A quick follow up on my post about starting Alternative (21 hours in SPOILERS)
well gamers, i am returning to give a quick update for my thoughts on the trilogy. a few days ago i made a post where i showed my 100% for Muv Luv and about how hyped i was to start Alternative.
i am now 21 hours into Alternative and what I assume to be a decent chunk through chapter 7 and probably half or maybe a little less through the story. I just got through the chomp incident and stopped reading about an hour after that.
to start, the beginning parts of this game were incredibly well made and i think the world building and just overall characterization of the whole story was already super good in Unlimited, but the first sort of Unlimited 2.0 arc in Alternative was really great at getting me back in and I feel like it just added more layers on top of it already that was great. easily the best part of this story is the world building and characterization, so having the first part of this massive final game be more of that was a great way to get back into it. truly 10/10 setup and structure in my opinion.
i was also really shocked by how much I loved the coup de tat arc that follows the beginning sections of the game. Sagiri was really interesting for the screentime he had, and also Walken was based and just seeing how that played out at the end with Tsukiyomi and Sagiri being a tragic sort of figure was great. i think this arc just had a really amazing atmosphere where it was all just in one night and god the snowy bgs at the start were amazing and the whole thing was so atmospheric i really felt like i was there with them doing the mission.
so fast forward to just a few minutes ago where I put down the game to pick up tomorrow when I wake up (I'm writing this at 4:22 AM). i just read through the incident during the afternoon OS training for the TSFs and the BETA showing up and all that stuff. Takeru losing his shit and just the horrific visuals of the BETA and the music and just god everything about this first encounter with them felt so raw and horrifying especially with how it affected Takeru and Chizuru fumbling her words and you could just tell none of the girls nor Takeru were prepared for it even though its a story about an alien threat to Earth where the aliens haven't showed up once in the story yet. it just made it so much better that they savored the introduction of the BETA proper to after they have been set up so much as this horrific threat and now you get to actually see the trauma they enduce on the cute characters that you've been with since Extra. i think there is its own sort of disturbing factor to Takeru just being completely humiliated during this encounter that i thought was really fucked up and dark when i read it.
now keep in mind, i have been spoiler free on the entire series for the whole time I've been reading it. but holy shit nothing could have possibly prepared me for that chomp scene. Marimo is such a sweet person that you actually get to know throughout the whole series. a series that had some small scenes of violence in Alternative before but honestly I thought it was softer than what people were saying until the BETA invaded in that part of the game. i think that's what makes this story hit for me. its just the complete subversion with all these high school anime romcom women going into the world with the BETA. it didn't hit me until the chomp scene, but now i can see why this would be legit traumatizing for people who actually get invested in the stories they read. I'm not soft when it comes to media, i rarely cry at stuff and I'm overall very jaded with how predictable and stale most stuff is to me nowadays, but what i just read was genuinely traumatizing in the moment and i had a solid 10 minutes where i couldn't even make out the words that the game was throwing at me. this is the first time that a game has had my jaw physically drop with a scene since SOMA, but for a completely different reason. no scene in any game has ever even come close to how disturbing that was, and im truly shocked to also say that for a minute i felt physically sick because of how much i love Marimo as a character.
so yeah, just wanted to write an update on my thoughts reading this story. thank you for reading all this, and look forward to my next update when i finish Alternative!