Let's talk about LISA

shit game shit thread

wew

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For the weird shit.
Soup's on, baby.

Man this thread is off to a good start

Eat shit.

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Wasn't supposed to be spoiled.

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Do you feel in charge?

this place is complete shit.

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lmao look at this nobody smh

I was talking about the forced roulette scene.
You can't do shit about it if the game decides to kill everyone in your party, followed by you. Multiple times.

Wow he really got triggered.

Anyway if I feel like breaking the game I wit Birdie, RT, and Mad Dog. For maximum emotional ending I go for Olan, Shocklord and Terry in that order

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Thursdays are for faggots. Only faggots do things on a Thursday.

Has never happened to me before across multiple playthroughs.

If you don't think a game called the PAINFUL RPG that forces you to play Russian roulette with your own party members and forces permadeath on the consequences, you have no soul and this is not the game for you.

I got through without losing one.

If you're really unlucky, it's one of the few areas where you can savescum easily, even in pain mode

That's an excuse only a friendless virgin would make!

Well I never sucked the RNG gods dick. On my first playthrough I got 2 gameovers on Russian Roulette, and I had gotten most of the party members that I could by that point.

What the fuck are you doing here, then?

*…is awesome, didn't notice I forgot that

Well maybe you should have

w e w

Ha what a faggot

I don't get how you had such a problem with it.

Anyways, who did Brad have to kill at the end of your games?

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Wow OP, we have a real connection, can't believe you're making a thread exactly now, what a coincidence, seeing as how i beated LISA today!
Just like Marty. :^)

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Is there a reason to use anyone else besides the main 4 you get? Terry, Nern, and Olan?
I hate switching guys.

gay

average cuteboys poster.bmp

How come Lisa never reached MEME status outside of here? Is it because it triggers e-celebs and game jounialists too much?

It's a pretty niche appeal, I'm not surprised it didn't catch on.

I was looking through Austin's stuff for fan art and saw him talking about the next game, didn't realize h was planning to release it late this year or early next year. Hopefully he sticks to that schedule.

Didn't have furry characters or waifu's.

Lisa seem like something that would have FNAF, Undertale and Overwatch levels of autism with it's fandom.

Well it does here, just nowhere else. It's a cult classic and the cult is Holla Forums.

What, what? I'm interested, did he say any official details about it?

It's called Ninja Tears and it's going to be a 2D sidescroller. Otherwise he hasn't said a whole lot about it, although I remember he said it was going to be darker than LISA was. I can't find the quote on the second one so that might have been during the AMA he did here.

fuck yeah, I never want this ride to end

Jack is probably fave companion because of sick cheap skillz

you pushover.
I bet you would buy yourself into easy mode if you could ever manage to get that many magazines.

But yeah, completely died to roulette as well. Losing teammates should be a thing,
but this here is just time consuming.

The game is too dark and sexist, because 99% of the characters are men and the only women get abused.

I inteded this post to be a joke when I typed it up but it's probably one of the reasons.

Terry, Birdy and Nern best companions.

Is Lisa actually worth playing? I was put off initially because 'feelsy pixelshit'.

Buzzo did nothing wrong

maximum BTFO levels

Spoiler warning because I don't want to make the rest of my post harder to read.

Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers.

Buzzo being turned into a "good guy" is a good example of why The Joyful sucks. No offense meant, it just seemed like a really lazy attempt to make someone who can easily be described as Brad's internalized desire for punishment (if it weren't for the hidden joy labs which didn't add anything of value to the narrative anyway) into some kind of deep, conflicted antagonist with a heart of gold. And it just falls completely flat, if I'm being honest, and fucks with the characters. Buzzo tortures Brad in The Painful as a way of punishing him for Lisa's suicide, but that doesn't make him a good guy and it doesn't mean Lisa somehow put him up to it or put him up to just being an asshole in general.

Lisa being some kind of demon child instead of being an innocent girl driven to suicide by her abusive, rapist father following the death of her mother is also really silly and uncompelling.

Why would Brad feel bad about not being able to prevent Lisa's abuse and suicide if she was just a complete shitter the whole time? She hanged herself once even her memory of her mother was corrupted by her father's abuse, she didn't hang around for years being a nasty weirdo. At least, prior to The Joyful there was absolutely no indication that she stuck around being a nasty weirdo.

Does LISA: The First give an impression of Lisa being some kind of evil girl? No, it doesn't. The Painful doesn't either, so the "character development" of Lisa and Buzzo in The Joyful is just abrupt and uncompelling. Buddy turns into an boring, annoying character from a bad anime in The Joyful as well and Rando coming back from the dead just to become Buddy's boring, weak-willed servant was incredibly bad. Rando's death was one of the most tragic parts of The Painful for me and it's a real shame to see it tarnished like that.

Everything about Buzzo and Dr. Yado destroying the world was uninteresting and goofy as well. Buzzo and Dr. Yado didn't need to be fleshed out as characters and now that they have been it would have been better if they hadn't been. Olathe wasn't really in need of worldbuilding, either. Olathe is (or at least should have remained) just the stage for the Brad's story.

Olathe as a setting and joy as a plot device were never what made The Painful's narrative good. What made The Painful's narrative good was the character story of Brad, how he failed to cope with LISA's torture and death, and how he hoped to redeem himself by raising Buddy and keeping her safe, and how his attempts at redeeming himself affected the world around him following Buddy's kidnapping.

I don't mean to insult anyone who liked The Joyful, not saying you're dumb if you do or something, but to me The Joyful is a pretty clear stain on the setting, story, and characters of the first two LISA games. There are some good moments, like the "fight" with Buddy's memory of Brad at the end, but I think overall it was detrimental to LISA's overarching story. There's probably more to say about it, but I've gone on long enough, I think.

this nigga gets it

Buzzo did everything wrong and deserves nothing but suffering

In your wrong opinion.

Every character besides Rando did everything wrong.

No Joyful, no Sindy Gallows.

Pretty much.

Yado a perfect! Buzzofags get out!

Why the duck is there a sage?

Man I hope this doesn't bridge into edgelord territory.

Given that Buddy was reimagined as a katana-wielding loli herald of death in The Joyful, it might. But most of the reaction to The Joyful I've seen has been at least partially if not wholly negative, so maybe Austin realizes that the epilogue to Lisa was a little misguided.

Thanks, glad you agree.

Are you saying Olathe and the mystery of what joy is and why it turns people into monsters was more interesting to you than Brad, his anguish and desperation, the other characters, the decisions you have to make concerning Brad's well-being and the well-being of the party, and Brad's journey to find Buddy and try to redeem himself?

That's fine, but I don't think most people would feel the same way you do.

I'm not saying Olathe and joy are somehow inherently detrimental to the story in The Painful, Olathe is a good setting for the story and joy is a good plot device, but they're definitely not the primary thrust of the plot or the most interesting part of it.

That dude was hard as nails. Honestly it was probably one of my favorite parts of The Joyful. Didn't even feel like he was wasted by being in such a short scene.

my nigga, rando was pure, he wanted to save humanity

Maybe I'm just an edgemaster but I really liked Joyful and playing as Buddy.
Her entire life was supremely fucked up; it's only natural she became a violent sociopath.

Also Joyful's soundtrack is better than Painful fukc u

I'm saying after playing Lisa: The First, I never would have expected that the sequel would star a cast of wrestlers in an apocalyptic wasteland searching for the last living female, and I might never have bothered playing the game if he hadn't taken such a bizarre direction with the sequel.

And I'm saying that separating that setting, Joy, the monsters it creates, and the decisions you make concerning your party's well-being is undermining Lisa as a game because the two are inseparable.

The rest of the post about Buzzo, Rando, and Yado is right, but I think your take on Lisa's character in The Joyful is completely off, she isn't portrayed as evil or nasty at all.

The ending to the game - and everything about it - was amazing.

Don't forget this…

That doesn't really make it any more enjoyable to play as someone it's impossible to connect with, I could at least sympathize with where Lisa and Brad were coming from

Yeah, I agree, the setting is good and interesting. Furthermore, it's a good setting for the kind of story The Painful has.

I'm not saying you can cut out the setting, the Joy, and the monsters and without damaging The Painful. I'm saying it's a mistake to focus on those things, to try and flesh them out, to expand Olathe, to provide exposition on the origins of Joy and how Olathe was destroyed. Olathe and Joy are foundational to The Painful, but they're not the primary force of the narrative.

Explaining these things and trying to expand them takes a lot of the mystery out of them and is a disservice to the character-driven narrative. Why have Joy labs that just explain Joy away as some drug created by the Umbrella Corporation? Why tell the player that it was Dr. Yado and Buzzo who destroyed the world? None of that stuff matters and what's worse, the explanation or elaboration we get isn't even good.

I'm not sure how well I'm communicating my point, but hopefully this makes my position clearer.

Buzzo described her as having "twisted" him up inside and having "dragged [Buzzo] into the darkness" and he says "she would have loved it here", referring to Olathe. He also says Buddy reminds him of Lisa, which I would think indicates Lisa was violent and disturbed.

youtu.be/J4WUZZ13PS4?t=10m28s

Definitely agree with you here.

Had the same issue this guy did. Love the games, but I will admit the roulette was bullshit. At first I save scummed, refusing to lose my squad, so I had 4 acceptable losses. After around 20 tries, I decided to accept if I at least survived, after 10 complete team wipes, I had 8 members if I remember right, I refused to lose anyone out of spite and sat there save scumming for around 20 or 30 minutes before I got through without anyone dying.

She was a bitch and she deserved it.

I don't really like the way a lot of the parts of the whole story in LISA are laid out.

Like lisa herself, you'd have no idea what that's about unless you played the prequel which is never mentioned anywhere.
Or anything that has to do with buzzo or yado is hidden away, you'd have to play painful like 3 times to get it all, not to mention getting the buzzo ending in joyful. I don't really like that. Maybe i'm just retarded, but i got the whole story by reading it of a wiki.
Just thought i'd give my 2 cents since everyone seems to be shitting on the games right now.
Also clint olympic is the best character i dont give a shit.

Actually if you examine his corpse at the end it says "it's gone", which is what it also says if you examine rick's corpse after his interrogation, and he also turned out to be alive. So you can't say it wasn't foreshadowed.

Homeland, Killchop and Mouth Wide Open were nice, but none of it is sweet Summer Love

He is a big guy.

I didn't notice that or I forgot about it. I'm glad there was some forethought behind it, but that only means the mistake of having Rando survive his fight with Brad has its roots in the ending of The Painful rather than The Joyful.

I still think it was a mistake to cheapen one of the most tragic moments of The Painful by having Rando survive the fight.

Almost the whole thing is spoilers so skip if you're going to bitch

I might be forgetting something, but I don't remember anything pointing to Lisa as some demented psycho child. If you mean her "ghost" fucking with Brad and Buzzo, that's just memories. If you mean the buzzsaw make over, it makes sense, in a kid having a terrible idea sort of way, similar for her encouraging buzzo to harm animals to get ready to scar her. The whole series is about horrible people or ok people with horrible ideas or misguided ways of helping, Lisa not being perfect, which most people in her type of situation rarely would be, seems normal

I think you're reading a little strongly into it. Marty abused Lisa over an extended period of time and it isn't a leap in logic to say that the abuse took a psychological toll. Staining the memory of her mother may have been the last straw, but I never got the impression in The First that her suicide was an abrupt decision or that she was innocent and well-adjusted up until that point.

That also doesn't mean that she was violent, or disturbed, or nasty, or wicked, just that she was emotionally stunted. That's the only implication I get from the comparison to Buddy, not that Lisa was a violent and remorseless sociopath like Buddy turned out to be.

"Brad was a good person. What's happened to you wasn't his fault. It's hers. She twisted me up so much inside… I loved her. When she died… I had to blame anyone but myself." So she was incapable of reciprocating his feelings, that doesn't turn her from a pitiable character into a malevolent one.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, Lisa: the first, I seems to remember "killing" Richard multiple times. Lisa wasn't the nicest thing out there, but she was smart enough not to act on the feelings in a way that would get her killed.

Not sure who you're talking to here. Don't think anyone's bitching, from what I've seen.

Doesn't really strike me as normal kid thing. Regardless, the core problem I'm trying to address is that Lisa was always portrayed as a helpless victim of sexual abuse who was driven to suicide in The First and The Painful, but then suddenly it's revealed she was a cruel weirdo who liked killing animals and psychologically abused Buzzo.

It needlessly changes an established character for the worst and makes Brad's motivations seem nonsensical.

You mean the representation of her father's phallus and his sexual abuse of her? I don't think lashing out at your rapist in a dreamscape really counts as being mean.

Correct me if I'm confusing him with another character, but I only remember a Rick the Dick. It's been at least two years since I've played The First so I could easily be forgetting something.

I ment someone rolling along, not you. I wrote it all out and thought on someone complaining I spoiled some shit.

Yeah, you hit it on the nose. I was just pointing out her being abused, she probably would feel bad abusing others, especially if she thought it'd stop her abuse. Yeah, Richard can be shortened to Dick or Rick. I'd imagine thoughts of cutting off Richard or forcing pills down Richard/Marty's throat aren't kind thoughts either. Just wanting him gone would be a more "normal" thought for a kid, but she wasn't in a very normal situation so it's understandable

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Ah, okay, makes sense.

Yes, that's a good and fair point, but none of the stuff Buzzo describes is meant to stop and further abuse.

It could be that she turned into a cruel, abusive person herself, of course, but we have not indication that this was the case before The Joyful except for her attacking a representation of her father's sexual violence, which is just a desire for self-defense rather than an expression of cruel intentions.

Prior to The Joyful we only really knew that Lisa, as a child, was abused and raped by her father following the death of her mother, she killed herself, and Brad, her brother, wasn't able to prevent her abuse or suicide so he was guilt-ridden about it.

These things indicate that she was a victim of abuse driven to suicide who Brad feels bad about not being able to protect. That's basically it. She was a victim. Many people who are abused become abusers themselves, but many people who experience incredible trauma are left "broken" and don't become abusive. Lisa, based on the information given in the first two games, seems to fit in the latter category.

If you take all that information alone, I think it would be far-fetched to say she was a cruel, psychopathic child who tried to psychologically abuse others.

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Did he changed? why there was joy on his cave?

he changed, but it didn't excuse what he'd already done

he can't have changed that much with all the bottles around the cave

Austin's said that she's the worst person in the entire series. Just because you're an abuse victim doesn't mean you're a good person.

Buddy brought the Joy with her, Marty didn't even know what that stuff was.

He exiled himself to a deserted island with nothing on it and was trying to drink himself to death.

I've seen plenty of kids torturing and killing animals just for the heck of it, are you telling me they all got diddles by their fathers? Kids are fucked up, man.

None of the stuff Buzzo describes have to necessarily be actual acts performed by Lisa. Someone you're close to committing suicide is enough to fuck up most people. All we know, she made him cut up some dogs then her. She could have been a perfect angel towards him before and after that, or a spawn of satan. We don't know. You just seem to assume the latter.

Too bad Austin didn't give any indication of that inside the games themselves until The Joyful which isn't very good for multiple other reasons. He should have made that clear in the games themselves if he wanted people to think of Lisa in that way. He should have written Brad in a more sensical way if his sister was so fucked up and not an innocent victim of her father's abuse.

In a previous post I outlined multiple things Buzzo said which indicate Lisa was cruel and demented. Believing Lisa would love the current state of Olathe being the strongest example.I think my point still stands because of these statements Buzzo made about her.

Something interesting to note here is that the two of these posts disagree entirely. Someone says Austin intends for Lisa to be the worst person in the series, another says she's still a good girl and a mostly innocent victim.

Didn't occur to me before, but maybe the Austin's writing in The Joyful is even worse than I though. The audience shouldn't be this confused about a very important character's, well, character.

I didn't say that. I said you don't know which she was based off the game. He left it up to interpretation, and gave his own interpretation during the AMA here.
Leaving things vague enough to be interpreted different ways, while not so vague as to leave it entirely undefined does not make bad writing. But constantly using double linebreaks on imageboards does.

That's a pretty fucking strong claim for this trilogy.

What's nonsensical about it? All the information about Lisa's supposed dark side doesn't come from Brad, it comes from Buzzo. Brad was pretty young when she killed herself, he could have romanticized her memory. He's not the most reliable narrator.

It really is. Even if you accept that Lisa wasn't a good person and fucked Buzzo up, if it weren't for Yado, the White Flash wouldn't have happened.

He didn't do that, though. He presented a character in one way, then suddenly presented her in another way.

Sorry

about

that.

:^)

I think he would have been in his mid-teens based on how old he looks at the beginning of Painful and how old Lisa looks in The Painful.

But yeah, that's possible, the idea occurred to me as well, but given what we see in The First, Brad's idea of what his sister was like seems more or less on point. That is, until suddenly good guy Buzzo tells Buddy that Lisa was a mean girl.

And I dunno, I imagine a little girl who was abused and raped by her father repeatedly would probably kill herself or develop some kind of severe dissociation disorder, but I could be wrong. I'm not some kind of psychiatrist or something, I just think that's what most people would imagine a little girl would do in that situation and it's what seems to jive most with what we know about Lisa in the first two games.

Yeah, I really don't mean to rail on the guy or something, but I doubt he put much serious thought into what he was saying when he said Lisa was the worst person in the series.

Even outside of determining age from pixel art, based on the introductory scene at the basketball court, there's no way he is older than ten years old at the beginning of The Painful. Lisa may have been 15-16 when she died.

I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that the intention was to make you feel as though you didn't know the character as well as you thought you did, although the twist would have made a lot more sense while you were still playing as Brad.

Right, but during that period Lisa is still a baby, remember? So if Lisa died when she was 15-16, Brad would have been like 25. If she was 12, he'd be like 22, and so on. I gave the mid-teens figure, but early twenties might be more accurate, actually.

Yeah, exactly. See, I wouldn't mind something like this if it was supposed to be a twist where Brad realizes the person he cared most about for in his life was the complete opposite of who he thought she was. And if it was done well, of course. It doesn't really function as a twist where Brad comes to understand who Lisa really was and has to deal with it somehow. It just feels like inconsistent writing and an oversight. A change done to somehow make Buzzo look like a victim or something. I'm not sure what the motivation was for Austin there.

So what the fuck is this game about?

I'd reversed their ages, which takes some air out of the theory.

But if you've developed an attachment to the idea of Lisa first by playing as her, then by playing as Brad and being driven by her memory, then it's still a twist where you come to understand who Lisa really was.

All things being equal I would have preferred if the epilogue had not been made, there's no way to top the finale of The Painful, and whatever Austin's intentions were I don't think he fully achieved his vision. That being said, I think I can still understand what the vision was and it's not that inconsistent, just dynamic. Moving from a pacifistic game with no combat (The First) to one that portrays violence in a gruesome and unflattering way (The Painful) to one that celebrates excessive violence (The Joyful), and moving from a game with a wholly sympathetic protagonist (Lisa) to one with an ambiguously sympathetic one (Brad) to a completely unsympathetic one (Buddy). It even fits pretty well with the idea that Lisa is supposed to be a sympathetic character at first and the ugly side of her character was meant to be revealed as a twist.

Pain

Right, I see what you're saying. It would be tragic if you found out the person Brad cared so much for was actually an evil person. Makes sense. When I played the Joyful, it didn't come off like a revelation to me, if that makes any sense, it just came off as an inconsistent oversight. Usually twists are presented in a shocking, or impactful way or have some kind of foreshadowing. Buzzo's statements about Lisa didn't so I think that's why it doesn't work as a twist where it could have if a little more care had been given to "building up" to the twist. Maybe it didn't connect with me because I already didn't like The Joyful as a whole as well.

Yeah, I definitely agree with that sentiment.

That's an interesting interpretation of the series, though. I hadn't thought of the games "progressing" in terms of violence and sympathy (or lack thereof).

Is it possible for the game to save at such a point where you're too low on health and joy to survive/progress?

There's no autosave, so if you save in a way that you can't continue, it's really all on you. That being said, I don't think there's a situation where's that's really a concern, aside from the finale stretch and even then Terry tells you that you can always just save to a separate slot.

Oh, yeah, this whole time I forgot to mention the beginning where Brad has Buddy kill someone to toughen her up. That scene conflicts strongly with how Brad treats Buddy in The Painful. We only ever see Brad trying to protect Buddy from the outside world in The Painful so why would he be trying to toughen her up so she can go out into the world? Why expose her to terrible shit when he obviously wants to protect her from exposure to terrible shit. Doesn't make any sense and didn't give me a good first impression of The Joyful.

People and their fucked up ways of coping.

I'm a super casual, because I feel like I fucked it in that manner at the point just after you get the scroll of being tough from jumping off the cliff too many times I cant remember what its called I haven't touched the game in months

spoilered because I'm a fucking casual

It's a shame that, as far as I know, this song doesn't share its theme with any songs in the later RPGs.

user, people tend to die at some point. Brad isn't an idiot, he knows he can't protect her forever. He's just hell-bent on doing it for as long as he can.

But in that way? He doesn't teach her how to scavenge or hunt, just how to kill a defenseless, hog-tied man? The whole scene just seemed off and out of character for Brad. Comes off as a goofy attempt to be shocking as well.

Well, we don't know that he didn't teach her that stuff as well. There's a lot of stuff in the background that we don't know, which is unfortunate.

Anybody played the fan games? how are they?

It's not impossible, but it's a stretch, thinking back to the introductory scenes of The Painful (the parts after Brad finds Buddy, anyway). First actively preventing her from going outside, then indulging Buddy by allowing her to make up all of the men in the camp, then allowing her to walk outside while wearing a mask. Skip ahead three or four steps and I could see him teaching her to kill. It runs in the family, after all.

It'd make more sense for Brad to let Buddy take the first few steps towards being ruthless enough to survive in an environment where everybody is out to rape her.

There are fan games? I've heard of the Spiteful, but I thought that was unfinished.

lisa-rpg.wikia.com/wiki/Fan_Games
Had no idea this shit existed

I don't really want to know what they're like

That's true. I think it'd be better to actually see some of that stuff in the game rather than what we did see.

Yeah, I can see your reasoning. It definitely is a stretch, though.

It might make sense, yeah, but I don't think Brad is really rational in how he raises Buddy or in how he does anything, really. Based on what we see, it seems Brad wants to protect Buddy, regardless of the consequences, even if it's bad for her long term. Even taking her out of the house with her mask on more so seems like an attempt to make her happy than getting her used to the outside world.

I'm just hungry enough for more content that I might check them out. I'm not entirely sure why I love this series so much, but it's left a mark on me.

This is pretty cool. I'll probably check some of these out later. Hopefully their good.

good post

it's pretty humorous but yeah it's mostly feelsy pixelshit, which is why i loved it

If the dev doesn't finish this I might pick it up. Likewise, if people are interested in helping, I wouldn't be opposed to making it communally. Aka, in threads like this.

I'd be down for LISA /tg/, although I don't know how the gameplay would even translate

Live action movie when?

I snatched the sample info from the google docs and converted them to .pdf. Have a read.

It looks pretty straight forward from what I read, but I feel that is for the best here. (It's more about driving players to the brink of their sanity, no?)
Keep in mind I'll only pick this up if the current developer fails to deliver.

I love it except for the FUCKING DRUMS

What's wrong with the drums?

They don't fit at all. Apparently I'm the only person in the world who thinks so, though

You are, and I'm going to bully the shit out of you for it.

why did I click on that

Buzzo did plenty wrong. He's just not entirely at fault, and at least attempted to redeem himself (though, he was too far gone for such a thing to matter).

(1)

librechan, pls go.

ALSO. I haven't played LISA even though I bought it, I heard it's a lot like Yumme Nikki.

Which game should I play first? LISA The First or Yumme Nikki?

The First seems to be shorter than Yumme, so if you want to just get it out of the way, play that first.

Yume Nikki and LISA the First are two entirely different games. The former is more about exploration, with a starting point (first launching the game) and an endpoint (after you collect all of the abilities and trigger the end sequence), where the latter actually has a coherent story to it. I'd save Yume Nikki as that game you come home to after a long day and launch to unwind, play LISA the First first if you want to get part of the trilogy's story.

Nigger, did you even goddamn play The Joyful?

Agreed. And, not only does Austin try to redeem an absolute fucking scumbag with zero redeeming qualities but he nails Lisa on a cross in the process. Now that I hated. There was no need to turn Lisa into just as much as a sick fuck as the rest of the people in the series.

My impression is that Lisa basically killed herself shortly after (like very shortly after) The First and that because of the circumstances surrounding her it caused the major events of The Painful. It makes her into a catalyst, which I'm fine with. But turning her from a kicked dog into something much worse just pisses me off and irked me pretty bad when I first played the DLC.

Reminder that Austin isn't a professional writer. He's just some guy. During his Q&A here, he could barely even fucking spell.

Cool guy, though.

Did anyone happen to save that Q&A?

this vicious circle of abuse plot might be inspired on something

Honest question, what is the appeal of all these Mother-inspired indie RPGs? They all seem to follow the pattern of cutesy-exterior-"edgy"-interior, not really offering much else than turning the deep and dark story of Earthbound up to 11 because the people who played it as children are adults now and know what a booby is. There's not much feeling to playing them because you know everything is going to turn out horrible by default, taking away any hope or investment in the plot.

Heck, what's the appeal of Mother?

Back on it's day, it's appeal was being a game that feelt and played like a fanstasy RPG on a modern world.

It's just a matter of taste really. You could ask the same question about anything "why do people like metal music?" or "why do people like realism in painting?" it's just a style choice, and some people like it while others don't. There are objective measures of quality of course, but theme isn't one of them.

Lisa and OFF aren't "mother like"

I don't like mother but lisa is the only one of this bunch that isnt shit

I'm well aware taste is subjective, I was mostly just curious what people who like the games like about them. Fanbase is never indicative of quality.

I said Mother-inspired, not Mother-like. I find it hard to believe that the Mother series had absolutely no bearing on these kinds of games coming to pass.

Well I liked Lisa and Undertale so I can answer (for me, anyway).

Lisa: I liked the dark and dry humor, the post-apocalyptic setting, and the soundtrack. I also enjoyed the idea of humanity devolving to just basic needs, and everything just being laid out so plain and to-the-point. Like people trade porn mags for booze, or murder one-another for a chance to fuck a woman. I liked how brutal and raw the idea of that is compared to other post-apocalyptic games like the Fallouts (Bethesda Fallouts especially).

Undertale: much like Lisa I enjoyed the humor and the music. The characters were all pretty adorable, and I had a lot of fun with the bullet-hell gameplay. Also the music deserves a second mention for being really great.

But again, those are just my feelings on them. I'd consider myself a "fan" of both games, so I hope it offers a bit of insight.

Even if you don't like Undertale, the soundtrack is fucking perfect

In what world is Lisa and Off cutesy? And your whole argument seems to be nothing but conjecture, have you even played any of these games?

At least one of the games you mentioned has a good ending.

same smh
I bet this pic really rumbles your feathers.

Cutesy was probably the wrong word. Innocent would probably also be wrong. The graphics generally start unseemly compared to the final products of the plot. For instance, looking at these character designs here, I wouldn't expect the game to turn towards the body horror and mature themes that it does.

Also, if you're talking about the good ending I think you're talking about, the game still pulls at the player's emotions a bit with the "you can't save everyone no matter how hard you try" problem going on. There is no single big happy ending for everyone involved.

It's not like any promotional material they have is very secretive about the themes, what with this being one of the screenshots on the steam store. And even if you ignore all screenshots and trailers and descriptions of the game, the game throws implied domestic abuse at you before you even get to your first battle, and then the first boss is this writhing mass flesh.

I'm really not sure here, but if you're talking about undertale it's actually possible to spare everyone.

Also, going back to what you said:
That's not even true for Earthbound, so where did this idea come from?

Friendly reminder that the entire soundtrack was made in the trial version of FruityLoops by Austin, meaning no saving and loading (each song was thus done in a single sitting)

He also did all the above-average-for-pixels art for the game, is an actor and pro at Wushu martial arts

Basically he fucking rules and you fucking suck so make a better game than him and become as cool as him is the moral of the story

Playing Lisa and Undertale at the same time was kind of a trip. I liked them both while playing, but LISA made less mistakes than Undertale (Alphys, difficulties with both the pacifist and genocide endings). Honestly, I find the cutesy-exterior-edgy-interior theme to be very appealing when done well. It goes back to a concept used in horror all the time, the uncanny, where the comfortable and familiar suddenly turns terrifying and alien. It can sometimes be a lazy shortcut for an M Night Shyamalan tweest, but it usually gets the most bang for your buck. Flowey's over-the-top dialogue, "IT'S KILL OR BE KILLED" was a bit too cringey to be effective for me, but I really enjoyed the demo's manual changing after a genocide to just a faceless flower on the last page. The character just needed more subtlety.

I guess the theme is also supposed to be nihilistic. All the useless shit people use to distract themselves, veneers of happiness and love are stripped away until there's nothing left (literally nothing, in the case of the 2nd and 3rd pics). It appeals to the edgelord in all of us, humanity is fascinated by the idea of nothingness.

I disagree. I went into the first three completely blind, so I had no idea what was in store, and am also shit at guessing endings. Even then, being able to guess that it's a tragedy still doesn't make it less emotionally powerful, at least for me.

Eversion also dealt with the theme in a more direct, simplistic way, and I enjoyed it. There's plenty of other media that uses it, I didn't even play Mother. I think my first encounter with it was in Egyptian Mythology, where if you were a sinner, you didn't go to hell, instead your soul was destroyed. There's also Dante's Inferno, where Atheists' souls were put in burning coffins and the lid would close on them on judgement day, giving them the oblivion they believed in.

I agree with you on Lisa, but Off is too stark and barren to be called cutesy in any aspect, even visuals. Actually, I guess the wheezing sound made by the shy civilians was kinda cute. The real surprise with Off is that the player assumes purifying the world is the same as saving it. I'd call that more a switch from conventional to nihilistic, rather than cutesy to edgy.

He's referring to how you can't stop Asriel from turning back into a flower in pacifist.

I'm not saying that the games pretend to be something they're not, what I mean is the aesthetic of them could potentially be separated from the themes and used for something else. You could probably make a cheery family-friendly game that looked like Lisa, minus the gore and such naturally, but for an extreme example, the graphics of Doom could never even pretend to be anything other than what it is.

Asriel.

As for the everything turning out horrible, that's more a thing from the indie games than Mother at all. I see a lot of indie games with grim settings only having grim endings, often written that way because the developer thought that a happy end would be too stereotypical for their story. Everyone is tragic or tortured in their background, because that's how the real world is man, the man always keeping you down, and there's no light at the end of the tunnel, man. Lisa is a bad example of this, but I couldn't help but get the vibe of grim for the sake of grim when I played Off.

HARVEY IS LITERALLY PERFECT

Has Austin backpedaled on his SJW shit yet? God I don't want to lose him.

I appreciate the review, my nigga. I enjoyed the painful and wasn't sure my autism bux was worth the joyful.

Brad tried so hard to do everything right, specially when everyone arround him just wanted to rape his daughter.

you ple a s a snek? XD

...

If you actually think Austin is an SJW, you're a fucking retard

The drums are the essence of LISA

I never quite get the comparison between Undertale and LISA.
There are a very few brief parallels, but
otherwise these two games seems more like opposites to me.

Yep, assuming archive.today hasn't shoved them off:

archive.is/HCDCI Part 1
archive.is/ve3EK Part 2

I even got to ask him a few questions, so that was pretty damn nice.

...

Why are people still arguing this? I'm 90% sure interviews with all of these developers have cited Mother as at least one of their inspirations.

Austin's more of a frat boy with a big heart.

I'd say it's the drums that make that song. They just come in and abruptly ruin the chill melody. It feels like the musical equivalent to edging during sex. I fucking love it.

I just want the chill melody ;_;

Why didn't anyone stop taking Joy after they noticed people started turning into murderous mutants? Did they notice?

ayy I can see all the posts I made

That wasn't a Q&A, that was just communal shitposting

did Dingaling come though?

He answered questions, he just got shitty questions

You mean did he show up? Yeah, it was really him.

that's pretty based

communal shitposting is correct

of course not

I hope he comes back when he releases his next game