Actually, the reason Perrault needs to crowd source his news reporting is that he’s busy writing shitty fiction for the below-the-fold section of the paper. “Finally, a serious newspaper novel: ‘Madam Depression’ by Perrault!” the teaser reads. Ooh, so it’s Madame Bovary, but without the nuance. Perrault’s shameless self-promotion reads on, “A novel that will lead your bored minds into a dazzling world of love and hate will begin in this issue!!” Dazzling? So this is Twilight fanfiction that he’s self-publishing, like Fifty Shades of Grey? I guess that makes sense; there should be a large market in the Island Nations for porn intended for unfulfilled straight ladies. Finally, Perrault begs, “Please send your fan letters to Perrault!!!” In a game full of depressing characters, Perrault here might be the saddest.
No, wait, it gets sadder. The first chapter of “Madam Depression” is the final item in Perrault’s new edition. “This married lady always behaved depressed, so those around her called her Madam Depression,” it reads. I think this was Perrault’s sixth-grade book report. “Madam Depression’s husband had passed away, which left her to live alone with her son. Madam Depression gathered up her reddish-silver hair and murmured, ‘Oh, I am so depressed…'” And that’s it. Hopefully in the next chapter, Madam Depression will meet Master Cullen, a mysterious suitor with pale glittery skin. And then she’ll bite her lip and mope.
I’m sure Marvy can help you out with that.
The only thing of interest anyone has to say is “What? You want a rematch?” so after another 20 minutes, Marvy takes his leave of Rita and heads back down the path to King Lido’s palace. For this outing he kicks Chiepoo to the curb and invites Mitsuba, who makes up for being a girl by having an impressively large sword. And literally anyone, even a lady, is an improvement over Chiepoo.
After spending the rest of the potch Rita graciously left him on armor and blacksmithing, Marvy finally sets out to do what King Lido suggested: check out the ruins west of the palace. At the entrance, he is stopped by a ragged-looking young boy with his scraggly short white hair pulled into a rat tail. Rat Boy asks him if he has permission to be there, like he has any chance of stopping Marvy from entering. But luckily for him, Marvy has a permit so he doesn’t have to beat up a kid. “We finally have visitors to show around!” Rat Boy exclaims, strangely delighted. I mean, they’re ruins, not Disneyland. “Thank you for waiting,” he goes on, even though there was no wait. “I am your guide, Rakgi. Allow me to show you around inside.” Ah, so this is Rakgi, the kid whose dad received the Rune of Punishment for giving his kid such a shitty name. Looks like I was right: this kid probably does get his ass kicked a lot. Rakgi is annoying to type and a terrible name anyway, so I think I’ll stick with Rat Boy.
You’d think that, with Rat Boy being the custodian of these ruins, it would be more or less free of monsters and safe for a young boy to traverse on his own. You would be wrong. The place is so crammed with random battles that Marvy can’t take five steps without encountering Xenosaga-esque crack unicorns and naked, creepy shadow dudes called “Jellymen” who look like they came out of Melisandre’s vagina. And yet, torches are lit at regular intervals, so we know Rat Boy has been walking through here by his lonesome with a pack of matches. What the fuck?
Look out, Renly!
Except that, a little ways in, Rat Boy basically admits that he’s never shown anyone through before. So he isn’t walking around in here himself, except that he obviously is. Thanks for clearing that up, kid. I have no questions about this arrangement.
I didn’t see any naked lady statues outside.
The corridors of these dark, dank ruins are so repetitive and boring that I wonder at one point if I’m wandering through a randomly generated dungeon, so let’s skip ahead to an area a bit deeper (hee) in the ruins, where Marvy finds another chest with a Furry in it. This one is glowing white and has a little halo, and is creatively named the Angelic Hairball. But unlike its cousin on Na-Nal’s beach, this one is a level 40 badass that opens up casting second-level Water Rune spells on all my party members. What an asshole. Marvy retreats and shoves his fuzzy ass back in his box.
Weary from half an hour of trudging through these dull-as-dirt ruins, Marvy is relieved to find a save point past the Angelic Furry. A couple screens later, Rat Boy stops Marvy. “Watch out!!” he cries. “The aura… It’s coming our way!!” Is Rat Boy a spirit medium? In training?
Obviously, the “aura” is a boss, half-assedly named Guard. It’s some kind of sentry golem with a single eye on its tiny round head, so it kind of looks like a Creamos with arms and legs. This one-eyed monster also has gigantic, confusingly boob-shaped shoulders. Don’t look at me. Anyway, it’s not much of an obstacle and shuts down after two rounds of being poked at with swords and Emo Rune Magic.
Rat Boy congratulates our heroes on their battle prowess. He adds, “Whew, I’m glad… Now, what I wanted to show you is up ahead. Quick, let’s go!” How has he never had to deal with the guard golems before now if he’s been down here before to have something to show them? You know what? Never mind. I give up. Let’s just go outside and check out Rat Boy’s totally awesome crayon drawings or whatever.
This outdoor area is confusingly labeled as the “Inner Ruins.” Just one more item in the pile of things I don’t feel like figuring out. After making use of another save point, looting a treasure chest for some random consumables, and killing some flying squirrels, Marvy runs to the next screen, where a woman who is obviously Rat Boy’s mother is waiting for them next to a tree and some conspicuous tombstones. And how did she get here? Are they a family of wizards? Do they have an invisibility cloak they’re not sharing?
Rat Boy starts yammering to Marvy about how they should be safe now because “he” won’t come here, but what he says isn’t important–what is important is that he’s voiced by Brianne Siddall, a.k.a. my beloved Jailbait. And I named him Rat Boy! Now I feel like a jerk. Not enough of a jerk to change the name, but my heart is heavy. Meanwhile, Rat Boy’s mom has just been standing here staring at them. She finally speaks up to ask her son who these strangers are. Her name, as we also learned in Marvy’s visit to the Vortex of Past Exposition, is Rikie, and in her portrait she has her eyes closed and is wearing a serene expression, like the people in Christian rock infomercials that sway back and forth with their arms above their heads. Like her son, she has a triangle tattoo in the middle of her forehead that is never referred to or explained in any way.
Rikie and Rat Boy share a couple screens of dialogue where they do nothing but discuss whether Marvy has the right paperwork to be there. After Keneth confirms that King Lido specifically asked them to come, Rikie says, “You have heard then, that the Rune, which had once been enshrined in this very place, is no longer here.” Uh, yeah, I think they heard. But no one interrupts her to point this out, so she keeps expositing. “In a distant past, the Rune became all consuming to the lives of those who were unfortunate enough to bear it. It gradually passed from master to master.” Pretty sure there’s nothing gradual about how it moves from master to master, but do go on. The camera pans to the graves at Rikie’s feet as she says, “And once everyone else around had died, it is believed that the sole survivor breathed his last…sitting under this very tree. The cycle of tragedy apparently ended…when he was turned to stone…and its powers were set free in this place.” Rikie walks over to the nearest grave, which I just noticed has a skeletal arm sticking out of it. I guess the Rune of Punishment was there? I have to admit, that’s kind of awesome, in a heavy metal album cover sort of way.
‘Here lies the biggest know-it-all in Mrs. Jensen’s fourth grade class.’
Marvy, bored by her story, decides to look at his hand and see if his rune is doing anything awesome. It’s not, but Rikie finally catches up with the rest of us. “…No, it cannot be… On your left hand…?” she over-punctuates. Just in case we don’t get it yet, she adds, “You have it? How? Th-The Rune of Punishment…which was once here?” IT WAS? WHOA. Marvy has the option to reply, “What ‘Rune of Punishment’?” and I’m just delighted that I have that choice, but I have Marvy play it straight with her. As straight as he can, anyway.
“So, it really is…” Rikie replies. “I can sense an aura about you that is similar to that of my late husband.” Oh, I’m so sure. Five seconds ago she had no clue the rune was even there. Whatever. Rat Boy chimes in, “Mom, Dad’s alive…I just know it!” Yeah, no, he’s not. But you keep hoping, kiddo! Rikie basically pats her dumb son on the head and pretends he didn’t say anything. “It was three years ago,” she explains to Marvy. “My husband was traveling out at sea when he had an unfortunate accident. Someone there possessed the Rune of Punishment.” Given that he was asked to come here specifically to listen to an expert explain his Rune of Fuck My Life, Marvy is more than a little peeved at this point that all Rikie can do is tell him shit he knows about already. But he lets her keep going, because she’s slightly less annoying to listen to than Keneth or Paula. “Its host died in the accident,” Rikie duhs, “and the Rune came to rest upon my husband, who had survived… Later that night, my husband disappeared.” She tells it like he came home with the Rune of Punishment, and then told his wife and son that he had to go out for a carton of smokes and never came back. “Why did he disappear, you ask?” Rikie goes on, when no one asked anything. “We searched in vain for the reason. Ultimately, our path led us here.” Is that just one more cosmic joke that the Rune of Punishment plays on its bearers–drawing them and their loved ones to this awful island? It’s like Lost, but with a distinct lack of Sawyer running around shirtless, and to Marvy, that’s the cruelest joke of all.
“I knew…” Rikie drones on. “Of course, there is no chance that he would have survived for three years with the Rune of Punishment.” Marvy is smart enough to absorb all this and know that his remaining time in this shitty world could be very limited indeed–he knows the rune has gone through at least five other people in those three years–but Keneth has to ask, “You said the Rune consumes its master’s life?” Jesus, Keneth, where the hell have you been the entire game? Rikie finally says out loud that Marvy standing here with the rune means her husband is dead and is never coming back with those cigarettes.
The cut scene ends so Rikie and Rat Boy can grieve by standing around with no expression on their faces, and Marvy can “grieve” by looting a treasure map out of the tree trunk. Marvy grieved over his fate back when he thought he’d die in the middle of the ocean and be eaten by Chiepoo. He’s over it.
The party gets ready to return to the palace, but before they can, Keneth shouts at Marvy that something’s coming. Not lately, Keneth, hint hint! Of course, he’s talking about another golem from the ruins. So Rat Boy was also wrong that the golems wouldn’t come outside. But it’s not like he’d ever been through the ruins before, so he wouldn’t have known. Except he clearly has been. Except he wouldn’t have survived alone. Nothing about this makes sense.
For clarity’s sake, I have no idea if this is the same golem that the party already faced, though it looks exactly the same and has the same name. Who cares? No one, I’m quite sure. Let’s just assume that it is. This time it goes down in two turns, too, and melodramatically bursts into flames. After the battle, Rat Boy says, “I never thought that guy would follow us all the way here!” What, the grand total of 20 feet between here and where they battled it the first time? Jesus, Rat Boy.
Out of nowhere, Rikie asks “Sir Marvy” if they can join his entourage, because he doesn’t have enough useless assholes yet. “I wish to be near that Rune,” she explains. “I have finally found the resolve to leave this place.” She wants to be a groupie for the rune that killed her husband? Lady, move on with your life. Find a hobby. Go find Rita and become a gambling addict. Something.
When Marvy returns to the cave, he finds a man who looks vaguely like the Fourth Doctor standing outside. I’m not going to call him that, because we already met the game’s doctor and that would be confusing, so his actual name is Manu. He senses that Marvy thinks he’s a nerd and wants to brush him off, so he blurts out, “P-Please take just one moment to hear what I have to say… My name is Manu, and I’ve got an invention just for you!” Is it a dildo? Please be a dildo. Marvy has needs. “Simply put,” Manu says, “it’s a box that carries people and things up and down. But…no one understands its usefulness yet.” Yes, Marvy is disappointed that it’s an elevator and not a dildo, but how could anyone not understand how an elevator can be useful? Manu adds that he thinks people would figure it out if there were any tall buildings around, but Obel is a backward hovel and of course none exist. Even so, it’s a fucking elevator. Has no one on this island ever had to move a sofa up a flight of stairs?
Anyway, Manu thought outside the box and built an outdoor elevator going down the cliff, so Marvy can easily travel from his cave to the harbor. And he did this on his own, without even begging for free room and board! What a guy.
Marvy’s all done adventuring for the day, so we will leave him here to play some more Ritapon. Next time: more naval battles, pirates, and weapons of mass destruction. Also, someone bothers attacking Obel. I know, I don’t get it, either. Until then!