DEVIL CAME THROUGH HERE

    extremely private roleplay blog for 𝐉𝐎𝐄 𝐃𝐀𝐕𝐈𝐒 of downfall 2016 / the devil came through here trilogy .  𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐃 .   written by MARLOWE, she/him, 23. main blog.                 I   WAS   JUST   TRYING   TO   SAVE   HER   I’M   SO   SORRY                  

                          𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐆𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 :                                           death, blood/gore, suicide, eating disorders,                                        murder, torture, general dark themes. these are                                        necessary evils in joe’s story.                                                            proceed with caution.

the whole idea of that dilemma is that with a psychological horror type game in this vein where disturbing imagery and a twisted sense of logic is the main pull into the world, it is hard to keep up that original emotional shock and draw that came from the very beginning; so either the story looses steam and intrigue as the player starts to understand the world around them, or the plot has to be ramped up to make up for the losses that comprehension gets in the way of. usually, the plot kind of runs away from itself trying to stay just as intense as before, kind of like the player is building a tolerance to the worldbuilding, and it loses the mystique when it tries to wrap itself up in new plotlines or heavier themes that weren’t sown from the very beginning to keep the player a little off-kilter. i call it this because of the aggressive shift i felt when playing through sally face for the first time; i genuinely believe the story should have ended after the apartment complex sequence, because there was no way for them to pull something more emotionally or horrifically impactful out of the lore they’d already built than that specific sequence, and therefore the entire last chapter just felt off and not as powerful to me.

the reason why i do not love the cat lady as much as i love downfall has a LOT to do with this concept; the opening prologue of tcl was so fucking good that i don’t think anything will ever top it. the first parasite was absolutely phenomenal, and psyched me up for a game in which i would be playing as a supernatural vengeance-seeker, a la the crow. the second/third with the pest control couple was also super good, although i still liked the doc more that was mostly personal preference. but after that point i felt like the plot was trying to solidify itself, and then the logic started to kind of make sense? and more effort was being put into the plotline of mitzi than the parasites we were originally tasked with eliminating (like the break-in chapter was like... i understand what he was trying to do but also i think it could’ve been done much better; if he wanted to explore the concept of bad things just happening without rhyme or reason i think he should’ve had the violence be a lot simpler, instead of the convoluted plot of tying them up twice and making susan play piano- that implies a plot or a backstory that wee never got to have and therefore it felt unfinished to me?). and with understanding the storyline through a basic linear plot, things had to be ramped up in tension, but i genuinely don’t believe they entirely successfully culminated into something that i would consider as satisfying as downfall’s endings to be honest. it makes sense, it tracks out, but i wish there had been more of that unreality and horror brought into the final parasite like there were in the others instead of just a normal guy; i understand why, but with the context of the rest of the game, it did feel underwhelming when it seemed like we were being promised a completely different kind of game. 

the reason i don’t love lorelai as much as downfall takes a similar but more intense framing as the cat lady; but instead of making the plotline more accessible, it was spun wildly out of control to the point where i’m still not entirely sure what the hell happened, and i’m very good at tearing apart my media to find as many codes and clues as possible. the idea of making the queen of maggots a physical form that lorelai could fight turned me off the entire plot altogether, the character of jimmy truly baffles me in ways i can’t express, and once again we are promised a very different kind of game at the beginning (and during the princess of maggots chapter) that i probably would have liked a lot better than what we got! the beginning of experiencing the actual death of lorelai, her resurrection, and specifically the sequence of running away from the stepfather in the maggot-realm was like... really fucking scary! and the rest of the game couldn’t quite reach that level for me. it did feel like it was going to follow along the plotline that the cat lady proposed and then turned away from, but again it twisted off that path and i am desperate to know what it would have been like to play as a character that would have fallen deeper down into the queen of maggot’s plans before having to fight their way out from the very bottom instead of struggling right at the top- and lorelai could have gone this direction, but she immediately turns back despite never having really been shown a reason why she shouldn’t trust the queen. like yeah, WE know we can’t trust her because we’ve experienced her before, but in all reality all she did was give lorelai a chance at revenge and to protect her sister. the plot turning off to follow a random dude and kill off the queen (who shouldn’t have a physical form, honestly) felt like it was trying to overcompensate for the issue of logic taking away the mystery of this universe we’ve spent three games in. i felt as though this plot was the weakest out of the three, despite having really intriguing promising segments that i would have loved to see more of.

the reason why downfall is my favourite is the fact that he accidentally fought this issue with the fact that none of it is real, despite all of it being real at the exact same time. keeping everything as a metaphorical dreamscape allows basically anything to happen and still make sense, because logic is not of any consequence in the quiet haven hotel; anything that happens can fit so long as there’s a secondary emotional reasoning for it to be involved. i believe it did get a little weaker towards the end with the second and third sophie deaths, but it got pulled together so nicely in the finale that i can’t even be mad at it and i’m pretty sure i played the puzzles a little strangely anyways so i’m going to blame myself for that (i watched a playthrough by another youtuber and saw some dialogue from the bathroom sophie that made a lot more sense to me but i somehow didn’t uncover that myself). the weight of the story is placed directly on the emotional state of joe as opposed to any linear progression of a plot, and the goal of the game never shifts- unlike the other two games in the series, in which the final destination changes as the plot progresses (for tcl; susan’s goal changes from killing 5 parasites to get out of this deal of immortality to helping mitzi find the man responsible for the death of her boyfriend. for lorelai; we go from wanting revenge on john doe to killing the queen of maggots). in downfall, you want your fucking wife back. joe needs to kill 4 sophies to get ivy back. joe kills 4 sophies. he sometimes gets ivy back. the ending sequence puts all of the psychological horrors you experienced into a proper framework to understand what they all meant outside of the plot, which makes it super satisfying to look back on- this allows the game to pull all of its really fucked up moments (that rem is so good at coming up with) without having to worry about justifying them later on, since they’re all... not real, in a way, but they also aren’t just left behind like “it was all a dream lol none of it mattered”. the tension and gore stayed at a level constant in ways the other games weren’t able to do for me.