dmboogie posted:

lmao cmon man...

Namtab posted:

My gnosia review is that its good, but you have to be really into werewolf

Its kinda the opposite side of the raging loop coin, raging loop is a visual novel with a werewolf theme, gnosia is a werewolf game with a visual novel theme.

Also i accidentally overwrote my 28 loop save

MonsterEnvy posted:

It should be noted that the SDR2 chapter 3 murder was even unplanned by the writers. Fuyuhiko was intended to die originally and Hiyoko was going to live. But at some point things changed around

The Colonel posted:

Namtab posted:

My gnosia review is that its good, but you have to be really into werewolf

Its kinda the opposite side of the raging loop coin, raging loop is a visual novel with a werewolf theme, gnosia is a werewolf game with a visual novel theme.

Also i accidentally overwrote my 28 loop save

psychoJ posted:

yeah i'm enjoying it, i just wish there was more dialogue variation in the trials. also i love shigimichi but he keeps voting for me!! that son of a bitch!!!

Ytlaya posted:

Gnosia question that just came to mind and wasn't that clear from the in-game FAQ - do the "Agree/Defend/etc" follow-up dialogue options contribute to the hidden "players will get suspicious if you talk too much" metric? The FAQ mentions that they are safer and have lower impact, but it's not clear how much safer. Subjectively they don't seem to do much and other players usually only get on my case if I've directly spoken up 2+ times during a round.

MegaZeroX posted:

Seems to me that so long as you don't speak up directly more than once, they probably won't get on your case about it. Also seems to be on a scale on their character opinions. No one will say anything if you are confirmed, and your allies won't care. So if you speak up like twice, maybe one or two people that hate you will note it, but it shouldn't be too bad with good charm

Also, its interesting to see how you value intuition, since that is my build's dump stat! My character relies on high stealth and charm to stay alive, then persuasion and logic to get people to be persuaded. I don't get any instant confirms (well, I did exactly once somehow with my 1 intuition LOL), but its something I can deal without. Besides, its not super useful as gnosia, especially since sometimes the event search will give you games without an AC or bug.

Irony Be My Shield posted:

The Say You're Human skill is very powerful but yeah, other than that I think Intuition is fairly ignorable. Once you get a feel for how the game works you can usually work out who the gnosia are in time without the Lie indicator, so it's more a matter of making sure the right person gets voted off (Charisma, Logic) and that you don't get killed yourself (Stealth as Crew, Performance as Gnosia). Charm you also need some amount of to not get randomly dogpiled on quiet days, and it also lets you be more aggressive without getting yourself voted off.

Ytlaya posted:

I haven't really figured out how to detect gnosia (or other bad actors) without either detecting a lie (or having another character detect a lie and tell me) or having engineer/doctor reports.

Ytlaya posted:

I haven't really figured out how to detect gnosia (or other bad actors) without either detecting a lie (or having another character detect a lie and tell me) or having engineer/doctor reports.

MegaZeroX posted:

I often figure things outside of logical stuff from (strategy spoilers I guess):

• Noticing what cliques form, as gnosia tend to form cliques together (though there will be some noise in there of course)
  
• Noticing if the super intuitive characters (ie: Comet and Chipie) seem to be onto something or not
  
• Checking what the smarter characters in general are pushing. If Raqio, Setsu, Yuriko, and Otome are pushing the same person, chances are pretty high that they are right.
  

MegaZeroX posted:

[*]Noticing if the super intuitive characters (ie: Comet and Chipie) seem to be onto something or not

MegaZeroX posted:

[*]Checking what the smarter characters in general are pushing. If Raqio, Setsu, Yuriko, and Otome are pushing the same person, chances are pretty high that they are right.

Irony Be My Shield posted:

I think Umineko's theme is correct and you'd probably agree with it if you understood it properly. This conversation should be had in the VN thread though.

Irony Be My Shield posted:

I'll try and write up a detailed response tomorrow. As a starter I'll ask you to reconsider what Erika represents, as that seems like the most obvious issue with your reading. In episode 5, is she interested in whether or not Natsuhi actually committed the crime? When she followed her boyfriend around for weeks collecting random circumstantial evidence, did she ever consider that her boyfriend may not have been cheating on her? When Ange is confronted with evidence that her parents were responsible to the massacre what was her reaction?

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

And above all there's the incredibly long sequence in chapter 8 where a whitewashed, obviously fraudulent version of the Ushiromiyas is paraded in front of Ange. Ange's dissatisfaction with this obvious lie is presented as a moral failing. The "trick or magic" prompt is a simple question with an obvious correct answer: it's a trick. It's not a question of not investigating sufficiently as with Natsuhi. It's either swallow the lie whole or deny it, no other options. The actual "trick" ending has Ange acting with a willful disregard for the truth, yes, but she got there by choosing the true answer, and the scene has to be interpreted with that context in mind.

In other words, "the truth is unbearable, and you won't be able to sustain an uncompromising drive towards it without either drifting off the path and/or self-destructing anyways, so it's better to just lie to yourself from the start."

MegaZeroX posted:

First of all, I don't reay get what you mean by the fact that Angie acts with a disregard of the truth in the Trick ending. Amakusa was pretty much clearly stated to be doing exactly as Angie described in the ending, and the captain was a real possibility, and given a priority of survival, she acts in her self interest.

MegaZeroX posted:

The moral of the story I would say is to ask "why do you seek the truth" and honestly take a real clear look at how it is effecting your mental health and the rest of your life, which is something we often fail to consider when evaluating what we should do.

The Trick Ending is meant to be a reflection of the other answer. Angie doesn't want to forgive and ignore the (murderous) failing of those around her, and she shouldn't be required to. Instead, she (literally) charts her own way forward, with the facts that she has.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

e: Also, to be honest, I just categorically reject the notion that lying to yourself is a valid coping mechanism -- we're over here splitting hairs over how critical or hostile Umineko is to stubbornly persistent truth-seeking, and it's an interesting question, but it's not strictly relevant as long as the VN is saying it's sometimes okay to lie to yourself and I'm like "lol absolutely not, not ever."

MegaZeroX posted:

And despite how media often frames it, avoidance through jogging, meditation, and other activities can be positive, as opposed to something like drug abuse or binge eating. And in the context of the magic ending, Angie largely focuses on pursuing a passion, which is a perfectly healthy form of avoidance.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Erika's behavior is inconsistent with a pure drive to discover the truth, yes. But she isn't fully aware of this and, moreover, she's Bernkastel's piece. The former is important because the reasoning is basically "Erika is deeply insecure and craves validation of her intelligence/usefulness" -> "Erika became obsessed with ferreting out the truth" -> "faced with a situation where she can either prove her worth or pursue the pure truth, it doesn't take much of a push for Erika to do the former." She doesn't, by herself, stand for the proposition that seeking the truth is always wrong or dangerous, but she does stand for the proposition that your motives matter re: whether you should seek the truth or not.

She may not have considered that her boyfriend or Natsuhi were actually innocent, but (unlike Bernkastel, who is fully self-aware and consciously choosing to repay humiliation in kind) I don't think for a moment that she realizes she's settling for falsehoods. Even her "intellectual rapist" speech, as self-condemning as it is, still frames it as a thrill at outing the truth. Her final conversation with Ange in the library is getting pretty close, but she's had a lot of time to reflect by then.

Ange's reaction to evidence that her parents were responsible for the massacre is denial and then despair. Of the two despair is presented as the greatest danger.

To my mind, though, all of this is pretty peripheral. Much more important is the part where Ange predicts that, because Maria can lie to herself about her life with her mother being a happy one, she probably won't grow up to perpetuate Rosa's child abuse. This seems completely backwards to me; it's essential that you understand that what was done to you was wrong, if you want to avoid doing it to others.

And above all there's the incredibly long sequence in chapter 8 where a whitewashed, obviously fraudulent version of the Ushiromiyas is paraded in front of Ange. Ange's dissatisfaction with this obvious lie is presented as a moral failing. The "trick or magic" prompt is a simple question with an obvious correct answer: it's a trick. It's not a question of not investigating sufficiently as with Natsuhi. It's either swallow the lie whole or deny it, no other options. The actual "trick" ending has Ange acting with a willful disregard for the truth, yes, but she got there by choosing the true answer, and the scene has to be interpreted with that context in mind.

In other words, "the truth is unbearable, and you won't be able to sustain an uncompromising drive towards it without either drifting off the path and/or self-destructing anyways, so it's better to just lie to yourself from the start."

rko posted:

Tuxedo Catfish, you might consider checking out the manga for Episode 8. Many of the people I’ve known to be frustrated by the VN’s ending prefer it, as it adds a few scenes that contextualize things in a slightly more tied-together way and makes some of the subtext you’re missing into text. Notably, following Ange’s suicide in the City of Books, a full, first-person “confession” covering 1984-1986 from Yasu’s perspective appears, and when Ange reappears in the Golden Land, an extended sequence of the Ushiromiyas coming to terms with their sins is shown. There are also a number of scenes that are substitutes for the minigames in the original VN that give some character threads more closure.

I find it loses some of the VN’s elegance and restraint (which are funny words to use about EP8), but it certainly might help clear up some of your misconceptions. I don’t even know where to begin with the idea that Beato’s suicide in the Magic End is anything less than a perfect capstone to one of the most sublime tragedies in the postmodern canon, but the manga even adds in a small scene here that might help.