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DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
Oh man, I love this game. I'm glad it's finally being done!

Would anybody care if I made some effortposts about the various archaeological stuff you can scan?

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DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
Gonna have to reinstall the game to play alongside the LP to look at all the various scannable background images!

Agent355 posted:

Please do, then I can edit them into the second post and pass it off as me doing my homework and being informative and stuff.

What is that thing you see when you first fall down into la mulana, some sort of tower things, I examined it in the video but I've never heard of it before.

Lore post moved below!

DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Apr 4, 2014

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.




That gate is a candi bentar, a Balinese split gate. It's a gate used in Balinese temples to connect the outside world with the temple. It is exclusively found in the "nista mandala" zone, which is the outermost region of a temple. It being in the entrance to the ruins is actually pretty cool, because it is serving its purpose in a manner of speaking: it's depicted in the tunnel connecting the ruins to the outside world.












These faces seen all throughout the Gate of Guidance are based on the colossal Olmec heads seen in the La Venta ruins in Mexico. Wikipedia claims there are at least seventeen of them and they all are incredibly ancient. They were carved from basalt boulders in between 1500 and 1000 BC. Each colossal head has its own distinct headdress and they are all thought to represent powerful Olmec rulers.












The mural is found in the room where Agent355 killed the two red skeletons. Also, I know it's somewhat of a cop out, but there is a more appropriate place in the game to discuss this engraving.










This mural is in the background of the block puzzle room. It is an actual stele (a carved wooden or stone slab) found at the La Venta ruins in Mexico, and the developers of La-Mulana actually did a pretty dang good job translating it to the game. Archaeologists have given it the descriptive title of "La Venta Stela 19," and all wikipedia says on the subject is that it is the earliest known depiction of a feathered serpent in Mesoamerica. Pretty cool if you ask me!












This carving is found in the room with the one-way door and like six kangaroo rats. Also skeletons. Lots of skeletons. Anyway, Oannes is a being from Babylonian mythology with the torso of a man and the lower body of a fish. Except he also had legs under his fish tail. According to the mythology, he taught mankind wisdom, how to write, and "instructions in the various sciences." Alternate history buffs regard Oannes as being proof that aliens visited Earth in ancient times, while historians believe Oannes to be another name for the great Babylonian sage "Adapa."

Honestly, this carving feels really out of place in this zone. There is a much better place in the game for it to be, and I'm not really sure why a Babylonian demigod is featured in the primarily Mesoamerican focused Gate of Guidance.














Finally, we have the boss of the Gate of Guidance, Amphisbaena. Now, this boss is interesting because not only is it a mythological being, but it is actually a real animal as well! On the mythological side, Amphisbaena is a beast from Greek mythology. After Perseus cut the head from Medusa, he felt the need to fly over the Libyan desert while holding the gorgon's head. When the severed head dripped blood onto the desert sands, this beast was born. It is said to be venomous, and either eats ants or corpses. No, really. Wikipedia says it eats both.



On the biological side, Amphisbaena is also a genus for a special kind of legless lizards, often referred to as worm lizards. Taking a few steps back, there is also a wider group (a clade) known as Amphisbaenia. Judging from the map on wikipedia, these lizard worms are a mostly tropical clade, living in and around the equator and a ways south of it.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
I looked up those exploding rats, following the link from the wikia to the Japanese wikipedia. Chrome offered to translate the page and I took it up on that.

Japanese Wikipedia on Kodama Rat posted:

As the name appearance mice or, Yamane beast similar to [1] [2] is close to body shape, reminiscent of dormouse hibernating rounded a spherical body, [3] .
It does not appear to exist, such as harm to human beings, but it encounters a man in the mountains, to inflate the body a moment and to stop and, the next moment, is allowed to burst their bodies along with the roar like guns, meat and internal organs raw people The spread around it properly [1] [2] (there is also a theory that sounds a popping sound and flying around without rupture [2] [4] ).
The action incredible this Kodama mouse, we stride mountain gods are afraid as a warning and anger, and left the game as soon as you meet this strangeness. There was also not take the prey even continue to hunting by force or even be affected by a disaster such as avalanche [1] [2] . And being able to perform the purification ceremony by cast a spell as "Nam A Brown Ken Sowaka" At home those who had been Tatara is, [1] .
According to the tradition during the stride, it is said seven stride of school that Kodama flow enters the mountain, their spirit has been the incarnation Kodama mouse by punishment of the god of the mountain [1] [2] .
There is also an alias for dormouse and "Kodama rat," but there is also a theory Yamane is an animal of real that true colors of Kodama rat phantom beast [5] , and straddles you've dug up dormouse during hibernation, We believe that there is a curse from the guilt, theory that it is assumed that led to this tradition has also been advocated [3] .

:shrug:

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.

Mehuyael posted:

Sakit is my favourite boss, mostly for his boss music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRTLBfVHgbs

Giant's Rage is such a great boss theme. Sakit also always gives me so much trouble. I sequence break like crazy to get some useful stuff and he still ruins my poo poo so easily.

Anyway, the educational writeup will come tomorrow. I spent the last four days marathon watching through Game of Thrones in lieu of doing anything worthwhile.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.




According to wikipedia, Wondjina are cloud and rain spirits from Aboriginal mythology that helped to create and influence the landscape and its inhabitants. Lots of cave paintings depicting these beings have been found and almost all of them bear a rather strange resemblance to space aliens and NASA astronauts in full gear.

This site has all sorts of cool theories about ancient aliens and whatnot in Australia. Though it also mentions that some archaeologists claim that the "astronaut gear" bears a striking resemblance to early middle eastern seamen, and there are sites on the Internet that will gladly tell you about Pharaonic-era Egyptians being stranded in Australia.



Supposedly a "Gray" space alien



Astronaut in full gear








It's just a repeating background in the mid-level area of the Mausoleum, but I swear it's significant somehow. The overall theme for the Mausoleum, as you'll find, is ancient petroglyphs. Anyone have any ideas on if the structure resembles anything from an ancient civilization that has petroglyphs?

My first inclination was that it was depicting Angkor Wat, but the resemblance is only passing.










This wasn't found in the Mausoleum, but it was still shown briefly in the third video. So for my purposes it counts! It is oddly out of place for where it is found, as the Spring in the Sky has a wholly different theme. The design of the Celtic cross was originally found in Ireland, but has since spread out all over the world. Legend holds that Saint Patrick or Saint Declan used the design to help convert the Irish pagans to Catholicism.



I really like the intricate Celtic knot design inside the cross










Another out-of-place scan. The dolphins are pretty cool, and that's really about it. It's also fascinating that relatively shallow in the ruins you can run across never-before-seen carvings from an incredibly ancient civilization.


















The Nazca Lines are some of the most famous petroglyphs in the world. They're found in the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. There are hundreds of them, and they are all incredibly large. The best way to view them is from the air, though you can stand on nearby hills for a pretty good view as well. Thanks to the stable climate in the desert, the petroglyphs have been preserved for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Though thanks to squatters in the area, they are beginning to deteriorate.

The first recorded sighting of the lines is from the conquistador Pedro Cieza de León. He was exploring and chronicling Peru in 1553 and mistook the ancient designs for trail markers. Except for a small mention in his book, the lines were left ignored by the world at large until they were re-discovered by a Peruvian archaeologist by the name of Toribio Mejia Xesspe, in 1927.



The Dolphin



The Hands



The Tree










I have no idea. I have searched and searched and nothing turns up an "Oyukanjou" cromlech in Akita, Japan. Shortening the name to "Oyu" gives some results, the first of which is a stock photography website, which is pretty telling. Honestly I'm at a loss here. This is a cromlech in Akita, Japan. It's not the Oyu, or Oyukanjou, or whatever cromlech though. At least not according to the photography blog I found the image on. By the way, if you go looking, avoid any photography blogs about cromlechs. The one I visited caused my browser to hang for almost two minutes while it loaded a lot of high res photography.

Anyway, a cromlech is a "prehistoric megalithic structure." It's an obsolete term, but typically refers to a circle of free-standing stone slabs. Sounds kinda familiar, huh? It also has a second meaning, one that the game is using. The best example is the Almendres Cromlech in Guadalupe, Portugal. The site is the largest existing group of structured menhirs in the Iberian peninsula. Menhir, by the way, is another term to describe this type of cromlech.

Confusing, innit?

If you enjoy lovely JRPGs, menhir is also the name of a type of enemy that are utter bastards to fight.







By the way, you should really click on this link. It's a super high definition (4288x2848) version of the above image. It's 7MB, so it might take a while to download on a slower connection, but it's incredibly cool and worth looking at!









Believe it or not, the Nebra Sky Disk is actually a real archaeological artifact! It was found in a site near Nebra, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Archaeologists believe it to be from around 1600 BC. Ever since being found, there has been contention as to whether or not the disk is real or not. As recently as 2005, there was a gentleman claiming (without ever having held the real thing) that the disk was a forgery. However, the artifact is now widely believed to be the genuine article, and presents some pretty fascinating looks into ancient Germanic astronomy and how accurate it really was.

It is the oldest known portable instrument to chart the passage of the heavens.



The real Nebra sky disk



A pretty cool image from 2004 showing what the various dots on the disk actually stand for

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
:aaaaa: I never realized you could actually scan those Egyptian God statues in the background! Gonna have my work cut out for me for this one.

Also I can't believe you jumped on that crumbling platform in the Temple of Moonlight. I know it's not something a new player would necessarily know to avoid, but still. Now you will never be able to access that "shortcut" to a later area that absolutely nobody ever uses!

ETA: Going through, there are absolutely no scannable spots in the Temple of Moonlight. No neat background details to scan, and all the stuff that looks like it sticks out enough to have a scan attached is just background. Even that cool miniature Nebra Sky Disk doesn't have an attached scan!

DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Apr 17, 2014

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.

Vil posted:

I've got a full (and spoilery) list of background scan locations (there's an achievement tied to viewing them all, across playthroughs), if you'd like me to PM you a copy.

Please do! While I like to think I've been thorough as hell with my captures, it would be nice to have a list to draw from.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.




The White Giant of the Tassili n'Ajjer plateau is just one of thousands of pieces of prehistoric rock art found in Algeria. The plateau itself is made of sandstone, which means that the vegetation is more lush there than in other areas, and is home to several species of endangered plants. Archaeologists suspect the rock art to be at least 9-10 millennia old.

These carvings were ancient at the height of the Pharaonic Egyptians. We're talking 8,000 BC or older. The art itself depicts herds of animals, and people dancing and hunting together. I can't find any special significance for the white giant, and Google searches only turn up results for the plateau. As is tradition so far, it is also the odd scan out as far as the rest of the Temple goes. Because the rest of this area is a who's who of Egyptian mythology.












These are in no particular order, just whatever order I scanned them in. Anyway, first up is Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of "the sky, love, beauty, joy, motherhood, foreign lands, mining, music, and fertility." She was also believed to welcome the dead into the next life. Typically she is depicted as a cow goddess with horns and a sun disk that has a snake wrapped around it. The ancient Greeks viewed Hathor as Aphrodite, and the Romans called her Venus, if that helps any.



There are a lot of results if you GIS Egyptian gods. By the way, you really should not GIS Egyptian mythological figures.



Hathor's Temple Complex at Dendera










Isis is the Egyptian goddess of "motherhood, magic, and fertility." She has a throne on her headdress, though later on she and Hathor were merged into more-or-less the same being. She is a very interesting goddess, as she is often shown as being the mother of Horus. This is interesting because she had Horus with Osiris, her brother. I hope you enjoy reading about mythological incest, because the ancient Egyptian pantheon is rife with it.

As far as merging her with Hathor goes, that came about around the time that the Cult of Ra came to prominence. Because of her associations with Horus, and because Horus and Ra were associated, Isis became associated with Ra by proxy. Unfortunately, in some regions, the official OTP was Ra and Hathor. So to placate ancient Egyptian ships, Hathor and Isis were merged into Hathor-Isis.

Also please kill me for describing Egyptian mythology in terms of Internet culture.



I will never not be amazed at how well this game's sprite artists were able to translate images and carvings to the game.










Thoth is the Egyptian god of "knowledge, Hieroglyphs, and wisdom." Depictions of Thoth vary between having the head of an ibis or baboon. The game goes with the ibis depiction, for what that's worth. At first, Thoth was depicted as being one of the two guardians of the universe - the other being his wife Ma'at. Later on, however, he became the arbitrator that the other gods came to when they were having a dispute. His domain was also magic, writing, science, and judging the dead.

Despite being an arbitrator and a judge of the dead, his wife was actually the goddess of truth and justice.













It wasn't until I was capturing these that I realized the statues in the background behind the main pyramid were able to be scanned. This god is Osiris, the god of the afterlife. Also apparently his son Horus was "posthumously begotten" which I really hope does not mean what I think that means. Because the incest is gross enough, but...

Anyway. Osiris had a second, extremely important job, in ancient Egypt. More important than being the lord and keeper of the dead. See, he was also responsible for the yearly flooding of the Nile. If you've ever played Sierra's classic city-building game Pharaoh, then you also know that he was exceptionally generous with his gifts and a few temples kept him pretty happy and kept your people well fed.



While searching for this kinda cool image of Osiris, I found an object of utter and indescribable horror.










This fine upstanding fellow is Anubis. He is the Egyptian protector of the dead, and god of embalming. It seems the Egyptian gods were very into specialization. He used to be the God of the Dead, during the Old Kingdom period, which lasted from roughly 2680BC to 2180BC. Eventually he was replaced by Osiris and instead became the protector of the dead.



I found this image on DeviantArt, but it depicts a very important moment. It is Anubis performing the "Weighing of the Heart" ceremony. During this ceremony, he places the heart of the recently dead on his scales, and on the other side of the scales he sets a feather of Ma'at. If the heart is heavier than the feather, then the dead would be devoured by that crocodile thing in the background.

Don't worry, though. The heart would only be heavier than the feather if it were impure. To be eaten by the Ammit (the name of the crocodile demon) was considered a great shame, and those so cursed would be considered to have died a second death and forevermore be restless.



This is a statue of Herm-Anubis, who is a fusion of Hermes and Anubis. Wikipedia claims that it's on display in the Vatican

Anubis was also a fan of going fast










Nephthys is the Egyptian goddess of "death, service, lamentation, and nighttime." I'm starting to notice a pattern with the gods found surrounding the pyramid. She is often found depicted as the companion of the next god to the right, Set. She is also considered to be the sister of both Isis and Osiris. Also apparently she is Anubis's mother.

Look, I'll post a family tree after I finish covering all these gods. It gets complicated.



This carving of Nephthys can be found in the Louvre



The most popular depiction of Nephthys is that of a young woman with a house and basket on top of her head










Wikipedia says that Set is the Egyptian god of "storms, the desert, disorder, violence, and foreigners." In the mythology, Set is said to have killed and mutilated his own brother, Osiris. Isis then revived Osiris and convinced him to have a child with her. That child, Horus, decided to go and take revenge on Set. Oh and just for good measure he married his other sister Nephthys who then fathered Anubis.



Interestingly enough, Set's face is an unknown animal. Egyptologists call it the "Set Animal" though it is also known as the "Tyhponic Beast," named, oddly enough, for the Greek beast Typhon.



In 2009, the TV show Destination Truth was apparently looking into the origins of the Egyptian cryptid the "salawa" which is yet another name for the Set animal. There was even a local sighting of the salawa, and the crew investigated.

What they found was not a salawa, but it was positively adorable.







Fennec foxes are so cute :3:










The next goddess in our tour is Bastet. She is the Egyptian goddess of cats, protection, joy, dance, music, love, and apparently fertility. Yeah, the Egyptian cat goddess of fertility. Just imagine how that GIS went. :smithicide:

She wasn't properly identified as Bastet the cat goddess until relatively late (the 22nd Dynasty, 945 - 715 BC) in ancient Egypt. Until then she was a lion-headed goddess and was often merged with Sekhmet, who was a goddess of war and vengeance. It is said that when her temple was unearthed, more than 300,000 lovingly mummified cats were found inside. The Egyptians really loved cats, and that made Bastet a very important goddess to them.



A statue of Bastet



I think this is promotional art for an ancient Egypt themed MOBA. Either way it's pretty cool










The Wedjet is also known as the Wadjet, and the Eye of Horus. The Egyptians revered it as a symbol of protection, royal power, and good health. Sailors were said to have often painted the Wedjet on the bow of their ships to keep them safe. They were also found on amulets buried with dead pharaohs, to keep them safe in their journey to the afterlife. Being forced to meditate under the eye to get the red jewel is also symbolic. You can view it as Lemeza praying to the Wedjet for protection against the upcoming boss.



The Wedjet is also known as the Udjat and can be found in a golden chest locked by a golden key somewhere in the caves. If you pick it up you can then see hidden gems and other fun things in the walls of the ruins. If you get near the entrance to the black market, the eye will also start to flash. Be sure to pick it up if you want to get into the city of gold, as you will almost certainly need it to find all the necessary artifacts to gain entrance.












You've heard all about him and how he's the product of all sorts of insane incest. Now you get to meet him properly! Horus is the Egyptian god of "vengeance, the sky, protection, and war." His symbol is the Wedjet eye, and he is depicted as having the head of a falcon. Prior to Ra becoming the chief god, Horus was it. He is widely considered to be the first national god of Egypt and descent from him was even used as justification of Pharaonic power.



A depiction of Horus in the Louvre



I think this is artwork from a DC comic










Tefnut is the Egyptian goddess of moisture. She is the sister and consort of Shu, and she is the mother of Geb and Nut. Despite being an extremely important goddess, the wikipedia page for her is surprisingly sparse. Her husband (and brother) is the god of air, her children are the gods of the sky and ground. She's not exactly obscure.

According to the Heliopolitans, she was born because her dad jerked off and the cum then dripped onto the ground.

wikipedia posted:

Atum was creative in that he proceeded to masturbate himself in Heliopolis. He took his penis in his hand so that he might obtain the pleasure of orgasm thereby. And brother and sister were born - that is Shu and Tefnut.

Another, more "fun" version has Atum eating the semen and spitting it back out to form Tefnut and Shu.

Is it really any wonder that the Egyptian gods are as hosed up as they are?












Shu, as I mentioned above, is the Egyptian god of air and one of the "primordial" gods. That is to say, his grandchildren are Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. Most every depiction of Shu has him holding his two children, Nut and Geb, apart. The popular myth was that if Shu didn't hold them apart, there was no way for life to be created otherwise.














Lemeza is not a very good archaeologist. He was able to identify Aten pretty readily, but he didn't stop to consider that the lizard headed god was perhaps Sobek? Sobek is known as the Egyptian god of the Nile, the army, the military, and fertility. Egyptians would often invoke his protection for dangers found on the Nile.

On the what-the-gently caress o-meter, Sobek was also apparently known as the "lord of semen."

What the gently caress posted:

Unis is Sobek, green of plumage, with alert face and raised fore, the splashing one who came from the thigh and tail of the great goddess in the sunlight…Unis has appeared as Sobek, Neith’s son. Unis will eat with his mouth, Unis will urinate and Unis will copulate with his penis. Unis is lord of semen, who takes women from their husbands to the place Unis likes according to his heart’s fancy. "





Meanwhile, Aten found on the thing's head is more simply the "disk of the sun." It wasn't really referred to as a god until Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akenhaten and decided that the new best policy for Egypt was one of sun-worshipping monotheism. He ruled for only 17 years before dying, so you can surmise that he was not a very popular figure.

Alternate history theorists have their own ideas on who Akenhaten was. They think he was the Biblical figure Moses. While there is some slight evidence to suggest this, most Biblical and Egyptian scholars are quick to point out that the evidence is only tenuous.



Artist's rendition of the Aten










So much incest








Finally we have Ellmac. Agent355 (or was it Yapo?) mentioned that this guy looks like one of those "Jesus lizards" and he was half right. The basilisk can indeed run across water. The basilisk is found in central and south America, but has been seen as far north as Florida.

However the actual creature that Ellmac is based on is found in an entirely different part of the world.



Meet the Frilled Lizard. This little sucker is found in Australia and parts of New Guinea and spends most of its time in trees eating insects. Occasionally they will go after spiders or other small lizards, though. Typically they're around 85cm in length, which is just under three feet. Their coloring varies depending on what climate they're found in, and the only certainty is that their frill is a lighter color than their body.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
I'm looking at the list of scans that Vil sent me and comparing notes to my own and I noticed something I wanted to share.

Ra is the Egyptian God of the Sun, right? Ostensibly the zone is a place to worship Ra, even with a pyramid being built in his honor. So why doesn't he have a statue there? There is no mention of Ra in the one place that it would make sense to see a reference to him!

Just something interesting to think about.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.

Genocyber posted:

Just finished watching the episodes; fun fact, you can permanently miss the Temple of the Sun map if you warp out of its room rather than pushing the statue to make the ladder appear.

Episode 6; why did you break the shortcut in the moon temple?

To be absolutely fair, the shortcut in the moon temple isn't really much of a shortcut. By the time you actually get to the point where you want to be doing the area the shortcut leads to, the warp point is only two or three screens away anyway.

Anyway, I keep forgetting just how short the Spring in the Sky really is. Even the Mausoleum of the Giants was longer to go through, and its puzzles were only slightly more devious what with the sky disk.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
I would like to point out that you can jump back to that platform from the waterfall screen. You don't have to go back through the Spring in the Sky every time.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
Just looking around the Chamber of Extinction, you can tell something bad happened in there. The area looks burnt, the elephant statues look like they're half melted, and there's a bunch of human-looking figures all over the area that, when scanned, reveal they were likely in the midst of melting when something froze them in place.

If you scan the grail tablet, it says that the area is the remains of a site of a great battle. What a battle it must have been if it had heat like that!

Also I swear one tablet somewhere in the game says that one of the previous ages was ended by a great fire from the heavens. The Chamber of Extinction might very well be the remnants of that fiery apocalypse.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.






Dancing man, indeed.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
Regarding that dick move in the video, the last time I played the Gate of Illusion, I got hit by it. Five consecutive times. That was not my first go-through of Gate of Illusion, either. So I knew about the trap and still got hit by it.

I was not very happy.

Also regarding the backside door in the Gate of Guidance, there's a tablet just below it that you can see as quickly as five minutes after starting the game.



I also always swore that the room with Oannes in the Gate of Guidance was linked to Chi You in some way. I dunno why, but it just made sense that the rooms were one and the same. If you fall into it from above, spikes come out of the floor to impale you. There are also lots of skeletons around the pit, which made it seem like women were being tossed into the pit to appease Chi You before he moved off to the backside field to get sustenance from ghosts instead.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.

Agent355 posted:

How do you die to the same trap five times? I'm honestly curious :haw:

Incredible (lack of) skill!

In all seriousness, the process went like... "Oh finally killed that boss. Time to loot the chest. GODDAMMIT!" On the upside, I am now very good at fighting Chi You.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.

Dr. Fetus posted:

For those wondering, here's the dialogue that Mulbruk was supposed to tell you.

Spoiler tagging images doesn't work on some platforms, and they're displayed just the same as if they weren't tagged.

EDIT: Or that, yeah.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
That shortcut is arguably faster for reaching a specific entrance to a late-game area that is otherwise a massive pain in the rear end to reach.

Also it really sticks out to me how the olmec heads in the Gate of Time look like Andross heads.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
There are extremely minor spoilers in the screenshots and the video in this post. They're just for items not shown in the LP yet, so if you care about that you probably ought to ignore this.

There's two things I wanted to point out.

First was that Agent mentioned in the video that he had no idea how you could early on find the table that says Mulbruk has the Book of the Dead. It's actually really easy to accidentally stumble across it if you take a wrong turn early in the game.

Also, that shortcut everyone gave him poo poo for breaking a while back?



Here we are in the Temple of Moonlight, in the room with the "shortcut."



This is where said "shortcut" spits you out.



The backside grail point is two rooms to the left, making this one of the game's more useless zone transitions.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
The way you completed the child with the circles puzzle felt strange. It's so much easier to just run across the top of the room, dropping spears onto the pots.

Also another tale of my amazing competence at La Mulana. The first time I played it, after getting the Cog of Souls I did not use it on the tablet in the same room and tried to clear the next zone. Four hours later I had to give up and look at a walkthrough to see what I didn't do.

It turns out that it is impossible to get all the way through that zone without using the Cog on that tablet. Eventually you run into a room where something is supposed to happen, but doesn't.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.

SourceElement posted:





The mural is found in the room where Agent355 killed the two red skeletons. Also, I know it's somewhat of a cop out, but there is a more appropriate place in the game to discuss this engraving.

A man riding an airship? I swear I've seen that somewhere before.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.

Patter Song posted:

Dimensional Corridor with Treasure Fairy is my favorite place to load up on cash.

Same. The room with the scorpion lady miniboss is where I like to farm for money once I've unlocked the dimensional corridor. Naturally this is before getting the dimensional key. If you enter and leave through the door to her right, you can repeatedly kill her extremely quickly without taking much, if any, damage.

Granted, the payout per kill is only something like 30 coins. But it's at least fast and doable on demand up until you start the zone in earnest.

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DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
The game says that the Dimensional Corridor is the most remote location in the ruins. I would have to disagree. The area with Ox-Head and Horse Face, and the pyramid with Nuwa are probably my vote for the most remote part of the ruins.

I also absolutely love the little hidden tunnel in the surface. Something about a path to an endgame area being hidden in plain sight in a place you can get to minutes into the game? I dunno, but I really like when games do that.

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