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[nenjin]

Finished:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Sort of irritated at the way they concealed info in this. Half the time I try to interact with something, I get no response or pay out, which time after time starts to make me believe there's no point in trying when there's nothing happening. It's like old school RPGs where there's no point to talking to anyone after their "part" is over, except when inexplicably you have to go all the way back to the beginning to start a side quest you'd have no way of knowing about, other than obsessively crawling over the entire game worth of NPCs and locations, again. HLM2 is like that, on a smaller scale. For a game that is constantly pushing you forward, examining every scene with a fine tooth comb and mashing the interact button seems at odds with that. Although I guess that will be my excuse to play each game at least once more through.

On the story....man did it escalate quickly. Yes there's tells and hints along the way, but basically the last two to three levels is what you're waiting the whole game for. I know they're telling some sort of "Crash" storyline where it's all about lives intersecting and events...but damn did it feel like not a whole lot was happening along the way.

I agree the end note of the whole game is "the cycle of violence leads to mutually assured destruction." The Masks, the whole time, are really just an expression of humanity's savagery, given face and voice inside the heads of the characters. The Gangster's Father basically says as much in his vision. We're all just animals. Richard is the spokesperson for man's lust for destruction (because you know, it's what makes us "Dicks".) On the one hand, you can say the nuke ending is an artistic statement that is the capstone of the game's theme going all the way back to the start of HLM1. ("Do you like hurting people?") To answer yes is for humanity to end up in a nuclear holocaust, the ultimate expression of watching the world burn.

On the other hand, you could consider it a cop out, a definitive statement to the fan base that shit is over. Perhaps it's an attempt to hurt the audience, something authors sometimes like to do, by wiping out or brutalizing their own creation. Whether that's true or not, such a nihilistic ending to a nihilistic game didn't really surprise me. I too feel they could have done more, come up with an interesting explanation for all the symbolism, for why 50 Blessings is apparently an apocalyptic cult hell bent on seeing America nuked (to murder the Russian president in the 80s makes getting nuked kind of a foregone conclusion.) I dunno, like I said, I enjoyed the semi-mystic implications of HLM1, and I'm a little disappointed that it just ends up being "The rooster is your own self-destruction talking back to you." Ina way, HLM2 feels like a lot of DLCs released at random and stitched together into a game. It consistently left me hungry for more story without every really delivering it. Part of that I blame to hiding half the damn vignettes and addendum across the game.

Although I'm left wondering, who exactly killed the Russian Gangster in the Vault before the Boss showed up. Who killed all the Gangsters in the building before the boss had a chance to kill them himself? Was he actually fighting his inner demons when he was killing the totem spirits of the masks, or was it something else masquerading as them? Maybe they're just inserting bodies for effect and it has no meaning other than to evoke questions with no answers.

While I don't regret buying it and finishing it, I don't feel like much of my appreciation has changed. It's more like "Yeah, that happened" rather than "OOMMMMMGGGGGG CLOSURE!" Put another way, I could have not played HLM2 and found myself in the same place: in love with the first game. It's not that HLM2 is a bad game with a bad story. I think someone's artistic vision just went a little overboard, and they weren't interested in pursuing an idea so much as just giving the idea an extended farewell. In that sense, HLM2 is like the end of the Remastered Starwars Trilogy, a long panning look at the world you like before the screen goes dark.

I think it's going to be a while before a fan campaign that is cohesive enough to carry the story anywhere emerges. What's nice I suppose though, is that the world of HLM has always stayed vague enough you can end up with a lot of different intrepretations by a lot of different authors.

[Fniff]

If anyone wants a bit more content from the story, watch the hard mode intro (Not Midnight Animal, youll have to start a new game) and play through the bonus level Abyss.

Spoiler: Reflections after those two events (click to show/hide)

I think Richard isn't who we think he is.
He looks like a metaphor, and no one seems to acknowledge his existence... But I think he's something more.
I think he's not humanity's self-destruction made flesh. He's the spirit of doubt. Every character he haunts is hiding a doubt. The mobster doubts he can really quit, the actor doubts he's not getting lost in his character, the mob boss doubts he can measure up to his father. Then, when the nukes come down, he turns into something else: a spirit of regret.
Richard really does like humanity. He wouldn't be anything without us. So when he sees us destroy ourselves, he feels angry... And regretful. That's why he doesn't lambast Beard or Richter. He even seems melancholy at their death, the first sign of real emotion that isn't hidden behind that mask.
As for 50 Blessings? I find it interesting the only people occupying their bunker is fifty homeless guys wearing Jacket's masks. I think what we see there is all that remains of 50 Blessings. They're hiding in the bunker, waiting for the end to come so they can emerge the only survivors. Their bunker looks equipped to take a nuclear blast. They may have become radicalised, I think. By HM2, it's less a vigilante conspiracy and more an urban militia.

[Teneb]

If anyone wants a bit more content from the story, watch the hard mode intro (Not Midnight Animal, youll have to start a new game) and play through the bonus level Abyss.

Spoiler: Reflections after those two events (click to show/hide)

I think Richard isn't who we think he is.
He looks like a metaphor, and no one seems to acknowledge his existence... But I think he's something more.
I think he's not humanity's self-destruction made flesh. He's the spirit of doubt. Every character he haunts is hiding a doubt. The mobster doubts he can really quit, the actor doubts he's not getting lost in his character, the mob boss doubts he can measure up to his father. Then, when the nukes come down, he turns into something else: a spirit of regret.
Richard really does like humanity. He wouldn't be anything without us. So when he sees us destroy ourselves, he feels angry... And regretful. That's why he doesn't lambast Beard or Richter. He even seems melancholy at their death, the first sign of real emotion that isn't hidden behind that mask.
As for 50 Blessings? I find it interesting the only people occupying their bunker is fifty homeless guys wearing Jacket's masks. I think what we see there is all that remains of 50 Blessings. They're hiding in the bunker, waiting for the end to come so they can emerge the only survivors. Their bunker looks equipped to take a nuclear blast. They may have become radicalised, I think. By HM2, it's less a vigilante conspiracy and more an urban militia.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Further on the 50 Blessings thing, I noticed that the colonel at the Hawaii missions eventually wears a phanter head as a mask, and etches the 50 blessings symbol on it. He is then promoted to lieutenant general. At the very end of the game, the news program Richter watches says a general was the leader of 50 blessings. It's not that much of a stretch to believe that guy was the founder and leader, after the war. Really need to do the game in hard mode now to get the extra dialogue.

[nenjin]

Spoiler: Reflections after those two events (click to show/hide)

I think Richard isn't who we think he is.
He looks like a metaphor, and no one seems to acknowledge his existence... But I think he's something more.
I think he's not humanity's self-destruction made flesh. He's the spirit of doubt. Every character he haunts is hiding a doubt. The mobster doubts he can really quit, the actor doubts he's not getting lost in his character, the mob boss doubts he can measure up to his father. Then, when the nukes come down, he turns into something else: a spirit of regret.
Richard really does like humanity. He wouldn't be anything without us. So when he sees us destroy ourselves, he feels angry... And regretful. That's why he doesn't lambast Beard or Richter. He even seems melancholy at their death, the first sign of real emotion that isn't hidden behind that mask.
As for 50 Blessings? I find it interesting the only people occupying their bunker is fifty homeless guys wearing Jacket's masks. I think what we see there is all that remains of 50 Blessings. They're hiding in the bunker, waiting for the end to come so they can emerge the only survivors. Their bunker looks equipped to take a nuclear blast. They may have become radicalised, I think. By HM2, it's less a vigilante conspiracy and more an urban militia.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

See, that's the mystical interpretation. That Richard isn't a reflection of us, that's he's actually something. (Along with Erasmus and the other from the first game, who are conspicuously absent from HLM2.) That's the interpretation I want to have of the setting, but it's not the interpretation I feel the game is presenting you in HLM2. I sort of feel like Dennation is playing both sides of the story for effect and ambiguity. Either Richard is the voice of the author and/or the conscious of the players/characters, where reusing him is just reusing the imagery for cohesion....or Richard as an actual entity in the world, with mystical, omniscient powers, foresight, the ability to read people's hearts and minds...like I said, I think Dennation plays to both ideas. While I want to go with Richard as an entity, it begs the question what he is and why he gives a shit in the first place, questions he flat out tells you cannot know the answers to.

The entire story also leans on the concept of the unreliable narrator heavily to keep the player off balance in their understanding of the story...which is why I don't want to invest too much effort in deconstructing it. Sort of like when games or TV shows throw in religious symbolism because it looks cool and lends mystery to an idea, I feel like Dennation did a lot of the same things. Like sticking a dead body in the vault to make you question whether the things The Son is talking to are real or just madness. Like why Martin is gunned down in his final scene Brandon Lee style. You could weave a complicated theory for why the actress had a gun loaded with real bullets instead of blanks, but applying Occam's Razor, the most likely answer is that Martin died when he did for dramatic effect and to satisfy the story's need for all its characters to die. Like, there really isn't a ton of meaning to it, just a lot of intentional contradictions so all explanations are valid.

*sigh* I may have to wait a while before hard mode. Some of those levels were such a chore I can't really say I had fun, it was anger that got me through them more than anything, and I'm not in a rush to do it all again.

[Fniff]

Speaking of the game being intentionally self-contradictory to create theories, I found that the cleverest part of the game story. Mysteries invest people, even if they aren't answered. I'm glad they made sure to keep the vague and Lynchian tone going rather then just doing what some other devs would do and go "Right, let's answer all open questions and wrap up all possible loose ends!".

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Spoilers about completing hard mode.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The only change is the addition of the poem: "For the Dear Old Flag I Die", after the credits.

Not worth pushing yourself through it if you're not enjoying the gameplay.

[nenjin]

Speaking of the game being intentionally self-contradictory to create theories, I found that the cleverest part of the game story. Mysteries invest people, even if they aren't answered. I'm glad they made sure to keep the vague and Lynchian tone going rather then just doing what some other devs would do and go "Right, let's answer all open questions and wrap up all possible loose ends!".

Sure, it's an effective trick but it can make it hard to take authorial intent seriously when it feels like they're manipulating you with easy cues. For example, take any scene in any movie an add a guy wearing a Zebra mask standing there silently, and no one acknowledges them. Dats vierd right?! I'm not saying that's the extent HLM does or has gone to, but it indulges quite a bit. And in a game where the central question is "Just WTF is going on", I dunno. I expected some resolution rather than....

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The hard mode intro basically says it all. "I'm the opposite of why you're writing your book." The objective of the book is truth and understanding, therefore, Richard is a lie and confusion, intentionally so, to defeat everyone's understanding. He can't be known, as he says. That to me is code for the writers going "Theorize all you want, we've designed this to affirm and contradict everything." Which, you know, I enjoy a good mind fuck as much as anyone else, but my patience for intentional ambiguity has its limits, especially when the voice of the authors is point blank telling me that's what they're doing. It's a little too much conceit for me. If everything and nothing is true, then the story really has no point other than an obvious appeal to that mystical mystery. It's to the point the ambiguity becomes meta and I don't find that very clever. It's easy to contradict your own story to appear deep and mysterious rather than, as an author, make a decision about what your shit means.

Put another way. Any time anyone asks a question or makes a statement, just go "Or is it?" SO DEEP. The story does that CONSTANTLY. "But you're not really here, are you?"  "But I'm not really here, am I?" After a while it just starts seeming pretentious.

[Fniff]

That makes sense. I'm the kind of guy who gets disappointed at official explanations, so you can see why I bought into a storyline that could be interpreted as (And probably is) needlessly ambiguous.

[Rolan7]

Alright, just completed the game. Analysis a-go-go!

Spoiler: Warning: Serious Spoilers (click to show/hide)

Hotline Miami isn't just a game about violence. It's a game about the cycle of violence.
Let's start with the original protagonist. Jacket/Hitman/Richard. Originally he was a cipher, someone we had no idea about. Similarly, his friend at the store/bar/pizza place/VCR Palace was also unknown apart from a few cryptic references. Then we learn they were actually war buddies fighting against the Soviets. Everything falls into place: why Jacket was so good with weapons, the nature of his relationship with the clerk, and so on and so forth.
In the second game, he's a ghost. He's in prison, and on death row at that. But his previous actions influence everyone in the game. The most obvious would be the Fans and I don't have to explain them, but it goes deeper. The Actor wouldn't be acting in Midnight Animal if Jacket didn't kill anyone. The Russian Mafiya boss wouldn't be trying to impress his father with risky rampages if his father wasn't killed by Jacket and thus unable to keep him in check. The Detective wouldn't be reduced to a psychotic killer in the guise of a police officer if Jacket didn't have so many imitators. Hell, the entire city of Miami seems to have become a nest of rampages and insanity, mainly thanks to Jacket.
The violence starts in war, the 'natural' place for violence. Then Jacket is recruited into 50 Blessings and brings the violence to the streets, which causes the spiral. He's the patient zero for the outbreak of violence in Miami. Without him, none of the events of the game would have happened. Miami might not have been nuked, if 50 Blessings seriously relied on Jacket for the survival of it's operation. Which is doubtful but possible.
This is why Richard the mask appears regularly, taunting most of the player characters. That was the mask Jacket was arrested in, and the most distinctive. The mask personifies everyone's fears. The Mafiya hitman's dreams of freedom is interrupted by Richard talking about how the road they're traveling on is a dead-end. The Mafiya boss cracks open the vault only to find his dead parents and grandfather, who is wearing the Richard mask and telling him how he will never match up to his father. Finally, he appears to Richter telling him that everything will get much worse from then on. While the others resist... Richter accepts his fate. Richard says the last words of the whole game: that letting go of life is not as hard as you think. I may be misquoting him, feel free to correct.
Then, 50 Blessings (Jacket's masters during HM1) assassinate both the Russian and American presidents. The world falls into an inter-continental nuclear war. We see visions of the characters that are left alive being burnt to a crisp by the nuclear attack. In the end, we see Jacket in his jail cell just before the bomb wipes him off the map.
I think that last image summarizes how everything went. Jacket, for all his efforts, has lost everything directly because of the violence he committed. His girlfriend, his house, his freedom, and at last his life. No-one has gotten what they wanted. Everyone has lost everything. Whether that's a shame or not is up to you.
By the way: in the dream the Detective ends up having, he meets a bug-eyed man who is apparently 'the Miami mutilator'. I think that man might be Jacket, or at least a very strange version of him created by the Detective. Is that how the Detective sees the man who started all this madness?

I like games where some things are left up to the player. Hotline Miami 2 remembers this, thankfully. Well, at least some of the time. By the way, does anyone know the music that plays in the End Credits?

Thanks for this, and all the other plot discussion.  Seeing other peoples' interpretations really helped me understand what I just saw.  I also missed a lot of little things.  Posting to watch, also.

I really enjoyed the plot, but like a lot of people, I was super frustrated by the huge levels full of gun-enemies.  Particularly those looong hallways where all you can do is inch forward at max shift-look, because there might be a patrolling gun-enemy just beyond your vision.  Even shittier because there usually actually is one, or even two.  The game punishes taking any risk at all.

Edit:  I even went back and played a couple levels of HM1 just to make sure I was remembering right.  I was, it flows a *lot* better and rewards good reactions rather than forcing you to make a plan for every room due to excessive enemy overwatch from offscreen.  There are still gotcha-windows, but the floors are small enough that you can actually see them coming...  Or at least remember them easily, and dying isn't a big deal.  I planned to only play two levels (on a touchpad, no less) and ended up playing 5 and having fun.

[nenjin]

I gotta say, I would not mind playing a broader game in the same style. I think they really hit a nice balance of twitch skill, smoothness, "crunchiness" with both games and I'd like to play something similar from them, that can be lived in a little more. There's almost no downtime in HLM, you're going from a cutscene to a level with just a little walkabout, which leaves me feeling a little strung out after I play it. I think a larger RPG-style game done in the same fashion by them could be pretty successful.

[Fniff]

It would be pretty great if there was an open world Hotline Miami. Like an ultraviolet GTA 2.

[Virtz]

It would be pretty great if there was an open world Hotline Miami. Like an ultraviolet GTA 2.

I dunno, sounds like a map with infinite windows.

Though even with a hub world map where you just pick which level to go to, I wonder if it wouldn't lose out too much on the style and story.

[scrdest]

Re: HM2 feels like DLC stitched together - that's somewhat hilarious... because that is almost literally what HM2 is. It started as a DLC expanding on the story post-HM1 ending, but it got bloated in scale enough that the devs decided to just develop it as a full game.

Re: Flow. That's what made HM1 so great for me. Once I've played the game through once or twice, it was just the pure joy of the flow, taking off the deliberate planning hat and just running on pure instinct and reflex. Perhaps once I go through 2 it will get the same for me - I know that Jake's final level felt much better on my second run - but the level design in several levels (notably, the Fans girl rescuing one, the Detective one at the marina, the final Soldier mission...) seems far less conducive to that.

[Cheeetar]

This is the most intense video game I've played in ages. Felt like it took a long while to get warmed up, but I really appreciated the ending levels.

[NobodyPro]

Casualties is kicking my arse like there's no tomorrow. Couldn't even finish the bastard.