#head as code

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Tumblr’s update automatically expands “read more” section that the author adds if you click on the one that is added for long posts, so spoiler warning

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How to fail at conspiracy

I’ve already explained basic failings of Head as Code in being Zero Escape-like, but I can recap while speaking more freely.

The escape rooms don’t allow to build any sense of cooperation with the cast. The old man villain is an immediately recognizable traitor. Even the VLR traitor could stay under the radar until the first voting, and there was also a red herring. The guy with a bottle and the “joking” friend have their backstories that are tied to the lore, but there’s no reason to care about either of them, nor the lore. Some evul organization ran the initial game, for the sake of an experiment that made less sense than some obsessed lovestruck girl’s idea to spend following centuries recreating it, and... It’s like, whatever.

999’s lore involved three shadowy organizations: Ace’s pharmacologist corporation, Akane/Zero’s group, and Lord Gordain’s group. As you can notice it by now, all those shady vague organizations had one thing in common – each was an extension of will for an established and known character. Gordain is a backstory entity, and most of things about him are in outside materials, but even he had name and characterization of an very obsessive and very rich man that was connected to Titanic. And that characterization, and knowledge about him, served as a fuel for early-game theories about current events, until we connected Ace to the pharmacologist corpo.

Here, while we have fleshed out Emily that has hijacked the Dating Game with her robots, those that ran the initial Dating Game have no other characterization beyond being mysterious and killing little puppies level of evil. There is no character we can hold responsible for whatever fucked up shit the organization has done, not even a henchman*. And this is a mistake the authors are going to repeat in the prequel, when they will talk big about their Empty S, but there will be no face for any of it. Nor behind, nor in the front it.

* The old man doesn’t count, because technobabble made him crazy and he went rogue. Therefore, everything we see him doing is his own independent act, not tied to the organization.

We humans need to have a face for the enemy. It doesn’t have to be the Big Bad, but it has to be at least some sort of lieutenant. A face to focus our hatred on. Somebody we can observe battling the heroes, either losing afterwards, or being triumphant. A character that can be directly connected to actions committed by your formless nebulous organization. A believable personality that is (even if just a partial) cause to problems that the our heroes are facing. But all Empty S has is exposition about it being very, very horrible. And it rings hollow, just as its name suggests.

And when your faceless nebulous entity does wacky shit, like turning people into other people and replacing them with robots, this becomes even more unbelievable. Who does that? Not any convincing character that the writers could think of.

How to fail at Clover

In 999, Ace is the traitor and the killer, and the most evil character in the cast. But Clover is another potential killer that slaughters everyone in one of bad endings, because she went crazy from her brother being supposedly murdered and nobody being trustworthy afterwards. However, if we help her realize that her brother is still alive, she will remain a steadfast ally for the entire last act of the game. We will also see unique heartwarming art of her gratefully hugging the protagonist for helping her out, and then another art, when she reunites with her brother.

Jasmine is HaC’s equivalent of Clover, as she also can snap and kill us and others. One good thing I have to say about her, is that she really did well as a red herring for the main girl and then possible mastermind. But I’ll cover that later. Still, she fails in the role of being Simon’s reason why he couldn’t forgive Emily.

In theory, Simon saves his own Clover, and allows at least her to walk out with emotional happy ending, only to learn that this all was for nothing, because Emily decided to shut her down. And that makes him rightfully pissed. In theory, this is a good cruel twist on reusing Clover-like scenario that gives a good payoff in the finale. In practice, the game makes it difficult to share Simon’s emotional reaction, due to the entire deal with Jasmine being convoluted, unsympathetic, disappointing, and unmemorable at once.

First, convoluted. So, Jasmine isn’t really Jasmine, just a criminal twin that was turned into Jasmine by Empty S, for lulz or something, while her twin sister didn’t realize anything, because she got instead a Cylon imposter. Well, that’s certainly not as relatable as believing that your sibling has been murdered by at least one of strangers you are trapped with.

Next, unsympathetic. Simply put, when not!Jasmine kills us, due to us not averting this bad end, she does it in the coldest way possible. I perfectly understand why Simon felt betrayed at that moment. Sure, Clover goes psychotic at you and everyone, but that happens with a built up. And when it happens, you perfectly understand her reasons to snap. Not!Jasmine puts a bullshit SF gizmo on her head, and then we decide to not press her on details, and then she decides to kill us coldly, and also spits on us on the goodbye. Well, that was nasty, unprovoked, inexcusable, and unnecessary, all while maintaining cruel calm. I was supposed to wish a happy ending for this person? I should be given an option to slap her in the face, with a back of my hand.

Now, disappointing. So, what do we need, to prevent the lady from going all cold killer on us? Well, we just ask her more questions about SF gizmo, which leads to her telling us she isn’t the real Jasmine, which somehow prevents her from plotting our murder. So, we don’t solve troubling her murder, we just don’t let her to change the topic, and that resolves her problem. Which most of us would have done anyway on the first playthrough of that section, but writers decided to arbitrarily lock us out of this option.

Finally, unmemorable. We have her reunite with her sister and explain to her the switch and the Cylon situation. Have the writers bothered to at least make that emotional? I guess they themselves became aware it’s impossible to get emotions out of explaining this convoluted mess, so Simon just narrates about standing on the sideline, and letting not!Jasmine talk with her sister. Then they walk away from us, not telling us anything useful for our survival. They don’t even bother explaining how they plan to leave the game. Thanks for nothing, me and the Cylon can stay to die together. And, yep, this is what happens in this timeline, shortly after.

It's not enough to just write your main character as such a goody two shoes, that he would think that his would be murderer and her likewise uncaring of others sister deserve a happy ending. When the player has to work to not get killed by a character, just to be practically left to die by them afterwards, you need to put effort to not make the player feel disconnected from MC’s sense of sympathy.

How to fail at science fiction

While later Zero Escape games do get convoluted with their SF elements, 999 simply and effectively utilizes its main concept of morphogenic field. Everything in that game revolves around this pseudo-scientific phenomenon. Even when it brings up a different subject of cryogenics, it ties it back to the fields by introducing Ice-9 that is related to the field. Through the game we hear about the fields constantly, until the final revelation of us using them for entire time.

And, through the game, we don’t just learn about the concept itself, but also about plot important events that are related to it. Past Nonary Game, abduction of children, experiments to control people, shady companies – we already know all that by the finale. Which is why the finale doesn’t have to explain all that in detail, instead it focuses on Akane’s true role and abilities.

Head as Code can’t decide whatever it is about fake memories, transferring consciousness, robots, or God. Excluding the out of place God, all those concepts are related, and we can figure it out, but yeah… As much I like the final twist itself, we got an exposition dump covering lots of things Simon had no chance to learn about before. How nice to learn that his friend was altered to believe in God, I couldn’t know that he has changed. Because you’ve only focused on establishing him as incapable of being funny.

And then we get God, which is the game trying to be clever with forth wall breaking, to excuse Simon’s ability to retain memories of his previous versions. Again, the twist of nothing being related to alternative timelines was good and well foreshadowed. But the “God kept your memories around” part was a lazy hand-wave by a Deus ex Machina. And again, Emily’s pre-game feelings to Simon was also just exposition dump, the writers should just stick to the survivor guilt. And again, we only learn about Empty S from second hand exposition, and it just feels like whatever evul organization that exists solely to set up the emotional final twist.

But let’s say what is good about it.

The saving grace

First, the game really well set ups Jasmine as a red herring main girl. I mean, the opening scene doesn’t really make me care about her and her death. But it does convince me that the game is about finding the path that leads to it, and then preventing it. Even after it has turned out that the Jasmine we knew wasn’t the real Jasmine, I still thought that the real Jasmine was going to turn out to be the mastermind. Emily was obviously tied to the events, and had huge importance during the first playthrough, but I saw her as the second girl, and at best an aware participant. A Santa type of character, at most.

Second, while this does rely on the player knowing already Zero Escape series, you do initially expect alternative histories and/or time travel. First ending didn’t lead you to the first scene, and somehow different paths had to be explained in story, same with Simon retaining memories from them. While the God stuff was eh, the revelation of this all being a single timeline with centuries spanning attempts of recreating the first game was brilliant and well foreshadowed.

And then we have Emily, who is the best character here and is surprisingly close to the greatness of Akane from Zero Escape (one day I may write analysis of Akane as a character, she really deserves it). She is insane, but for understandable reasons. She was traumatized by watching Simon die after saving her, and then had to live with survivor guilt, and probably had no chance to go to therapy. Instead, she realized she could recreate the game, so she did that, and she did that over and over again. All to recreate the Simon that has sacrificed himself for her, but to have him survive this time around. Tragic, twisted, romantic, shocking... A lot of conflicting feelings is packed here.

Yeah, the comedic jump sound, that the game plays when she starts coughing to her death, has ruined the mood a bit. Aside from that, and the exposition dump I’ve complained about above, the ending was well executed. It did feel pretty unique and gave the game a memorable identity, beyond being just a cheap 999 knock-off.

As much I have to complain about this game, I do respect its finale. While the writers suffer from a clear case of getting too much of inspiration from other works of fiction, and not really understand what made them good, they did have a good idea for their last, satisfying revelation. This ending, alongside the premise of the prequel, have succeeded at making me interested in their next work.