How can Namco make a game like this?
So yeah, I decided to play Fragile Dreams. It's a short game, and I've been wanting to play it for a while, so yeah. Plus I was able to rent it, since it was so short, so I get to play a $50 game for about $5, and maybe buy it if I really liked it.
Little did I know that it would be the most fucking depressing game I have ever played in my life.
So, to start out with, you play as this kid named Seto. The world ended a while back (at least 15 years, it's implied that the end happened before Seto was born), and this kid was raised by an old man. But then the old man dies, and in a letter he tells Seto to 'go to the red tower' and find more humans. Apparently gramps thinks more people survived the apocalypse.
At first it isn't so bad. You get to explore a run-down Tokyo, fight ghosts, get the bejezus scared out of you, and make friends with a shitload of cats. Yes, cats. Apparently Seto is a cat person. Oh, and there's some guy with a KFC chicken mascot thing on his head, but he only shows up to sell you items. Which is probably good, since he's a bit of a creeper.
The main plot is just starting to pick up (I met some bratty boy who stole shit from me and ran off, and now I'm chasing him. Fuck yeah unoriginal plots), but what really gets me is this one particular side plot. Along the journey, you find small items. They're everyday things, like a shoe or a cell phone, but attached to each item is a memory. Part of the game is viewing these memories to piece together exactly what happened when the world ended.
Now in the memory we just see a still shot of the item as there is a voice over of the owner. The memory is always close to the end for each person, and they're at least aware that something is wrong with the world, if not certain that they're about to die. A few of them aren't so bad, really: there's one at the beginning that belongs to a boy who's happy to go to an amusement park, but he's worried about the 'weird storm clouds' in the distance. Now we can easily figure out that it's related to the end of the world, but it doesn't specifically say it. But most of these memories are really, REALLY depressing.
There were two that really got me. One was actually related to the very first one you find, which is about a mother and a daughter visiting a mall. You later find the ghost of the girl, and you trade the item for a key you need. Now the memory itself wasn't too sad, but after meeting the little girl I took a moment to look around the room and see the graffiti on the wall. (Another feature of this game is that there is graffiti scrawled on many walls, most of which is written by people leaving behind messages at the end of the world. Some is translated, but most is left in Japanese without any translation.) It was obviously written by the girl before she died, because it was all in hiragana. I was like "Oh hey, I can read this!" And I spent a few minutes trying to read it. I was able to pick out words like 'bread' and rice' from the graffiti, which I though was cool, but then I found another bit I could read: "where is mama?" And near that was another phrase: "I'm hungry."
For those who haven't pieced it together, here's a condensed version: the girl starved to death while waiting for her mom to come get her.
But that isn't nearly as bad as the dog collar. Oh god, the dog collar. At one point, you find a dog collar, and you get a memory from a dog. From the moment it started I thought "This is going to be terrible." And, for once, I hated being right.
The memory started out with the dog talking about how it was happy to go on a long walk with its master. Then the pair got home and the master was sad, so the dog tried to cheer him up, but then the master started crying and the dog tried to lick the tears away. Then the dog becomes confused as the master leaves the dog behind in the house, and the dog talks about how lonely it was and how it started to cry too and how it just wanted its master to come home again and the whole time I was just thinking "OH MY GOD HOW CAN THEY MAKE SOMETHING THIS TERRIBLE?"
And while those two have been pretty bad, I can only imagine the other ones I'll see. I've seen maybe six or seven of them now, and they're all pretty sad, but some of them are worse than the others.
So yeah, I've cried twice over this game, and I'm only maybe a fourth of the way in. Let's see how far I can get before I can't play this game anymore.
Little did I know that it would be the most fucking depressing game I have ever played in my life.
So, to start out with, you play as this kid named Seto. The world ended a while back (at least 15 years, it's implied that the end happened before Seto was born), and this kid was raised by an old man. But then the old man dies, and in a letter he tells Seto to 'go to the red tower' and find more humans. Apparently gramps thinks more people survived the apocalypse.
At first it isn't so bad. You get to explore a run-down Tokyo, fight ghosts, get the bejezus scared out of you, and make friends with a shitload of cats. Yes, cats. Apparently Seto is a cat person. Oh, and there's some guy with a KFC chicken mascot thing on his head, but he only shows up to sell you items. Which is probably good, since he's a bit of a creeper.
The main plot is just starting to pick up (I met some bratty boy who stole shit from me and ran off, and now I'm chasing him. Fuck yeah unoriginal plots), but what really gets me is this one particular side plot. Along the journey, you find small items. They're everyday things, like a shoe or a cell phone, but attached to each item is a memory. Part of the game is viewing these memories to piece together exactly what happened when the world ended.
Now in the memory we just see a still shot of the item as there is a voice over of the owner. The memory is always close to the end for each person, and they're at least aware that something is wrong with the world, if not certain that they're about to die. A few of them aren't so bad, really: there's one at the beginning that belongs to a boy who's happy to go to an amusement park, but he's worried about the 'weird storm clouds' in the distance. Now we can easily figure out that it's related to the end of the world, but it doesn't specifically say it. But most of these memories are really, REALLY depressing.
There were two that really got me. One was actually related to the very first one you find, which is about a mother and a daughter visiting a mall. You later find the ghost of the girl, and you trade the item for a key you need. Now the memory itself wasn't too sad, but after meeting the little girl I took a moment to look around the room and see the graffiti on the wall. (Another feature of this game is that there is graffiti scrawled on many walls, most of which is written by people leaving behind messages at the end of the world. Some is translated, but most is left in Japanese without any translation.) It was obviously written by the girl before she died, because it was all in hiragana. I was like "Oh hey, I can read this!" And I spent a few minutes trying to read it. I was able to pick out words like 'bread' and rice' from the graffiti, which I though was cool, but then I found another bit I could read: "where is mama?" And near that was another phrase: "I'm hungry."
For those who haven't pieced it together, here's a condensed version: the girl starved to death while waiting for her mom to come get her.
But that isn't nearly as bad as the dog collar. Oh god, the dog collar. At one point, you find a dog collar, and you get a memory from a dog. From the moment it started I thought "This is going to be terrible." And, for once, I hated being right.
The memory started out with the dog talking about how it was happy to go on a long walk with its master. Then the pair got home and the master was sad, so the dog tried to cheer him up, but then the master started crying and the dog tried to lick the tears away. Then the dog becomes confused as the master leaves the dog behind in the house, and the dog talks about how lonely it was and how it started to cry too and how it just wanted its master to come home again and the whole time I was just thinking "OH MY GOD HOW CAN THEY MAKE SOMETHING THIS TERRIBLE?"
And while those two have been pretty bad, I can only imagine the other ones I'll see. I've seen maybe six or seven of them now, and they're all pretty sad, but some of them are worse than the others.
So yeah, I've cried twice over this game, and I'm only maybe a fourth of the way in. Let's see how far I can get before I can't play this game anymore.