 So, what's all this then? This is AI: The Somnium Files, a visual novel / puzzle type game by Spike Chunsoft, released for the PS4, the Switch and the PC in September of 2019. It was directed by Kotaro Uchikoshi. That Uchikoshi? That Uchikoshi - most known for directing the Zero Escape series and mind-melting plots and twists therein. So what's this game about? Well, as far as gameplay is concerned, we're looking at a game that mixes the investigation segments from Danganronpa (look around an area from a fixed position, checking out items in the scene and talking to people) with strange puzzle segments where you have to search for solutions to problems in people's dreams, with all the bizarre dream logic that follows from that. It actually works really well. As for the story, you play detective Kaname Date, an investigator with a cybereye that has a revolutionary AI named Aiba (short for AI-Ball - get it, AI-Ball, eye ball?) in it that helps him in his investigations. Date and Aiba begin the game investigating a murder, and things just repeatedly escalate from there. It's an Uchikoshi game. Expect poo poo to get nuts. Also expect lots of AI / eye puns. And what about the LP? In a departure from what I usually do, this LP will be done in video form with subtitled commentary. I thought a lot about it, and I eventually came to the conclusion that this format has more benefits than a standard VLP (the voiceacting is really good and the game is a lot more "active" - there's a lot going on that is more difficult to convey in screenshots) and also avoids some serious drawbacks (the dialogue headshots use the same 3D models as the characters themselves, meaning there is no sprite rip, meaning I would've had to manually cut out all those expressions, meaning I would've thrown myself out a window halfway through). I will obviously be editing when necessary. Spoiler pol- NO NO NO NO NO! NO SPOILERS EVER! And don't even think about being cute about it. I can tell. I've been that fucker that gets cute about spoilers. I've been him several times within my own LPs. I know. No spoilers, not even under tags. Anyway, with that said, let's get going.                                                                                             
TheMcD fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Sep 9, 2020 |
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Oct 22, 2019 20:28
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Hell yes. I mainlined this whole thing over a rainy weekend and change and it was absolutely everything I hoped, and then some. Enjoy Uchikoshi's Wild Ride, folks.
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Oct 22, 2019 20:43
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AI is so drat good. In a lot of ways it's Uchikoshi at his best.
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Oct 22, 2019 22:02
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You sure do pick great stopping points. I can't wait to watch the second video.
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Oct 22, 2019 22:30
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Oooooooh this should be fun, I just finished it up a couple weekends ago myself.
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Oct 22, 2019 22:44
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Yeah this game's great, I hope everyone here enjoys it as much as I did.
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Oct 22, 2019 23:01
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AweStriker posted:You sure do pick great stopping points. I can't wait to watch the second video. So far, I've just been taking what the game is giving me, since it does fairly regularly give me new chapters to use as stopping points. Though there definitely will be some chapters where we'll need more than one video to get through later on. Some of them are definitely more beefy.
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Oct 23, 2019 10:32
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Are we sure that our AI doesn't also want to be a Magical Girl? Based on that dream sequence, I can't help but wonder...
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Oct 23, 2019 16:28
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Our AI was also doing the Monokuma dance
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Oct 24, 2019 05:40
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oh boy oh boy oh boy This gives me the impetus to actually finish the drat game so I don't get spoiled, too.
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Oct 25, 2019 18:30
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This game looks super weird and interesting, but your subtitles are a bit confusing. They're kinda small in relation to the size of the screen, and the game's own text, particularly when both you and the game are competing for my attention; it can get pretty hectic when I have to jump between the middle and the bottom of the screen every other second. Anyway, thread bookmarked, 
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Oct 25, 2019 19:18
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inscrutable horse posted:This game looks super weird and interesting, but your subtitles are a bit confusing. They're kinda small in relation to the size of the screen, and the game's own text, particularly when both you and the game are competing for my attention; it can get pretty hectic when I have to jump between the middle and the bottom of the screen every other second. The text size is a problem? I know I've been bad about keeping the text on screen and my subtitles separate, and I've been trying to be better about that in the second video, and since this is my first shot at subtitled VLPing, I'm entirely open to continue workshopping my methods if something comes up, but I haven't heard anything about the text in and of itself being too small so far. I thought it was only very slightly smaller compared to the game's text.
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Oct 25, 2019 20:20
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Not small in such a way as to be hard to read, but they... It's hard to explain, but they *feel* small. It's something about how they're between the very bottom of the screen and the text-box, which makes it feel like it's been squeezed in with the barest of margins. It's entirely subjective, I'll admit  On a less subjective note, however, your commentary gets covered by the Youtube tool-bar: like so
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Oct 25, 2019 21:15
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Size doesn't matter
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Oct 25, 2019 21:29
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inscrutable horse posted:Not small in such a way as to be hard to read, but they... It's hard to explain, but they *feel* small. It's something about how they're between the very bottom of the screen and the text-box, which makes it feel like it's been squeezed in with the barest of margins. It's entirely subjective, I'll admit Well, I do see what you mean, but it seems like this is a problem I can't do a lot about. I could move the subtitles entirely to the top of the screen, which is less crowded, making them "sub"titles in name only, but that exacerbates the disconnect between in-game text and also screws with things when there is something at the top (like the hint on what to do in the Somnia). Here's an attempt to change things up a bit:  I increased the text size from 30px to 35px, reinforced the outline and shadow to make it jump more, and changed the vertical offset from 10px to 20px.  Alternatively, here's the same thing with 30px font size, which would probably make it easier for me to remake the earlier episodes (the larger font size might mean that some lines go over two lines now and that would look absolutely horrible, I'm pretty sure). I feel like I don't want to just straight up jam my subtitles into the text box's screen real estate, because that would look even more crowded. Would something like this improve things?
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Oct 25, 2019 21:41
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35px with a bigger offset and shadow is a massive improvement, and it completely eliminates the issue, IMO. But if that's too large, the 30px text is still much better. I think it's the off-set that makes the most difference 
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Oct 25, 2019 21:53
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Alright, so here's a new video. However, it's like two minutes long - it's checking out the other options we've missed in Date's Somnium, and there weren't a lot. So, going forward, videos with green color will be those where we check out the things we missed in our main run in the Somnia. It's now the first using the new subtitle settings, however there's only like four lines. I'll make the next main video with these new settings as well, and if that looks good, I'll replace the first two videos with new versions with the new subtitle settings. EDIT: Never mind. Apparently I rendered this poo poo wrong. I'll re-do this. EDIT AGAIN: Fixed now! I just uploaded the wrong video because I have like a billion files laying around. TheMcD fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Oct 25, 2019 |
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Oct 25, 2019 23:36
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The subtitle style you use in this new video looks good to me, definitely an improvement over the other one though I was fine with that one too.
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Oct 26, 2019 00:55
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New mainline video! We're going to have a chat with our boss and take a look at her rather unique office. Also, our eyeball has something important to say. As a note, I mention this in the video, but just as a rule, when I just looked at an item and then look at the same item again and say something in subtitles, you can ignore the game text at that point because it's just a repetition of what the item is that we already saw. It just gives a good opportunity to throw in a comment. Also, I remade the first two episodes with the new subtitle style:  
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Oct 27, 2019 20:51
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I do like how Date actually changes where he's looking when Aiba is looking at him. It's the little details that work.
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Oct 27, 2019 22:30
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Will there be more, or less than 1,000 eye/I/AI puns before the game is complete 
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Oct 27, 2019 23:16
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The boss keeps crossing and recrossing her legs like she really needs to pee Dangit Date, finish the conversation so she can go to the bathroom
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Oct 28, 2019 04:50
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Probably the edge of the desk is cutting into her legs because she can't sit in a chair like a normal person.
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Oct 28, 2019 04:56
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biosterous posted:The boss keeps crossing and recrossing her legs like she really needs to pee Alas, everybody is going to have to deal with Date staring gormlessly at his surroundings for like fifteen minutes like an rear end in a top hat before he ever actually starts a conversation. Because ~extra dialogue~!
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Oct 28, 2019 19:44
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Gotta say, really enjoying the voice acting of this game!
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Oct 28, 2019 20:36
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Grabs the popcorn and soda to watch people Lose Their poo poo over the plot Oh, man, this is gonna be goooood.
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Oct 29, 2019 00:25
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TheMcD posted:Alas, everybody is going to have to deal with Date staring gormlessly at his surroundings for like fifteen minutes like an rear end in a top hat before he ever actually starts a conversation. Because ~extra dialogue~! While I enjoyed most of the examining dialogue, one thing I didn't like is that there's no way to tell which items have new content when you return to a location and examine them again (sometimes items that didn't have dialogue the first time get dialogue later). So every time you switch locations you have to examine all the items even though most of them just give the description again and remember what you can examine in each location because some of them have reeeeaaaaaaaalllllly small hitboxes. This of course includes the Boss's office, but I gave up on getting all the dialogue there.
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Oct 29, 2019 03:39
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There definitely should be some kind of indicator, like an icon next to the name. That said most players should realize fairly quickly that the descriptions are pretty nondescript during any 'serious' scene. So at least when you realize that it becomes a good idea to stop poking around. Does feel like padding however. I've only done two routes and a route I couldn't finish first go around and I clocked in at 22 hours. How much of that was just in Boss' office?
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Oct 29, 2019 05:18
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Ota is wearing a belt seemingly based off of Kamen Rider V3
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Oct 29, 2019 05:49
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These two are such dorks. I love it. That Somnium scene reminded me of SWERY.
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Oct 29, 2019 07:52
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So I bought this game on Switch shortly after this LP started (at full price and then of course it went on sale like two days later) and I am loving this so far.
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Nov 1, 2019 00:00
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mateo360 posted:So I bought this game on Switch shortly after this LP started (at full price and then of course it went on sale like two days later) and I am loving this so far. It'll be great when like 80% of the people in this thread have already beaten this game.
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Nov 1, 2019 00:17
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it was on my list to eventually check out based on the director alone. I used your vids to determine if I wanted to get it and play ahead and enjoy it the way I did the Zero Escapes or if I just wanted to experience a Uchikoshi plot with everyone else. you can tell which won out.
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Nov 1, 2019 00:38
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I beat it not to toot my own horn but I'm pretty pro at this game, don't be afraid to ask if you need any sweet tips
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Nov 1, 2019 01:15
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Hwurmp posted:not to toot my own horn but I'm pretty pro at this game, don't be afraid to ask if you need any sweet tips so is it ai like AI or ai like eye
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Nov 1, 2019 18:26
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AI before E except after C or when sounding like AI as in nAIghbor or wAI Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Nov 1, 2019 |
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Nov 1, 2019 19:01
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Hm, so this is what we've got so far: Whoever killed Shoko Nadami also removed her left eye, apparently before she died. Boss thinks this might be a copy of a crime that occured six years ago. Date doesn't know about this crime, and Boss doesn't want to tell him. Date is missing his left eye, and had Aiba installed in its place five years ago. Date doesn't remember anything before six years ago. So... Date was the victim in an attempted murder six years ago, and that's how he lost his left eye? And his amnesia might be due to trauma from that attack? No idea why the incident would've been kept secret from from him if that was the case though, but all these parallels definitely feel like they're going somewhere. Thanks for doing this LP, I'm looking forward to seeing how ridiculous this game gets.
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Nov 1, 2019 21:08
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I can't remember if it's brought up at this point so I'mma spoiler it but concerning the original murders.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf7NbRFyg3Y Neither route I finished went into detail about the case. Man, I really need to play more... Buuut Luigi's Mansion just came out and it's spooke-em halls are presumably filled with just as much mystery. Edit: whoops, uh, my bad... I wasn't thinking there. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) UnintelGen fucked around with this message at 11:06 on Nov 2, 2019 |
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Nov 1, 2019 21:18
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UnintelGen posted:I'mma spoiler it bruh
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Nov 1, 2019 21:42
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 08:52 |
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TheMcD posted:Spoiler pol-
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Nov 2, 2019 00:54
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