When They Cry - Higurashi and Umineko

That game was pretty fun. I wrote down all the purple stuff by who said what when, and then it turns out when the game is finished setting up they give you a replay function of all the scenes, making that work pointless.

Ah well, having a word document open was helpful for figuring out the story. Took me some time to figure it out even so.

Just wanna ask first. Are those spoilers Up there safe for me to read?

Also, I might want to try and go through my thinking process here, if no one loudly objects.

The huge post up above has ending spoilers in it, though it's labeled which spoilers are for which section. After that I was talking to you, so go ahead and read them.

Go ahead and lay out your reasoning, but be sure to spoiler it. I'll be interested in seeing how your reasoning compares to mine.

Okay, here goes so far. Let's assume for a moment that Krauss is the culprit (using him as an example because he was the one I used first). The culprit cannot die, so in the second twilight where he "dies", he is not truly dead. However, Nanjo confirms his death so either Nanjo is the culprit and is lying about his death, or Krauss is actually dead. Either way, he cannot be the culprit. This way, I ruled out Krauss, Natsuhi, Shkannon, Gohda, Kumasawa and Nanjo himself. Since Nanjo checks all of the aforementioned peoples' deaths, all of them are confirmed to be for sure dead. I also ruled out Jessica from being the culprit and confirmed her death (This also confirms Nanjo's death since Jessica cannot lie about Nanjo being dead). Since George states Maria's innocence in purple text, Maria is also not the culprit.

At this point, I've pretty much halved the suspects. I'll be going through more from here on. If anything's unclear, feel free to ask. I'll be going over the other stuff now.

Okay, I think I've got it. I continued using this method with the first twilight victims, though it got a bit complicated with the "Child checks parent" thing. I ruled out George from being the culprit since Jessica states that George could not kill Shannon and Jessica herself is innocent. Thus, George is innocent.

All the kids check the deaths of their parents and two people check Genji's death so everyone except Rudolf and Kyrie are confirmed dead and non-suspect. Following the previous logic, Rudolf and Kyrie cannot be suspects but are not confirmed dead. Since all the suspects except Battler are eliminated, Battler's the culprit. Though I'm pretty sure there's some flaw in the reasoning so I'm going to check everything over.

edited 22nd Dec '11 8:24:00 PM by neobowman

My reasoning started from the opposite direction. Literally, since I started with the eighth twilight as the basis for my reasoning.

Okay, there are huge flaws in my reasoning. I will try to work things out. Might take a while.

EDIT: Okay, so it's not directly stated in the rules but I have a hypothesis. I just want to confirm something, even if its a spoiler. Is there only 1 culprit?

edited 22nd Dec '11 8:35:50 PM by neobowman

Rather than answer that directly, I have a suggestion. Look at the rules as they are laid out closely and realize what the implications are. Exact wording is important.

And now to answer it directly (I recommend you do what I suggested anyway before you read this) yes, there is more than one culprit.

edited 22nd Dec '11 8:44:56 PM by Arha

I've gone through it several times. It says culprits quite a bit. It also says, a culprit and not THE culprit.

Yeah, I figured. I was going to go along those lines anyway and was almost sure that was it because otherwise there would be a contradiction. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't going wayyyyyy off track.

Yeah, it's going to take a looooooot more time now. I'll think it over during the night.

edited 22nd Dec '11 9:16:23 PM by neobowman

Okay, I'm having a tough time. There are a few problems with solving this. One, I don't know how many culprits there are. It could be two or three, though I doubt it could be four. Still, I can't be sure. It's really hard to narrow things down this way. Second, the culprit doesn't only tell lies. He/she can also tell truths, which again cuts down my options quite a bit. I'm kinda stuck. I'll try to think on it some more.

edited 23rd Dec '11 1:45:48 PM by neobowman

Actually it's a pretty good idea to just by default not assume anything the culprit says is true.

Well is it an implied rule that nothing the culprit says is true? Or does it just happen to work out that way? If it's the latter, then there has to be another way of figuring it out.

Here's the tricks to Bern's mystery

1. Purple text is absolute, unless it's being said by the culprit. In which case they can lie.

2. Culprits can't be killed.

3. The narration doesn't lie.

One thing to note is that, actually, it's best to solve this mystery from back to front. Start at the end, then move back.

edited 23rd Dec '11 4:23:24 PM by PataHikari

Well... I already knew all that. Except the last part, might be useful.

Thanks

edited 23rd Dec '11 4:29:17 PM by neobowman

Going back to front is quite helpful. Since you already got to that conclusion anyway, I'll mention this as an example: The narration confirms that Jessica and Nanjo are dead, which means that their testimony is valid. That's how my reasoning was founded.

Something that Neobowman shouldn't read: It's funny, but he almost had it at the beginning and quicker than I did. I got stuck at a point of reasoning that he started with immediately. The problem is that he doesn't get the full implication of the rules nor check the exact wording of the purple well enough.

edited 23rd Dec '11 5:19:12 PM by Arha

It was my mistake that I wasn't reading the story enough and I was just focusing on the purple text. I definitely should have caught that part with Shannon and Nanjo not being dead.

Following the same method, and starting from Nanjo/Jessica, I got the possible culprits down to George and his parents, Battler and his parents, and Maria and Rosa.

Holy shit that was f*cking simple. Battler says "None of us have alibis" in purple text. Just a bit later, Jessica states that they do all have alibis in purple text. Since Jessica's innocence is proven already, Battler is lying and is one of the culprits. I was looking through some of the stuff with the keys to figure something out when I saw that.

edited 23rd Dec '11 10:39:56 PM by neobowman

Here's my theory so far. Battler, Kyrie and Rudolf are the culprits. One of the adults kills 4 people inside the dining room and they both pretend to be dead. Everyone comes in and Battler fakes the check. When everyone goes to the Parlor, the two adults go out and about. When Krauss and Natsuhi go to their room, one of the two (the one who killed the 4 people) goes and kills them and hides within the room. The other goes outside. When everyone goes to the guesthouse and Shkanon comes out, adult #2 or Battler kills him/her. Adult #2 hides inside guesthouse and eventually kills Kumasawa/Gohda.

This is where we hit the roadblock. Apparantly, Nanjo couldn't be killed by anyone outside the guesthouse, but was killed inside the guesthouse. Huh. Jessica later is pretty easy to explain so can be ignored for now. I will think on this for a bit.

edited 23rd Dec '11 10:59:38 PM by neobowman

Okay, some more ideas. George says Maria couldn't kill anyone and Maria says George could only kill a kid. Since the only kids killed are Jessica and Shkannon and he was proven to not be either of the killer, if he is a culprit, so is Maria. Likewise, if Maria is a culprit, so is George. Now comes proving their innocence.

Okay, my revised theory: Person A (Either Rudolf or Kyrie) and Person B (The one that isn't Person A) are in the room before the murders. Person A kills 4 people, and then they both pretend to be dead. When everyone alive splits up and Krauss and Natsuhi go into their room, Person A kills those two and hides within that room, staying there for the rest of the game. Person B flees the manor. Up to this part, it's the same as my previous theory. From now on it's a bit different. Battler kills Shkannon. It has to be him because to be defined as a culprit, you have to kill someone, and he doesn't get a chance to kill someone anytime else. Person B kills Gohda/Kumasawa, then kills Nanjo. Nanjo goes outside of the guesthouse for whatever reason, Person B kills him and drags him in, then hides. Then Person B kills Jessica.

Since there are no chances for George to kill, both George and Maria are innocent, and in turn, so are their parents. Culprits are Battler, Kyrie and Rudolf. Now going to check over the whole thing once before going on with the story.

I never bothered considering the 'howdunnit' since Bern told you you didn't need to.

Okay, so I'm right, but apparantly there's a George family culprit theory. Which is completely ridiculous imo because that would mean Battler would have to be a killer too. But I guess since it's Erika, the logic is going to be twisted like that. Uahhhhhh.... I don't want to think about this anymore.

It's funny. In most places, you aren't supposed to use twisted logic like Erika does. But Umineko actually expects it and praises it.

edited 24th Dec '11 7:01:26 PM by neobowman

If you put in the George family culprit theory it doesn't actually work. I tried after I saw Erika declare that theory.

Hell yeahz, The Executioner is playing.

All the times the_executioner plays in this game is awesome. Makes me wish liberatedliberater got used a bit more ;__;

Come to think of it, I never made the Lambdadelta avatar like I intended to. I should get around to that. Decided she was my favorite of the witches.

Kind of funny considering my dislike for Takano.

edited 24th Dec '11 9:08:04 PM by Arha

Well Takano was just Lambda's peice after all hehehehe

Hanyuu sure got a lot meaner between games, didn't she?

Edit: Haha the Lambdadelta avatar looks so wrong on me. Why must you be a blond frilly moppet, Lambda?

edited 24th Dec '11 11:28:20 PM by Arha