LET'S PLAY KILLER7 - The world won't change. All it does is turn.

Hello ladies and gentlemen and non-binary individuals, welcome to Let's Play Killer7.

Killer7 was first released on the Gamecube and Playstation 2 in 2005. And honestly nobody knew what to make of it. If you dig up all the old reviews written for it back in the day you'll find nothing but a sea of confused game writers trying to figure out just how in the hell they were supposed to reconcile this thing against Resident Evil 4. Confused attempts to describe the Graphics as "Cel-shaded" and plot comparisons to the Metal Gear Solid series abound. It was a game wholly unlike anything else out there, and nobody really had a category for it yet. An "Art Game" before Art Games were a thing.

The game didn't sell super great, but its immediate cult status and lasting legacy as one of the most fucked up gamecube games ever made elevated it's writer/director Suda51 from "some guy who makes weird games" to "THE GUY who makes weird games", and prompted western releases of Suda's early Japan-only games such as The Silver Case and Flower, Sun, and Rain. Crazed fanboys (such as myself) spent years begging Capcom for a remaster, and our demands were finally answered when the game got a steam re-release in November of 2018.

For this LP, I will be streaming the game to my Twitch.TV Channel, most likely with a bunch of people from my Discord Crew yelling nonsense all over it. That footage will be edited and uploaded to my Youtube Channel, before finally posting it here in this thread with accompanying write-ups. I'll try to announce my intention to stream in advance of actually going live both here and on my Twitter, but I'm bad at remembering to do that, And I'll prolly just forget.

YOUTUBE PLAYLIST

A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSCRIPTIONS IN THIS LP

Killer7 has a LOT of text, most of which is presented in the form of cut-scenes where dead people deliver heavily distorted monologues. Said monologues are very important if you want to try and figure out just what the fuck is going on, but I'm way too lazy to transcribe all that shit by hand. Fortunately GameFaqs has me covered.

All the transcribed text in this LP will be copy-pasted from the following resources with only minor editing. Please join me in thanking these brave heroes who took on the thankless task of transcribing everything everyone says in this game, so that I could benefit from their hard work a full decade later.

Killer7 Game Script - OrdogToxin - 2008/10/23
Remnant Psyche FAQ - Save_Some_FACE - 2007/10/05
Travis Monologues FAQ - Shockley_Haynes - 2009/08/05
Pigeon Letters Text - Shockley_Haynes - 2008/05/05

You might have also noticed that my video recording quality tends to range from "Pretty bad" to "downright unwatchable. My screenshot-taking skills are likewise nonexistent. So instead of creating screenshots and gifs to go along with appropriate transcriptions from my own footage, I'm an longplay of the Gamecube version being emulated in HD as my source.

Killer7 Gamecube Full Longplay - DeShelly - 2017/09/06

Cool. I played the hell out of RE4, Viewtiful Joe, and P.N.03, and Dark Phoenix never came out, so this was always the random part of the Capcom 5 that I didn't know anything about. I'm looking forward to finally seeing it.

PROLOGUE BONUS POST!
TRIGGER WARNING: EVERYTHING

Let's get this out of the way right now. This game is fucked up. Like, seriously fucked up. "Fucked up by video game standards" fucked up. The medium has had 13 years since Killer7's initial release, during which enormous strides have been made in the art of simulated graphic murder! You'd think that by now our standards for what qualifies as fucked up would have reached dizzying new levels, and we'd find what was considered fucked up in 2005 to be positively quaint! But no! Somehow, in defiance of all reason, this game is still really really fucked up!

If you are sensitive to or triggered by anything on the following list, please proceed with caution.
WILL THIS LP EXPLAIN THIS GAME?

Kinda sorta maybe I guess but also not really IDFK WTFever.

A lot of the weird shit in Killer7 isn't really meant to be explained and defies any sort of simple logical breakdown. I can give my INTERPRETATION on some of the stuff in here, but if you point to any random aspect and go "WHY THIS?" I'm probably just gonna reply "WHY ANYTHING? SHIT JUST IS."

Which isn't to say I don't have theories! I've got loads of them! But I'm not going to seal myself in a wine casket to engrave upon a grain of rice a comprehensive theory on the exact mechanics of, say, Samantha personality changing based on the lighting in any given room, or where exactly the blood channel guy fits in with the Smith's group dynamic. I have seen the THEORY.txts of the past, and am haunted by grim visions of future "THE HIDDEN MEANING OF" videos. I refuse to sink to such depths of depravity.

IS KILLER7 A GOOD GAME?

Killer7 is a fucking miracle.

Fuck yes this game is an Awesome and must be celebrated. I even hear the PC port is good!

INTERLUDE: WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE WEIRDOS?
CAST OF CHARACTERS
TO BE UPDATED AS THE STORY PROGRESSES (MAYBE).

THE SMITHS


HARMAN SMITH
"THE GOD KILLER", "THE MASTER"

The leader of the gang, and the host to the seven personalities that make up the killer7. Harman has something called "Multifoliate Personae Phenomenon" a made-up phrase meaning that when a different personality takes the wheel, Harman's physical body changes to match. This is absolutely how Dissociative Identity Disorder works in the real world.

While his advancing age has constrained him to a wheelchair, Harman's influence, intelligence, strength, and apparent supernatural power still command a great deal of respect. The kind of old man who's always polite and reserved, but when he talks, everybody listens. In combat he uses a fucking enormous sniper rifle. Not that he's in combat very much. He has people for that.


GARCIAN SMITH
"THE CLEANER"

Harman's most loyal servant/persona and the only one allowed to communicate with the master directly. In fact, communication is pretty much Garcian's whole thing, as he's also the only Smith that's allowed out in "public" to do things like contact government agents and other entities outside the 7. Because he's so valuable to the team's ability to function, Garcian delegates most of the high-risk dirty work to the other Smiths, only involving himself when they manage to fuck everything up and get themselves killed. I'm pretty bad at video games, so you can expect that to happen a lot.

Calling Garcian "the only Smith with people skills" is less of a compliment for him than it is a diss for the rest of the team. He presents himself as stoic to the point of emotionless. Nothing seems to phase him, or amuse him, or elicit any sort of response beyond a factual, no-nonsense answer. The lone exception is Harman, whom he treats with almost religious devotion.

His primary use in gameplay is reviving killed Smiths. Each time one bites it, you have to take Garcian out to the site of their death to retrieve their remains and bring them back to life. He can't revive himself, so getting him killed is an immediate game over. He's armed with a small pistol, but given the risk inherent in taking him out and about, you'll want to avoid using it as much as possible.


DAN SMITH
"THE HELLION", "THE DEMON"

In a game where most named characters are professional murderers, Dan somehow manages to stand out from the crowd by being just that mean. Everything about him carries a sense of menace, from his perpetual pissed-off glare, to his sneering, resentful voice, even in the way he walks and stands. It sends the clear message that while he might not be the strongest Smith, he's definitely the most dangerous. His terrible attitude and non-existent people skills have guaranteed that nobody actually likes him as a person, but pro murder isn't really a job you take to make friends.

In gameplay, Dan's special ability is a charge shot that can obliterate certain targets and enemies. His stats are the most balanced across the board, making him basically your best choice for every possible situation. He's pretty much my favorite character for actually playing the game, so expect to see a LOT of him in the videos.


KAEDE SMITH
"BAREFOOT"

Of all the personas, Kaede strikes me as the Smith who's most out of place. Not because she's the team's only woman, but because everything about her just screams "I don't want to be here". Her mannerisms are all cautious and nervous, and lack of footwear and short dress give the impression of someone who was more hoping to spend their evening at home on the couch instead of running around doing murders. Adding to this impression is her long-range weapon, complete with sniper scope. If she has to be here, then by god, she's going to be as far away from the action as possible.

In gameplay Kaede is your ranged option, best for carefully hitting the weakpoints of enemies from way far away. My standard gameplay style is to not notice enemies until they're two feet away from me, and then frantically fire at everything BUT their weakpoints, so you won't be seeing me use her very much. Her other character-specific ability comes in the form of Mizaru, who is a ghost lady in a bondage suit. With her help, Kade can break magical blood barriers that keep the team from progressing by uh... slitting her wrists. And now that I've written all this out, it suddenly seems REALLY BAD that this game has exactly one female playable character, and her special skill is self-harm.

That's not awesome.


CON SMITH
"THE PUNK"

Con is a disrespectful hyperactive teenage punk who likes to go really fast, say cuss words and is never seen without his headset and oh my god it's like someone held up a mirror to my very soul. As the youngest of the Smiths, there's a distinctively teenage excitement present in everything Con does. You can see it in the stupid "cool" way he holds his guns, the way he plays hackysack with his clips when he's reloading, his silly over-the-top catchphrases and his deliberate goofy poses. He's a kid first and an elite assassin second, and it shows.

Con is blind, but it's the Daredevil kind of blind where he can actually see better than everyone else. Going into first-person as con lets you see exactly as much as every other character can see. Supposedly this is due to "good hearing", which comes up in-game exactly once.

In gameplay, Con has the highest movement speed and the fastest rate of fire. He can also sacrifice some blood vials to get a temporary boost of super speed, which is great for rushing through areas you've already been in. Finally, his short stature allows him to fit into places the other smiths can't reach. Expect me to play as him quite frequently in the videos, because he's the best and I love him.


COYOTE SMITH
"THE THIEF"

Coyote is not as good as Dan. He carries a very powerful handgun, but it's less powerful than than Dan's. He can do a charge shot, which can't charge as high Dan's. He's got a significant lifebar, but its not as long as Dan's. Everything about the guy is "pretty good" But not as good as Dan.

Given how everything about Coyote is obviously outclassed by another member of the team, It's easy to see the way he acts as being motivated by an all-consuming inferiority complex. He holds his gun in the MOST gangsta style. He Puffs out his chest and tries to make himself look bigger than he is when running around. He very deliberately opens padlocks one-handed, just to show off he can do it, and when he gets a critical hit on an enemy, he sneers cuss words as hard as he possibly can! A wise man once said "There's a difference between saying you don't give a fuck, and not giving a fuck." Coyote is the former, Dan is the latter.

In gameplay, Coyote is needed for getting on top of roofs, and for picking locks. He's not BAD when it comes to general-purpose running around and killing things, but I almost never use him for it. Why would I? Dan's better.


KEVIN SMITH
"FOUR-EYES"

No not that Kevin Smith.

The Smith's stealth guy, going unnoticed is Kevin's whole thing. While everybody else on the character select is happy to share their favorite cuss words and insults with you, Kevin never says a word. While every other persona's weapon of choice are enormously loud guns, Kevin works entirely with silent throwing knives. His posture is permanently hunched over, like he's actively trying to make himself seem smaller than he really is. And his special power is that by taking off his sunglasses, he can literally turn invisible, which in gameplay lets him run past enemies and bypass security systems.

Also, he's gay. This fact is only alluded to in Hand in Killer7, where it's stated that long before the events of the game, Kevin was forced to "kill the man he loved".

I don't think I'd call Kevin a positive example of LGBTQ+ representation in video games, even by the standards of the mid-00s when it was first released. A shirtless man with zero body fat, wearing only sunglasses and leather pants who's also a knife murderer hits at least 4 or 5 boxes on the harmful sterotype checklist, none of which are mitigated by the fact that none of the Smiths are "good" people. There are undeniable problems here that should not be ignored!

But at the same time, I think there's something to be said about how Kevin can be seen as a commentary on queer erasure. A gay man who can never be as loud or boisterous as his straight counterparts, who goes along with the group in mute silence, who's special ability is to literally turn invisible at will?

I don't think that was an accident.


MASK DE SMITH
"THE MASK" "THE KING OF THE RING"

MASK IS THE GREATEST AND MOST BEST!

LUCHA LIBRE IS STRONGEST STYLE!

KAFABE IS THE LIE THAT GUIDES US TO THE TRUTH!

...Oh right, uh, in gameplay, Mask is armed with a pair of grenade launchers that just fucking obilterate all enemies. Problem is he's so insanely OP that everything he destroys is blasted to bits, so it's basically impossible for him to gather blood from enemies, which is needed for doing character upgrades. His reload speed also starts out pretty slow, so if he misses when enemies are close, he's in serious trouble. In terms of navigating levels, Mask is needed for destroying cracked walls and getting past large obstacles that require feats of strength, such as PULLING A FULLY LOADED TANKER TRUCK DOWN THE STREET!

OR LIFTING STEEL SUPPORT BEAMS HEAVY ENOUGH TO CRUSH A MORTAL MAN!

BUT MASK IS NO ORDINARY MORTAL!

BEHOLD THE MIGHT OF THE LEGENDARY KING OF THE RING!

In which a black guy turns into a white guy, murders Jimmy Neutron, destroys a giant egg-laying monster in the parking garage, and talks to some friendly ghosts.


NOTES

• THIS GAME IS FUCKING BEAUTIFUL. My new computer has some personal beef with OBS, so it's not QUITE as pretty as it should be on the video, but even with my recording issues you you can tell that this game has some utterly phenomenal art direction. The game gets so much mileage out of flat colors, shadows and gradients, giving itself an incredibly unique look that I've yet to see replicated by anything that's come out since. I don't think there's a single PS2-era game that's aged half as well as this one.
• THE BLACK GUY TURNS INTO A WHITE GUY, THEN KILLS JIMMY NEUTRON. Just in case you thought this game wasn't going to be fucking weird.
• MEET VINCEL DILL BORIS VII, IWAZARUSCOF. Iwazaru for short. He's the Smith Syndicate's very own manservant ghost gimp, here to provide exposition, explain gameplay mechanics, and to be an opinionated little busybody in general. He shows up all over the fucking place, hanging from the ceiling and gesturing at us to shush while he tells us all about whatever's currently on his mind. He's okay, I guess, but the Spectral entity I'm REALLY excited to see is...
• TRAVIS!! Aw man, Travis is just the best you guys. He's the ghost of someone the Smiths killed forever ago, who decided that his spectral revenge upon us would take the form of hanging out and being our best friend, who gives us valuable plot information and wears a variety of fun t-shirts! Also no, he's not that Travis, and yes I can prove it.
• GUESS I SHOULD TALK ABOUT HOW THE GAME ACTUALLY PLAYS? Basically we're confined to a series of pre-determined paths, and can only choose which direction we're going down them, or which one to take when we reach a branch. Our enemies are the Heavens Smiles, gross blocky monster things that spawn all over the place. When we hear their distinctive laughter, it's time to switch to first person mode, hammer the scan button to make them less invisible, then shoot them until they're dead. If we hit their special weakpoints, we can kill them instantly and get more blood, which we can use to level up our little gang of murder men. We run around the various mazelike levels doing this until we've done all the NEEDED things and reach the end. Rinse and repeat until the game is over.
• EARLY ON WE ENCOUNTER A DUPLICATOR SMILE. It's basically just a giant mess of vaugely organic grossness that continually spits out eggs containing additional heavens smiles. It's presence here is basically just an in-game tutorial on weakpoints and charge shots. Killing it rewards us with some one on one time with Travis, and a SOUL SHELL, which is something I'll explain later.
• HARMAN ROOMS. Various doors on your path will lead to these rooms, which provide a variety of services. If you go to the TV you can switch between your available characters, and convert your blood into upgrade points. You can find Iwazaru in the back of the room where he'll dole out long-winded explanations for gameplay mechanics. I will never, ever do this. This is also where you can save your game via... THE SAVE MAID. But only if the room is dark! The Save Maid is weird like that.
• I SWITCH TO CON SMITH. Con's a punkass who likes to go fast, so I relate to him on a deeply personal level.
• MEET YOON-HUN. Yoon's basically our hint ghost. If you talk to him normally, he'll politely guide you towards the solution to whatever puzzle is nearby. if you shoot his mask, he'll steal some of your blood reserves, then rudely spell out the solution in no uncertain terms while flipping you off. He'll be KINDA important to the story way, WAY later in the game, but 90% of the time it's just obvious solutions for obvious puzzles, so I'm probably gonna skip him a lot.
• MEET KESS BLOODYSUNDAY. That sure is a name. Kess is the ghost of a murdered kid who was himself a murderer! He talks a lot about how freaked out he is by everything, which, yeah okay, fair.
• "MEET" JOHNNY GAGNON. Johnny doesn't actually show up in person, opting instead to contact us via letters sent by carrier pigeons. The pigeons are all named after Bond Girls, because Johnny's a fan.
• MEET SUSIE SUMNER. Most of the ghosts we've encountered are weird, translucent people, but Susie Bucks that particular trend by being a non-see-thru severed head. When we talk to her, she gives returns our fire ring, then asks us to please leave her alone so she can resume tumbling around in the dryer. Weird girl.
• I SWITCH TO COYOTE SMITH TO UNLOCK A DOOR. He's the only Smith that knows how to jimmy a padlock. Please note that he holds his gun "gangsta style", and that Iwazaru thinks he's "just a petty thief" who doesn't deserve to be a part of the syndicate. Damn dude, don't sugarcoat it for us or anything.
• PUZZLES! Get this guys! I had to light the candles... IN THE ORDER OF THE NUMBERS! But first I needed to turn the air conditioner off! because it kept blowing out my candles! Also, I'm just gonna put "puzzles" in scare quotes from now on because seriously.
• LOLDEAD. Immediately after our victory over the "puzzle" I forget how to turn around when facing a horde of monsters, causing Dan to get exploded to death. How will the Smiths find a way to cope with the loss of their team's scariest motherfucker, who is very definitely dead forever and never coming back?
  Find out... Next time!

TRANSCRIPTIONS

Oh my LORD I didn't know how bad I needed this.

It's only one person on-screen when Garcian recreates the Abbey Road cover, but Garcian is at that point the host for four actual killers (Dan, Con, Coyote, and Kaede).

Also I was a teenage idiot when I first played so I didn't notice that Iwazaru's weird gimp mask was strangely reminiscent of the Japanese nationalist rising sun symbol and normally I'd write that off as coincidence, except Suda51 drinks from the Gimp Mask Character Design well quite frequently and this is the only character that has that.

Plus, it's impossible to read too much (or too little) into Killer7.

"BEAT'S HEART GREW THREE SIZES THAT DAY."

As an adult idiot, who is on his 4th or 5th playthrough, I didn't notice this until you pointed it out. Good catch!

Killer7 is equal parts poignant mind-blowing symbolism and meaningless gibberish that's just there to confuse you, and nobody really knows which is which.

If we knew what it meant, it would just be Braid.

Even Suda?

Judging by the chronology of his work, Suda pretty clearly knows even less than we do.

To spoil something later on:

Suda's idea of a dramatic reveal of a villainous plot only works if you have literally zero idea how elections work.

This is, of course, a feature.

In which a dead man is brought back to life via rapid pressing of the A button. Also, Iwazaru's ex-wife is here.

NOTES

• "DON'T MAKE ME SAY IT AGAIN. I'M A CLEANER." Dan getting himself exploded at the end of the last video gives me a perfect excuse to talk about how dying works in Killer7. Every time you get a persona killed, you're taken back to the most recently visited Harman Room, where Garcian's profile will be selected by default. Take Garcian back to the crime scene, and he'll pick up the dead persona's remains so you can revive them with button-mashing. It's not a very harsh a penalty as far as video game deaths go, but you have to be VERY careful when playing as Garcian, because the only character he can't bring back to life is himself. If he gets killed on a retrieval mission, it's an immediate game over.
• ALSO, THE DEAD SMITH'S REMAINS ARE REPRESENTED BY BLOODY BROWN PAPER BAGS. Like a sack lunch, only instead of a sammich it's a human head.
• "NOW THAT IS A GOOD FUCKIN BEER." No BEAT Let's Play is complete without at least once instance of me abandoning my computer mid-recording to get alcohol. That shit's been happening since Bad Rats. It's practically my calling card.
• BATHROOM PUZZLE. We use the fire ring to set off the sprinkler system in the 3rd floor bathroom. This allows us to flush the toilet, which causes an odd engraving to tumble out of the broken pipe in the laundry room downstairs. Killer7 is a very logical game.
• I GUESS I SHOULD MENTION THE ODD ENGRAVINGS? We actually got one last video for solving the candle "puzzle", I just totally blanked on mentioning it. They're basically glorified keys, similar to the crests or carvings in a Resident Evil game. In this case, we put the two we've obtained into an electrical box, which causes all the bookshelves in the library to slide out of our way.
• MASK DE SMITH BEST SMITH! Mask De Smith can blow up cracked walls to open up additional paths! How? LUCHADOR MAGIC THAT'S HOW.
• MEET MIZARU. At various points in the game, you'll see a lady in a white gimp suit, hanging around on the ceiling. That's Iwazaru's ex-wife, Mizaru. No idea what caused that relationship to fall apart, I mean, they seem like they were made for eachother. Her presence signifies that there's a barrier of some sort nearby that only Kaede can break by, uh, slashing her wrists. You guys all read the trigger warning I put in the prologue post, right? Ok cool just checking. Anyways, breaking this particular barrier leads us to a table covered in Jewelry, where we find our second SOUL SHELL.
• KAEDE CAN ALSO ABSORB BLOOD. This is also accomplished via slashing wrists. Because reasons. We use it here to change a bloody message from HOW SOON IS NOW to NO. A marked improvement, in my opinion. Also it's the passcode we need for the next door I guess whatever.
• CAN I JUST SAY HOW MUCH I LOVE THE GREEN ROOM'S VISUALS? Just, MAN! Such a great use of the game's artstyle! So fucking good.
• THEN WE REACH THE VINCULUM GATE. We'll be visiting this place a bunch of times over the course of the game, but each time will follow the same pattern:
  • An ordinary door will take us to The Gatekeeper, who will only let us pass if we've found all the level's SOUL SHELLS, so yeah there was an actual reason for us to collect those things.
  • We will then ascend of a short flight of stairs while listening to a Fucking Sick Techno Track.
  • The stairs exit into The Colosseum, which is a massive, ruined building. In the center of this building is a small concrete structure with a shuttered door, that our path will always take us tantalizingly close to before veering off to a different exit. Kess Bloodysunday will be found waiting by our exit, where he'll warn us about a monster on the other side.
  • The exit will take us to an area that looks like the rest of the level, where we'll encounter a Queen Smile, which is a fancy word for miniboss. in this level it's the speed smile, who jerks around as it approaches, making it harder to shoot.
  • Once the smile's dead, we walk through a little lobby area and down a short flight of stairs, where we can listen to more Awesome Techno.
  And then it's over, and we're back in the level proper. And if we turn around and go back through the door we just came through, we'll end up in whatever room we were in before all that nonsense started. It's almost like that whole series of impossible events was all in our imagination or something.
• IN THE NEXT HARMAN ROOM I REACH THE LEVEL'S BLOOD CAP. Each level will only let you convert so much blood into upgrade vials before the machine stops working. It's not hard to reach the max by just playing normally, but if you don't reach it, you can just replay the level to farm up more kills until you hit the cap. I generally blow all my vials on Dan and Con, so it won't be long before my team's power dynamic is lopsided as hell.
• "LET'S RIDE AN ELEVATOR! IT'S EXCITING!" Where's this elevator go? Find out... next time!

TRANSCRIPTIONS

BEAT: Okay, what does this say? "How soo... ne nowl"?
Kalir: "How soon is now."
BEAT: Ohhh "How SOON is NOW" okay, okay.

I don't know - two bottoms doesn't seem like it would work very well.

I came here to make this joke but I was too slow so instead I'll meme.



(I guess that's pretty NSFW but come on you're in the Killer Fucking 7 thread, this is the most wholesome thing you'll get here.)

There's a total of three gimps. Ceiling gimp is Kikazaru, who is the game's way of saying "yo there's a soul shell here" and who is, to use Iwazaru's words, "a total freak". Mizaru is exclusively summoned by Kaede for hemomancy reasons.

Yeah but if you count his work in No More Heroes there's way more gimp suits.

Yes, but how many of them were in a relationship?

In which we meet an Angel, a Devil, and a God.

NOTES

• A CAMERA OUTSIDE OF THE ELEVATOR CHANGES US BACK INTO GARCIAN. Fortunately there aren't any threats in this part of the level that can kill him. Just a talk with Travis, and a (missable?) conversation with Kess. Also, Travis Calls us Emir for some reason. Weird guy.
• THEN ANOTHER CAMERA FORCES US TO CHANGE INTO THE PRIMARY SMITH: HARMAN. The Smiths's core persona appears as an old man in a wheelchair, pushed by our loyal Save Maid, Samantha Sitbon. The way the cutscene opens implies that she's wheeled him all the way to this point, and it's only now that he's taking over. She also vanishes in a same way that Harman appeared as soon as her boss is out of sight. Harman does not react to his attendant in any meaningful way. He just silently wheels himself forward into the next room, where he encounters...
• THE ANGEL. In a game full of highly stylized but relatively realistically proportioned humans, The Angel sticks out like a sore thumb. She's a full-blown anime, complete with huge eyes, glowing blush and unnerving smile. Oh and also four translucent wings. She gives an extremely anime speech that implies that she's the one who filled this building with Smiles and that she will punish Harman for going against her!
• HARMAN HAS NO TIME FOR THE ANGEL'S BULLSHIT. "Goodnight child, it's past your bedtime" is basically grumpy old man talk for "GTFO kid." He then draws his MASSIVE rifle, and blasts all four of her wings into oblivion. For a moment it looks like the Angel's down for the count, but then she picks herself back up and mocks us in a very different voice from the one she had a second ago. The wings on her back have been replaced by four red faces. Then a camera on the wall transforms us back into Dan Smith, meaning the cutscene's over, and it's time to get back to work.
• BOSS FIGHT TIME! All we have to do is stand still long enough for her to take aim, then run around the room while she's doing her big pyrokinesis thing and shoot the faces on her back. Hit all four, and she explodes into a mass of feathers. It takes me awhile, but it's not that hard, I just suck at video games. The whole thing is by far the most NORMAL fight in the game, which should tell you a lot about just how weird things are going to get.
• AFTER THE FIGHT, ANOTHER CAMERA TURNS US BACK INTO HARMAN. We wheel our way down a long hallway, and out into what's either a very oddly-designed balcony, or a portion of the building that's still under construction. Here we find the Angel we just killed, sitting in a chair at the end of the room. Behind her, a dude wearing a green coat fades in and out of existence. Shooting the angle only gets us some distortion effects and an insult. Shooting the Green dude causes the angle to explode for the final time, and kicks off a cutscene in which we...
• MEET KUN-LAN. Kun is the real cause behind the heaven's smiles, the Angle is something he just threw in for fun. You can find a full transcript of their conversation below, but what I want to draw your attention to is just how unconcerned both men are through their entire conversation. They hit eachother with corny lines and talk about their weekly chess games, neither bothered in the slightest about the fact that moments ago they were trying to kill eachother. This is made even odder by the fact that the only thing we can do as soon as their talk ends is draw Harman's rifle and aim it at Kun, like the talk they just had never happened at all.
• SHOOTING AT KUN CAUSES THE MOST IMPOSSIBLE THING EVER TO HAPPEN. Kun catches the bullet, and lets it drag him across town, landing on a building that looks an awful lot like the Space Needle. Even though the two are now miles apart, they're somehow able to continue their earlier conversation, which can be read in full below. Harman glares, Kun laughs. Smash cut to black.
• ANGEL: COMPLETE. The only post-level score tally we're given is a countdown of exterminated heaven's smiles. I killed 52, which is WAY more than the promised fourteen!

TRANSCRIPTIONS

The day when laughter
disappears from this world draws near.

I'm trying to write a wrap-up post for target Zero, but I suck at writing, so it's not done yet.

I did however, manage to half-finish the cast post! That's ALMOST like an update!

Con's hearing also helps to highlight broken walls that Mask can break, although they're already really obvious.

LEVEL WRAP-UP POSTS? SERIOUSLY?

Yeah seriously. There's a lot of stuff in this game that I know I'm gonna want to talk about that won't fit into a bulleted list beneath the youtube embed. I'm already dreading the amount of text I'm going to have to write for the next level Sunset, and, I don't even want to think about the crimes against language I'll be inspired to commit by Encounter. So I figured I'd better start off on the right foot and establish a pattern of following up each level with one of these, megaposts so I could be nice and consistent.

Only problem is: I don't really have that much to say about Angel all by itself. The game hasn't introduced most of the of the WEIRDER plot points yet and the one big "Waaait a second, something's OFF about this whole thing" moment with Harman and Kun at the end of the last video is something I'm saving for later, when we have a little more information to work with.

So in lieu of a bunch of babble about plot points that haven't really been introduced yet, here's a story from YUNG BEAT'S sordid past!

A STORY ABOUT MY FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH THIS LEVEL.

I pre-ordered Killer7 as soon as I could after I saw the first trailer. The day it was released, I picked it up from my local gamestop, went straight to my Gameube and dove right in!

And then the next day I went back to Gamestop and sold it for store credit.

I immediately hated the on-rails controls, and couldn't understand why the game wouldn't just let me go wherever I wanted, like it was supposed to. I kept getting annoyed by the gimps and ghosts kept talking to me with their slow text that you couldn't advance on command! I didn't understand how the death mechanics worked, so tried to play as the cool dude with the suitcase and got a game over. Then I reached the scene with the lady who's missing her entire back and just turned my Gamecube off. Then a few years later I saw it going for 5 bucks at a used game store, and decided to give it a second chance based on my ALL CONSUMING LOVE for No More Heroes.

So does the fact that Angel made me quit in disgust mean it's a bad introduction? Looking on it now with the gift of hindsight and a full understanding of my long history with this game, do I think they should have done anything differently?

Hell no I wouldn't change a fucking thing.

There's a very good reason for Angel to be the way it is: Because it's the introduction to goddamn Killer7.

I mean seriously. You gotta establish the tone.

INTERLUDE: WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING?
THE MANUAL
WHICH OBVIOUSLY DOESN'T COME WITH THE STEAM VERSION BUT WTFEVER.

So if you're like me (you're not THERE'S ONLY ONE BEAT) you probably dive into whatever game you're playing the moment it's out of it's plastic wrap without giving the manual a single thought. Then maybe a few days later, you'd pull it out for some idle couch reading, only to absent-mindedly leave it on the armrest, where it's discovered by your mom and determined to be "garbage". And that's why my Gamecube copy of Killer7 no longer has a little instructional pamphlet!

If you're like the vast majority of people on this forum, who feel that video game manuals are a beautiful lost art that must be preserved at all costs, you probably now want to murder me in cold blood! To which I say... eh... yeah. Fair.

Fortunately for all of us, GoggleBob was able to hook me up with a scan of his manual which he kept in pristine condition. And it's a good thing too, because the Killer7 manual is one of those impossibly rare creations that actually adds insight to the game beyond the obvious "push the stick to move the guy" or "pull the trigger to shoot the gun". There's a surprising amount of effort put into this little pamphlet, the kind rarely seen in it's contemporaries.

So now that this LP is past the introductory chapter, we're right at the point where I'd remember that manuals are a thing. So let's take a look at this humble little booklet, and see just what it has to offer.

PAGES 00-07
COVER & INTRODUCTION


I think it's kinda cool that the banner on the game's steam page is based on the manual cover instead of any of the game's boxes. Also worth noting is the abbreviated version of the game's backstory on pages 6-7. None of that shit came up in the level we just played! Maybe we'll see some of it next chapter.

PAGES 08-13
CHARACTERS


Okay, these 6 pages are the ENTIRE REASON I'M EVEN DOING A MANUAL POST, so you'd better be fucking grateful for their heroisim.

Most game manuals of the PS2 era are dry exercises in technical writing, a bunch of matter of fact instructions on how to play video games, written under the assumption that their reader has never held a controller in their life. Killer7 injects some much needed character to it's manual by presenting it as written by, well, a character. And who better to instruct us on the game than our actual in-game instructor/manservant ghost gimp, Iwazaru!

Iwazaru's presence as the author is more than just a cute literary trick to give the text more personality. His gossiping lets us see the Smiths from his perspective, and learn things about the group and Iwazaru himself that might not be obvious in-game. You can read as much or as little into his blurbs as you want, but here's what jumped out at me.

• Iwazaru's reverence towards Harman seems completely legit. Going by what we've seen in the game so far, yeah, that tracks.
• He doesn't seem to have any strong feelings one way or the other towards Garcian or Con. His profiles on Travis and Christopher Mills are similarly matter-of-fact.
• He doesn't actually seem to know much about Kevin at all. The guy just doesn't open up to people.
• He obviously doesn't have anything nice to say about Kaede, but that might be be spillover resentment towards his ex-wife.
• He openly trash-talks Coyote and Mask, Coyote I understand, but Mask? That dude's awesome! What the fuck, Iwazaru?
• He reveals that Dan only barely tolerates Garcian, and would jump at the chance to straight up murder Harman. I might be reading too much into it, but it almost sounds like Iwazaru's afraid of him.
• He calls Kun Lan "the root of all evils" and reveals that this back-and-forth with Harman has been going on for decades. He also casually lets slip that Harman has actually straight up killed Kun in the past, so I guess dying didn't really do much to slow him down.

PAGES 14-27
TYPICAL "HOW TO PLAY" BULLSHIT


Sadly, after the character profiles, the manual seems to completely forget about it's cool written-in-character conceit, and starts to read like every other piece of video-game technical writing. I get that there's not THAT much you can do to liven up "Push the stick to pick your path", but it's like they didn't even try! I mean, just look at pages 20-21! There's a whole box about Iwazaru himself that's just dying to be written in first person, and you can't tell me that the little blurb on the SAVE MAID wouldn't benefit from from a few resentful comments about how he's the better of Harman's two attendants. Worst of all, look what they made poor Travis do!


Oh Travis. I'm so sorry man. You didn't deserve that.

PAGES 28-31
CREDITS & ADVERTISEMENTS AND WARRANTY STUFF.


If you asked me to make a list of games with great merchandising potential, Killer7 wouldn't make the top 50. I'd always assumed that the action figures never saw an actual release. Killer7 didn't exactly set any sales records, and given that the characters in the ad are obviously renders of their in-game models instead of plastic figurines, I figured that any sort of actual production of toys was still at a stage where Capcom could still hit the breaks and cut their losses. So imagine my surprise when a quick google search revealed that at least SOMETHING got committed to plastic!


As for the comic book, all I know is that at least one issue got released. I have vague memories of reading a review of it way back in 2005 that described it as "Kinda eh". I can't really say I have much faith in the ability of Kinetic Komikz to distill this fucked up artgame into a coherent visual narrative, and even less faith that the whole thing didn't get canceled long before it was complete. Maybe I'll do some digging on some lazy weekend, see if any of those questionably-legal comicreader sites have an old scan or something, but I really doubt it'd be worth the effort.

In which we watch a movie, then watch a movie, then watch a movie, then watch a movie, then die.

NOTES

• I HOPE YOU GUYS LIKE EXPOSITION! Because this update is easily 90% cutscenes! I'll try to give you all the bullet-point version up here, but honestly you're probably better off just skipping straight down to the transcripts below. Now they all have fun screenshots, which I made just for you!
• WE START WITH A LONG ANIME MOVIE THAT SORTA EXPLAINS THE SETTING. Short version: humanity obtained world peace in 1998! (Yaaay!) All of terrorisim was eradicated, because they got rid of the internet and airplanes, and built highways across the oceans! (Uhhh?) But then in 2003, terrorists came back! And their only goal was terror! (Oh no!) And the only ones that could stop these terrorists was a group of professional murders called the Killer 7. (Hey, that's the name of the game!)
• THEN WE'RE TREATED TO GARCIAN'S MORNING ROUTINE. Garcian's breakfast is interrupted by a coded message on his answering machine. He then goes into the other room to see a borderline psychotic Samantha, brutally abusing an apparently catatonic Harman. When Garcian turns out the lights, Harman is suddenly much more lucid, and Samantha much less openly sadistic. Then the lights go back off and everything's back to the way it was.
• BEFORE WE LEAVE THE TRAILER, LET'S TAKE A QUICK LOOK AROUND. So in the back of the hallway that leads to Harman's room, we can find two doors. One of them's covered in a variety of bolted-on padlocks and deadbolts, and the other one's a straight up safe, like the kind you'd find on a bank vault. We can't open either of them.
• ALSO, HORRIBLE SCREAMING. Something in this nightmare trailer is constantly making horrible screaming noises. I don't think it's supposed to be Harman suffering Samantha's abuse, because 1.) he was pretty non-responsive earlier, and 2.) Samantha just left for "class". Presumably there's someone or something stuck behind those locked doors, and whoever or whatever it is isn't very happy about it.
• THEN WE CUT TO A SITUATION ROOM IN WASHINGTON DC. In it, a bunch of very worried military officials panic over an upcoming international incident. Apparently a salvo of nuclear missiles have been launched at Japan Estimated time of impact is 18 hours from now. Tellingly, we're never told who launched the nukes. The apparent senior officer, one General Spencer solemnly calls the president, awaiting his assessment. The scene ends before the president can respond.
• THEN WE CUT TO GARCIAN AND CHRISTOPHER MILLS MEETING ON AN OVERPASS. Mills briefly talks about the situation developing in Japan, then presents Garcian with his mission briefing. We're to go to the Fukushima restaurant in Washington DC, Then kill its owner, Toru Fukushima. Apparently he's some sort of bigshot intermediary between the US and Japan, and how this operation plays out will affect the US's choice to intervene in the missile strike that's rapidly approaching the island nation. It's also implied that the nation that launched this strike against japan was the US itself. Probably. Maybe. I guess?
• ONE TRANSITION LATER AND WE'RE FINALLY ACTUALLY PLAYING THE VIDEO GAME AGAIN. About fucking time! Hi Iwazaru, good to see you again! Let's just go into this very fancy resturaunt and OH HEY YET ANOTHER CUTSCENE.
• HOW MANY IN YOUR PARTY? Instead of reserving a table, Mask politely tells the wait staff that he's here to kill their boss. The wait staff politely respond by turning into into smileys, who are then politely exploded. A very cordial meeting, to be sure.
• OKAY NOW WE CAN FINALLY ACTUALLY PLAY THE VIDEO GAME! We start this level with only Mask, Coyote and Kaede playable, so I'm gonna have to do some murderin before I can start bulldozing everything with Dan, as is my wont. But hey, at least this is a good opportunity to show off Kaede's long range scope! Let me just switch to her and-
• LOLDEAD LOL RIP IN PEAS KAEDE. See you next video.

TRANSCRIPTIONS

HEY I'M GONNA STEAM/RECORD IN LIKE 45 MINS.

SO 10:30 EST.

YEAH.

https://www.twitch.tv/beatishate

EDIT:

FUCK IT LET'S DO IT NOW.
https://www.twitch.tv/beatishate

GOOD NEWS: I managed to fix my OBS settings! Future updates should look significantly less awful!

BAD NEWS: Fixing my settings mid-stream means I'm gonna have to do some NON-YOUTUBE editing. Anybody know any good free video editors?

In which I waste everybody's time repeating the same small area because I suck at staying alive.

NOTES

• OKAY LET'S GO PICK UP KAEDE'S SEVERED HEAD I GUESS. Hey remember when the second update started in the exact same way? I'm good at video games you guys.
• I TELL MY TECH SUPPORT/DRAGONBALL STORY. That time I needed a guy at work to fix my computer and he saw my Goku cable bite and we both agreed that Goku was just the best.
• WE GET TO SEE COYOTE'S *OTHER* PRIMARY USE. He has like, a 10-foot vertical jump. Amazingly, instead of using it to just leap fucking everywhere as any sane human who could do that would obviously do, He just uses it to hop up a level whenever we reach a dead end. We don't even comment on it in the video, as we're too busy trying to make a comprehensive list of all the Gokus.
• OH HEY SUSIE. While running around on the roof with Coyote, we stumble across Susie Sumners, hiding inside a cabinet. She gives us back our water Ring, which will be useful for solving some puzzles, and tells us a story about how she hated school so much, she jumped out the window, so she'd get to go to the hospital instead! Haha, you silly kids and your wacky get-out-of school antics!
• THEN SHE CASUALLY DROPS THAT SHE ALSO MURDERED HER MOM. That's... significantly less wacky. Hey, you guys all read that trigger warning in the prologue post, right? Okay, just checking.
• OH ALSO I JUST REALIZED MY TRANSCRIPTION SOURCE IS KINDA FUDGING SUSIE'S EMOTICONS. It's all minor shit, like her greeting being ('-')/ instead of ('–')ﾉ. I tried "fixing" a few of them, but then I stopped because scouring tables of unicode symbols to replace [] with ▯ turned out to be a pain in the ass. I'll try to keep an eye out for cases where it's so off it could change the meaning of what she's saying, but I'm not gonna lose sleep over the difference between ｀ and '.
• TRAVIS EXPLAINS THE PLOT. Our dead friend with the fun T-shirts tries his very best to tell us what's going on, but at this point I can't really give much insight beyond what's in the below transcriptions. Maybe next video things'll start coming together?
• OH BOY IT'S A NEW ENEMY! Meet the bombhead smiles. You can only shoot them when the bombs on their heads are open, otherwise they teleport to you and immediately explode. They're probably among the easiest smiles to kill. Unfortunately I suck at video games, so...
• LOLDEAD. Dammit Coyote, this is why I always play as Dan!
• THE LAST FIVE MINUTES OF THE VIDEO ARE JUST A LONGFORM DEMONSTRATION OF KILLER7'S REAL PUNISHMENT FOR FAILURE. You gotta re-do everything since the last Harman room as Garcian for the body retrival, then do the whole thing AGAIN as a normal character just to get back where you were. The whole runaround takes us all the way to the end of this video, where I discover that Coyote died literally two feet from a different Harman, room, and if I'd just had the sense to go there first, I could have saved us all five minutes. Fuck this bullshit art game!

TRANSCRIPTIONS

I moved some posts around so I could fit in a breakdown of the Game's Manual!

It's located after the first chapter ends! Mirroring my IRL habit of not even remembering that the manual is a THING until long after I've already started playing.

Is it because he's a Mexican wrestler, Iwazaru? Would you totally mark out and start praising Mask if he was from NJPW?

In which Mask does the most AWESOME THING EVER, and then we babble about random bullshit while solving a puzzle.

NOTES

• OH SNAP IT'S DAN TIME. Hell yeah I fuckin love Dan.
• AFTER A LITTLE BIT OF RUNAROUND WE HIT ANOTHER BARRIER, HIDING ANOTHER DUPLICATOR. Surprisingly, I don't think there's anything behind the duplicator that we actually need to finish the level, just another chance to hang out with Travis. I'm not complaining tho. Travis is the shit.
• A LITTLE LATER WE RUN INTO YET ANOTHER NEW TYPE OF SMILE. The Spiral Smiles are gigantic balls that slowly roll towards you, occasionally exposing their enormous green weakpoints as they rotate. They're probably the single easiest smile to kill in the whole game. They're also the first smile we've encountered (the bird things that just cause a blindness effect nonwithstanding) that arent' even a little bit human. Not the weirdest thing, given that just a few minutes ago we saw smiles hatch from eggs, but still weird.
• ANOTHER "PUZZLE". We find an empty vase, looking at it makes our water ring yell "HEY YOU SHOULD USE ME!" Using it makes a painting change colors, allowing us to spin it around to get a new odd engraving. Also Yoon-Hyun is there I guess. Whatever.
• "FUCK YOU, SARGON OF AKKAD." Never a bad time to call out alt-right edgelords on their bullshit.
• MASK'S BIG MOMENT. So obviously I love this cutscene for mask's BULLETPROOF HEADBUTT, but I also want to draw attention to the way the Chef acts before he pulls the trigger. Limitations of the character models and Gamecube-era animation aside, it always struck me as more of a deliberate assassination attempt then a frightened man firing in self-defense, even before the creepy grin at the end confirms our suspicion. This game is pretty cool you guys.
• THEN WE ARRIVE AT THE THIS LEVEL'S MAIN CHALLENGE. Essentially we're placed in a diamond-shaped map with a house at each of the four compass directions. At our entrace there's a map, that assigns an animal to each direction. We have to go to each house and pick their corresponding animal. Like most of Killer7's puzzles, it's more time-consuming than it is difficult.
• ANOTHER NEW SMILE TYPE. Meet the very creatively-named Another Smile. They crawl along the ceiling, instead of walking on the floor. They die like chumps. MOVING ON.
• I BABBLE A LITTLE ABOUT MY PRIOR LET'S PLAYS. I've been meaning to do a THEN VS NOW kinda thing on Let's Read Star Fox Command for awhile now. The whole thing was a very weirdly personal creation, and I'm curious to see if any of it holds up.
• AT 19:40 I GET A COUNTER KILL. These are special kill animations that unlock after a few level-ups, which your characters will bust out if a crawling foe gets too close. In this case, it's Dan, carelessly stomping clean through a smile's head. Very Dan move, IMO.
• I WONDER HOW MUCH LONGER I CAN PUT OFF TALKING ABOUT TRAVIS'S MUSINGS ON THE PLOT? At least one more update! Maybe more.
• SOLVING ALL THE HOUSES CAUSES A DRAWBRIDGE TO COME CRASHING DOWN. Where's it lead? Find out, Next time!

TRANSCRIPTIONS