Board 8 > Scattered thoughts as I play AI: The Somnium Files *spoilers* *A-set, you bet*

(+) Yeah! (+)

OK I've put about 14 hours into this already so it's too late to make a proper playthrough topic, but I need somewhere to collect my thoughts as there's just so much stuff going on in this game.

I think this game is pretty divisive here but I'm really liking it! Sure it doesn't land everything it tries, but I dig the vibe and like how often it's switching things up.

A summary of where I'm up to: I first took the right path at the first somnium (blowing the cage away, discovering Iris's frozen body). Still no idea why Iris's corpse was in Mizuki's dream. At the second somnium I broke through Iris's lie and wound up being locked off. Is this like 999's coffin ending where I accidentally got the true path too soon >_>

Went back and did the 'believe Iris' route, which I expected to suck but it actually had a really powerful ending. Then went all the way back and picked the other route for Mizuki, which led to dead Renju and eventually Iris's terrifying second somnium. Picked the route that wound up showing Date's face as the original Cyclops killer, then Iris and Ota wind up dead and I expected a bad end but the game is still going. That's about where I'm up to.

Overall, I love the style of this game. I'm a sucker for a sleek aesthetic like this, and the writing feels pretty modern with a lot of the cultural aspects that are here, refreshing for this genre from what I've seen. FYI I've only played 999 of the director's previous works. I'll get it out of the way here though: Date is far too horny. Like I don't have a problem with it in theory but it comes out of nowhere in incredibly inappropriate moments and the humour doesn't always land here, which is sad as I do enjoy a lot of the humour elsewhere in the game. Also the QTE 'Action' scenes are interminably long and don't really work for me. But those are my only major problems.

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So, to the actual mystery stuff. The reason I made this topic was to document my thoughts and stuff to try and piece things together. Hopefully those of you who have played the game can get some enjoyment out of this as you laugh at my foolishness when I put 2+2 together and make Naixatloz.

Iris
I really like her character, and she must be central to the overall mystery. Her mother was about to reveal the one way to save her from her brain tumour, but then we were distracted. This has happened multiple times and is a bit cheap tbh. I was initially worried when Iris started talking about Naix and all that, but thankfully that was a delusion and we aren't going there. I fully expect parallel worlds to be relevant though based off of 999's warm embrace of those kinds of ideas.
What caught me completely off guard is how different Iris's personality is when going the other route where Renju dies. She seems much colder and more guilty, I don't know if this is intentional but she just seems off somehow. Not to mention her horrifying somnium. How the hell does she know about the original Cyclops stuff? Anyway, my current guess is that the killer(s) are ultimately trying to save Iris through some timeline stuff. IDK why she always ends up dead though. Poor girl.

Date
OK Date is clearly involved in things more than he knows. I mean that should be obvious from the start with the missing left eye stuff, I guess. He seems to have memories of being #89 somehow? And then there's his face in Iris' somnium for being the original killer. His presence would also explain why the timelines change so much because of the decisions made in the somnia, he's one of the few variables there. Along with...

Aiba
I don't think this game is gonna go the psycho-killer AI route, but she's clearly been lying to Date for some reason. There's been numerous slip-ups regarding 'dosing' him, hmm. Haven't figured out where to go with this.

Boss
I enjoy her personality, but her withholding of vital info is annoying. 'Yeah I'm not gonna tell you anything about your past, but I promise there's no connection between this eye-stealing serial killer and the one 6 years ago when you happened to lose your memories and your eye. Dude just trust me bro' Maybe it'll come together and make sense, but it just feels like the game couldn't think of a good reason for withholding info that would spoil the player.
Worth noting that Boss and Pewter are also variables who see most of the somnium stuff, so theoretically they could change the timelines based on what Aiba and Date see.
Also I doubt the game will go there but it would be nice if there was some mention of the ethical implications of cops drugging whoever they feel is important and going into their minds to discover their darkest secrets. Real dystopian stuff >_>

Renju
OK I like what they've done with this dude so far. I know everyone will play this in a different order but him just being this mysterious phantom presence whose name keeps coming up but who we never actually see in the Iris route is cool. The only time we've even seen him speak is in a memory of Date's at Marble. But then we go the other route and he immediately dies!
Not a single clue what his deal is. He's clearly vitally important, and he's too obvious to be a bad guy I hope, but I don't know why he's so invested in Iris. The reveal of him and Pewter being a couple was nice (if brief), I didn't expect much LGBT stuff here and Mama is nice but clearly pretty stereotypical. I hope they don't make him and Pewter bad guys, but I have faith in the director to not take the easy tropey way out there.
One strange note: in one route he gets in a car crash but flees the hospital. In the other route I've done the same radio broadcast about a car crash comes through, but he's already been killed by the time that happens... This must be a clue but I don't see how. Maybe some timeline bleeding stuff.

Pewter
Can't rule him out of anything. He is present for many of the somnia, and we know he is incredibly loyal to Renju. But he obviously wouldn't want Renju dead... He did create Aiba and knows a ton about the somnium stuff, but I get the feeling he's not gonna be a bad guy. He did tell us about the prototype psync thing, not sure why he would do that if he was responsible. More to come here. Also lol at his anime outfit.

Mizuki
Her dynamic with Date is fun, but christ how the hell is she even walking around when her parent(s) have just been brutally murdered. She's clearly a victim of me going the Iris route first, as it is super weird how little Date (and anyone else really) seems to care about the trauma she's just been through. As for her relevance, weirdly she doesn't seem super central right now, but I have to assume that'll change in one of the routes to come.

Hitomi
Like her a lot. She's super kind and sweet but is much more involved in things than she lets on. She was shot 6 years ago, and that is in Date's dream... She knows So Sejima, and if this whole thing is about saving Iris then she must be involved.

#89
Is this guy Date somehow? Date seems to have his memories of playing with Iris. He did something years ago that got him sentenced to life imprisonment. He's connected to Renju and Hitomi. And Iris and Date. If Date shot Hitomi 6 years ago, did these two connect somehow then? Too soon to tell his deal, but he's gonna be vital for sure. I mean, I guess pretty much everyone will be >_>

Moma
Don't see him being too involved with the mysteries, but his dead brother might be somehow.

So Sejima
Corrupt politician. I doubt he's central, probs just the money man for whatever shady stuff is happening. But then he knows Hitomi so *shrug* we'll see

Ota
I doubt he has much to do with the deeper stuff here. But I would just like to say how horrifying the murder tape of him+Iris+the polar bear was.

Ota's father
For a while I was suspecting Ota's mother as she's otherwise an entirely extraneous character and she does hate Iris, but last time I met her she mentioned her husband just leaving and coming whenever he likes. We've not seen this guy yet, and crucially there's a space in the profile list for somebody else right below Ota and his mother's names. He is definitely 100% gonna be involved in this, but in what sense? Not a clue.

That's all for now! Not a clue where any of this is going, but I'm really enjoying the ride.

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#89's somnium reveals BOSS as his old friend who helped him out 6 years ago (still, why was this place in Date's memory?), and then we see a vid of Boss killing So Sejima. I didn't see this coming at all! I should be drawing a web diagram to keep all these connections in check >_> Very cool twist. And we are locked off again, so there's not gonna be one singular 'true' route hmm...

Back in the other route, Ota and Iris get polar bear'd again but we save them this time. I was completely wrong about Ota's dad, but Mayumi is looking mighty suspicious now. Especially as the knife in Ota's somnium had a floral pattern on it (which nobody acknowledges, dang). There's some nice stuff with Mizuki finally, and Iris continues to behave really coldly in this left path. What did she say/do to Mayumi off camera? I just can't figure her out.

There's also a mention of how staying in somnium too long could have you subsumed into the subject's mind or something. I wonder if this is what happened to Date 6 years ago somehow? Hmm.

But none of that matters, because in the middle of our investigation Date decides to abandon it all and move to Atami with the receptionist. They live happily ever after, The End. I chuckled at this. Date really is not a great person lol

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andylt posted...

But none of that matters, because in the middle of our investigation Date decides to abandon it all and move to Atami with the receptionist. They live happily ever after, The End. I chuckled at this. Date really is not a great person lol

Congrats on your first ending!

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I got the Iris ending too already, but thanks! This one was definitely unexpected >_>

Also lol of course AI is on game pass as of today

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I like these writeups so far! I'm one of the people who did really like the game.

The "Date being horny" thing seemed out of place until I played one of Uchikoshi's other works, Punch Line, which was bad, but it finally made sense. I guess Uchikoshi is just horny by default and sometimes other writers keep him in check.

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Arti posted...

I like these writeups so far! I'm one of the people who did really like the game.

The "Date being horny" thing seemed out of place until I played one of Uchikoshi's other works, Punch Line, which was bad, but it finally made sense. I guess Uchikoshi is just horny by default and sometimes other writers keep him in check.

I don't get why people dislike this game honestly! I guess it could fall apart at the end, and the super horny stuff will have turned some away, but the writing is overall pretty great so far at least.

Lol, 999 wasn't on this level but there was one scene with an elevator that was 50x hornier than the rest of the game, I bet he snuck that in when nobody was looking.

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Renju was my favorite. Although I did not entirely finish this game.

Tag!

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tag

loved the game, though it does have it's flaws (and yeah, Date being constantly horny was one of them, but I've basically come to expect it as an unfortunate and bizarre downside of this genre)

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porrrrnoooooo maaaaaaag

Honestly I found Date to be so horny that it looped around to being hilarious.

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Date made me face palm a lot.

Sometimes Date's horniness is funny, sometimes it's far too much/misplaced and doesn't work imo.

So I got the Mizuki route ending. She had terrible parents huh, especially Shoko damn. This kinda felt like the 'default' route, it had a big action climax then some personal Date stuff and some very nice moments with Date/Mizuki, nothing too out there. So Sejima is far too obvious to be the actual culprit though. We did get a couple of new tidbits- Hitomi was best friends with Shoko (I don't recall if we knew that already), but So Sejima casually tosses in that he is Date's father. I wasn't sure I heard him right but that seems pretty huge!

Back in the alternative route from Ota's somnium, Mayumi is off the hook and I just feel kinda awful for both her and Ota. I was annoyed at Date for not attempting to comfort Ota at all when he poured his heart out about how guilty he feels as a son :(

We eventually get a timeline of the Iris/Ota incident- the van went to the Sejima mansion, then the Kabasaki district, then to the warehouse. Hm, so Iris could've driven to So's herself in theory, as we still don't know everything to do with her. He was in her somnium, so there has to be a connection there. I am also curious how Mayumi got home afterwards, the driver left and Aiba only saw the one taxi on security footage that night so I'm pretty confused at that.

Then So gets killed again and stuffed into a vase. The killer has been prominently displaying the bodies so far, so why hide him away? More importantly, why was So killed like this in this and one other timeline, but not the others. If it's Boss in both timelines, was she busy with something else in the Mizuki route I just did? I can't remember...

We also get a timeline confirmation that would track with Date being So's child, but he obviously isn't aware of this yet. Is Hitomi the mother maybe? She seems to have links with pretty much every relevant person here, but no way she would kill Iris... No matter how much I keep playing this I still have yet to piece things together any better >_> Having a blast though!

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Mayumi must be protected ;-;

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Ota's route complete. This was all so sweet and sad :( Nothing to do with the main plot as it turns out, but who cares, it was done very well.

A new route finally unlocks, and it is time for The Tale of Manaka Iwai. The frozen corpse twist here is excellent, I had completely fallen for the 'parallel worlds' bit from earlier even after Iris's delusions were made apparent. It just felt like something this director would do based on 999's embrace of that kinda thing >_> (Speaking of, cool All-ice reference). I like when media pretends to be about supernatural/fantasy stuff then it turns out there's a logical explanation for it all. So much better than the other way around! Though of course this game is embracing sci-fi regardless.

The heat comes on Hitomi pretty hard here, all signs are pointing to her, but it soon becomes clear that she is innocent. I should've known when Hitomi mentioned Manaka by name out of the blue ages ago that it would wind up being crucial. Hitomi thankfully tells us everything (I think), and we get plenty of new pieces of info here. This is the first time we hear the name Saito Sejima, who it turns out is responsible for killing Manaka (according to Renju, so not 100% confirmed). Another great twist, as is the realisation that back in So's somnium we were witnessing a memory haunting him from 18 years earlier. So isn't so one-dimensional after all, hm.

I would like to note that I like how much effort seems to be put into the design of the somnia. Not really the level design, but thematically speaking. There's the different styles for each one of course, but also they all hint at whatever deeper stuff is going on with that character, even if we don't learn it right away.

Anyway, we wind up at the prototype psync machine again (I figured this was where we were going), and see Renju's corpse before getting knocked out by 89. We're locked off here for now, but there is much to discuss.

Back before we go into Hitomi's dream, Pewter and Boss (rather clunkily, if I'm honest) tell Date that being in somnium so long can result in a full mind-swap between the participants. This is an absolutely massive deal, and it opens up so many new ideas. First and foremost is Date himself of course, but there are a bunch of half-formed ideas swirling around my mind here.

• I currently believe that Date likely had his mind swapped 6 years ago with #89, or rather with Hitomi's lover/Iris's 'uncle' before he was arrested and given the name 89. This would explain why he has memories of younger Iris and why the shooting at the Sagan household was in his mind. And I think his body is Saito Sejima's- the timeline lines up, and it'd explain So's rather casual mention of killing his own son in that other timeline. Though I may have this backwards depending on how the bodyswap thing works. In either case, why would his mind have been swapped? Did Boss want 89 to be kept on the force that badly?! We'll have to see. Can't forget that Date's left eye was removed too, did Saito have a bad run in with Rohan Kumakura?
• If I'm right and Date is 89's mind in Saito's body, then it would follow that Saito's mind is in 89's body. Thinking back to when #89 told us his story, he did specifically refer to everyone involved in the third person, so it would track that it wasn't him. And 89 contacted So specifically. But then we hit the snag of his somnium, Saito wasn't there at the Sagan household 6 years ago so why would it be in his dream? If he's not Uncle, then he must be either Hitomi, Boss, or Rohan. Rohan makes the most sense of these three I think. But then Hitomi has been visiting 89 in prison, she would surely notice if 89 wasn't himself...
• Talking of Rohan, I believe he must've had his mind swapped too. Moma mentioned that 6 years ago he suddenly started acting differently. And Rohan is the one with the eyeball obsession, so he could absolutely be the new killer. But then, why did he wait 6 years to kill again? Why is he picking these people to kill? And most importantly, whose body houses the mind of Rohan Kumakura??? If he's in 89's body then he can't actually have killed Shoko Nadami. How many bodyswaps actually went on here >_>
• The more I think about it, the more options this bodyswap thing opens up. Take Renju, who has been acting strangely over this whole game. We've never actually spoken to him in the present. Could Rohan be in his body? We did find Shoko's eyeball in his stomach in Ota's ending, but then who killed him? Or maybe it's the other way, and Renju is trying to get revenge on Manaka's killers like he told Hitomi in the flashback. But I don't see how it all tracks with the killings. And why did he break #89 out of prison? Does he think Saito's mind is in 89 and he wants to kill him? He was placed in the psync, maybe they performed a body swap there and whoever was in Renju's body is now in #89's.
• And then there's Iris. She has been acting very strangely in the left routes, notably taking the knife from Mayumi in Ota's ending. Could she have been bodyswapped somehow? Maybe I'm taking it too far. It's also worth noting that bodyswapping Iris is one way she could be free of her tumour >_>
• So Sejima could also have more to do here. Maybe he is actually Saito or something. Man, there are too many options here and none of them line up completely! And then there's the question of who committed suicide a year ago if not Rohan Kumakura. Renju? And of course, why was Shoko Nadami killed???

I feel like I have most of the pieces here, but I still can't make them fit. The next route that's opened up should shed some light regarding Boss, so hopefully we'll see how she facilitated some kind of bodyswap that resulted in Date or something. Before I do that route, I may go back to previous scenes and try to do some detective work myself- I'm thinking the scene where Moma tells us about Rohan, and the scene with #89 telling 'his' story and the ensuing somnium. Maybe that'll shed some light on things. And perhaps Iris's somnium where we saw So.

Regardless of how totally wrong I will inevitably end up being, this is all very fascinating and exciting stuff. The pacing in this game is excellent, I really don't get how it isn't a more widely beloved game!


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Interesting thoughts!

From what Ive seen the biggest complaint is that the somnia feel like mostly trial and error to people rather than actual puzzle solving (I didnt mind them myself).

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I actually liked the trial and error. A lot of the wrong answers came with funny dialogue, which was always a nice addition.

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Yeah I kinda like it, it's easy enough to just retry the whole thing and you can skip pretty quickly back to where you were.

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Annihilation end get! I loved every second of these reveals, what a fun set of twists. And getting Boss to voice the big villain reveal scene is great, she has such a cool voice.

So I called some of the developments >_> Date's identity, at least. My main mistakes seem to have been assuming Rohan was actively doing the killing (the eyes were a great misdirect there), and generally my failure to imagine the scope and frequency of the bodyswaps, jeez. Saito was really going at it.

Thinking back now, a lot of things make a lot of sense. Basically each killing was indeed caused by the most obvious suspect, and I was right to be suspicious of Iris in the left routes. I love the realisation that the super creepy somnium in her head was actually Saito's. I guess the animal drawings probs represent him killing squirrels, cats etc as a kid before he moved on to humans. And So kissing a woman was most likely Manaka, who would be his first human kill. When So tried to kill us in Mizuki's route, he was actually Saito. When Iris wakes up at the end of Ota's route, she will actually be So lol. And 89's somnium was indeed Rohan's. Rohan was deeply involved, but is now presumably dead in Renju's body on the right route.

Date must've really scuppered Saito's plans in all the right hand routes lol. There's also the sad knowledge that Renju has been dead since Day 1, and Shoko died a year ago in place of Rohan. The main stuff left to reveal I guess is exactly how everything went down 6 years ago with Saito/Rohan/89/Boss/So and the bodyswaps (Date is the only one who lost an eye...), but honestly I don't think we even need any more super big twists here, the pieces have all fallen in pretty much the right place. I'm satisfied with how things have turned out so far. Though I know they're gonna throw some kind of shock in there!

My fav little 'oh yeah' realisation is from when Hitomi told us Shoko went to see 89 in prison, and 89 had said she wanted to "meet" him. It must have actually been Saito wanting to see Rohan in person!

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for me I figured out the killer was moving from person to person before learning about the body swaps. I thought it was a ghost or something. The order you do the routes in can really change how you see the game, which I think is pretty cool. I did all the left side routes first, so seeing a timeline where everyone is alive and Iris is singing and playing Minecraft was such a bizarre and wonderful tonal shift.

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Hoping to beat this today!

DeepsPraw posted...

for me I figured out the killer was moving from person to person before learning about the body swaps. I thought it was a ghost or something. The order you do the routes in can really change how you see the game, which I think is pretty cool. I did all the left side routes first, so seeing a timeline where everyone is alive and Iris is singing and playing Minecraft was such a bizarre and wonderful tonal shift.

That's cool, I hadn't figured that out at all! Yeah one of the things I appreciate most about this/999 is how well they're written so you can experience the story in any order and still find it satisfying and rewarding in completely different ways. Yeah I did the exact opposite routes to you lol, so seeing Iris's (Saito's) super creepy somnium and everyone brutally dying over and over was a lot >_>

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And roll credits. Of course a game packed with gruesome murders and eyeball plucking ended with a group musical number, how else would this go?! I love how this game doesn't take itself too seriously and wears its bizarreness with pride. Of course not all the humour works (I like a lot of it but hornyDate and the porno mag action scenes didn't always click with me), but overall I think this was a terrific game.

Unfortunately Saito wasn't really very threatening in the end, as soon as he puts Aiba into his eye socket you know she's gonna save the day somehow. And I didn't think they were really gonna keep her dead. Still good stuff, and I was surprised that it was Falco who accidentally shot Hitomi! The big group action scene was fine, but really the game had already peaked with the Saito reveal in the other route. Saito himself was a bit underdeveloped imo, I was disappointed that the reason he and Falco swapped bodies was just... that he kinda felt like it. I will say Saito's real body fits him so much more than it does Date, they did well with that. And So gets off awfully lightly all things considered. How is Pewter the only person who ends up in prison lol

Well we got our grand happy ending (almost, RIP Renju and Shoko), and the epilogue (and appendix) was packed full of answers to little questions I still had which was nice. I'm still not sure how 6 years ago Rohan learned that Hitomi knew about Manaka, but wtv. I thoroughly enjoyed this game, the writing was great and I loved the characters. Really don't know why this isn't regarded as highly as the Zero Escapes! I heard it's getting a sequel, and I'm very happy to spend more time in this world.

One more time!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri44-FwuhBQ

I didn't even like the song originally but it grew on me >_>

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every time Falco talked all I could think about was a certain character from Zero Time Dilemma

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I haven't played VLR or ZTD yet, I expect it will be the opposite for me then!

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