No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

This place is the lore dump / explanation as to why/how this world is like this after CT and honestly, it’s not really doing it for me.

I mean, I’m not gonna go poking tons of holes really, but it’s kind of…. lame? I guess?

After what happened in CT with Lavos and the various moments in the past/present/future that we witnessed- this game feels like an entirely different world- but the explanation is just sorta….

“The repaired future from CT lead to reinventing everything we already had for reasons and now it’s like this.”

Like, they invented a natural island range, erased some of their scientists memories and sent them to live there, and invented Elements (why? You had magic already? It’s just a worse version of that if not the exact same thing? It’s like saying I invented oxygen 2.0, but it’s just oxygen but in balloons) as well as the save points we’ve been using (which my god I think that’s the lamest and dumbest part, the save points being a physical item that everyone recognizes is weird as is- but it’s also only referenced ONCE in the home village in which they creepily say “We don’t live our lives for ourselves, we follow these floating pyramids instructions to a T because reasons / vague religion”)

Whoops. Said I wouldn’t poke holes, but seriously, it’s kinda dumb. Basically we’re living in a simulation world / nature reservation and that’s why things work funky and dumb compared to CT.

*cough* but why does the advent of elements mean normal magic (which EXISTS in this world because this is the CT world) is nowhere to be found?

*cough* The story put next to no emphasis on the save points and their impact on society, they just sort of get mentioned slightly at the start and it stops mattering. Did the save points tell the people to create militaries? Did the save points tell some humans to roll around in elements or whatever you do to create demi-humans or did the scientists ALSO invent demi-humans? There was mention of Dragonian people in the story- so unless some people got funky with the dragons (WHICH THE SCIENTISTS CREATED APPARENTLY WHY IS THAT A THING WHY ISN’T IT JUST “MAGIC FOR MAGIC’S SAKE”) did the scientists invent those people? Or did they really relay through the save points to go find a dragon to get funky with for dragon people? How much micro management was going through these save points?

*cough* Why was the repaired future from CT trying to invent time travel if there was already the Epoch meaning it already existed in one form?

*cough* It’s silly that the reason the rest of the world (heck, is there even a rest of the world? This is ONE location, maybe JUST this location is this way) is gone is because of a failed time control experiment unleashing too much “Anti Annihilation waves”. Seriously? You guys got destroyed by “Super cure beams”? You got KILLED by “Ultra Kindness Auras”? WHAT?

*cough* I still like this place, though not nearly as much as the other dead sea where I saw a mash up of future locations frozen in time, also look at this “Human vs Reptite” image.

mosseffect

for some reason in my (cursed? blessed?) sims game i am able to invite the grim reaper to parties, and now he regularly shows up even if i don’t invite him. he often brings ceviche. normal quality. he’s a decent party guest except for the fact that the only interaction you can have with him is to slow dance. naturally i made one of my sims slow dance with him, which gave him the notification ‘we have a lot in common! id love to get to know you better’. so anyway, a couple of days and parties later, it’s 6 am and my sim gets a phone call. it’s death. he wants to know if i want to go on a date.

naturally my sim accepts. death takes him to the school stadium in the rain and stands outside, unable to be interacted with, while a thought bubble containing my sim’s face pops up over his head for a simlish hour, over and over again, carrying a rainbow umbrella while my sim sits on the ground and considers the hollowness of life.

remembering that all i can do is slow dance with him, i drive him to moonlight point, where there’s a couch and a record player, and i slow dance with him for about 5 hours. every 2 seconds he steps on my sims’ foot, to the point where it was hard to get decent pictures of them actually slow dancing.

after a while my sim got hungry so i let him go drink some juice, and death went and started reading a book on a couch. i went and sat next to him, wondering if there would be any new interactions since you get different ones when you sit on a couch or bench, and lo and behold i discovered, not only can you slow dance with death, you can also cuddle with him. naturally i did so because the quality of dates is determined by the number of positive social interactions you have with someone, and slow dancing unfortunately doesn’t give you any of those, but cuddling does. anyway, once you start the cuddling animation, you get fancy new options like kiss and make out, so my sim spent the next six hours making out with death on a shitty couch at the beach in a thunderstorm while listening to sim!bastille.

after a couple dozen make out sessions, a single option appeared under the Romantic… heading: ‘take a romantic photo together’. this only shows up once you’re a romantic interest of someone. i have now successfully wooed death. knowing that selecting this option would make death stand up from the couch and i likely wouldn’t be able to get him to sit again, i decided to end the date at the tender hour of 3 am (i guess death doesn’t sleep) with a kiss. it takes a while- death can’t seem to figure out where to stand or how to walk around a foosball table- but eventually i get my picture.

but apparently death doesnt like having his picture taken.

i try to slow dance again with him, but the option has disappeared. i have committed an irreparable social faux pas. i sit on the couch again in the hopes that death will resume reading his book and i can cuddle with him again, but instead he stands in front of the bookshelf for an hour. i take a break, leaving my sim to his own devices for a while while i check in on my other sims, since one of them just went into labour. i deal with that. when i return, i find my sim drinking juice in silence with death still standing in front of the bookshelf, but he’s changed into this sick new outfit in the interim.

beekeeper chic. finally, at 6 am, death decides he’s had enough. he will never forgive me for my social blunder of taking a selfie while lipping at his shadowy veil. he opens up his rainbow umbrella and leaves.

the date doesn’t end until i get home. i receive no date notification. death doesn’t even deign to let me know how badly i fucked up. all i have to remember my 24 hour gay liaison with one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse is a single selfie. i hang it over my sims bed, a constant reminder to him that he has achieved ultimate goth status, and a warning to the others he dates: i have kissed death, and he never called me back.

mosseffect