Photography 201: Advanced Decomposition. Let's Play Fatal Frame!

Everybody is dead, Dave.





And the mirror blows up again for emphasis.



Okay… that rambling note in Tomoe’s diary makes a bit more sense now.





Something’s here again, isn’t it?





It’s Kirie! Standing behind Miku!



Except she’s not…



Is it just me, or does she look closer now?







Um…





Now might be a good time to…

Run, maybe?



Jog? Lope? Saunter? Do that weird shuffling slow-as-molasses thing you did earlier? Away? From here?





Like, nowish?







Worst. Survival horror protagonist. Ever.



We’ve got control back, but the shrine door is locked and there’s no way out. Eventually Kirie is going to catch up with us.







You have nobody to blame but yourself for this, Miku.





Kirie looks happy!

Kirie: I’ll make you feel my pain.

This is so not good.











I begin to understand where the chip on Kirie’s shoulder stems from. So Miku blacks out, and the next thing we see is a group of shadowy figures circling her and chanting in a sing-song.





Creepy Kid 1: A demon!



Creepy Kid 2: A new demon!



Creepy Kid 3: Hurry, find him!







Wow, what a crazy dream!



Childish figures scurry away.



Miku sits up quickly, but they’re gone.

Through… the wall?



Not the door over there.



Looks like Miku’s in the doll room. And she’s okay!





…ish.







Miku: The rope..? No!

And what have we learned about stranger danger from this experience?





The marks fade… for now.

Miku's reaction to her new rope marks is the most emotion I have seen from her yet. She's usually locked into what the MST3K crew used to call "Dull Surprise."

She does have a couple flashes of honest panic when Kirie's backing her into the corner, but for the most part you're right. It certainly doesn't help that the voice actress playing Miku isn't very expressive.

I've never found the voice acting to be very good in this series, though. I was kind of shocked when the remake of 2 happened and gamer forums completely freaked out that Tecmo/Nintendo didn't track down the original VAs to reprise their role in the localization. Never mind the hilariousness of people claiming that English actresses were "completely inappropriate" to play Japanese people, because as everyone knows the only way to accurately portray a Japanese person is by speaking with a US Midwestern accent.

"Miku, I found a camera. It's best that you, the master of photographing, take it with you."

To be fair, sometimes it's a respect thing, rather than a case of "it was perfect the way it was harumph harumph." It's just that with gaming fandom, I almost always get the impression that it's the latter. How was Tecmo ever going to track down Bored Intern #32 ever again anyway?

I'm sure part of it is also "this is my favorite game ever and is therefore perfect". People don't like to see flaws in things they love, otherwise their love is somehow unjustified.

You're wrong and FFT is flawless.

Thank you for proving her point.

Humor, ladies and gentlemen!

People sniping at each other in the comments... it's... a real LP!

*sniff*

I'm so proud...

I'm sorry, Mogri. I literally had exactly the same kind of conversation in real life just today (not about FFT though, that would have been a weird coincideince) and I thought you were serious.

... Unless our fighting is the only thing that brings Droewyn joy. In that case, you're a dumb butt who can't do the laundry without turning everything pink.

Oh yeah? Well, your mom turns everything pink! I mean, your mom turned everything pink last night! I mean, wait, let me start over.

You guys are the best.

At the beginning of Night 2, we begin where we left off, with Miku staring at her hands.



Is that… someone’s feet?





Hey! That little shit kidnapped what we’ve rightfully stolen!

Miku: *gasp* That mirror..! Give it back!



The brat is so terrified by the prospect of a meek schoolgirl’s wrath that he beats a hasty retreat.

Well, fuck.



So we’re back in the doll room. And it looks different! Wasn’t there a gaping hole in the floor the last time we were here? It was… fixed? Maybe that’s what the ghosts of little urchins do, when they’re not busy helping themselves to our key items.

Anyway, Miku’s camera wants us to take a picture of the wall where the other ghostlings disappeared through. Upon further inspection, there’s clearly a door there.





I kind of remember there being a picture hanging there during the first night. So does that mean the scroll acts as a key when it’s hanging there? (Answer: YES) Does that mean that we could have used that passage during the first night if we’d known about it? (Answer: NO)





“June 10th
“Mikoto really seems to like this mansion. She’s playing Demon Tag here with her neighborhood friends again today. I guess a big mansion is the perfect place for kids to play. But for people in my sickly condition, it’s a little bit too big…

“June 15th
“Today was a wonderful day. My husband, my daughter and I took a walk in the mountains. I’m feeling pretty good these days, and I was even able to walk quite a distance today. I had so much fun!”

This must be written by Yae Munakata, the folklorist’s wife. Demon Tag again… I’m sensing a theme here. From context, I guess it’s a children’s game of some kind.





I picked up the next item before I noticed the bad camera angle. The item is a sparkling point on the shelf to the left of the doll in the white kimono.

“I must have been passed out. I’m afraid it’s too late to help Mr. Takamine… If only I had come to sooner! The spirits in this mansion are very powerful. The force behind this curse must be here somewhere… And I’m going to start looking for it right now!”

I put Mafuyu’s note in my file. Mafuyu… Now I know you’re here somewhere.

No, you know that he was here at one point. Let’s face it, kiddo, his ghostly form wandering the halls looks a whole lot like the ghosts of Takamine and Company, and you know what happened to them.

Although given that Mafuyu wasn’t doing a whole lot of journaling during the prologue, he must have lasted a bit longer than we were originally led to believe. Maybe he is still around here somewhere.

…nah, he’s probably dead.

We were given an opportunity to save at the end of Night 1, which was convenient because one of the more annoying vanishing ghosts is going to appear as soon as we try to leave the room.



That blur is a ghostly child sprinting past the doll room. This capture is similar to the woman jumping off the roof, but since Miku will be facing the right way automatically when she opens the door, it’s just a matter of timing.



Leaving the doll room triggers a cut scene and a fight.








???: It’s… it’s dark… It’s so dark!





This is Blinded, or Blind Demon. She’s really awful, if you don’t know how to fight her. In case you didn’t catch the gouged-out eyes or her extremely subtle nom de plume, this ghost can’t see you. The only way for her to detect you is by listening, and as everyone knows, the blind have superhuman hearing. If you move she’ll know exactly where you are, and she can both lunge very quickly and teleport to get you. The way to fight her is to build up a charge as she stumbles around (only walking counts as movement; turning to aim the camera doesn’t). You can either fire when fully charged or wait for a zero shot; unless she’s actually in danger of stumbling directly into you, you’re fine.

Do not fire with less than a full charge, because if your shot doesn’t stun her she will immediately lunge for you. Using the camera pinpoints your location. And once you do snap your shot, you need to move before the stun wears off, because she’ll be attacking as soon as she can move. Run 3-4 paces, just far enough to change location, then stop. Rinse and repeat.

She may occasionally teleport. If she does this, she always appears directly behind Miku. It’s not actually an attack; it’s a trick to scare you into moving. The triangle button makes Miku do a 180-degree turn; just use that and get her.

We’re going to be seeing a lot of Blinded during this night.









There’s a door at the top of the steps. I think I forgot to check it earlier, but it’s locked and the locking mechanism is broken. We won’t be visiting this area anytime soon.

Himuro family crest. It probably unlocks the door, but it’s broken.

I just said that.



???: What happened to me?





It’s this ghost lady again. It’s starting to look like she might be Yae Munakata.





That’s everything out here. I’m getting the urge to save, so let’s head through the burial room.





“On the 26th day of the 11th month, in preparation for the Strangling Ritual 10 years later, choose a maiden with holy power.

“She should be past the age of 7 years, 9 months, and 25 days.”

I love how precisely the age is calculated here. It makes me wonder if couples tried to time their pregnancies so as to disqualify their daughters from ritual eligibility.



Somebody’s been cleaning up around here! This table was a total mess last night.



Sounds like an invitation to me! Good thing Miku has that engraved lighter that she’s going to be selling on Ebay as soon as she gets home, along with all the newly dead famous guy’s final notebooks…



???: Gueeeeessss whaaaat, Boooossssssss…

WHAT. No.

*rifles through item screen*



So, yeah. The lighter is gone from Miku’s inventory, which means that making fire is currently out of the question. Good job with that resourceful protagonist thing, Miku.







It seems to be locked from the other side.

Looks like we won’t be heading out to the circular hallway anytime soon.

Random encounter with a Broken Neck. Now that the camera has been decently upgraded, she doesn’t pose much of a challenge in an open area.

Enough of this room; let’s go save in the rubble room.





While searching the rear part of the room for items, the camera reacts to the door with the broken lock.





Why would we care about solving a puzzle when the door can’t be used?





That plate was smashed into a dozen pieces last night. What’s going on here? Anyway, we’ve got a destination now: the well in the backyard. Back through the atrium we go…



Another super-fast ghost kid. This one’s widely considered to be the hardest capture in the game, though I always have a harder time with the jumping woman. He appears when you turn the corner at the big mirror in the hallway with the staircase, and dashes away like his ass is on fire. Be quick!



I was going to make a video of attempts to capture this brat and put it to Yakety Sax. Then I got him on my second try. Booya!





Checking the second floor for items or to see if the doors are suddenly passable…





This one -– the one that goes to the anteroom -- was nailed shut before.



And here’s another hidden ghost where you hear static but don’t see the filament glow until you’re pointing it right at the correct spot. In this case, it’s a high window.

And the other door is still boarded up.




Heading back downstairs to follow where the Running Kid was going. This door is still locked.











Our buddy, Man With Long Arms, is back. He starts off a little too close for comfort, so begin by backing away immediately. This is a tougher fight; he has more health and we’re not fighting in a circular hallway. If you get backed into a corner and need some space, remember that you can stun him and then run through him to get some more room to maneuver.









And the door to the fish tank room is sealed. Piffle.





But the seal is at… the staircase in the very hallway we’re in. Seems a bit lazy, but I suppose it might trip up someone who isn’t very observant.





That’s better. There’s another running kid in the fish tank room, but this one’s onscreen for longer and so is considerably easier.

The maximum you can have of any film type is 99 exposures. I’ve been using Type 14 exclusively up until now, but I could probably switch over at any time to get a bit more oomph in combat. Just remember to switch back to 14 between battles. There’s nothing worse than wasting the good stuff on non-hostile ghosts and random bits of scenery.





The door to the backyard is still password protected, but it wants a different code this time.



There’s engraving underneath, but it’s gouged. Can only read some.

I can just barely make out…

“the Shinto ritual,” “Blind…” and “held on the day of…” from the gouged-out words.

Nice of whoever defaced the door locks to consistently leave just enough legible for us to be able to figure out the passwords, isn’t it? The answer is of course found on the Blind Demon Ritual scroll that we just picked up. It’s the twenty-sixth of November, or 2611.



All right! Let’s go check out that well!









Anyone else getting flashbacks to Ring right about now?



Creepy little dead girl incoming!



Miku just stares at it in characteristic fashion.

Child in Well starts out really close. Back up quickly. She likes to zoom directly at you, then teleport to a different location and zoom again. She’s not too tough if you can manage to keep track of her. When you kill her she says, “Mikoto… hurry!”







The kill shot photo morphs into the image of the stone sitting on the well that we’ve already seen. In case you’ve forgotten why we were messing with the well in the first place.







And there’s a photo op…





Instead of getting a titled snapshot, Miku receives an actual photograph showing how the little girl died. There were three local kids who also went missing when Mikoto Munakata did, and she’s the only one who returned. Now we know the fate of one of them.

The shrine at the top of the hill isn’t an important location right now, but there’re some items and a hidden ghost so it tends to be worth the trip and probable random ghost attack.





Bound Man again.







And then a Broken Neck inside the shrine itself.

It took me a while to find the hidden ghost. He’s at the base of the big mirror to the left of the altar.





Backtracking through the hallway with the stairs, Blinded wants a rematch. The strategy for her pretty much never changes.



And then we got attacked by another Broken Neck in the burial room. Fun Fact: You can run from all of the random encounters and some of the scheduled ones if you want. They’ll follow you for a few rooms and then give up. I don’t do this until the third night because most of them are easy and I like points.

Speaking of which…



Power up!



The next area is a long and pretty featureless hallway. Mafuyu’s been here; I wonder how he got through the puzzle locked door?









“The mansion has started to change. As far as I can figure out, the ghosts are trying to pull me back into the past. The spirits are using their power to make parts of the mansion revert to the way they were in the past. The ghosts of that era are beginning to stir.

“Just what exactly happened in this mansion, anyway? And just what do the ghosts want me to do about it?”

A nice explanation for the game designers’ decision to reuse as many assets as they could get away with…

The corridor ends in yet another puzzle door. I hate these things.





This… is not something we’ve seen before. But with all the locked doors our options are pretty limited, and there are only two areas with standing water: the fish tank room and the abyss. Let’s go check out that lake!



The pier has been repaired.

You can actually see the little purple stone sitting on top of the cairn.



There’s a hidden stone mirror if you go behind the cairn and look at the ground.







There’s a hidden ghost here as well, but I got attacked again on my way to finding it. Another unscripted battle; the game is giving us a lot less time to explore before siccing stuff on us during the second night.





This thing is called the Wandering Man. He’s like a harder version of Broken Neck – he swoops around you and occasionally teleports. He can be mean, so don’t wait for zero shots.

The hidden ghost is in a little alcove.





Upon leaving the abyss, Miku is being watched.









This one triggers when you set foot on the steps. It’s another easy capture because Miku automatically swivels to face her when you bring up finder mode. The difficulty here is in timing, because this ghost doesn’t stick around long.

And then we got attacked in the burial room again by another random Broken Neck. I think I’m going to leave off with the blow-by-blows and screenshots of random encounters unless there’s something special about them.

Anyway, back to the puzzle door. These things are getting tougher.

Miku: It’s.. it’s Mafuyu!

Well spotted. A+ in Sibling Recognition. How about putting some of those perception points into either common sense or movement speed instead?



This is a very large square room. This balcony goes all the way around, and there’s a ladder on one of the walls.





Another ledge with another ladder.







That is a really big… not altar exactly, since there isn’t one… but you just know that this is where some evil ceremonies happen. Giant circles of floor spikes are never good.



And there’s a really big door. There’s a column next to the door that has a symbol on it.



I wonder if it’s a device for opening the gate?

Checking out the door itself…





It’s the ghost who was on the balcony in the atrium! This is Ryoza Munakata, and he’ll be our tour guide for most of tonight.

Munakata: Beyond this door… the mirror must be there!

He’s looking for the magic mirror, as well. Makes sense, since it’s his notes that will lead Tomoe to tell Takamine about it.





There’s a hard to spot sparkling point on the floor.

The Ritual Masks and Their Meaning

In the Himuro rituals, masks play a very important role. One of them is called the Blinding Mask, which is used in the Demon Tag Ritual. Two stakes pierce through the eyes of the Blinding Mask. It is used in the Demon Tag Ritual as a blindfold.

The legend goes, “While the demon is blindfolded, enter the rope altar and perform the ritual.” This might mean that the Blinding Mask is a key to the rope altar.

The pillar suddenly wants us to take a shot of it!





And then we get attacked by Blinded again.



Killing her earns us another photo clue.



That’s great. Miss Survival Horror 2002 lost the lighter, remember?





Ah. Well, that’s fine then. Let’s see if we can manage to not drop them between here and the burial room.





Thanks, Pointing Girl, but we were on top of that already.

Seriously, I’d forgotten how much this game holds your hand! If you take a picture of the candles you get the same hint again.





It’s time for a new puzzle!



Lighting a candle will toggle the lit/unlit status of the ones next to it. You can’t snuff a lit candle directly; you can only light an unlit one. Also, matches are not a finite resource, so you have as many turns as you need to light all the red ones and extinguish the white ones.

When you win, all of the candles light up.

Scroll get! And this is a good place to leave off. Happy Halloween, everyone!

If this LP and I were junior high school kids at a chaperoned semi formal we would be slow dancing really awkwardly at arms length once, and then smiling at each other from opposite sides of the gym floor all night. That is how I feel about this LP.

Yay!

I think!

Last time, Miku had to go to way too much effort in order to be able to light some candles and get a scroll.

Now that we’ve got the thing, let’s go hang it up in the doll room and see if that unlocks the secret passage!



Well, here we are…





…and so is Crawling Girl!

She doesn’t have much more stamina this time around, and Miku doesn’t have to deal with avoiding a hole in the middle of the floor anymore, so this fight is a piece of cake. It took me two shots; one fully charged and one zero shot.

When she’s defeated, she says “ Come find me… I’ve been waiting so long… so long…

Aww…

After the fight, the floor in front of the secret door reacts. Just like the Girl In Well, this is an opportunity to find out what happened to one of Mikoto’s friends.





Looks like Man With Long Arms got her.









And now we’re in the kimono room! There’s a tough vanishing ghost that appears as soon as Miku steps forward.



Another stupid running kid. Didn’t anyone teach their children not to run indoors? This kid dashes about as quickly as the others, and the trick is to ignore the area where you see him and focus the camera to the left where he’s going to be. The capture circle only glows for an instant.



Boy: I have to give this mirror to that man.









“June 18th
“That camera seems to have some kind of uncanny power. It can capture things that aren’t even there… Mikoto begged me to let her have the camera back.

“I don’t understand the things that camera captures… But I know I can never let Mikoto see them! I have to protect her. Something terrible is going to happen. I can feel it.”

Hey, that sounds kind of familiar, but I just can’t seem to place it. Well, better put some fresh film in my spirit-exorcising camera, just in case!