m. tarah henry 🌹 @Lobst@scalie.club

#introductions

Hi, everyone; I'm tarah, otherwise known as lobst. I've drawn a few comics that people have seemed to enjoy, and programmed a game demo that won 10th-place in a 140+ entry game jam despite having no sound. My ability to finish any individual project has been stymied by mental health problems for over a year, but I've been seeking treatment and making progress. I've also been streaming videogames on weekends. Watch this space!

https://lobstworks.com/
https://lobst.itch.io/

Good morning, everyone; at the moment, I have "SANPO" (the opening music from My Neighbor Totoro) stuck in my head from playing it in Taiko no Tatsujin a few days ago. As far as songs to get stuck and methods of doing so are concerned, I recommend this on both fronts 🔸

Aspects of this seem like a scenario writer laid out the level with overly precocious setpieces, and the artists and designers assigned to modeling/implementing them just absolutely knocked them out of the park. Example: there's a room where two people are playing a suitably flashy off-brand DDR, complete with great mocap animations of characters playing both well and poorly.

I want to figure out how to do the (Not) Malpractice, Silent Ninja, and The Groom challenges

Hmm; not a fan of the hospital AI's heavy accent or the director's toupee being included as part of his uniform, considering the Japan locale seems to be the first time either character trait has appeared in the game. (Since 2016 was episodic, they decided to reuse actors with generic American accents for every level, which means the AI voice sticks out like a sore thumb; 2018's levels are better about that, at least.)

Anyway, if you're looking for solid videogame writing, I/O have been doing fantastic work here. (The incidental dialogue is great, too; everyone's 'clever' in a way that makes it easy to justify rendering them unconscious and using their current outfit as a disguise. The kind of people who'd seriously tell a random waiter "Better hustle for those tips!" or "One day, you'll own your OWN restaurant!")

This mission contains a rare situation where 47 can converse with his target. Play the recording in Jordna's hotel room and sit in a chair across from it: he'll investigate, see you, realize what's going on, and plead and cry out for a way to fix this. It's clear he's in agony, but just like the self-made rock star facade, it's all to assuage his ego over the life choices he should have taken (accept punishment under the law, and/or use his fortune to help others).

It's clear he feels this way because he knows he committed murder, and he feels guilt about it. At one point he listened to an audio recording of the night in question all the time as a method of torturing himself, before his agent took it away. But the suffering created by this ritual doesn't actually *do* anything. It doesn't help the people he actually hurt; if it did, they (his girlfriend's parents) wouldn't have hired a (John) Hitman to kill him.

This all changes one night when he kills his celebrity girlfriend in a sudden rage; he quickly calls his dad, who hires a high-powered lawyer and manipulates his media empire to get Jordan acquitted on an 'affluenza' defense. This eats at Jordan, to the point where he snaps at positive gestures offered by his father (who appears to bear no ill will over the incident). In the mission, he views the birthday cake ordered by his father as a coded decree of ownership.

Jordan Cross, lead singer of musical group The Class, views himself as a self-made rock star: up until recently, he deliberately rejected all possible assistance from his multibillionaire father to become one of the most successful musical artists in the world. He did this thinking it would absolve him of the responsibility that comes from his privilege and personal fortune (he's vegan, and he shops local; it's easy to imagine he takes pride in doing things 'right').

I've been going through this late at night recently. It's supremely fun; however, even though I've maxed out location mastery in four missions it feels like I've barely scratched the surface of each one -- like the assassinations themselves are meant to be training for optional challenges.

Favorite mission so far has to be Club 27. It's one big story revealed in pieces as you experiment with each target, with a pretty good moral (suffering by itself is not redemptive).