Once again, there's an update.
Why do I get the feeling that Kuzuryuu took the bait? He had that suspicious envelope with him, and he got extremely defensive when questioned about it. Then again, he gets extremely defensive when questioned about anything, so it could be a red herring. The motive could have also been revealed to Koizumi or Peko, who seemed to show an interest in playing the game as well.
Oh, and we finally get to see our favorite psycho Nagito again, and he's just as psycho as he seemed in the last chapter.
And there's a new Free Time event with a twist: the students with the lowest votes win, so vote for whoever you don't want to see.
New trailer
for the anime. A little bit of additional footage, and the misleading marketing continues by pulling right from the demo and showing us the corpse of Hagakure.
I'd frankly be disappointed if the characters didn't continue to bleed Pepto Bismol. It's just as much a part of the style as the cardboard cut out sprites and crazy trial camera angles.
In other news, anime premier date confirmed for the 4th of July, and the Maizono heroine fake out is in full force for the promotion. Nothing to celebrate american independence like watching Japanese teenagers kill each other.
Everything happens for a reason. The reason is a chaotic intersection of chance and the laws of physics.At least it's coming out on a system that still has some shelf life, so there's a tiny chance it could get picked up.
Incidentally, it looks like shit is getting real in the LP! Haven't read the entire update yet, but I saw the splash for the end of the (Ab)Normal Days chapter. That means it's murder time!
Wasn't expecting a body to turn up quite so soon...
Just saiyan, the translation patch for DR 1 is out.
The latest LP update was posted a few days ago, and the Chapter 2 investigation has begun!
The main item of importance this time is the time of death. The murder took place at about 3PM, around the same time that Hinata and Souda arrived at the diner. That means the killer has to be someone who passed by around that time, since there's no other way to the beach.
Unless they're going to pull a trick involving the killer swimming around the island to escape detection or something like that.
I just played through the translation patch of the first game. Haven't followed the Let's Play, and have no plans to at the moment, but I guess that's how most other people are experiencing this?
Anyway, it's a pretty great game. I like the exaggerated sense of style, and the "courtroom" gameplay elements added some excitement to what's otherwise just a debate. Honestly I'd call it a flat-out improvement over Phoenix Wright. Nothing wrong with those games of course, but improvement within a genre is only to be expected.
But, well, I'm not sure if this is actually a complaint but I thought the mysteries were too easy. There was so much foreshadowing and important clues thrown about ahead of time that I could basically agree with Kirigiri and go "ah, so that's it" before the trials started for almost all the cases. Well, not 100% (I didn't guess Oowada ahead of time, for example) but I had a basic "shape" of the case in my head. Honestly I was slightly disappointed in Naegi a lot of times and very disappointed when Kirigiri had to take everyone outside to prove that Fujisaki was a boy. And of course Celes made it super-obvious that she was leading everyone around during the chase scene. That culprit disappointed me a lot: I expected more from them. On the other had, mysteries are designed to be solved. If the relevant evidence was hidden from you until the trial, as it is in Phoenix Wright, it feels less like I'm solving the mystery myself and more like I'm being led around by the narrative. So in that sense it's a perk that the mysteries are fair?
Also, one thing I thought was really weird was how strangely insistent the culprits were on hard evidence. "Yeah, everything circumstantial points towards me, and I'm acting really suspicious, and no one else could have done because of everything we just proved, but do you have any hard evidence it was me?!" Leading to the climactic Machine Talk Battle or whatever. Except none of that matters since it's just a vote anyway? We don't need to prove this beyond reasonable doubt. Just by being in the position they're in, they're going to get voted as the villain evidence or otherwise. Of course, to meet the gameplay "Game Over" needs they always vote Naegi the culprit when you run out of credibility even though it makes no sense. Even ignoring the laziness inherent in the generic game over screen, it seems like a waste of the whole Ballot System since there is never any tension ever. You can't vote until the case has been proven beyond reasonable doubt, so why is it even a vote?
The vote was important though, as it wasn't always proved beyond reasonable doubt. Like the last case, where Naegi/Kirigiri is voted and executed, despite being innocent. It also came up when Ishimaru refused to vote for Mondo even though he clearly did it. It's basically a tangible way for Monobear to get a culprit consensus, and it works better story-wise than Naegi saying "Yeah it was that dude over there."
And the Paywall is down. Pity, I liked Mahiru.
Everything happens for a reason. The reason is a chaotic intersection of chance and the laws of physics.The fact that it was a vote wasn't important. You always had to convince everyone of everything, instead of just saying "well, most of us believe it so no MTB for you." Mostly because everyone else was either a complete idiot with no opinion of their own, a culprit, or a super-genius who figured it all out before you did (except that one time Togami freaked out because people aren't robots). Even Ishimaru's dissent occurred after a meaningless MTB.
edited 2nd Jul '13 8:10:54 PM by Clarste
The investigation continues with a new update.
Several points of importance this time.
Even though the announcement means at least three people found the body, there's only one set of footprints leading out of the beach house. The other exit is blocked off by the victim's body. There is a window in the shower room that the killer could have used to escape, but it's very high up on the wall, so it would have been difficult for them to reach it without assistance.
There's several empty water bottles in the trash, and a bunch of bottles missing from the shelves. It's possible the killer used these to wash off blood.
The murder weapon appears to be the metal bat on the ground. This is the same weapon used in the Twilight Syndrome game, so the killer has to be someone who played that game. Apparently, there's some sort of secret ending in the game, which Nanami is going to help Hinata find. Maybe that will shed some light on this situation.
On another note, FYI, if you already know what's going to happen in the game, don't spoil anything in the LP thread. Apparently there was a situation in the thread where someone was trying to disguise spoilers as speculation, causing a temporary thread lock. I don't know what exactly got spoiled, but it must have been something big.
Do yourself a favor and don't look at the character page, as it's already riddled with spoilers. Actually, don't look at the main page either.
Do take note that there's a separate thread now for the anime. As this is the game discussion thread, we here will probably be throwing around spoilers for the first game like it's common knowledge.
edited 6th Jul '13 2:45:07 PM by Mirrinus
The cow eats Fruit Loops at midnight.

There's been a couple of new updates since last time, and we now have a motive.
So the motive is hidden inside a video game. That's... unique. I get the feeling that Nanami's going to be suspected this time, since she'd be the one most tempted to play the game, plus she just declared that she isn't going to kill anyone.
I also wonder what Monobear meant by "hidden connections"... Maybe some of the students knew each other before going to Hope's Peak, and that will become important in some way.
edited 1st Jun '13 12:45:29 PM by Wyvernil