Spoilers for a side quest and some atmosphere in Ghostwire: Tokyo
Loothound:
So, yesterday Butch was heavy on THEMES, and I may have something to add but it also might just be ATMOSPHERE! Which is another great aspect of this game.
So last night Femmy and I noticed that there is no (or almost no) non-diegetic music in this game. Other than the noises of the world everything is silent. This is pretty unusual for a game, or most media actually. It's obviously a deliberate choice, and it makes the game feel very lonely and empty. Then I was thinking about it in terms of the THEME stuff from yesterday.
No ambient music. No discernible individuality or personality to almost any human or ex-human that we meet. Maybe this is a THEME thing, too. A world where everyone is wrapped up in their failures, phobias, and issues is inherently a lonely and empty feeling one.
Thinking about the visitors for a moment. The ones that are all presented as young people, the schoolgirls and boys, don't have any heads at all. If you watch their actins, however, they are the most lively. They act in ways that we see as being more human. The schoolgirls cavort, sit swinging their knees, take selfies, etc. All of the ones who look like adults have physical heads, but no faces. They are either wrapped in cloth or what appear to be newspapers (which could be an interesting commentary all on its own). Their movements, while sometimes recognizable, are a little more automaton like.
Although, that seems to be changing as the game progresses. I've been noticing behaviors that we didn't see from the visitors earlier in the game, and they seem to be a bit more human. Is it possible that as we save more spirits the actions of the visitors is changing?
Anyway, that's a lot, and I'm not sure what it all means. Other than shit's creepy as fuck, of course. And bananas.
Butch:
Ooo great start because it dovetails exactly with what I wanted to talk on, as it is something I did last night.
I did something with music and a little girl, you see.
Specifically, I did the side quest in the piano school. The quest itself did not make me say "hmm," as it was a pretty basic one. Kill some dudes, solve a rather straight-forward puzzle, boom, done. What made me say "hmm" was how it ended. Usually, these quests, we get "Thank you! I can move on now! Here's some money and some spirit blobs!" This one, we got that quasi cutscene where the girl played the Moonlight Sonata. The game let us, forced us? rewarded us? made us sit and listen as she played. We got this little interlude of music and humanity.
Which, given everything Looty just said about the lack of music and the lack of expressed, artistic humanity in the game, was really striking. This quest, we HAD to listen to a person play beautiful music against the backdrop of....not that.
Add that to yesterday's discussion of hubris: The bad guy in that quest was someone who was jealous of his own protégé. Hubris was corrupting art, corrupting humanity, stealing MUSIC, which isn't present in the rest of the game.
Hmm.
Loothound:
I remember that quest! The thing with the haunted painting was a cool touch. I also noticed how they wanted us to slow down and actually listen to the music (you could actually press the O button to skip it like in other conversations, although they didn't show you the prompt for it). Plus it was Moonlight Sonata, which is sort of the go-to music for quiet, pensive/reflective moments in a lot of movies and shows.
Femmy threw out that there may be some Zen point being made by the game, and I'm rallying starting to think that's a key angle to all of this. I'm thinking again about KK's reaction to the kappa drowning kids, where's he's all 'that's the way it is.' It's just a natural thing, and you have to accept it even though it's kind of tragic. Very different attitude.
Butch:
They did want you to sit through it! And, if you did (and didn't press O), after a while KK would comment on how beautiful it was. Akito all "I didn't know you had taste..."
But, as you say, you could miss that. If you just rushed through, you'd never hear KK mention that it was beautiful.
KK does often say "That's the way it is," and seems to mean it, but then, he's also the one person trying to actively CHANGE the way it is. He's fighting. He isn't all "Hey, kid, nothing we can do." He's the driving force in trying to stop "the way it is."
Hmm.
Feminina:
Very true. I think KK would probably say that he accepts "the way things are" when it comes to acts of nature or the known supernatural, but that Hannya is trying to break this established pattern, and so his trying to stop Hannya is about preserving the way things are (and by implication should be), rather than trying to change things.
Hannya is a radical: KK is essentially conservative.
Butch:
How did you read the piano quest, Femmy? I'm still pondering. I mean, it wasn't a particularly interesting quest up until then. Defeat all enemies, search around, blah blah blah been there done that. But then...that end.
Didn't see it coming.
Loothound:
Yeah, there's definitely a distinction between how we're supposed to feel about yokai vs. Hannya and the Visitors. We only go after yokai to use/protect their magatama. There's often a regret that goes along with it, too. We're supposed to accept their existence, even when it's harmful.
Feminina:
I was amused by the bit with the painting because it was so funny to see its face get all irritated. I think this would be extremely creepy in real life, but it was amusing in the game because – and here's another possible reason for all the spirits looking alike – this game doesn't do human expressions incredibly well, so it just looked kind of hilarious to me.
I mean, the animation is fine, the faces aren't terrible or anything, but whenever we see Akito in cut scenes his face is a bit wooden, isn't it? But since the whole world is empty except for Akito in first person where we rarely see him, his disembodied companion KK, a bunch of misty spirits and faceless Visitors, and some occasional other people in creepy masks, it really doesn't matter that they don't have the best facial animations around.
That aside, as y'all noted, I did like the use of music in this one, and it was an interesting example of negative emotions corrupting things – here, one person actively harming another, as opposed to the Visitors, which, to take it back to previous comments, are "just what happens" when people suppress their feelings until they manifest in this way. If I'm crushed by my job to the point that it makes an Umbrella Man appear and it injures someone, that's one thing...this was one human intentionally injuring another out of jealousy.
Somewhere along the way we commented on how Hannya, despite being the main antagonist, isn't necessarily 'bad': most of the badness that happens is people doing things to each other, whether intentionally or not. This guy was way more 'bad' than Hannya, if we accept that Hannya genuinely believes he's trying to help people. He was hurting his own student on purpose!
And yet, he's small potatoes compared to Hannya in the overall picture. Maybe a bit of an 'intentions only go so far' message, as well as the rest.
Loothound:
Yeah, the painting's faces definitely came off as more goofy than scary. I think I actually chuckled at the angry face.
I think that Hannya, despite his intentions, just has more capacity to do harm. Because science! A music teacher can sure wreck an individual's life, but science can ruin shit for everybody.
I think we might have to consider another possible cultural aspect, which is that in Japan they are really aware of the double edged nature of science and technology. Think about Godzilla. In the first movie he was a pretty clear metaphor for the destructive power of atomic energy, but over the years he kind of evolved to be the protector of Japan while still wrecking large swaths of it. Sure, he's a devastating monster, but he can save us from even MORE devastating monsters!
So, maybe Hannya is just a somewhat inevitable consequence of this advancing technology of spiritual research. Once certain things became technically possible, it was inevitable that someone would use it in amazingly harmful ways.
Feminina:
That is true, and this game certainly does a lot of obvious comparison/mashup of traditional culture and high technology.
And on the lack of human expressions, one of the things that made Gutsy be so creepy and work so well was the complete plastic expressionlessness of his half face. Which turned into a weird, contorted shout as he pounded on the door.
What does he want? What is he thinking? Why is he following me? Why is he offering me his heart, but I can't take it? There's no way to know.
Shudder.
I also like the idea that Hannya is kind of like both the scientists who woke up Godzilla and, perhaps, Godzilla himself. He woke up the monster in himself.
Maybe in a later game, we'll need Hannya to save us from something even worse!
Loothound:
What if the visitors go completely bazonkers and threaten even HIM! Then we have to team up like two gunslinging doves to survive! Of course, he'll die tragically and we'll realize that we loved him all along, but still…
Feminina:
Oh man, that would be the best! We'd hold him in the wreckage and a single tear would slip down Akito's face while Hannya breathes his last and we'd say "who's the real monster? Not...you..." and flocks of doves would flutter into the air, chased by two-tailed cats.
Loothound:
Eat your heart out, Mr. Woo!
Butch:
Good lord I go run some errands and come back to this.
Aren't you guys the ones with jobs? Why am I the busy one? I want a damn raise.
Anyway....another thing I thought of when I was DOING PRODUCTIVE WORK was that the thing that let the quest giving spirit in the music quest go on to wherever was that "he can finally listen to the music again." Given that Looty started all this by pointing out the game lacks music (save for being near stores), that was interesting. It seemed, in that case, he was going to a much better place.
Loothound:
Hey, do you know how many times I've had to step away from my computer for a while to find a dump truck full of back-and-forth between you two? I have no sympathy (except for the you needing a raise part—that's legit).
Also, since the exchange on the subject yesterday I'm absolutely fixated on the 'what's happening with all of the spirits we're saving' question. They're definitely going to a better place than wherever Hannya has in mind, but I really hope they're not just going to the afterlife. I can't think of anything that we've come across that really answers this. Can either of you think of anything? This is bugging me.
Feminina:
That's a good question about where the spirits go, and a good point about that particular one being able to listen to music.
We're not sure what these spirits are moving on to, and I don't have a strong sense that it's a 'heaven' as Christians would conceive it, where souls can hang out and listen to harps, so it's interesting that KK believes this soul will be able to listen to music, wherever it is. Maybe it's just in a 'music of the spheres' kind of way?
As for the question, I think the ones who talk and who we help do go on to the afterlife, which is fine because they were already dead and this is the right next step for them. The ones we find in clusters and collect in katashiro, who in my theory aren't really supposed to be dead, I think go through the phone line to Ed, who claims he can reunite them with their bodies and they will be alive again. I think we don't have any idea whether or not he really can, but I'm pretty sure that's what he said, so I'm going with that.
As for music, I want to add one other thing I keep meaning to mention – the way the collector cats sing to themselves. I'll be near a stall for some reason and hear something weird and then realize its just one of the nekomata cheerfully singing "mew mew mew mew mew" in the background. I love this so much for some reason.
Butch:
They do!
There's always ridiculous music playing by the shops, too.
Although, something we're missing: We COULD be playing music. Some of the quest rewards/milestone rewards/cat toy rewards are songs. There's some song player in the inventory that I keep forgetting about/ignoring.
As we progress, we have more options to fill the world with music.
Hmm.
Loothound:
Yes, the music is definitely an option, but it's a choice on the player's part. Almost like Akito has decided to listen to music while he's running around like a mystic flying squirrel. Or not almost, that's what he's doing. Femmy tried that, and it kind of messes things up, since so much of your awareness of what's happening is based on what you hear.
So Ed DID say that he thinks he can reunite the spirits with their bodies? That's good, because I have faith in Ed—despite his being a complete weirdo.
Feminina:
It's true, I've turned on the music from the inventory a couple of times, but I feel like it becomes distracting.
I think this is because it's not integrated into the world the way 'soundtrack' music is in a game that has that, where you just have your basic background sounds for walking around, or for when a threat is near, or for when you're fighting. It just plays, as if you had it on headphones or whatever, and so when I was trying to concentrate on shooting some flying ghosts, it didn't match what I was doing the way it would have if it were built it as part of the ambient experience.
It's not bad music, though, I kind of liked it.
And yeah, I'm pretty sure I remember Ed (or someone, about Ed) saying that the spirits could be returned to their bodies if we got them out to him, so that's what I've been assuming.
We don't really know what happened to their bodies, since they disappeared and left their clothes behind...maybe if we're successful in stopping all this, they'll just reform inside their clothes, and then Ed will have all the spirits ready to return to them and things will go on with no one the wiser? Totally unclear. But I don't think I'm imagining that we were told they could be saved at one point pretty early on.
Butch:
Hmm. That does sound distracting.
But then, Fallout did something similar. This is worse?
Feminina:
I think it's probably not worse, it's just that I'm not accustomed to it at this point in the game, having spent all my time up until now with nothing but whatever sound comes from cats or storefronts or terrifying Visitors. With Fallout, you have radio stations pretty early on and get used to setting your own background music that way. Probably if I'd started doing it sooner here, it would be fine.
Loothound:
I don't remember listening to the radio in Fallout at all, but I feel like that's still kind of different. Listening to the radio is still a form of active input from the world that you're in, there's a connection (weren't there news reports and stuff in the Fallout radio stations?) In Ghostwire it literally seemed like you were putting your headphones on and listening to whatever, like you were tuning out the world. That's the conceptual part of it for me, anyway. From a technical standpoint it might just be a question of getting the sound balance right.
Butch:
Really? Shit, I sang the theme to Fallout to my kids as a lullaby (because I am that messed up). I can't hear 1940s music without wanting to shoot mutants.
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