Wandersong - Unison

[Piesonscreations]

Who would've thought that the Wandersong was All Star, after all.

Man, what an enjoyable experience it was to watch this LP. Almost teared up with Sama and Miriam's hug at the end there. Miriam is such a good character.
Also, I like to imagine that Eya just erased Audrey. Or hey, maybe Audrey really wasn't a human and was more of a thing created by Eya to be the thing that would end the world, hence her refusal to accept anything other than that. And even Rainbow wasn't aware of this, but of course, would've been conditioned to believe that this "person" would be the hero.

[UFereSanyo]

I decided to make a drawing of a mix of Demo and Eyala :^) I hope you like it! I tried to upload the image from my computer but i had an http error, so i just posted it somewhere else and copied the image url.

[raocow]

heyyyy, look at that

[helucard]

Woooow.....
... that was a stellar finale.
I love that the whole deal that did the thing was less "the McGuffins saved the day" and more "the united voices of the world in general". The real achievement here was bringing everyone together, that is a wild accomplishment, and far more admirable than convincing 7 distant but technically reachable people to hand over a piece of their being, especially when they can technically be dead and containing no trace of their former selves to do it.

Out of interest, where DID Audrey go...? She never appeared once in the finale after the creation of the black hole, which is odd because she doesn't usually vanish after killing an overseer, she sticks around, gloats a bit, then whoosh. She's absolutely smug enough that she would've been standing there, inaudibly gloating in the silent silhouettes after the final strike. Was she at the equivelant of Ground Zero? Did she die?

Also I find it terribly ironic that all that matters to her is the title of The Hero, when we literally know absolutely nobody else who has previously been The Hero, so her claim to the title and feeling of self importance is utterly obliterated in the moment she ceases being and a new world exists, as she'd be totally forgotten. Like, at what point do you hear "This recreation of the universe has happened several times; the last hero was the knight of Fort Cettaira, Sir Arnold Wedgeworth, and before that we had the Eyan Cleric of Chimeslight, Lady Julia Rhombus-Sparke." Even the monks of the Mount Ichor have nothing to say of previous universes, only that "the end" is a thing that happens and they're ready for it. They don't even mention The Hero, nor previous iterations of them, despite Bhami's words making it fully clear that they're aware of the fact that this is a thing that has happened countless times.

For The Hero, there is no recognition, hall of fame, or cheering fans in the next world. The actions of The Hero are utterly destructive at their core. The title is as meaningless as the several "you dashed" achievements that she earns along the way. In a way, I suppose that's why she was chosen. The only person capable of being selected to do this is someone who is so entirely self absorbed and willing to stroke their ego to the extent that they absolutely WILL end the world... just so they can, for the last moments of all of their world's existence, call themself "The Hero" (note the capitalisation). The title is not a badge of honor. It's a mark of shame that cuts so deep that an entirely new universe has to be created just to get past the fact that something like this could happen.

I mean, gosh, can you imagine the difference in the people of Rulle crowding around Audrey if they knew that she was about to rip the floor out from under everyone? People are aware she's fighting monsters, and they acknowledge the title of "The Hero" in that regard. Do they know she's ending the world? There are those with the overseer songs that provide them, but is she upfront about the reason for using it? I'd like to see if there's dialogue that suggests that the general population of the world is aware of what she's REALLY doing because I can't imagine it going well if she just walks up to someone and says "Hi, can you give me the sequence of notes needed to access the spirit world so I can go in and kill one of the seven binding forces of existence and eventually release us from reality to make way for Eya's plan?"

[Grounder]

fell way behind on this oopsie

[Nimono]

Out of interest, where DID Audrey go...? She never appeared once in the finale after the creation of the black hole, which is odd because she doesn't usually vanish after killing an overseer, she sticks around, gloats a bit, then whoosh. She's absolutely smug enough that she would've been standing there, inaudibly gloating in the silent silhouettes after the final strike. Was she at the equivelant of Ground Zero? Did she die?

The devs actually answered that once!

The original intent for that scene was that you'd get to see her fall into the pit that the Dream King was in, outright saying she died, but they realized two things:

1: It was very hard to notice alongside all the other effects going on.
2: It clashed with the story's theme of forgiveness.

Therefore, they changed it to be ambiguous and the official answer is "no one knows". So what happened to Audrey? Who knows!

[Ditocoaf]

Yeah, I like that it doesn't answer what happens to Audrey. Her story ends with killing the Dream King, what happens to her after that is outside the scope of canon.

Theories where she gets "left behind" while the new world is created don't feel right to me. The "wandersong" is the bard's own invention, in the end, and filtering people out based on whether they deserve a second chance doesn't feel true to the bard's spirit. It feels more appropriate, to me, to imagine her in this new universe, her quest over and made obsolete, having to figure out what to do with her life now that the "hero" title is meaningless. Just another person again, like she was always afraid of.

[Le Neveu de Rameau]

She's a lonely girl

...She ain't got a home.

OOooOOooOOooOO-oo-oo!

[11clock]

Is it possible to actually lose the final boss? Or is the health bar just for show?

[Crow]

nah you can't lose
i don't think there's a fail state in the entire game like there's a few spots where you can fall in pits but you'll be literally like 3 seconds back at most

[CrappyBlueLuigi]

It feels more appropriate, to me, to imagine her in this new universe, her quest over and made obsolete, having to figure out what to do with her life now that the "hero" title is meaningless. Just another person again, like she was always afraid of.

i agree that this is likely where she's at post-song, but i definitely feel a bit dissatisfied not getting to experience any of this from the game directly. i'm a sucker for unreasonably self-righteously malicious characters getting their sole motivation ripped from them and having to really, unavoidably confront why the person they were was harmful to themself as much as it was everyone else, just cause it's a really cathartic thing for me in fiction. and like yeah, i could just write that myself, but i think the game could've gone there, and it really felt like it was going there a few videos ago before audrey was like "nvm i am 100% the same person i was three hours ago, and for that matter the same person i was a week ago"

[Duker]

nah you can't lose
i don't think there's a fail state in the entire game like there's a few spots where you can fall in pits but you'll be literally like 3 seconds back at most

When playing as Audrey is the closest, where dying restarts the boss fight. That's kind of a game over in a way, just skipping the actual game over screen and having to choose to continue.

[Ditocoaf]

Some singing sections loop if you do badly enough the first time through. That's basically this game's approach to challenge. I think you can't "fail" the boss fight, but I think the theoretical "how close is Miriam to stealing the sword?" meter loses progress if you're messing up too much

[kitikami]

img

This is beautiful.
***

I like that the game doesn't try to redeem Audrey at all. By this point her toxic qualities kind of define her and it would take a whole nother game to reverse that in a way that would feel satisfying, so using the final stretch to instead lean in on how dangerous she is makes more sense to me. And having a character Sama can't help who refuses to change or even self-reflect balances out the game's generally positive themes and gives those more impact. A scene showing Audrey struggling with her identity in the new universe credits sequence would have been ok, but i don't think it's necessary. Being willing to leave loose ends untied or ambiguous when they're not essential to the main point is something i wish more stories would do.

Viola using a non-gendered pronoun for Ash in the ending was another cool moment of this game being casually LGBTQIA+ friendly. I also really appreciate this game committing so well to building a game around non-violent gameplay. A lot of games use abstracted violence to seem non-violent (Mario is a classic example) or are so abstract they don't really include story or characters (like a lot of rhythm or puzzle games), but few pull off a fully realized plot with conflict where the only violent things the player does are handle coffee and control (and at the very end attack) Audrey for a short time.

[AlchemistHohenheim]

So I started off kind of only half paying attention to this series, and then at some point (around when Audrey actually showed up, I guess?) it became captivating. It ended up being a really nice experience.

Also, for reference for raocow, Parkitect is a Rollercoaster Tycoon-style game (closer to RCT1 and 2 than the later games in that series). It's pretty good.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/453090/Parkitect/

[HatKid]

I really enjoyed this LP and I want to get the game at some point, but who knows when that'll be.

What a ride this game was.

[thatguyif]

So, this was something.

I want to say something regarding Audrey, something that may, well, anger some of you. If this has been brought up, apologies. It's a long-ass rant, so I'm going to put it in spoiler.

I always felt put off by Audrey, and I didn't know why. But I finally figured it out after she killed the last overseer. It's because I know people like this character. She represents a certain tendency I've seen develop through social media in recent years, one that basically pushed me to become completely detached from it. There's a group of people who, for a time, find themselves to be, well, nothing, nobodies. They hate that, they're insecure about their place in the world, and they desire to be special. They'll rarely state that desire, unless they're sure nobody will question them for having such an insecure desire. Suddenly, they either gain a label/identity—either through happenstance or factors that converge on one another, one of which is almost certainly a social media addiction/starving for attention—or realize they have a label/identity that they can leverage to be special thanks to social media. And then they don't just make themselves about said label/identity, they become it. Such was the case with Audrey, who once she gained the sword became the Hero and lived purely as that, being bound by that sword.

When this happens, because of the nature of social media being this sort of attention economy, uniqueness and special-ness becomes a form of currency. And having a label/identity can serve that in spades. Just identifying yourself openly with such a label can bring the adoration of friends and strangers that belong to said label, and that's a huge endorphin/confidence boost, especially when you start as a nobody. Most certainly Audrey got that when she claimed the sword. She was the Hero now, she was special.

And when you start with that...it's very very easy to become extremely narcissistic. Which is what Audrey ultimately was. A unique kind of narcissist, at that: One that combines individual narcissism with the identifying aspects of collective narcissism. I saw in her what I saw in those people.

When you become the label, it's very hard not to do things that are self-centered and arrogant, because everything you do is through that label, and that is the one thing that makes you you, if only because you are now special. Audrey's destruction of the Overseers was explicitly that: She was following the orders of Eya to a T because she is the Hero, and she would do everything to keep being the Hero. In addition, because you view everything from that lens, you make everything about that label. Sometimes they bring it up pointlessly or make it a constant topic of discussion, even when it isn't necessary to do so. Moreover, they treat any contemptuous act based on how it squares to their label. Consider Audrey's defense over breaking a promise to not kill an Overseer: She was chosen to act this way and couldn't promise that away. It's not hard to read that as "I refuse to do anything that threatens my position as Hero, my label of Hero."

Which leads to my next point about these people. They gain enemies faster than a dam burst floods a valley. Now, some enemies, you can understand the hatred, because labels do attract antagonism like moths to a light. But for narcissists like the people I mention, what defines an "enemy" becomes very broad quickly. It can be a well-meaning person who makes a mistake. It can be a person who is questioning or critical of the contradictions of a label—something all labels have. It may be a person who, while supportive of the label or maybe even possessing it themselves, finds the behavior of the individual troubling or wrong and seeks to address it. Hell, it could be someone making points about something only tangentially related to the label. No matter, these people can all be seen as enemies under various different names. For the second point, Audrey's inability to see the contradiction of her being the Hero meaning that she must commit a great evil in destroying the world leads her to constantly fight over it. For the third point, much of the conflict is centered on Miriam and Sama's attempts to stop Audrey's violent and destructive behavior and try to turn her from the Hero in an actual hero.

More on this: Because the label means everything to them, it becomes their armor. It emaciates them, psychologically. If you take it away from them, they feel they become nothing again. They are constantly aware of this point, being narcissists. It is their greatest fear. And should, by some bit of misfortune, a situation arises where they could lose that label or lose the uniqueness associated with this label, they will fight tooth and nail to get it back, doing despicable and disgraceful things in the process. It's hard to not see parallels when Audrey loses her sword in Act 6, not to mention taking the sword away playing a key role in finishing the game.

It sort of leads into a toxic environment wherever this person or others like them influence the discourse of this label in ways that do far more harm than good, especially since social media favors those who seek attention. It often traps a lot of people who have this label, being forced to toe the line, or worse accepting it in some twisted form of Stockholm Syndrome. They also become abusive and use the label as a means to deny and shield themselves from such abuse. I've seen this happen to close friends. And I mean, it seemed everything Audrey did was harmful. She was toxic to the core, and it was being a Hero that made her toxic.

So this long-winded rant leads me to my final point: I find it sad that, for a game that's about forgiveness, Audrey's ending is ambiguous with the implication that she could be redeemed. I would argue that Audrey didn't deserve that for the simple reason that, like the people I've described, she's incapable of forgiveness. She knows not grace or understanding or anything human, because everything has to be about her role as the Hero, which is indistinguishable from everything being about her. Just consider the lines she said before killing the Dream King: "This is my quest! This is MY STORY!" I'm not sure what would be a fitting ending for someone so consumed by their label...It's hard to do one for someone like this. Perhaps the universe does end, but only for Audrey, and she is left alone in the void, with her sword disintegrating before her eyes having served its purpose. And she has to live with the fact that she is no longer special forever more. That would be something that would befit the people I have described as I have seen them in Twitch chats, Discord chats, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other places of the sort. If you took social media away from them tomorrow, they would likely fall apart in a dramatic fashion. That Audrey would still be considered a hero after all this (as hinted at in some cases) is disheartening.

Some might find by reading between the lines my long rant directed towards certain labels where this toxic behavior seems prevalent. The labels themselves aren't the problem though, nor even the people with said labels. It is that social media has created an environment that creates and enables the hybrid form of narcissism to perpetuate and poison everything it touches, and puts said narcissists (a small number in any label, for sure) in control of what is being said, or simply what is. That's a dangerous thing. And quite frankly I could throw a rock in a crowd and the odds are favorable I'll hit the type of person I'm describing, the Audreys of the world.

Just wanted to get that off my chest.

[CrappyBlueLuigi]

i find it really weird the way you use the terms label and identity and would really prefer you elaborate on those instead of being vague

[Duker]

Edit: The use of 'label' and 'identity' seems clear enough to me?


"Audrey's ending is ambiguous with the implication that she could be redeemed."
Need to HARD disagree on that interpretation. I think it's purely 100% objectively ambiguous and therefore there's no possible implications to be had, good or bad. We know litelarily nothing of her fate. If anything it was proven beyond doubt in the last 2 acts that she's NOT redeemable, and I can't see how the ending could change that in any way.

[Whimsical Calamari]

god what a game

jumping into this thread super late to put in two different thoughts:

first, re: redemption: i don't think her lack of redemption, in the way it was executed, goes against the game's whole "forgiveness" thing. because IMO she wasn't traditionally "irredeemable" at all - in the end, she chose not to be redeemed. she heard what others said, saw her many chances at redemption, thought about what her role and actions meant, weighed everything she could do differently against what she wanted... and ultimately decided that redemption and truly saving the world simply weren't worth as much to her as being The Hero.

second: of course where's Audrey, but also: where are the monks? we just, don't hear about them ever again either. the Bard never goes back to Ichor Mountain to visit them, and we never see them during the Earthsong sequence. and just like Audrey, they were fully accepting of The End, and dedicated to see it through. so i wonder if maybe, at the moment Eya sang the song that ended the universe, she just... took everyone who saw no path for themselves beyond The End? no values judgment or morality at play, Eya simply accepted the souls that were ready and willing to go. it kinda meshes with the logic of ghosts in this game - all the spirits we see have some unfinished business, whether it's delivering a message that was never told in life, giving their child closure, or just accompanying their widow for The End. and once they achieve their purpose, they're gone. (the lines that blurred after the collapse of the spirit world could also have aided that transition, too, who knows)

[Razzling]

Showing up super late after the party after lurking this whole time to share my last minute thoughts about this wonderful gem of a game.

Actually I'm just going to be focusing on Audrey. (Putting it under the cut)

To preface this, I want to elaborate that yes, Audrey was in the wrong here, she is cruel and narcissistic and well, tried to destroy the world so she can have her time in the limelight BUT

People have said in this thread that she "got her chances at redemption and rejected them" and I would like to argue against that actually. Someone pointed out in the youtube comments that this game has the writing problem of nobody ever explains their point, instead they just yell their points at each other until the other relents "Destroying the world is bad!" vs "Eya told me to!" is as deep as we get for discussion between Sama and Audrey. So many people have put it much more eloquently than I ever could the farce that is "The Hero" and how empty of a role it is, and how any love and fame you get from it is as fleeting as can be. The issue is nobody ever told this to Audrey.

Most conversations between Sama/Miriam and Audrey usually boils down to "You're bad and evil and u shouldn't be doing this cuz its bad >:(" and like? Of course Audrey is going to double down on her viewpoint when it feels like she's being talked down to, she's narcissistic and selfish and feeling important is the most important thing to her, so why would she relent when her foils in this scenario almost seem to imply that she's stupid.

They never seem to talk in a language Audrey understands, Sama instead says how "easy" it is to promise not to destroy the world, and actively threaten to leave her to die in their one and only heart to heart scenario. We never see the conversation between Audrey and Eyala that caused them to split up, but I would bet that Eyala only said "We should let Sama do their thing <3" without any context, possibly implying in Audrey's brain that she is less important than this random bard not chosen by God herself. The closest we ever get to someone getting deep into it is Sama's final speech after they steal her sword, but by that point it's too late, seeing how she spent an entire game being set in her ways and having things that almost solidify it.

This writing is also to the detriment of just understanding Audrey to begin with. We see the game from Sama's point of view, and see all these lovely people and make all these friends and have all these fun experiences! And now this big bad hero wants to kill them all bc she's selfish. We never really get to see the true impact of WHY Eya had this system in place to begin with, sure we see monsters, but they're usually either dead or can be sung away. We don't see villages ravaged or the horrors that a dying world can bring, and why it's so important to stop that no matter the cost. We never get to have the talk on what Audrey really thinks, because the dialogue in this game never goes beyond the surface level when dealing with her.

Like, she's clearly evil though, it just makes me sad we never get a deeper look into the role of The Hero and how she ended up as this person to begin with.

Anyways all that to say the game should have ended with a slumber party 0/10