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indigozealBuilding World Revisited starts off with a fight with 19121, Richard's ghost. He makes what is in retrospect an excellent entrance: staring out vacantly with a grey, lined face over the city, descending to earth from the top of a building in a lifeless, yielding flop that resembles a suicide plunge. He's memorably hopeless, a huge contrast to the brash, self-possessed Richard of old; even in combat, his blind flailing and vigorous, tape-looped stuttering is reminiscent of an automaton or an old, faded video image on playback, not an entity acting under his own power. If anything of the old Richard is in there, his behavior is a reminder of how hellish it must be for him to be in Walter's thrall, devoid of his own will. It's extra incentive (if any were needed) to stop Walter and undo his hellworld.
I did, by the way, use a Silver Bullet on Richard's ghost, as advised, and on the ghost of Andrew in the Water Prison. I didn't engage either for any period of time, but from LP videos, I could see that while Richard was probably still beatable in a tag-team situation, Eileen would've probably have eaten a few hits thanks to Richard's ability to teleport. (And I certainly couldn't have afforded that at this point, but it's unfortunate nonetheless - I would've liked to have taken a stab at a cooperative boss fight. Eileen seems pretty game in this video.) I could also see the fight with Andrew, with his sudden charging attacks in a narrow spiral corridor, leading nowhere good fast. You feel kind of cheated, though, having to cut a couple challenges short because the programmers haven't given the non-experts the tools to make any headway otherwise.
I will note that I discovered that I didn't totally have the hang of the elevators the first time I came to Building World; I didn't understand for some reason that there were two separate elevators that moved independently, each with back & front entrances. I must've just blundered through the first time, but I did find a couple areas that were completely new to me. Also, despite my best efforts, Eileen definitively crossed the line into the half-possessed state here. I can't recall what pushed her over - it might have been the ghost gamut near the exit - but Walter was trying to possess her by the end of the level.
Also also, that was a rather stupid boss fight at the end of the level. Eileen's guaranteed to take damage unless you enter & reenter the room to make the true boss respawn right by the doors, which means the only way you can win safely is by cheesing through. (It's rare that the programmers let you cheese through instead of coming up with a punishment for you being clever, but perhaps this bit fell through the cracks. It does seem like a very pasted-on fight.)
Nothing else to say about Building World, so let's move on to the crucial cutscene with Joseph's ghost at the bottom of Walter's mind stairwell. I think it's pretty botched, actually. I understand that they'd want to give Joe Romersa a speaking role, since he's a big part of the sound team (so to speak), but it doesn't work for this character. They were probably going for a Voice of Doom with the flat, affectless baritone, but it sounds instead like a remnant of the early PS1 days and a cheap sound studio. Making Joseph's ghost look like a monolith from 2001 doesn't help, either. I understand that Joseph, while retaining far more of his former self than the other victims, is still a ghost and therefore should not be a comforting presence, but they shot right past that into "jarringly alien." He doesn't look or sound like part of the world or game around him, in other words. (The decision to back half of the scene with an a capella version of "Tender Sugar" also hurts it - it's distracting and divides the viewer's attention.) The bad choices in presentation are unfortunate, considering what crucial information is being laid out here.
Furthermore, the big revelation here - that Henry isn't just a bystander or Eileen's protector; that he's actually the final victim - should be a big crescendo but is given a total no-sell. Romersa intones it right ("Number twenty-one...HENRY...TOWNSHEND"), but Henry, as always, has no reaction. Perhaps he always knew in the back of his head - it's not a wild assumption, and the player can actually stumble across this information a bit earlier in the game, if she happens to hit the correct haunting, one of the best scares in the game (check the figure's left collarbone) - but its confirmation should be more of a deal than it is. It's part of the culmination of Henry's story: he's made an effort to remove himself from the events of his world, and he's instead ended up at the center of them; his need to engage with his life & surroundings has become a literal matter of life or death. Henry needs to react in some way here, and the story falls down.
There's more to this stretch of the game...but I think it's better covered next time.
.
I did, by the way, use a Silver Bullet on Richard's ghost, as advised, and on the ghost of Andrew in the Water Prison. I didn't engage either for any period of time, but from LP videos, I could see that while Richard was probably still beatable in a tag-team situation, Eileen would've probably have eaten a few hits thanks to Richard's ability to teleport. (And I certainly couldn't have afforded that at this point, but it's unfortunate nonetheless - I would've liked to have taken a stab at a cooperative boss fight. Eileen seems pretty game in this video.) I could also see the fight with Andrew, with his sudden charging attacks in a narrow spiral corridor, leading nowhere good fast. You feel kind of cheated, though, having to cut a couple challenges short because the programmers haven't given the non-experts the tools to make any headway otherwise.
I will note that I discovered that I didn't totally have the hang of the elevators the first time I came to Building World; I didn't understand for some reason that there were two separate elevators that moved independently, each with back & front entrances. I must've just blundered through the first time, but I did find a couple areas that were completely new to me. Also, despite my best efforts, Eileen definitively crossed the line into the half-possessed state here. I can't recall what pushed her over - it might have been the ghost gamut near the exit - but Walter was trying to possess her by the end of the level.
Also also, that was a rather stupid boss fight at the end of the level. Eileen's guaranteed to take damage unless you enter & reenter the room to make the true boss respawn right by the doors, which means the only way you can win safely is by cheesing through. (It's rare that the programmers let you cheese through instead of coming up with a punishment for you being clever, but perhaps this bit fell through the cracks. It does seem like a very pasted-on fight.)
Nothing else to say about Building World, so let's move on to the crucial cutscene with Joseph's ghost at the bottom of Walter's mind stairwell. I think it's pretty botched, actually. I understand that they'd want to give Joe Romersa a speaking role, since he's a big part of the sound team (so to speak), but it doesn't work for this character. They were probably going for a Voice of Doom with the flat, affectless baritone, but it sounds instead like a remnant of the early PS1 days and a cheap sound studio. Making Joseph's ghost look like a monolith from 2001 doesn't help, either. I understand that Joseph, while retaining far more of his former self than the other victims, is still a ghost and therefore should not be a comforting presence, but they shot right past that into "jarringly alien." He doesn't look or sound like part of the world or game around him, in other words. (The decision to back half of the scene with an a capella version of "Tender Sugar" also hurts it - it's distracting and divides the viewer's attention.) The bad choices in presentation are unfortunate, considering what crucial information is being laid out here.
Furthermore, the big revelation here - that Henry isn't just a bystander or Eileen's protector; that he's actually the final victim - should be a big crescendo but is given a total no-sell. Romersa intones it right ("Number twenty-one...HENRY...TOWNSHEND"), but Henry, as always, has no reaction. Perhaps he always knew in the back of his head - it's not a wild assumption, and the player can actually stumble across this information a bit earlier in the game, if she happens to hit the correct haunting, one of the best scares in the game (check the figure's left collarbone) - but its confirmation should be more of a deal than it is. It's part of the culmination of Henry's story: he's made an effort to remove himself from the events of his world, and he's instead ended up at the center of them; his need to engage with his life & surroundings has become a literal matter of life or death. Henry needs to react in some way here, and the story falls down.
There's more to this stretch of the game...but I think it's better covered next time.
.
