History VideoGame / PunishingGrayRaven

* InformedEquipment: [[GameplayAndStorySegregation Despite the importance of Memories for a character's performance]], they don't show up on a character's person when you have them equipped
* InformedEquipment: [[GameplayAndStorySegregation Despite the importance of Memories for a character's performance]], they don't show up on a character's person when you have them equipped

* OutOfGenreExperience: Most of the game is SciFi, if not ScienceFantasy. ''Inscription of Labyrinth'', meanwhile, while retaining the same gameplay, has a tone, setting, and plot that wouldn't be out of place in a horror game like ''VideoGame/SilentHill''.

* SurprisinglyCreepyMoment: Or rather, surprisingly creepy chapter. ''Inscription of Labyrinth'' takes the player away from the sci-fi locales and puts them, alongside the Cerberus squad, in an old abandoned town that is more than likely inspired by VideoGame/SilentHill, given the fog and the general atmosphere. One major enemy in this chapter is "Blair", a CreepyDoll with no eyes and obviously broken limbs that, while mostly harmless, is still unnerving to even look at; there's [[RealityHasNoSoundtrack little to no music aside from ambiance]], and [[spoiler:the combination of No.21's instability and the Commandant's Mind Beacon being corrupted back in ''Fake Ascension'' is causing them both to experience and relive Luna's memories of the day the Punishing Virus first hit her hometown from her perspective, including saying and doing what she said and did back then against their own wills, with 21 in particular obviously not enjoying the sensation of losing control of her own voice and body]]. The majority of the chapter is incredibly unnerving, feeling more like it should be in a horror game rather than a sci-fi ARPG, and nothing else in the game is quite like it, making it feel that much more bizarre.

** The artwork of Memories tend to be more risque than the playable characters, particularly [[MsFanservice ones of females]]. Lots of skimpy clothing, suggestive poses, and MaleGaze.
** This however doesn't mean the males don't get their share either, as evidenced by Waun.
* FanatasticUnderclass: Far away away from the space station Babylonia, away from the cities with Purification Towers and Conservation Zones, away from the camps of the Forsaken, the walled city of Kowloon and the carriages of Asslam, there are various scattered camps consisting of people and the descendants of those who were denied entry into Babylonia during the Great Retreat.

* DownerBeginning: To [[EstablishingSeriesMoment set tone of the game and its story]], it starts with an injured Lucia ''struggling'' to fight against a hoard of Corrupted, forcing her and the player Commandant to resort to drastic measures, like lowering Lucia's pain threshold, to keep the mission and themselves alive.

In the distant future, mankind's first zero-point energy nuclear reactor gives birth to a new type of virus in its vacuum chambers, known as "the Punishing". When it escapes and spreads along the wind currents of Earth's atmosphere following an explosion, the cybernetic pathogen proceeds to kill humans and infect machines, causing them to mindlessly seek to destroy anything with a human consciousness. Humanity thus sees no other option but to escape into space, where survivors live aboard the space colony ''Babylonia''. To reclaim their lost planet, humans devise a way to modify their bodies into virus-resistant combat cyborgs: the Reconstructed Soldiers, or in its short form, the constructs.

* CinderellaPlot: Liv's father remarried, and her new step-family promptly began neglecting her and treating her like a servant, until her fortunes turned around. Though in this case, Liv didn't meet a prince and marry into royalty: she enlisted in the army as a medic in lieu of her step-siblings, nearly died saving soldiers on the frontline, and was transformed into a combat cyborg lauded as a war hero, who is still fighting when the game begins.

* StepServant: Liv's father remarried, and her new step-family promptly began neglecting her and treating like a servant, until her fortunes turned around. Though in this case, Liv didn't meet a prince and marry into royalty: she enlisted in the army as a medic in lieu of her step-siblings, nearly died saving soldiers on the frontline, and was transformed into a combat cyborg lauded as a war hero, who is still fighting when the game begins.

* WeirdWest: The story ''Sands of Wrath'' takes a turn in genre, as the Commandant winds up in the very Wild West-styled community of New Auclair, leading to a Western tale where the local wheat harvest and festival has to contend with cyborgs, monsters and the sci-fi apocalypse.

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[[caption-width-right:350:The abyss looks into you\\
when you look long into an abyss[[note]]Top: [[TheStoic Lucia]], Bottom (L-R): [[BadassPreacher Bianca]], [[TheHeart Liv]], [[RetiredBadass Watanabe]], [[DumbIsGood Kamui]], [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Nanami]], [[TheSmartGuy Lee]], and [[LadySwearsalot Karenina]][[/note]]]]

* AccentAdaptation: When the English dub was implemented, several characters were given British accents, typically to emphasize [[TheQueensLatin social class or sophistication]]. This is understandable for [[LadyOfWar Selena]] and [[OfficerAndAGentleman Chrome]]. Maybe [[ChurchMilitant Bianca]] too. ''Qu'', the empress for the FantasyCounterpartCulture of ''China'', having one too is... a choice.

* BrainUploading: The M.I.N.D. system allows a cyborg's mind to be digitized to go along with their mechanical body. What happens when a mind can be freely transferred around gets explored in a few different stories, as technicians can go on a JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind by accessing a construct's memories, and [[spoiler:cloning accidentally occurs when a stored consciousness is resurrected from a backup after the original person is mistakenly presumed dead.]]