Note: This article contains minor spoilers for AI: The Dream File Nirvana Begins.
Five hours into the game time, I played the first ending in this reasoning AVG: I went to the seaside city with a big-breasted beauty at the front desk to indulge in pleasure.
it’s this sister
At that time, the character I controlled in the game was an investigator with a poor mental state. In the face of all kinds of crazy cases, I was working hard and looking for evidence when I suddenly had a fight with the front desk of the artist office. beautiful sister eloping thoughts.
Immediately, the camera of the game turned from the bright and clean building to the sea: goodbye, my police life. After typing a few big words in front of the screen, my character officially announced that he was quitting.
He spent the rest of his life in Atami City, Shizuoka Prefecture
If you have played the previous game, you should be familiar with such nonsense. This is “Dreamland File”, a classic Kotaro-style work that combines beautiful girls, pornographic jokes and incredible mysteries.
Not long ago, the sequel to the series “AI: The Beginning of Nirvana in the Dream Archives” was just released, and it has maintained a “particularly praise” on Steam so far.
Behind the praise, players have given very different feedback on the game. Some players say that this is obviously a more sophisticated reasoning work than the previous generation, but more players remain skeptical about it. The game, it’s hard to say if it’s a real improvement.
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Like the first generation, the story of “The Beginning of Nirvana” also has a fascinating opening: in a studio, a half corpse that was cut in half with molecular precision suddenly appeared. Six years later, the other half of the body reappeared in another place.
The forensic doctor concluded that the two corpses died only one day apart—as if they had traveled through time and space.
But what needs to be explained in advance is that although the “Dreamland Archives” series has always called itself “intuitive reasoning” in its announcements, in fact it neither follows the laws of realistic logic, nor has anything to do with classical Japanese-style intrinsic reasoning: The most important way to collect evidence in the game is to “drill into the insider’s brain”.
This “drilling into the brain” process is called Psync in the game.
In a Psync, players need to use the ability of AI personality to read the witness’s subconscious, interact with the elements in his memory, break open the shackles in the witness’s heart, and release the secrets they have hidden in their hearts. “origin of.
What has puzzled players since the beginning of the previous game is that this process of “searching dreams” is almost completely irregular and illogical – after all, this is a dream, and it is not unusual for anything to happen in a dream.
For example, the dream you are trying to search comes from a lonely teenager. When you try to open a locked cabinet in the dream, you will find that not only can you not open it violently, but you can’t open the door even if you find the key. The player never thought that the correct answer would be “give the cabinet a hug”.
It is not uncommon for the game world to suddenly turn upside down
This may be part of the charm of “Dreamland Archives”, that is, the escape in the game is “unreasonable to a certain extent”, and the player can’t guess the next plot even if he kills them, and he can’t make guesses according to common sense. Can obediently wait for the author to present the follow-up development to you.
Therefore, whenever a player intends to try any “Dreamland Archives”, try not to over speculate on the plot development of the story-if you try to speculate the plot with the “law of reality logic”, you will inevitably fall into “Are you all crazy?” ” in doubt.
Of course, for players who can imagine chasing a rocket on a motorcycle, congratulations must be given to him for chasing Kotsuko Taro’s brain hole at the same time.
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Back to “The Beginning of Nirvana”.
Since the plot of “The Beginning of Nirvana” is closely connected with the first generation, the development team obviously took into account the player experience of the first contact with the series. Just in less than ten minutes of the game, the system will ask the player the question: Have you played the previous generation of games?
Of course played. When I saw the question, I didn’t hesitate to choose OK, but I didn’t expect it to have a backhand – the second question immediately appeared: So, please, do you remember which character was injured in the right leg in the final battle? ?
I was a little flustered. It has been more than a year since the previous game was cleared. Although many important plots are still vivid in my mind, I can’t remember such details after all. I decided to take a gamble: if you give me two options, I can still remember how much, Four… It’s okay, there are only a few people in the final decisive battle, it’s always not too much difference.
I selected “remember”, and the result… the screen jumped out of the keyboard typing input box.
It was a fill-in-the-blank question.
This kind of “purity test” for old players is a bit too strict, but fortunately, it won’t let you miss any specific game content, but you will miss some small easter eggs.
There are also some elements that have appeared in the previous work. In order to explain to the player, a small scroll bar is added to the top of the game, which means that the AI speaks directly to the player, explaining something “explained in the previous work” or “and” The past settings do not match” section.
For this scroll bar, I have been secretly expecting that it will have some META elements: for example, is it possible to allow AI to directly talk to the player in this way, in order to hide the “player-controlled character”, conspiracy to sacrifice himself to save the world. Neil-esque moments, or in that way it could hint at me in front of the screen to make some decisions that deviate from the character’s original intent. These are just my assumptions, the role of the scroll bar itself is just the scroll bar.
But even if the game is very friendly to new players, trying again after playing the previous game will still add a lot to your experience. After all, the bond with the character is one of the most important background sounds in the “Dream Files” series. Without these, The surprises, turning points, and the advent of mysterious characters in the new work may seem almost meaningless in terms of experience.
The time span of the two works is as long as six years. It is somewhat gratifying to watch the boys and girls grow up.
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Compared with the previous work, the biggest improvement of “Nirvana Begins” is that the dream part of the game has become more logical.
“More logical” may not be so accurate, in other words, the trial and error cost of Psync interactions in games has become lower. The dreams in the previous work have no rules and are of various colors. At first glance, they are very fresh, but when playing, they often need to use an exhaustive method to click through the interactive parts of the entire screen one by one.
This process wastes too much time, and a dream trip can be stressful or have to start all over again.
For example, in the abandoned factory at the end of the first generation, there is a story about opening doors that I will never forget. I need to find the keys in order to open all the doors of the factory. I don’t know how many times I have tossed it back and forth.
Kotaro Takoshi, who may like to surf the Internet, enthusiastically received suggestions from players. In short, in “The Beginning of Nirvana”, Psync changed the previous gameplay, so that almost every dream has a clear theme.
For example, the dream of little angel Elise has been made into a game similar to “Pokémon GO”. As for the “Pokémon” in it, it is the NPC character in the game, and there are also strong and weak points. It is necessary to use the player’s understanding of NPC to “conquer” it.
After playing for a long time in other unfamiliar and cruel themes of dreams, a bright and relaxed Pokémon gameplay suddenly appeared. This kind of contrast full of thoughts is the most interesting part of this generation of “Dream Files”.
In other dreams, Psync is sometimes a quiz competition, sometimes a cooking competition. Players no longer need to go shopping in dreams like headless flies, but have a clear purpose: to win the game, You can win clues, and the characters in the game will tell you everything you hide after waking up.
Whether it is to subdue Pokémon or practice cooking skills, the dream interaction in “The Beginning of Nirvana” has brought a qualitative change to the monotonous Psync gameplay in the first generation.
Quiz quiz is really hard
In some dreams that are more closely related to the main line, there is even a dream version of the escape room puzzle. You can only go to the next room by unlocking the password on the wall. It is more like “Extreme Escape”.
“Escape the Crimson Room”
All in all, Nirvana Begins has done a lot to make Psync’s game content more in line with its rich concept in the setting.
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Add in these well-designed puzzles, and it stands to reason that “AI: The Dream File Nirvana Begins” should have been a more player-friendly work, but the actual situation does not seem so optimistic.
Regardless of the changes, players can read that the producers tried to make Nirvana Begins a more comprehensive product. They tried to “add food” from all angles: the game added an electronic pet, which needs to be fed into different forms by answering questions every 20 minutes; the cute AI personality has an extra-dimensional space for psychological counseling, players can Here, ask and AI in-depth exchange of poetry, songs and philosophy of life.
But any of these “embellishments” have hardly been widely discussed by players after the release.
The electronic pet consultation that occurs every 20 minutes is regarded as an anti-addiction tip by me
The same goes for the beautiful girl elements in the game. In the previous work, A-set (Elise), who was a popular online idol, just rode the wave of virtual anchors. Not only did she open a personal Weibo, but she also opened a YouTube channel as a Vtuber to build momentum. She was in the game. The character image of a girl who loves dancing and vitality is also deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and has become one of the most difficult characters for players to give up.
In “The Beginning of Nirvana”, this happiness tripled: there are three beautiful girls who love singing and dancing, and have a good figure. But in the limited plot, it is impossible to evenly distribute the scenes to everyone. Under the “divide” plot of many characters, not only did the first-generation male protagonist Ida disappear throughout the whole process, but the characters were too flat and the characters were not full of motivation. an unavoidable problem.
This kind of “excessive force” is also reflected in the plot. The blockbuster of this work is buried in the second half of the plot, but as the game progresses with more and more complicated content and elements, the player’s brain will It becomes more and more confusing (physically), sometimes resulting in a situation of “worry over surprise”.
Of course, as a sequel, “The Beginning of Nirvana” can already be called a decent and complete answer: the game content is enriched, and the core system has made considerable innovations. It’s just that when the audience reads out the work, in order to cling to an “unguessable trick” and instead make compromises in other aspects, it will be somewhat regrettable.
Epilogue
When I played the original AI: The Dream File, I deliberately dragged the game for a long time, and even on an instant-play console like the Switch, it took nearly a month on and off.
After all, in the past two years, being able to fully enjoy a suspenseful reasoning AVG with a novel concept, wandering back and forth in the dense narrative tricks and the joy of uncovering the answer, is a thing worth cherishing.
In fact, whether it is the first generation or the sequel, the sales of “Dream Files” can always be described as bleak. According to the information that can be found, the sales volume of the first generation of the game in Japan was not even 10,000 in the first week. On the contrary, Chinese players barely supported the sales volume. It is no wonder that Kotsuko Taro quickly opened Sina Weibo after the game was released. Come and thank the Chinese players.
The development of “The Beginning of Nirvana” also seems to be a bit stretched: the game optimization has obvious flaws, and according to player feedback, there are occasional crashes (although I have not encountered them). When a player asked if there would be a PS5 version of the game, Tayue replied pitifully that “the funds are insufficient”, and a few days ago, he once said that the studio was “very poor”.
The Dream Archives series isn’t perfect, but even such imperfect experiences are likely to become fewer and fewer in the future.
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