[Spoilers] Early hints to the true identity of the characters

[Esphee]

Let me preface by the fact that I loved every uncertain choice and winding road leading to the final confrontation. It felt ethereal. I usually play these "choice matters" games completely uninformed and in one play through because once the ending is achieved, it's more realistic to what I could have done being dropped into a similar scenario.

As the title suggests, I loved the subtle hints that you, as the bird/ lizard person, receive in your journey as to what can be expected at the end of your story. (Especially the fact that I was a BIRD LIZARD! Freaky, I know!) Guessing is part of the fun, but you can't deduce a true ending until after the first 2-3 interactions with "the lady in white". I had my skeptic goggles on lock to try and narrow down what role everyone had to play throughout the game. In doing so not a single character felt bland or uninterested after you figured them out because there was always such vibrancy and depth surrounding them.

I figured the Narrator had an ulterior motive similar to the Parable series. While he did, and I was force into situations that didn't allow me to spare the Princess, it only gave way for more unanswered captivation over his "true" role. This lead me to realize his goal of "staying alive as long as he could", being a viable win condition for his character within the confines of the game. When either you, the princess, or both of you died, his scenario was concluded, and as a result, that version of himself in space-time, died. A motive for survival and a theme of wanting to live for the experiences life has to offer. By the end of the game you realize that the Narrator is an imperfect being similar to a naive child wishing to continue a game of tag without understanding that all good things must come to an end for them to be considered good. I will say the mirrors perplexed me for a while and might even have a better explanation on another play through where I focus on pleasing the Narrator, but his endings aren't fun, he's more about prolonging the inevitable.

The Princess (catalyst for the Lady in White) was a more complicated case. There were times where I thought the game was going to swap our roles due to the amount of control she exerted over the Narrator. Her control made me question the laws of this game. "Could you will anything into existence if you had enough confidence in yourself?" I remembered asking, and it turns out, the answer to that was Yes. It left me longing for moments where you broke free from the Narrator to exist outside of the game he was playing. The Princess and her character seemed to give the player purpose. A half of the whole that had been left by the prior god that created you, with the Narrator only being an echo in time of that deity. She reasons that there should only be death by the end of the game not knowing any better. Seeming to just want to roam from universe to universe with you because you complete her. The one thing she could never destroy, and the only thing that wasn't her. (Talk about a match made in heaven!) She too was also naive by considering death as the only purpose to her existence. While she is right, and that is the role she was designed for, I chose to see more in her and fought her ideas. I wanted her to be free of expectation, not constrained to a path designed for her. I can't say I've had that emotion for any character in any game before. After watching her break down and mold to the interactions between the player, I felt sympathy for her role in complementing the players existence. Through all the choices, reactions, emotions, and discord, the end result was always by design. That feeling of stepping back for a moment and realizing the cycle only continues because we thirst for outcomes was wild.

Finally, the player (and his many voices) was well done. From the large amount of branching questions, actions, interactions, and secrets, the game scratched my lore itch without having to save scum. The only time I ever saved was when it crashed intentionally after choosing to sit with the Lady in White forever (whaaaat, I could have been the only one!). Being able to explore the confines of each character in a single play-through was refreshing and by doing an entire play-through this way, should I get the urge to really test the limits of each scenario in the future, I can return and still be surprised by different encounters (based on the number of achievements I seem to be lacking). The voices. By god, the voices had me laughing, tearing up, and on edge (Heart, Lungs, Liver, Nerves @_@) practically the entire time and made the voices seem like I wasn't alone against this controlling Narrator guy (who I definitely thought was just another one of my voices that went rogue).

Overall, I would say this game gave me a new perspective

[brickey.8]

I'm curious which routes you got to reach those conclusions.

For the Narrator, in a way he's not motivated by self-preservation at all--he's doing this so everyone *else* won't die. It's the player's life that he needs to preserve as long as possible. Since the scenario resets every time you die, his victory condition requires both that you kill the princess and that you not die afterward. In fact, if you ask the right questions to the mirror you learn that the person he's an echo of killed himself after setting all this up, since that was necessary for the plan to work.

In a way he's very upfront about what he wants. It's just the "how" and "why" that he constantly lies about.

For the Princess/Shifting Mound, she's more a god of change than death. In a lot of routes her debate questions in the final route are about growth, or conflict, or hardships being only temporary. She does tend to embody more negative concepts than positive ones, by nature of the fact that this is a story about you killing each other.

[folly]

Originally posted by brickey.8:

For the Princess/Shifting Mound, she's more a god of change than death. In a lot of routes her debate questions in the final route are about growth, or conflict, or hardships being only temporary. She does tend to embody more negative concepts than positive ones, by nature of the fact that this is a story about you killing each other.

I think the reason she's presented poorly is because of the narrator. he's only thinking about preventing death and destruction. he sees that as the primary part of her. "kill the goddess who contains death" sounds more reasonable than "bring all processes to a standstill and make the universe cling to its dying moments forever"

[SotiCoto]

It isn't like the characters even have a meaningful identity.

The Princess is a personification of change, and is always a princess because of meta reasons. Also it is uncertain whether she even has any will of her own as she tends to be completely shaped (including her personality) by the voices.

The Protagonist is supposedly a personification of the perpetuity and stagnancy... but has a bunch of voices in their head that aren't adequately explained and are never described as anything more than shards of glass within the narrative, which is frankly crazy as they are the primary driving force for everything that happens in the game. Also Protag is a crow-man, or possibly a raven. Dunno why. Maybe traditional association with wisdom or observation. Just a guess.

And the Narrator is just a completely insane ghost who is stuck in permanent fear-of-death mode and takes it to the most irrational extremes imaginable... and is apparently different to the voices, though they probably got stuck there due to his crazy ideas about preventing death. No idea how he got the ability to do any of this in the first place though.

So... yeah... it is all just vague abstraction.

[folly]

Originally posted by SotiCoto:

It isn't like the characters even have a meaningful identity.

The Princess is a personification of change, and is always a princess because of meta reasons. Also it is uncertain whether she even has any will of her own as she tends to be completely shaped (including her personality) by the voices.

Yes, the princess is shaped by your beliefs, that's the whole point of the character. she doesn't have a concrete personality. she's part of something bigger which very clearly does have its own will

Originally posted by SotiCoto:

The Protagonist is supposedly a personification of the perpetuity and stagnancy... but has a bunch of voices in their head that aren't adequately explained and are never described as anything more than shards of glass within the narrative, which is frankly crazy as they are the primary driving force for everything that happens in the game. Also Protag is a crow-man, or possibly a raven. Dunno why. Maybe traditional association with wisdom or observation. Just a guess.

the voices are adequately explained if you look for it. the princesses are pieces of Her and the voices are pieces of you. that's it. as to how they're related to perpetuity and stagnation.... they all have personality traits that could be described as "stuck in their ways."
there's stubborn, for one. smitten is too lovestruck to admit any fault, paranoid is too fearful to give things a chance, contrarian quite literally refuses to move forward, hunted is too meek to take action, and so on. so just like the princess changes every time, you start hearing a voice, mirroring the way you acted in the last world - a piece of you.
also... primary driving force? wdym? they drive fairly little compared to you, the narrator, and the princess

Originally posted by SotiCoto:

And the Narrator is just a completely insane ghost who is stuck in permanent fear-of-death mode and takes it to the most irrational extremes imaginable... and is apparently different to the voices, though they probably got stuck there due to his crazy ideas about preventing death. No idea how he got the ability to do any of this in the first place though.

So... yeah... it is all just vague abstraction.

this is correct. but I don't understand why you're presenting it like a negative? old man deluded by fear of death, ruins things for everyone else. is there something wrong with that? I genuinely don't know why he has the same voice though. nothing to do with his character. just a stylistic choice ig
the last bit is actually interesting to me, though - how did he do any of this? he claims that in life he was "painfully mortal." does this mean he was literally just a guy? or just that he was technically able to die? and if he was literally just a guy, h o w d o?
personally, I like this aspect. it evokes the same sort of feeling as ancient mythology. someone random accomplishes an impossible metaphorical action in real life via means you don't need to question. "I lassoed the sun" "I brought fire to humanity" "I carved the first people out of wood" yk? it's fun!

[SotiCoto]

Originally posted by Sukaisage:

Yes, the princess is shaped by your beliefs, that's the whole point of the character. she doesn't have a concrete personality. she's part of something bigger which very clearly does have its own will

No, not your beliefs. The Voices.
It is their mad takes on any given situation that result in the princess changing, not the player's beliefs. Not that I expect the game to know what the player believes in the first place, but the voices interpret things in some wacky and annoying ways.
Also I'm fairly sure the Omniprincess doesn't have a will, or at least she doesn't have the distinction of a will that makes it what it is, as she holds to no preferences and gives cagey non-answers to any question you ask of her. Having all the personalities is functionally the same as having no personality.

Originally posted by SotiCoto:

the voices are adequately explained if you look for it. the princesses are pieces of Her and the voices are pieces of you. that's it. as to how they're related to perpetuity and stagnation.... they all have personality traits that could be described as "stuck in their ways."
there's stubborn, for one. smitten is too lovestruck to admit any fault, paranoid is too fearful to give things a chance, contrarian quite literally refuses to move forward, hunted is too meek to take action, and so on. so just like the princess changes every time, you start hearing a voice, mirroring the way you acted in the last world - a piece of you.
also... primary driving force? wdym? they drive fairly little compared to you, the narrator, and the princess

You're using the word "you" in ways I wouldn't use it. I mean they're not pieces of me. I disagree with most of them. The only one I consistently agree with is the Contrarian. I'm not sure if they're necessarily parts of the crow-man either, since their existence is clearly tied to the mirror, not only because they're called "shards of glass" by the Spectre, but because they vanish when crow-man approaches the mirror. So basically they, in their entirety, are the mirror and lose their distinction when approaching the mirror like the princess's personalities lose their distinction when taken by the omniprincess.
But crow-man... i.e. the protagonist... i.e. the vessel that the player rides in and occasionally gets to exert control over, is not the mirror.
So there are still plenty of questions left unanswered in that regard.

And as to them driving the game, that should be obvious. What the voices say and do shapes the princess. The player can make a sparse few choices regarding what the crow-man does, limited by both the game's options and how many have been removed by the Omniprincess to prevent repetition. BUT the Voices have their own interpretation of those choices. Mad takes, as I previously said, that completely shape the Princess in both body and personality, and thus in turn restrict the player in how one is able to react to the princess.
The most obvious example is in the Adversary route where the Voice of the Stubborn can make the Princess literally unkillable by believing in it, and the player has absolutely no option to prevent it happening once the idea is incepted. And that is after his mad desire to fight shaped HER mad desire to fight in the first place. I mean you get on that path by taking the blade downstairs and actively trying to kill the Princess (though not immediately), but unlike the no-blade route for Chapter 1, you have to commit to the idea of trying to kill her or you end up on another route... BUT you end up in Chapter 2 with a Voice that just wants to FIGHT her, not to KILL her, which is exactly how her desires are reflected in return, and the only way to shift off that path is to forcibly let yourself die.

So yeah. Voices are not the player, probably not the crow-man either, and they shape the Princess and thus the plot.

Originally posted by SotiCoto:

this is correct. but I don't understand why you're presenting it like a negative? old man deluded by fear of death, ruins things for everyone else. is there something wrong with that? I genuinely don't know why he has the same voice though. nothing to do with his character. just a stylistic choice ig

I don't understand why you would believe it anything other than a negative.
He is trying to remove death. He is trying to bring eternal pain and suffering to all existence. Obvious villain is obvious. The fact he is insane and can't be reasoned with at all doesn't help matters.
Anyhow, I'm still not entirely sure what his relation to the voices is besides the meta connection of the voice actor. I'm just trusting that they're different because the Spectre and I believe the Tower identified them differently. There weren't many incarnations of the princess that could hear the voices and the Narrator to identify them. Besides that though, I'd assume he had some hand in their creation, since he is the one behind the mirror, so to speak.

the last bit is actually interesting to me, though - how did he do any of this? he claims that in life he was "painfully mortal." does this mean he was literally just a guy? or just that he was technically able to die? and if he was literally just a guy, h o w d o?
personally, I like this aspect. it evokes the same sort of feeling as ancient mythology. someone random accomplishes an impossible metaphorical action in real life via means you don't need to question. "I lassoed the sun" "I brought fire to humanity" "I carved the first people out of wood" yk? it's fun!

So far as I'm aware, we aren't given the answer.
How exactly he'd lock a physical embodiment of all change in a shack and force the physical embodiment of the unchanging to go and try to kill her in the shack is a mystery. A rather annoying mystery, given the entire game hinges on it. "It happens because the plot needed it to happen" is a meta-reason; not a narrative-acceptable reason.

[folly]

Originally posted by SotiCoto:

It is their mad takes on any given situation that result in the princess changing, not the player's beliefs. Not that I expect the game to know what the player believes in the first place, but the voices interpret things in some wacky and annoying ways.
Also I'm fairly sure the Omniprincess doesn't have a will, or at least she doesn't have the distinction of a will that makes it what it is, as she holds to no preferences and gives cagey non-answers to any question you ask of her. Having all the personalities is functionally the same as having no personality.

You're using the word "you" in ways I wouldn't use it. I mean they're not pieces of me. I disagree with most of them. The only one I consistently agree with is the Contrarian. I'm not sure if they're necessarily parts of the crow-man either, since their existence is clearly tied to the mirror, not only because they're called "shards of glass" by the Spectre, but because they vanish when crow-man approaches the mirror. So basically they, in their entirety, are the mirror and lose their distinction when approaching the mirror like the princess's personalities lose their distinction when taken by the omniprincess.
But crow-man... i.e. the protagonist... i.e. the vessel that the player rides in and occasionally gets to exert control over, is not the mirror.
So there are still plenty of questions left unanswered in that regard.

well I'm sorry for using the word "you" to refer to the protagonist... my bad, I guess! swap out all of those "you"s for "the long quiet" and we're good. they are pieces of the long quiet, all of which reflect stagnant traits that your choices exhibited in the last world.

Originally posted by SotiCoto:

And as to them driving the game, that should be obvious. What the voices say and do shapes the princess. The player can make a sparse few choices regarding what the crow-man does, limited by both the game's options and how many have been removed by the Omniprincess to prevent repetition. BUT the Voices have their own interpretation of those choices. Mad takes, as I previously said, that completely shape the Princess in both body and personality, and thus in turn restrict the player in how one is able to react to the princess.
The most obvious example is in the Adversary route where the Voice of the Stubborn can make the Princess literally unkillable by believing in it, and the player has absolutely no option to prevent it happening once the idea is incepted. And that is after his mad desire to fight shaped HER mad desire to fight in the first place. I mean you get on that path by taking the blade downstairs and actively trying to kill the Princess (though not immediately), but unlike the no-blade route for Chapter 1, you have to commit to the idea of trying to kill her or you end up on another route... BUT you end up in Chapter 2 with a Voice that just wants to FIGHT her, not to KILL her, which is exactly how her desires are reflected in return, and the only way to shift off that path is to forcibly let yourself die.

So yeah. Voices are not the player, probably not the crow-man either, and they shape the Princess and thus the plot.

do you expect a visual novel to have unlimited choices? do you expect to be able to do anything? the protagonist's memory is wiped each time after seeing Her. he doesn't know exactly what's going on and won't think up a strategy like you based on information he doesn't have. the choices you're given are generally very reasonable.
so after you, the player, make a few choices in the first chapter, you get a voice (part of the CHARACTER, the long quiet) that reflects those choices in a more exaggerated way. then you, the player, are given more choices dictated by what the crow-man knows and what the voices think of as solutions. of course they have mad takes - they're caricatures of one intense emotion.
the adversary is an obvious example, indeed - when you guide it far enough down one path, you reach the end of that path. the stubborn wants to fight, and when you enable every one of his choices, you end up in an eternal fight. but there is plenty of opportunity to avoid that. you can end up at the fury or the eye of the needle easily. she only becomes unkillable when you kill her and wait for her to get back up. the stubborn, and the crow-man you've built through the choices you've chosen, believe that she will.

Originally posted by SotiCoto:

I don't understand why you would believe it anything other than a negative.
He is trying to remove death. He is trying to bring eternal pain and suffering to all existence. Obvious villain is obvious. The fact he is insane and can't be reasoned with at all doesn't help matters.
Anyhow, I'm still not entirely sure what his relation to the voices is besides the meta connection of the voice actor. I'm just trusting that they're different because the Spectre and I believe the Tower identified them differently. There weren't many incarnations of the princess that could hear the voices and the Narrator to identify them. Besides that though, I'd assume he had some hand in their creation, since he is the one behind the mirror, so to speak.

I believe it's not a negative because the story needs a villain. he's not sane. that's established. and you get to defeat him. do you want the villain to be perfectly reasonable?
I don't think there's a reason the narrator has the same voice actor. might just be a stylistic choice like I said before, or maybe it's to save money. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
but, yes, he had a hand in their creation, as he did with every character that isn't him

Originally posted by SotiCoto:

So far as I'm aware, we aren't given the answer.
How exactly he'd lock a physical embodiment of all change in a shack and force the physical embodiment of the unchanging to go and try to kill her in the shack is a mystery. A rather annoying mystery, given the entire game hinges on it. "It happens because the plot needed it to happen" is a meta-reason; not a narrative-acceptable reason.

I can respect that you're not happy with this as a mystery. it's usually nice to have a real explanation for things. but, like I said before, I personally prefer it this way. it adds an extra mythological touch on top of everything. ex:
"raven steals all the water in the world from another person who stole it, flies up chimney, permanently turns all ravens black because covered in soot, and then drops mouthfuls of water in his flight, creating the massive bodies of water we have today"
you know? it's just fun. whimsical. who is this guy? how did he interact with abstract concepts? how did he fundamentally alter reality out of fear? this is unreasonable! in a good way, in my opinion. but it is unreasonable, and I can see why that could be frustrating.

[brickey.8]

Originally posted by SotiCoto:

Originally posted by Sukaisage:

Yes, the princess is shaped by your beliefs, that's the whole point of the character. she doesn't have a concrete personality. she's part of something bigger which very clearly does have its own will

No, not your beliefs. The Voices.
It is their mad takes on any given situation that result in the princess changing, not the player's beliefs. Not that I expect the game to know what the player believes in the first place, but the voices interpret things in some wacky and annoying ways.
Also I'm fairly sure the Omniprincess doesn't have a will, or at least she doesn't have the distinction of a will that makes it what it is, as she holds to no preferences and gives cagey non-answers to any question you ask of her. Having all the personalities is functionally the same as having no personality.

The bird man absolutely is a character in the story, distinct from the person behind the keyboard. Your dialog choices can shape him in a bunch of different directions but they all are things that a person in that situation would say, tinged with appropriate emotions for the situation.

And that person's beliefs shape the princess just as much as the voices do--that's why the Mound needs to erase its memory each time. That's why the narrator tries to steer you away from saying that the Princess can't die even when the Stubborn is convinced. That's why if you think it's appropriate to enter the basement with a knife in chapter 1 you encounter a more dangerous-sounding Princess, and why if you run away from the basement she gets the Nightmare's powers before any new voices are introduced. It's just harder to see most of the time, because the voices are assumed to believe the same thing entering a new chapter that "you" believe.

As for "Omniprincess", she absolutely has goals. Her initial goal is to regain all the former pieces of herself. She doesn't care which you bring her because they're all pieces that she wants. And she'll get them all at the end anyways. In the finale, she is even clearer about what she wants: She wants to convince you to stop fighting back and be gods with her together. What I will say is that it's not clear that her beliefs can shape reality the same way yours can (though it's also not clear that she *can't*).


I kinda agree that having the narrator complete an unexplained, myth-like feat to get the plot in motion is kinda cooler.

[Davaretta]

It really was an incredibly game, one that holds up a mirror to the player of his own personality. Those speeches at the end are awfully on point. It's really well written.