I'm not entirely sure what, if any, significance this may have on the story itself -- but has anyone noticed that the house in which you fight the Vampire Evil King is, other than the colour scheme, a carbon copy of Ari's house?

From the inside, yes it is. It could partly be for effect, but I once hypothesized that it was Beiloune's home before Classification, which is why the doll Marlene felt at home: She was at the home of the original a long time ago.

I never thought of that, but it makes a lot of sense. Thanks~

Glad I could help.

I thought she felt at home because the doll belonged to Ari's mom before Beiloune swiped it to recreate Marlene. Maybe it was a little of both. I always thought Ari's house used to belong to Pollack, though. Perhaps he lived in the Highlands once and was forced to abandon his home and build elsewhere when he and Beiloune had their falling out.

Here's my theory about the dolls: A subversive (as oppossed to an outright deviant) made dolls in the likeness of the Princess some time ago. If you talk to townsfolk in Rashelo after Beiloune reveals his true nature, you see that there is a history of Marlene (The Princess) and her chamberlain appearing and all sorts of havoc ensuing. By making the dolls, people may become curious why the Princess now looks exactly like the one so many years/decades/centuries ago. Classification worked as long as no one really thought about the world.

That's quite likely. Of course, the meaning is subtle enough that only those who are already thinking are likely to get it.

But it should be noted that the battle had been fought long before Okage started. I imagine every generation there were one or two people who were still part of the system but could see through it and would cause trouble. Perhaps the dolls were a way to find others who were like them. Even though Classification had been widespread and enduring, in individual cases it was flimsy at best. Classification thus couldn't be completely arbitrary or the whole thing would collapse. To be honest, I don't think much will change on the surface at least.

Oh yeah, it's mentioned in passing by Gramps that the doll was lost when they moved. Also consider that the sign posts seem to indicate that before the family arrived that the house wasn't lived in much. It's likely that the family moved in before Ari was born, but beyond that is pure guesswork.

Didn't the picture in Ari's house look like Marlene a bit? An ancestor!? There's also a guy that looks like the Ringmaster.

And the thing about the Vampire Evil King's house looking like Ari's, I thought the programmers were just lazy, so they copied Ari's house. Since in the whole game there are TONS of doors that are just for looks and you can never open.

But...where's the fun in that?

I thought the picture was of Annie, I really doubt that they'll leave pictures of other people at their house. On the other hand, I suspect that Ari's Grandparents knew the Ringmaster when they were in the circus.

So, where's the original princess? I always thought that the girl that Ari spoke to in Triste was the princess that Beiloune had locked up for some reason. If she isn't then who is she[I]?

Marlene is in Triste, we never said she wasn't.

I admit I haven't made to the end of the game yet. Will it be revealed why Marlene is in Triste? I don't want to know how it ends, I just would like to know if some of the questions will be answered.

I don't think it's ever specifically stated. I don't remember. I don't even remember when you find out, just that you do.

It get's fairly obvious the second time, and the dow-eyed girl in Triste talks about her and it becomes a reasonable conclusion.

Yeah! What they said! Go finish the game. It'll make you feel all warm and fuzzy (yet still dark!) inside. :stanlove:

Because people are people, they will gather were they find those like themselves. Triste was outside the domain of Beiloune, yet within his territory at the same time. It's a border town that was abandoned by normal residents, thus the deviants who were ejected from the world congregated in Triste.

That makes me wonder about Marlene, actually. Did she willingly leave, or was she forced? Because if you talk to that door, it's someone else who tells Ari to go away. She was definitely being hidden, not just hiding.

Also, that first scene outside the door, with the music box and Ari asking who it is and why she doesn't come out? She says she can't see him anymore. But you get the scene if you walk by before Doll!Marlene is...unenchanted? I want to say destroyed, but that's not right. It just makes me wonder how she sees if it's not through the doll's eyes.

The little girl also explained that Marlene was seeing through the doll. Keep in mind that I think about this kind of thing in terms of Legacy of Kain, I think something about an Unclassified killing the Great Evil King did something to negate Marlene's purpose and eject her from the world, or perhaps interacting with Hopkins triggered something and she faded away like Ari did.

So perhaps the game was just re-enacting history. Ari found himself on much the same path Hopkins had taken, with Marlene tagging along. If she had continued with him, the doll might have fallen out of Classification as well.

I thought this was just the guy who lived below her, on the first floor, and she lives on the second. :stanconfused:

And I also just thought that Marlene got lost, wandered to that magical square that made Ari dissappear, and then found Triste.

That goes back to an old speculation about Beiloune's family, particularly about his wife. I kinda suspected that it might be a relative from Marlene's mama's side of the family.

Who are you talking about? Ari's family, or the yelling person on the first floor?

btw, did the game ever say that Marlene's mom died BEFORE they got to Ari's world, or did she die after?

I don't think the game ever mentions her mother, though I could have just missed it. I always figured she died before and that's what made Beiloune lose it and create Classification.

Actually, my guess was that Classification was taking shape when Marlene's mother died and Beiloune decided to exploit it for personal ends. It seems odd that Beiloune would create Classification in a vaccuum, absent of outside participation. It's kinda like how Lenin overthrew the government, but Stalin made the Soviet Union.

Well, why create something like that if you aren't going to exploit it in the first place. It's not just a form of government. It's mind control. To an extent.

Perhaps it was intitiated by a tyrant in an earlier age.

Beiloune could of come from OUR world, and then just made our world's so-called "classification" stronger. You know how we classify people as goths, punks, hippies, etc... What was it called? Cliches? I talked about it for a week in my English class... :stanwink:

Looking at Madril, I think the world was closer to the Industrial Revolution era.

Cliques, m'dear. :stanwink:

I think the only reason it seems Industrial Revolution era is because of Madril. That's the only place in the game where machinery is in actual use. It's definitely post-Industry, which is why I've been thinking post-apocolyptic. A sufficient catastrophe could have reduced the world to something halfway between modern and Iron Age while still leaving remnants of the earlier civilization to confuse everyone and sundry.

By the mode of dress, it's relatively modern, but guns (which have been in use since before the French Revolution, though the actual date escapes me) are rare and legendary things, valued mostly by scholars and antique collectors. Bladed weapons are the norm, and the Bakery Woman uses an old-fashioned stone oven. On the other hand, towns are run by mayors rather than dukes, counts, or elder councils. The only town elder is in Tenel, and he doesn't run anything except the WCO (which is just a bored fellow's secret club anyway). Rashelo, at the very least, is a democracy, but the people-elected official answers to the monarchy. There's no sign of central air or heat, or even indoor water closets and modern plumbing with the exception of a few sinks.

It's a melding of two time periods with allusions to a third. Maybe Beiloune took over after whatever the catastrophe. Maybe he's been slowly regressing technology.

I think Beiloune may have been picking and choosing what more modern elements he wanted to keep, balancing out convienience and security. Guns for example, though they were relatively primative at the time, were equalizing weapons and made it easier for commoners to fight experienced soldiers or monsters. This Beiloune couldn't allow, his world is heavily stratified into several castes. At the top is the Princess, then heroes, then town officials, commoners, and ghosts.

Ultimately, I think Beiloune wanted to make the world more like a fairy tale world, but because of how ludacris such a world can be in reality he was bound to have problems. While Madril was the only city that was visited, it is possible that there were several cities. Anyone recall where Rosalyn first met Stan? We never see this jungle of Ascogorta, but it would stand to reason that it simply wasn't accessable because of constraints and wasn't important to the plot beyond the exposition so the area was never available. Y'know, it's kind of a shame that there was never a point in which the gang visited the Hero's University. The potential comedy there is nearly limitless.

:stanconfused: *sudden image of Ari racing down the halls at top speed, Stan alternately yelling for him to run faster and shouting threats, with two dozen Heroes in hot pursuit and an angry Rosalyn shouting that none of them are allowed to kill Stan because that's her job*

*snickercoughcough* Anyway. I thought someone mentioned that Madril was the only city like Madril in the world. And...I actually had more to say on that subject, but the plot bunnies suddenly demand my attention.

Er, I do agree that he was picking and choosing. Part of it (mode of dress) was probably things he just didn't think about changing. Part of it (ancient technology) might have been things he couldn't change for whatever reason. And the rest was the things he could change, which led to a somewhat mixed up era. He might not have noticed the problems at first, until he had to start 'patching' over them. It probably just snowballed. That might even explain why he seems so crazy in game: he'd been slowly losing control for centuries, and then Pollack decided to exploit it all (possible betrayal?). Then Marlene disappeared, which probably just broke him completely.

So...the entire game happened because of lack of planning?

I actually thought the opposite of this. That there WAS technology, but people have forgotten how to use it. Didn't the gear freak grandpa say it was from ancient times?

This kind of reminds me of Jak and Daxter. You know, how there's all this technology, but people don't know what they were for or how to use it, and the world kinda went back in time with people fighting w/ sticks, living in huts, and there's nature everywhere.

OR I also thought that Beiloune had made the gears just for looks, kind of like a church with no god, a Big Ben in a lake, and a Royal Castle that PROBABLY doesn't exist. Did the game specify that it DID exist somewhere?

And Boogie! When you said about the place Rosalyn met Stan 3 yrs ago, a jungle you said? I thought it was on a mountain. :stanconfused:

The mountain was in a jungle.

I think Beiloune's decent into madness had more to do with his cynicism and the emotional problems that came with losing Marlene. To be honest, I don't think there is any reason for the people in the world to think of the mix and match of technology as inconsitent because it's what they grew up with. Beiloune wants to downplay technology in order to make magic more relevant and mysterious, rather than just another form of technology.

Well, I don't think people thought it was strange and started to wake up. I was thinking...eh, more metaphysical than that. Like, trying to put a brick roof on a straw house; it just doesn't work that way, and it'll make the house fall down. Likewise, trying to unnaturally meld different time periods together made the reality unstable as it tried to fix itself. Of course, you have to adhere to the theory that time is a near-sentient force rather than a man-made concept for that to make any sense.

To be honest, the only real problem I see is how Beiloune could allow certain modern technologies and supress the development of new ones. There's one theory that ideas generate new ideas by combining them with other ideas, kinda like how the lightbulb was the product of several ideas converging. Other than that I see no real problem. Case in point, the Romans were consumate architechts but they didn't enjoy the modern luxuries we have (well at least not to the same extent).

Remember, time is an artificial thing. True, one can establish a sequence of events and many natural processes take place within a certain range, but if one were to place several objects from several of our eras in pristine condition and plopped a person who had no knowledge of history and asked him to say which items are more recent and which are more ancient, he would be hard pressed. For example, the design of a toothbrush changes but the basic concept has stayed the same ever since it was developed.

(as a side note, thinking of the Hero's University inspired a scene in which the group faces some Power Ranger types and Ari responds:

• Cool.
• Aiye! I'm scared!
• That spandex is waaaaay too tight.

Hehe :stantounge: )

We'll have to agree to disagree on the concept of time. It's one of my obsessions, and the discussion is one that I can get pretty heated over. Eh heh, even to the point of degenerating to Stan-style verbal attacks and such logic as, "Well, isn't it obvious?"

If the ideas already existed, picking and choosing technology probably wouldn't have that big of an impact. It would just be like trading with a less advanced society. The technology doesn't vanish or destroy the fabric of reality just because it's more advanced than anything they could have come up with on their own. They may have some trouble figuring out how it works, of course. And if there's no one around to teach them, they may form fetish/worship clubs about it.

Now that I think about it, someone somewhere must still know how to work and build machinery. It might have been necessery to enabling there to be technology, in fact, that someone be Classified as knowing how. After all, the Tiny Gears were part of a machine before it exploded. Doesn't the Gear Guy say he was building it?

The Sword of Gear was one of the things he was developing. The tiny gears were part of another machine that blew up. From the way he talked when he gave the Sword of Gear, I seemed to get the impresion that Beiloune disdained "modern" technology. Perhaps there was an equivalent to the A-bomb that was used and the resulting destruction made Beiloune averse to it.

(Have you ever wondered what kind of conversations Japanese fans have, and what they would think of ours :stantounge: )

Okay, I'm gonna leave this thread now...It's too long and confusing. (-o-?) Have fun though!