History VideoGame / CognitiveDissonance

* Nanomachines: several healing items feature these; the Nanobot injection, the Super fixer nanobots, and the Nanobot backpack.

* SurpriseCreepy: Minus Giegue being a constant threat, the game and locations start off rather cheery and simplistic. Then, in Chapter 7, [[spoiler:you go aboard the Abandoned Mothership, where Starmen and Mooks have been taken over by parasitic plants, and a voice asks its "friends" to get you. And when you try to leave the ship the first time with your space map?]]

* BonusBoss: The game has a few, some of which helps net you an [[MultipleEndings alternate endings]].
** Master Magnolia, found in [[spoiler: Giegue's old Mother Ship]]. Absolutely brutal, with a mountain of health and two forms, and the ability [[FlunkyBoss flood the battlefield with minions]]. While required to beat in order to get one of the other endings, they're not required for the normal endings. Beating them also nets you PSI Beam Omega for Larice before chapter 8.
** Dr. Destructo, found [[spoiler: on the moon after collecting all four gems]]. Slightly less brutal than Master Magnolia, but still quite a frantic fight. While not required for an alternate ending, beating him nets you the final two knowledge stones in the game.
** The crowned king, however, has to be [[spoiler: [[LethalJokeCharacter Fobbyiyg]]]], which has mountains of health, hits like a truck, has several annoying PSI attacks, and is basically the last thing the player should tackle in the game. Beating them, however, [[InfinityPlusOneSword nets you the single best weapon in the game]].

* HopelessBossFight: Giegue will attack you in Chapter 1 and Chapter 3, and you will not survive. [[spoiler:If you cheat to beat him in Chapter 1, [[TheBattleDidntCount the game ignores you]] and continues with you losing. If you cheat to beat him in Chapter 3, you will get a JokeEnding similar to that of ''VideoGame/EarthwormJim''; this is the same ending as if you used force without getting Song or Nightmare Empower in Chapter 8.]]

* MindScrew: The Paradox ending of the game. [[spoiler:You get it by having Niiue sing Maria's Song to Gigyas. The FinalBoss fight instantly ends, leading the cast into an even deeper hallway into Giegue's mind. This leads to the G Core, Giegue's core self, being guarded by four different colored swirls. Each swirl seems to correspond to one of the original ''Mother''[='s=] protagonists (Ninten, Ana, Lloyd, and Teddy). Pressing on and defeating each swirl causes the G Core to self-destruct and pitches the protagonists into a disintegrating void as time collapses around them. Niiue is very confused as to what happened, but thanks Alinivar.]]

** [[EarnYourBadEnding Paradox Ending]]; [[spoiler: obtained by completing the Dr. Destructo side quest and obtaining the knowledge stones, saving one of them, completing the infected mothership sidequest in order to have Niiue join you temporarily in Magicant and using the stone on him to teach him the sing command. Using this on Giygas causes the Applechasers to head deeper into his mind to find the last remaining shred of sanity inside him. Killing him ends up completely eradicating Giygas for good; but also causes a TimeCrash that slowly destroys the universe, with Niiue commenting that he feels extremely hollow now Giygas and Giegue have been completely erased from existence.]]

* RaiseHimRightThisTime: [[spoiler: In the Severance ending. After Niiue manages to overpower Giygas and separate him from Giegue, the two manage along with the remaining Applechasers to escape the crumbling Magicant. When they return to the real world, Giegue has been de-aged back to the age Maria left him. It's left ambiguous if Giegue still remembers what happened or if he's back to being an uncorrupted child, but the Applechasers welcome him to their gang with opened arms.]]

* RetGone: In the 'Good' ending, if [[spoiler: the player uses PK Harmony seven times after Niiue joins them to battles Giegue as he's becoming Giygas, they are able to temporarily restore him back to sanity. Realizing what he's become and will eventually become again, Giegue and Niiue manage to work together to create a timeline where Giygas never existed.]]

* FiveManBand:
** TheLeader: Alinivar
** TheLancer: Col. Saturn
** TheSmartGuy: Zarbol
** TheBigGuy: Larice
** [[{{Mentors}} Mentor]]: Niiue

It can be downloaded at the Cognitive Dissonance homepage [[http://cogdis.tazmily.com/ here]], or accessed through a web broswer [[https://mothercogdis.com/ here]] ([[https://mothercogdis.com/esp Spanish Translation]]).

It can be downloaded at the Cognitive Dissonance homepage [[http://cogdis.tazmily.com/ here]], or accessed through a web broswerr[[https://mothercogdis.com/ here]] ([[https://mothercogdis.com/esp Spanish Translation]]).

It can be downloaded at the Cognitive Dissonance homepage [[http://cogdis.tazmily.com/ here]].

** Likewise in Sataene, a building set to be demolished has a sign warning anyone that standing in front of the bulldozer will not damage it.

* BittersweetEnding: This comes from the Bad and Good endings. You send the Messenger back where he needs to be and distract Gigyas long enough, but in the former, the Applechasers can't defeat Giegue and [[KillEmAll die,]] and in the latter, [[spoiler:Giegue assists Niiue in getting the Applechasers out of his mind, but Niiue is implied to die]]. This is {{Averted}} in the [[spoiler:Severance]] ending, when [[spoiler:Giegue's core personality is pulled away as a child again, thus letting almost everyone survive while Giygas, the main force, is allowed to be destroyed by Ness and co. without taking Giegue with him. The only one who dies is Zarbol, AKA Buzz Buzz]].

* KillEmAll: [[spoiler: The Bad ending leaves all the Applechasers dead, with Zarbol DoomedByCanon.]]

* HeroesPreferSwords: Subverted. You can still get Gold Starman to RareRandomDrop the Sword of Kings. However, no one in your party knows what a sword ''is'', much less how to use one, and so in this game it's VendorTrash "Sharp-Pointy Thing."

* DifficultySpike: Happens momentarily on your first visit to Earth. If you had been keeping up with the game, it forces a minor amount of grinding on you to get money for new items as well as to beat the bosses that are there, otherwise you get crushed.
** If you are playing on hard mode, you will play a brief segment in which Niiue [[spoiler: must escape Gigyas's deteriorating mental state on the ship he grew up on.]] Even with [[PurposefullyOverpowered Niiue]], this location is full of enemies designed for the lategame ''and'' a party of four and can very easily thrash the player if they don't dodge enough of them.

* InfinityPlusOneSword: The Borange Ray in 2.0, dropped by the BonusBoss [[spoiler:Fobbyiyg the Cosmic Destroyer]]. A one-handed cannon, stronger than any weapon, hits everyone twice, anyone can equip it, and it inflicts the [[StandardStatusEffects Insanity effect]].

* StandardStatusEffect: Averted with the Insanity status effect. It causes members of your party to start attacking each other and eventually die if they don’t get healed.

* RaiseHimRightThisTime: [[spoiler: In the Severance ending. After Niiue manages to overpower Giygas and separate him from Giegue, the two manage along with the remaining Applechasers to escape the crumbling Magicant. When they return to the real world, Giegue has been de-aged back to the age Maria left him. It's left ambiguous if Giegue still remembers what happened or if he's back to being an uncorrupted child, but the Applechasers welcome him to their gang with opened arms.]]

->''to exist happily in this time, it must surely flow backward''

''MOTHER: Cognitive Dissonance'', formerly known as ''Cognitive Dissonance: Between Two Times'', is a completed FanSequel in the ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER}}'' series, created in UsefulNotes/RPGMaker, specifically ''RPG Maker 2003'', taking place between ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings'' and ''VideoGame/EarthBound'', and using a chapter structure similar to ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER 3}}''. The story begins with Giegue overlooking the empty void of space from the bridge of his ship, haunted by his defeat at the hands of Ninten and his friends. It was developed by the fan handish2000, also known as otherhand, from the Starmen.net forum.

* AmazingTechnicolorBattlefield: Downplayed. Cognitive Dissonance takes something of a middle ground between Earthbound Beginning's black battlefield and Earthbound's psychedelic backgrounds, offering more minimalistic background color patterns against a black backdrop.

* ContinuityNod: All sorts to all three ''MOTHER'' games. [[WordOfGod Handish]] even said that there was even a nod to ''MOTHER 4'' (The fan-game that has now since been re-branded as the [[SerialNumbersFiledOff new-but-similar product]] ''VideoGame/{{Oddity}}'').

* LampshadeHanging: There’s a lot of it here, being a ''MOTHER'' game that has a long history of doing that.

* MindScrew: The Paradox ending of the game. [[spoiler:You get it by having Niiue sing Maria's Song to Gigyas. The FinalBoss fight instantly ends, leading the cast into an even deeper hallway into Giegue's mind. This leads to the G Core, Giegue's core self, being guarded by four different colored swirls. Each swirl seems to correspond to one of the original MOTHER's protagonists (Ninten, Ana, Lloyd, and Teddy). Pressing on and defeating each swirl causes the G Core to self-destruct and pitches the protagonists into a disintegrating void as time collapses around them. Niiue is very confused as to what happened, but thanks Alinivar.]]

** During chapter 1, you can save your game using black, rotary-dial Earth phones, despite being on Saturn. This feels totally intuitive to players of ''Mother'' or ''Earthbound'', and no one in-universe questions it.

* PsychicPowers: This is a ''MOTHER'' game, after all. Alinivar gets his from the Apple of Enlightenment.

* SequelHook: Naturally, as a midquel of the first two ''MOTHER'' games.

Since the game uses an older version of UsefulNotes/RPGMaker as it's engine, the game's battle system leans far more heavily into ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings'' style of combat than ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' or ''VideoGame/Mother3'''s. The PSI and abilities are recreated rather accurately from the ''VideoGame/{{Mother}}'' series and the battle backgrounds feature a lower grade style of that of ''[=EarthBound=]'s'' but ultimately it lacks the scrolling odometer mechanics the later ''Mother'' games are famous for. To compensate, the game instead uses an ATB gauge, not unlike that of the earlier ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' games to help simulate the frantic nature the scrolling HP mechanics in the main series has.

The game has been reworked into [[http://forum.starmen.net/forum/Fan/Games/Cognitive-Dissonance-2-0-Reworking-Project/page/1/ version 2.0]] by handish2000 with assistance from another user named Crav. The new version includes re-balanced enemies, polished boss fights, animated backgrounds, new sprites, an updated spaceship and updated maps, along with an updated save system where you will start from the last natural point instead of back at the title screen. There will also be more planets to visit in some form or another instead of just the plot-essential ones (even Pluto; it’s the 80’s, you see). Oh, and there’s a tow truck if you run out of fuel in space. You can see the trailer [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwbOz3MDpCY here]].

* ArcWords: Who has lost his tail?

* HateSink: While Giegue does order his henchmen to do some heinous stuff, like attacking a village of innocent civilians, [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds his tragic origins]] and [[TragicMonster his ultimate fate]] garners some sympathy. His minion Greyface, however, has none of those saving graces. When he isn't mocking the heroes, he's stealing the Apple Pieces the player worked so hard to get. The hate gets hammered home when on Mars, [[spoiler:Greyface reprograms Larice to fight his friends, which nearly kills him while he escapes from Mars. It's later revealed that Greyface's true identity is Porky Minch, which... isn't really a surprise. At all]].

* BigBad: Giegue, who else?

* {{Shoutout}}:

* BagOfSharing: Unlock the ''VideoGame/{{Mother}}'' games, inventory in this game is shared among the entire party instead of being completely separate.

* BagOfSharing

* AnotherDimension: Niiue’s [[spoiler:Magicant]].

* AnAesop: Don't ignore or fight your feelings and emotions. All it will do is cause you serious mental harm in the long run. At the same time, only focusing on positive emotions will do just as much harm as negative emotions. [[In the bad ending, this is what causes Giegue to be forever stuck as Giygas and dooms the universe, and in the paradox ending, Niiue trying to destroy Giygas' core ends up dooming ''all of reality''. It's only by working together in the good and severance endings do they manage to end on a positive note.]]

* AllInARow

** TimeParadox: Use a Knowledge Stone to grant "Song" to Niiue, and [[spoiler: use it against Giygas. This sinks you deeper into Giygas' psyche, and you fight the G-Core and [=NALTs=], [[MindScrew which may or may not be the original heroes of Mother.]] Winning this fight "should not have happened" and [[TimeCrash erases the future timeline]], leaving the heroes in a disintegrating void.]] Niiue is confused, but thanks Alinivar for his efforts nonetheless.
** Joke End, [[spoiler:Hammertime]]: Defeat Giygas without [[spoiler:unlocking Maria's room with the Reboot orbs (thus not using Nightmare Empower), without using Song, and without using PK Harmony]]. Its defense is astronomical, making this normally [[HopelessBossFight an overwhelmingly daunting task]], but the Ballpeen Hammer, an item you can receive by trading an item you get when escaping the Mothership as Larice with a Shambler on Uranus, [[FixedDamageAttack deals a fixed 9999 damage,]] toning the challenge down from "impossible" to "manageable". However, [[RealityBreakingParadox reality cannot handle Giygas being defeated by brute strength alone]], [[spoiler:causing everybody to spontaneously transmute into cows]]. You also get this ending by beating [[spoiler:Giegue in Chapter 3. It's impossible without cheating, though]].
*** This ending also occurred in the 1.0 version of the game if you beat [[spoiler:Fobbyig]].