修羅界 HOTLINE MIFUNE (part 2)
...I don’t view myself as a murderer. Because killing isn’t my goal. You’ve heard of people who ‘kill like it’s as simple as breathing,’ right? Well, for me, if I don’t kill, it becomes hard to breathe. I’m just paying the train fare for this track I got on long ago. Or it’s like I’m perpetually repaying a loan.
NISIOISIN
Load up. Black screen.
Fade.
Developer splash.
【竹パン】
Fade.
Black screen.
Fade.
BGM: 幽玄会社 – けれども
【廾回卞し工几ヨ・冊工乍凵几ヨ】
【〜ホットライン・ミフネ〜】
Yeah, that's right. Back at it again. Last time, we – actually, fuck it, no recap. Recap not necessary. Recap never necessary. We're in the same thread, just scroll up. If your finger's cramped, cry about it. You thought we were done, but the reality is this is where we hit the nitrous. No time to lose. Hit CONTINUE. We're going. Go. Do it.
Smash cut to black.
【STAIRWELL】
BGM: 幽玄会社 – 彼岸帰航
We load back in. Instantly. Rasetsu is in the stairwell. Gym bag on his shoulder, blood dripping from his raincoat. Same shit, different floor. Stencils on the concrete indicate that this is the stairwell between 29F and 30F. This – is obviously not where we were last time. Last time we died a long way down below on 3F. We got killed by some kind of RPGMaker horror game jumpscare insta-death phenomenon. Usually they put those in to get streamers to make loud noises, but that one was sufficiently far off the beaten track to make you think Okura Shimeji had another motivation. We'll come back to that.
Now, as to why we're now in a different place. Full disclosure. After dying we started a new run off-camera, went back up through the Connected Discourses, and now we're here in the Collected Discourses as we were, just much higher up. Fundamentally our position is the same. You've missed nothing. Actually you have missed a few bosses, a few names and subtitles, as well as a few Enma dialogues, but the former are mostly unimportant and the latter we'll be providing in full elsewhere, so don't worry about it. By this point you know how HM plays, more or less, you know what we've been doing, there's nothing special and no point in covering it here because it's a whole lot of murder gameplay which is far better experienced than described. You're reading a Let's Play because you have – we do not hesitate to remind you – accepted the inherent limitations. If you wanted experiences you would be playing Hotline Mifune yourself, having taken the effort to get a link from someone on the Discord to a certain mega.nz folder containing a certain 535MB .rar file of which we are obliged by the forum TOS to disavow all knowledge. But you haven't done that, clearly, so why are you here? It's obvious, so obvious it barely even needs to be said. You are a pleb and a secondary but you want to win an argument in GD over some dumb bullshit, so you need us to interpret for you all these moon runes, these peculiar cuneiform inscriptions that you found on the funerary monument to Bamboo Bread's indie period. Many such cases. We don't judge. We just understand. And we're on the case, don't worry. Here to help. We're doing it live. Right now. We're in the stairwell. Who else is in the stairwell approximately one-sixth of the time? Correct, it's Enma. Here he is. Let's talk to him.
[ENMA] SO YOU ARE STILL ALIVE
[ENMA] THAT COULD COME IN USEFUL
[RASETSU] OBVIOUSLY
[ENMA] VERY FEW INDEED HAVE MADE IT THIS FAR
[ENMA] WHAT WITH ALL THE FORCES ARRAYED BEHIND THE OPPOSITION
[ENMA] THE BOSS HERE IS WELL CONNECTED
[ENMA] HE HAS THE BACKING OF COUNTLESS INTERESTS THROUGHOUT SOCIETY
[ENMA] NOT SO MUCH FOR HIS PERSONAL QUALITIES OF COURSE
[ENMA] BUT FOR THE RULE HE EMBODIES ADAMANTLY
[ENMA] CONTRACTS MUST BE HONOURED
[ENMA] DEBTS MUST BE REPAID
[ENMA] THAT IS THE LAW
Whenever Enma refers to "the law," which he often does, he uses the word [縁起] read as 'ritsu' according to the ruby text. Needless to say this is totally untranslatable. Don't even try. Normally this word 'engi' [縁起] is an 'omen' in the usual knock-on-wood sense. If the [縁起] of something is bad, that means it's raising a death flag. This word is originally a Buddhist term. It is how the concept of 'dependent origination' (look it up) was rendered in Chinese. The decidedly non-standard reading 'ritsu' is probably there to suggest the word [律] which means 'law' in the sense of a code or set of rules governing human conduct – a monastic rule for example. In the Heian period it referred specifically to the system of criminal law. You might interpret this as Enma identifying the two concepts: dependent origination, the arising of everything we usually call 'reality', is like the legal system, a code dictating certain crimes and their associated punishments. Or vice versa.
[ENMA] LAW INDEED IS THE RESPECTABLE FACE OF CRIME
[ENMA] BUT THESE CRIMINALS YOU FIND AROUND HERE
[ENMA] THESE YAKUZA OR GAMBLERS OR WHATEVER
[ENMA] IT SEEMS TO ME RATHER THAT THEY ARE THE UGLY FACE OF THE LAW
[ENMA] WHICH SHOWS ITSELF STRICTLY IN PROPORTION TO YOUR RESISTANCE
[RASETSU] I KNOW THAT WHAT I AM DOING IS ILLEGAL
[RASETSU] I AM DOING IT ANYWAY
[ENMA] MANY OTHERS HAD THE SAME IDEA
[ENMA] YOUR OTHER VERSIONS
Remember that the word rendered as 'versions' is [片反]. See the previous update for details.
[RASETSU] THEY ALL GOT KILLED
[ENMA] THEY WERE ALL MUCH LIKE YOU
[ENMA] DEBTORS IN SOME SENSE
[ENMA] THUS THE LAW BOUND THEM
[ENMA] THEIR MEANS WERE LIMITED
[ENMA] PAYING OFF THE INTEREST WAS THE MOST THEY COULD DO
[ENMA] DAY BY DAY
[ENMA] PAYING AND PAYING AND PAYING AND PAYING AND PAYING AND PAYING
[ENMA] BUT ONE DAY
[ENMA] THE IDEA CAME TO THEM THAT THEY WOULD NOT PAY
[ENMA] THAT IS THE IDEA OF EXITING FROM THE LAW
[ENMA] BUT THE LAW IS GENERALLY PERVASIVE AND THERE IS NO EXIT
[ENMA] NONE THAT IS READILY ACCESSIBLE ANYWAY
[ENMA] THERE WAS NO CHOICE BUT TO COME HERE
[ENMA] AND TRY TO ABSOLVE THE DEBT MANUALLY
Absolve? Enma says [祓い切り] instead of the usual [払い切り], i.e. 'to pay off a loan.' The pronunciation is the same but he has replaced the character for 'pay off' with another meaning 'exorcise (an evil spirit, etc.)'
[ENMA] IT DID NOT END WELL FOR THEM
[ENMA] THE IDEA WAS ONLY A MOMENTARY IMPULSE
[ENMA] IN ITS OWN WAY UNDERSTANDABLE BUT INSANE
[ENMA] TOO INSANE FOR THEM
[ENMA] THEY COULD NOT MAINTAIN IT IN ITS PURITY
[ENMA] IN ANOTHER MOMENT THEY WOKE UP
[ENMA] AND FOUND THEMSELVES HERE
[ENMA] WHERE THEY ALWAYS HAD BEEN IN A MANNER OF SPEAKING
[ENMA] BEFORE THE LAW
[RASETSU] THEY HAD BEEN COMPELLED TO ACT BY THAT IMPULSE
[RASETSU] IS THAT WHAT YOU MEAN TO SAY
[ENMA] NOT AT ALL
[ENMA] ONLY THE LAW COMPELS
[ENMA] THE LAW IS COMPULSION ITSELF
[ENMA] THE ORDER OF THIS WORLD
[ENMA] THE LAW COMPELS BECAUSE IT ACTS ON THE FLESH
[ENMA] THE FACE OF FLESH
[ENMA] ON THE CONTRARY THE IMPULSE IS FREE
[ENMA] IT IS FREE BECAUSE IT SHOWS THE TRUE FACE
[ENMA] THE TRUE FACE WHICH IS UNCONDITIONED
[ENMA] ACTING ON IMPULSE WAS PROBABLY THE ONLY FREE CHOICE THEY EVER MADE
[ENMA] AND THEY DIED NOT BECAUSE THE IMPULSE WAS INSANE
[ENMA] BUT BECAUSE THEY LACKED THE PURITY TO EMBODY IT
Conversation over. This is a long one. Should mention that you can hold down the attack button (mouse1 or RT by default) to skip conversations if you don't care to read them. A few more like this and Enma will have just outright explained the whole game to you. In fact that's exactly what he does; the idea that there are deep mysteries to Hotline Mifune which have to be investigated is really somewhat misleading. There is no mystery to HM. It's all right there on the surface. You just have to learn to see it.
Anyway, we leave Enma and walk up to the stairwell landing stenciled with 40F. Rasetsu takes his gym bag off the shoulder, puts it down, opens it up, and we're in the mask selection menu. You will notice immediately that we have more masks available than we did last time. Quite right. On the way back up to where we are now, we naturally went through a bunch of "Heaven" floors where we fought the bosses and got their drops. We now have the full suite of CONSCIOUS-grade masks. Let's examine the in the menu.
【CONSCIOUS HYENA】
【FEED ON CORPSES TO REGAIN FLESH】
【CONSCIOUS DOG】
【WEAPON IS UNBREAKABLE】
These ones you've seen already. Moving on.
【CONSCIOUS BIRD】
【MOVE FASTER KILL FASTER】
A grotesque, impressionistic take on a brightly-coloured, long-beaked hummingbird. It's not obvious, from the detail in which they're presented, what these masks are made of or how they stay attached to Rasetsu's head, but they do. Probably it's painted wood. Here there seems to be one or two stray pixels of a suggestion of some kind of string or ribbon which ties around the back. This one, as the subtitle suggests, is the SANIC mask. Gotta go fast. Rasetsu moves at 1.5x normal speed and attacks at 1.5x normal speed. You also parry and riposte faster, which will fuck up your muscle memory but it doesn't matter because you're not really meant to be parrying with this one, you just run circles around the enemies and stab them a lot.
【CONSCIOUS MONKEY】
【THROW HARDER】
No idea what kind of monkey this is supposed to be. It looks very smug. The subtitle is not quite clear. Normally – i.e. using other masks – you can right-click to throw the weapon Rasetsu is holding. If your thrown weapon hits an enemy, it'll kill them outright (or do a lot of damage, if it hits a boss). With MONKEY you do indeed, as it says, 'throw harder', to the point where your thrown weapons can pierce through as many enemies as you can get lined up in a row, killing all of them in the process. more importantly, weapons thrown with MONKEY will bounce off walls up to four times, retaining all their speed and piercing/damaging potential. This works for any weapon. Any. You can turn a small room into a blender. If you get the bounces angled properly this can insta-kill bosses.
Incidentally (this feature is not described in the manual) MONKEY masks also allow you to steal the weapons that enemies are holding. If you perform a perfect parry with your bare hands, you can – while the enemy is in their staggered, ripostable state – hit left-click to take their weapon just like picking one up off the floor normally. You can then riposte the enemy with their own weapon. It's not actually useful but it's very MLG.
【CONSCIOUS SNAKE】
【MAKE NO SOUND】
Cubist pixel-mosaic detail of a hissing krait. Big fangs, very scary. This one is fairly straightforward. With a SNAKE mask Rasetsu doesn't make noise when he moves, opens doors, swings his weapon, or kills people. Enemies will only react to you through direct line-of-sight. Not much else to say about it. Useful if you want to try being "stealthy" though there is no obvious advantage to doing that.
【CONSCIOUS CROCODILE】
【SURPRISE ATTACK】
A muddy green, vicious, snarling caiman. Perhaps the most interesting mask. If you equip it and enter a level the first thing you'll notice is that Rasetsu now moves much more slowly than usual – a casual walking pace, if that. The second thing you'll notice is that when you left-click, instead of swinging his weapon as per usual, Rasetsu swings his weapon while rapidly lunging forward in the direction of your aim. Very fast. Ridiculously fast, in fact. You just zooooom over in that direction, continuing until you hit an enemy or a piece of level geometry. This dash ability is on a cooldown, however, so if you zoom down a corridor and smash face-first into a wall at the other end, you'll be stuck there with your very slow walking speed for 8 whole seconds. Any attacks you perform during that time will behave normally, you just swing your weapon without zooming anywhere. Now this seems like a pretty shitty mask ability until you figure out the trick, which is that if your dashing attack terminates at an enemy – this kills the enemy, by the way – there's no cooldown at all. So if you are very precise and quick with your aim you can clear entire floors in a few seconds by just lunging from one guy to the next. It's actually possible to use CROCODILE to clear floors with no keyboard input whatsoever, moving entirely with mouse-aimed lunge attacks. This is the high-risk speedrun tech.
Anyway, for the time being, let's stop admiring the CONSCIOUS masks and select one. BIRD will do nicely. You may be wondering what other kinds of masks there are aside from these. Good question. Conveniently, we are just about to find out.
【COLLECTED DISCOURSES】
【40F::HEAVEN REALM】
BGM: 下司照ル - 死に礼拝せよ
The usual high-end corporate offices. You know what to do.
SFX: Extremely violent murder...
SFX:...at very high speed.
Something like that.
SFX: Using a cast-iron skillet to expertly block an opponent's downward katana slash before slipping past him to the left and quickly executing a takedown by slamming him facewise with the aforementioned skillet with enough force to project a spatter of bloody forehead pulp and ground nose cartilage onto the walls perpendicular to this action.
SFX: The same.
Since you're coming up on another boss fight – wherein, spoiler, you're going to pick up your first ORGANIC mask since you already have all the CONSCIOUS ones – there's another thing we need to show off which was unfortunately neglected last time. Truth is, you can always tell beforehand what mask a boss is going to drop when you kill it, first because their sprite is actually wearing it (though all you see here is a few pixels on a fast-moving enemy so it's difficult), and second because the boss will have the ability appropriate to whatever animal mask they're wearing. That boss we fought last time to get CONSCIOUS DOG, he had a DOG mask on and therefore an unbreakable weapon. Admittedly that is not very obvious since it normally takes a bit of effort to get a boss to break their weapon – you have to parry or face-tank their attacks a few times in a row – but take our word for it, he did. This applies even when you'd think it wouldn't, like with HYENA masks. If you kite a boss wearing a HYENA mask outside of his boss room and back out into the rest of the level – which is, obviously, full of dead bodies that you've produced on the way there – he will indeed sometimes feed on a corpse to regain some FLESH. Just like you can. Impressive, really, that they thought to implement that, but you never know what Ryokuchiku and Okura Shimeji will do when they're really motivated. Anyway, it's boss fight time.
【CORPORATE AGENT KUNQIAN PI】
【UPROOT GRASS AND SUCHLIKE BRING SUCCESS】
Having killed everyone else on the level you now burst through the boardroom door in an explosion of woodchips and killing intent. What awaits in front of the desk is a boss, whose attendant PURITY and FLESH bars appear the moment he aggros on you. Observe closely as this large, muscle-bound yakuza enforcer attempts to slice you into hamburger with – a naginata, by the look of it. That's a somewhat rare spawn.
SFX: An immovable force meets an unstoppable object.
Notice the boss' movements. Notice the sound he makes when he circles, dodges, rushes you. Or rather, notice the absence of those sounds. If you can. Admittedly, with GesuTeru's "Worship Death" blasting in the background – a song critics described as 'witchhouse darkwave post-metal grindfuck electrocore' and 'Holy Fawn playing in the next room while your house is being destroyed by a tornado' when it debuted on the album HELLBERLIN – it can be hard to hear much of anything. But try it. You will notice that the boss is not making any sound when he moves or attacks. This means, as you can no doubt surmise, that he's wearing a SNAKE mask. And therefore, when you kill him-
SFX: Killing him.
-he's going to a drop a SNAKE mask.
SFX: A body crumples to the floor, unceremoniously.
SFX: Death rattle.
SFX: Heavy breathing.
SFX: Breathing slackens.
SFX: Nil.
BGM: 陰陰殷殷 – 冷視
And there it is, lying on the floor next to him. Go on. Walk over, pick it up.
【MASK GET】
【ORGANIC SNAKE】
Take a moment to admire it in closeup in the pickup screen. It looks, indeed, very much like the CONSCIOUS SNAKE mask, and in fact is the same sprite but slightly recoloured. Palette swap. Different kind of snake, probably. A carpet python or something. All speckled scales and glistening eyes as far as the pixel-gorn presentation permits. Having admired it for long enough you can now click through. No need to bother with the phone this time, since (as we are currently wearing a CONSCIOUS mask) it will be the same as what we saw before. Just get to the stairwell, PURITY's draining. Back we go.
【STAIRWELL】
BGM: 幽玄会社 – 彼岸帰航
Alright. It's time. Or it will be time, very shortly. Enma has decided to spawn twice in a row. Let's talk to him, hopefully it's one of the short dialogues.
[RASETSU] ...
[RASETSU] ABOUT THE BOSS
[ENMA] YEAH
[RASETSU] ...
[ENMA] HAVE YOU NOT FOUND HIM YET
[RASETSU] ...
[ENMA] HE IS HERE
[ENMA] ASSUREDLY
[RASETSU] HERE
[ENMA] HE COULD HARDLY BE ANYWHERE ELSE
[ENMA] THE OFFICE IS ON 64F
[ENMA] THEY SAY HE IS ALWAYS WORKING
[ENMA] CALLING IN DEBTS
[ENMA] ISSUING LOANS
[ENMA] OVERSEEING THIS WHOLE OPERATION
[ENMA] A BLIND MACHINE
[RASETSU] WHO SAYS THAT
[ENMA] DEBTORS
[ENMA] PEOPLE
[RASETSU] LIKE YOU
[ENMA] OF COURSE I TOO AM A DEBTOR
[ENMA] VERY DEEPLY IN DEBT ACTUALLY
[RASETSU] YOU DO NOT SEEM ESPECIALLY CONCERNED
[ENMA] THEY NEVER CHECK IN HERE
[RASETSU] REALLY
[ENMA] YEAH THEY ALL USE THE ELEVATOR
[RASETSU] ...
You might think that it is getting to the point where we are going to have to explain what the fuck Enma is talking about. It is not. Climb the stairs to the landing before 41F, drop the gym bag, and check out the mask selection menu. Scroll over to the far right and what do we see?
【ORGANIC SNAKE】
【MAKE NO SOUND】
【DHARMAKAYA DHARANI】
Despite looking slightly different in colouration, an ORGANIC mask has the same description as its CONSCIOUS counterpart and in fact does the exact same thing, in this case rendering Rasetsu's movement and kills silent. But then there's this extra line of flavour text, 'dharmakaya dharani' [法身偈]. This is the same on all ORGANIC masks, and what it means is not immediately obvious. Don't worry. You'll see. Enter 41F.
【COLLECTED DISCOURSES】
【41F::ANIMAL REALM】
BGM: ΛSЖƧΛ – 紅団
The usual nightclub. "Scarlet Gang" by ΛSЖƧΛ is pounding in the middle distance, some hell-smothered wavering EDM nightmare echoing in the hollow of a giant skull. And it is giant. The first thing you'll notice – possibly the second thing, after the swarm of yakuza toughs coming your way to try and put an end to the fun – is that this floor is bigger than all the others you've seen up to now. Go and check.
SFX: Kill.
SFX: Kill.
SFX: Kill.
SFX: Kill.
SFX: Kill.
SFX: Kill.
SFX: Kill.
Rasetsu soundlessly kills his way down a corridor – and the corridor keeps going, the killing keeps going, branching off onto a multiplex of other rooms, other victims. More than usual, that is to say. More enemies, more space. The geometry of this place seems fractalised, more extensive, more cavernous. This is one thing you get with ORGANIC masks, though it is not the main thing. When you enter a level wearing one, the algorithm which generates the floor layouts is modified to use a larger tileset (see previous update for how this system works) which produces a level around twice as big as what you get with a CONSCIOUS mask. Now you may assume, correctly, that this is not necessarily a desirable thing for a roguelike or roguelite. The boss, as Enma conveniently told you, is on the sixty-fourth floor. If, every time the boss kills you (and – spoiler – he will absolutely kill you) you have to fight your way up through 63 floors of bullshit just to get another attempt, why would you want to make that journey twice as long? Why indeed. True, the floors are not especially 'long' either way – you can clear an average sized floor (i.e wearing a CONSCIOUS mask) as an average player (possible skill issue) in about a minute. But anything gets repetitive, even repetition. But – to compound the 'but' with another one – it's not quite as simple as this makes it sound. There is actually a very good reason to wear an ORGANIC mask. This is the 'dharmakaya dharani' thing. To demonstrate we'll need a volunteer. We'll need to kill all but one of the enemies on the level.
SFX: Something like a lawnmower running over a live goat.
SFX: And reversing over it.
As you, or rather Rasetsu, approach the last remaining enemy on the level, pay careful attention to your PURITY. You will need it at a high level. If you don't have enough you'll need to parry the enemy a few times to regain PURITY without killing him. The point: very simple. If you kill the last remaining enemy on a floor in such a way that your PURITY is maxed out by doing that – i.e. you produce excess PURITY with the kill, which is added to SCORE as usual – then something special will happen. The enemy's bloodstain will blossom outward violently, as it usually does, but this time it'll fill in a figure of superimposed concentric squares and circles. A mandala: modeled, to the extent that being drawn basically with the MS Paint red pencil tool over some garish lo-fi architect's rendering of a 'nightclub' can allow, after some of the elaborate devotional geometries you see in the Shingon sect. Then you just walk into the centre of it. What happens? You wouldn't think anything would happen. Actually what happens is there's a smash cut to black.
BGM: Nil.
【DHARMAKAYA DHARANI】
【DEBT RESTRUCTURING】
Do not adjust your set.
【A POOR MAN THINKS OF HIS OLD DEBTS】
【STILL IT IS NECESSARY TO CHECK】
And like a thunderclap we smash back from black, back into – a nightclub.
BGM: 遠流と王国 – 92\238
The same nightclub. No, not the same. Or, yes, the same, but differently constructed. The same in style, the same in theming. But not the same floor. And unlike the floor just departed, this one is not filled with corpses. It is filled with men who are not yet corpses. It is filled with the sprites of (one must imagine) faintly amazed yakuza who have just seen you, Rasetsu, appear out of thin air with a blood-drenched golf club in your hand. You know what to do.
SFX: Sounds recorded from a contact microphone placed on the operative components of a machine for processing human flesh.
You should have figured out what's happened by now, but just to make sure we'll kill everyone here and exit the level as normal.
SFX: Heavy breathing.
SFX: Breathing slackens.
SFX: Nil.
BGM: 陰陰殷殷 – 冷視
Into the stairwell.
【STAIRWELL】
BGM: 幽玄会社 – 彼岸帰航
Observe, if you will, the stencil on the landing outside the door Rasetsu just left. That says 49F. Yet the floor we entered was 41F. It's just as you think. Activating a "dharmakaya dharani" (hereafter abbreviated as "dharani") on a floor of a certain biome will teleport you upstairs to the next floor of that same biome. How far this takes you is of course determined by the floor sequence, which is set randomly at the start of the run. This is what allows some truly unhinged speedrun behaviour: provided you get good RNG, you can hit the dharani on 2F and then keep on hitting them – chain your way through "Hungry Ghost" floors skipping most of the game. Now there are some caveats here. Firstly, you cannot get a dharani on a “Heaven” floor. Not allowed. It just won't trigger. Only works on the other five biomes. “Heaven” floors always have to be completed normally if you enter them, but you can skip over them by jumping between instances of the other biomes. Secondly, as Enma mentioned earlier, the Boss – about which more later – is on 64F. That floor is a little bit special. You cannot use a dharani to jump to, or over, 64F.
(“Over?”)
Well that was a spoiler, wasn't it? Now that the cat's out of the bag we may as well skip ahead to 64F. You know basically how everything works up to this point. You know what to expect. Rasetsu climbs stairs, enters room, kills everyone, leaves room, climbs stairs, et cetera. The rest is gameplay which doesn't bear summary. You have to experience it. You won't, of course, but you have to.
A few things before we skip ahead. You may be wondering what happens if we enter a "Heaven" floor wearing an ORGANIC mask, kill the boss - CORPORATE AGENT whoever it is - and then activate the phone before exiting the level? The phone doesn't do anything different, it just gives you the same distant laughter SFX as always. But you do indeed get a new text card as you return to the stairwell.
【WAS IT SO THAT YAO GAVE THE WORLD TO SHUN】
【THE SON OF HEAVEN CANNOT GIVE THE WORLD TO A PERSON】
【THEN WHO GAVE THE WORLD TO SHUN】
【HEAVEN GAVE IT TO HIM】
【DID HEAVEN GIVE IT TO HIM WITH AN EXPLICIT MANDATE】
【HEAVEN DOES NOT SPEAK】
【IT EXPRESSES ITSELF IN ACTIONS AND AFFAIRS AND THAT IS ALL】
This is from Mencius. Like the Xun Zi quote you get from doing the same thing with with a CONSCIOUS mask, it appears to be talking about Heaven in a very Chinese way. What, indeed, was meant? We'll come back to that. Incidentally Yao, who was mentioned in the previous one too, was one of the sage-emperors of ancient China - and by that you should understand "ancient from the perspective of the 4th century BC" - and generally appears in Confucian writings as the archetypal example of the perfect and beneficent ruler. He makes the crops not fail and the magistrates not be corrupt and the Yangtze not flood and kill everyone by being just the coolest guy, basically, and he also invented the game of Go which is not relevant. You may have noticed that while pretty much all of Hotline Mifune is saturated in Buddhist references, a number of things which seem "in-universe" (question mark) to pertain directly to GMK Financing and Loan are directly connected to ancient Chinese philosophy and specifically Confucianism. There are several ways this can be interpreted which we'll come to later.
In addition, on the way up to 64F, we encountered at random a few Enma dialogues. Here they are.
On the stairwell leading to 51F:
[ENMA] HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT THAT
[RASETSU] WHAT
[ENMA] HYENA DOG BIRD SNAKE MONKEY CROCODILE
[ENMA] THESE REPRESENT THE SIX SENSES
[ENMA] THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF THE SIX SENSES IS CALM WATER
[ENMA] BEYOND LIFE AND DEATH
[RASETSU] WHAT OF IT
[ENMA] ARE YOU ALIVE RIGHT NOW
[RASETSU] WHO
[ENMA] EXACTLY
Marginal note. Enma in his usual obtuse way is indicating something about the selection of animals used for Rasetsu's masks. Why these six animals in particular? You may think this is just Okura Shimeji throwing darts at a board, but in fact it is not. Hyena, Dog, Bird, Snake, Monkey, and Crocodile are the six animals mentioned in the Chappana Sutta (SN 35.206), which is part of the "Connected Discourses" of the Buddha and in which they do indeed serve as metaphorical representations of the six senses. (N.B. in Buddhism the mental perception of your own feelings, volitions etc. is counted as a sixth sense in addition to the regular five.)
And in the stairwell to 59F.
[ENMA] ARE YOU AFRAID OF DYING
[RASETSU] NO
[ENMA] THERE IS NO REASON TO BE
[ENMA] HUMAN BEINGS HAVE THIS CHARACTERISTIC
[ENMA] THAT BEING ALIVE OR DEAD DOES NOT FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE THEIR SITUATION
The word here rendered as "situation" is [事常]. What you would normally use is [事情] but once again Enma has replaced a character with another that is pronounced the same way.
[ENMA] THE LAW IS BINDING IN ANY CASE
[RASETSU] AND IN THIS PARTICULAR
[ENMA] ONLY THE FACE OF FLESH CAN DIE
[ENMA] THE TRUE FACE IS UNDYING IMMORTAL
[ENMA] THAT IS WHY YOU WILL NEVER DIE IN HERE
[ENMA] BECAUSE HERE YOU EMBODY THE TRUE FACE WITH GREAT PURITY
[ENMA] AND ACCORDINGLY THE WORLD PRESENTS ITSELF
[RASETSU] AS A STAIRWELL
[ENMA] YEAH
We are now ready to approach "the boss."
【STAIRWELL】
BGM: 幽玄会社 – 彼岸帰航
Note the stencils on the stairwell landing. You have just completed 63F. There is no indication here in the stairwell that anything special is going to happen; in fact, if you didn't read or just didn't get one of the Enma dialogues earlier where he explains that the boss is on 64F, you don't know that anything is going to happen at all. Enma may or may not appear here, same as usual; in this case he is not here. Rasetsu climbs the stairs, reaches the door to 64F. He puts his gym bag on the ground and opens it. You get the mask selection screen as usual.
【ORGANIC BIRD】
【MOVE FASTER KILL FASTER】
【DHARMAKAYA DHARANI】
Offscreen we fought and killed another boss on a "Heaven" floor, and got a new mask. As before; the effect is the same as CONSCIOUS BIRD, but the level generates larger and it's possible to obtain a dharani when killing the last enemy. Except, no, not actually, because neither of those things apply on 64F. Why? Because (pause for effect as we enter the door) -
【COLLECTED DISCOURSES】
【64F::HEAVEN REALM】
BGM: 幽玄会社 – けれども
64F is not randomised. 64F is always a "Heaven" floor, and moreover, its layout is always the same regardless of what mask Rasetsu is wearing. 64F is in fact not really a floor at all. It is just one room. It is put together from the "Heaven" biome tileset, so it's a very nice corporate office-type room; in fact it's essentially just one of the miniboss rooms scaled up. In the middle of the room there is a desk. Standing in front of the desk there is one (1) enemy. (You should be able to see where this is going.) The enemy is, as far as the overhead sprite graphics can demonstrate, a guy wearing a mask. When you approach him, you enter a conversation. Characters aren't named in conversation, but his facial sprite - which appears opposite Rasetsu's when he's speaking, as usual - shows a mask formed in the shape of a vicious, snarling, horned blue oni.
[BOSS] PAY YOUR FUCKING DEBT
Yes, this is where the meme comes from. The "boss" - who does have a name, but we haven't learned it yet - talks in just about the most abrasive yakuza-dialect Japanese imaginable, which is here translated liberally.
[RASETSU] I WOULD PREFER NOT TO
[BOSS] SHUT THE FUCK UP
[BOSS] IDIOT
[BOSS] RETARD
[BOSS] (LAUGHS)
When he laughs - they just write [草] in the dialogue box to indicate this - you will hear a SFX in the background which is, indeed, the same "distant laughter" SFX you've been hearing now and then when interacting with phones. This is the guy on the other end. Implicitly.
[BOSS] YOU DO NOT EVEN KNOW
[BOSS] YOU STUPID FUCKING FAGGOT
[BOSS] YOU HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE WHY YOU ARE HERE
[BOSS] WHY SHOULD I GIVE A SHIT WHAT YOU SAY
[BOSS] YOU PAY YOUR DEBT BECAUSE YOU CAN AND YOU MUST
[BOSS] NOT BECAUSE YOU WANT
[BOSS] YOU WANT
[BOSS] YOU FUCKING WANT DO YOU
[BOSS] IS THAT IT
[BOSS] WHO GIVES A FUCK WHAT YOU WANT
[BOSS] THE ONLY THING YOU TRULY WANT IS TO BE IN DEBT
[BOSS] THAT IS WHY YOU ARE HERE
[BOSS] IT MAKES NO FUCKING DIFFERENCE AT ALL WHAT YOU WANT
[BOSS] YOU PAY THE DEBT
[BOSS] AS YOU HAVE BEEN
[BOSS] AS YOU ARE NOW
[BOSS] WHY
[BOSS] BECAUSE THAT IS THE FUCKING RULE
[BOSS] THIS IS NOT JUST MY LAW
[BOSS] THIS IS THE WHOLE OF THE FUCKING LAW
[BOSS] AND THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND WILL DO
[BOSS] BECAUSE YOU MUST AND YOU CAN
[BOSS] AND YOU OUGHT TO
[BOSS] AND YOU WILL
[BOSS] BECAUSE ALL THIS
[BOSS] YOU UNDERSTAND
[BOSS] IS ALL FOR YOU
[BOSS] THIS IS ALL FOR YOU MOTHERFUCKER
[BOSS] YOU BUILT THIS
[BOSS] (LAUGHS)
[BOSS] IDIOT
[BOSS] WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS FUCKING BUSINESS RUNS ON
[BOSS] YOU TOOK OUT THE LOAN
[BOSS] YOU WANTED THIS
[BOSS] THIS WAS ALL PUT HERE FOR YOU
[BOSS] YOU COME HERE
[BOSS] YOU
[BOSS] (LAUGHS)
[BOSS] YOU CAME HERE TO PAY THE DEBT
[BOSS] LIKE EVERYONE
[BOSS] THEN YOU DECIDE
[BOSS] NO I GUESS I FUCKING WILL NOT PAY THE FUCKING DEBT
[BOSS] FOR WHATEVER STUPID FUCKING RETARD REASON YOU THOUGHT
[BOSS] YOU HAD A SUDDEN IMPULSE TO DO IT
[BOSS] BUT IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE
[BOSS] YOU ARE STILL PAYING THE DEBT
[BOSS] YOU TAKE OUT THE LOAN
[BOSS] YOU CONTINUE TO TAKE OUT THE LOAN
[BOSS] EVERY MOMENT YOU ARE HERE
[BOSS] YOU PAY IT BACK BY TAKING OUT MORE
[BOSS] YOU CONSOLIDATE AND RESTRUCTURE THE DEBT
[BOSS] YOU ARE DOING IT RIGHT NOW
[BOSS] AND THIS FUCKING SHIT
[BOSS] YOU CAN GO ON WITH THIS AS LONG AS YOU WANT
[BOSS] IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE
[BOSS] YOU WILL KEEP TAKING IT OUT
[BOSS] YOU WILL KEEP PAYING IT BACK
[BOSS] AND WE ARE HERE
[BOSS] FOR THIS SINGLE FUCKING REASON
[BOSS] TO FACILITATE THAT
[BOSS] FOR YOU
[BOSS] THIS IS ALL FOR YOU
[BOSS] THIS IS HOW THINGS ARE FOR YOU
[BOSS] THIS IS HOW I HAVE TO STOMP YOU INTO THE DIRT
[BOSS] THIS IS HOW IT HAS TO FUCKING LOOK
[BOSS] BECAUSE YOU CHOSE TO LOOK AT IT THIS WAY
[BOSS] YOU WEAR THAT RETARDED MASK
[BOSS] SO WE WEAR ONE TOO
[RASETSU] THE MASK REVEALS THE TRUE FACE
[BOSS] YOU
[BOSS] FUCKING
[BOSS] FAGGOT ASS LITTLE BITCH
[BOSS] IT DOES NOT MATTER
[BOSS] WHY DO YOU NOT GET THIS
[BOSS] (LAUGHS)
[BOSS] TRUE OR NOT IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE
[BOSS] AS LONG AS YOU KEEP PAYING
[RASETSU] NO
[RASETSU] I AM DONE WITH THAT
[RASETSU] I AM GONE
[RASETSU] I WAS IN THERE
[RASETSU] I WENT THERE
[RASETSU] I AM ALREADY THROUGH THAT
[RASETSU] I WILL HAVE DONE WITH YOU
[RASETSU] I WILL BURN IT ALL AWAY FROM THE ROOTS
[BOSS] WILL YOU NOW
[BOSS] MOTHERFUCKER GODDAMN HOW STUPID CAN YOU BE
[RASETSU] I WILL END IT
[BOSS] YOU
[BOSS] (LAUGHS)
[BOSS] THE VERY FACT THAT YOU ARE HERE TELLS ME
[BOSS] THAT NOTHING WILL END
At this point we must confess that you are being decieved. Most monstrously decepted. The boss's speech here is being presented as if it were a continuous whole. And it is. This is direct from the script file. But the truth is that, when you're playing the game, this is not actually the speech you get. More precisely: you don't get the whole of this speech. You do get this speech, the start of it. But at around the point where he says "The only thing you want is to be in debt" -
【UNSIGHTLY】
【UNDESERVING OF LIFE】
SFX: Dial tone.
SFX: Dial tone.
SFX: Click.
-you die.
(What?)
Yes, really. Smash cut to black.
【EPITAPH】
THERE WAS NO LONGER EVEN A VESTIGE OF BLOOD
WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT ARIADNE
SAID THESEUS
THE MINOTAUR SCARCELY DEFENDED HIMSELF
J. L. BORGES
When you obtain this screen after dying, that means you have obtained an "ending." Yes, this is an ending. In the code it's called Partial Payment [減債] but a lot of people refer to it simply as the "prank ending" - which is not wholly true. It is true in the sense that you, the player, have been pranked. Because - yes, indeed, you did just die. "No cap" as you idiot children say. Not making that up. In your ordinary playthrough, the first time you reach 64F, you will enter into this conversation and you will, without question, die - at around that point, maybe a little earlier or later. Why is that? Because this, the conversation with the "boss," is the only the dialogue in the game that breaks the rules. This dialogue sequence was deliberately designed by Okura Shimeji to troll you. Because in every other conversation in the game, PURITY is not a factor and you can read at your leisure. That is the expectation you have arrived at. By design. But in this conversation, even while you're reading - and remember that the cinematic black bars come down over the HUD and hide it, so you can't actually see this happening - the PURITY meter is still ticking down. And that means that even if you're reading very fast, you will 100% absolutely die because this foul-mouthed rant (in the course of which the "boss" more or less explains the entire game) is deliberately made so long that it's impossible to read it in its entirety before PURITY hits 0%. Consider yourself trolled by Bamboo Bread.
And with that, gentlemen, we return - to the main menu.
BGM: 幽玄会社 – けれども
【廾回卞し工几ヨ・冊工乍凵几ヨ】
【〜ホットライン・ミフネ〜】
But now let's be serious. That's not what you came here for. Killing you during a cutscene? Why is that allowed? Good question. To explain, let's just quickly play through the entire game again and get back up to 64F.
Through the power of editing we are just immediately here again. This will take you about 30 minutes in real time, less if you're actually good and use dharanis judiciously. There were a number of new Enma dialogues on the way but we'll save those for after. We took a few hits on the way, our FLESH is looking a bit dicey but it should be alright. Rasetsu in his usual blood-drenched hooded raincoat climbs the stairs to 64F.
【COLLECTED DISCOURSES】
【64F::HEAVEN REALM】
BGM: 幽玄会社 – けれども
Okay. So, what you're supposed to do is go up to the boss and enter dialogue as before-
[BOSS] PAY YOUR FUCKING DEBT
-and just skip the conversation. tl;dr. And just like that, you're cooking with gas. Boss music kicks in.
BGM: 河原=ステレオ – 死の乞婿
Back into regular gameplay. You can move Rasetsu around again. And just like when you engage a miniboss in combat, this one gets a title superimposed at the bottom of the screen.
【KARMA REALM SI CHONGGEN】
【THINGS HAVE THEIR ROOT AND THEIR BRANCHES】
Some things to note. His "title" is not Corporate Agent [業界代理] like the minibosses but rather just [業の界] - the word Gyoukai [業界] from the name of the company, which there means 'industrial', is separated into its components. The result is somewhat ambiguous because [業] could mean a number of different things and boss titles don't have furigana to help you figure out which one. It could be translated as something like "Realm of Work" or "Realm of Karma." Generally we've settled on the second one for reasons that should be obvious by now. The boss' actual name, as far as anyone in this game has a name, is [四重根] which you will still sometimes see people translate as "Kon" or "Shijuukon." Early on there was an argument over whether it should be read in Chinese or Japanese; either is probably justifiable, but we are using Chinese to keep it consistent with the minibosses. The quote in the second line is not from the I Ching, like with minibosses, but from the Daxue which is a Confucian text.
Now as for the actual fight: just like the minibosses, Si Chonggen has his own FLESH and PURITY metres. Just like the minibosses, you have to deplete his PURITY to 0% in order to kill him. Simple. Except, of course, that he has one thing that the minibosses don't.
SFX: Bang.
SFX: Rasetsu's brain explodes all over the nearest wall.
Smash cut to black. (This is getting familiar.)
【UNSIGHTLY】
【UNDESERVING OF LIFE】
SFX: Dial tone.
SFX: Dial tone.
SFX: Click.
And again, again.
【EPITAPH】
THERE WAS NO LONGER EVEN A VESTIGE OF BLOOD
WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT ARIADNE
SAID THESEUS
THE MINOTAUR SCARCELY DEFENDED HIMSELF
J. L. BORGES
Indeed, the trolling doesn't end there: in a game entirely built around melee weapons, the boss on 64F just straight up has a fucking gun. And when you regain control of Rasetsu after skipping the dialogue, the very first thing he will do is shoot you with it - and he is a quickdraw and will do this before you can close the distance, and Rasetsu cannot dodge bullets. This is where all the other memes come from, and also why Si Chonggen is by far the most popular character in the game (measured by fanart volume) despite appearing only once. Getting shot in the face here is the other way you obtain the Partial Payment ending, and at this point it should be quite understandable why a lot of players don't know that there are other endings.
But now let's be serious. More serious. Because despite impressions you can actually beat Si Chonggen; it's just that, unlike the minibosses, who are more or less honest fights, he is a puzzle to which you have to figure out the trick. Some people complain about this. They are "people" only in a manner of speaking. They think the boss design in HM is bullshit and frustrating. The correct response to this opinion is "yes it is" but also "git gud." Si Chonggen is deliberately designed to kill you in unfair and bullshit ways. This is literally written in a comment in the script which controls his AI: [クソゲっぽくしておけww]. Bamboo Bread could very well have just made him like a regular miniboss but bigger and with more PURITY; they didn't. They made a troll boss fight. Why? Because the feeling of annoyance and frustration you get from being killed and knowing you'll have to replay about half an hour of game to get another attempt at him is 100% intentional. And they didn't just do that out of a desire to spite the player for playing the game, as seen in certain other developers. Bamboo Bread made Si Chonggen bullshit because they were extremely confident that the ordinary gameplay loop of Hotline Mifune is enjoyable enough that you don't actually mind being forced to repeat it. They knew very well they were going to frustrate you; they were confident that it was a frustration you would secretly enjoy. And if, while playing HM, you become aware that that's what they're doing, you are a step closer to understanding what it's all about. Most players don't take that step.
Anyway, there are two ways to kill Si Chonggen, which we'll call the 'easy' and 'hard' ways respectively - though in practice they are both hard. The second one is just way harder.
The easy way is to just take the hit. Remember how damage works in Hotline Mifune. If your FLESH value is even a tiny bit negative when you walk into 64F, Si Chonggen's first shot will drop your PURITY to 0% instantly and you will die. But - if your FLESH is positive, taking damage actually boosts PURITY. Getting shot with positive FLESH will immediately drop your FLESH to the lowest possible negative, but, it will immediately max out PURITY and you will not die. A second hit will instakill you of course, so the objective is to not let that happen; you need to close the gap before Si Chonggen makes his followup shot. The easiest method here is to use a MONKEY mask and throw a weapon at him; he will dodge it, but the dodge will delay his followup. The second-easiest is to use a CROCODILE mask and just dash-lunge at him - you need to do this immediately after, but not before, he shoots the first time (because, hidden mechanic, getting shot cancels you out of the CROCODILE lunge, leaving you with a cooldown and slow movement in front of a guy with a gun). The third easiest is to use a BIRD mask - to make this work you need to move in a sort of spiral, you're moving to the side slightly while go in, and if you do it just right you can cause his followup to miss you by a hair the moment you reach him. If you fuck up by even one pixel you will, of course, die instantly.
Now, the hard way to kill Si Chonggen is to...not take the hit. That is to say, you have to perfect-parry the bullet. Yes: it's not hitscan, it's a modeled projectile, but it is extremely fast and extremely small. You cannot regular-parry it - that will just be parsed as it hitting you - but you can perfect-parry. The window for this is literally one (1) frame. Works with any weapon, even - you guessed it - with bare hands. If you do that, then Si Chonggen will be briefly stunned and enter a riposteable state. Does that make sense? Not really. I guess he just can't quite believe what he saw. But in any case, the stun window is long enough that you can approach him at your leisure and riposte and kill him very easily.
Closing the gap, basically, is all there is to this fight. Si Chonggen is very weak up close; one hit will drain his FLESH, and the next hit will drain his PURITY to 0%. And that will be that. So let's fast-forward to another playthrough in which we have actually just killed him.
BGM: ARUBAITO – GYO9SAI
We have actually just killed Si Chonggen in an exceedingly awesome way that will not be televised. For good measure, let's stomp him into the floor for a bit.
SFX: An overwhelming display of sickening brutality.
SFX: No, seriously, just beating and beating and beating until you can put your boot through the guy's broken skull and squish the brain bits underneath until they stain the carpet.
SFX: Entrails of a world, in which there is neither self nor other but an unceasing palpitation of blood and bone and bile.
SFX: And hate.
SFX: Only ever hate.
SFX: HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE
That - may be enough.
SFX: Heavy breathing.
SFX: Breathing slackens.
SFX: Nil.
BGM: 陰陰殷殷 – 冷視
Right, so, much like a miniboss Si Chonggen drops things. He drops his mask, first of all, so walk over there and pick it up.
【MASK GET】
【DEMON】
It's the oni mask he was wearing. A special mask. We'll go into what effect it has shortly. There is also another thing that Si Chonggen drops. Pick it up.
SFX: The chk-chk sound guns inexplicably make when being picked up.
Yes, the gun. You can take the gun. Don't get too excited now. Explain it in a moment; for now there is one more thing. There is, on the desk in the middle of the office, a phone. Like in the rooms with minibosses, in fact. You can walk over to it.
SFX: Dial tone.
And indeed you can interact with it too.
SFX: Click. The receiver is lifted.
SFX: A pause, not more than a breath.
SFX: The sound of blowing wind.
SFX: Click. Hang up.
That's everything. You can now leave 64F. Unlike interacting with the phone after a miniboss kill, interacting with the phone on 64F doesn't give you a message when you leave the level. You just get dumped right back out in the stairwell like normal.
【STAIRWELL】
BGM: 幽玄会社 – 彼岸帰航
Enma is here, by sheer coincidence, so let's see what he has to say.
[ENMA] YOUR SITUATION IS NOT SO UNUSUAL
[ENMA] NEITHER THE MOST NOR THE LEAST SEVERE
[ENMA] YOU COULD VERY WELL HAVE KEPT GOING AS YOU WERE
[ENMA] A DEBTOR BUT IN CIRCUMSTANCES OF RELATIVE CONVENIENCE
[RASETSU] IT HAD BECOME IMPOSSIBLE
[ENMA] IN THAT RESPECT YOU YOURSELF ARE NOTHING VERY SPECIAL
[ENMA] THE FACE OF FLESH YOUR MOTHER AND FATHER GAVE YOU IS UNDISTINGUISHED
[ENMA] BUT THE TRUE FACE
[ENMA] WHICH YOU HAD BEFORE YOUR MOTHER AND FATHER WERE BORN
[ENMA] IS VERY PECULIAR
[ENMA] I THINK YOU MUST HAVE UNDERSTOOD THIS
[RASETSU] I PERSONALLY
[ENMA] THE FACE OF FLESH HAS NO FUTURE
[ENMA] ALL YOU CAN DO NOW IS SHOW YOUR TRUE FACE
[ENMA] WITH PURITY
[RASETSU] A MASK REVEALS THE TRUE FACE
[ENMA] NOTHING OTHERWISE
Thank you Enma, very cool. Now, the important things. You now have the DEMON [鬼] mask, which is somewhat unique. We'll show it off in a minute. Second: the gun. This is how it works. The gun is a revolver, a six-shooter. The 'ammo' is modeled with weapon durability; each shot it holds represents 1/6 of the total. When you have fired all the shots in the cylinder, the gun 'breaks' and has to be discarded. Since the boss always gets at least one shot off, you'll never pick up the gun in pristine condition: it will always be missing at least 1/6, sometimes 2/6. You aim using the crosshair, just like throwing weapons. When you fire the gun, it - shoots a bullet. Shocker. It will kill any normal enemy in one hit and any miniboss (with full FLESH and PURITY) in two hits. But you only have 4-5 shots so you'd better make them count.
Question: the DOG masks make weapons unbreakable. Can't you just put one on and have infinite ammo?
【ORGANIC DOG】
【WEAPON IS UNBREAKABLE】
【DHARMAKAYA DHARANI】
Well, you see, about that-
【CORRECTED DISCOURSES】
【65F::ASURA REALM】
BGM: 下司照ル – ガソリン・ギロチン
-yes.
SFX: Bang.
SFX: Bang.
SFX: Bang.
SFX: Bang.
SFX: Bang.
SFX: Bang.
SFX: Bang.
SFX: Bang.
SFX: Bang.
Only, in truth, the problem is that there's a unique 0.2 multiplier on PURITY gain for the gun. If your FLESH is at a point where killing a guy normally would net you +10% PURITY, killing that guy with the gun will get you only +2%. So yes, it's true, if you're willing to wear nothing but DOG masks you can treat the rest of the game like an American public school. But you have to fight a lot harder against the constant PURITY drain. You'll need to be shooting people non-stop, pretty much. It's basically a different game at that point. Interesting that Bamboo Bread gave you option, but most players agree that it's not actually very interesting.
SFX: Heavy breathing.
SFX: Breathing slackens.
SFX: Nil.
BGM: 陰陰殷殷 – 冷視
And now look, you're surrounded by dead guys. Many such cases.
【STAIRWELL】
BGM: 幽玄会社 – 彼岸帰航
Back into the stairwell, and - surprise - here's Enma again. What are the odds? (The odds are exactly 1/6.) Let's see if he has anything new to say.
[ENMA] I WONDER IF YOU HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT IT
[ENMA] THE CONSEQUENCES OF SUCCESS
[RASETSU] THE QUESTION MAKES NO SENSE
[ENMA] YOU HAVE A CHOICE
[ENMA] AT EVERY MOMENT
[ENMA] AS A DEBTOR
[ENMA] YOU CAN LEAVE NOW AND GO BACK
[ENMA] AND KEEP REPAYING INSTALMENTS AS BEFORE
[RASETSU] I HAVE PLACED MYSELF BEYOND THE POINT OF NO RETURN
[RASETSU] PRECISELY IN ORDER TO DENY MYSELF THAT CHOICE
[ENMA] TO DENY WHO EXACTLY
[ENMA] COULD IT BE THE SELF
[ENMA] THE SELF IS NOT THAT WHICH CHOOSES
[ENMA] THE FACE OF FLESH IS NOT THE TRUE FACE
[RASETSU] I AM COMPELLED
[ENMA] BY WHAT
[RASETSU] BY MY WILL
[RASETSU] MY TRUE FACE
[ENMA] NATURALLY
[ENMA] BUT
[ENMA] ARE YOU AN AUTOMATON THEN
[ENMA] WITH NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT YOU DO
[RASETSU] NO ONE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT THEY DO
[RASETSU] ONLY FOR WHAT THEY ARE
Worth noting that Enma does not get new dialogues after killing the boss on 64F; they're all chosen from the same pool regardless of where you are. As far as he's concerned, Rasetsu having already murdered Si Chonggen is a non-event.
Now, about the DEMON mask.
【DEMON】
As you can see, unlike the others DEMON has no descriptive text. What it does is not explicitly disclosed ahead of time. It's best to just show you.
【CORRECTED DISCOURSES】
【66F::HUNGRY GHOST REALM】
BGM: 陰陰殷殷 – 記憶もなければ何もない
We enter a "Hungry Ghost" floor, the usual pachinko parlour filled with scowling yakuza toughs. The floor generation here is the same as with an ORGANIC mask, so you're getting a larger floor than with the CONSCIOUS masks. Unlike the ORGANIC masks, DEMON does not let you get a dharani with the last kill. You have to clear the floor normally. It also does not modify weapon behaviour or Rasetsu's movement in anyway. What it does do is change the enemy AI.
SFX: Kicking down a frosted-glass door into a room filled with men who don't know they're dead yet.
SFX: Faint, muffled, electronically distorted screaming.
SFX: A chorus of screams, iterated proportionate to the number of active enemies and their relative distance to Rasetsu.
Yeah, whatever the soundtrack is, you're getting the "eternal screaming in digital hell" effect overlaid on top of it whether you like it or not. When Rasetsu is wearing the DEMON mask, enemies will scream and run away in terror instead of making a beeline for you like they normally do. This is the only thing that DEMON does, but it changes the gameplay radically. You have to chase enemies around the level, hunt them down - they'll try to hide from you in unentered rooms, and so on. They will still attack you if you get close enough, but their pathing is overwhelmingly biased toward getting as far away from the player as possible. As you can see.
SFX: Heavy breathing.
SFX: Breathing slackens.
SFX: Nil.
BGM: 陰陰殷殷 – 冷視
Well done. This is arguably the most challenging way to play HM, and Demon% is a semi-popular speedrun category for that reason. (Though still about 20 minutes slower than Any%.)
We are now at the point where we can treat with the rest of the game in a more or less summary fashion. You know, basically, how everything works - as far as you can without playing the game, which is not very far but you can hardly do any better. So let's now deal with things thematically instead of trying to describe everything in order.
MUSIC 音楽
The music in Hotline Mifune is the sickest shit ever. Bamboo Bread put a lot of effort into scouting out indie artists from the semi-underground electronica scene in Tokyo, and while HM itself was not very successful some of these guys have gone on to do great things elsewhere. Notably GesuTeru who renamed themselves CICADA SOUND and did the OST for the award-winning character-action smack-n-slash DEAD DIE DREAMING which you know from all those image macros of the main character hot-swapping his prosthetic arm with a dog. As you may have figured out, some areas have specific tracks associated with them, while in others it is randomised. Here is the track listing from the OST digital release, with in-game usages.
1. ΛSЖƧΛ – 黒幕
2. ARUBAITO – THRENODY FOR THE VICTIMS OF KASUMIGASEKI
3. 下司照ル – 無名物質との共謀
4. 河原=ステレオ – 六条
All the above are part of the BGM pool for "Hell" floors. When a floor is spawned with the "Hell" biome the BGM will be selected randomly from one of these. It is not quite accurate to say that there's formal consistency between the tracks you hear on one biome vs. another. "THRENODY" for instance - with the violins screeching in the background - is very far away, musically, from the bass guitar riff in "Kuromaki" which sounds like something Peter Hook came up with in 1981. But the songs are not selected at random; Okura Shimeji did it personally and he described the process in an interview as being based on the "emotional content" of the tracks involved. Which is not very helpful on the face of things, but you can sort of hear it. These tracks are dark, low-key, and the dominant emotion they express is a kind of hatred seething under the surface. The standout is Kawara=Stereo's "Rokujou" which uses traditional Japanese instruments combined with heavy Soviet-era synths; someone on the forum once called it "a vengeful spirit snapping the strings on a koto one by one."
5. ΛSЖƧΛ – 百鬼
6. ΛSЖƧΛ – 夜行
7. 陰陰殷殷 – 記憶もなければ何もない
8. 遠流と王国 - 海辺射殺
For "Hungry Ghost" floors. These are all very fast-paced songs, high-tempo. They feel "desperate" in a way. The first proper combat encounter in the game, on 2F, is always a "Hungry Ghost" floor, so one supposes they had to make it stand out. "One Hundred Demons" and "Night Parade" both have this kind of rave-disco energy. "No Memories, Nothing" by In'in'in'in is very odd - it's basically a dark ambient track but scored at 145 BPM.
9. 遠流と王国 – 92\238
10. 下司照ル – 反社会的
11. ΛSЖƧΛ – 紅団
12. 河原=ステレオ - 盛者必衰
For "Animal" floors. These ones are kind of fun, you might say "playful" - like a bird of prey playing with its food. They are generally sort of mellow, but still very intense, especially when Exile & The Kingdom are involved. People compare these ones to anime insert songs sometimes. "Scarlet Gang" is in a strange way the happiest song on the HM soundtrack. Some of you may also remember "The Prosperous Must Decay" because there was a brief fad on niconico some years ago for using it in Kantai Collection MMDs; you kids today won't understand a word of that.
13. 河原=ステレオ – 生者必滅
14. 下司照ル – 素粒子加速器
15. ARUBAITO – GROUND BELOW IRON
16. ARUBAITO – TYRANNO MASSACREDO
For "Human" floors. The tracks used on these floors are unique in that they all include vocals in some sense, although on Kawara=Stereo's "All Living Things Must Die" they're very subdued; Hana is screaming the lyrics as in death metal, but, like, underwater by the sound of it. There is a pronounced industrial/grunge edge to ARUBAITO's contributions here, but he still likes to let you know he used to play in an orchestra now and then.
17. 陰陰殷殷 – ko.ro.si.te.ya.ru
18. 下司照ル – ガソリン・ギロチン
19. 河原=ステレオ – 妖怪の笑い声
20. 下司照ル - 今生を断れ
For "Asura" floors. GesuTeru's "Gasoline Guillotine" is, without question, the best track in the entire game. It's almost a shame that "Youkai Laughter" and "Dismiss This Life" have to share the pool with it because while both of those go phenomenally fucking hard, "Gasoline Guillotine" is like the first 5 seconds of "Self versus Self" arranged for demonic orchestra and extended into four whole minutes of being hit in the face by a brick made of pure sound. It is the angriest industrial/darkwave track you've ever heard. There is a reaction video where some tuber got Klayton to listen to it. Highly recommend.
21. 遠流と王国 – 92\235
22. ARUBAITO – GYO9SAI
23. 下司照ル - 死に礼拝せよ
24. 河原=ステレオ – 死の乞婿
For "Heaven" floors. "92\235" is a remix of "92\238" as heard on "Animal" floors; there's a whole lot of bass and instrumentation added, it sounds generally a lot more 'evil' and minor-key. These are boss fight themes, remember, so there's a lot of force in them. The influence of witch house on Kawara=Stereo is nowhere more apparent than in their contribution here - you have these very ethereal female vocals singing poems from the Hyakunin Isshuu while three electric guitars and one electric biwa are slowly drowned in mud. Great for workout playlists.
25. 幽玄会社 – けれども
Yuugengaisha's "And Yet" is the Main Menu theme. It's also played on 64F before you fight Si Chonggen. In contrast to the floor themes this is a slow, kind of sad, improvised guitar piece with some light synths on the underlayer. On the OST album (which was released on CD at C110 about a year after the game itself) there are two versions of this - a short arrange (2'45'') and the full version which is over 17 minutes long. The full version is the one used in the game.
26. 幽玄会社 – 彼岸帰航
Very familiar, this one. "Far Shore Return Trip" is played in the stairwell and sort of, by implication, functions like Enma's theme song. Much like "And Yet" this is a very long track, about 12 minutes on the album, and playback is staggered so you'll hear different parts of it throughout your journey on the stairwell. It's most easily categorised as "drone/ambient" - and it certainly is that, there's something a lot like Irisarri's work on "Sacred Hatred" which comes through in the mellow yet deep, as it were "oceanic" tone.
27. 陰陰殷殷 – 冷視
And, of course, "Cold Gaze" - which is more or less Rasetsu's theme. It plays whenever you've killed every enemy on a floor, to indicate that it's time to leave. This is an interesting one because unlike all the other tracks "Cold Gaze" was specially composed for the game. Okura Shimeji reached out to In'in'in'in and commissioned it. We don't know exactly what he requested but the result is very odd. The main reason it's odd is because it's another long track - 9'43'' - but playback is not staggered in-game so whenever it plays, it always plays from the start, and always in circumstances where you are can only hear the first 20 seconds at most. The first 20 seconds of "Cold Gaze" - actually the first minute is like this - is this soft, low-pitched, very eerie drone which sounds like a horror movie playing next door. This is actually a violin duet, so heavily distorted that you can hardly tell it's a real instrument. But after about a minute and a half the tempo picks up, the distortion lessens, and the rest of the song is roughly a neo-classical sonata for violin and (in this case synthesised) orchestra which sounds a lot like Philip Glass' "Runaway Horses" with added persistent electronic overdrive. It's very cool, but you'll never hear it in-game.
EDIT: Last year, by popular demand, by which is meant a number of people here and in Japan sending letter bombs to Bamboo Bread's office, the Hotline Mifune OST album was finally added to Spotify. You no longer have to buy the CD off a shady reseller for a king's ransom. You're welcome.
MASKS 能面
Some of you may be wondering about why the masks have such strange names. ORGANIC DOG, for instance, sounds like the next big health-food fad. The truth is more complicated. In the original the masks have their animal names, which are given as normal Japanese words (DOG [狗], BIRD [鳥], SNAKE [蛇], HYENA [鬣犬], MONKEY [猿], CROCODILE [鰐]) and then have their 'grade' or 'tier' indicated by a prefix. The first tier is prefixed with [識], the second with [入], and the third (more on this later) is [所縁]. For a long time nobody had any idea what these meant or how they should be translated. Then IwaGyu on this here forum figured out that they are, of course, meant to be Buddhist terms. Buddhism, you see, is an extremely autistic religion and they love making numbered lists; there are so many of these that at the back of the Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism there is like a 30-page List of Lists which isn't even partly complete. One of these is the list of the Eighteen Dhatus. What is a dhatu? It's best you don't know. The point is that this is a division of the world, or of phenomenally-experienced reality, into three sets of six. You have the six sense organs [入] - remember that there are six senses in Buddhism, the mind itself is counted as a sense - and the six kinds of sense objects [所縁] to which these organs correspond, and the six kinds of sense consciousness [識] which arise from perceiving an object of a given kind through the corresponding sense. So this lead us to propose the translation of the first tier as CONSCIOUS, the second as ORGANIC, and the last - oh yeah, the last one. About that:
Below 64F you can obtain only CONSCIOUS and ORGANIC masks. Once you have all of those, minibosses encountered on "Heaven" floors will no longer drop them. When you kill Si Chonggen and get to 65F and above, however, you become able to obtain a new tier of masks from minibosses, the OBJECTIVE masks. OBJECTIVE DOG, BIRD, CROCODILE, et cetera: it's all the same animals. OBJECTIVE masks, aside from visual differences (their dominant colours are blue and black, roughly in line with the dark lacquer blue of the DEMON mask) behave exactly the same as ORGANIC masks. You get the larger level spawn and the ability to trigger a dharani. But you get one more thing, which is vaguely indicated on their subtitle in the selection screen.
【OBJECTIVE DOG】
【WEAPON IS UNBREAKABLE】
【DHARMAKAYA DHARANI】
【PERCEPTION OF THE GROUND】
Very vaguely. What that extra line means is that every enemy on the level (a) obtains the same mask effect as you, the player, and (b) they all get their own FLESH and PURITY bars floating above their heads. In effect, OBJECTIVE masks basically make every single enemy into a miniboss. And now imagine, if you will, walking into a floor wearing OBJECTIVE BIRD and being confronted with about 35 enemies moving like they're on about as much cocaine as they realistically would be in a line of work like this. Or, fuck that, imagine OBJECTIVE HYENA - every single enemy becomes capable of eating the corpses of their allies in order to regain FLESH. It's nightmarish to watch. OBJECTIVE masks are absolute bullshit and the best part of Hotline Mifune.
Incidentally, when you wear an OBJECTIVE mask and interact with the phone on a "Heaven" floor after killing the Corporate Agent, you get this text on level exit:
【WHAT HEAVEN HAS CONFERRED IS CALLED NATURE】
【ACCORDANCE WITH NATURE IS CALLED THE PATH】
【THE REGULATION OF THIS PATH IS CALLED INSTRUCTION】
【THE PATH MAY NOT BE LEFT FOR AN INSTANT】
【IF IT COULD BE LEFT】
【IT WOULD NOT BE THE PATH】
This is from the Zhongyong. Another Confucian text. Probably written by Confucius' grandson, possibly by the man himself. As usual, it talks about Heaven. Broadly speaking you can sort of get the idea of what these messages mean: they are framed, when they arrive, as messages from "the management" of GMK - which is to say from Si Chonggen, and let's just ignore that you can still get them after you've killed him - and they talk about "Heaven", which appears to be the floor biome most closely connected with the "management". "Heaven" as referred to in these Confucian texts seems to be a kind of metaphor for GMK Financing and Loan itself, or maybe vice versa. "Heaven" is portrayed as a kind of immanent order to the universe which isn't externally imposed so much as just "the way things are" - Heaven doesn't directly "order" you to do or not do anything, it simply manifests itself in the way things turn out. Heaven is a binding order, something like the "law of nature" - and this is pretty much how GMK Financing and Loan portrays itself, as a kind of natural force. Tide goes in, tide goes out; debt is accrued, debt is paid. You can't explain that. It is just how it is. It is the "path" which can't be left. On the topic of "paths" and not leaving them - being unable to leave them, even - there is another thing to bring up.
CREEPYPASTA 怖麺
Yeah, yeah, you've wanted to hear about this since last time. Here's how it works. As you know, when Rasetsu is in the stairwell, it's possible to climb up by one floor only; you can climb further but it just loops you around to where you were, Escher-style. You can climb down the stairs as far as you like, however, and you can even re-enter floors you've already cleared. When you do this - strange things happen.
Firstly, strange things in the stairwell. When you go down more than 3-4 flights you will notice that the BGM (Far Shore Return Trip by Yuugengaisha) stops. The lighting in the stairwell begins to flicker. Once you go down more than 10 flights you will occasionally enter stretches of stairwell where the lights are just off. It is very dark and there is nothing there. Beyond 20 flights down you will sometimes, rarely, see a brief suggestion of a sprite moving just as the stairwell fades in or out from a transition. Finally, if you go down more than 64 flights of stairs below the floor you're currently up to, Rasetsu's PURITY will begin to drain. The stairwell no longer protects you. And since there are no enemies here, if you don't turn back and go up again you will die.
Secondly, strange things in the levels. As noted last time, when Rasetsu enters a level you don't go through the animation where you put down the gym bag and select a mask. Rasetsu just walks in without putting a mask on. He still carries the weapon that he was carrying when he left the previous level, so you have access to a weapon but not a mask ability. What happens when you enter a level you've already completed?
We saw one possible thing that can happen, which is that the level has been entirely reset and cleaned of damage and blood and corpses. There is no BGM and PURITY still drains. You don't die from PURITY loss here, however; if your PURITY gets below a threshold a strange white-clothed NPC with a sword will spawn in and jumpscare you by murdering you in one hit. You can avoid that by leaving the floor. This kind of sequence is called an EMPTY LEVEL and it occurs 30% of the time when you re-enter a cleared floor. (This, like most things in the game, is randomised.) The other things that can happen, and their probabilities, are as follows.
- CORPSE PARTY - The floor is exactly how you left it, covered in blood and so forth, but all the corpses have been replaced with Rasetsu's own body. The white-clothed NPC will appear here and kill you. Happens 30% of the time.
- LARGE ROOM - 15% probability. You enter into a floor that is patently not the one you cleared earlier. It is a single extremely large room built according to the level biome, with no enemies or furnishings on it. Extremely large is not an exaggeration. We datamined the parameters for this: it generates a room about 100 times larger, by surface area, than a floor generated with an ORGANIC mask. It is not possible to reach the other side - or explore it, really, at all - due to the PURITY drain. The white-clothed NPC can appear here and kill you but does not always.
- LONG ROOM - Similar to the LARGE ROOM but it's a hallway. Finite but very big. According to the code used to spawn it, the hallway is 3000 biome tiles long and it would take you over 15 minutes realtime to walk Rasetsu to the far end even if PURITY drain wasn't an issue. There are sometimes rooms that spawn off to one side of the hall, but the doors leading to them are locked and cannot be interacted with. The side rooms contain certain biome tiles that are not used in ordinary floor generations. Some of them look like the inside of someone's house. 15% probability. The white-clothed NPC can appear in one of the locked rooms (rarely) but does not attack and kill the player. It just stands there.
- CAUSAL LOOP - The level is fully respawned with enemies as normal. There's no BGM and you have no mask abilities, but otherwise it plays out just like a regular floor. 5% probability.
- LARGE ROOM (GRAVEYARD) - This is similar to the LARGE ROOM but the generation works differently so we categorise it differently. What is especially odd about this one is that, despite being theoretically a floor inside a building, this "room" appears to be...outdoors. The 'ground' is grass and dirt - a special biome used nowhere else - and every tile contains a gravestone with incense burning. The number of gravestones spawned is equal to the number of enemies killed in all runs aggregated on your act.sav, added to the number of times Rasetsu himself has died. The white-clothed NPC will appear here and kill you. Appears 3% of the time.
- TURNED AROUND - You think you're entering a floor, but you actually just end up back in the stairwell where you were. 2% probability.
A question. Are any of these actually scary? Well, no. But frankly most creepypasta aren't scary. Most horror games aren't scary. Maybe they're a little bit scary at the start, but pretty soon it's all a meme. Is anyone seriously afraid of SCP shit anymore? Was anyone ever? You get the idea. People will sometimes talk about supposedly hidden super-rare sequences that can happen on re-entering a cleared level. Do not believe them; that is all just actual real life creepypasta. The above list, and the associated probabilities, was obtained by analysis of the game scripts. These are all that there are. The one exception is if you go all the way down to 1F and try to re-enter it. This behaves a bit strangely. If you have you not yet killed Si Chonggen (i.e. you have not yet reached 65F) you can re-enter 1F and nothing at all will happen; it will be exactly like you left it, no differences whatsoever. You will not get one of the sequences listed above; no jumpscares, even. If, however, you have entered the CORRECTED DISCOURSES above 64F, the game executable will crash to desktop when you try to re-enter 1F. It's not entirely obvious if that was intended behaviour; the dump tells you it's a memory access violation. Bamboo Bread never patched it out. But then again, they never patched HM at all.
ENDINGS エンド
There are three obtainable endings in Hotline Mifune. (Three?) Yes, three. You may think there are only two. You may know of only two. You may question the use of the word 'obtainable' there (assuming you Know) since the third one is a bit iffy on that front. But there are three, nonetheless. The first one - Partial Payment - you've already seen. To get it you just have to die on 64F, either due to Si Chonggen talking for too long or due to being shot in the face. This is what the Any% route does. The other two endings require some more explanation.
After clearing 64F, you leave the COLLECTED DISCOURSES and enter the CORRECTED DISCOURSES. What are you even doing past this point? The "boss" theoretically has been killed. What is the point of continuing? The answer is fairly simple, you're just continuing as before: grinding through the levels to kill as much as you can. That is what you, the player are doing. What, in context, is Rasetsu doing? He doesn't really know himself. His trajectory in opposition to "Heaven" - i.e. to GMK Financing and Loan - seems to have become a kind of blind killing machine. In a manner of speaking he already got what he "wanted" - or seemed to want - at the outset. But he still continues. He continues because he continues to "want" something. Or rather you do, and he is just the vehicle for it.
How many more floors can there be? In principle there's no reason why Bamboo Bread couldn't have made it infinite. In practice they did not. In practice there is a limit, as with all things. There are exactly 108 floors in the GMK Financing and Loan building. So let's now return to the stairwell, just before the end.
【STAIRWELL】
BGM: 幽玄会社 – 彼岸帰航
No Enma today. That's fine. Rasetsu's raincoat is blood-drenched as usual; his footprints are outlined in unfading red on the raw concrete. Fluorescent lights hum in the background. By the time you've got here you've spent about 45 minutes on the playthrough, possibly longer if you're not using dharanis. You will on average have killed about 1600 enemies on the way, including Si Chonggen. And that's just in this playthrough. Reaching 108F takes a lot of effort even if you casual it out and use only CONSCIOUS masks on the way up. The generation algorithm is slightly biased to produce larger enemy counts on higher floors; the increase is so subtle you won't notice it, but if you watch footage of someone playing 7F vs 107F you'll see it clearly.
We approach the door. Rasetsu puts down the gym bag, and opens it.
【OBJECTIVE HYENA】
【FEED ON CORPSES TO REGAIN FLESH】
【DHARMAKAYA DHARANI】
【PERCEPTION OF THE GROUND】
It doesn't actually matter what tier of mask you wear here. 108F, like 1F and 64F, is not randomised. It is always a "Hell" floor. And it is a little bit unique.
【CORRECTED DISCOURSES】
【108F::HELL REALM】
BGM: 陰陰殷殷 – 冷視
Truth is, if you've been exploring the lower floors after clearing them, you may have already seen this. This is not a "Hell" floor generated according to the usual tileset for that biome. This is the LARGE ROOM (GRAVEYARD) which can rarely appear in place of a cleared floor. This is outside, outdoors even. It appears to be raining; the raindrops form circles on the sodden path. The storm outside - distant thunder - has been a constant presence in the ambient underlayer beneath the murder and the music, and now, with the fairly quiet opening of Cold Gaze playing, you can hear it much louder than usual. You move forward along a path between grave markers. (There are thousands of them.) Proceeding directly ahead one comes to an area which is illuminated by a lamppost (this is a special tile which does not spawn on the GRAVEYARD encountered elsewhere). Beneath the lamppost is Enma's dead body surrounded by a pool of blood. Standing behind Enma's dead body is the white-clothed NPC with the sword. You've seen this one already. This is the one that kills you.
What is it called? There is no boss subtitle overlaid here, so no official name. In the scripts this NPC is called "onore" which can mean both "I" and "you" - which is inconvenient. On Pixiv this character is usually tagged as "The Enemy" [敵] which doesn't make a huge amount of sense when you look at it too closely, but we have nothing better to use so we'll go with that.
Anyway - now that you are on 108F, and PURITY is draining away as usual, there are two things you can do. You will notice that unlike every other appearance, the Enemy is not attacking Rasetsu. Just stands there. It turns to follow your movements, so it is clearly aware of you, but it doesn't act. You can, if you like, attack. Wouldn't recommend it. You see, unlike Si Chonggen who was bullshit, the Enemy is in fact outright unkillable. It does have a PURITY and FLESH meter hovering over its head, but its PURITY meter is already at 0%. And if you try to attack - it will, without fail, perfect-parry and riposte every single attack you make. If you throw your weapon, even with a MONKEY mask, it will dodge. If you try to CROCODILE lunge, it will perfect-parry the lunge (other enemies can very rarely do this) and riposte you. If you wear the DEMON mask - the more inventive of you will have thought of this - then the Enemy will become hostile to you immediately, and will rush toward you and attack you. You can try to get an attack in between the Enemy's attacks - but this is an enemy that just cheats, and has 0 recovery frames, and will just perfect-parry and riposte your attacks no matter what. You can try to parry the Enemy's attacks; it is possible, and you can keep PURITY up that way, but eventually your weapon will degrade and break and you will have to keep parrying with bare hands, which will quickly consume all your FLESH very quickly and leave you in a position where you have to keep doing that, forever, and if you make a single mistake the Enemy's attack will land and drain your PURITY instantly, killing you. You can try to perfect-parry the Enemy's attacks: this is impossible. The perfect-parry window on the sword it uses (a special weapon unobtainable by the player) is not only less than one frame, it's less than one tick of the game logic. How is that even possible? There's an entire library they implemented in the code specifically to do it. It seems to be that when the game checks for the perfect-parry window being active on the sword it calls a routine that's running on a seperate thread tied directly to the CPU clock. Even if you underclocked your processor deliberately you would have a maybe 1/10000 chance of making those line up, and you would have to be sub-millisecond accurate even to get that chance. This is easily the most ridiculous feature Bamboo Bread put in the game and it's all specifically done just to make sure that you will, absolutely, die.
Your other option is just to do nothing, and wait for your PURITY to hit 0%. And you will die as well.
You will die no matter what you do.
【UNSIGHTLY】
【UNDESERVING OF LIFE】
SFX: Dial tone.
SFX: Dial tone continues.
SFX: And continues.
【THIS WAS YOUR MISTAKE】
【THROUGH IGNORANCE KARMA IS ACCUMULATED】
【IT IS BETTER THIS WAY】
【THE CAUSE OF BIRTH IS KARMA】
【JUST DIE】
【THROUGH KNOWLEDGE KARMA IS NOT ACCUMULATED】
【JUST DIE】
【THROUGH ABSENCE OF KARMA】
【JUST DIE】
【ONE IS NOT REBORN】
【JUST DIE】
【JUST DIE】
【JUST DIE】
SFX: Click.
And here we are again.
【EPITAPH】
THERE WAS NO LONGER EVEN A VESTIGE OF BLOOD
WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT ARIADNE
SAID THESEUS
THE MINOTAUR SCARCELY DEFENDED HIMSELF
J. L. BORGES
This is the second ending, which is called "Writeoff" [帳消し]. You obtain it by dying on 108F, for any reason. And really this is, as far as everyone ought to be concerned, where Rasetsu's story ends. Where it has to end. How did you think a game like this could end, honestly? It ends the same way it's been ending for hours. You just die. You die - but of course, dying doesn't essentially change your situation. You die and you come back. What do you do when you get an ending like this? You hit the main menu and you jump right back in. Repeat. Because you want to. Because "you" want to. Because that is your will. The true face.
—Only, in truth, that is not quite the end.
This was discovered only after we (in the discord, to which you are not invited) decompiled Hotline Mifune and got to look at the code. There's a lot in there, a lot of quite funny comments in the script which you can see in the relevant thread in GD. And there is also a third ending sequence. Now there was disagreement here as to whether this ending "counts" - whether it is "canon" if you will. The argument goes that it has clearly been dummied out - that the ending is not actually obtainable in-game but was left in because they didn't have time to remove it. This is - true. But technically, technically, it is very technically not true. To explain this we have to go all the way back to the beginning. Remember what happens when you start a new run? You get the sequence with Ox and Horse driving the car, Rasetsu breaks out and kills them, et cetera.
【HEISEI 8】
【800 DAYS】
【00:00】
BGM: 幽玄会社 – 彼岸帰航
Heisei 8, by the way, is 1996. In case you were wondering when this game takes place.
[HORSE] ...
[OX] ...
[HORSE] DOES IT NOT BOTHER YOU
[OX] ...
[HORSE] THE ODOMETER
[OX] WHAT
[HORSE] THE NUMBER ON THE ODOMETER
[OX] ...
The number Horse quotes from the odometer is, as mentioned in the last update, the "run count." It measures how many times you have died (and, implicitly from the fact that you're looking at it in game, the number of times you have restarted after dying.) Now this number is stored in memory as an unsigned 64-bit integer. This means that there is a maximum possible value that can be stored for this number; this maximum is, however, somewhat large.
[HORSE] IT IS 18,446,744,073,709,551,615
[OX] 18,446,744,073,709,551,615
There is, of all things, a check in the code to see if the run count is equal to the maximum - in other words, to one less than 2^64, which is about eighteen and a half quintillion. Now this is "achievable" in-game. It would take at least 100 trillion years but it is achievable. (Laughter.) It is an absolutely impossible, inhuman amount of time; it suggests a repetition that has gone on beyond any imaginable limit, beyond life and death, beyond the universe itself. We have done it here by modifying the act.sav file because we don't have that kind of time. But what actually happens if you start the game with the run count that high? Well, nothing. Everything is as usual. Until, that is, you get to 108F.
【CORRECTED DISCOURSES】
【108F::HELL REALM】
BGM: 陰陰殷殷 – 冷視
You walk right in as before and notice that there is nothing here. Enma's corpse is not here. The Enemy is not here. The check in the code triggers a flag that makes both of them fail to spawn. And it causes something else to spawn in their place. On the ground under the lamppost where they would usually be is, just lying on the floor - a mask.
Walk over it.
【MASK GET】
【TRUE FACE】
Now once you pick up this mask there's nothing else you can do, and you can't leave the room, so you will just die from PURITY loss and get the "Writeoff" ending as usual. But when you start a new run - first of all, what will happen is that the run count will overflow and return to zero.
[HORSE] THE NUMBER ON THE ODOMETER
[OX] ...
[HORSE] IT IS 0
[OX] 0
But the second thing that will happen, once you've been through 1F and gotten into the stairwell, is that the TRUE FACE mask will be in your inventory. If you look at it you'll see it's a (pixel-art representation of) a Noh mask of the deigan style, an impassive-looking face with pale skin. People found the assets for this mask a long time before we got to look at the code and there were all sorts of theories about how to obtain it; as it turned out the actual method was even more insane than anything we could suspect. Sasuga Bamboo Bread. Like the DEMON mask it has no descriptive text to accompany it. In terms of level generation it behaves like an ORGANIC or OBJECTIVE mask. What its effect is - is very simple. The TRUE FACE just disables PURITY as a mechanic for the player. The PURITY meter is simply eliminated, and you can neither lose or gain any of it. This effect is now permanent, once you've put the TRUE FACE on even once; it will now apply no matter what mask you're wearing, and even in the stairwell where you don't wear a mask. Rasetsu has become unkillable. All challenge has been completely removed the game. Hotline Mifune has been turned into a walking simulator. You can explore it a bit now. You can listen to the complete rant from Si Chonggen if you so wish. You can explore the unusual levels that appear if you return to cleared floors after a long interval - you can walk to the other side of the LARGE ROOM or the end of the LONG ROOM. The Enemy will no longer appear at all. You are imperishable and entirely free within this labyrinth; you may go where you wish, and nothing can stop you. Now that there is no longer any obstacle to your progress you will find, perhaps, that there is no longer any interest. You may walk down from the CORRECTED DISCOURSES all the way back to 1F, and you may enter it. The game will no longer crash to desktop once you have the TRUE FACE. You can return by the way you first arrived, the Associate and the Concierge who you murdered on an impulse. And unlike any other return to 1F, you can, if you want, simply walk up to the glass door at the front of the lobby, and leave.
【EPITAPH】
THERE WAS NO LONGER EVEN A VESTIGE OF BLOOD
WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT ARIADNE
SAID THESEUS
THE MINOTAUR SCARCELY DEFENDED HIMSELF
J. L. BORGES
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Originally Posted by YoungMeme
