Board 8 > The House in Fata Morgana *spoilers after the first post*

(+) Yeah! (+)

Yeah I'll probably do 1 nomination for 2B (I prefer 9S but he would get wrecked), 1 for Velvet, 1 for Michel, and then 7 trades for Michel. What else is there to support this year, anyway?
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My main man Michel Mr. Cool BROlinger will of course get a nomination from me
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Gonna talk a bit about tone and atmosphere.

Door 4 has the strangest vibe out of everything in the game. Even before it's over and you learn that it was an illusions, and even if you were to miss out on the 'text log' red text, I think most people would be unnerved by the atmosphere it has. Supernatural happenings have been a light background element of the first three Doors, but they never actually interfered with the plot contained within those Doors. Mell, Yukimasa, and Jacopo may have been under the influence of Morgana's curse, but the tragedy of their lives could have easily happened without the curse - especially consider how their second lives are more or less echoes of their first.

Door 4 is all about supernatural stuff right from the get-go. The first text you see when starting this Door reads like it's either from a dark fairy tale or some sort of biblical verse. The White-Haired Girl is running because they want to burn her at the stake for being a witch, and of course this Michel actually does have a 'Midas touch' style curse that you get to see in action. In general the witch's curse is talked about a lot more and is a much bigger deal. And then there's the overall style of the music:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elukbKjU7ww" data-time="

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwSlFGQm7JY" data-time="

High-pitched instruments (mostly bells) are put in stark contrast to low-pitched instruments (that sound like pipe organs or the low keys on a piano). The vocals are either overpowering and ominous, or spoken in subdued whispers in the background. Olhos na Sala Esculo also has these moments in the background of the song where it sounds like the melody is about to break apart. Overall, the music sounds ethereal and otherworldly, even when compared to the rest of Fata Morgana's soundtrack. It doesn't feel...well, real. Which works perfectly with the underlying secret of The Fourth Door.

The main point I'm getting at is that The Fourth Door is maybe the most creeped out I've been by something that wasn't (on the surface) trying to be very scary. It just feels wrong. I think Michel himself explained it best when he said that it doesn't contain a hint of humanity. Despite being a story of tragedy, it's still too good to be true and comes off as dishonest. And when finishing The Fourth Door, the question is raised: if this story with no happy ending was supposed to be a lighthearted fabrication of what happened in reality, then just how badly did things actually turn out?

Just felt like commenting on The Fourth Door because it impresses me. It's not my favorite part of the game, but it's impressive that something that could have been a complete waste of time (considering none of it is real) manages to so uniquely effective.
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Yeah, loved what they did with Door 4. I also want to add that this door is the first time the VN starts using character sprites that face the player rather than each other, implying that you are no longer a bystander in the story now. But unlike the next door, it only shows a silhouette of "Giselle" when switching to Michel's perspective, hinting at the incongruity of this tale with the rest of the narrative; and that's when the game starts glitching out. That sound effect they played in that scene was seriously creepy.

jl260 posted...

I also want to add that this door is the first time the VN starts using character sprites that face the player rather than each other, implying that you are no longer a bystander in the story now.

Yeah, this is a great touch. I think this was especially effective in the final door, where you get to see every principle character in the game speak directly to you for the first time. Yukimasa's a lot more intimidating that way!
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Anti-purge
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Feel like talking about the relationship between Michel and Giselle.

Out of any single element in the story, the relationship between Michel and Giselle is the most important thing that the writers had to get right. While Morgana's revenge is the cause of everything that happens, Michel and Giselle's pure devotion to one another is what acts as the catalyst for resolving everything. Without their desire to be together again, Giselle doesn't remain in the mansion as The Maid and Michel doesn't do the borderline impossible and find his way back. That kind of devotion implies a relationship that is firmly in the "eternal pure love" category that comes off as unrealistic and cliche in most stories. Maria even states that she thinks Michel's trust in Giselle is going to be broken, to which Michel strongly refutes...and considering what we've seen up until that point, Michel is right.

It would be so, so easy to get this kind of relationship wrong. How do you write a pairing where you're able to buy that they spent literally almost 1000 years trying to get back to each other? Especially with how bad their initial first impressions of each other are. And second, and third. Michel pulls a freaking knife on Giselle at one point. Lots of couples in fiction have animosity towards each other when they first meet because it makes for fun scenes, but very rarely have I seen it displayed so brutally realistic as Fata Morgana did. Michel and Giselle's early interactions with each other come about as a result of the respective traumas each of them have experienced up until that point, and even before you know exactly what those traumas are, you get the sense that each one is deeply hurting on the inside.

In the end, though, it's because their characters feel so honest that I'm able to buy Michel/Giselle despite (or even because) of their animosity. When they finally achieve a major breakthrough with each other and find that they have a lot more in common than they realized, it allows them to trust each other on a sort of deeper level. Once your dirty laundry has been aired and the other person is still able to look you in the eye and see you as normal, it kind of skips a few steps in the relationship. And while the way they grow closer to each other starts from dramatic circumstances, afterwards it's far more grounded and built on them legitimately liking spending time with each other. Every interaction between Michel and Giselle where they're just...talking, is perfectly written and shows a couple that is obviously happy together (even before they're officially a couple) without being written as overly saccharine.

In summary, Fata Morgana sets up Michel/Giselle as a couple where you can easily see why they would want to be together, and then easily see why they would want to stay together, all while keeping them feeling like real people. That's extremely difficult and it's probably the most impressive element of writing the game has. When Fata Morgana shows me that Giselle spent almost a millenia as The Maid waiting for Michel while Michel pulled together his shattered souls over the same period of time while trying to get back to Giselle, I can buy it, because I can buy that those two just care that much about one another.

In a shorter summary: Michel/Giselle is OTP.
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Can KP shill this enough to be the next Umineko craze???
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I wish! Unfortunately, this costs money while Umineko (at the time) was free.
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I mean I'd be okay with that considering Fata Morgana is near my favorite VN while Umineko is near my least favorite >.>
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Also Fata Morgana's $25 price point is a bit of a barrier as well. It deserves that price point, being a 30 hour game, but there are certain genres that people just expect to pay less for and this is one of them.
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KamikazePotato posted...

Also Fata Morgana's $25 price point is a bit of a barrier as well. It deserves that price point, being a 30 hour game, but there are certain genres that people just expect to pay less for and this is one of them.

The funny thing is, if Fata Morgana were to be sold as a paperback novel instead of a video game, $25 is a completely fair price, given the added dimensions of art and music compared to your typical novel.

Yeah it is. It's just a hard sell to people when they generally think of VNs as cheap porn games. Fata Morgana actually seems to have had some independent success though, which is cool. Nothing on the level of the bigger VNs but I'll take it.
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Have another topic to talk about but Monster Hunter came out so that'll be tomorrow probably
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If Fata Morgana were basically any other kind of piece of media I'd be recommending it to everybody. But as it is, it'd be tough to get just anyone into it.
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It doesn't help that it's hard to sell what's so good about the game when part of what makes the game so good is slowly discovering exactly what's going on. You want to say enough to make it appealing, but not so much that it would ruin some great beats.
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Yeah, the best description I could come up with in various VN recommendation topics was that it follows various tragedies throughout history that all occurred in a mysterious house.

Anyway, I'm still following and enjoying the insights you're posting!
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Thanks! Nice to know my ramblings entertain some people.
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Am going to talk about the final act of the game, and how it re-contextualizes both the first three Doors and their three main characters, and makes them better.

I really liked the first three Doors, but I felt like each one was a little worse than the last (and they're all on a step below from the Fourth Door onwards). The First Door was an excellent story of creeping dread, where the music and writing gave me just enough of an idea of what was going on that each charming scene between Mell and the White-Haired Girl made me increasingly nervous - but the story doesn't delve much into the dark side of Mell's personality, really only touching on it in the last 10% or so. The Second Door, like the First, only gets into the meat of Yukimasa's personality near the very end. It actually felt pretty jarring that he was always a crazy murderer even before losing his memory as his scenes with Pauline gave no hint of that whatsoever. The Third Door has a great setting and the first half is extremely good, peppering in strong interactions between Jacopo/Michelle/Maria and good foreshadowing that gives you that subtle feeling of dread that Fata Morgana does so well. The second half (personally) falls apart somewhat because I found the whole 'Michelle writes a letter every day and somehow Jacopo never questions the situation or goes and visits her' unrealistic, and because while Maria's face turn was great I felt like she became too much of a cartoon villain. Her 'evil' sprite with her open mouth looks fuckin' weird.

The Final Door more or less erased all these issues I had. Seeing these characters in different scenarios, yet making the same mistakes, gave much greater insight into their personality defects than before. Mell's story diverges the most from the First Door, because as it was hinted at in the First Door, Mell kind of sucks when things aren't handed to him on a silver platter. After getting banished for admittedly harsh reasons, he refuses to support Nellie in any real way, and he gets so complacent with Nellie's affections that he considers marrying her even though he obviously doesn't have the same feelings for her that she does him (what the fuck, Mell). He enlists Morgana's help becomes her friend, then distances himself from her the moment she starts to creep him out despite her continued help, and then abandons her (just like he abandoned Nellie in the First Door) the moment Yukimasa threatens him. Are these scenarios difficult? Yes. It sucks that Mell had to go through them. But it all displays how weak-willed Mell is when things get rough, and how quickly he is to abandon others to make things easier on himself. It provides an excellent contrast to the First Door, where Mell's faults are much less pronounced thanks to his cushy lifestyle.

In general, Yukimasa's character makes far more sense after The Final Door. Seeing him act like he did before he became The Beast (for longer than one-two scenes) with all the knowledge of what happened in The Second Door made it much clearer that he's always been this deranged. One of the most tense scenes in The Final Door is the 'Last Support' bit, which is just Yukimasa probing you with fairly innocent questions and then leaving. Nothing happens but it feels like he could snap at any moment. The bad ending where you take Maria's knife is terrifying simply because The Beast's savagery feels far worse when he's doing it directly to you - the front-facing portraits (as opposed to Door 1-3s sideways portraits, which are meant to show that you're watching other people's stories) really emphasize this effect. The concept of his 'tethers' is further detailed as well, and makes it really clear how important Michelle and Pauline were to his sanity in The Second Door. After reading The Final Door, I can totally, easily believe that this dude could become The Beast if given any little nudge in the wrong direction.
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And then there's Jacopo and Maria. Jacopo's actions in the Third Door are a lot less nonsensical when I saw how incredibly poor he is at communicating himself in The Final Door. Can't express his feelings whatsoever and compartmentalizes the hell out of any questionable act he commits. He does the exact same thing to Morgana that he did to Michelle, and boy oh boy is it messed up. What Jacopo did to Morgana in The Final Door one of the worst things anyone did to anyone in the entire game and his pathetic excuse of "I was totally waiting for the right time to maybe not torture her" is just as pathetic as it was in The Third Door. It made me realize that while his actions in the Third Door were dumb, they're simply the result of his inborn character defects that seem almost inescapable. Maria, on the other hand, made me appreciate her more by acting really different than she did in the Third Door. She's not the (fake) demure assistant, nor is she a cartoon villain. She's just a free-spirited woman who does what she wants but also has a rather bleak outlook on the world. Considering that she really doesn't seem to have a specific moral code and has a penchant for violence, her descent into outright villainy in The Third Door seems a lot more plausible to me now. It's also interesting that Jacopo and Maria seem destined to come into conflict with each other - even in the prologue, where they have no idea who each other is, they randomly bump into each other on the street and start yelling at each other.

Eventually I want to replay the game simply because I'd love to experience everything with the full picture that I have now. That's the mark of a great story.
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Up
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Jacopo's actions (in both incarnations) will always be more contemptible to me than Yukimasa's simply due to the fact that Jacopo possessed empathy but chose to suppress it to achieve his goals while Yukimasa lacked it to begin with.

When you think about it, Jacopo is what happens when you insert your typical snobbish tsundere in Japanese media into a multi-layered gothic tragedy; the "humph, it's not like I like you" schtick suddenly isn't all that funny anymore, is it?

In other news, it seems like Novectacle is preparing to release something cool: https://twitter.com/Novectacle_EN/status/1027820964459864064

One of the best things the follow-up game does is give more insight into Jacopo's turn into The Lord. It's done really well, I think, in that it gives explanations and thoughts into more of his actions without absolving him of blame for him.
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Yeah I really need to get to the followup game. Don't want to end up buying even more things twice though - is it going to be included in the PS4 version?

I am totally down for a concert film.
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KamikazePotato posted...

Yeah I really need to get to the followup game. Don't want to end up buying even more things twice though - is it going to be included in the PS4 version?

It is.
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Yeah...as much as I love Fata Morgana, I don't think I'm willing to buy the Steam version, the hardcopy version + soundtrack, the prequel and the upcoming PS4 release (especially since that artbook is also looking pretty slick...). Think I'll skip on the prequel for now and wait for the PS4 version.
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anti-purge
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Game's on sale! Time to shill it to people I now
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