the other hand... If anything is naive - it is to think that pulling out a scheme like that (morbid by any standards) and still be a "good kid that made a mistake" is possible."

So, you separated their "reaction" with their "later actions." So I'm curious how you thought their "reaction" was strange, taking their age into consideration. Sunny and Basil thought maybe Mari would wake up, so they put her in bed. When Sunny realizes she was dead, he broke down sobbing and then went into emotional shock. We don't know exactly what Basil's initial reaction was, since we only see his face (which looks suitably terrified and upset) in one photo, and are not able to listen to his thoughts like we are with Sunny.

The "later actions" I'm going to assume is referring to Basil hanging Mari's body. I'm going to ignore the red herring of "It's not my fault, she tripped and fell to her death. Basil was here, he will tell you the same" because it's not something I ever brought up, and has already been addressed by another poster, which answers this complaint just fine (I also already gave my opinion as to why what happened to Mari needed to be as gruesome as it was for the purpose of the message the game seems to be conveying).

So let's just cut out all the fat here and examine this scenario:

There is someone who just watched his best friend accidentally kill his sister, by pushing her down the stairs. Since both of them are children, they both think maybe she will wake up if they take her back up to her room and lay her down in bed. His best friend realizes she isn't waking up, and begins to cry, going into emotional shock shortly afterwards. In his mind, his best friend couldn't have done it. Because he's a "good person," and a "good person" is incapable of doing anything like that. It must have been "Something" behind him that did it. But he knows no one will believe that. So he comes up with a terrible, awful plan in order to save him - to protect him from having his life taken away from him, and from being known as someone who murdered his sister. He tells his best friend, who is still in shock, to follow his lead. They carry her out and set her down. His best friend stands there, still in emotional shock and staring at the leaves on the tree and not fully knowing what's happening. And while his best friend is standing there, he proceeds to tie a rope around his best friend's sister's neck and hangs her.

That's the gist of what is shown in the photos, as well as what is written on the captions for these events.

My question is: do you think this action - as horrible and gruesome as it is - renders either of these children irredeemable? If so, then I simply think we just have different views on morality, which means there isn't really much else to discuss on that front.

"At least you headspace would not look like magic land with friendly everyone."

You seem to forget why the upper part of headspace exists. Quote from Black Space: "The world that you created above this one... Did you create it to protect this place or to hide it away? Either way... it's become more powerful than you."

I don't think this needs much more explanation, to be honest. I think this is pretty obvious from this quote alone.

"Aubrey did pretty much the same act - she pushed Basil into the pond. Problem is - we didn't see her reaction. Plus, there was someone who could help (yes, Sunny is not a great helper, but still). Something tells me she probably would call for help if she and Basil were alone."

Again, you completely ignored the point I made and are talking about something else. I'm not talking about who was there to help, should things have gone even more wrong. I'm not talking about if Aubrey would have called for help if Basil and Sunny were still alive. Because neither of these points are relevant to the actual parallel to what happened to Mari. If Mari was still alive after falling down the stairs, and needed an ambulance, they probably would have called for one. So this point is just a red herring.

"Or at least would not fish his body out of the water to make it look like suicide somehow."

This isn't relevant to the scenario I asked you to consider in my previous post. To make it as much of a 1:1 as possible, I was putting Kim (since she is Aubrey's current best friend) as a stand-in for the role Basil had in Mari's death/hanging. But, ignoring that, like I brought up in the main point of my previous post, you don't know if she would or would not do that. I'm sure, if you asked her, she would say she would never do that. But, as I said, it's very easy to appear morally virtuous when your morality isn't being challenged in such a severe way.

"Also, falling into the pond from the pier is not something like falling down the stairs from the second floor."

Another red herring, and shows you're pretty much missing the forest for the trees here.

Regarding the father's reaction and him leaving, I actually totally agree with you. The father being unable to forgive Sunny and having to leave is completely understandable. I have no idea how I could possibly handle a scenario like that in his place.

[STFU NOOB]

The big plot hole is that nobody at any point busted the myth that she hanged herself, except very possibly the dad-- there's some loose implication with that in the hole beneath the ...w?... key at the end of Humphrey. Otherwise, you can pretty much wand wave everything with very real explanations with as simple as shock, poor upbringing and kids on the cusp of puberty playing at adults they aren't. It really is that simple. Basil seems to have a strange sort of home life, and that breeds a strange kid, who could hatch a strange plot. Principally because they lack the advanced moral reasoning, children can pull off awfully cold feats... I wouldn't think too hard about it, honestly, but there's plenty of evidence if you wish to find it. A plot like the Sunny-Basil Treetime Hangout Fiasco is probably around a 6 or a 7-- accidental, a very simple childlike ruse to cover the truth, not like there was truly malicious intent.

The suspended disbelief is that the body was never passed under a professional's eyes, and that the violin was never discovered by anyone with legal jurisdiction who said, "uh, yeah, this was a framing." Anyone in medical practice could take one look at a body that got tossed down the stairs and point out how clearly not-a-hanging it was.