Killer7 SINdicate

[Rake]

The former cafe:

http://www.accessgames-blog.com/swery65/


(Seen here with a Yakuza style tattoo of Sharapova.)

For anyone out there who still gives a fuck about 51, 65 is the natural follow-up— one of the more interesting characters in game development, born in 1973 the first child of a Buddhist monk family from Osaka— now a certified Buddhist priest himself.

Most well-known for Red Seeds Profile, formerly known as Rainy Woods:



..and for those Observers out there /kirakira that's right! The site and logo were designed by none other than Eisin Sasaki of GhM fame— contributing their best graphic work such as killer7's in-game puzzle renders, the Japanese cover, graphics for Hand in killer7, as well as motion graphics for Blood+: One Night Kiss, early prototype work on No More Heroes, and much more we'll probably never get to fucking see. /sob





Unfortunately, the cult success came from it mistaking off as a "so-bad-it's-good" "campy" (fucking trannies can't imagine anyone taking themselves or anything they do seriously) "attempt" at a "Twin Peaks game"— thankfully dispelled in full by friend of the hotel Hikikomori Media:



But for anyone who hasn't been following him as long as I have, 65 can describe himself:

[...] Aside from that, I’m also working on a story about a high school girl detective who uses the imagination (fantasising) energy from masturbating to help her solve murders. But all the publishers keep telling me ‘There’s no way we could put out such a perverted game!’ LOL!

I wish someone would let me make it. [...]

[Sauce]

[...] “I was raised in a Buddhist temple, and I became interested in temples and started to learn about them. Sometime next month I am aiming to get the qualifications required to become a priest. I want to become the first Buddhist priest game developer in Japan. It’s partly a serious pursuit, and partly not so serious.” [...]

[Sauce]

[...] Growing up in a temple meant that I encountered a lot of different people from a young age. These were not always happy people; much of the time they were angry, or sad, or suffering in some way. I think this gave me a natural interest in humanity, and it also taught me that the spirit can be fraught. So perhaps my work portrays a sense of things that are beyond human comprehension as a result. [...]

[...] I actually became a qualified priest while I was a high-school student. Some 25 years later, I had forgotten this part of my identity – that I was also a monk. But last year I became seriously ill and had to take a prolonged period off work. [...]

[...] I spent time living communally in a temple in Kyoto. Every day began at 5:30am and ended at 11pm, with a strict daily routine. History, doctrine, devotional exercises, sermons, etiquette, morality, music, law; we followed a regime of when to rest and when to study. It goes without saying that devotional exercises were not missed on a single day. We sat in the seiza position (kneeling with your back straight and your feet tucked beneath your bottom) for maybe 10 hours a day. [...]

[...] I have always created works with the belief that the world of entertainment and the spiritual world are connected. [...] I wouldn’t want to make an exaggerated statement like ‘Games are just the same as faith!’, but I do believe that they are something greater than simply a means of generating money, or pieces of mere entertainment to be consumed. I strive to make games that can be considered even a little bit as art or something eternal. [...]

[Sauce]



Yeah, this shit's already old enough that this's back when those French artfags at Archipel were still Toco Toco TV:


(I thought the intro was a French artist that really liked Japan, turns out it's a Japanese artist that really likes France— so both the intro and song by Hige Driver are Japanese.)

But there's a newer one too:



Swery's also released a book, Dear Ambivalence:



(Not his first attempt, as The Good Life originally started as a novel to deal with the loss of his cat.)

With cover art by crossdresser (kind of a running theme with him, right? /lips) Ryu Kimura:



65 should poach this guy for White Owls permanently:



http://iogii.web.fc2.com/system.html

This old-school visual kei look is pretty rare nowadays:



Unsurprisingly, Swery has fascination with violence /murder and pain /saw:

[...] “To be honest, we had more horrific scenes when developing this game but we deleted or fixed them before release,” [...] “For example, in the scene where the second victim (I intentionally hide the name) is killed, he (or she) was going to be killed by having the entrails pulled out from his (or her) body while he (or she) was alive. Why did I want to make these kinds of horrific scenes? Because I wanted to express the most [feared] thing in the real world — death — as something meaningful. [...]

“As for the controversy about this kind of expression [violence in games] — I think that has nothing to do with me. There are so many beautiful games that can ease the mind, but in the real world, we can’t stamp out any war or murder happening somewhere. I feel the need to express the dark side of the world, not only the beautiful side. [...]

[Sauce]

https://www.refused-classification.com/ ... ersial-04/

Some interesting talks on his game design philosophy:







I'm dear ambivalent on his post-hyperglycemic move from Access to his own White Owls:





https://www.giantbomb.com/articles/swer ... 1100-5584/







The aesthetics under him directly are better (Prince Owlery, golden ratio, lucha libre, etc.) but he suffers from the same problem as 51 (who needs Mikami to stand over him with a kendo sword and beat good games out of him like a piñata), Inafune or the like— a lotta these guys don't seem to be able to deal with the lack of overhead structure provided by the "men in suits" finance types, even though those're the same types that tend to stand in their way creatively (like what happened to Kojima). As unfortunately, his best games so far (Red Seeds Profile and D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die) were done under the infrastructure of Access.



https://web.archive.org/web/20170117112 ... white_owls


(I wish I'd bought shit from their Zazzle store. I like this gloomy-twee aesthetic with Prince Owlery. The Engrish makes it even better.)

On the subject of the aesthetics of White Owls Inc., when I'd played The MISSING (so far, the only game they've actually fucking finished) I thought FK, the patchwork stuffed animal from The MISSING looked a little like The Pillows mascot Buster-kun:



But don't take my word for it:

https://imgur.com/gallery/AE4jC/new

EDIT: Okay, this broke for some reasons. FUCK Imgur. /hurr

https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoBestFriends ... on_isnt_a/

https://www.giantbomb.com/deadly-premon ... le-417704/



https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/intere ... ds/.150667

Buster-kun has been The Pillows' mascot since about 1998, when on a visit to London, the band saw a doll of a "grotesque and creepy-looking teddy bear" in a shop window. Since then it has been constantly used in promotional videos, album artwork and goods such as T-shirts and bracelets. Buster-kun was named after the Little Busters album and the group also uses the term "little busters" for its fans. The original doll can be seen in the promotional video for the song "Hybrid Rainbow" and on the DVD video and artwork cover of the Hello, Welcome to Bubbletown's Happy Zoo (Instant Show) DVD.

In an interview, Sawao commented on the reason why they adopted Buster-kun and what it represents to the band's music: "The original doll was made out of really dirty old leather and had a real-looking eye and tongue, but one of the eyes was a button and it was displayed in a window, shaking like it was being electrocuted. We still don't know what it was and why it was there, because it wasn't in a store display window and it didn't look like it was for commercial purposes, but it just seemed like someone's idea of a prank or some artist's work that we thought was interesting. So we used it in our jacket booklet and while we were on tour, we thought of placing that bear image on T-shirts, so we sent the picture to a designer to arrange it. At first it looks cute, but once you get up close, it has sharp teeth like it's ready to bite any minute. So that kind-of-cute but kind-of-scary look fits right in with The Pillows music perfectly.".

/spooky Since I can't know for sure— I'll just have to ask if I run into him.



SWERY65's entrance in 2010 with Red Seeds Profile was such a breath of fresh air at a time where the tone of gaming was getting conservative and risk averse, from that to D4 and then western hits like Max Payne 3, Kane & Lynch 2, and Hotline Miami coming out in rapid succession it looked like the early '10s were going to reject the commercial sterility of the late '00s and return to the crazy violence and surreality of the early '00s.
Unfortunately, between the mulatto-Kenyan-Obongo administration and GamerGate, that shit got the shutdown pretty quick (ruining the economy probably wasn't planned as a cultural psyop, but the government doesn't let a good disaster go to waste), since they needed to begin to shift the zeitgeist away from the war culture of the U.S. in the '00s built to fuel enlistment and transform it into the victim culture necessary to drive faggotry (getting Gen X and Millennials to Boomer up and willingly relinquish what little freedom they have left in exchange for petty comforts) that would quickly infect and dictate the rest of the 2010's to now (the Everpresent). Japan being the 51st (occupied) state of the United States means that anything done to Americans runs downstream to them.

Here's hoping that White Owls Inc. can find more stability so 65 can go back to making games no one else can! Either way, I'll still be supporting him:



/angel

[Meru]

Much-needed thread and epic OP.

I need to collect my thoughts properly. In the meantime, here is a post I would like to draw attention to:

Had completely forgotten those. A bizarre addition.

I never really liked them because they kill the pacing of the story. Sometimes a chapter will start with York in the red room, but in the re-release they add an apropos of nothing scene of him retelling the game to his granddaughter right before it. So is he telling her "And then I woke up in a spiritual space between realms where I had visions of my younger self, then I woke up"? The framing doesn't fit at all.
They removed them from the switch version but everything else (new camera, no color filters, a million more glitches, propensity to crashing) is the same as the director's cut version.

I actually got in trouble for recommending the original DP on the old forums back when it came out lol. I still think the original is an overall good game despite the forced combat sections. (Which again, in the overall economy of the playtime aren't even that many unless you're just speeding through the story.)
The level of interactivity you have with the town and characters hasn't been replicated in anything since, which is absurd when you consider that it was a low-budget title released at budget price. Each named NPC has a routine which changes depending on the episode and the weather, they each have different dialogue depending on where you meet them, when you meet them and the weather conditions, they interact with each other regardless of player input, and each of them has a little storyline that ties into the history of the town. You can even spy them from their windows and enter each of their houses.
I would even argue that most of the sidequest rewards are useful or fun to play around with, even though they're worth it in and of itself if you're into the writing of the game.

I also think the writing is good, or at the very least the character writing. It doesen't get enough credit because everyone just focuses on the funnier/goofier moments (which I don't mind either. Every derivative of Twin Peaks seems to selectively ignore that it had its own goofy moments as well.)

At its core the plot revolves around a psychological mindgame between York/Zach, George and Forrest Kaysen.

George is a broken man through the abuse he suffered in childhood who runs the town's BDSM underworld like a cult of personality by taking advantage of people who are even more insecure and feeble minded than he is (A transvestite gay man, random teenage girls) by prying them with drugs. Ultimately he was just manipulated by Kaysen whose purpose is to be an agent of chaos and spread the red seed through whichever means are more feasable in a specific era and location. (Which in present day rural america, would be undeground drug deals. During war time he just infiltrated the military to develop them into a chemical weapon, which is still seeped in the town's streets to this day and is ultimately what causes the supernatural apparitions to come out at night.)
George starts sacrificing his cult members one by one after being manipulated by Kaysen into thinking that the ritual would make him ascend to godhood, and with Thomas' help he impedes York's investigations while he goes through with the other murders.

That's what Kaysen's line, "Binding people with rules is a sign of small mindedness, and that's what George represented in life" is getting at. George's iron grip on the town, which he developed by being a lawman during the day and a drug kingpin during the night, is ultimately just a reflection of his own weakness of character, which Kaysen exploits successfully by reaching his goals without lifting a finger. George even cries like a bitch when he's turning into a super sayian 3 in his boss fight lol. "He's the one who gave me the wonderful present! He told me I would be divine!"
His banter with York is also very funny. "I chose her as my first sacrifice, so I could become divine!" "No George, you chose her as your first "victim" so you could become a "first degree murderer.""

Zach is also a broken man due to childhood trauma who chose to be a lawman, but instead of projecting his insecurities by asserting control onto the weak minded he developed a split personality in the strong and reliable York Morgan who acts as a filter between Zach and the world. Instead of succumbing to his own broken body and mind, Zach manages to tap into a higher level of spirituality through his connection with York, which is how he's ultimately able to solve the investigation through bullshit coincidences such as fishing out the files from the river. (It's actually not dissimilar to how Dale Cooper in TP3, after being rendered retarded by switching bodies with the tulpa Dougie Jones, immediately starts making life better for all those surrounding him by following hints left for him by the lodge spirits. It's hinting at higher forces at play, it's not actually bullshit.)
Zach, once presented with a repeat of his childhood trauma (His father being forced to kill his own wife in order to prevent the spread of evil. Which is to say that the sacrifices to the red seeds, are actually just impregnated with a red tree, further spreading the infection. Hence why the biggest number of them are found in the cemetery.) eventually gathers the strenght to come out of his York cocoon and confront Kaysen. In other words, Zach is able to hurt Kaysen because instead of commiserating himself (much like George did) his trauma became a gateway to a higher state of mind and existance.

Another thing I find interesting is how Mr. Stewart acts as a spiritual guide / shaman for Zach through the game. Stewart is actually George's father, and he failed in protecting George from his own insane wife. We later find out that he in turn was crippled by his father, which was made insane by the red seed gas in the 50s. (Stewart's father was the original Raincoat Killer from the 50s, the same legend that George exploits in present-time Greenvale.)
In other words, all the main players in the game are part of a cicle of abuse started by a spiritual evil that has no purpose other than to spread itself and weaken others. By acting out the roles of father and son, Stewart and Zach ultimately break this cicle of abuse through a spiritual connection to a higher plane.

There's some very good dialogue and acting in there too, specifically relating to the phrase "At times we must purge things from this world because they should not exist, even if it means losing someone that you love". The first time we hear that is when York is recounting the suicide-homicide of his parents, and recalls them as his father's last words before he killed his wife and himself. Stewart then quotes the line back at him, which is the one moment where York gets upset and responds "that doesen't justify murder!". I like that instead of questioning why or how Stewart would know about his past, he just has a gut reaction. When Zach is awakened, it is revealed that Xander (his dad) actually could not bring himself to kill his wife, who was consumed by the red tree in front of him. (Meaning that his sin is the same as Stewart's. Failing to kill a loved one, allowing evil to spread further and infect the next generation.) Zach is then forced into the same choice (killing Emily in order to spare her from being consumed by the tree), yet cannot bring himself to quote his father fully. (He says "extracted" instead of "purge".) He ultimately fails as well, so I guess in this instance Emily is the one breaking the cycle of abuse by killing herself, which in turn gives Zach enough conviction to face Kaysen even without his York persona. York, having fulfilled his role, becomes a guide to the afterlife to those who died. (Which apparently was a foregone conclusion, considering the painting in Stewart's house predicted this exact outcome.) By helping Zach, Stewart ultimately spares him the grief of growing into a regretful old man as he did. (Which happens in 2 regardless but whatever, I mean in the context of 1.)

There's this idea that the writing in DP is "so bad it's good" but I disagree. It is definitely a funny game, but I think the humor is as intentional as the drama. I think the problem with gamers is that they're so used to god awful dogshit writing that they can't even conceptualize something being sincere. I do think DP and D4 have legitimately good writing, they're not really "about" anything in the same sense that the older Suda games were (where you can approach them as not so subtle allegories of real world issues, and the philosophy behind them) but that doesn't make the writing bad. The plot construction of D4 was kind of impressive in and of itself considering that you can predict which plot twists were going to happen in the following titles just by analysing the only one they released.

What happened with Swery is similar to what happened with Suda, in that the biggest part of the fanbase latched on to very superficial elements of each's work, which in turn led producers to ask for those elements to be blown out of proportion and overshadow everything else. With Suda it would be the pop culture reference, violence and dirty jokes. With Swery I guess it would be the goofy animations, glitches and movie quotes I think? That's even worse because his first three games (Spy Fiction, DP and D4) were not glitchy at all lol. It's as if the entire appeal of Suda's games was decided upon the shitty PS3 port of No More Heroes or something.

Even spy fiction, which was the weakest game of the three, still had some good writing in there (I like how the double agent character is handled specifically) and some fun gameplay ideas I've not really seen expanded in anything else.

The tranny puzzle game he made still had some drama (although I can't really relate to it since I'm not a goth chick myself) but everything else that came after was just a bunch of retarded memes.
DP2 is especially egregious because it cut out everything that was good about the original, while expanding on its worse elements and tacking on an RPG system that everything else ties back to. Seriously, WTF? Noone remembers farming alligators to drop teeth to make 1/10th of a medallion that gives you a +1 in strenght from DP1. What everyone remembers is the exploration, investigation, cool locations and character interactions. DP2 barely has any interiors, barely has any additional dialogue (there's like ten lines in total), no alternate dialogue when meeting characters out of sequence, no memorable sidequests that tie into the overall history of the town, no different vehicles, and everything you do ties into the grinding RPG system that is only useful to get high scores in some god awful minigames and for the only three combat sequences in the game.
There are some parts of the story that I enjoyed, for example I liked most of what was going on with old man Zach, I liked Kaysen returning at the end (although his new voice actor almost ruins it), I liked that scarface from Spy Fiction showed up as the plantation owner, but overall it didn't really have any bite. It's just a bunch of shit happening, with Swery shoehorning in his fetish for transvestites once again by making the tranny villain a supergenious who managed to outsmart Kaysen (who is essentially an emissary of elder gods lol) by creating a situation in which kind hearted Patricia would inherit the massive wealth of the clarkson family while York would solve the case preventing the spread of the red seed at the same time making the world a better place all around. (All of this also relied on hurricane cathrina happening at the exact right time so I guess the tranny also puppeteered HAARP from behind the scenes.)
There is no psychological power play or mistery solving in this detective game whatsoever because the "villain" (who is not a villain at all and is in fact the smartest person to ever live, human or otherwise) has already won before the story started. So the only bit of drama to be invested in is Zach slowly going insane from a brain tumor and obsessing over a corpse that was never found, but that is also resolved with some bullshit macguffin with York showing up and magically curing Zach of his tumor which may or may not have been Forrest Kaysen himself. That makes no sense because in the original, York was just a persona that Zach created to shield himself from the world. Granted the game does hint at the fact that York eventually developed into his own soul living in the spiritual plane, but just being able to magically cure cancer with the power of love is a step too far. He's basically an angel now. The rest of the story is just a bunch of jokes and movie references and memes where York follows the instructions of a voodoo priest who has nothing to do with any of the events taking place. (???)

The Good Life was promising when it got announced since it seemed like a re-do of Deadly Premonition without the tacked on combat. In that you'd actually get to investigate a murder lol. (The biggest problem with 1 is that you can actually just beat the game by never engaging with detective work whatsoever and just driving from cutscene to cutscene, and from combat encounter to combat encounter. Granted that would be missing everything good about the game, but it was technically possible. Meanwhile the good life seemed like it would require you to engage with the world, just to progress with the story.)
Unfortunately from what I have seen TGL is also a bunch of dumb memes and grinding. I might be wrong considering I have not played it yet, but that's the impression I get from all the footage.

I don't understand if Swery thinks he's being clever by constantly peddling the idea that his games are shit on purpose because people like them that way, or if he drank himself into retardation. I definitely think he showed promise when DP and D4 released but I don't really give a shit what he does now.

[Krizzx]

Whatever happened to that game he was supposed to be making with Suda 51?

[ArhumMK51]

Whatever happened to that game he was supposed to be making with Suda 51?

Still happening, developed by White Owls according to trademarks.

(Reply to Death Game Hotel announcement)

[ArhumMK51]

Japanese TGS Trailer:


English Trailer:


Swery & Suda talk about the game (timestamped link):


Looks like The Missing, if it was actually good.

[Krizzx]

Ugh, XSX exclusive?

[Deep]

Ugh, XSX exclusive?

Nah, it's for every modern system. So don't worry. Just watch it on youtube.

[cj_iwakura]

Ehhh... I'm pretty disappointed, I expected it to be an action/survival horror game a la Killer7 paired with Evil Within(but good), not a The Missing clone.

[Meru]

Doesn't look very Missing-like to me, besides hopefully being built upon it. It's a combat game where you hit things and make life bars go down, which sucks. I don't like that there's "levels" based on X or Y movie. I don't like the whole idea. It looks like a waste of this collaboration. If any prior works come to mind, it would be Let it Die. Needless to say, I will definitely be paypigging it, but probably won't play. If you're on this forum you should give 65 and 51 money whenever there is an opportunity.

[cj_iwakura]

Oh, I'm still going to play it, just disappointed it's not something... more. I was hoping for more of a psychological horror game, which is really what Swery's best at(even if he keeps trying to shoehorn in bad mechanics, just let the man make a visual novel or something without combat).