Christine...he's there, the Phantom of the Opera...
The Phantom of the Opera is a Visual Novel made as part of the MazM game series that reinterprets classic novels. Developed in 2018, the game tells the well-known story of how the singer Christine Daae and the other members of the opera house are menaced by the mysterious figure known as the Phantom of the Opera.The game adapts the original novel by Leroux. Although it professes to be more accurate to the book than the musical adaptation that most are more familiar with, it nonetheless features various new additions to the story and vastly different reinterpretations of the characters.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Villainy:
- Erik, himself, is rewritten in the game to be much more blatantly and deliberately abusive to Christine, emotionally abusing her as both the Angel of Music and once he finally reveals himself to her, on top of being shown physically striking her a few times. Even more damning of his character is that he's revealed to have kidnapped another woman who rejected him during his days in Turkey that he's been keeping prisoner under the opera house for ten years, Melek, essentially reducing Christine to just his latest obsession. This all culminates in the ending, where he refuses to save Raoul—who only survives drowning by chance—and then refuses to see the error of his ways towards Christine and Melek. He decries Christine as a devil for not loving him, asking her to bury his body when he dies as a final act of spite.
- Richard and Moncharmin go from being Pointy Haired Bosses whose biggest crime was not believing in the Phantom, to outright criminals who attempt to harass Christine out of the opera house with methods up to and including framing her for murder, fire employees left and right for the flimsiest of reasons, and at one point tried to kidnap and potentially kill Jammes.
- Count Philippe is treated as being arrogant, classist, and intentionally stringing Sorelli along just for the fun of it; later chapters also cast his complete control over his siblings' inheritance in a more suspicious light than the original book, with Raoul accusing him of sending him on the North Pole expedition to kill him and keep his share. Although that accusation at least is implied to be unfounded, as Philippe dies worrying about Raoul.
- Even the Persian, while overall still a noble character, is portrayed as being at least partially responsible for how terribly Erik turned out. His act of kindness towards Erik in saving his life is also made the result of him trying to get Erik away from the Shah by framing him for treason.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Erik's backstory is made darker than in the book; rather than running away from home and participating in fairs, he's sold to a circus by his own mother and abused until The Persian purchases him for the Shah, who also proceeds to abuse him.
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
- Jammes, Sorelli, and Meg go from being Christine's coworkers who thought poorly of her old singing voice to her best and most loyal friends, with Meg aged up a bit presumably for this purpose.
- Carlotta is shown in this as having been great friends with Christine prior to the events of the game, who only ended up treating her terribly because the managers lied to her about Christine intentionally stealing her spot.
- Despite Erik's protests otherwise, his and The Persian's relationship is shown to be an intimate friendship in the game, with Hatim being the only person Erik feels safe around, as he desperately wants him to be the father he never had. The Persian, for his part, genuinely enjoyed Erik's company in Persia and tries to protect Erik from the authorities as much as stop his crimes from happening. While in the book Erik insists that he only saved The Persian during the climax due to Christine's intervention and couldn't care less what happened to him at that point, here he saves Hatim purely out of affection for his old friend, as he couldn't care less what Christine wanted by then.
- Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: In the book, Christine can't help Raoul and The Persian escape from the Torture Chamber because she'd been tied up by Erik, and must convince him to let her go by pretending to be hurt by the ropes. But in the game, Erik's other prisoner Melek is standing right in the room with her, untied, and yet it's not even treated as an option that she undo the ropes before Erik returns.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Christine unintentionally asks one of Erik as the Angel of Music; when Jammes is missing, she begs him to let her leave their lessons to look for her by asking him if he would do the same if a friend of his was in trouble. Erik's reply is a startled "Friend...?" and he abruptly leaves the conversation.
- Blind and the Beast: Defied with Melek, a blind woman Erik kidnapped from Turkey. Erik thinks that she'll love him since she can't see his appearance, but she despises Erik anyway for the weapons of war and torture that she learned he created.
- Canon Foreigner:
- Rather than Leroux himself, the narrator who collects the accounts of the Phantom is an unnamed detective character investigating Joseph Buquet's death.
- A new main character is introduced in Melek, a blind servant of Erik's in Turkey whom he kidnapped and imprisoned after she rejected his marriage proposal.
- Composite Character: The Shah in Erik's backstory has both his original role and the role of the little sultana, being the one who corrupts Erik by having him torture and kill for his amusement.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Persian as in the original book is only known as The Persian or the daroga, although the game does give him a name—Hatim. He avoids using his name to prevent drawing attention to himself, and Erik refuses to use his name as evidence of how complicated their relationship is.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Christine briefly reflects that Erik's appearance must have led to him having a hard life, and then quickly dismisses it as being no reason for him to commit such terrible deeds. This is reinforced by her "The Reason You Suck" Speech speech towards him in the ending.
- Gone Horribly Right: In backstory: The Persian tries to get Erik away from the Shah's corrupting influence by telling the Shah that Erik was colluding with Russian ambassadors, expecting him to get exiled. Instead, the Shah tries to execute him, forcing the Persian to intervene; now Erik is free from the Shah, but was given one more trauma to deal with in the process.
- I Just Want to Be Loved: Erik's explicit motivation. From his mother to the Persian down to Christine, none of the people he has loved have actually loved him back, and his obsession with being loved for himself drove him to become cruel and murderous.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: If during the climax you have Christine pick the grasshopper instead of the scorpion, then the opera house blows up while Erik is in the middle of gleefully waxing poetic about their approaching death.
- Misery Poker: A trait unique to this game's Erik is that he frequently puts his suffering as being worse than Christine's. One new scene in particular has him constantly cutting in to a story he prompts her to tell about the hardships in her life to point out how she didn't have it "as bad" as him; for example, he dismisses her grieving over her parents' respective deaths—something that severely scarred her emotionally to the point that it affected her ability to sing—by pointing out that at least her parents loved her before they died.
- Moral Myopia: Erik sees Christine loving Raoul as her betraying him and in the end sees her to be a demon for leaving him and not loving him, despite the Persian pointing out that Christine couldn't have betrayed him if he coerced her to "love" him in the first place.
- Multiple Endings: There's a Non-Standard Game Over ending where you blow everyone up if you pick the grasshopper, and an alternate ending where as Christine, the player gently refuses to elope with Raoul and instead travels the world alone, trying to find her own happiness now that she has her freedom.
- No Name Given: The detective that drives the framing device of the story is never given a name.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
- Raoul delivers several to the Persian after they end up in the torture chamber; one for getting them trapped in said chamber, another for his role in how ghastly Erik turned out to be, and then again for how he didn't try hard enough to stop Erik from hurting other people like Christine.
- Christine delivers one to Erik at the climax before she leaves him with Melek, claiming that people don't hate him because of his appearance, but because of how he acts, and that he's not some mystical Phantom or powerful Don Juan, but a pathetic human named Erik.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The Phantom dropping the chandelier is not only a scare tactic on the managers, but is made out to be his revenge on the managers and Carlotta for making Christine's life a living hell.
- Shout-Out: At one point, a hysterical Richard makes a reference to the Webber musical's titular song:Richard: He's there, the Phantom of the Opera-a!
- Trauma Button: Due to the extensive abuse he suffered at the hands of the Shah, and after almost being executed by him, talking about "His Majesty" in front of Erik explicitly triggers him into a traumatized state, which the Persian takes advantage of.
- White Mask of Doom: Like the musical, the game changes Erik's mask color from black to white.
