Before we continue into the living hell that is the acrophobia sequence, some additional notes that didn’t really fit at the end of last post:
addendum of sorts
You might’ve noticed some holes in my commentary here—namely, the very start in White Space and the hide-and-seek segment, Basil’s flower exposition, and Ye Olde Sprout Mole. I didn’t have much to say on them while playing, and am intentionally skipping a review for now because I know I’ll come back to them in a future playthrough.
If I’ve forgotten something significant in the interim then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also:
...man don't tell me there's gonna be a part later where there's no choice but to stab one of the friends
Fun fact about this comment: while definitely being a good little blind-player and not even glancing at pictures related to the game, I glimpsed what looked like a screenshot of “Stab who?” in the Headspace menu. Which implied stabbing your friends was in fact something that could happen eventually.
Good thing I was wrong, huh? (Not counting the real-world Aubrey fight; if that’d been serious I’d have expected more of a reaction.) The game just bonked me with existential dread of the “imagine being condemned to hell forever because you no longer serve the escapist fantasy in which you exist” sort! Omori never stabs any other human—
Oh.
further theory-thoughts
Re: shoes
- Omori and Mari are the only two of the Headspace crew with footwear, at least based on the fullbodies in the artbook; Mari is barefoot in the “All our feet in a circle” photo, but otherwise her sprite’s outfit seems to match the fullbody art. Conclusion: zero zilch nada nil I Don’t Fucking Know
- Surprisingly, the “Barefoot Suicide” trope is never invoked anywhere ever, from what I remember.
- Going back to the circle photo, circles themselves are kind of a weird little recurring thing? The sacrifice circle preceding Breaven is a big one; the arrangement of the scribbled photos in that one Hangman room is subtler (seen in this LP update, after “jump into a dark hole?”); and if you really want to go full “literally anything remotely circular is related” there’s the planets, oranges, even Omori being “bulbous” and relatedly the lightbulb itself. I’m willing to chalk some of that up to coincidence (circles. basic shape. Literally Fucking Everywhere) but I want to say there’s something to the photo, sacrifice, and scribbles….
Re: hair sprouts
Basil actually doesn’t have the hair-sprouts/“Rabies Antennae” in his talksprites, battle sprites, or the shot of his face in the hospital at the true end—but the silhouette is unmistakable in basically every other cutscene!!
The Omori characters don’t have the most consistent design details in the world, in general. (For instance, the Headspace kids have skintones in the overworld sprites and nowhere else; it was even scrapped from the tag photos, comparing the demo versions.) Much as I pick at details, I think there’s a simple explanation for some of these inconsistencies:
- There were multiple artists on the team, and 100% feature consistency wasn’t a priority; and
- they are not going to redraw half a fuckin cutscene to add hair leafs.
That said, Basil is a permanent member of the hair-rabies club in my heart.
Why rabies?????
Drew a thing. Weeb had a comment.
