00:00:02.00 Dave Hello, everybody. My name is Dave Jackson, and you're listening to Tales from the Backlog. This is a video games deep dive review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it and discuss. My guest today is a friend of the show, one of my co-hosts on a top three podcast, a very frequent guest on this podcast and a picnic enthusiast. Welcome back, Aaron Angle. 00:00:32.11 Aaron Sorry for the pause, I was finishing up a picnic lunch. 00:00:35.17 Dave Yes. 00:00:35.23 Aaron What's up, everybody? 00:00:37.50 Dave Uh, good to have you back, man. Uh, most frequent guest on this podcast. Most recently, people will have heard you, uh, what was the most recent thing that we did? 00:00:47.65 Dave Final fantasy seven rebirth is coming out soon. Uh, but before that we did some other stuff. 00:00:53.51 Aaron Yeah, there's, we did Rocket League and Persona 5 and Ghost of Tsushima. Um, Chained Echoes. 00:00:58.71 Dave Yeah. Chained echoes, final fantasy six. 00:01:01.63 Aaron Mm-hmm. I missed the Dave the Diver episode, but I'm very excited to listen to it so I could fall asleep to you just getting unnecessarily angry. 00:01:02.13 Dave Yeah. 00:01:11.51 Dave Yeah, that's about how that went. Yeah, for sure. Well, ah good to have you back today. We have a different kind of game today than some of the stuff we've talked about before. Today, we're talking about Omori, which is a psychological horror RPG developed and published by Omocat for PC and Switch in 2020 with console ports in 2022. 00:01:34.10 Dave And if this is your first time listening to the show, first of all, thanks for stopping by. Here is how spoilers work on the podcast. We're not going to spoil the story of Omori during this first portion of the episode. And it's definitely a game where you want to not be spoiled on the story. So you can check it out in the show notes. There's a timestamp for when that spoiler wall is. You can jump out then. 00:01:57.90 Dave and make sure you don't get spoiled on what's actually going on in this game. So ah with that being said, what is Omori? We have some quick elevator pitches at the top of the show to give people an idea of what this is. I say Omori is kind of like Earthbound, but with a very brutal darkness lurking under the surface. Aaron, what would you say? 00:02:21.97 Aaron I think that pretty much sums it up. I think it's one of those games to where like, uh, if you like a good JRPG, if you like a good indie RPG specifically, um, but you're getting a little bored with the how saturated, you know, indie games can seem sometimes and how similar a lot of indie games can seem a lot of the time. This is definitely like one of those RPGs that has so much depth to it that it feels like you're playing a different kind of game. So that would kind of be my little pitch. 00:02:49.51 Dave Yeah, yeah, that's a good pitch for sure. um I played this on PC. I played it almost the entire way on Steam Deck. It ran just fine on Steam Deck. It took 22 hours to beat. ah Aaron, where did you play this and about how long did the play through take you? 00:03:05.55 Aaron I definitely played it on Steam Deck, one of the first Steam Deck games that I played. I played it on my TV, not on and not like a little, you know, by itself on the Steam Deck screen. I definitely put like 60 hours into this game, ah easy. um I wanted to do everything. I mean, it wasn't 60, but it was probably like Low to mid 50s. I did some grind sicko stuff and I literally tried to experience everything in the game. Um, and I still missed a lot when I go back and I look at some of the stuff and like, fuck even the path I took. I missed a lot of stuff, but yeah, yeah, I would say maybe about 50 hours with some grinding. If you're into it, you can do it. 00:03:42.38 Dave Yeah, you definitely can grind. Again, not sure if you need to in this game, but you can if you want to. So ah big, ah big range here, but I think if people are going to just kind of mainline the story, I think it's about a 20 hour game. And then obviously RPGs got side quests and places to explore and stuff. You can definitely spend more time there. 00:04:02.35 Dave So ah let's start the episode, as always, by talking about our personal histories with Omori. And the main reason that I played this is because you pestered me to play it. So let's start with you as if that's not the way every episode goes anyway. But ah Aaron, where did you first hear about this? 00:04:22.28 Aaron I, so I, uh, I got the steam deck and I probably had like 10 or 15 games that I bought right away that I was really excited to play. Um, and I, I tried all of them. I beat probably like six or seven of them and the rest, I was just like, well, this is fucking awful. I need something else. So at like highest rated steam games, like steam games with the most players, you know, I kind of, you know, kind of got it down to RPGs in that realm. And all I kept seeing online anywhere I looked like, 00:04:51.35 Aaron Dude, if you have not played any more, you have to play it. So I looked at a YouTube video, watched it a little trailer on it, and I was like, oh, fuck, this might, you know, this kind of looks like something I could get into. And it kind of went from there. But yeah, it was because I ran out of stuff to play. And I was like, what can't I play on PlayStation? And this was the game that kept popping up on list after list after list. So I decided to pull the trigger. Cheap game, not expensive game. 00:05:12.56 Dave Yeah, yeah, I definitely picked it up pretty cheap on sale. It's been out long enough that it's ah it's fairly cheap if you wait for those sales. um For me personally, it was definitely like I had heard of this and I had seen a couple of screenshots here and there, you know like the black and white. 00:05:29.89 Dave with the, you know, the black light bulb and stuff like that. Like I had seen that before, but I hadn't really looked into it. And there's like a hundred fucking million YouTube essays about this game. 00:05:41.49 Dave And I had just not had any of them pop up for me. And it was really when you played it and you were talking about how much you loved it and that I should play it. And then like, you know, I do what I always do where I'm like, Oh yeah, that sounds cool. 00:05:53.46 Dave And then like in my head, I'm like, I'm probably not going to play that. But you, you were like, 00:05:56.57 Aaron yeah 00:05:58.46 Dave Extra persistent with this one ah that made me actually be like okay like Aaron actually cares like he he actually really does want me to play this not like him You know asking me every three months of all play fortnight or something like that like 00:06:11.08 Aaron Yeah, right. No, and Dave, Dave's playing it down. I was literally texting the group chat every day as I was playing the game, just like, Oh my God, dude, this, the scariest thing just happened to no more here. 00:06:22.16 Aaron Oh my fucking God, dude, this game is gutting me or Oh my God, I've never played a game. Like it wasn't like an annoying persistence. It was literally just Dave. You are missing out on the consciousness of video games. 00:06:33.90 Dave Yeah. 00:06:35.07 Aaron If you do not play this kind of thing. 00:06:37.28 Dave Yeah, exactly. So here we are. It was basically like, ah you talked it up so much and then you kept talking about it. And I was like, okay, all right, there's something here. Let me check this out. And to get into our quick opening thoughts at the top of the show here, I think this game is really fucking good, first of all. um There's like, there's this weird, it's not weird. The way the game is structurally set up, there are like two main, 00:07:04.99 Dave modes of play, we'll say. There's the dream world and then there's the real world. And I love the real world section. I think it's like one of the best story RPGs I've ever played. And I like the dream world section, it ranges from like, 00:07:20.96 Dave it takes way too fucking long to like me being like oh they're doing some really cool stuff here but like it's weird when you like set it up like this and I think of all of my favorite parts they're in like one specific type of play in the game uh that said in that dream world section is where all the RPG stuff is and I think this game is uh like a surprisingly competent mechanical RPG, like I think the battle system is really fun and stuff like that. And that was kind of a surprise. So overall, I think the most important part about this game is the story and the things that like, you know, the themes that it is trying to touch on. And I think it's really, really good at that stuff. And that's the most important part. And we'll talk about it later. But like, if we, you know, make a pie chart of all the time that I spent playing Omori, 00:08:14.65 Dave About like half of that at least is stuff that I can kind of take or leave, but it's not the most important thing. So that's not what really sticks with me here. ah But I do think this game is really good and I'm glad I played it. 00:08:26.99 Aaron Yeah, I mean, I've said it many times and, you know, in retrospect, like seven, eight months after I've played this game, like I still feel the same way that I do about it. It's just that it is wholly unique amongst video games. It is wholly unique amongst RPGs. And if you even get it down to JRPGs or RPG Maker RPGs or whatever, like you're still getting something that I've never seen in video games before, or at least I've never seen ah topics and themes like, you know, hit the way they do through this story for me. So I kind of think that's like, but I do not think I'm qualified to talk about this video game, especially after that video you sent me talking about dissociative amnesia and and things like that. Like i I am not qualified to talk about this game. and 00:09:16.45 Aaron I really wanted to do this episode. so it's like it's. It's like a game that touches me outside of playing a video game that I love. It's it's a game that makes i think makes you you know retrospective on who you are and the things that you've done and in you what the ramifications have or could have possibly been if you had made different decisions along these things you know it's on stuff like trauma and and themes of like you know forgiveness and guilt and things that just like you don't necessarily like look inward in in real life and the game kind of forces you to through these characters and i think when a video game like that leaks into real life or make makes me you know 00:09:57.19 Aaron It makes me question my awareness of who I am and how the world works around me. It's really hard for me not to say that this video game isn't one of the most special video games I've ever played. It isn't one of the most unique and might be in the grand scheme of things, one of the best video game experiences I've ever had. So long ass elevator pitch I know, but yeah as Dave can attest, man, this game touched me a lot more than I thought it would and ah and I think anybody who's played it would agree with me. 00:10:23.41 Dave Yeah, I think that all of that stuff is absolutely true. Like it it is a game that if it works for you, it is going to touch you in that way. And it's definitely going to make you think about what people are going through and stuff like that. So it is, you know, one of those when we start talking about like, especially in the spoiler section, when we start talking about like what's actually happening here, there will be a lot of, you know, talk about the way we feel about themes and how they're explored and stuff like that with like the caveat of like, I am not a therapist. So like, 00:10:53.57 Aaron exactly 00:10:53.75 Dave I'm not, you know, I'm not diagnosing anybody or anything like that. 00:10:55.27 Aaron right 00:10:57.92 Dave It is one of those games where there's there's a fucking lot happening. So ah let's take a little music break and when we come back, we will set up the story of what's going on here. 00:11:11.15 Dave The game begins with your titular character named Omori, who is a teenage boy wearing a black tank top, some pajama bottoms, long black socks, ah laying down in a white void called Whitespace. 00:11:16.97 Aaron Exactly. Right. 00:11:26.79 Dave And there's a message that goes up on the screen that says, welcome to Whitespace. You've lived here for as long as you can remember. And in a white space, there's a little laptop. There's a journal full of very fucked up drawings. There is a cat, and there's a big white door. And after some stuff in white space, you go through the door, and you enter this game's dream world portion called Headspace, which is a very, very ah vibrant and colorful 00:11:58.75 Dave kind of fantasy RPG world, we'll say. Omori steps outside where he's greeted by his friends, Kel, Hero, and Aubrey, and ah ah later friends that they meet, Mari and Basil. And they go to Basil's house to hang out in this ah this world here, ah but there's a little scuffle between some of the friends. Aubrey and Kel are kind of like a dog and a cat, just like a cartoon dog and a cat. Like Tom and Jerry, basically. they ah I know that's not a dog and a cat, but they're always fighting and stuff like that. And um in their little scuffle, some photos get knocked out of Basil's album. 00:12:37.81 Dave ah one of the photos they don't remember taking. And when Omori looks at it, Basil yells something, a scary image flashes up on the screen, and Omori is transported back to white space. So it's kind of an abrupt end to this little adventure with the friends. And one thing that happens here that I'll say, this is, you know, 15 minutes, 30 minutes into the game. 00:13:01.70 Dave ah Omori has a knife as his you know fantasy weapon ah for combat. You do your combat tutorial in that headspace section and you're kind of wandering around white space until you realize the only thing that you can do is to go to the menu. There's a menu option that says stab and it asks you who you want to stab and You stab yourself, Omori stabs himself in the stomach and you have to do this. It's pretty fucked up and it's a really, really interesting and shocking way that this game starts. And it kind of lets you in on just like, I don't know, somehow violent this game can be sometimes. 00:13:47.27 Aaron I remember I had to look up that stabbing. I had no idea what the fuck to do. I walked around white space forever until it was eventually like stabbing. 00:14:15.82 Dave Oh yeah. 00:14:18.98 Aaron I'm like, oh, what am I stabbing? And it only gave me the option to stab myself. And I realized, oh, this game has a child stabbing themselves to death. I am in for something different here. 00:14:30.90 Dave Yeah, and we'll mention right here, I was going to mention this at the top of the story set up here, but Omori does have a ah pretty hefty content warning when you start the game up, ah content warning for suicide, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, um and of course, 00:14:40.17 Aaron Mm hmm. 00:14:48.56 Dave other self-harm. So something to keep in mind if you are um sensitive to those things, definitely check doesthedogdie.com, ah which is a website that I recently learned is not just a place for finding out if the dog dies, it's full of all kinds of warnings for content in the media. So I definitely want to check out if you're interested to see how exactly those articulate in the game before you play it yourself. 00:15:15.81 Dave ah So that opening is super fucked up and um I was streaming this and I was like shocked when this happened. I was like, what is this game? What is happening here? ah What happens is after you do this, 00:15:32.24 Dave It turns out, like I've kind of mentioned before, this was a dream of a kid in the real world whose canon name is Sunny, although you can enter a name. And Sunny is what the Japanese term is hikikomori, which loosely translates to like a recluse or someone with severe social withdrawal. ah So Sunny has not left his house in years following a tragic event, he's just kind of been living in the house. But Sunny's going to move soon. There's a message from Sunny's mom talking about the upcoming move date in three days, ah but he's home alone right now. 00:16:16.91 Dave ah There's another message from Sunny's mom saying that his friend Kel has been calling, ah which Kel was in the dream world, so there's a link between those two. And Kel wants to hang out before Sunny leaves. So the next day Kel comes over, knocks on the door, and you have a choice whether you want to hang out with Kel or not. And that's where I'm going to stop with actual plot details. ah And so... Whoo, this ah this story really goes a lot of places. The one I guess I'll mention right now, I mentioned there are two kinds of modes of play. There's headspace, which is the dream world and there are the real world sections. 00:16:58.88 Dave um Headspace is probably going to take up more of your play time, but I think the real world sections of this are by far the best content in the game. I actually don't care for the Headspace sections all that much. And I think it's just, it leans into something too quirky of a thing for me. like it's a dream. So it's like taking in these random influences from the real world. And when the things that I find most interesting from the real world bleed into headspace and vice versa, I really like it. But there is a lot to like, I don't know, I don't know how to really describe this like cartoony, quirky humor and characters that I just don't really care about. 00:17:46.20 Aaron Yeah, it's got big, ah big, heavy anime vibes, Dave. hi I got you right there. 00:17:49.58 Dave that that is not 00:17:52.08 Aaron Dave is saying that it has heavy anime vibes and it can be the worst. No, I'm just kidding. So, okay. So Dave Dave is right. So like you, like the headspace part of the game, the part where you were in the dream world where Sunny goes, uh, every time he goes to bed or whatever. 00:18:06.70 Aaron ah Is the big video game part and I just and I agree with Dave like the stuff that happens in headspace is way better It's almost like headspace is where the actual story takes place and everything that are no in the real world Yeah in the real world is actually where like 00:18:13.76 Dave That is not. 00:18:18.51 Dave you mean You mean the real world? Yeah. 00:18:22.43 Aaron The real story of this game takes place and how you find out most of this stuff. And Headspace, to me, is almost kind of like a palette cleanser to get away from all the sadness for a little while. So they almost had to make Headspace like this quirky, you know, kind of cheesy video game, which is right up my alley in terms of video games. So I was able to experience both sides with the same amount of joy. 00:18:46.83 Aaron The headspace gives me my stupid RPG with all my battles and collecting trash so I can get the recycling machine award or, you know, collecting whatever, you know, yeah I got my, I got my rocks off in headspace with my RPG stuff. And I got my rocks off in the real world with narrative stuff. And, you know, while I, I agree with you that like the head spaces, sometimes you're just like, Oh my God, okay, let's get out of here. Like I do think. 00:19:13.98 Aaron I do think it is a good balance for everything that you experience in the real world. I think the real world gets fucking super real sometimes. And I think this goes back to probably why Headspace is the way it is because Omori's real world is terrible. And so his Headspace has to be as over the top, you know, circus type shit as possible. 00:19:39.20 Dave Sunny's real world. 00:19:41.00 Aaron Sunny okay so okay so i did not play the game as Sunny i named my character so i don't register as Sunny i named my character Aaron right so if i accidentally say Aaron or Omori 90% of the time i'm probably going to be referring to Sunny i never played as Sunny something that was like the whole time i was like at every video i watched every year i was just like who the fuck is Sunny it was like it's bead so my apologies my apologies i'm being confusing oh yeah yeah yeah 00:19:45.34 Dave Oh, okay. 00:20:02.59 Dave One of those RPGs. Yeah. When you can, when you can name your character you know playing Final Fantasy seven, like who the fuck is cloud? His name's Aaron. 00:20:11.84 Aaron Who is he? Yeah, his name's Fartknocker. 00:20:14.43 Dave Yeah. um I think ah the good thing about the Headspace sections, if so like the Headspace sections almost have like their own plot and then they tie into the real story. And I think the way that the Headspace sections tie into the real story is really interesting and something to talk about in the spoiler section. But those like mini plots that you go on in Headspace, I could not have cared less about. like uh there's yeah space boyfriend and princess and those characters like i don't give a shit about those characters at all and it' it's a lot so like i would get into because you're right that's where like the that's where like the rpg stuff is that's where the dungeons are that's where the fighting is and the boss fights and i would be in those sections like i enjoy the rpg mechanical stuff but what i'm really thinking is i can't wait till this is over so i can see what's gonna happen in the real world 00:20:44.29 Aaron I get it. Space boyfriend. Yeah, I get it. 00:20:51.10 Aaron I get you, man. I do. 00:21:12.41 Aaron See what's happening next we're the big plot points move It's it's like it's like watching lost were you like, okay, like, you know, i'm I'm watching their backstory and this is cool Get me back to the island so I can see some plot movement Almost not really if you think about it If 00:21:13.97 Dave Yeah. 00:21:25.43 Dave Kinda, it would be like if they only focused on the characters and loss that you don't care about. 00:21:35.83 Dave ah yeah it's If it was all Nikki and Paolo. 00:21:38.51 Aaron it was heavy Michael, yeah, I get you 00:21:38.70 Dave Yeah. 00:21:41.67 Dave Yeah, all right. So um those things tie together in a cool way, I think. And another thing that I think is cool about the way the story is told here is that you have choices for what you're going to do in the story. And what I like about this is the choices that you make can have big impacts on the story. ah One particular choice that you make will drastically change the game to the point where it's like two different games basically. ah But these are not telegraphed to you in ways that make them seem like big important video game choices where it's like, you know, at the end of ah at the end of Ghost of Tsushima, you have like this huge dramatic choice and the game is like, hey man, this is a huge dramatic choice. 00:22:29.74 Dave What are you gonna do? Omori doesn't do that. Omori will make them seem more natural. And so like, there's a couple of them. 00:22:36.45 Aaron Hey, you wanna hang out? 00:22:39.32 Dave There's a couple of them where They happened. I learned about what would have happened if I picked a different thing, but I didn't know I was making a huge important choice at the time, which I think is really, really cool. It affects the endings that you can get. There are multiple endings and some of the endings reach back pretty far ah back into the game based on seemingly small choices that you made. And I think that this is really, really good stuff. 00:23:08.83 Aaron Yeah. One of the best parts about this game is like, you know, I can remember playing these kinds of RPGs when I was younger, you know, on super Nintendo or early PlayStation. And this is always like the thing that like, you know, I always wished I could see in a RPG like that is like seeing like the decisions I make have like an, like a significant impact 30, 40 hours later. I'm not going to get into spoilers about any of these things. We'll definitely talk about this later, but I, this is one of my favorite parts of the game. This is one of my favorite parts of most ah video games that I, you know, I like a lot of. 00:23:38.92 Aaron narrative choose your own adventure type games. I like games where I can impact the story and the story is not on one specific path. It's just kind of what I'm feeling at the time I'm making that decision, but Dave hit it right on the head. The very cool thing about Amore is you do not even write until you realize you're doing it at the time. It seems like such an instant, like they ask you a million questions in the game and 99% of them, ah you you know, can just lead to whatever or an item or, you know, whatever. 00:24:05.77 Aaron But like two or three of them completely changed the trajectory of what you're going to experience. And you never, you would never even realize it. Now me personally, like the first hour of the game, anytime I had to make a decision, cause I had read there like, Hey, by the way, lots of decisions impact what you do. 00:24:22.55 Aaron I was like, OK, what will happen if this happens? And so I obviously spoiled the Kel thing for myself. And that's when I kind of stopped looking at stuff to make sure I was playing the game that I wanted to play and just started playing the game that I wanted me to play for myself. 00:24:38.75 Dave Yeah. And like, honestly, I don't know if you agree. And if we disagree super strongly on this, I might just cut it out of the episode. But like, I think that the route that goes when you say yes to hang out with Kel should be someone's first playthrough. 00:24:54.34 Aaron That's the game. Yes. 00:24:55.45 Dave Yeah, so when Kel asks you to hang out, just say yes and then like make all the other choices naturally as you would. ah But that seems like that that should be what you do. 00:25:07.74 Dave And there's some stuff in the spoiler section that I'll bring up about those particular choices. 00:25:13.60 Aaron Why would you make that decision? Yeah. 00:25:15.24 Dave Right. Yeah. why? Why are they interesting decisions? 00:25:16.69 Aaron and I know what you're talking about. I got you. 00:25:18.12 Dave Yeah. ah So that's cool. um And then ah the other part about the story, I guess, just to touch on is we did mention that the game touches on some extremely heavy themes. 00:25:30.16 Dave It's very similar to another like very brutal game that we did on the show recently, Lisa the Painful, where you have uh you know thematic content about suicide and depression and grief and anxiety and uh how people cope with trauma and self-harm and all kinds of things like that and i think that this game treats those things with respect which is really good uh and You know, obviously it's going to differ from person to person, whether you want to play games that are based around these things. ah But I do think that these are really good and again, handled with respect. 00:26:10.85 Aaron yeah Yeah, I don't really have much but more to say about that. i ah you know Things like that don't bother me and I can understand why people would be bothered by those things, but I do think this game does a really good job of making it accessible to even people who might be triggered by those kinds of things. 00:26:26.99 Aaron So much respect to the game. 00:26:27.38 Dave Yeah. for sure. And that kind of leads into like, why is this game in October with all the other horror games? Why did I say that this is a psychological horror game? ah Well, those themes play into the psychological horror and, you know, psychological horror in some ways is, you know, it's not just using fucked up music and visuals to freak you out rather than, you know, 00:26:57.00 Dave zombies and monsters. ah But psychological horror to me, there's an aspect of it where if you try and put yourself in the shoes of people in the story, and try and empathize with what they're going through, there are people fucking going through it in this game in a lot of huge ways. And I think that that is part of what I what makes this story so good and affecting ah is that 00:27:25.13 Dave The story content, how much you like the characters, by the way, like everyone's going through it, but I think these characters are super likable, like pretty much across the board in the main group at least. 00:27:33.34 Aaron Agreed. 00:27:35.95 Dave Again, I don't give a fuck about princess or space boyfriend, but Kel and Mari and Aubrey and Basil and Hero and the the main group, they are awesome characters. 00:27:49.46 Dave and the way that they develop through the story is really great. um So to see them go through these situations adds to the horror of it, too, because it's not really a game with like, you know, fucking. I don't know how like monsters, really, like it's not a horror game where there's zombies or, you know, evil dog creatures or some shit like that. um It's just it's all kind of in the head. 00:28:17.15 Aaron Yeah, it's like you're experiencing another person's fear. And that's what makes it kind of scary is it might not be something that you specifically are scared of, but the characters you are playing as are you know affected by that. 00:28:31.07 Aaron What I will say is you are kind of wrong. like ah like Let's be completely frank here. There are a lot of jump scares in this game. 00:28:37.09 Dave There are jump scares for sure. 00:28:37.90 Aaron there are a lot of And there are some monster scenes and some chase scenes and some really you know it's it's not just like a psychological thing like you know i i agree with you or like for me like a horror game has to do more than throw some zombies and some jump scares at me but like let's even talk about like you know when the game gets like really see you know you see the dialogue on the screen it's just like regular font or whatever And then when the game gets really serious, the font is all like scribbled and the characters eyes turn red and the like, you know, like this is, this game didn't like scare me by any means, but there were times I was playing this game in my house by myself in the dark, mostly. 00:29:06.55 Dave Yeah. 00:29:15.14 Aaron And I was like, I should, uh, I should go turn on the kitchen. Like, I don't know, just a little bit more light. 00:29:18.51 Dave yeah 00:29:20.21 Aaron Like it's not scary, but for somebody who does not fuck with scary games, there were a couple of times I was playing this where I was like, one the jump scare got me really hard or two i was like i i am feeling very uneasy with where i think this is about to go right i even told you i was like dave every time you see a mirror look at it every time you think you might find a mirror look at it 00:29:34.00 Dave Yeah, there are jump scares for sure. There's one huge one early in the game, two huge ones early in the game. And then there's a bunch of like, you know, if you look in that mirror, who knows if there's going to be something else when you look in there, you know? Yeah. 00:29:52.84 Dave Yeah, so like there's a bunch of stuff like that too. um But if you know looking back on what those scars are accomplishing, I think that those are for a purpose and not just there to scare you. 00:30:04.86 Aaron Yep, agreed. 00:30:05.75 Dave ah which is you know as As I get more and more comfortable with playing horror games, I still have like You know, jump scares will get you because it's a thing, you know, jumping out like it's, it's a reflex, but to me, there has to be a good reason for them for me to like respect why they're there. 00:30:24.08 Dave And, uh, the, like, I, I just say, I prefer the way they're done in Omori because they're for a story purpose more so than like, build up and release of tension or just like, Hey, it's been a while since we freaked you out. 00:30:39.69 Aaron Since we scared you yeah good point 00:30:39.88 Dave So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see, music. Kind of continuing along those lines with talking about how this game does horror. Let's talk about the way the game looks and the way they do sound and music. So you mentioned the fonts earlier, which changed depending on the situation. And the scary font is ah is pretty creepy. And um this game does a lot with art. So we'll start there. 00:31:11.07 Dave With horror stuff, you know, the RPG maker parts of the game are simple, we'll say, but they do so much with changing the backgrounds out to, you know, emphasize how creepy the situation or this character is in a really dark place. So the background is going to be freaky as hell during this part, but it's not using like the pixel art um you know RPG Maker or like you know this game kind of has like an any NES type of look to it it's more colorful than an any NES game but those sections kind of look like that but when they decide to switch these out they will like lean on the fact that the director of this game they were a professional artist before they made this game 00:32:01.55 Dave So like the fact that this is a a professional artist who was not involved in any way with video games until this comes through when they decide like, we're switching out that pixel art for whatever fucked up idea they want to put on the screen here. 00:32:17.53 Aaron Yeah, you know, and without going into you know too many spoilers, there are a lot of hands in this video game, a lot of hands and fingers ah that make their way around the scariness of this game. 00:32:29.98 Aaron And it looks like they're using real hands and real fingers. Doesn't even look like art. It looks like a transposed photograph. 00:32:34.49 Dave Yeah. 00:32:36.79 Aaron Uh, I, you know, like the, the important thing that you said is like that the creator of this game was an artist before they did this shit. And it's very, very prevalent throughout the entire game that they tried to fit in as much of what they do into it. Like, right. Uh, with whatever, whether it's a little. 00:32:54.69 Aaron you know animated cutscenes or or the photos that you see in this photo book throughout the game. um One thing I did want to talk about because when I go look at the game it looks like Earthbound flu with some animated cutscenes and some cool like you know drawings throughout it. So do you remember if you ever read The Little Prince? Do you know what I'm talking about in the book? 00:33:20.75 Dave Yeah, I read it. Yeah. 00:33:21.99 Aaron so to me it kind of has like the same aesthetic that like the illustrated version of the little prince has or like ah like ah old rolled doll books like james and the giant peach or the big friendly giant where it's like what you're seeing on screen very, very clearly looks like it was hand drawn by a child, a a child who is like very good at drawing, but hand drawn. There's this scene in the game where you sit with all your friends on this couch and you look up at the night sky and you see Saturn and it looks like a fucking 10 year old kid had drawn it and colored it and you see a spaceship and the moon and some stars and it looks, you know, better than what I can draw, but like, like a little kid drew it. And I do think this is, 00:34:03.27 Aaron I mean, it's always going to be that way with video games that I love that like the art is going to go hand in hand with the story and it's going to go in hand with the music and blah blah, blah, blah, blah. But it really reminded me of like those old rolled doll books or like the little prints where it almost looked like a lot of it was drawn by a child. And I and i think that kind of enhanced the horror part of the game for me, because when you're in this headspace area, 00:34:26.71 Aaron You are in an area that has been entirely ah entirely created by the mind of a child so it makes sense to see things like the way child may see them like hand scribbled or Watercolored or you know draw by numbers or whatever the fuck and I really really enjoyed that about the game Oh, 00:34:43.13 Dave Yeah, 100%. That sketchbook style. 00:34:47.55 Aaron dude, I need to scan we haven't even talked the sketchbook yet to Oh Right, right, right 00:34:50.79 Dave Well, not like Omori's sketchbook. I mean, like the art style. It's like the drawings inside the sketchbook are are really fucked up. 00:34:56.48 Aaron Yep, sure. 00:34:59.38 Dave They're cool. But the sketchbook style that's kind of used throughout, um this is what things look like in the combat screen. So like your character portraits and enemy designs are all done in this you know rough sketchbook style. 00:35:14.05 Dave Like you can see the pencil lines and stuff like that. It's really good. ah Super colorful, super expressive. um especially shout out to when you're on that combat screen and it shows your character portraits, there is a mechanic that is based around emotions in this game. 00:35:31.47 Dave So when like Omori is sad or when Aubrey is angry or something like that, their portraits are super expressive and funny ah to look at because it's like it's like a a comedically drawn you drawing of an angry little girl or something like that. 00:35:47.09 Aaron yeah 00:35:48.14 Dave It's really cool. It's really good. 00:35:49.23 Aaron That it's awesome and it's really well done. This is, you know, like, like, again, like you're playing the game, it's earthbound, but every other artistic decision in the game outside of that really comes from the heart. 00:36:00.98 Aaron And it's very easy to tell it's, it's, it's very cool. And it's like pleasing, like you, you know, like, you know, so sometimes you play a game that's like, too dark or too fast or whatever the fuck you get like eye fatigue. 00:36:12.33 Aaron This game is constantly like giving you some sort of whatever to keep you interested in. A lot of that comes from those things. It's really cool. 00:36:21.65 Dave Yeah, yeah, so that is the style, I think, of Omocat, the artist, the director of the game, and that's their um pseudonym as an artist. And then the music, which is credited to Bo N, Jamie Lynn, and Pedro Silva. ah The music, again, I keep mentioning EarthBound, but the music reminds me of the soundtrack from EarthBound, not that it sounds the same, 00:36:48.90 Dave but it has a quirky soundtrack. It's super diverse. There's a ton of different types of sounds within the soundtrack. And ah even with all of this kind of quirkiness, 00:37:02.92 Dave types of, you know, instruments or like synthesized instruments that don't sound like any other video game really. And even within all of this, all of the music sounds like Omori music. um So like there's some chiptunes in here, there's some like piano based music, there's some boss fights that have like some wild keyboards and electric guitars and stuff. um And then there's just a lot of, ah you know, everything in between. 00:37:29.92 Dave um And then when you talk about the horror stuff in the soundtrack, they do horror type soundscapes really, really well also when it's like, okay, it's time to time to go in the pit. We've got like this creepy soundscape to go behind this. That stuff is really good too. 00:37:48.23 Aaron and not only that they uh and i'm never going to talk about music on this podcast again because whoever i'm on it with is just so much better at explaining than i am one of the things that this game does really well that i don't think we've ever talked about on a podcast is how well they play silence like like when when when they use no music no sound effects it always seems like extremely intentional so i'm not going to talk about the music because it's like a uh it It's great. 00:38:15.67 Aaron It's wonderful. It's fitting in all that stuff. The sound effects in this game and how they play with silence, I think, are the strong points to talk about when it comes to the audio. We mentioned it earlier. Omori has a knife. 00:38:26.76 Aaron He fights with it a lot. The knife sound of you stabbing something or someone is very cool. 00:38:30.98 Dave Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. 00:38:33.59 Aaron um there You smash stuff in the game and it's got a very audible noise. like you know like There are cat noises. and and hey like Like I said audio is not really the thing that I fuck with here But I do think it is very well polished and I do really like the music but the the one thing that always stood out to me in this game is like When there wasn't music when there wasn't sound effects when it was completely silent you knew You you know, you're not in a good part of the game. You know something Terrible is probably about to happen 00:39:04.47 Dave Yeah, they really do that tactic like silence really, really well. So like when all that music drops away, you're like, oh, shit, something about to go down here. 00:39:13.58 Aaron Oh God, am I gonna have to stab a kid again? 00:39:14.96 Dave Or, yeah, or is it, you know, Sunny's alone in his house at night? 00:39:19.96 Aaron Still, still scary. Still super scary. 00:39:21.57 Dave Yeah, stuff like that. A couple other things I want to shout out about the music. um There is some really good leitmotif and um like reuse of songs in different situations, which is always great to hear. 00:39:35.31 Dave I also just want to shout out that the combat music is really good throughout the game. And in an RPG like this, when you do hundreds of battles throughout the you know the game, 00:39:41.34 Aaron Correct. 00:39:47.47 Dave You can't get tired of the combat music, otherwise you'll start to like recent combat because you don't want to hear this music anymore. And I really like the music in Omori's combat. It's really nice. ah Mari's theme, which is called By Your Side, is really awesome. It's probably my favorite song in the game. It plays whenever you meet Mari at the picnic area. 00:40:11.51 Dave And one other thing that I think is really effective is there's one song in here called, I think it's called The Trees. And it is maybe the slowest paced video game song I've heard in a long time. And it's, it's like uncomfortably slow. 00:40:30.13 Dave you're playing an RPG and RPGs are always filled with upbeat catchy music. Or even if it's a sad song, they're not this slow. And I wanted to shout that out because whenever that thing comes on, like, it really slows you down into like the moment and the conversations or whatever that are happening. And just wanted to shout those out. Good stuff. 00:40:56.56 Aaron Yeah, yeah, totally agree with you. Like I said, I was, ah I think one of the only things about this game, and the lore and everything that went into it that I have not explored has been the soundtrack. But when you said that like, hey, there's this really slow paced song called In the Trees, when my first thought is like, oh, I know why it's called that. 00:41:14.99 Dave Hmm, yeah. Uh, music. All right, let's talk about what it's like to play Omori. And again, making the comparison with ah EarthBound, you know, it's very JRPG, but EarthBound is the best analog, I think, where you're like, you're going around um checking on objects. Most like EarthBound is, you know, talking to weird characters that always have something interesting or otherwise quirky to say. 00:41:44.69 Dave um So I liked going around and talking to everybody in this game just to see what they had to say, even if it ended up being something I didn't think was fun or interesting. ah they There's no one in this game that's like you know just saying like, hey, press B to open your menu or some bullshit like that. like Everyone has something interesting. um So I think the biggest thing about combat is to talk about. So I think the biggest thing about playing this game is to talk about combat. So ah when you're in dream space and there are enemies to fight, there are enemies out on the field, they're visible, you can see them and kind of like Earthbound. Again, they will run over to you if you're able to dodge past them, you don't have to fight them, but they're faster than you, so most of the time you'll end up fighting them if you're not super careful. 00:42:37.44 Dave It is turn-based combat and it's in the type of turn-based combat where you queue up everybody's actions at the beginning of the turn and then it all plays out in a row including the opponents depending on the speed stat or depending on special skills that you use. 00:42:53.83 Dave ah Each character in the game learns new skills when they level up, kind of like Pokemon. And like Pokemon, you can only equip four skills at a time. So you are kind of like building out characters with what you want them to focus on in combat. It's not really one aside from maybe a few skills per character where it's like you learn a bunch of high damage dealing things like status effects and emotions are super key to this combat system. So you do want to kind of build around that. 00:43:27.77 Aaron Yeah, you know and like we we should talk a little bit about the ah emotion system and how it works. 00:43:34.03 Dave Yeah. 00:43:34.42 Aaron Do you have that up? Because I don't remember exactly how it works. 00:43:37.47 Dave Yeah, so emotions are status effects, they 00:43:43.21 Dave they kind of replace traditional status effects, but emotions are, um they affect your stats. So they're buffs and debuffs, and most of them will buff one stat, debuff another stat, and maybe have another effect in there. So for example, if a character is happy, their critical rate goes up, but their hit rate goes down. 00:44:05.43 Dave If they're angry, their offense goes up, their defense goes down. If they're sad, their defense goes up, offense goes down. And also when they're sad, if they get hit, damage gets taken from HP and their magic points kind of spread out. So if a character is sad, it's kind of like turtling up and, you know, trying to stay alive longer, raise your defense and stuff like that. 00:44:28.80 Dave ah There are other moves that will just raise attack or just raise speed or something like that. But this, you know, just introduces what these emotions do, because you can do them to your characters and enemies. Just introducing what they do. Kind of like unlocks everything that you do in combat, like everything you do is based around these emotions. If there's any strategy involved at all in the battle that you're fighting. 00:45:00.83 Aaron Sorry, I ah you know me when I play RPGs, but I do I grind and I grind and I grind until basically the battle mechanics don't work anymore. But I was reading about, so I tried to put a role to everybody. Like, right? Like, like Heroes, my healer. Oh, Maury's my rogue. Kel's like my support. And Aubrey's like my heavy damage dealer. like She's basically my fighter. 00:45:27.20 Aaron but there was a strategy that I figured out or that I read about along the way and I don't remember exactly what the specific like I never fucked with emotions just FYI I don't care if you're sad I don't care if you're happy I don't care if you're angry I'm killing you but the OP p like strategy of the game is that you have to make kell happy and boost him with an attackup and then he does like one move i can't remember what it was and it's just like ah one hit boss killer a two hit boss killer something like that so my strategy became or a morey backsta aubrey pumping up ke Hero pumping up k and then ke unleashing this just devastating attack. and Another one of the parts of the battle system we don't talk about they they kind of ah like the characters can interact with each other outside of like using like a skill like I don't remember who it is I think Kel uses like a a sports ball right and so instead of like doing an attack with Kel you can pass that ball to somebody and if you pass it to Hero you get like a hit point boost or a hit point buff and 00:46:29.61 Aaron if you pass it to Aubrey she'll fucking just like wing it right back in their face at like three times speed to do extra damage and if you pass it to Omori he drops it 90% of the time and ruins your turn but if he catches it he can he gets a lot of confidence becomes happy and then does like a really good attack so you know as somebody who like played the game is like a no I am just going to grind all the time so I really don't have any problems with death and I'm gonna cheese some strategy I read online like you Dave's right you can play this you can mainline the story and if you take advantage of how emotions are used in the battle system you can still win you you don't have to grind man like the game gives you the the tools to win that way 00:47:07.90 Dave Yeah, so let me explain how it goes for people who are not gonna grind until everything dies in one hit. So you do really have to utilize these emotions in combat, and there's a ton of ways to synergize what each character is doing with emotions. So for example, Kel has a move that will make a teammate or an enemy angry. 00:47:33.42 Dave So I would often use that on Aubrey because Aubrey had a move that did extra damage if she was angry. And it plays into the story too because Kel and Aubrey are always fucking with each other and making each other angry in the story. So it makes sense that they can do this in battle too, to your um you know to your benefit. Those tag moves are really interesting because when you do a regular attack, you can build up these points. Every attack builds up one, and then when somebody gets hit in your party, it builds up another, I think. ah So you need maybe three, I think, to do one of these tag moves. 00:48:09.86 Dave But when you do, that can put an emotion on somebody. Like you mentioned when Kel passes Omori the ball and Omori drops it, Omori becomes sad if that happens. Omori has a move that does double damage if he's sad. So you can really strategize around these or if someone needs a little bit of healing, you pass it to Hero for a little bit of healing. 00:48:34.39 Dave um I really love how this synergizes and it peaked for me in some of the late game boss fights that were like a perfect level of strategy and difficulty. Like out of maybe the three hardest fights, I probably died once, but they all took like every bit of strategy on each turn to like manage the special gauge and make sure everyone has the right emotions and make sure like knowing your character so well that when you like cue in all the attacks, you know, like this person is going to attack, they're going to do this, it's going to affect this person and their speed is second, so they're going to go next and like, you can line up like this big hole move of or this big hole like chain of things to to happen. And I don't know, like, 00:49:25.16 Dave I think that for a lot of the combat, like it's something that kind of plagues this genre where like the regular combats, not the boss fights are probably too easy to require this strategy. But when you get to a combat scenario that does require it, I think this ah system is really unique, first of all, but it works really, really well. And I haven't seen another game really have like party synergies in like the individual moves and decisions that you make. Always thinking about like, okay, this character is going to do this. How could it also affect another character and boost what that character wants to do? I'm not really sure that I've thought about that as much as I have in Omori outside of something like 00:50:13.14 Dave Like the greats in turn-based combat, like in my opinion, like Darkest Dungeon or Baldur's Gate 3 or something like that. I think this combat system is really good. 00:50:23.73 Aaron It is, it's, it's awesome. Even for a grinding sicko like me, man. Like, so you're right. Like even as a granny, like the regular battles, obviously attack, attack, attack, attack. I don't care. Get me out of here or whatever. But like there, there is some sequencing that involves that thing I told you about earlier, earlier that strategy that I used with Kel to get him to unleash this crazy attack with being angry and her being this and blah, blah, blah, blah. 00:50:45.59 Aaron That's like a three round setup, like things have to fall in order during those three rounds. 00:50:50.44 Dave Yeah. 00:50:51.35 Aaron for it to work, and if it doesn't work, it could be five or six rounds before it works again. Um, I also dig that whole bunch. I think one of the things that I really had to pay attention to statistically for my battles was speed, because I needed each character to go at a certain spot. And it's really hard, because you're constantly finding like accessories that like raise speed, and you're constantly finding accessories and things that like make a lot of stats better and like so you'll equip your people with like what you think are the best things you get into battle and all of a sudden like these strategies that you're using don't work anymore because the speeds are different on each character right so that was one other thing that I you know as somebody who just grinds and grinds and grinds and grinds till I can kill everything in one hit you can win the game this way but like it's definitely gonna be easier for you to follow how the game wants you to do these battles 00:51:43.89 Aaron And yeah, I just, I've never paid attention to turn order so much in my life to pull off some of the things that I had to pull off. Like whenever Omori got too fast, I was like, fuck, I need Omori to go second. 00:51:55.74 Aaron If he's going first, everything is ruined. 00:51:55.81 Dave ah so 00:51:58.93 Dave Yeah, there are also moves where it's like, Kel is gonna taunt the enemy so they attack him and he goes first in the turn when he might not normally go first. um Characters have moves like that too. So you have the turn order and like recognizing how what you're doing is going to affect the turn order is super important. um And it it just ends up being like, again, 00:52:23.28 Dave Unfortunately, it's something that happens with a lot of games like this. The regular battles don't require this strategy and you can just kind of like mash attack to get through them in one round or maybe two. ah But anything more than that really requires your knowledge of the emotion system and how things synergize with other characters. 00:52:47.54 Dave Or you have to be a grinding sicko like Aaron ah to do what he wants to do. 00:52:53.14 Aaron You should put in like, like applause right there after you say that. 00:52:57.22 Dave I most certainly am not going to do that. No. 00:52:59.21 Aaron Cool. 00:53:01.31 Dave So. um 00:53:05.27 Dave Yeah, I think that we're at the end of this non-spoiler section, kind of itching to get into talk about what happens in the story here. So let's ah let's do our wrap up. Let's do our recommendations. So Aaron, what kind of person would you recommend to play Omori? 00:53:21.53 Aaron I don't care. what kind of person you are, what kind of gamer you are. This to me is one of those games that if you like video games and you have not played and experienced Omori, you have not experienced enough. Like this is one of those games that I do not feel as replicated in any other kind of game. I do not feel like the way this reached me and as I've talked to people in the Discord affected them in a you know relatively similar way. like If you like video games and even if this one isn't in your genre, I think it is like 00:54:00.35 Aaron It's like you can't get out of high school without reading the scarlet letter. You know, you got to read the great Gatsby, you know, you got to do like, is it, but there's a reason to, like you have to play Omori. Omori is something that is good for video games and more games should be this. Hey. They. 00:54:21.67 Aaron It's very impactful even to somebody like me who doesn't have emotions and feelings and stuff like that. Like this game is impactful in that every single person that enjoys video games should play it just so even if they don't like it just to experience what it's like to play a game that is so vastly different to me than any other kind of game that I've played before. 00:54:42.72 Dave Yeah, it is really interesting. And I think that it, so it's not like the only RPG like this that I've played that goes into, you know, 00:54:55.92 Dave really heavy like adult themes, we'll say. But Omori takes it a step further than those other RPGs. So like, Omori's more fucked up than those other games are. 00:55:07.21 Dave um ah Things like ah like Mother 3 deals with some of these things, ah but not to the degree that Omori goes to. 00:55:07.84 Aaron correct. 00:55:15.45 Dave which is really interesting. And so it's like it it sets up a situation where it's like, is this being, you know, edgy for being edgy sake or like trying to be too dark or ah is it writing a check that it can't cash with these like, you know, themes we've talked about before these really heavy real life situations. And again, I think this game does a great job with that. So the only caveat really is If you don't wanna play a game centered around these things, don't play Omori because you know what it's about. It's a dark story about these things. And the other thing is if you don't like JRPGs, I'm not sure that this is gonna change your mind about them, ah but it is number one, shorter than most ah RPGs like this that it's kind of taking inspiration from. And number two, the story does go in 00:56:10.25 Dave different directions, we'll say, than a lot of those do. So it's ah it's a pretty easy recommendation for me with those caveats that like if you don't want to play a game that's about what Omori is about, then don't play it. Other than that, I think this game is really great. And again, I don't love what I'm doing all the time. 00:56:32.22 Dave I don't love the story content in the RPG dungeons and stuff like that but those are they're to a purpose and once you get to like the the quote the real story you know the present day stuff well let me reword that uh 00:56:57.77 Dave the more close to your character's stuff and finding out like what's actually happening here and how are people handling what's happening. I think all of that is so good that it is definitely worth playing. If what we've talked about at all interests you or doesn't actively push you away, I think it's worth playing. 00:57:16.48 Dave sell Uh, good, good game. I'm really glad that I played it. Uh, so before we get into spoilers, we always do a little bit of housekeeping here. Like I said, at the beginning, Aaron's one of the co-hosts on one of my, uh, one of my other podcasts. I only have two right now. Uh, it's called a top three podcast and I shouted out on every episode of tales from the backlog. But, uh, Aaron, since you're here, do you want to do the plug for me this time? What's, uh, what do we do over there? 00:57:46.46 Aaron Freudian slip Dave does have another podcast. We don't know what Dave's dick dictionary. It's all about porn star dicks and It's not as good as top three, but it's fine It's it's really bad don't listen to it all lately link in the description ah Yeah, see so what Dave and I did right there is we got into a real top three mode since they're talking or top three mood 00:57:58.66 Dave No, it's not, it's, it's really bad. It's very amateurish. Yeah. Not well-researched. It's terrible. 00:58:12.73 Aaron But yeah, it's Dave, it's I, it's our friend Alan, it's God of the universe and fan favorite Bloodbath. 00:58:12.78 Dave Yeah. 00:58:20.47 Aaron We just sit around, pick top threes, do some draft episodes, you know, submit some answers on our Discord, Facebook. Do you use Twitter anymore? Sorry, X. Do you throw out, do you guys should I text you? 00:58:30.76 Dave No, no, I don't. I, the top three Twitter is, uh, it's dusty. 00:58:34.35 Aaron It's a wasteland, dude, don't go back there. 00:58:35.86 Dave Yeah. so 00:58:36.85 Aaron But yeah, yeah, come on down, listen to us. We're just having a good time, nothing serious. Yeah. Come listen to a bloodbath. Talk about how much sex he had this week. Real good time. 00:58:48.15 Dave it's ah It's a comedy show, first and foremost. So like this this show is funny from time to time, but a top three podcast is a comedy show. It's just us having a good time doing lists and drafts and things like that. And if you listen to enough episodes, you might find out why Bloodbath's name is Bloodbath. 00:59:06.85 Dave But maybe not. Who knows? It might be guarded secrets. But anyway, that's a top three podcast. It's a good time. And you can go check out the other episodes of Tales from the Backlog that Aaron's been on too many to remember off the top of my head. Aaron's been on both the Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth episodes. The Rebirth episode will be coming out next month. 00:59:30.88 Dave remake was out in May of this year. Other ones we talked about: Chained Echoes, Final Fantasy 6, Rocket League, Ghost of Tsushima, Persona 5, a lot of other episodes with Eren here. So, 00:59:47.77 Dave If you want to support Tales from the Backlog, you can leave a rating and review. That really helps if people are going to search for podcasts about Omori, they might find this episode and that's what we want. You can also join the Discord server, join the conversation about Omori this week, as well as just join the the community of people who are in there every day, hanging out, chatting, talking about the games they're playing, talking about, you know, you know, 01:00:15.18 Dave Nice, uh, critical discussions about video games. I really enjoy when that's going on in the server. It's a great group of people. So there's an invite link down in the show notes and we would love to have you there too. And last but not least, if you want to support the show monetarily, you can do that at patreon dot.com slash real Dave Jackson, where you can vote in polls for what games I do on the show. You can get some bonus episodes every now and then and, uh, have my everlasting love and respect. 01:00:44.88 Dave So, Aaron will be there too. 01:00:46.06 Aaron And I'll be there too. 01:00:48.44 Dave Yes. Uh, that is all for the non-spoiler portion of this episode. We're going to take a music break. And when we come back, it's full spoiler time for Omori. 01:07:53.53 Dave All right, we're back and it's full spoiler time for Omori. And again, we're going to give that content warning this spoiler section especially is going to talk about ah suicide and a um a different kind of wrongful death, we'll say. ah So also panic attacks, anxiety, depression, things like that. Once again, reiterating that. And again, we're not going to go in the chronological order for the story. We're not going to beat by beat walkthrough what happens in the story. We're going to start with the big revelations here soon. So please leave if you don't want to be spoiled. So 01:08:42.09 Dave Let's start by talking about the backstory with the group. So ah the kids in Headspace, I think, are about 12 years old, if I remember right. And the group is now 16 years old. And Hero is a year older than the rest of the group. 01:08:58.18 Dave Things that we learn, Mari is Sunny's sister and Hero's girlfriend. So those two were dating, that's a thing that we learn. Hero and Kel are brothers. Basil is a friend to everybody, but Basil is especially close to Sunny. And there is at least one screen where um Sunny and Basil are holding hands. And I don't know if that means there's something you romantic there or if it's just a um because in in some cultures friends hold hands and there's nothing else to it just holding hands with your friends ah but they're very close and then what you're doing is kind of uncovering memories of the backstory of the group before Sunny went into this seclusion 01:09:45.85 Dave and the memories that you're uncovering all take place during a summer vacation and the big thing that's revealed to you early on is that Mari is not in the real world with you all and Mari is She's in headspace, but she doesn't travel with the group. She's not part of the group. And it's because they presented to you as if she committed suicide. And that was what caused the group to break apart and it caused Sunny to become a recluse and not come outside for four years. ah So what did you think when this was presented as what split the group up? 01:10:29.10 Aaron I, well, like one, it makes complete sense, which is why when you get kind of to the end of this game, like every single twist is so impactful and fucks you up so much because like that, that that's the idea that you have the entire time. 01:10:42.17 Aaron Now, it took me longer to figure out that Sunny and Mari were brother and sisters than it did. Mari was dead. I just thought like the whole, like literally like half the game of like, ah, they're just there. 01:10:53.95 Aaron That's just like his older friend or whatever. But what you talked about here that is important is like the entire game is you slowly figuring out what happens to this really, really tight-knit group of friends. 01:11:07.76 Aaron like So you got to think about it. 01:11:08.74 Dave Yeah. 01:11:09.67 Aaron So Mari, you know, supposedly kills herself. three, four years before the events in Headspace, you know, take place in Omori or the real world. 01:11:20.14 Dave The real world. 01:11:21.66 Aaron So, and, and, and Sunny has basically been a recluse for years. 01:11:22.00 Dave Yeah. 01:11:25.91 Aaron This was always kind of the part of the game that kind of like, I was kind of like, this is the one thing that kind of doesn't make sense to me is because you have this event where Mari dies. And then it's like, oh yeah, by the way, like four years later, now, Kel wants to hang out. Like four years later, Sunny wants to, you know, patch things up with, with, with Basil or at least, you know, the Kel starts to care or Aubrey starts to care. Um, but yeah, like, you know, that, that that was kind of like always, always the big thing to me was I was just like, Hey, it just seems like this should have happened. You know, maybe a year after this tragic event too, but it's literally like, no, nobody's talked to each other in like three or four years, which I always found kind of weird. 01:12:04.70 Dave Well, so like, I think the other people in the group, Kel, Hero, and Aubrey have had some contact, but they grew apart. Hero went to college. And the the reason that Kel comes over and suddenly wants to hang out is because he sees the for sale sign in Sunny's yard and is like, well, fuck, last chance, I guess, to go hang out with Sunny. But like, you know how it is, like, 01:12:30.98 Dave somebody fucking like stops talking to you, you're eventually going to stop trying to talk with them. I mean, something that both of us have gone through with a close friend of ours at some point where it's like, hey, this motherfucker doesn't answer the phone or anything like that. 01:12:37.13 Aaron sure. 01:12:44.19 Dave like I'm not calling anymore. There's a point where you're just like, it's enough. But then There's that thing that brings you back. So ah with Kel, it was like, you know, seeing that for sale sign and just like the, you know, the decision for Sunny to like, you know what, if this is going to be the last time I see this, this old friend of mine to either go outside or to not. 01:13:08.35 Aaron um fine i'll go outside 01:13:10.35 Dave Yeah. um So talk about the decision a bit here in a bit. But um what I think is really interesting is how Mari did not commit suicide. 01:13:21.46 Dave That's not what happened. But everything that I like I think it's really interesting how they laid it out. Everything that they present is like the effects on everybody else of Mari supposedly killing herself. 01:13:34.12 Aaron I'll try and I'll 01:13:36.85 Dave ah makes perfect sense. 01:13:38.28 Aaron go outside. 01:13:39.10 Dave And like the way that everybody reacts to it, ah the fact that like, ah Hero talks about how he blamed himself because he couldn't see it coming. 01:13:49.72 Dave And that's something that like, you know, I know a few people who've done that. And maybe you'd be like, yeah, maybe they were, you know, depressed or something, but I didn't know they do that. Or that is something you hear sometimes where people are like, 01:14:03.88 Dave I would have it just like it's a complete shock. Like nobody thinks that someone will actually do that in a lot of cases. And so I thought that felt really ah real to me that while this was the storyline, all of that stuff made sense to me. 01:14:19.57 Aaron Yeah, and and they really present Mari as this as like the character or like the person who like has everything together and has everything figured out and she's a, she's a nurturer, she's a best friend, she's nice and she's beautiful and like she, she takes care of the group and makes sure everybody's okay. 01:14:38.84 Aaron Especially like, and let's talk about Sunny even for a half second here who even when he was normal was not normal. Like right, he's a non-talking protagonist with a knife. 01:14:46.88 Dave Yeah. 01:14:49.57 Aaron Like something's always been kind of weird and goofy about this kid. But like you know it's kind of like the you know for like what you know the the shock that kind of happened after Robin Williams committed suicide, where you're just like, this is the last person you would ever expect that to happen to because of how they lived their lives and the things that they did to bring joy. 01:15:06.10 Dave Right. 01:15:08.08 Aaron Mari was kind of like that kind of person. You can see why her importance is, like why that would wreck everybody's life around her because she made herself so important and seeing somebody like her decide to make that decision. 01:15:22.60 Aaron as they viewed it at the time, you can see why it fractured the group. 01:15:24.60 Dave Yeah. 01:15:26.99 Dave Yeah, so ah the way that everybody reacts is interesting. So Hero, like at the very beginning, started like lashing out and Heroes another one like so Mari and Hero are both like They're the older characters, they have it together. 01:15:45.04 Dave like They're taking care of the younger kids. Hero his fuck His name is Hero. He is the Hero to everyone in the group. 01:15:50.81 Aaron Like this is fair, Yeah. 01:15:52.89 Dave He's perfect. he You know he's athletic, he cooks, he's nice, he takes care of everybody. 01:15:59.47 Aaron He's going to med school like. 01:16:01.03 Dave Yeah, and he ah he lashes out at ah Kel, his younger brother, after this happens. ah Aubrey starts acting out and she becomes a bully, um which you deal with later in the story. Sunny goes into seclusion in his house and that fucks Basil up. 01:16:22.47 Dave because Sunny was like Basil's ah like support system basically. ah Sunny was kind of like a rock for Basil. ah Basil also has mental health struggles and kind of always did and relied a lot on Sunny. When Sunny disappeared, that really fucked Basil up. 01:16:40.96 Dave and um kell is just kind of like he just stayed kell i guess uh he's just kind of i guess but he dealt with it in his own way but he he seemed to be like on the surface the least affected by it but it's it's uh while this was still the story i thought this was like super good uh as far as like This is the event that happened. ah We're going to explore for a little while how this affected the people in the group, this group of teenagers. And I thought that was great. 01:17:14.20 Aaron and you even have that like moment in headspace you you have a couple of them where like you know mari is buried outside behind the church and you'll have the real world god sorry it's been a minute okay so in the real world there are moments like uh mari is buried behind the church and different characters come into your party Hero and aubrey uh while you're playing through the real world and 01:17:22.28 Dave You keep saying Headspace. It's the real world. Headspace is the dream world. 01:17:41.28 Aaron like Hero when he first comes to your party he's you know and you go to the church he's uh you try to go the back door and he's or it's either him or aubrey and they're just like dude i'm not i'm not comfortable with this hear he's like yeah i can't do this right now so you're like okay maybe we'll come back the next day or something like that and it's really cool how like how the spacing works and how they decide to present these things to you through Hero and through aubrey and even through kell who you know kell is kind of like just the 01:17:49.18 Dave It's Hero. Yeah, Hero's like, I'm not ready. 01:18:06.74 Aaron hey whatever he deals with it in his own way but like kell definitely by the time you get to the end is also like kind of emotionally devastated and more than willing to talk about it than he is like as he's presented in the real world at the beginning 01:18:20.27 Dave Yeah, I think you know the whole storyline of getting the group back together and everybody, because it seems like a lot of them didn't really share with each other how they were feeling or how others how somebody else's actions were affecting them. And so I think that does kind of help with Kel's development. Once Aubrey gets back in the group and she talks about how um you know, some of the other characters and the way that they reacted to it made her react negatively and kind of pushed her away from the group. That may have helped to soften Kell up a little bit or at least or maybe like break down the outer shell that he had of like that, that happy go lucky, you know, always joking guy. 01:19:06.67 Aaron And I think that's kind of, I think that's kind of like the biggest thing about this game is, is, is just like, or, or at least when it comes to that like group of friends is like, if y'all just would have taken some time to, to, to process and grieve properly and to talk to each other and be honest with each other properly, things might not be the way they are. But then you look at it that way. 01:19:29.08 Aaron There are a bunch of pre-teens, like you know what he's like they're kids and things like that happens. 01:19:30.70 Dave Yeah, they're like 12 and 13 years old, yeah. 01:19:35.70 Aaron But I do think one of the biggest themes about this game is forgiveness and guilt and the inability to experience either of those two things. And that's why things of you know kind of went to chaos within them or within their group is because And again, they're kids, but like it seems like a lot of stuff that could have been hashed out earlier on, but now that they're emotionally equipped enough to do so, they've got years of feelings backed up to put into it. So it kind of becomes a little bit of chaos. 01:20:04.65 Dave Yeah. And they also have this deadline because Sunny's moving in three days. And so that's, that's kind of like something that's that gets brought up where it's like they're fighting or maybe like Aubrey's being, you know, mean to everybody or, uh, you know, Basil's going through it in the real world and they, 01:20:29.43 Dave You know they talk about it a few times where it's like this is the last time our groups are going to be together like this Heroes at college Sunny's about to move away, like we need to, we need to make up we can be friends like we used to be friends. um And that's that's really good. 01:20:44.33 Dave Now What actually happened for people who didn't play is like we mentioned before, Mari didn't kill herself. What actually happened, and this is a very, very late game revelation for ah you know a good reason that you don't learn this until late. What actually happened is that Mari was a piano player and Sunny learned how to play the violin and they were going to do a recital together and Mari mentions in some kind of flashback that she kind of pushed Sunny a little hard to like maybe practice too much or something like that. They got in an argument at the top of the stairs and Sunny pushed her and she fell down the stairs and died. 01:21:26.73 Dave instantly because of the fall down the stairs. So number one, that explains why the first half hour of the game includes a scene where Sunny is afraid of the stairs, which I think is really good, like setting that up at the beginning and then like 20 hours later, you're like, oh, fuck, that's why he didn't want to go down the stairs in the dark. 01:21:45.78 Aaron Yeah. 01:21:45.82 Dave I get it. um The other part about that is that Basil saw this happen. Basil saw the truth of how she died and together they staged the suicide in the backyard because they were scared and probably didn't want to get in trouble. 01:22:02.15 Dave um which is super fucked up as you know something that this is what Sunny has been dealing with this whole time under the surface. And Basil too, on top of the struggles that Basil already had, and is that Sunny killed his sister on accident and then they staged a suicide And the last part about this is as her body was hanging from the tree, one of her eyes was open and that image of the open eye becomes the monster that's tormenting Sunny and Basil throughout most of this game. So this ah revelation, like, because the way it's presented, you're like picking up photographs one by one of the accident and like the aftermath and the staging in the backyard and all of that. 01:22:51.81 Dave Once I started to realize through like some of those photographs, like, Oh, fuck, Sunny killed her. And that's what's been tormenting him. That was when I already thought the story was great. When I thought that they were dealing with like the aftermath of a suicide. This is what like elevated it to like, Oh, fuck this. This explains so much more about this. This is very interesting. 01:23:16.32 Aaron It's very, very sad, but really, really beautiful. It is very, very rare that I play a video game that constantly has me going back and forth and hits me with a game changer right at the end that I don't see coming. 01:23:28.71 Aaron This, to me, was one of the biggest video game twists I ever experienced. But not only are you experiencing the story changing in front of you, but the scene. 01:23:33.98 Dave Yeah. 01:23:38.84 Aaron I would say that whole 40 minute period Kind of at the end of the game where you're kind of experiencing who that you go outside for the first time you see the tree like You I mean mean after after he after he kills her he pushes her down the stairs He like drags her body like up to his room and like sets her up next to the bed and just like sits there and like Contoplates like it's not just like this like okay, they yeah Basil sees this Amori kills her, we're best friends, we're gonna figure this out, obviously you didn't mean to, shows a lot of like, you know, what ah Sunny means to Basil. And then you have to go through this emotional scene of him dragging her up and then having to figure it out. Like, this is why Basil becomes even more reclusive and even more weird after this whole thing is because like, not only did he, in whatever capacity it is, love Sunny to the point where like, 01:24:36.99 Aaron he had convinced himself that what Sunny had done was an accident regardless of whether or not it was you know we yeah know we could talk about Sunny and him being like unstable already like before the events took place like to do something like that but like you talked about it earlier like 01:24:50.39 Dave Yeah. 01:24:54.70 Aaron Basil and Sunny's relationship like they are the two most important to each other in the same way that Hero is with Mari whether or not that's romantic or whatever they are I look at them as like best friends that's who they are Kel's not his best friend it's Basil right and so for not only Basil to put himself through you know, to to to put themselves through like, like helping Omori stage this thing, because that's how much they care, but then to hire Sunny stage this thing, but then for Sunny to immediately say like, start ignoring Basil from there on out. 01:25:28.54 Aaron I mean, dude, there's like a 15, 20 minute period at the end of this game that is just emotionally exhausting by the time you get to the end of it, because everything's kind of revealed to you very quickly. 01:25:37.67 Dave oh yeah 01:25:40.82 Aaron And the fact that, yeah I mean, I'm sure if you can read into a game like this or read into a story like this You can pick out the pieces ahead of time if you're way better at like, you know seeing foreshadowing and making educated together This shit caught me off guard so fucking hard, dude. They even have that moment where you unlock that chest that's in that room and you find like Sunny's violin and it's like broken and has blood on it and like hair and shit like that and the whole game they're like hey dude it's in the chest in the toy room or like hey don't forget and here's the key don't forget to open that because this is key to remembering and that's kind of what this game is about this is why like the trigger stuff that we talk about is so important because the game does not want to 01:26:00.83 Dave Oh yeah. Yeah. yeah 01:26:23.43 Aaron Skimp over those things that game is Forcing your main character to confront those and depending on how you feel about those things you May leak in real life and force you to confront, you know, some of that kind of stuff yourself. It's it's its it's a lot the the end of this game is like two straight hours of Torture it's so sad 01:26:46.21 Dave Yeah, it's because like you already got the feeling of what was actually happening and what is actually happening for most of the game is Sunny uncovering these repressed memories of what happened. And it starts with uncovering the fact that Mari is dead and the accepted story for why she's dead. 01:27:06.03 Dave And then as you go, like those last couple hours are finding out like the truth, truth, and then Sunny, like reckoning with that. And ah either choosing to face it and, um you know, start to make progress toward moving on with life or not doing it, depending on what you do at the end. So what's actually happening in the game is Omori, 01:27:33.89 Dave In Headspace, Omori is like an avatar that is like a guardian protecting Sunny from uncovering the truth, keeping those memories repressed. So anytime you're going around in Headspace, because this is what Sunny does with his life now, he just kind of lays around in daydreams or you know dreams at night, 01:27:57.39 Dave maybe help out around the house. ah He plays some games, his computer has a ah game on it and stuff like that. But he spends a lot of time in this headspace. And any time that he gets close to something in headspace that might like brush up against these memories, 01:28:15.44 Dave Oh, Maury takes him out of headspace right away. So that's why in that opening cutscene when they see a for the sorry, the opening section when Basil's photo album has this picture of Maury in it, that headspace immediately ends as soon as they see it. um There's other parts where, you know, you might get close to Basil who wants to tell you something in headspace and then headspace will end. And so This is cool for a couple reasons. The first one is, you know, the role of Omori from keeping Sunny away from the truth. But also, I don't think that Basil has a buffer like this. So while Sunny's been living in this, you know, dreamland, protecting himself from these memories, Basil, I think, has just been going through it for the last four years without this kind of ah buffer. 01:29:11.02 Dave Because Basil is like fucked up when you go see him for the first time in the real world. 01:29:14.95 Aaron Oh, dude. Yeah, dude, he's like when he sees you, it's like he almost has a panic attack. He constantly excuses himself. 01:29:20.07 Dave Yeah, like he's seen a ghost, yeah. 01:29:23.12 Aaron Like, you know, like whenever you guys are even hanging out and like, you know, let's it. Basil is very important to the story. He's a Very important to uh, whose son he is as a character and all of those things like so I think it's fair to like talk you know and and even like Aubrey is some degree is to like talk about these kids like Home lives in how like, you know, like their their home life affects the way they react to the situation in general Like so the thing with basil is he he doesn't have parents He Yes, sure 01:29:36.70 Dave Yeah. 01:29:53.34 Dave His parents are traveling, like they, they travel for work and they're gone for long periods of time. So he has a caretaker at his house. 01:30:02.18 Aaron sure they are so anyways so he uh basil lives at this house with this caretaker who's a sweet woman and uh his catatonic grandmother who uh lives upstairs in their house and is basically like hooked to this device um so it's like Dude, I don't think I've ever felt worse for a character in any video video game than I have for Basil as a character. And so like when you see him in headspace at the very beginning and he's just like talking about the flowers and how much he loves the flowers and his house and why all the flowers represent all of his friends and stuff. 01:30:36.43 Aaron like the juxtaposition to like who he is in the real world and how fucked up like shit has become for him so like Basil has this not only does he have this terrible home life not only does he share this like really strong connection with Sunny that forces him to cover up the murder of Sunny's sister and try to keep it all together then not only does he lose Sunny so like Basil in the real world is just he's he's He's almost like a really sad version of butters, like like things just don't go right for him, you know what I mean? 01:31:07.21 Dave Yeah. Aubrey bullies him in the real world, um, because Aubrey's pissed off at Basil for, um, I think she's pissed. I forget exactly why she's pissed at Basil, but she hates Basil in the real world. 01:31:22.04 Dave And I, it might be because he's hoarding the pictures or. 01:31:25.50 Aaron It's something to do with the pictures. I can't remember what it was because she actually, so Aubrey steals Basil's photo album and she blacks out all the pictures with Mari. 01:31:26.95 Dave Yeah. 01:31:33.69 Aaron I think it's something like, like Basil threw away the pictures of Mari and she got mad because. 01:31:40.28 Dave Because that's the only thing left of Mari. 01:31:41.97 Aaron Right. Exactly. And like, you know, if you, if you want to talk about like, you know, Kel and Hero are very stereotypical. Like a household, there's a mom, a dad, 2.5 kids, and a dog. They make dinner every night. Like, so, you know, they, they kind of react in those ways. Aubrey, you can see why she lashes out with anger. You go into Aubrey's house once or twice throughout the game. and i i i don't think both parents are there and the house is a fucking mess dude there's like trash and shit everywhere the tv's on so you can tell that aubrey has kind of like this like really like rough home life compared to a lot of the other kids in it and i think that's a huge part of her character as well and and i think what's really cool is like that also translates into headspace as kind of her i i i like how 01:32:05.16 Dave It's a mess, yeah. 01:32:20.91 Dave Yeah. 01:32:27.95 Aaron Like they're the characteristics they share in the real world translate to like their battle style like in uh Headspace like, you know Omori is is the same as Sunny where they're just silent and stabbing stuff But like kell and he really a Hero plays the caretaker kell's playing in sports Aubrey's just like fucking angry and lashes out through like the different moves that she has I used to use headbutt like every time because It's just a good move 01:32:51.76 Dave Oh yeah. 01:32:53.97 Aaron But like, yeah, like it's important to also look at where all of these kids in the group are coming from in the real world because it definitely impacts the way that they react to Mari's death. And I'm glad you say Mari to like half the videos I see. They call her Mary and I'm like, that's not how Mary spelled. 01:33:14.90 Dave Yeah, it'd be a really quirky way to spell Mary. m a r i yeah um One thing they say about Aubrey at some point is somebody comments on like even when the group was hanging out every day they never went to mary's or Aubrey's house. 01:33:33.10 Aaron Mm hmm. 01:33:33.35 Dave which you know makes me think like she doesn't want you there because she doesn't want you to see what it's like at her house. 01:33:36.94 Aaron Yeah. 01:33:39.75 Dave So yeah it's ah it's really interesting you know how we find the group when Sunny decides to come outside. 01:33:39.88 Aaron Hmm. 01:33:49.78 Dave ah So Aubrey has like a ah gang of um you know kids that she just like roams the neighborhood with like you know teenagers acting like badasses or whatever when they're all you know they're all idiots uh when you learn about them um Sunny's going out into the real world for the first time in several years after spending time in dream world, basically. 01:34:13.05 Dave i And they kind of like there's a couple things that happen. They kind of make you realize things like, Oh, Sunny might not realize that he's in the real world or that you can't do dream world stuff in the real world. 01:34:26.60 Dave ah Most notably when you get in a fight with Aubrey and Sunny stabs her. 01:34:31.17 Aaron oh my god what a shock bro did you fucking stab me you psycho 01:34:32.15 Dave Because 01:34:34.95 Dave yeah dude because it yeah because so like Omori fights with a knife in dream space Sunny picks up a knife in the real world i think there's a thing where you have to like cut a steak and cook it or whatever so Sunny has a knife and then you go out in the real world and you have a fight with aubrey and her friends in the battle screen and You probably just like Sunny in the game, you're like, oh, battle. 01:35:01.98 Dave I know what to do here. Get the knife, stab, stab. And yeah, he just goes over and fucking cuts Aubrey with it. And she's like, yo, everyone, not just her, all her friends and Kel, everyone's like, bro, you have a fucking knife. 01:35:13.57 Dave What's wrong with you? 01:35:14.17 Aaron Yeah dude, Kel starts freaking out. 01:35:16.11 Dave Yeah, aye which is really interesting to show. You know, maybe Sunny is not super, you know, he doesn't have like a great grasp on reality after so much time spending ah inside in headspace and then a little commentary on, you know, how easy it is for us to to do violence as, you know, controlling video game characters or something like that. 01:35:44.85 Aaron yeah yeah no and like let's uh again this is from the video that i watched that you sent me but also i thought this story it's like i don't really feel too bad because aubrey had a spike bat with nails in it so it's like so it's not like he was like you know he could just been like well she could hit me in the head with a nail bat so i might as well do what i gotta do here but you are right in what you said 01:35:56.22 Dave Yeah, if she did, yeah. 01:36:04.46 Dave Yeah, for sure. That video is from Daryl Talks Games, which is a great YouTube channel that I watch all the time, even when it's not things that I'm you know looking for more opinions on for the podcast. ah That's a great YouTube channel. um Yeah. 01:36:21.79 Dave so 01:36:24.95 Dave Let's see here. Uh, did you water Basil's flowers in headspace? 01:36:30.05 Aaron every single day and I know why you missed so this is also one of the probably why I spent so much time in this game and so many hours on it and why I liked it so much because you could literally be in headspace and have an inaccessible area and then if you just play through a little bit of the game you go back and it is accessible before you leave and sometimes it it is kind of in the middle like I was just so obsessive because like one of the things I read about it every time I play a new game I go to I type in ah this game tips IGN because they usually have like a top like 10 like 01:36:50.33 Dave Yeah. 01:37:04.60 Aaron Alright, if you're a beginner remember these things and like the one thing that stuck out to me when I read the Amore one was like water Basil's plants every day You got it. You might not think you can get there but just keep trying so every time I would get near the playground I would just go and check on Basil's flowers and I didn't know it was just gonna be like a Like a two-second cutscene at the end that like just between you and i I I don't it's not super impactful I just told you that so you would get as excited as me to try and do this thing but Yeah yeah I watered them every day I wanted to you know hype my friend Basil up and also like yeah no I just that that that that article told me just to do it. 01:37:43.20 Dave Yeah. 01:37:43.39 Aaron I thought I'd get like a secret weapon or something but I didn't. 01:37:46.34 Dave I thought it would be much more serious. So I, you know, you asked me multiple times as I was playing, like you were still watering Basil's flowers. And I was like, I think so. ah But I went back there. So I think maybe there's like four times where you can water the flowers or something like that. I did it the first time. I missed it the second time. I did it the third time and then the fourth time they were all dead. ah So it was like, 01:38:16.97 Dave I got really like kind of upset because I thought this was going to determine whether Basil lives or dies because ah It's not hard it's not hard to see In like the real world sections that Basil is having a really hard time and that Basil might not make it through this story Which you know, he he it's possible for him to not make it through this story, but I thought it was going to be 01:38:25.81 Aaron That's funny though. 01:38:39.13 Aaron Is fair. 01:38:44.49 Dave um Hinging on whether you watered all the flowers throughout the story because part of the big story in headspace Is that as you're playing through the headspace sections? 01:38:56.58 Dave Everybody's forgetting who basil is as it goes along slowly slowly they're like, you know because it the 01:39:06.22 Aaron Do you remember what basil looks like? 01:39:08.34 Dave Yeah, the Headspace storyline is that after that first time when Basil brings out that photograph, Basil is gone. And so you're looking for Basil. That's what takes you to all of these places is you might see an apparition or something and follow it because it looks like Basil. And then as it goes, yeah, people will be like, 01:39:29.47 Dave Yeah. What were we doing here again? Why did we come here? And people were like, I think we were looking for basil. Is that right? Is that his name? And then, uh, like later on, it gets more serious. 01:39:41.92 Dave Like they find a basil plant and they're like, this reminds me of something. I don't know what it reminds me of. What does this basil plant remind me of? 01:39:52.95 Dave ah Well, I don't know. And then. 01:39:54.59 Aaron They get full-time jobs. They're like, all right, we're like, sorry, I got wrapped up in this full-time job. 01:39:56.72 Dave Yeah. 01:40:00.16 Aaron I forgot we were searching for our friend. 01:40:02.44 Dave Yeah, that's a little bit of a, there's like a little bit of ah a thing about growing up in this game. I think you see it most through Hero ah because Hero wants to be a chef and he has to give up his dream to go to college and do something more practical or something like that. So then after that, the next Headspace scene, you meet those characters and Heroes like, yeah, I got a full-time job working at this casino for free. It's great. Love it. 01:40:30.63 Aaron and he's like the best at it too. 01:40:32.68 Dave Yeah. 01:40:32.76 Aaron Like his boss is mad. 01:40:33.20 Dave Everyone fucking loves him. Yeah. 01:40:34.96 Aaron Yeah. 01:40:36.09 Dave Hero yeah and Hero. Well, you're just the best. 01:40:39.50 Aaron Like you're just great. 01:40:40.80 Dave Yeah. 01:40:40.81 Aaron Yeah. 01:40:42.05 Dave Uh, but there's like the last part of that, that basil disappearing scene is, um, they're kind of like following the path and they find the flower crown that basil always wore. 01:40:53.09 Dave And everyone's like, what the fuck is this? Like, this is weird. And then, uh, even Hero makes fun of it. He's like, no one wants to wear this. And then Kel kicks it off a cliff. 01:41:03.53 Dave And I was like, Oh, fuck. Like, 01:41:05.75 Aaron They don't and it kind of goes back to what I said earlier man. Like the game is like it's all about Forceful remembrance like right the game wants like these characters to remember in like the most painful way possible 01:41:21.01 Dave Right, but I think what's happening with this Bazel storyline is Omori because Omori controls dream space, headspace. 01:41:31.63 Dave So I think Omori is trying to keep them away from Bazel because Bazel holds the truth of what happened. 01:41:38.41 Aaron Ooh. Ooh, yeah. like I like that. 01:41:40.34 Dave So 01:41:41.46 Aaron Yeah. No, probably. 01:41:42.87 Dave Yeah, so like I think I don't think that Basil is even actually in headspace for real until like the very end when it's too late for Omori to control it. But I think that Omori holds some influence over what characters are aware of. And so the fact they're all slowly forgetting Basil, I think is what Omori is doing because Omori's whole purpose is to keep Sunny away from the truth. 01:42:08.16 Aaron Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense. I haven't thought about it before. There is a lot to go on and or there's a lot to talk about with the relationship with Omori and Sunny and kind of there. 01:42:19.43 Dave Yeah. 01:42:19.85 Aaron Let's go back to the lost man in black, like Jacob battle that they're having his mind. 01:42:26.35 Dave Try to just try to force in as many lost references as you can. 01:42:30.07 Aaron You, you just did the Hurley you're great thing too. 01:42:32.35 Dave That's right. I did it too. 01:42:32.95 Aaron So you did too. 01:42:33.39 Dave You're right. So yeah. 01:42:33.95 Aaron There's three. 01:42:35.21 Dave Okay. So you've done two. I've done one. That's fair. 01:42:39.90 Aaron Time to catch up. 01:42:41.96 Dave Did you, uh, before we talk about like, you know, Sunny's journey to discovering the truth, did you either do or like watching a play through where you don't hang out with Kel and you just spend the rest of the time inside? 01:42:57.81 Aaron No, i yeah so after I had made that decision um that I was going to go outside with Kel, I read a little bit about the, ah how do you pronounce that? 01:43:07.23 Dave Hikikomori. 01:43:09.01 Aaron the Kikomori route and I was like, that sounds way more boring than the game I'm playing. Like I could understand that taking that route for a second play through for extra content. But as far as my first, and and again, I didn't, I don't want people to think like I spoiled the game for myself. I was just told that it was like really like, you know, the decisions you made heavily influenced the story. So I wanted to make sure when I came to one that I thought would be important that I knew I was not playing the game the wrong way because I wanted to experience the way they wanted me to blah, blah, blah. 01:43:38.72 Aaron Um, but no, I don't. I didn't even want to go back and replay that route. 01:43:47.31 Dave Yeah, so I told myself I would either go back and replay it or I would watch a YouTube summary of it. 01:43:59.18 Dave So what? 01:43:59.38 Aaron That's what I did. Yeah. 01:44:04.74 Dave What actually happened was ah I did not go back and replay it because what happens in the HIKI KOMORI route is you don't go outside. You don't ever see the people in the real world. You don't see the resolution of their stories, although you have to think it's not great for anybody involved. 01:44:22.60 Dave um And the entire game takes place either with Sunny doing chores in the house or with Sunny in Headspace. And as I said before, Headspace is by far my least favorite part of this game. So I was like, do I want to play this whole game again, but just have it be all of the parts that I like the least? I don't think so. 01:44:44.73 Dave um as interesting as it would be from a story perspective to see it, ah I didn't want to do it. And then yesterday I went on YouTube and I typed in Omori Hikikomori root to watch a story summary thinking like, okay, someone's made like a half hour video talking about it. Nope. It's all either like, like eight second meme videos or it's like let's play where it's like, watch all eight hours of this and I can't, I can't watch let's play really. So I didn't look into this really. I just know how it kind of like 01:45:23.60 Dave plays out like what it means to play that. ah So the rest of the spoiler section will not be talking about what happens in that route ah because everybody else failed me. I didn't fail. Everybody else failed me by not making a neat little summary video. 01:45:41.25 Aaron No, Dave, you're great. And he made the right decision to hang out with Kel because he wanted to play video games. The one, uh, in, in again, without like, uh, spoiling myself when I was kind of reading on these things I was playing is like, basically what I was to understand is the HIKI KOMORI route, you spent way less time in the real world and way more time in headspace. 01:45:59.83 Aaron Now, did you spend more time in headspace or did you experience all of his headspace and lose a lot of what you would have experienced in the real world? 01:46:00.69 Dave Yeah. 01:46:07.56 Aaron By the time I had read this, I was already kind of, one, I was past it, but two, I had realized that the real world was the story, and that's what I wanted to experience. So no harm, no foul. But i this is one of the things we alluded to earlier when we talked about the the big decision that you make that like pretty much pretty much influences the path that Sunny takes throughout the game is, so the first night you're in your house, you hear a knock at the door in the middle of the night, 01:46:36.24 Dave Yeah. 01:46:36.29 Aaron You go downstairs and it's like, hey, do you want to answer the door? And you do. And there's a terrifying fucking jump scare. Like it gets, it gets you hard and it's scary. 01:46:43.58 Dave Yeah. 01:46:46.39 Dave It's, uh, it's Mari at the door ah the first time, and then it turns into this monster and it's a, it is a full on jump scare. 01:46:46.46 Aaron Like, right. It's Maury. Yes. Like, right. Like, like the ring style stretching a face across the screen, like type jump scare. 01:46:54.38 Dave Yeah. 01:47:00.45 Aaron So the second time that you are asked to answer the door to your house, Understandably, you're maybe a little bit hesitant to make the same decision a second time. 01:47:10.64 Dave Right. 01:47:13.36 Aaron And that's why it's so funny that that decision is maybe the most influential one you will make in the game because the game is like, I want you to be scared. And if you are scared to answer the door for the second time, we're going to give you the route. 01:47:25.88 Aaron Everybody hates you. Pussy. like know 01:47:28.94 Dave it makes sense though, like it makes sense with what's going on with Sunny that he would not answer the door. like I think it's more unlikely if you're just going through like the real, you know how might these characters actually react? I think it's more unlikely that he does answer the door for Kel, but that is what unlocks like going and you know mending the friend group and seeing what happens with everybody and eventually maybe saving Basil and saving yourself. 01:48:03.40 Dave um But it is, I think the more unlikely thing to like to play out in reality that Sunny would just like to ignore the door, especially after you got scared like that. 01:48:17.29 Aaron Oh yeah, dude, I hate jump scares. Like I didn't want to look in the mirrors. 01:48:19.00 Dave Yeah. 01:48:20.61 Aaron I didn't want to do this. I didn't want to do this, but I am glad that is the path that I chose because I do think it is a much better game, especially your first time through to choose the Sunny route as opposed to the other one. 01:48:33.22 Dave Yeah, absolutely. Let's do some music here. 01:48:40.06 Aaron Are you going to use the battle music for any of them? 01:48:42.47 Dave Earlier in the episode, for sure, yeah. 01:48:44.44 Aaron Cool. 01:48:46.44 Dave So the story of Omori then becomes this um this journey that Sunny and possibly Basil can go on together toward living their lives again, basically, in different ways. Can Sunny reintegrate into society and um you know, move past this traumatic event in the past. Can Basil do the same thing? um Basil has not been secluded the same way, but Basil's very much an outcast. Basil has extreme mental health struggles. So can Basil go on and live the rest of their life? And also one thing that's brought up is can they do this ah without each other because Sunny's leaving? And that's one thing that Basil brings up. So, 01:49:35.77 Dave Some conversations with Basil, there's a quote that I want to bring up that Basil says. So when you're talking to Basil, after you find out what happened, um late in the game, you go to this place, I think it's like canonically like below headspace in Sunny's consciousness. ah And it might even be like subconscious or something called black space, which is just like a fucking place of terrors basically. Things are kind of randomized, they don't make a lot of sense. And you're just like living out like nightmares and you know weird thoughts and stuff like that. And in there you talk a lot with Basil. 01:50:15.98 Dave And Basil says, no matter how much I want it, things can't go back to the way they were before. But I still cling on. Is there still hope for us, Sunny? And so that goes on to be like part of the rest of the story is like, can they find hope and can they move on? 01:50:38.85 Dave um Basil is really upset with Sunny for abandoning him when this happened. ah Basil tells Sunny, when you hid the truth, you sealed a part of me away with it. In that day when you became nothing, that's when Sunny became a recluse and never left his house again, 01:50:57.96 Dave Basil says part of me was lost too. So a part of this starts with like Basil letting Sunny know how much he hurt him when he disappeared and how Sunny not being there made it basically impossible for Basil to heal from or move on from what happened with him too. 01:51:21.48 Aaron It's yeah The black space to me is the best part of the game because it's it's kind of to me were like the reality of both worlds combined. It's right before Omori and Sunny have this final showdown, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But the black space is essentially right towards the end of the game before there is any resolution. It's when the main character, Sunny, faces their biggest struggle. 01:51:48.19 Aaron And the biggest struggle for Sunny is to confront these feelings of what happened and what he did. Like, Sunny is... You know, we talked about this in the Final Fantasy VII Remake episode. Do we have a very unreliable narrator in that? And we have an extremely unreliable one in this. So it's like, at this point, like, you're almost, like, begging for there to be a resolution to this because you see, like, what these things are doing to your main character in Sunny. 01:52:15.52 Aaron And I'm glad I picked the route that I did. Like, so the way I ended the game was kind of like on a, Hey, we gotta tell everybody what happened, make peace with each other before I leave. Because if I leave and things aren't resolved, I don't feel like I resolved them in the game myself. So like, this is a, you know, those quotes from base, that's just, it's so sad, dude. Like, you know, like, like, I have more empathy for basil than I do. 01:52:41.90 Aaron any other video game character you know what I'm saying so it's like one of those things where like I felt by the time that I had gone through black space that I collected the hangman keys that I had a pretty good grasp on what had happened that like I myself could not end the game without resolving things between Basil and Sunny, which is why I talk about the importance of watering his flowers because right, it's it's a two, three second cutscene at the end of the game. 01:53:10.40 Aaron But what happens in that cutscene is Basil and Sunny embrace. They tell their friends what actually happened and who knows what goes on from there in the legal system. 01:53:21.48 Aaron I don't like how we are like that. The big thing to me, like, oh shit, is, is Sunny going to go to jail for admitting that he killed his sister? 01:53:22.59 Dave ah assessment 01:53:28.65 Aaron You know, but like I had to have that sort of resolve like basil and Sunny had to make up basil and Sunny had to get this guilt off their chest because the this guilt and this inability to talk to people about what happened even though what they did was heinous, you know to a degree that's what's creating all these problems that's what's creating a something that's what's creating the headspace that's what's creating all of Basil's problems like to me I had to resolve that before I ended the game or I wouldn't have felt satisfied beating it 01:53:59.77 Dave Yeah, and that's, I mean, both of those resolutions are what we're working toward. So there's kind of going toward the end of the story with Basil, then going toward the end of the story with Omori and Sunny. So I think this part in Black Space is when Omori starts to try to like wrestle control of Headspace back as like it's becoming really clear that Basil's about to tell Sunny or like help Sunny remember that they're the ones who did this and not and that it wasn't a suicide. 01:54:33.32 Dave So there's a really fucked up sequence in this black space part where ah Basil dies a bunch of horrific deaths in like the span of, you know, like once every 30 seconds, like they're going down like a raft and they go under a low bridge and it cuts Basil's head off or ah Sunny's going around smashing watermelons. 01:54:55.51 Dave And then one of the watermelons turned out to be Basil. 01:54:56.23 Aaron Smashes basil it to that that that fucked me up 01:54:58.44 Dave Yeah. Uh, yeah, that section was really fucked up. And I think it was, um, like Omori just doing anything he could to keep this from happening, even though they're like right on the doorstep of finding out what's going on. So Omori has to do this over and over and over again. And like the last, the reason I think this is what's happening is because the last time that it happens, like You go through like this really fucked up like red door. 01:55:28.06 Dave You go to the shadow version of the town church and there's these hands up there holding basil and you get like an option. Do you want to save basil? And so like, Oh, Maury runs up and saves basil, but then Oh Maury fucking like stabs basil through the heart where it's like, you know, once and for all, Oh Maury is like. 01:55:42.89 Aaron Yeah. 01:55:47.74 Dave No, like the truth can't come out, basically. And this is in headspace, so it's not affecting Basil in the real world. This is all in Sunny's head. But ah this is like Omori getting more and more desperate to keep the truth from getting to Sunny. So like this section was fucked up, especially when Basil's dying all the time. 01:56:07.97 Aaron And like, let's not even like, so that's kind of the thing is like, oh, Maury kind of slowly. Again, this is, it's like lost in the sense that like, when it gets down to the nitty gritty, it's a mental battle between two separate entities to take control of what their destiny is, right? 01:56:25.93 Dave Yeah, Sunny versus Omori, yeah. 01:56:28.16 Aaron Yes, right. That's what it comes down to. And it's really cool because you play as both of them throughout the game. And it's fun playing as Omori because you're killing people and playing RPGs. And it's fun to play as Sunny because you're learning about the real story. It's really cool seeing these two forces collide at the end of the game, especially after the giant reveal of Sunny actually killing Mari. so like the it's it's It's very cool. And I guess I never really thought about this till you just talked about it right there. But like, oh, Morrie basically going like, no, the truth can't come out. Like, I would rather shut this whole operation down than letting this come out because I am this part of you. And like, if this part of you can't be in control, then this then none then no parts of you can exist, right? And you know I don't know if you, do you care if I say one of the many endings to this game real quick? 01:57:19.06 Dave Now go ahead. 01:57:20.19 Aaron So like if Omori wins, the game ends with you in the hospital throwing yourself off the fucking balcony. Like you die. Like you kill yourself. 01:57:29.94 Dave Sunny. Sunny kills himself. Yeah. 01:57:31.72 Aaron Son, son, son, son, he kills himself. If Omori wins that battle between you two. So like there is a ramification to Omori winning and there is a reason why it is like, I think that's very cool. 01:57:42.56 Aaron Just like that. I'm taking my ball and I'm going home. All right. You want to fight. You don't want to give up. You don't want to save your friends. Cool, dude. Like. You're going off the balcony. it's Dude, it's so fucked up. 01:57:53.44 Aaron It's such a fucked up little game, man. 01:57:53.76 Dave Yep, it is. Um, so yeah, but I guess before we talk about Sunny confronting Omori, let's just say, uh, were you able to save basil in the real world? 01:58:07.87 Aaron Oh, yeah. 01:58:08.79 Dave Okay. 01:58:08.89 Aaron Oh, yeah. 01:58:09.59 Dave So, uh, for those who didn't play, um, the kids, they go have a sleepover over at Basil's house. Basil is like extra going through it because his grandma had to go to the hospital on top of everything else that he is dealing with. 01:58:22.88 Dave So Basil locks himself in his room and the kids decide like, we're just going to like to hang out in Basil's living room and just be here in case he wants to come out and see us. and that night, Sunny wakes up in the middle of the night and ah you can choose to go back to bed or you can choose to go check on Basil. If you go check on Basil, if he's in the bathroom, he has that eye monster attacking him again basically, and you have a fight against Basil like in the real world that ends with you getting stabbed in the eye with garden shears. 01:59:02.03 Aaron Oh shoot, yeah. 01:59:03.61 Dave Yeah, Basil stabs Sunny in the eye with garden shears. So that's why at the end of the game, that's why they're in the hospital. ah because of this. um If you don't go check on Basil, he kills himself during the night. And it has nothing to do with whether you watered his flowers or not. It just has to do if you went to check on him at night. 01:59:24.27 Dave Uh, which I'm not sure about from a gameplay perspective. Like it seems like, I don't know. I could see somebody, you know, through no ill will just not going to go check on basil where it's like, it's the middle of the night. He's probably asleep or something like that. But that is what happens and basil can either live or die, uh, in here. And then after that. 01:59:50.17 Dave I was able to save Basil also. It was a weird boss fight against Basil because I knew I should not stab Basil like I did to Aubrey earlier. 01:59:58.45 Aaron Yeah, you don't, you don't want to kill him by accident. You don't want to kill him by accident. 02:00:00.91 Dave yeah 02:00:01.95 Aaron You're trying to save his life here. 02:00:02.80 Dave yeah ah so 02:00:04.24 Aaron And then he starts hitting you and you're like, Basil, come on, dude. 02:00:07.43 Dave Yeah. Uh, in the real world, Sunny has these, uh, combat moves like calm, uh, calm down, uh, persist. Um, I forget what the other one's called, but basically, they just heal him and like, uh, reverse any negative emotions or something like that. 02:00:25.12 Dave Like he kind of just takes a deep breath. That's what you have to do to just let basil get it out of his system until he doesn't get it out of his system. And he stabbed you in the eye with garden shears. 02:00:34.93 Aaron That stabs you in the face with garbage. 02:00:37.34 Dave Yeah. 02:00:38.27 Aaron They were like, all right, Basil. 02:00:40.50 Dave Time to go to the hospital. Yeah. 02:00:42.25 Aaron Yeah. 02:00:42.79 Dave So then ah it's on to um Sunny and Omori. So like Omori becomes the villain in the story, becomes the primary antagonist at the end here. 02:00:56.81 Dave Before you fight the boss fight against Omori, during the scene when um I just want to shout this out because I thought it was ah like a beautiful scene. Sunny goes into the house in the real world. He finds the broken violin and then there's this scene where you're going from street light to street light in dream space. 02:01:20.78 Dave and it's showing you these like memories of Sunny and Mari. So like now he has remembered what happened and now he's remembering who she was as his sister and there are all these wonderful memories like uh one of them is like Sunny remembers the taste of the cookies that Mari used to make. So it's like these really beautiful scenes and then at the end, Sunny gets up on stage with his mended violin and plays the duet with Mari that they never got to do in the real world. And the song is super beautiful. And I thought that was really, really sweet. 02:02:01.44 Aaron Yeah, it's really, really sweet. And like, again, as with most of this game, there's definitely like this, this shadow hanging over this moment as you're experiencing these things. Like there's definitely like a, you know, we talked about how the game plays with silence and like, you know, to a degree plays with like the the rain and stuff in this scene is like, 02:02:22.51 Aaron date You're going street light to street light, reliving happy memories that you had with your older sister, right? And it's kind of like your last, like, right before you go face the boss at the end of a game, like, going and making sure you get, like, the best weapons and the best armor and the best items and all these things to make sure you're prepared. It's the same way with this scene in, uh, in Omori, because, like, you're basically, like, using these things to, you know, essentially, like, mentally help you in this inevitable battle that you know you're going to have. 02:02:50.98 Aaron and this fight with, ah in in and I'll let you talk about a little bit more, the these things that Sunny does in the real world to fight off his fears, ah you're you're basically in the same kind of RPG battle system, but instead of having moves to attack, you have moves to, like you said, take a deep breath and and calm down and and and it's basically like the game is like telling you how to get over like a panic attack or like to get over being like fear stricken and in this last battle versus Omori you're fighting him and shit but the the things that have helped you get over your fears throughout the game whether it's the stairs or heights or water or whatever these are the same things that the game's been teaching you the whole time to 02:03:36.91 Aaron used to get over things like that that become extremely important in this last battle versus Omori but I do really love that scene and I really love how it's the one thing at the end that is not reality that is uh that uh Sunny is confronting it's like what the result of a regular reality would have been that like of of him and her playing that show that night that ultimately gives him the you know, wherewithal to deal with the rest of this stuff. 02:04:10.28 Dave Yeah, just like it's a sign that he's able to, you know, take a step forward oh in here. 02:04:16.91 Aaron Correct. 02:04:18.27 Dave So he does that duet with Mari and then afterwards he breaks down crying and that kind of leads you into the last fight with Omori because I think Omori You know, Omori has agency, Omori is a character, and Omori realizes that like, this is this is it, this is the last thing. 02:04:39.99 Dave So Omori is the last thing that's going to stand in Sunny's way to like fully experiencing everything and moving on. So you have a boss fight against Omori, but it's not a normal boss fight. It is unwinnable and it's unwinnable at least two times, I think. Uh, so. 02:05:04.40 Dave At some point, Omori is going to beat you. He's way too strong. um And all the while he's talking to Sunny saying, they'll never forgive you. You don't deserve forgiveness. All you do is take from others. You don't deserve to live. You let your friends believe a lie in order to protect yourself. Like this is all of all of those nasty things coming up from inside of Sunny before the moment where he might, you know, tell the truth to somebody. Omori tells Sunny when they learn the truth, they'll hate you as much as you hate yourself, that you should die. If they know the truth, you'll just make things worse. It's best to just die here. And when you lose the fight, because you will lose the fight, ah you 02:05:53.58 Dave get a chance to retry, and if you click no, ah it goes to the bad ending immediately, um where Omori and Sunny hug, and Sunny phases into Omori, and now Omori is the only thing left, and Sunny jumps off the roof of the ah hospital. 02:06:13.91 Dave um 02:06:18.69 Dave If you click to retry the fight, it's a really, really difficult boss fight. And Omori gets like the things that Omori says, like gets nastier and nastier as you go. 02:06:29.53 Dave Um, and, uh, Omori says Hero loved her and you killed her. Aubrey loved her and you killed her. Just like, you know, pulling out all the stops here. 02:06:41.37 Aaron Last-ditch effort, yeah. 02:06:42.54 Dave Yeah, yeah. And you like, it legitimately took me several tries to beat this. It's just like a really tough boss fight. There's a couple of times where you have to get a game over and click continue, but you do have to beat Omori actually at some point ah in the fight. 02:06:58.78 Dave And then at the end of the fight, I misremembered this is where the duet between Mari and Sunny plays. ah Earlier, when you do the streetlight scene, it's just Sunny on stage by himself playing the violin. At the end of the Omori boss fight is where they play the duet. um And Sunny hugs Omori and Omori disappears. So Sunny is the only one left at the end here. So um I thought this is a really interesting fight from a story perspective and then like it's, 02:07:27.85 Dave It's not the same as the regular battle system, because you don't do the emotions, you don't have other characters, it's just one on one. But from a story perspective, I thought that this final fight was really cool. 02:07:40.25 Aaron No, it is, man. It's the end result of... If you've chosen this path, it's the end result that you look for. It's getting rid of Omori and deciding that confrontation, remembrance, and the hope of forgiveness is the right path to take. and you know You get a little bit older, you realize things like that, and sure, it should get out. um i I was trying to think what I was gonna say here. 02:08:08.08 Aaron So like So, the final fight with Omori was something I didn't think was possible, I didn't, I didn't think it was difficult by any means. And I, and I think like, because I think it's like either you're going to lose or you're going to win. So Dave talked about how you're inevitably going to die and the game gives you a retry or a continuation, but it's like. 02:08:30.39 Aaron If I remember correctly, it wasn't really presented like, Hey, game over, you lose. Do you want to retry the fight? It gives you an option. It's like, do you give up? 02:08:40.94 Dave Yeah, give up or continue, I think. 02:08:41.02 Aaron Yes or no. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Give up or continue. And like one of my, one of the weirdest things about the end of the game is like, and I didn't spoil any of it for myself as I was like. 02:08:52.10 Aaron I felt like there were a lot of really really like I think most of the games big decisions come at the end of the game and they give you like 10 in like a 20 minute period like what you do during this fight what you do before this fight and what you do in the hospital scene afterwards like they give you a bunch of decisions and like a really small amount of time so it's not like one of those things where it's just like hey game over try again like it feels that way as you're playing it but every time you come back something's a little bit different in the fight than it was the last time whether it's dialogue or or 02:09:24.15 Dave Oh, the backgrounds change, the backgrounds get wild. 02:09:25.93 Aaron The background, the music changes, dude. Like you're, you as you have throughout the game, like you get more and more options to like, you know, what you have to choose from in this battle and stuff. So like after the first time where it said continue and I said yes, and I realized it was a little bit different. I was like, okay, how many times am I going to have to die? And you it's it's that last struggle for Sunny where it's like, am I going to give in? No. All right. You got knocked down. 02:09:55.05 Dave yeah 02:09:55.53 Aaron Am I going to give in? 02:09:57.42 Aaron No. And you come back and it just ah incrementally a little bit better for you. 02:10:01.33 Dave Yeah, it's the most um it's the most intense that Sunny's like inner torment ever gets during this. This is where all of the nastiest thoughts and self-hatred come out during this part, because that's what Omori is holding back, is all of those things. Omori's purpose in the story was to allow Sunny to just kind of exist without you know, touching these things. I think there was a quote at some point where someone had said white space is a place to exist. It's not a space to live. And so like that's just what Sunny's doing in here with Omori's help. But once that's all threatened, Omori just like, you know, releases the plug of all of that self doubt and it all just comes out. And so that's I think that's why at that moment, this is the moment where if you choose to give up, 02:10:57.78 Dave um This is where, you know, the end goes the way that it does with Sunny. ah But if you choose to, you know, keep trying and, you know, persist through those thoughts, then you get to the end where Sunny lives. And what happens is Sunny wakes up in the hospital, he has an eye patch, he, because, you know, stabbed in the eye with garden shears. 02:11:23.42 Aaron Yeah. 02:11:24.19 Dave He gets up, he leaves us his hospital room, goes over to Basil's room, and the group is in there. And it's a really short animated cutscene, and the last thing that happens is a message flashes on the screen where Sunny speaks for the first time and says, I have to tell you something. 02:11:45.15 Dave And that's where the game ends. So it's implied Sunny's going to tell them the truth about what happens. And before we get to a couple of questions about that, if you water Basil's plants, the whole time you get an extra scene where Basil wakes up and he and Sunny smile at each other. See, you know, showing like no bad blood between us. We're, we're, we're cool. But 02:12:09.81 Dave ah The group has been operating this whole time under the knowledge that Mari killed herself and Sunny's going to tell them the truth here. So the two questions, how do you think they're going to react to this? But I think another question that might be a little bit more interesting is like, should Sunny tell them the truth here? 02:12:34.71 Aaron yeah This is funny. I would not have in a million years. I just would have been like, Hey, Basil, you and I are cool. Clap up. I told Aubrey, she got a nail bat, you know, type shit. Like she, I, so I, I do think it is one of those things. 02:12:44.68 Dave Yeah. 02:12:47.03 Aaron Like when I played the game, I felt like it was the right choice to have. 02:12:53.09 Dave Yeah, it's there. It's there. 02:12:55.10 Aaron it's the right thing to do and and i've been playing the whole game the right way i'm not going to switch up all these things that i've been doing to get to this point and just change my mind at the last second and that's not going to happen so what i imagine is and how the game ultimately ends is you are in a car driving to assumedly where you are moving now and some music plays and everything goes away and if you took the ending that i did where 02:12:56.01 Dave Yeah. 02:13:21.59 Aaron you and basil give the hey we're blood hey you know like forgive each other we're gonna be friends forever type shit um and but they leave it open-ended on you know what happens after you tell kell what happens after you tell aubrey and Hero and like what happens after his parents find out that was always like a big thing to me that they never really explained either i think they 02:13:36.14 Dave Yeah. 02:13:45.77 Aaron intentionally didn't have a lot of parental stuff in the game outside of like Kel's parents, I guess, Kel and Hero's parents. um But like, yeah, what my thought is, is they're very emotionally at a place already where the couple days in the real world has taken them, that they are in a place to accept this. 02:14:09.71 Aaron I don't know if they if Aubrey would but I think Hero would understand Aubrey is the one that I'm kind of like I don't know man and like she's a nine-year a 16 year old girl with a nail bat and a fuck in her own gang like you know she's the one to me that I always thought was kind of I never understood why she forgave them in the first place, if I can be completely honest with you. 02:14:31.50 Aaron I think she had gotten to a point of darkness so far. I mean, we didn't even talk about this. She pushes, she pushes Basil in a pond and almost fucking kills him. 02:14:38.46 Dave Yeah. 02:14:40.27 Aaron And then like 20 minutes later, they're all best friends. Like I, I don't trust that Aubrey could process this. I don't think she processed anything properly compared to the rest of the gang. 02:14:50.76 Aaron So that would be the one where I was like, Yeah, Hero and Kel might understand because they have a stable home life. You know what I'm saying? And you know, if that's their biggest problem, this is this, but this is like this shattered Aubrey and I really don't know how she would react to the truth like that. Especially seeing as she does not really like Sunny that much and she almost killed Basil. That's how much she doesn't like him, you know? 02:15:15.12 Dave Yeah, part of me thinks that if Sunny's thinking about himself, like from his perspective, for him, I think it's the right thing to do. Because a part of his journey, I guess, of living with the truth is to not keep it to himself. 02:15:36.33 Dave um And honestly, I think I was under the impression that Sunny's parents knew something like that. They didn't believe that it was just, you know, a suicide or something like that. 02:15:49.02 Aaron Can I ask why like cuz I I'd never I don't I remember like in that video you showed me they talked about like his Like Sunny finding memories of his dad and like that lost library was like you're not a son to me anymore and blah blah blah but I think other than that and okay, so like 02:16:01.76 Dave Yeah, that's why. 02:16:06.00 Aaron yeah Are you saying that like that line specifically is like, uh, we know, you know something or like a father tragically dealing with it in his, in a different way that they don't really get into. 02:16:06.51 Dave I mean it. 02:16:17.15 Dave It could be any of those things. Like it could be that's his reaction. 02:16:19.27 Aaron Yeah. 02:16:20.67 Dave Like he's disowning Sunny. He might've left the family because it's not his mom, dad, and Sunny moving. 02:16:26.10 Aaron You never talk to him in the game. 02:16:27.42 Dave It's just his mom. 02:16:27.87 Aaron Yeah. 02:16:29.49 Dave And she never mentions him in the messages or anything like that. 02:16:29.55 Aaron Yeah. 02:16:32.01 Aaron Yeah. 02:16:32.92 Dave So that that could be it. It could be that this is how he responds to the death of his daughter by, you know, lashing out at other people. 02:16:44.04 Dave And it could just be that 02:16:49.20 Dave Like they accepted the story that Sunny and Basil told everybody, but that still drove their family apart or something like that. 02:16:57.78 Aaron So let me ask you this question. 02:16:58.09 Dave It could be. 02:16:59.57 Aaron How did the cops not figure this out? So this always bothered me too. I know it's not important, but there, there are a couple of things about this, about how it just went off, like so scot free, like to like 11 year old kids staged this suicide or whatever. 02:17:15.24 Aaron where they have video games so they're like what the games taking place in like 1996 or something like that like forensic evidence exists so I was I was thinking about this and I was like when he pushed her down the stairs she broke her neck and when she hung herself that's why or when when they hung her up that's why nobody ever questioned it because she had a broken neck 02:17:22.91 Dave the 02:17:35.71 Dave Yeah, I mean, the only thing that I thought of was ah how did they hoist a body up into a tree? 02:17:36.19 Aaron This is something I've thought about. like i i you know I know it's not really important, but I think that's like one of the things that bothered me the most about this game is like how did these two little kids get away with staging a suicide? 02:17:54.17 Aaron Right. 02:17:54.76 Dave Unless they really like working together. 02:17:56.15 Aaron Mari is bigger than both of them combined, yeah. 02:17:58.50 Dave Yeah, and anyway, like, I don't know, I think that they may have staged it well enough. And, ah you know, If it is that Sunny's parents didn't ask questions, then you know they just accepted for what it is. And like I'm sure the cops came, but they probably cleaned up you know where the accident took place and stuff like that. and um Or maybe the cops were not called and maybe it's just, you know they saw it and they moved on from there. But with the group, you know you know when you think about, 02:18:36.04 Dave telling them the truth, I kind of agree with you that everybody's like, everybody's cool at the end of the story and they are like, they're back to loving each other, but that doesn't mean that they can handle a new bombshell like this. So I would not be surprised if anyone in the group reacts poorly, ah even Hero, even Kel. And I think that like, it's a really interesting like things like from Sunny's perspective, 02:19:05.76 Dave thinking about his journey and Basil's journey too, telling the others is probably a part of healing, right? Is not keeping that bottled up inside for the rest of their lives. 02:19:17.41 Dave But for everybody else's state, yeah, you're just keeping more stuff on there. 02:19:19.96 Aaron Extra trauma, yeah Right, 02:19:23.39 Dave So not only, you know, they're not, they're not over Mari's death. It's just the day after they made up as a group of friends and kind of shared their feelings a little bit. 02:19:33.62 Aaron it's like way too soon to drop that kind of shit 02:19:35.48 Dave Now, yeah, now we have a bombshell where Sunny's like, all right, so guess what? It was actually me and we lied to you this whole time. Uh, 02:19:44.73 Aaron ah I would like to think that like it when it says like hey guys we have something to tell you and they tell him and ah Aubrey stabs him in the other eye with something else medical scissors yeah we're making light of this this is the saddest game of all time is it is hard to make this episode funny just have i 02:19:55.21 Dave Yeah. With like, uh, like, how'd you get a scalpel Aubrey? Yeah. Yeah. Craft scissors. 02:20:05.18 Dave It's very sad. So it's like a super bittersweet ending where it's like you're happy for Sunny and Basil that they've made it to this point where they can share the truth with people. But it's very it's I mean, to me, it's pretty obvious it's gonna fuck the ah the rest of the group up again. um Because They have not, they've still not had all the time to process like their new perspective on all of this. 02:20:29.90 Aaron real processing in the game is shown through the lens i feel of basil and Sonny's relationship which is why it's so easy for you to look at the game as even a sweet ending because if you took that away it's arguably still a very sad ending a very dark ending yeah right exactly 02:20:32.16 Dave They're just friends again. It doesn't mean they're okay with what happened. ah 02:20:43.86 Dave Yeah. 02:20:51.99 Dave Well, yeah, this is a good ending. This is the good ending. The good ending is Sunny and Basil possibly like shattering everything that has been, all the progress that's been made throughout the game is possibly doing this. So like it's and it's a them telling the truth might help some people, but it's gonna hurt some people too. So it's a really interesting way for this to end where it's not, 02:21:22.78 Dave Like how could this story wrap up with like ah a beautiful, perfect ending where everyone is going to be happy? 02:21:27.47 Aaron It can't, does not lend itself to that. 02:21:29.10 Dave Like it's not that kind of story. Like too much shit has happened. 02:21:34.58 Dave So. 02:21:34.74 Aaron Yeah, uh, agreed, man. Like, you know, you can, uh, no, you can't, the best possible ending to this game leaves characters, deflated characters that you see progress in throughout that could immediately be taken away by how this game ends, even on the best possible ending. So, and, and, and that's one of the things I love about this game too is like, 02:21:56.25 Aaron you know I like having a bunch of different endings and usually I like to go for the best one I'm not a heartless bastard dude I want to watch a little kid throw off of throw himself off a balcony regardless of what it means to the story that I've been playing but like I also I like it when stories end and there are still questions. 02:22:15.64 Aaron Like I like how I know there's never going to be in Omori 2 and like forever and ever seventh lost reference. 02:22:15.66 Dave Oh yeah. 02:22:22.64 Aaron We can still talk about things that didn't make sense or still theorize about things that never got explained. I like that about this game too because like you have to, you have to deduce how you think like other important characters and because at the end it's you're right. 02:22:41.45 Aaron it's it's basil and it's Sunny and that's it and they don't show anybody else at the very very end right so like you have to in good conscience like you're always gonna wonder how everybody else would have reacted even somebody as small of a character as his mother does she ever find out you know like wait 02:22:48.15 Dave Yep. 02:23:02.31 Aaron What's her reaction? Obviously, he's still on the move to Sunnydale or wherever the fuck he's going. like right so like Did she find out? Are there better therapists there? like There's so much more that could be talked about this game even after the ending. That's one of the brilliant things about it, man. 02:23:19.99 Dave Yeah. And even if, let's just say hypothetically, everybody's like, you know what? You know what guys, we've learned something today. 02:23:26.86 Aaron You did it. say 02:23:29.24 Dave Even if, even if that's how, even if that's what happened after this, uh, this last, you know, bit of dialogue where they say we have something to tell you, even if that happened, all the characters still have like just tons of things to work through still. 02:23:31.99 Aaron do yeah 02:23:40.89 Aaron 10 years of therapy and self-reflection to get better. 02:23:48.81 Dave Yeah. 02:23:49.01 Aaron None of them are going to be easy to marry. 02:23:52.56 Dave That's pretty fucked up, yeah. 02:23:54.11 Aaron That was that was a good joke. I'm sorry. I told you guys this ain't the joke bacon episode. I'm sorry 02:23:57.82 Dave Yeah. um Also, I just read in the Hikikomori route, um you get the ending where Sunny leaves ah and like gets in the moving truck and like no progress has been made whatsoever. um the like the The monster's probably still there and stuff like that. So ah because Sunny never left, 02:24:22.21 Dave the house, you don't get this scene in the hospital where he jumps off the roof, they just move away and no progress is ever made, which is 02:24:30.85 Aaron 20,000 more questions. 02:24:32.49 Dave Yeah, which is kind of fucked up, because if you were to if you were to put these endings on like a ah spectrum of like worst to best, that HIKI KOMORI ending would probably be in the middle somewhere. 02:24:33.49 Aaron We're, how does this follow him? you know 02:24:46.61 Dave ah You have to assume, like, I don't know, it's interesting to think about what would happen with the other characters if Sunny never came outside. ah 02:24:56.69 Aaron offer You would be terrible. 02:24:58.34 Dave Aubrey would be terrible, Hero would be out at at college, 02:24:58.52 Aaron Hero, Hero would be fine. Kel being alcoholic at 33 like you know, like it's definitely like I said, this is one of those They they they don't talk in and guilt and like a lack of forgiveness and a lack of like Communication is to me kind of what this whole game is about so and again that's why I love it so bit like if you give a game with 17 innings and you have a game that like doesn't give you the information that you need to fully like flesh out like okay well this is how everything worked out we could talk forever forever and ever about what happens to these characters and these different any we haven't even talked about how the characters who had just recently like accepted Sunny and you you know back into their friend group and it like what if he just kills himself 02:25:47.37 Aaron Like, you know what I mean? Like what, what a basil kills themselves while they're staying over at his house that night to make sure he's okay. 02:25:48.25 Dave Oh yeah. 02:25:53.41 Aaron Like, you know, there's, there's, there's way, way too much to like speculate and theorize about. And I, and I, and I love that, but that's why he can't replay the game. Like to me, it's one of those games to where like, I picked the way I wanted to go. 02:26:05.48 Aaron This is going to be the story for me forever. It's interesting to see those other things, but like when I think about, oh, Maury, I think about that, like. That, that, uh, that Hero's journey. You know what I mean? Like he started in a place. He was bad. He learned something. He was confronted with something. He learned something else. He's back in the place that he started having learned something along the way. And there is resolution. Like I, I, I like that finality in the path that I took. Cause I, I don't know if I could experience the game on another plane like that. 02:26:36.14 Dave Yeah, it's just interesting to think, and this is why I think the HIKI KOMORI route should be a second playthrough, because your idea about how the other characters live in the world where Sunny never goes outside, you have to know about those characters and know what they were going through in order to make any kind of guess about, like, how does this play out if Sunny never comes outside? ah Which is, you know, it's interesting, interesting to think about, so. 02:27:03.78 Dave uh yeah yeah man me too it's a really really good game like an endlessly interesting story and again one that it deals with all these uh really complex and um sensitive themes but i think handles them with respect and it is not so much focused on like the act 02:27:04.18 Aaron I love this game, man. A great video game. 02:27:27.30 Dave but focused on how people are affected by it, like how the other people are affected by it, whether you're talking about Mari's supposed suicide or ah Basil's or Basil and Sunny's, what they call that manslaughter, if you if you didn't mean to do it. 02:27:45.28 Aaron yeah 02:27:47.01 Dave But yeah, 02:27:47.37 Aaron Yeah. ah attempt Attempted homicide. 02:27:49.90 Dave Yeah. So it's ah got a lot of stuff, a lot going on. 02:27:50.64 Aaron Yeah. 02:27:54.82 Dave Um, long spoiler section in this episode, but I thought that's, that's where we would be. So, uh, thanks for going through it with me, man. A very different conversation from what we do over the top three. 02:28:05.26 Dave So it's good to dig into this one with you. 02:28:08.87 Aaron Oh, yeah, dude, like this is and I said at the beginning, I am not the guy who should be talking about games like this, but at the end of the day, it is one of the more meaningful games I've ever played. 02:28:19.81 Aaron And, you know, I'm really glad you said yes, because Dave says no to 90 percent of things that I tell him. 02:28:26.05 Dave Oh yeah. 02:28:26.44 Aaron like not just video games youtube videos rap songs does not matter dave says no and i'm glad you finally played the game and i hope i didn't pester you too much because i judge i was just like dave would appreciate this kind of experience yep 02:28:40.73 Dave No, I mean, like you, you mentioned it enough times that I'd take notice and then I looked at it on Steam and it's like 99%. Everybody fucking loves this game. So it's, you know, wasn't that big of a push to get me to do it eventually. 02:28:55.49 Dave I'll still never play Fortnite with you, but I did, I did this one. 02:28:57.74 Aaron Yeah, and I'm going to be paying for Dave the Diver for the next two years. So that's why I'm glad you got this one first. 02:29:02.76 Dave Absolutely. Yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. So ah thanks again, man. I appreciate you going through this with me taking two and a half hours to talk about it. It Was a good time. 02:29:14.83 Aaron Yeah, got you, baby. Love being here, man. 02:29:16.88 Dave Absolutely. ah So everybody else, thank you for listening all the way to the end. As always, if you made it this far, you are my Hero. I hope you've enjoyed the conversation. 02:29:27.45 Dave Omori has so much to it that we could talk about the same events from different perspectives as you. And there are things about the story that we didn't talk about at all, such as the scene where you are ah possibly forced to cut open the cat, which was really fucked up. 02:29:45.13 Aaron yeah such as almost all of headspace bias or not bye 02:29:47.92 Dave Yeah. So, um, yeah, so there's a lot to talk about. And again, if you've made it this far, I will give the plug to join the discord server and come talk about Omori with us. I think that will be a good time, but otherwise thank you for listening all the way to the end and tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.