[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Renall]

Well, yes, that is rather exactly the problem, and one The Princess Bride addresses in an amusing manner. It actually wouldn't surprise me if Umineko's solution is similar (a third option that isn't either/or).

[Oliver]

That's exactly what I meant by "when to stop".

[DaBackpack]

Originally Posted by Oliver

The problem with chessboard thinking is not to turn the chessboard over.

It's when to stop.

"Turning the chessboard around" is derived from the concept of Game Theory. In a game of chess (just as an example), there are a clearly defined set of rules that one has to follow in order to achieve the goal of victory. In order for Game Theory to work at all, you have to know two things:

1. Your opponent's goal
2. Rules/parameters of the game

I think it's safe to assume that we know Ryukishi's goal. He wants to write an intriguing mystery tale that will be difficult to solve. He thing we do not know, though, is the ruleset.

How can you win a game of chess if you don't know how to advance the pieces and our opponent does? This is sort of where we are right now. We do not know to what extent Ryukishi is willing to go to write an interesting mystery.

Does he follow the Knox Decalogue?
Does he follow the Van Dine Commandments?
Does Ryukishi even have a clear answer to his own riddles?

We might know some of the answers to the questions, but we do not know with certainty what guidelines he follows when he writes his novels.

I think it would be better to analyze the visual novel itself without questioning the author's choices. Sure, it could narrow down some choices, but it is not a good reason to exclude Shkanon if there is no direct evidence against it in the visual novels.

[Judoh]

However the possibility of a third option suggests that the proposed options may not be valid options at all.

Originally Posted by DaBackpack

I think it would be better to analyze the visual novel itself without questioning the author's choices.

But that's what we've been doing this whole time... examining the story to bits without think about what he thinks...

[Leafsnail]

Originally Posted by Renall

Well, yes, that is rather exactly the problem, and one The Princess Bride addresses in an amusing manner. It actually wouldn't surprise me if Umineko's solution is similar (a third option that isn't either/or).

The most obvious either/ or is "If the culprit isn't one of the 18, it has to be a witch!". Hmm...

[DaBackpack]

Originally Posted by Judoh

But that's what we've been doing this whole time... examining the story to bits...

And that's what we should be doing, but I'm just saying we shouldn't eliminate choices because "it's too obvious."

[chronotrig]

Don't forget the possibility that Shkanon is true, but not the final answer. EP6 seems to hint that Shkanon is the main culprit. It may be that Battler even thinks that this is the case (it is a possible solution, and it would match with the game that he created).

Personally though, I think that Shkanon is not only not the final culprit, but that she doesn't even have a clue who the final culprit is. It might be that even Beatrice didn't know.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

The most obvious either/ or is "If the culprit isn't one of the 18, it has to be a witch!". Hmm...

Battler actually stuck with this third option throughout. "There is a 19th person on the island, they are the culprit, they are not a witch."

Look where that got him.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by DaBackpack

And that's what we should be doing, but I'm just saying we shouldn't eliminate choices because "it's too obvious."

You don't get it. There's obvious as in "Oh now that you tell me I get it" and there's obvious as in something you constantly regurgitate hints for. The latter is not something Ryukishi does when he writes.

Originally Posted by chronotrig

EP6 seems to hint that Shkanon is the main culprit.

I never got this impression even with the hints toward shkanon in Episode 6. Care to share why you think that?

[Leafsnail]

Originally Posted by chronotrig

Don't forget the possibility that Shkanon is true, but not the final answer. EP6 seems to hint that Shkanon is the main culprit. It may be that Battler even thinks that this is the case (it is a possible solution, and it would match with the game that he created).

Personally though, I think that Shkanon is not only not the final culprit, but that she doesn't even have a clue who the final culprit is. It might be that even Beatrice didn't know.

This remains a possibility. Shkanon could just be the one in charge of the fake twilights, for a start... although it's generally easiest to find a way to have Shannon or Kanon walking around alive at the end of each episode.

[chronotrig]

Originally Posted by Judoh

I never got this impression even with the hints in Episode 6. Care to share why you think that?

Put simply, it hints in several places that Beatrice is the one responsible for the deaths of Battler's family. That same Beatrice is the one who Battler seems to have some sort of feelings for, and is the one who participates in the love trial against Shannon and Kanon.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by chronotrig

Put simply, it hints in several places that Beatrice is the one responsible for the deaths of Battler's family. That same Beatrice is the one who Battler seems to have some sort of feelings for, and is the one who participates in the love trial against Shannon and Kanon.

I think you can look at it that way. To me it's just an outright attempt to make us beleive it's Beatrice that's the culprit. It's also possible to carry over the sin to someone else connected to this person. You can take a lot of the love trial as hints for motives for whoever you think that other person is. There are lots of options. I don't see this as eliminating any hints towards anyone except X, but you can look at it that way.

[Renall]

Honestly, ep6 did the least to make me think Beatrice was the culprit. If anything it narrowed her motives considerably to the point that it's hard to imagine that she really is.

Indeed, it's something we only gather by inference. In ep2, we see Beatrice with the future FT victims. But we don't have any real evidence that she killed them, and it almost seems like she had no intention of doing so. Ep4 tells us that because of Battler's sin, which Beatrice knows, people die. But that doesn't mean she's killing them, or that on-board "Beatrice" knows that Battler's sin leads to people dying. Meta-Beatrice may know this, but not necessarily Piece-Beato. Likewise, in ep5 we're told what Beatrice did not commit the murders for. Now the inference we're clearly meant to gather here is that she committed the murders, but for another reason... but the text doesn't say that. It just says that, if Beatrice committed the murders, she didn't do it for those reasons. Not that she did, and not that the murders themselves absolutely were not committed for that reason.

It's very suspicious. It was set up as the default option so long ago that it becomes ingrained, yet the evidence pointing toward it all seems to suggest very much that "Beatrice" is completely, or at least mostly, innocent.

If that's true, and murders are actually happening, clearly someone else is the culprit. Yet if Beatrice knows who they are, she's protecting or hiding them, or they're capable of hiding even in her stories. And if she doesn't know, was either she or Battler able to figure it out from what they did know?

[Linkin Battler]

Originally Posted by chronotrig

Don't forget the possibility that Shkanon is true, but not the final answer. EP6 seems to hint that Shkanon is the main culprit. It may be that Battler even thinks that this is the case (it is a possible solution, and it would match with the game that he created).

I never had this impression too, more then a culprit a blackmailed complice at the most

[Kylon99]

I'm working on a post with all the current theories I have, but in the mean time this thought came up and I thought it was important:


If the fakery was being done for the sake of Battler, since:
- The chances of two people not being picked for the first twilight in all 5 episodes is 3.46% The chances of one person survivng all twilights from EP1-5 is 1.31%. This means Nanjo is purposely excluded from the first twilight and Battler is purposely excluded from all twilights in EP1-5. This highly suggests the Epitaph Fakery is concerned with Battler in some way.

So...

- If the fakery was ready to go on Kinzo's death then it would have happened in 1985, the year Kinzo was really dead during the family conference. But it happened in 1986, when Battler returned. We know from the probabilities that Battler is special to the Epitaph. But would they have just simply waited for his return, knowing he was pissed off at Rudolf and likely never to come back?

This is when I realized it was Rudolf who brought Battler back by apologizing. Didn't he apologize by kneeling and putting his forehead to the ground? I thought this wasn't a likely thing for him or anyone to do, but now it becomes clear. Rudolf was *asked* to bring Battler back by the Beatrice Faction.

- This means Rudolf knows something. I think his admission that he will die that night means he knows of the fakery! Maybe not all of the plans, but some of it at least.
- At the very least, Rudolf's actions must be reviewed in this light. The thing is, he seems to die (for real) quite often so he doesn't get very much chance to act on whatever knowledge he has.

Definitely Rudolf has prior knowledge.

[Judoh]

Well about the Factions thing. Dlanor said something about how it's not a good idea to say so an so's group did X because you can't identify the people in it. So for the sake of argument that's something we have to look into and reevaluate if it doesn't fit.

Also is there anyone here who doesn't think the first twilight is initially faked? I'd like to know because so far there doesn't seem to be a lot of opposition to it. There doesn't seem to be any opinion on why that shouldn't be what's happening and that sort of keeps theories from having a multi-angled outlook.

[Renall]

It's possible not all of them were, but at the very least ep2 and ep3 seem... off. They almost seem impossible to set up without fakery.

[Judoh]

Well Episode 2 I never understood how faking worked because Lambda's red says 'they're dead the moment they were discovered'.

Episode 3 doesn't work unless you use the boiler room door trick which becomes a closed room because you can't open the exit from the outside. However that solution isn't consistent with episode 6...

Faking can explain a lot of things in the episodes I think. What I'm more interested in are opinions on why people would think faking the first twilight shouldn't be true or else how it would be unrealistic if it was.

[zRyuu]

Actually, for episode 2 that was Beatrice's red. Faking can still work if you think the original plan was to fake the first twilight, however the culprit decided to kill them before they were discovered. Of course, this would mean the culprit doesnt care about showing fake bodies to Battler. The culprit is just taking advantage of the situation.
i think Ep1 also has a faked 1st twilight and probably the rest too. Not sure about EP3, i need to reread that one.

[ijriims]

Originally Posted by Judoh

Episode 3 doesn't work unless you use the boiler room door trick which becomes a closed room because you can't open the exit from the outside. However that solution isn't consistent with episode 6...

THe latest manga on EP3 had Rudolf say that the backdoor of boiler room seemed to be blocked by some bar or something which made it closed room.

GM Ryu07 seemed to have retro-fixed the story ...