UPDATE ONE 2/3 - E-Mails and Errands

Date: 2015-06-23 06:16 am (UTC)
truebluehorror: (Default)


Of course, being a teen, the first thing we’re going to do is check out what messages we got while we were asleep.




E-Mail: At present, we humans are facing an immense threat. The demons from legends and myths have awakened and are poised to attack. The only way to fight the demon threat is to make use of demons ourselves. This program is the key. I hope that some brave soul will take this program and rise up… The demons must be fought to save humanity.

Oh. It’s just junk mail. That’s a disappointment. Dude probably wants like a donation to help keep the demons at bay or-



Of course this hunk of junk downloads spyware onto our computer.

Or not.

Welcome to one of the big staples of Shin Megami Tensei: the Demon Summoning Program. We’ll learn a little bit more about what the demon summoning program is in this game later and why it exists, but we’ll point out a few basics to begin with for now. While the exact ways the Program works can differ from game to game, the basic idea of the demon summoning program is this: it runs a system of programming strings that act and emulate summoning rituals, allowing the summoner to forego the actual ritual themselves and summon their demons quickly and easily. Remember the string of words we saw in the opening update, when we talked about barbarous names? That’s a part of the demon summoning program and how it operates. There are other features of the program, other specifics on how it works, based around which Shin Megami Tensei game we’re in, but the basic gist is that it’s like a music player program, if iTunes just happened to summon higher spiritual forces instead of playing Abby Road.

The program is pretty much our ticket to survival. Unlike our other human companions, we’re just a guy with grit and gusto, and our main leg up is that while we can’t use magic, our demons sure can and can back us up. The Demon Summoning Program is the reason why we can summon and communicate with them in the first place; most other humans would have no hope of making a contract with them. This feature of the game is as old as the original NES games themselves, and we’ll have an annotation section in a few updates talking about its origins and its programmers. It’s just enough to know for now that this program is essential to us staying alive, and it was sent to us by a dude named Stephen who apparently is terrified as hell of demon invasion, which hey, aren’t we all.


Continuation Text - Mother’s Voice: ADAM, aren’t you up yet!?

Yes mom give me a minute! I’m just preparing for the apocalypse, yeesh.



After mom hollers at us one more time we’re dumped into the screen for our room. This room will essentially serve as our base camp. We can use our computer, save our game, and sleep to restore our health here. We can also leave the room, but it’s so safe maybe we’ll just stay in here.

Usually checking our computer doesn’t give us much, but we’ve already got another message waiting for us so lets check it.



Stephen: My next program isn’t quite complete, so you’ll have to be patient for that. Until then, the e-manual I’m sending for the Demon Summoning Program should explain how to use it.
>Downloading…

Looks like Stephen’s got something else cooking for us that we’ll see in a bit. Why he didn’t send us the manual for how to use the demon summoning program with the program itself is beyond me, but no harm no foul. I’m sure not too many other people have gotten it, and I’m sure it’s not so important they really need the manual.

Anyway, what follows is an explanation of the conversation system you use to speak with and recruit demons. We’ll talk more about that when we actually get down to it later on.

Anyway we’ve left mom waiting long enough let’s go show her we are in fact up.



: You slept so well that not even the noisy siren from the police cars woke you. I think something really bad happened…Oh, I almost forgot. Here’s your allowance for the month.



You’re the best mom.

: Don’t spend it all in one place. Actually…Can you buy some coffee from the café at the arcade? Thanks.

And now we even have our first quest. Now we’re cooking.

After this I head back to my room to save before going on, but forget that heading back to my room triggers another scene with mom since I’m supposed to be out buying coffee. I’m not very good at this questing business.



: It’s becoming a dangerous world out there… I don’t even feel safe walking around town…

The more we here the more disarming a lot of what we’re seeing is. First we have a dream of people we’ve never known and of someone who’s certain they were always meant to be with us, then we get a program that summons demons, and now our peaceful community has had a murder in it. Kind of hard to think these things aren’t connected.



Kind of sending me some conflicting messages here, mom.



And now we can see the inside of our house, and our basic UI for when we’re walking around the world. Like a traditional dungeoncrawler, we see things from a first person view that mimics a three-dimensional environment. On the bottom of the screen is a display of our party make-up and status; above that is a bar that shows us how close we are to running into a random encounter. When the bar is blue, that means we’re safe; yellow means we’re in danger of running into a random encounter, and red means a random encounter will be coming up in a few steps. This bar wasn’t in the original SNES version of the game, but was added to later versions.

On the top of the screen we have a counter telling us what phase the moon is in, what cardinal direction we’re moving in, and a little box labeled “MAG”, which is short for magnetite, which is important for demon summoning. It and the moon are mechanics that won’t come into play until we’re dealing with demons, so we’ll talk about them then.

Just looking around, we can tell our house is a little bare, but otherwise nice. And since dad doesn’t seem to be in the picture, it really appears to be up to mom to both keep up a job and maintain the place. It’s pretty clear our mom works her butt off to help take care of us. We should remember that with some of the decisions we’ll make later.

Anyway, it’s time to meet the best character in the game.




This is our dog, Pascal, and he owns bones. There are a lot of contenders for greatest video game dog, but they all pale to Pascal.

Anyway, we're not walking him. We have coffee to get.




This is our world map. Unlike most JRPGs of the time, which would tend to have relatively vast fields/wilderness areas that your characters would trek across from town to town, Shin Megami Tensei goes for a more minimalist approach. Most of your activity takes place through different cities and wards of Tokyo(5), so there isn’t much wilderness travel. Rather, you and any random NPCs are represented as these little pointer people who look like pieces straight out of The Game of Life, with basic streets and buildings drawn to show you where you can walk and the buildings you can enter. It’s within these buildings that you’ll encounter actual detail and do most of your adventuring, instead of much massive exploring of the streets, though there is some.

The top left of the screen again shows the phases of the moon, which will come into play when dealing with demons, and the lower right shows us both our encounter meter and which part of Tokyo we’re in.

We’re supposed to head to the mall, which is the large gray building to the right of us, but first lets check in on our neighbors.



: If you’re looking for my daughter, she went out.

That's okay, neighbor who runs a shady practice out of his house. I'll check in on my childhood friend later, you just keep on doing your thing.



If we check one of those little blockades on the streets, we end up running into the five-o. Seems like this murder has everyone rightfully on edge, because they’re not letting anyone in or out of the area until they catch their man.

We head to the mall. Technically, it’s meant to be an arcade with an open air main area and shops scattered about, but the design is one big inside area. Place isn’t much to look at, so we’ll just check out some of the stores, starting with the café.






That’s some…great news. Think it’d be better if you told any of the multitude of cops about it, but thanks for the heads up. I won’t be hanging out around there.



Considering this used to be a place that used to be so calm and quiet, a lot of things are coming unhinged really quickly. We should keep that in mind about the hospital for later. We might have to look into it. Anyway, let’s go get our coffee.



That’s nice of you. Kind of defeats the purpose of me coming here, but hey at least I’m free to goof off for a while! Let’s check out who else is in the café before we head out.



Well this news just keeps getting better and better.





Oh hey it’s you! So it wasn’t just a dream! Wait up a minute, I have so much to ask that I-



Oh. Well. Never mind. Let’s see who else is here.



Did you hear there was a knife wielding maniac behind the drug store?

We’ve talked to all the folks we can in the café, lets check out what other sights there are in the arcade.
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