WARNING!

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CERN

IBM 5100

So, a few months ago, I decided to play. I was intrigued by its premise, and since I also somewhat recently got into visual novels, I figured I'd try one of the classics. The fact that a PS Vita port of the game was released also helped -- I mean, who doesn't love reading in bed? So, this past summer, this was basically me:I try to go into new experiences with as little expectations as possible -- I find that this is the best way to enjoy any type of media. But, it's not really financially responsible to buy a game without at least getting some idea of what I'm getting into. So I looked around here a little bit.— Actual quotes from fellow NeoGAF membersOh hey, that's all I need to know! I like going on an emotional ride. So I suppose this is a sci-fi adventure with tearjerker elements? Heh, let's do this!...Little did I know that tears would indeed fall from my eyes, but not forof the reasons I expected.Let's start at the beginning. What follows are my impressions of the game as the story unfolded.Steins;Gate begins by introducing us to the main character, Okabe Rintaro. Actually, the game begins with a possibly well-made intro video that I deliberately didn't watch. I just can't trust Japanese developers to not spoil their games in their intros.But I digress. The game introduces Okabe, or "Okarin", as his childhood friend Mayuri affectionately calls him. It also gives an answer to what the hell a Steins Gate is:Uh. Okay then.It quickly becomes evident that Okabe suffers from severe immaturity. For some reason, he tries to present himself as this exaggerated supernatural character, a self-proclaimed "Mad Scientist" named "Hououin Kyouma". And he has no problems doing this in public.Turns out there is a word for this kind of behaviour:. Oh yeah, one of the great things about Steins;Gate is that it knows not everyone will be familiar with the terms it throws at you, so it includes a built-in encyclopedia. It's seriously handy.So, Okabe doesn't really appear to be a likeable guy. He would, however, grow to be one of my favourite characters.Most of the prologue is full of inane events thatdon't matter and you shouldforget about them. Oh, except that a girl named Makise Kurisu got murdered. And a crowd of hundreds of people suddenly evaporated when Okabe sent an email. Y'know, just your standard Wednesday.With the prologue over, the game introduces the rest of Okabe's friends, some of which work(?) at the laboratory he founded. He calls his colleagues "lab mems", short for "laboratory members", because Steins Gate forbid a Japanese teenager not abbreviate everything for the sake of I don't even know.Turns out Okarin's friends (barely) tolerate his 13-year-old-syndrome persona, and life goes on as normal. Except Okabe can't get what happened in the prologue out of his mind. It just makes no scientific sense, even for a mad scientist.By chance, or the will of Steins Gate (or narrative convenience), Okabe runs into Makise Kurisu, the girl he had previously seen in a pool of blood. Except this time, she doesn't appear to be mortally wounded. Also, it turns out the email he had sent that day somehow got sent to the past. Well slap my chicken and call me Mayushii, something ain't right here.Okabe swiftly tries to get to the bottom of the mystery (and under Kurisu's shirt, for a quick autopsy). Oh, by the way, Kurisu is an actual scientist, thesis published and everything, despite having just turned eighteen. That's actually amazing -- I wouldn't want any twenty-something-year-old senior citizens in my teenage thriller.You can immediately understand that Kurisu is driven by science. Even though she's mad at Okabe's shenanigans, notice the subtle shifts in her expression as she gets more and more curious about the zombie girl + email mysteries:However, there's not much time to think about this right now. Kurisu has to give a speech on -- oh hey! How convenient! -- time travel.Now, it's at this point that I really start to respect Steins;Gate for what it's trying to do. It throws theories at you, but it clearly explains what parts of the theory are purely hypothetical, which ones require unproven elements (such as wormholes and exotic matter), and what could be actually done if we had the technology.All of this tickled my engineer brain the right way. I found myself pondering and analysing what was being said, sometimes even proposing an answer before it actually appeared on the screen. Fun times.Okabe and Kurisu, science lovers that they are, quickly start ferociously discussing the plausibility of time travel among themselves, completely disregarding everyone else in the room. You can probably guess how this is going to end up, and it's also going to involve a room.Kurisu is legitimately intrigued by Okabe's email machine, which, by the way, is a phone and a microwave taped together. Serendipity, or whatever. So, she decides to join his lab. Okabe names her his assistant and starts calling her "Christina", becauseAfter this, the team starts investigating the PhoneWave (I almost want to snog the creative genius that came up with this name). What does it do, how does it work, etcetera. Long story short, everything that goes in it returns to its previous state at a certain moment in the past. If that something has mass (or energy) above a certain threshold, it also turns into a jellified substance (or is lost, respectively).At this point, Steins;Gate can be a bit infuriating due to how scientific the characters must act. To the attentive reader, it's already obvious what the PhoneWave is. It's a time machine, but we must test all 65535 variables before we can safely declare that conclusion. It's a time machine, but what if it's "just" a teleporter? It's a time machine, but what if it just hates chicken and bananas specifically?It's a time machine, dummies.I didn't mind the long science sessions because it's so rare to see actual scientific methods being explored instead of the usual "instantaneous science" that is common in fiction.But what follows after the discovery of the PhoneWave's function is a real test of endurance to the curiosity of the reader. I'll get there in a bit.So the microwave can send email to the past. At the same time, there is an online poster by the name of John Titor who's going around claiming he is a time traveller from the year 2036. Titor says that in the future, a method for physical time travel is developed by research organizationSERN. SERN used this technology to rule the world, and that's a big no-no, so Titor's mission is to change this future.Okabe remembers a John Titor from the early 2000s, who allegedly travelled back in time to find anIBN 5100 computer so he could debug legacy software written in a proprietary language. This hidden function of the IBN 5100 turned it into a small urban legend.Around this time, Okabe also meets ayoung lady named Kiryu Moeka, who's obsessively looking for an IBN 5100 for her work.Speaking of John Titor, SERN, and the IBN 5100, there's this new part-timer at the CRT store below that's saying someinteresting things:Let's talk a bit about Suzuha. On a first playthrough, it's incredibly easy to miss just how full of intention most of her interactions with Okabe are. What seems like idle chatter is actually the game bombarding you with hints about her nature.I know this might have been obvious to many people, but I'm not ashamed to say that I was not expecting the reveal of who Suzuha really is, despite all the hints being there from the very beginning. This was very interesting for me, especially since I tend to overanalyse these things and spoil myself in the process.If you have access to the game, I suggest (as a fun exercise) skipping through the beginning of the game until Suzuha's parts. It's amazing how it's all there.Back to the story, and since Okabe thinks all of this can't be a coincidence, he decides to track down an IBN 5100 of his own, and asks his hacker friend Daru to hack into SERN, to find out if they really are as bad as Titor claims. Hey, what could go wrong?Turns out Daru is the real deal, and is able to hack into SERN. Y'know, the inventors of the World Wide Web? No biggie. Meanwhile, Okabe also finds an IBN 5100. It's almost as if the world wanted all of this to happen. Everything's coming up Okarin.With the info they gather from SERN's private files, they find out that SERN has been indeed researching time travel, and is even experimenting on humans! All of the humans so far turn into a jellified substance upon travelling, losing their lives.With all this hard evidence, Okabe feels validated, and everyone at the lab is forced to admit that this is more than a simple conspiracy theory.By this time (and this is what I was talking about earlier), it's normal to think that the game is taking way too long to get going. There are a lot of inane conversations and events, and I can totally see why some people would lose interest at this point. It's valid criticism., in my opinion, this overly long set-up plays a very important role further ahead in the game. I'll address that later.On a lucky streak and feeling like a god, Okabe declares that the lab should further improve the PhoneWave in order to outwit SERN's time travel efforts.But Okabe has his priorities sorted out, and he decides we must first come up with a cool name for our time-travelling emails.This isn't really relevant, but when Okabe said this, I remember thinking to myself: "Hmm... it's an email that goes back in time... I think 'Retromail' would be a good name."Seconds later...I want to marry this woman.After feeling disproportionately proud of myself for this, the characters settle on the inferior name D-Mail, named after the DeLorean in "Back to the Future".Oh, by the way, let me just pause here for a bit and talk about how amazing the art in this game is. It's seriously gorgeous to look at. What's up with the arm belts, though? Oh, and are you listening to the playlist I posted at the top of this post? Isn't the soundtrack? Steins Gatedamn.Anyway. After yet another long session of sciencing, the lab mems figure out the conditions for having D-Mails work all the time. So, it's time to experiment a lot and try to change the past in various ways, in yet another "what could go wrong" moment for everyone except Okabe.D-mails, as it turns out, actually work. If the D-Mail would actually trigger the Butterfly Effect, then the world actually changes, and apparently Okabe is the only one who can perceive this (an ability he calls Reading Steiner, for no reason whatsoever).Okabe's friends are quick to take advantage of this, and send their own D-Mails for their own purposes. Moeka wants to revert a bad purchase, Luka wants to become a girl (wait, what), and Faris wants to bring her father back from the dead.All of the D-Mails work, and Okabe is apparently the only one who remembers the world before it was changed by D-Mails. The game really convinces you that Okabe has a supernatural ability, and it's around this point that it kind of jumps the shark towards pure fiction. It had to happen at some point, naturally.By the way, and this is apropos of nothing, but isn't this pic so unintentionally creepy? It's one of those "when you see it..." moments:Okabe sends one last D-Mail to prevent Suzuha from mysteriously leaving Akihabara. All of these D-Mails would have a disastrous effect, because you see, at some point between D-Mails the IBN 5100 vanished.So the PhoneWave is a beast, and it must be improved. Kurisu, who's actually a neuroscientist despite her dominance of modern physics, suggests implementing her thesis (storing memories as data) as an additional function. Since the PhoneWave can send some bytes of data to the past, Kurisu suggests compressing all of a person's memories (in a way that makes no sense whatsoever, but that I still commend the game for trying to explain it) and sending them to the past, effectively allowing a person to "time leap".This task takes some days to complete, and meanwhile the hacking of SERN had continued.The Time Leap Machine is eventually finished.Man, I swear. So many hours have passed since the game started, and while the setting is interesting and all, isn't it about timehappened?This is a threat. An actual threat, after all this time.And it's only now, looking back, that I realise that those first hours of the game, where little happened and the game seemed to drag along, were essential to create this false sense of security.It's nothing but yet another one of Hououin Kyouma's childish delusions.They're a nuclear research organisation. They have secrets, but they're not actually going to go after people who participate in inane conspiracy theories. And besides, they're in Europe.We are merely curious, naïve teenagers.No one knows.No one cares.I mean, we think we can change the world, but so does everyone else at some point in their lives.We are living our lives normally.Look at how normal and boring our normal lives are.since we started doing this.Nothing will happen to us.No one will come through that door.In fact, after the assault begins, it takes a while for everyone in the lab to process what is going on.The same happens to the player. It just feels, close to impossible. The immediate shattering of Okabe's safety bubble is brutal. Everything feels ethereal, dreamlike. What the hell is happening.The lab mems are immediately brought back to reality by the appearance of a familiar face. Kiryu Moeka. The young woman who everyone thought was a friend, appears with a gun, demanding that they surrender their time machine.And to prove her point, she shoots Okabe's childhood friend, Mayuri.She kills Mayuri. Just like that.It worked. It was worth it. Steins;Gate took forever to get going, but the payoff is here, and it's going to be a wild ride from now on.Okabe still can't believe it, but he retains enough judgement to realise that there is still a way out: the Time Leap Machine. He can send his memories to the past, and prevent this.But no matter what he does, and how many times he leaps, he can't save Mayuri. She always dies.For the entirety of the game, I didn't cry because I was happy for the characters, or sad about their misfortunes. I didn't even cry because of the fact that Mayuri had died. It was this scene:Tears inadvertently ran down my face due to howI was by what was happening. My incredulousness at what was happening, Okabe's hair-rising scream, the complete shift from what was once a slice-of-life story. The sheerof Moeka and SERN's actions. It was overwhelming. Before I knew it, my face was silently wet, and my mouth was wide open in shock.Since this scene is missable, I'll quickly explain how it goes: Okabe is running through Akiba with Mayuri, trying to hide her from SERN. Eventually, he loses her. After desperately looking for her everywhere, he decides to return to the lab. Just then, he receives a mail from Moeka, with a picture attached. The picture is of a 50-year-old newspaper article, about a jellified human that appeared in the wall of a house. At this point, the game takes control away from you, slowly revealing the identity of the Jellyman. The scene ends with Okabe's horrified scream.If you've reached this part of the post (thank you for reading, by the way!), I'd like to know the effect this scene had on you. I was indeed absolutely shocked.During one of his time loops to attempt to save Mayuri, Okabe learns who Suzuha actually is:Yeah, the hints were there. Apparently, there was some truth to what John Titor posted online. She is in fact trying to change the future into one that isn't ruled by SERN. And the way to do this is to return the IBN 5100 to Okabe. This will allow him to access and decrypt a hidden database within SERN that's written with the IBN 5100's proprietary code. This database stores the data that allowed SERN to track down Okabe. Deleting this data will make it so SERN never knows about him, effectively returning him to the wordline where SERN doesn't get a hold of the Time Leap Machine (that would eventually kickstart SERN's time machine), and where Mayuri isn't murdered. It's a win-win situation.But it was the D-Mails that everyone sent that took the IBN 5100 from Okabe. Therefore, he must undo the effects of every D-Mail sent.Including the one that kept Suzuha (who is also revealed to be Daru's daughter) from leaving, since her leaving when she did was a crucial factor in obtaining the IBN 5100, and her mission would fail otherwise.All the other D-Mails must follow.That means Faris's dad must board the plane that had an accident.That means that Luka must go back to being a boy (wait, what).That means tracking down......Kiryu Moeka