"Did You Catch It?" #5
A bits-and-pieces show with freeformschooler
Hello, and welcome to the fifth episode of the much-too-frequent "Did You Catch It?" Today, we won't focus on a specific theme, but we'll cover bits and pieces of information from the past two levels. I'm always surprised just how many things the readers
do catch. There's hardly a reason for covering the missed or unknown easter eggs, references and callbacks, except that some readers enjoy it. If you want to be completely surprised by everything (one reader said they avoid theorycrafting like the plague, and that's reasonable), you ought to skip over these segments.
Why did Ciro go nearly mad on DL3?
DL3 gave us our first hint of the true nature of the Warrens: there is some mysterious, even metaphysical, force which directly manipulates the Dungeon Levels. It's the same force that rearranges Dungeon Levels. We also know higher-up Siblings have radio-like communication: Proxxy and her instruction screen, Cain and his messaging panel, Ecco and his speakers - and these run in tandem with communications like we saw with the weird statue on DL2. It also becomes clear from Cain's communications that there is some sort of suppression on most Dungeon Levels that prevents these "background events" from occurring on DL3. Similarly, though Ciro occasionally hears voices from the players, it wasn't until Cleared DL2 (an area that seemed dead and sterile and had no communication devices) that we saw the
ghosts of the players or whoever it is giving the voices. The suppression field that normally keeps communications silent was swapped on DL3 for a magic suppression field.
From this, we can assume the unsuppressed "background events" slowly corrupt beings on Dungeon Level 3. Nearly every creature we saw on DL3 was twisted in some way: the Hellyfish and other monsters were abominations, Polydectes is... whatever he's supposed to be, Cain is bizarre enough that he gets his own art style, and the only permanent service NPC was a Shopkeeper. Oddly, Oric and Spira seem to be in full possession of their mental faculties. We can guess Ciro and the others were similarly affected by DL3.
Chief's Robe
Chief's robe is covered densely in letters from the English Alphabet knock-off seen throughout the Warrens. Though it's hard to decipher at such a small size, the original letter read something to the effect of "KEEP THIS VILLAGE IN ETERNAL PEACE."
The Song
The Fellsetto's music beam is the first few bars of
Totaka's Song. It's a song that appears on a wide variety of video games that Totaka Kazumi worked on. Obviously, Mr. Kazumi did not work on TWoOtA, but Warrens pays homage (and rips from) Nintendo series in so many ways that it simply had to be placed in the token musical level.
What IS Ripriver, anyway?In a game where everything is a reference, cliche, or directly stolen from some video game series, Prince Ripriver and Skyship Serabella seem to come out of left field. They clearly come from a different world than Ciro. Their background is nonsensical: ghost robots tasked with the maintenance of a floating warship. Why? This was an interesting enough question that someone asked it on IRC once, and it deserves a proper answer.
Prince Ripriver and his brothers are analogous to the robots of one of my favorite video games, Cave Story. Skyship Serabella fills the role of the Island from the game. Quote and Curly Brace are metaphorical ghosts of the war they were built for, but Warrens takes this a step further and makes Ripriver an actual ghost of a robot.
Much like Quote, Prince Ripriver desired to leave the Skyship and see his planet's surface.
The robots were the only inhabitants of the Skyship, and they seem to have a feudal society that Ecco usurped when the Skyship was brought into the Warrens. The Island had a similar society. Despite its small population, Mimiga Village's leader is known as "King," and the Demon Crown seems to turn its wearer into an evil ruler.
Finally, completing the analogy, Ecco himself has apparently gone mad with lust for power and is using the Island as a base of operations for his rebellion against Oric. He is TWoOtA's version of the Doctor, and his Ultimate Weapon, whatever that is, plays the part of the Demon Crown. The ominous "die for our lives" certainly has a
red flower sound to it...
There are two speakers, not one, in Over and Out. Their voices are layered over each other many times, and the background noises are the same voices altered. Hopefully this is enough information to rekindle interest in isolating hints from the song.
Good episode! There likely won't be another until the release of TWoOtABorn (which is now 1/3 complete.) Though the "Minus" platform game has been scrapped, and the Angel.html game's files were lost, some of the original concepts for both games live on in TWoOtABorn. Hopefully it'll see a release by summer of this year, but don't get your hopes up. Freeformschooler out!
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Topic: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome ??? (Read 3977671 times)