[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.

[Meat Man (Alfons)]

Originally posted by srd_27:

12 year olds are not little kids, they aren't dumb. There are plenty of murder or other serious criminal cases done by prepubescent kids or teens.

I certainly was stupid when I was twelve

[kimori]

in the game there is a cutscene showing probably the dad of sunny cutting a tree with a rope on it
when we try to interact he says something like: you're not my son, go away
so we can assume that things didn't go as smoothly and they actually were caught
and it was sunny's parents who hid the murder trying to protect their son from legal issues
there was also his mother saying that she already lost mari so she can't lose sunny as well
which also makes me wonder if that has to do with it
im kinda late but yeah
thats what i think

[gabl8a89]

The plot twist certainly got holes on it, but it ain't that bad. Perhaps Sunny's dad / mom bribe into high ranks so department of justice believe she was died of suicide.

[MrPudding-Sama]

This is also the thing I dont understand how peoples can get along with "ah Basil and Sunny are just kids accidents can happen" About Sunny's violin 5 teenager worked at part time jobs for a significant time then Mari just said we have to play better for out friends then mf Sunny destroyed violin and his sister spine then his other mf psychopath friend just offered hım lets hang her so we you wont get blame even without thinking what ıf she is breathing but so slow only medical equipment can detect, they did not care for Mari, if she lost an eye they was also gonna take her tongue to make sure she wont tell anyone what they did

[MrPudding-Sama]

Originally posted by 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.

Once I cracked up my brother's head with a door when I was around 9 but first thing I did was finding an adult to help us

[keep.it.professional]

The twist is certainly far-fetched and bizarre, but it's not at all impossible, and no doubt similar things have in fact happened -- there have been an awful lot of lives lived.

The conceit of the game is "suppose this horrible thing happens -- then what?" and I think it works as an exploration of that unthinkable hypothesis.

[Ivy Bug]

Um....Ayo the pizza here....*Intense yelling in background* Never mind I will...Just.,