Seafood Buffets Near Me - Find All You Can Eat Seafood

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**** * ****
Hussein nudged his brother Iqbal and aimed his chin toward the bar. “Look, a fat, stupid American has finally managed some success.”
Iqbal smirked, “It is the only way the infidels can succeed. They have no education and no skills to do anything useful. They don’t even worship their own God anymore, only money and fame. They will soon learn better…”
The brothers were out enjoying a night of revelry, with a few more planned when they reached the city. The celebrations were a last reward before they fulfilled their mission and achieved True Paradise through martyrdom. Hussein was superstitious and hoped to find success at gambling before they took the great risk that if successful, would help to sustain their cause. They’d grown up in this land of debauchery and foolishness but had been taught from the first to honor their own Beliefs and culture above anything the Americans professed.
Hussein was on roll number five of what he intended to be a short run. He wished to win five times for the Five Pillars of Islam, the name of his cell in the latest great Jihad. He blew on the dice and tossed. The small cubes bounced against the back side of the pit and tumbled end over end as he watched breathlessly. “Another ten!” the barker called. And pushed the winnings toward Hussein. He placed a minimum bet and rolled once more. He had already left the table before the barker called, “Snakeyes! Next roller please.”
He held up his chips triumphantly, “Iqbal, more money from roll number five! I kept the bet in place for five rolls, I left only the minimum for the last roll, it is a Sign! We are fated to succeed. We will meet the others tomorrow, go over the plan, and then have a few last nights to revel in this world…”
Iqbal patted his brother on the shoulder, “There is something I would like more than winning chips. He nodded toward the bar and the attractive and sinuous young local who worked behind it, steadily polishing glasses.
Hussein watched for a moment, unsure whether his brother meant the alcoholic drinks that had been forbidden until now or the woman. Knowing Iqbal, he assumed both. “As you wish brother. Take your mortal enjoyments while you can. She looks a little sullen though, frown, lowered brows, I like the happy ones.”
Iqbal’s serpent-like smile widened, “She will look better when I have freed her from the miseries of the uncircumcised. She will enjoy a real man. Who knows? Maybe I will convert her so that we can meet again in Paradise.” With that, he surged away from his brother and slithered up to the bar opposite the young First Nations maid. “Good evening, I noticed that you do not have many customers at the bar. It seems odd that so beautiful a creature as yourself would not attract more company.”
The woman ignored him, intently focused on her task. He tried again, “Perhaps I must order a drink to remain at the bar? If so, a gin and tonic if you please.”
She continued to polish the glass. He leaned forward, “Did you hear me?” he inquired in an annoyed tone. “Perhaps you have no business because you are surly and unhelpful.”
She looked at him and delivered a smirk that appeared to be far more evil than anything he could ever hope to muster, despite his thin, reptilian lips and predatory mind, “We don’t want customers to linger at the bar, getting drunk and building from misery to anger over their losses. We want them playing… and losing.” She leaned toward him and glared into his own eyes that he normally considered flinty and daunting. “You know about losing, don’t you?”
Hussein noted that the large man at the end of the bar in the “Security” shirt had begun stumping toward them. “Iqbal, perhaps it is time to go look for other entertainment.”
Iqbal ignored him, he was trapped in the serpent’s gaze, like a mouse dropped into a snake’s tank to be devoured while its owner watched with perverse interest. Hussein reached for his brother to tug at his arm but never got the chance. The big security officer seized his hand, drew it to his too wide chest and turned. The weight of the man drew him away from his brother and caused him to spin around so that he ended up facing the goon with his brother beyond the man and in the clutches of the Serpent Woman. The ham-fisted gargantuan continued to twist the hand he gripped until the pressure caused Hussein sever pain. He grunted and bent into the angle of his wrist to relieve the distress. He found himself bent forward and looking up desperately toward the man’s face.
The security staffer smiled, his square, blunt teeth showing dark behind an almost lipless mouth. His wide back and chest, covered in body armor under his shirt made him appear like a monster-sized… Turtle. Hussein felt himself lifted and placed behind the bar. His brother soon slithered over the top and fell to the floor beside him, smiling beatifically. Hussein opened his mouth to scream for help, but a large, blunt fist crashed into the side of his head and he saw stars… seven of them, like the Holy... The fist descended once more, and he saw only darkness.
**** * ****
Fr. Danilo Bayani was immensely enjoying his latest trip to the continental USA. He had visited Hawaii many years ago, and New York City more recently, but this was his first tour of the grand landbound spaces that this country offered. He’d managed to roam so far from his origins in Manila. Now, in his twilight years, he longed to see what he could of God’s Green Earth. All on the payroll of The Vatican while they cleanse the records of those hateful… allegations. The bitter thoughts raced across his mind. Of course he was a sinner, he was only mortal. He’d been expiated of those sins and had paid an enormous price to continue serving in his capacity as a parish priest. He forced his mind to return to the moment and more enjoyable pursuits.
He noted the hirsute and similar appearing pair of men who had gone to the bar and wondered why the Security officer approached them, but his attention was called once more to the round of Texas Hold’em and his table mates. When he again had a moment to look, no one was at the bar, in front or behind… curious, he thought, but he quickly refocused his attention on the fascinating new game he was in the process of learning. He was familiar with Poker, so it wasn’t difficult to learn. He liked the high level of interaction that this version of the old game allowed. He’d done well, certainly gained enough to fund extracurricular activities during the rest of his current sabbatical.
He’d been disturbed by the overall atmosphere of this place when he’d arrived. He did not care for the numerous paintings and sculptures of Ancient Native Deities and Spirits. They seemed to be mostly images of the Dark Beings of various Tribal cultures. He loved to study diverse cultures, but this place was an amalgamation of cultures, built for mutual support by several Tribes in the region. Much of the artwork was schlocky and clearly intended to cater to the garish and sordid tastes of the vapid gambling set. Some part of him did not feel… welcome, as though he had intruded on some private Place, set aside for Other Gods.
He shook off the depressing musings… There are NO Other Gods, he reassured himself. He soon stepped away from the table to take care of personal needs and to decide what he should do with the rest of his night. Perhaps he would visit the White Dove Restaurant & Ballroom on the other side of the hotel lobby from the casino. It boasted a good reputation according to online reviews, even though it was a simple buffet style with a dance floor to one side. He liked the name, it was… peaceful he decided.
He soon had a selection of food piled onto a plate and was seated near the dance floor. The place was sparsely occupied, so his hopes of being able to watch dancers as he ate were dashed. Still, the food was good enough. A little bland, but that was necessary in a place that acted as a crossroads of cultures. There was a spice table at the end of the primary row of entrees. He’d helped himself, yet nothing seemed to attach to his taste buds. The combination of eating nearly alone, having no one with energy around him, and the tasteless food soon had him growing restless. He finished up his repast and left the table to go out to the final section of the complex he had not visited, the River Overlook.
As he passed the table nearest the entrance, he saw a stout man in a rumpled sport coat, who glared daggers at him, eyes focused on his crucifix, the only outward sign of his profession. The man appeared to be so hostile, that he paused for a moment to determine whether he’d done anything to offend the fellow. “Excuse me sir, have I offended you in some way?”
The man looked startled. He was apparently unused to being confronted about his demeanor or behavior. He scowled, “Don’t like that thing you have around your neck. You Catholics are all Hell-bound. No concept of righteousness. Not that you’d understand, you people don’t even read The Book. You listen to your priests and pope and disregard The Word. All the kneeling and ritual prayers in the world won’t save you in the end. Go back to your idols and beads and leave me alone to seek Heaven.”
Fr. Bayani was startled by the vehemence with which the man spoke. He hadn’t been attacked directly for his Faith in years. “Sir, I’m not sure what Religion you practice, but I am a man of God, a consecrated priest of the Holy Church. I assure you that I understand more than most, if not as much as I would like. I meant no harm and wish you a peaceful night.”
With that, he started to walk past the man, but the man rose from his table and pointed his finger, “Your pope is the Anti-Christ, and your Church is a place of Satan! Look to the Bible for your salvation before it’s too late.”
Fr. Bayani increased his pace and continued on his journey to the River Overlook. He would need the peace and tranquility that nature and the sound of flowing water would provide to settle his roiling mind.
**** * ****
Pastor Bill resumed his seat and shook his head, “Fool, doesn’t know that he’s risking his soul, courting Damnation.” He’d had a bad run at the tables over at the casino. His Denomination frowned on games of chance, but he had needed the money. One of his congregation had come up pregnant and they had to get it resolved before the three-month deadline for abortions. He knew that if his wife found out about Carmen, then she would divorce him. He was here to break every major rule that he professed to hold dear each week. His plan for quick money had failed, so he’d visited the bar. Now he hoped that eating would guide him back to sobriety. He had to think of another plan.
Seeing that… priest had annoyed him. Had he not been inebriated, he would never have said what he did, nor stared so rudely in the first place. Yet he wanted someone on whom to vent the anger he felt, that arose from fear and he’d always disliked the papists. If his wife divorced him, if the scandal involving the woman who cleaned the church all week and then occupied the back pew every Sunday ever broke; he would lose his ministry, his livelihood. His degree in Theology would be worthless. He might be able to get a job teaching, at some secular school, but most would not hire fervent Christians like himself.
He stared dejectedly at his plate of food that had contained more spice and flavors than he liked, a shadow passed in his periphery. It was low-slung and blurred just a bit as it loped along the wall. He thought he heard an odd laugh, somewhere between human and… canine? Maybe a little like a hyena might sound, or so he imagined. There was a manic quality to the laughter. A jest that was on him so that only the other Entity knew what it was. It was the wicked laughter of children at play, who’d decided to target a fat kid with glasses. A kid whose parents had been abusive addicts but who later “got right” through religious-based recovery programs. Their faith had led him to his own, but he’d never really lost those early traumas of being unaccepted by his peers and being beaten by people who later professed faith above all.
A mocking whine, definitely doggish, his now sobering consciousness informed him. Something was making fun of him, teasing him from the shadows. He looked around for staff members or other customers but found himself alone. The dining area and the dance floor were deserted. It was odd, there was almost always someone at the buffet service tables. He looked over to the kitchen doors in hopes that one of the employees would burst through with a fresh serving of chicken wings or whatever tray had been emptied. He saw dark figures move past the clouded round windows on the swinging doors and temporarily occlude the bright kitchen lights within, but they were indistinct blobs, and appeared to be focused on tasks of their own choosing rather than service of his needs.
He stood and realized that he was more intoxicated than he’d realized. He immediately resumed his seat and bent forward to regain his balance and bearings… and to swallow his rising gorge. When he sat up again, a dark, shaggy form perched in the chair across from him. The figure was no more than a silhouette, a raggedly hewn shadow. Yet there were eyes. Sinister golden gleams appeared and blinked at him. He heard a heavy, panting sort of breathing and a gust of foul-smelling carnivore breath assaulted his olfactory senses. “Who? Er, what are you doing at my table?” he asked in a mushy, confused manner. Still fighting off waves of nausea.
He could not see it very well in the poorly illuminated dining room, but his impression was that the... Being… smiled at him: a gaping, lolling smile, with a tongue dangling out to one side and sharp canines gleaming. “I thought I would check on you my righteous friend. You seem to be upset, unhappy. You nipped and barked at that other person who shares your Faith. I thought perhaps there was a deeper concern preying on your conscience?”
Pastor Bill had to force himself to think through what this… person? Had said to him. Likely some hippie-dippy weirdo. “That guy was a Catholic priest, we’re nowhere near the same Religion.”
Once more he heard the chortling laughter that was now very clear, “I’m sure you think it’s different. Those of his specific religion, came to these lands many years ago. They were the first of you Christians to arrive. The rest have been simple variations on a theme. The problems began, when your co-religionists assumed that only your God exists; that all of the local Gods and Spirits were instead Demons and Dark Powers. Instead of trying to show that yours is a better Way, you Christians insisted that yours is the only Way. You’ve forgotten that in Ancient Times, people held True to Deities who were attached to local communities or to the land and features around them; geographically and ethnically relevant. You have gone from subsuming and incorporating Older Gods as Angels and Saints, to Demonizing Them, and now in your hubris, to denying Them altogether.” He shook His head. “Too bad really, it creates an Adversarial relationship.” He chuckled at some joke that Pastor Bill was still too drunk to comprehend.
Pastor Bill had grown increasingly fearful as the Voice intoned Its Philosophies. He wanted to refute that Voice, to deny Its very Existence. Yet he feared Its Wrath more than anything he’d ever feared, even the Fires of Hell. Instead of making a stand and arguing his faith, he staggered to his feet and ran, stumbled, blindly toward the kitchen and the pale, ghostly figures within. Surely someone within would save him! The sardonic laughter chortled after him and chased him into the too bright lights, descending into the yips and howls of Coyote even as the doors swung shut behind him. He looked around at the glowing white figures who halted in their various progresses to stare at him. Their eyes! There were none, just empty sockets, faces slack, with gaping, lamprey maws. He heard a new sound as they swarmed him… his own forlorn screams of ultimate agony.
**** * ****
Fr. Bayani stood out on the River Overlook platform and enjoyed the solitude that had so recently left him restless. There were plenty of noises out across the flowing torrent: the water itself, as it passed over hidden objects, fish as they leapt from its embrace to kiss the night air, frogs and insects, and the warbling, mournful sounds of a loon, and the soft sigh of the wind as it passed through the verdant landscape. This is much more peaceful than the White Dove he thought. He had some trouble shaking off ruminations on the verbal assault from the strange, possibly drunken man in the restaurant. He decided that he would pray for the man, that he would one day soon find The True Faith. Sometimes that was all one could do for the short-sighted.
He heard a deep, coughing hiss out in the dark. He was startled but quickly realized that it was an American Alligator, cousin to creatures he had observed in many places around the planet. He was truly content, at one with Nature in all Her Glory… in all the natural splendor of Creation! he immediately corrected himself. A sound impinged on his senses as it slowly rose and obscured the others… it was a lapping sound at first, more like ocean waves on a beach than the banks of a river. Waves, at cross purposes to the flow of the river, slapped at the base of the platform. Soon they sounds evolved into splashes, as if something very large approached the River Overlook platform. He leaned over the rail to have a closer look. Perhaps it was a large water creature or a boat… maybe a ‘gator as the locals called the big reptiles.
He peered down at the dim rippling surface below. At first, he was unable to discern anything but small reflections on the water as it swirled and lapped; then from below the surface, he spotted an eye, a too large eye! It glowed from within with a sickly luminescence akin to that produced by deep growing fungi. As he stared in horror, he saw a mouth gape below the eye, and enormous frog-like opening with no teeth but serrated lips, like some monstrous catfish. As he stared, too much in shock to act, he suddenly felt his body wrapped in strong, leprous flesh and he quickly lost his ability to breathe. The last sight he saw before he plunged over the safety rail was the thin, grey, first light of dawn.
**** * ****
Chief Harry Whitehorse gazed around at his fellow chiefs and Shamans from various local Tribes, “So, are The Dark Ones satisfied once again? Have They sated their appetites on strangers so that our peoples will be safe for another year?”
Affirmative rumbles muttered around the conference room. Red Wolf, a Shaman, spoke from near the back row, “They are not only satisfied but Coyote assures us that the prey people will not be linked with our premises or business operations.”
Most of the fresh mutters sounded pleased, but old Harry had to ask, “Can we trust Him?”
Chortling laughter sounded throughout the conference room and ascended into thunderous yips and howls of hysterical glee.

High all! I really recently fell in love with the Fallout Universe, with all its complexities and unique stories. In particular, I very much enjoy the subjectivity of interpretations of the games and their outcomes, and I wanted to create my own personal contribution by writing a story specifically set after the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. The Courier is referenced once in passing and there's no mention of a next of kin for the Courier. The story is completely original with entirely unique characters that I've made and it takes place after a non-specific timeline in which Mr House wins the fight for the Mojave Desert. I wanted to share some of my work with my fellow Fallout fans and see what you think. I sincerely hope you enjoy it.
Beginning:
After the guns fell silent during the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, the world was forever changed. Mr House’s City State of New Vegas gained full sovereignty and control over the Mojave Desert, and his Securitron Army pushed the exhausted NCR and broken Legion out. In the following years, Mr House rapidly expanded the city of New Vegas, and reignited the production of old Pre-War Technology automobiles, bus lines, and a high speed train line appeared. The Strip itself expanded beyond the Three Families; Strip clubs, pubs, casinos, all you can eat buffets filling the area, with some residential apartments and houses now beginning to be sold to the highest bidder, just as it was in the old world.
The expanded city of Vegas outside the Strip itself however is a slum, crime, inequality, and denigration is all but abundant, and unrest is growing. Following the removal of President Kimball, his Vice President Donald Watson took over and inherited a State in crisis. Faith in the government had rapidly deteriorated, and the economy of the NCR began to suffer as many relocated to the Strip to live a life of luxury and excess. The NCR is now a shadow of its former self, with Military Police now required to keep order on the streets of its towns and cities. The poverty level is rising. In the East, Caesar’s Legion too is changing, and not for the better. With the Western Campaign a failure by all accounts, resources dwindling, questions about the strength of their Leader Caesar are cropping up in the minds of those closest to him.
By 2295, the pieces had fallen into place. The fate of these States and the people who uphold them is uncertain. One thing is for sure. Whatever happens, the Wasteland will be changed unlike it has ever been before.
‘I appreciate your respectful and restrained response to my contact. It is a pleasure to interact with the less agitated members of your State.’
Aminta barely heard Mr House, and instead stared out the windows of the Lucky 38. The skyline of the Strip extended seemingly forever, pushing away the surrounding darkness with neon light. Just beyond the city outskirts, the silhouette of Mr House’s newly created Launch Pad. It was one of five, and she could just see the other four, each slightly further away from the city than the last. She scrutinised them, and was struck by the boundless possibilities of such technology; the opportunities provided. How exciting it would be! Mr House’s voice then cracked her thoughts and brought back to the present. She listened, without comment.
‘Roughly 18 hours ago, a team of five extraordinarily skilled individuals ascended Hoover Dam from the base of the structure,’ The ostentatiously large screen in which Mr House’s face sat suddenly changed to show grainy footage. ‘This was captured by one of our cameras on the perimeter of the dam. I apologise for the bad quality, it has been surprisingly difficult obtaining improved camera lenses, and As you can see, they used some kind of Grapnel Launcher and ascended via the rope.’
On the screen, it was possible to just make out five distinct figures at the base of the dam. They were clearly dressed in dark clothing, though the quality was too poor and the camera was too far away to make out any of the fine details of the material. Aminta scrutinised the footage, watching intently as the five figures used an oblong object, reminiscent of a hunting rifle to fire a rope, or cord up the side of the dam; high enough to catch the top. The operator of the device then disconnected it from the gun, and pressed it into the ground. It appeared to stick. They then ascended the rope. The camera feed then cut to show three of the attackers subdue and restrain two security guards. Due to the light, it was clear that the clothing the criminals were wearing was Recon Armor, though there were no insignia or identifiable characteristics. The two men were then held down by two and clubbed across the face by the third member with the butt of a 10mm pistol. He then turned to the computer and retrieved something from his pocket. Then the screen went black.
‘At this point, at roughly 1:27 am a Trojan was fitted onto the system. It temporarily disabled all the security cameras in the sector. It was one of the strongest Trojans I’ve ever come across, but I was able to get the system back up and running within 15 minutes. Unfortunately we cannot recover any footage from the corrupted data files that detail how the robbers escaped. I hope you can understand why I decided to contact you.’
Aminta pondered to herself. Why would Mr House, a man who controlled Rockets and owned and governed an entire city and it’s enterprises, would need to contact the New California Republic for assistance in a robbery? From where they were standing, he appeared to be in a position any high ranking NCR official would kill for. She didn’t say anything. There had to be more to this meeting than what Mr House was implying. She looked to her left, trying to be casual. Sitting next to her with an overexaggerated grave look on his face was Political Officer Neville Dawson, and next to him was Dennis Crocker, former Ambassador to the Strip. They too were quiet, their faces frustratingly hiding what they were thinking. Not sure where to look, Aminta turned back to the screen Mr House’s caricature face was on. She had to say something.
‘Mr House, why exactly do you think these people targeted Hoover Dam? There are many casinos and places full of money on the New Vegas Strip. Is there anything of massive value at Hoover Dam?’
‘Well Chief Aminta Marr, no, ostensibly speaking, there is nothing there of real value to anyone, unless they have the ability to take and control the Dam and source it’s hydraulic generated electricity,’
‘Then why would someone do this?’ Aminta said curtly. She tensed up, not meaning to sound dismissive.
‘Well Aminta, they did take one thing from what we've deduced,’ Mr House said, appearing to ignore her tone.
‘And what was that Mr House?’ Neville cut in. He was leaning forward, hands clasped tightly together. He was trying - and failing - to ease the tension in the room.
‘Well, before I contacted you Neville, and to answer your question Aminta, I ran through my storage records from 2285 to the present. I had Mr Harvey Shwarze, my ‘Representative in Government’ review them in paper form in our archives. Three things - completely inconsequential things mind you, were missing. Three Platinum Chips.’
‘Three Platinum Chips?’ Neville said concertedly, as if he knew exactly what Mr House was talking about.
‘That’s right. It’s a data storage device, well it was a data storage device. Designed by me before the Great War of 2077. Perhaps once upon a time this would’ve been valuable to somebody, but after the Second Battle of Hoover Dam I had access to all kinds of ruined facilities all over the Mojave to reform to working order. I began reprinting hundreds of Platinum Chips which were variations of the original Platinum Chip. They continuously upgrade and encrypt my software to prevent any outside programmers from accessing my highly sensitive data. I have no idea what a group of hooligans would want with three. I can easily replace them, and since they’re only usable on my systems, well they would simply be useless.’
‘Perhaps they wanted to sell them,’ Aminta proposed. It wasn’t impossible, she thought. People pay top dollar for things with perceived value, isn’t that the cardinal rule of the Strip?
‘To whom?’ Mr House replied. ‘The point still stands. Nobody has any use for them but me.’
‘Well, perhaps they thought they were valuable.’ Dennis remarked.
‘In any case, they will soon learn they are not valuable.’
‘If you have no problems with this Mr House,’ Aminta cut in. ‘Why do you need us here? The NCR has its own problems, big problems, and from where we’re standing, you seem to have everything under control.’
‘That’s precisely the issue!’ Mr House exclaimed. ‘The very fact they managed to steal anything from me at all is deeply disconcerting! I spent days and nights running statistical simulations for all possible scenarios in and formulated the best plans for countering every scenario I came across!’
‘I guess my point is, I do not understand, in any capacity, why you, YOU of all people would need to call us for assistance in a matter that you - whether intentional or not - have spent the last fives minutes telling us it isn’t an issue.’
The room fell quiet. Aminta pulled her hands back from the table and into her lap, and looked down at them, pretending to be occupied analysing them. She had exposed the true, unspoken meaning of this meeting, and they all knew it. She bit her lip. Dennis wiped the sweat off his face. Neville breathed in deeply, as though he was going to speak. But Mr House did first.
‘As I understand it, the NCR has fallen on hard times since the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. My Lieutenant after the battle was admittedly curt in regards to handling our relations, and since then it seems your economy is really struggling with extremely poor unemployment and satisfaction levels,’ Mr House paused.
Neville looked at Aminta with a look of understanding, and regret but he didn’t say anything. Mr House was right. Of course he was right.
‘It just so happens that while it may look from the outset I’m doing well, with the occasional launch of one of my experimental rockets, crime in Greater New Vegas is extraordinarily high. To be clear, the Strip is not, but the extended city state with the newly constructed buildings - those areas are. I want to make a proposition for the mutual benefit of the NCR, and New Vegas. Neville, think carefully about what I’m about to say.’
Neville spoke up. ‘Alright, I’m all ears.’
‘Dennis Crocker here can once again become the Ambassador to the Strip, and the NCR can once again have an Embassy. I will also give the NCR access to some of my technologies to help your state re-stabilize after everything that’s happened. In return however, I would like Aminta here, who is your Chief and Commander of both your military and normal police forces, to assist my Securitrons in patrolling Outer Vegas. Securitrons don’t make the best police, and security guards are in short supply and are not equipped, in any sense, to be police. I also would like your help in tracking down the culprits of this robbery; that being an extension of the aforementioned policing stipulation. Such a breach of security cannot happen again. Neville Dawson, I’m willing to sign a treaty pertaining to these terms, or any terms the NCR may propose, unless of course it does mutually benefit both states.’
Aminta felt her twang strike her deep in her heart. For years, the NCR Police Force had been absorbed into the Military Police Unit, and they could barely contain black market dealings of Chems and military grade weaponry on the streets of NCR’s cities. They did not have the resources or power Mr House seemed to think they did. For nearly 3 years straight she had been bombarded with evidence of killings by her own subordinates, illegal incarcerations, and illicit behavior between colleagues within her own chain of command, with no power to rehabilitate or prosecute those involved. Meanwhile, those that had the money to escape fled to New Vegas, desperate to find a life of comfort. It was possible that through re-establishing trade and mutual respect with Mr House, they could rebuild the NCR’s respectability on the international and internal level. She found herself hoping the treaty would be signed.
‘This... is a huge proposition. I hope you can understand the overwhelming nature of what you’re telling us, it’ll take a bit for us to come to a conclusion.’ Neville exhaled, as though he had been holding it for the last minute.
‘I understand.’ Mr House responded.
‘Maybe I ask,’ Donnie piped up. ‘What specific kinds of technology will you provide to the NCR?’
Mr House ran down a checklist. ‘Vehicles. Remade pre-war cars. Excavation machines. Cement mixers. Would provide jobs and improve your infrastructure in the process, whilst also giving me business and improving the situation here. Mutually beneficial for both sides.’
‘I see.’
Aminta struggled to contain her happiness. She had become a police officer to enforce safety and protect those who abide by the law. This was a way back to such operations, in which she could help those in need, rather than sit idly while their situation worsened.
‘I’ll also be willing to give 10% of the electricity produced by Hoover Dam to the NCR. It produces more than I need.’ Mr House offered.
Dennis shifted his weight, and opened his mouth. It was a second before anything came out.
‘15% would be great, if possible.’
‘Done.’ Mr House concluded.
‘Well, we’ll definitely have to confer this back to President Watson. As previously said by Mr Dawson, this is a huge offer.’
‘I understand. Aminta, I can only hope you also support this.’
Aminta smiled. ‘I am willing to establish a NCR Police Force here in New Vegas, and assist in establishing prosperity and stability, for the benefit of both states.’
‘Excellent. I’ll arrange for a Taxi to take you back to the border.’
*****
Nobody said a word in the ride in the elevator down to the entrance of the Lucky 38. There was a perpetual sense of being watched, and listened to, and Aminta supposed they probably were. She sensed from the stiffness of Donnie and Neville’s postures they felt the same way. As the three left through the ground level of the building, the desolate casino indicated a time long past, preserved in pristine condition yet uncannily lifeless; inhabited only by robots. Aminta felt a shiver flow throughout her body, prompting her to hurry outside.
Upon exiting, Aminta was greeted by the fantastic lighting she had seen from the Lucky 38. Buildings stretched high into the now night sky, perpetually lit up and calling for you to spend a few short hours in their luxurious suites and lose all the money you have without knowing it. She had visited the Strip a couple of times before the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. Back then, whilst still grand, its exterior walls felt cobbled-together, layered pieces of steel to preserve what glory the pre-war days had. Now, the Strip felt open, almost a complete return to complete pre-war glory, though there was no way of her knowing what such a time looked like. Polished, beetle like cars with extravagant interwoven pieces of silver and gold making up their hubcaps cluttered the road, filled with nicely dressed young women chattering incessantly.
Boys, ranging from teenagers to old men stumbled around, drunk and happy, their legs falling beneath them as though they were wet noodles. To the left, the Ultra Luxe Casino hotel stood at the far end of the street, intoxicatingly ostentatious and alluring for any hoping to climb the social ladder, despite the many rumors of cannibalism attempting to tarnish the brand. The fountain outside the front sprayed sparkling water into the night air which caught the light of the strip and reflected it like the jewels the building it was in front of was embroidered in. However, Aminta was not taken by the hotel, and watched two NCR troopers, still in their military uniforms be forced to dance in front of a crowd of onlookers. They were pushed and shoved as they struggled to dance, their arms and legs barely keeping to any rhythm as they fell to the ground, vomiting a putrid yellow substance onto the asphalt. She looked away in disgust and embarrassment for the two men.
A man in an expensive looking suit and bowtie greeted the three. Behind him stood a long polished black car.
‘Shall I take you to the crossing point?’
‘Yes.’ Donnie answered. Aminta and Neville followed his lead. He had more experience on the Strip than the majority of the tourists around them. She started the car once they were all inside, the engine barely kicking as it began to drive. Aminta marvelled at its power, it’s sleekness, at the strength and confidence of its movement and the luxury of it’s exotic wood plated interior.
The chauffeur drove to the large South Gate of the Strip, passing multitudinous buildings of similar grandeur and spectacle, all the same though uniquely different, until they all blurred into one mix of different colours and moving forms. The chauffeur leaned out of the side window, showed an identification pass to a Securitron, and the gate opened. Aminta’s car was the only car that left. As the gate closed, the car picked up speed and tore through the rest of Vegas.
Immediately outside the Strip, the buildings were noticeably more dilapidated. Aminta watched as the varied prosperity of the Strip curtailed rapidly into a mess of buildings, barely recognisable as residential or industrial, though they were unmistakably new creations. She almost didn’t notice it at first, but they were all the same. Row after row of buildings with the same geometric exterior, though placed at odd angles to each other, as if a child had been playing with them and haphazardly threw them into where they now stood. As the car moved further and further away from the Strip, lights in these buildings became scarce, and the brickwork became exposed to reveal pipelines and shreds of electrical appliances, some still spitting sparks. When the light of the Strip was nothing more than a flicker of light on the night horizon, the copied buildings were replaced with houses, roofs sagging, walls crumbling. As the car zipped passed, Aminta caught wisps of figures; people moving about the ruins and the darkness like ghosts, until they passed the last house, and all that could be seen was the night sky and desert shrubbery.

**** * ****
Hussein nudged his brother Iqbal and aimed his chin toward the bar. “Look, a fat, stupid American has finally managed some success.”
Iqbal smirked, “It is the only way the infidels can succeed. They have no education and no skills to do anything useful. They don’t even worship their own God anymore, only money and fame. They will soon learn better…”
The brothers were out enjoying a night of revelry, with a few more planned when they reached the city. The celebrations were a last reward before they fulfilled their mission and achieved True Paradise through martyrdom. Hussein was superstitious and hoped to find success at gambling before they took the great risk that if successful, would help to sustain their cause. They’d grown up in this land of debauchery and foolishness but had been taught from the first to honor their own Beliefs and culture above anything the Americans professed.
Hussein was on roll number five of what he intended to be a short run. He wished to win five times for the Five Pillars of Islam, the name of his cell in the latest great Jihad. He blew on the dice and tossed. The small cubes bounced against the back side of the pit and tumbled end over end as he watched breathlessly. “Another ten!” the barker called. And pushed the winnings toward Hussein. He placed a minimum bet and rolled once more. He had already left the table before the barker called, “Snakeyes! Next roller please.”
He held up his chips triumphantly, “Iqbal, more money from roll number five! I kept the bet in place for five rolls, I left only the minimum for the last roll, it is a Sign! We are fated to succeed. We will meet the others tomorrow, go over the plan, and then have a few last nights to revel in this world…”
Iqbal patted his brother on the shoulder, “There is something I would like more than winning chips. He nodded toward the bar and the attractive and sinuous young local who worked behind it, steadily polishing glasses.
Hussein watched for a moment, unsure whether his brother meant the alcoholic drinks that had been forbidden until now or the woman. Knowing Iqbal, he assumed both. “As you wish brother. Take your mortal enjoyments while you can. She looks a little sullen though, frown, lowered brows, I like the happy ones.”
Iqbal’s serpent-like smile widened, “She will look better when I have freed her from the miseries of the uncircumcised. She will enjoy a real man. Who knows? Maybe I will convert her so that we can meet again in Paradise.” With that, he surged away from his brother and slithered up to the bar opposite the young First Nations maid. “Good evening, I noticed that you do not have many customers at the bar. It seems odd that so beautiful a creature as yourself would not attract more company.”
The woman ignored him, intently focused on her task. He tried again, “Perhaps I must order a drink to remain at the bar? If so, a gin and tonic if you please.”
She continued to polish the glass. He leaned forward, “Did you hear me?” he inquired in an annoyed tone. “Perhaps you have no business because you are surly and unhelpful.”
She looked at him and delivered a smirk that appeared to be far more evil than anything he could ever hope to muster, despite his thin, reptilian lips and predatory mind, “We don’t want customers to linger at the bar, getting drunk and building from misery to anger over their losses. We want them playing… and losing.” She leaned toward him and glared into his own eyes that he normally considered flinty and daunting. “You know about losing, don’t you?”
Hussein noted that the large man at the end of the bar in the “Security” shirt had begun stumping toward them. “Iqbal, perhaps it is time to go look for other entertainment.”
Iqbal ignored him, he was trapped in the serpent’s gaze, like a mouse dropped into a snake’s tank to be devoured while its owner watched with perverse interest. Hussein reached for his brother to tug at his arm but never got the chance. The big security officer seized his hand, drew it to his too wide chest and turned. The weight of the man drew him away from his brother and caused him to spin around so that he ended up facing the goon with his brother beyond the man and in the clutches of the Serpent Woman. The ham-fisted gargantuan continued to twist the hand he gripped until the pressure caused Hussein sever pain. He grunted and bent into the angle of his wrist to relieve the distress. He found himself bent forward and looking up desperately toward the man’s face.
The security staffer smiled, his square, blunt teeth showing dark behind an almost lipless mouth. His wide back and chest, covered in body armor under his shirt made him appear like a monster-sized… Turtle. Hussein felt himself lifted and placed behind the bar. His brother soon slithered over the top and fell to the floor beside him, smiling beatifically. Hussein opened his mouth to scream for help, but a large, blunt fist crashed into the side of his head and he saw stars… seven of them, like the Holy... The fist descended once more, and he saw only darkness.
**** * ****
Fr. Danilo Bayani was immensely enjoying his latest trip to the continental USA. He had visited Hawaii many years ago, and New York City more recently, but this was his first tour of the grand landbound spaces that this country offered. He’d managed to roam so far from his origins in Manila. Now, in his twilight years, he longed to see what he could of God’s Green Earth. All on the payroll of The Vatican while they cleanse the records of those hateful… allegations. The bitter thoughts raced across his mind. Of course he was a sinner, he was only mortal. He’d been expiated of those sins and had paid an enormous price to continue serving in his capacity as a parish priest. He forced his mind to return to the moment and more enjoyable pursuits.
He noted the hirsute and similar appearing pair of men who had gone to the bar and wondered why the Security officer approached them, but his attention was called once more to the round of Texas Hold’em and his table mates. When he again had a moment to look, no one was at the bar, in front or behind… curious, he thought, but he quickly refocused his attention on the fascinating new game he was in the process of learning. He was familiar with Poker, so it wasn’t difficult to learn. He liked the high level of interaction that this version of the old game allowed. He’d done well, certainly gained enough to fund extracurricular activities during the rest of his current sabbatical.
He’d been disturbed by the overall atmosphere of this place when he’d arrived. He did not care for the numerous paintings and sculptures of Ancient Native Deities and Spirits. They seemed to be mostly images of the Dark Beings of various Tribal cultures. He loved to study diverse cultures, but this place was an amalgamation of cultures, built for mutual support by several Tribes in the region. Much of the artwork was schlocky and clearly intended to cater to the garish and sordid tastes of the vapid gambling set. Some part of him did not feel… welcome, as though he had intruded on some private Place, set aside for Other Gods.
He shook off the depressing musings… There are NO Other Gods, he reassured himself. He soon stepped away from the table to take care of personal needs and to decide what he should do with the rest of his night. Perhaps he would visit the White Dove Restaurant & Ballroom on the other side of the hotel lobby from the casino. It boasted a good reputation according to online reviews, even though it was a simple buffet style with a dance floor to one side. He liked the name, it was… peaceful he decided.
He soon had a selection of food piled onto a plate and was seated near the dance floor. The place was sparsely occupied, so his hopes of being able to watch dancers as he ate were dashed. Still, the food was good enough. A little bland, but that was necessary in a place that acted as a crossroads of cultures. There was a spice table at the end of the primary row of entrees. He’d helped himself, yet nothing seemed to attach to his taste buds. The combination of eating nearly alone, having no one with energy around him, and the tasteless food soon had him growing restless. He finished up his repast and left the table to go out to the final section of the complex he had not visited, the River Overlook.
As he passed the table nearest the entrance, he saw a stout man in a rumpled sport coat, who glared daggers at him, eyes focused on his crucifix, the only outward sign of his profession. The man appeared to be so hostile, that he paused for a moment to determine whether he’d done anything to offend the fellow. “Excuse me sir, have I offended you in some way?”
The man looked startled. He was apparently unused to being confronted about his demeanor or behavior. He scowled, “Don’t like that thing you have around your neck. You Catholics are all Hell-bound. No concept of righteousness. Not that you’d understand, you people don’t even read The Book. You listen to your priests and pope and disregard The Word. All the kneeling and ritual prayers in the world won’t save you in the end. Go back to your idols and beads and leave me alone to seek Heaven.”
Fr. Bayani was startled by the vehemence with which the man spoke. He hadn’t been attacked directly for his Faith in years. “Sir, I’m not sure what Religion you practice, but I am a man of God, a consecrated priest of the Holy Church. I assure you that I understand more than most, if not as much as I would like. I meant no harm and wish you a peaceful night.”
With that, he started to walk past the man, but the man rose from his table and pointed his finger, “Your pope is the Anti-Christ, and your Church is a place of Satan! Look to the Bible for your salvation before it’s too late.”
Fr. Bayani increased his pace and continued on his journey to the River Overlook. He would need the peace and tranquility that nature and the sound of flowing water would provide to settle his roiling mind.
**** * ****
Pastor Bill resumed his seat and shook his head, “Fool, doesn’t know that he’s risking his soul, courting Damnation.” He’d had a bad run at the tables over at the casino. His Denomination frowned on games of chance, but he had needed the money. One of his congregation had come up pregnant and they had to get it resolved before the three-month deadline for abortions. He knew that if his wife found out about Carmen, then she would divorce him. He was here to break every major rule that he professed to hold dear each week. His plan for quick money had failed, so he’d visited the bar. Now he hoped that eating would guide him back to sobriety. He had to think of another plan.
Seeing that… priest had annoyed him. Had he not been inebriated, he would never have said what he did, nor stared so rudely in the first place. Yet he wanted someone on whom to vent the anger he felt, that arose from fear and he’d always disliked the papists. If his wife divorced him, if the scandal involving the woman who cleaned the church all week and then occupied the back pew every Sunday ever broke; he would lose his ministry, his livelihood. His degree in Theology would be worthless. He might be able to get a job teaching, at some secular school, but most would not hire fervent Christians like himself.
He stared dejectedly at his plate of food that had contained more spice and flavors than he liked, a shadow passed in his periphery. It was low-slung and blurred just a bit as it loped along the wall. He thought he heard an odd laugh, somewhere between human and… canine? Maybe a little like a hyena might sound, or so he imagined. There was a manic quality to the laughter. A jest that was on him so that only the other Entity knew what it was. It was the wicked laughter of children at play, who’d decided to target a fat kid with glasses. A kid whose parents had been abusive addicts but who later “got right” through religious-based recovery programs. Their faith had led him to his own, but he’d never really lost those early traumas of being unaccepted by his peers and being beaten by people who later professed faith above all.
A mocking whine, definitely doggish, his now sobering consciousness informed him. Something was making fun of him, teasing him from the shadows. He looked around for staff members or other customers but found himself alone. The dining area and the dance floor were deserted. It was odd, there was almost always someone at the buffet service tables. He looked over to the kitchen doors in hopes that one of the employees would burst through with a fresh serving of chicken wings or whatever tray had been emptied. He saw dark figures move past the clouded round windows on the swinging doors and temporarily occlude the bright kitchen lights within, but they were indistinct blobs, and appeared to be focused on tasks of their own choosing rather than service of his needs.
He stood and realized that he was more intoxicated than he’d realized. He immediately resumed his seat and bent forward to regain his balance and bearings… and to swallow his rising gorge. When he sat up again, a dark, shaggy form perched in the chair across from him. The figure was no more than a silhouette, a raggedly hewn shadow. Yet there were eyes. Sinister golden gleams appeared and blinked at him. He heard a heavy, panting sort of breathing and a gust of foul-smelling carnivore breath assaulted his olfactory senses. “Who? Er, what are you doing at my table?” he asked in a mushy, confused manner. Still fighting off waves of nausea.
He could not see it very well in the poorly illuminated dining room, but his impression was that the... Being… smiled at him: a gaping, lolling smile, with a tongue dangling out to one side and sharp canines gleaming. “I thought I would check on you my righteous friend. You seem to be upset, unhappy. You nipped and barked at that other person who shares your Faith. I thought perhaps there was a deeper concern preying on your conscience?”
Pastor Bill had to force himself to think through what this… person? Had said to him. Likely some hippie-dippy weirdo. “That guy was a Catholic priest, we’re nowhere near the same Religion.”
Once more he heard the chortling laughter that was now very clear, “I’m sure you think it’s different. Those of his specific religion, came to these lands many years ago. They were the first of you Christians to arrive. The rest have been simple variations on a theme. The problems began, when your co-religionists assumed that only your God exists; that all of the local Gods and Spirits were instead Demons and Dark Powers. Instead of trying to show that yours is a better Way, you Christians insisted that yours is the only Way. You’ve forgotten that in Ancient Times, people held True to Deities who were attached to local communities or to the land and features around them; geographically and ethnically relevant. You have gone from subsuming and incorporating Older Gods as Angels and Saints, to Demonizing Them, and now in your hubris, to denying Them altogether.” He shook His head. “Too bad really, it creates an Adversarial relationship.” He chuckled at some joke that Pastor Bill was still too drunk to comprehend.
Pastor Bill had grown increasingly fearful as the Voice intoned Its Philosophies. He wanted to refute that Voice, to deny Its very Existence. Yet he feared Its Wrath more than anything he’d ever feared, even the Fires of Hell. Instead of making a stand and arguing his faith, he staggered to his feet and ran, stumbled, blindly toward the kitchen and the pale, ghostly figures within. Surely someone within would save him! The sardonic laughter chortled after him and chased him into the too bright lights, descending into the yips and howls of Coyote even as the doors swung shut behind him. He looked around at the glowing white figures who halted in their various progresses to stare at him. Their eyes! There were none, just empty sockets, faces slack, with gaping, lamprey maws. He heard a new sound as they swarmed him… his own forlorn screams of ultimate agony.
**** * ****
Fr. Bayani stood out on the River Overlook platform and enjoyed the solitude that had so recently left him restless. There were plenty of noises out across the flowing torrent: the water itself, as it passed over hidden objects, fish as they leapt from its embrace to kiss the night air, frogs and insects, and the warbling, mournful sounds of a loon, and the soft sigh of the wind as it passed through the verdant landscape. This is much more peaceful than the White Dove he thought. He had some trouble shaking off ruminations on the verbal assault from the strange, possibly drunken man in the restaurant. He decided that he would pray for the man, that he would one day soon find The True Faith. Sometimes that was all one could do for the short-sighted.
He heard a deep, coughing hiss out in the dark. He was startled but quickly realized that it was an American Alligator, cousin to creatures he had observed in many places around the planet. He was truly content, at one with Nature in all Her Glory… in all the natural splendor of Creation! he immediately corrected himself. A sound impinged on his senses as it slowly rose and obscured the others… it was a lapping sound at first, more like ocean waves on a beach than the banks of a river. Waves, at cross purposes to the flow of the river, slapped at the base of the platform. Soon they sounds evolved into splashes, as if something very large approached the River Overlook platform. He leaned over the rail to have a closer look. Perhaps it was a large water creature or a boat… maybe a ‘gator as the locals called the big reptiles.
He peered down at the dim rippling surface below. At first, he was unable to discern anything but small reflections on the water as it swirled and lapped; then from below the surface, he spotted an eye, a too large eye! It glowed from within with a sickly luminescence akin to that produced by deep growing fungi. As he stared in horror, he saw a mouth gape below the eye, and enormous frog-like opening with no teeth but serrated lips, like some monstrous catfish. As he stared, too much in shock to act, he suddenly felt his body wrapped in strong, leprous flesh and he quickly lost his ability to breathe. The last sight he saw before he plunged over the safety rail was the thin, grey, first light of dawn.
**** * ****
Chief Harry Whitehorse gazed around at his fellow chiefs and Shamans from various local Tribes, “So, are The Dark Ones satisfied once again? Have They sated their appetites on strangers so that our peoples will be safe for another year?”
Affirmative rumbles muttered around the conference room. Red Wolf, a Shaman, spoke from near the back row, “They are not only satisfied but Coyote assures us that the prey people will not be linked with our premises or business operations.”
Most of the fresh mutters sounded pleased, but old Harry had to ask, “Can we trust Him?”
Chortling laughter sounded throughout the conference room and ascended into thunderous yips and howls of hysterical glee.

Fans of Resident Evil were more than happy to see Capcom come out with another zombie title that replaces tight hallways and puzzles with open-world exploration and a level-up system. The creation of Dead Rising, back in 2006, was a breath of fresh air that was surprisingly supposed to be a sequel to Shadow of Rome, which is a random gladiator game that pretty much nobody played but was something far ahead of its time. Fast forward about 10 years and 3 games later, and Dead Rising is as dead as the zombies that plague its mall, casinos, city, and mall again. Granted, the games changed from a Japanese studio to a Canadian studio after the first one was a smash hit and it was very visible that the second game was already of a different quality. However, once it hit 3, there was such a huge difference in the way the game functioned and played out, people outright refused to bother playing it(it didn’t help that it was an Xbox exclusive until the poorly optimized PC port came out).
When it comes down to the first installment being a goofy game that lets you dress as a little school girl and ride a tricycle while zombies are swatting at wasps and yellow raincoat cult members are blowing themselves up, it’s hard to imagine people complaining that the third and fourth game got too silly for their own good. What a lot of people don’t realize is how that is a legitimate concern from gamers, due to the situation that is what I like to call “invisible nuance”. This invisible nuance is where people are unable to understand how the games differ from 1 and 2 over to 3 and 4, and this is because 1 and 2 are satire, while 3 and 4 are parody. In fact, 4 is a parody of the entire series, making it a parody of a parody. With that slight nuance, the Canadian designers not only ruined the story for everyone, but they ruined any chance of a fifth game until Capcom gets so desperate they might as well summon up their own zombie horde to sit down and buy their games.
I understand that not many people understand the difference between parody and satire, and I am certain the developers didn’t either when they adopted the IP from the Japanese studio. This is why I believe that the second game was accidentally good, even though they still fumbled on things like making Chuck a really iffy kind of melee fighter at full level and how the game was starting to become a little bit too cartoony for its own good. To put it simply, satire is when a work of art is making fun a genre or work by being part of it. Parody is when a work of art is taking a genre or another work of art and is using it to make jokes that are unrelated to what it’s basing itself on. Satire uses humor to show flaws in human behavior or culture, while parody uses an established work of art to make a joke.
It’s very difficult to understand the difference, I know, but I think I’m able to make it simple to understand with a few examples. My favorite example is the difference between Scream and Scary Movie. Scream is satire, Scary Movie is a parody. Scream has a plot revolving around the tropes of slasher films, Scary Movie has a chick belittle her killer after she’s decapitated. Scream has the group follow clues from slasher movies to avoid being killed, Scary Movie has a dude cum so hard the girl on top of him is stuck to the ceiling.
If that doesn’t make the difference clear to you, then, I’m sorry, I fear you have the case of the brain worms.
The plot of Dead Rising is a satire of Resident Evil, mixed with a take on American consumerism. The entire reason the zombie outbreaks occur in the mall is because a terrorist group wanted to bring the problem a corporation invoked on their Latino town of Santa Cabeza, all because the company wanted to make more cows in order to feed Americans. It’s not that Americans are staring, but rather they are demanding, and the best place to see American demand back in 2006 was in a shopping mall on Black Friday. Shaun of the Dead did a similar satire moment where they showed shoppers at a store walking like zombies because that’s pretty much how they look, just switch the words “brains” with “bargains”. Surprisingly, the first game doesn’t have money as an issue, although it was great when the second game implemented it for its theme of corporate anti-culture and big pharma.
So far, we have two games that follow their themes very well and are applying them as a satire. The mall setting is a satire set up for consumerism, while the casino and wrestling ring strip in the second game is a satire set up for anti-culture turning people into greedy slobs that just want to watch blood matches and gamble. Even the main characters of Frank and Chuck work well as themes, with Frank being a journalist(he’s covered wars, you know) and Chuck being a motocross champion turned gladiator. Both of these cause their outbreaks for different reasons and both of these have a beautiful grip on what makes the psychopaths “psychopaths”.
Psychopaths are the result of someone going crazy due to the outbreak and because the designers needed a reason to have boss battles across the game’s 3-day span. Just having them there was satire since it’s kind of rare to see people going crazy in zombie movies (back then) and it was interesting to see how humans would turn on humans by having PTSD and a history of being oppressed or already psychotic. The idea of Frank covering wars and then coming home to deal with people having PTSD is a great theme, due to how war has to be glorified in the American news to keep the war effort going, and then the soldiers come home and reveal how terrible it actually was.
The first game even has a moment where a psychopath named Cliff goes crazy in a home repair store and after you defeat him, he gives a dramatic monologue about how he snapped the second he saw his granddaughter get eaten by zombies. It’s a heart-wrenching moment that is perfectly finished by Frank closing Cliff’s eyes with a hand and letting out a defeated sigh. Much like how it is in war, not every battle won is a victory. Then there are Psychopaths like Adam the clown who are memorable for the wonderful performance by the voice actor and how intense the battle is.
But no matter what Psychopath we deal with, they all follow a theme and an archetype. Adam is the Caino archetype clown, one who is miserable but desires others to laugh and enjoy themselves. This gets twisted into him tying people onto a thrill ride and juggling chainsaws for the sake of “amusement”. The grocery clerk, Steven Chapman, is the archetype of the perfect retail employee. His archetype is twisted into someone who shrieks at the top of his lungs for people to get out of his store and he sets up a shopping cart with pitchforks and blades on it. There’s even a cult leader in a movie theater to make reference to the “cult of personality” where people go to watch and indulge in pointless films to simply argue and create teams against each other about “what media is better than another” with none of them realizing that they are just blindly following propaganda that makes them feel good or powerful.
There’s a reason for these psychopaths to be there. They follow themes, they are archetypes, their actions relate to their themes, and even their settings fit their themes to create this deep experience that sticks with you, all while poking fun at the subject of consumerism. That is why people enjoy satire. The events are making fun of the major themes and subjects, all while being a part of those themes and subjects. The survivors are the same way, where you’re trying to save their lives and yet some of them worry more about food, when they are already fat, or they are found doing something they enjoyed in their normal life as if the zombie apocalypse is the perfect excuse to rush to escapism.
In the second game, they do the same thing with corporations and big pharma, and they use satire in a similar way but didn’t really tie their themes to either one. Instead, they tied their themes to job titles and employment. Ted Smith, the tiger tamer who looks like if Bobby Hill had a baby with a potato and fed it paint chips, becomes a Psychopath to treat the tiger he grew attached to. Antoine Thomas, the chef that is a bitch to kill, goes crazy trying to create the perfect dish with human flesh. Or is it zombie flesh?
Either way, once you meet the mailman with a shotgun who goes postal(yes, I went there, because the game went there), it’s easy to see that they are simply going crazy the same way the grocery clerk of the previous game went crazy. They had a job, they became that job, and they will die as that job. It’s kind of a way to talk about corporatism, but it’s also kind of not. This is why I think DR2 was starting to get messy with its themes and satire, because even though they were using satire to make fun of people who take their jobs too seriously, it’s not really part of the main theme, so it’s understandable why the Psychopaths are not as memorable. Strangely enough, the ones that are memorable are the ones who do fit the corporation theme, like the CURE terrorist who fights you with broken glass, and TK who serves as the main antagonist.
Zombrex, the entire reason the game happens, due to big pharma needing zombies to create queens, which allows them to make more zombrex, is the biggest aid in the main theme. Even if you kill TK, the outbreaks will continue, because they would need more zombrex, which requires more zombies, which then makes more people need more zombrex. I swear that theme was far too genius for its own good. Sadly, the only part of the gameplay that relates to it is going over to a pawn shop that is owned by a faceless entity to buy weapons and zombrex, and that’s about it. I guess you can count the “spend money to make money” mentality with gambling because the entire business practice is a gamble, but I’m not really sure if that’s intentional or if I’m just fishing for anything relevant.
To wrap up the satire segment, it’s kind of clear that the main idea behind the first 2 games, when it came to satire, was how the themes matched the events and the actions, as well as the humor. Anything goofy going on gameplay-wise is not part of the “world” that the story is setting up. You don’t craft weapons during a cutscene and it’s not like the game forces you to dress up like Megaman for a mission. Granted, there is the ability to be kidnapped by cultists in the first game and you wake up in a box in your underwear, but that’s still part of the gameplay, where it belongs.
Now… let’s talk about parody, and boy is this going to be a rant.
The third game is where everything goes downhill, story-wise. The idea of big pharma is gone, the idea of American consumerism is there accidentally, and the designers wanted to put a big emphasis on how combo weapons exist. You play as Nick Ramos, who is a mechanic and… that’s his entire character. While Frank was a big mouth pacifist who seeks the truth and Chuck was a hard-ass who wants safety for future generations, Nick is a clean slate who likes to scramble on the floor and awkwardly ask people why they’re killing people. Nick is no longer a character, but rather, a walking joke.
He’s nothing more than the voice of the director telling the audience what they should be thinking in order for their awkward scenes to work. His over the top expressions, as if he’s auditioning to play the dad from Son of the Mask, are what the director wants the player to do when a fat lady stabs a man with an oversized fork or when a MILF cop puts his hand on her fake tit. The idea isn’t that he’s a satire of the typical zombie hero, but rather a slapstick parody of what the player does during gameplay. It’s hard to imagine Nick being shocked at a few dead bodies, then quickly fly into action with a boxing glove that has an acetylene tank taped onto it. The amount of difference between cutscenes and gameplay is so extreme, we’re more inclined to skip Psychopath introductions because Nick doesn’t act like the character we’ve been playing as, but rather acts like a helpless survivor that wandered away from the safe house.
And before I go off on how the Psychopaths are like in the third game, I have to say that the idea of using the seven deadly sins was an okay idea. It’s not bad. I like themes that represent something. But what the hell does the seven deadly sins have to do with the theme of the story? I have to get into the main theme before I talk about the Psychopaths. While DR1 was about consumerism, and DR2 was about corporatism, DR3 flew way off-topic and decided to make a game about zombies discuss privacy and citizen rights.
Yeah… I’m not a genius when it comes down to zombie tropes, but what exactly does a Hispanic dude helping out a group who call themselves The Illegals have to do with the plot of a zombie outbreak? If anything, the plot is saying “these illegals are a risk because there are people who create outbreaks if they are not tracked” and then the gameplay says “you must save these people who risk more outbreaks because they want to do things their own way” with then the plot later going “hey, remember those illegals, you have to help them because this one chick is an illegal and she’s important for no real reason.”
Seriously, Annie, the major subplot out of like 5 different unrelated subplots, is Nick’s main objective in the beginning for no real reason. It’s never shown that they are dating, it’s never said she’s important to him, and it’s never said what Nick’s reason is other than “I have to find her”. This can only be concluded as a parody of how games give you missions for no reason. “Bring me 10 goat foreskins”. Why? I don’t know, but I’ll reward you with exp and gold.
These main characters have nothing to them except for Gary, who is a mobster who used to be a wrestler, which touches a fall from grace personality that makes him cocky in his ability but humble in his situation. Everyone else is no longer an archetype or even remotely relatable to a character we can point to any zombie media. Annie is a babydoll goth only by appearance, Rhonda is a pinup punk, Red is a beatnik. These aren’t personalities, they are costumes that follow a stereotype, and they didn’t even bother to include the stereotype. Instead, we get these empty husks that are ready to tell jokes instead of supporting the reason why they are there, to begin with.
Okay, I’ve delayed it long enough… It's time to talk about the Psychopaths.
We get seven major Psychopaths that fill out the seven sins: Lust is an S&M performer who you find in a porn shop, gluttony is a fat lady on a scooter you find in a buffet, greed is a surgeon who is collecting organs, sloth is a champagne socialist you find in his mansion, wrath is a zen monk in his garden, envy is a nerd on a yacht who tries to be like Nick, and pride is a female bodybuilder you find in a gym.
At first, from that alone, you can go “oh, that sounds good. The themes are in order, they don’t have much wrong with them, and they don’t conflict with their symbolism.”
That is because, on paper, they are almost flawless. But once executed and given dialogue, they are no longer satire. They become parodies of sins. The only ones that stay in their lane are the surgeon and the S&M gimp, and that’s because their personalities and roles are easy to make rather threatening and psychopathic. The rest of them become these over the top cartoon representations that fart a lot and make jokes like they’re Jim Carrey during the dream scene in Dumb and Dumber.
I swear, I’m not joking, two of them, sloth and gluttony, shit themselves when they die. Wrath, an old monk who’s gone mad and says “pretentious big brain Buddhist riddles” has his last word be “Seriously?!” after reminiscing about having a family. There’s nothing really about them that makes them sinners, other than how they set up jokes. Pride gets called “sir” by Nick, and it’s funny because she’s just a really buff chick with short hair, and Nick is supposed to be the player and Nick is a misgendering idiot. The rest of the Psychopaths, who are part of the main story, have very little to do with anything.
To put it plainly, the theme we’ve established with the concept of illegals and citizen rights and privacy, the only thing the main story Psychopaths relate to is that some of them are police officers and military officials. This is just a parody of the previous games, where they had two DHS agents try to find out what’s going on with you, and now the government is your biggest enemy because there is The Illegals organization and they are important and stuff. I don’t think I have to get into the subject of the illegal crisis the US has had since before Dead Rising was a thing, but, just so we’re clear, the bitten illegals are a parody of the immigration illegals.
They create an organization, they claim they just want to be safe and do things on their own, they want to stay off the grid, and then they have people like Red who go out of their way to destroy government property and we have people like Annie who has a father (Chuck Greene) who’s in charge of a mafia. I don’t know about you, but this sounds like a Spanish soap opera more than it sounds like a zombie game. Nothing about them is saying why they are illegal, or what the illegal status means to an outsider, or what the illegal status means to an insider. They say they are free and then they are held up in a shelter surrounded by zombies and they need Nick to save them.
Speaking of Nick, let’s talk about his tattoo.
Later on in the game, it’s revealed that Nick is part of an experiment where they had a bunch of children, who are immune to the virus but also carry it, go out into different places. The reason is kind of so that they can infect places, which is seen in an awful cutscene that is literally a museum of exposition, and it’s hinted that Nick or his friend Diego might have been the reason people were infected in their area, but it’s never really said. Instead, they drop that plot point and talk about how Nick is the cure.
So, the entire time we’re playing as Nick, we are shown that he’s useless in human interactions and is a weakling, but then now he’s the cure and the savior of the human race, as long as he can be taken away and studied. This is a parody of exactly what Frank West’s character went through in the first game, which was a hero’s journey.
You see, a hero’s journey, when applied with the Jungian form that Frank West had, is done right, you get a story that flows well and makes sense. Frank had the call of adventure towards the mall, he’s helped by the DHS agents, he gets mentors and helpers along the way, then he’s thrown into the abyss of the conspiracy, he changes from a journalist to a warrior of truth, he finds out he’s bitten and will soon turn, then he is granted the reward of finding a temporary cure with Isabella’s help. Near the end, he also encounters his shadow, who is a military commander. Frank is out to reveal the truth, while the military commander is out to conceal the truth. The battle challenges Frank’s beliefs of whether or not hiding such a big scoop is the right thing to do.
Nick’s journey is a parody of this, minus the shadow.
He starts off as useless, never really works for anything to happen, the entire story exists without him needing to be there, then near the end, they say “by the way, you’re important”, all for the story to say Nick is still not really that important and reveal that Isabella caused the outbreak so that Nick can reveal himself as someone who’s immune.
This isn’t a hero’s journey. It’s not even a journey. It’s a series of unfortunate events that reward Nick for absolutely no reason. He has to survive because he’s special, but he didn’t do anything to be special, other than magically be good at combining things, which… is something everyone else can do in this world. The best way I can say his character fits the theme is by saying “the cure to a bad situation is to have someone who can fix stuff”. Doesn’t that sound absolutely engaging?
Now, what about the fourth game? Is there anything else I really have to add to hammer in the idea that these two failures were accidental parodies? I guess I can say that the fourth game goes over consumerism, again, but leaves it at “hey, Christmas is a thing, right?” Nothing in the story really deals with the theme of consumerism because that game has the theme of freaking transhumanism. The main villain is a dude who’s a conscious zombie with robot armor and Frank West turns into a zombie, only to be turned back into a human. Frank turns into a rotting corpse… then he turns back into a fully functional human.
Trust me, that’s a parody. That’s just a joke with nothing funny attached to it, much like most of Frank’s dialogue in the fourth game. All he does is wisecracks and Uncharted-esque zingers. His personality is to wait for someone to give him material to make fun of and to have pointless arguments with Asian women. Even when I say the theme is about transhumanism, it really does just end at that. There are no more Psychopaths, they replaced them with maniacs. The maniacs are a parody of Psychopaths.
Characters like the Sadistic Claus and Captain Black Fridaybeard have nothing to do with the theme and they have nothing to do with reality. They are just there, wielding electric axes and ice swords because that’s how the designers wanted to reward the player for defeating an opponent that is easier than finding something to be disappointed within the game. Archetypes are more than just catchphrases, vernacular, and stereotypes. They have an actual purpose and theme that is carried out by their actions and desires because the most important part of an archetype is their specific desire.
When all the maniac simply desires is “kill everything” then they’re no different from a wandering zombie. They are reduced to a parody of what the psychopaths were. The story was reduced to a parody of the first game, with the theme even being parodied as “with consumerism, we can achieve transhumanism” as part of the plot. It’s basically saying, “you eat a lot and we end up with robo-zombies that talk.” Frank himself was reduced to a parody of Frank, with his charismatic journalistic archetype being replaced by Carrot Top and his bag o’ funny props.
At no point am I saying that parody is bad. To be honest, I love parody movies like Scary Movie, especially Scary Movie 2. However, when we want to make a game fun, and when it’s a game like Dead Rising, the jokes of said parody should make us actually laugh. It should try to make us amused, and that’s hard to do with a setting that’s also trying to take itself seriously at times. It’s like trying to enjoy a parody episode of Simpson’s Treehouse of Horrors and the entire time they play it off like it’s supposed to be serious. That serious tone is great for satire, but it’s just too out of place for parody.
Parody can exist within satire, but satire cannot exist within a parody. Satire relies on the themes of the subject to make the humor have its punch, while parody is simply a joke that uses a theme and subject as a platform to talk about something unrelated. I believe the designers who messed up on that little bit of nuance had the right intentions but didn’t have the right direction. If anything, nobody told them the first game was satire and the second game was kind of trying to copy the first game in approach and they lucked out by great observation. But the second they decided to try something else, they had no idea what the original plan was and went off into their presumed direction, parody.
It’s amazing how such a small mistake can cause such big problems, but let that be a lesson to you. The slightest misunderstanding you have of the art you try to mimic can cause the biggest differences in how people compare yours with the original source. There are things that stick with people and there are things that fall flat. The more you understand the established concepts that people enjoy, the better you’ll be able to please your audience and returning fans. If you don’t understand how the art was well received, and you go by “top trends of the previous year”, you’re going to make another Dead Rising 4.

Continuing
“Hey, Viv!”, I say, as we’re all being shuttled onto the bus which will take us to our hotel, “Toss me one of those miniatures, if you please. Yeah. Of course, Vodka’ll do. It’s bloody dusty round these parts.”
Viv chuckles and asks if anyone else wants anything. He’s a consummate scrounger and somehow sweet-talked a demure and pulchritudinous female Air China cabin attendant out of her phone number, Email address, and a case of 100 airline liquor miniatures.
That he looks like a marginally graying version of Robert Mitchum in his heyday and speaks fluent Dutch, French, and Italian might explain his success. I mean, a guy with four ex-wives can’t be all wrong, right?
He’s a definite outlier in this crowd. We could be characterized as a batch of aging natural geoscientists who collectively, sans Viv, add up to an approximate eight on the “Looker” scale. Besides the years, the mileage, the climatic, and industrial ravages, it’s a good thing we all have expansive personalities, as most of us are dreadful enough to make a buzzard barf.
But, save for Viv, no one presently here is on the make. Oh, sure; we’ll all sweet talk some fair nubile into a free drink or a double when we really ordered a regular drink, but we’re all married, most terminally, that is, over 35 years and counting. The odd thing is that save and except for Viv, none of us married folk had ever been divorced.
That is strange, considering that the global divorce rate hovers around 50%, and we are often called to be apart from kith and kin for prolonged periods. However, we are always faithful and committed to our marital units and those vows we spoke all those many long decades ago.
But, hey, we’re all seriously male and not anywhere near dead; and there’s no penalty for just looking, right?
Continuing.
We’re all loaded on a pre-war, not certain which war, by the way, bus which stank of fish, kimchee, and diesel fuel. We really don’t care even a tiny, iotic amount. It’s free transport, we’re tired of traveling, and not keen on walking any further than we absolutely have to.
Viv has been passing out boozy little liquor miniatures, and I’ve been handing out cigars since I bought a metric shitload back in Dubai Duty-Free and somehow got them all through customs.
We didn’t light up, as there was neither a driver nor handler present. So, we figured we’d all just wait on the cigars, and concentrate on having a little ground-level “Welcome to Best Korea” party until the powers that be got their collective shit together and provided drivers, herders, and handlers.
We sat there for 15 long minutes. Being the international ambassadors of amity and insobriety, we started making noises like “Hey! Where’s our fucking driver?” and “I am Doctor Academician! Of All State Russian Geological Survey! How dare you make me wait? ”
Suddenly, a couple of characters in ill-fitting gray suits and fake Rays Bans are outside the bus having a collective meltdown. Somehow, someone fucked up and put us on a ‘regular’ bus and not the ‘VIP’ bus. In other words, we got to see what the locals really got to ride around Pyongyang on instead of our supposed to be impressed by the bus that wasn’t there; but was now just arriving.
A spanking new purple-and-chrome Mercedes long-haul bus shows up. It even has our group name emblazoned above the placard that normally tells where the bus is headed or who it is for: “’국제 석유 지질 과학 연합’ [Gugje Seog-yu Jijil Gwahag Yeonhab] or ‘International Union of Petroleum Geological Sciences’”.
We are brusquely ordered off our present bus and into the opulent, obviously bespoke, bright yellow faux-leather interior Mercedes-Benz Tourismo RH M. It’s so new and so obviously a ploy to get us to think that all things here are so new and opulent, it even smells of that new car, ah, bus, aroma.
“Well, we’ll take care of that soon enough”, I muse, as the bus is equipped with ashtrays and we’re going on the scenic route to our hotel, which is only 25 or so kilometers from the airport. However, it was announced that it’ll take us about 2 hours to get to our hotel since we need to see the city in its best light and get a feeling for the town if we should ever find ourselves lost and alone.
We all know what’s going on. They’re getting our rooms ‘ready’ for our arrival and need some extra time to make sure everything’s all wired in and transmitting properly.
“Guys”, I muse to our new handlers, “I’ve been to the Soviet Union, pre-wall fall. I stayed in places where I was definitely among the first westerners ever to grace their porticos. We’re a busload of natural scientists, of eight different nationalities, covering the economic spectrum from staunch capitalism to sociable socialism to hard-core communism. You even think for a second we’re going to spill any beans about anything you’d find interesting or useful? Think again.”
In fact, it would become a running joke between us all to see what sort of fake bombshells we could drop into the normal conversation what would give the listener’s the greatest case of the jibblies.
But for now, our bags were all loaded into the cargo compartment of this very, very nice, I must admit, mode of conveyance. Our handlers: ‘Yuk’, ‘No’, ‘Man’, and ‘Kong’, are all seated upfront and please with their latest tally of bodies. We have a couple of shady fellow travelers with the knock-off Ray-Bans and shiny gray suits that just appeared out of the woodwork in the back, seated by the loo, watching over all of us, and we’re going on a fucking city tour, whether we like it or not.
We’re all present and accounted for. Let’s keep our camera in our bags for the time being as the drinking and smoking lights had just been lit as the bus fired up its new German-engineered and machined precision diesel engine.
The bus rumbled to life and after a moment or two of checking that all dials, gauges, and indicators were where they were supposed to be; without so much as a cursory glance, we pulled out into traffic.
Except there was none.
Not another bus, pushbike, tap-tap, scooter, car, truck, hover-board, or motorcycle in sight.
Nothing.
Seems we were a big deal. They shut down the main drag so we wouldn’t be encumbered by such proletariat things like traffic jams or people-things cluttering the roadway, clambering for a look at the Western scientific cadre.
So, away we whizzed, sans traffic and into the very belly of the beast, and onward; eventually, towards our hotel.
Our handlers were very kind to point out passing scenes of interest.
“Look, look! There’s the Potong River. Notice all the lovely birds, ‘eh what? See the Norwegian Blue? Beautiful plumage!”
“See here, look. Here’s the Taedong River. Many forms of fish in the river. Maybe we’ll see some fishermen. If you like, we can stop, and ask them about today’s catch.”
We all declined, as we were certain that the fish the ‘random fisherman’ we’d talk to was flown in fresh from elsewhere earlier in the day.
Besides, we were comfortable. We had our drinks, our cigars, and we were leaving the driving to someone else.
After being driven around the city and seeing all the wonderful monuments, like the faux Arch of Triumph, which looks exactly unlike its namesake Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile in Paris.
The Arch of Reunification, a monument to the goal of a reunified Korea, which, by necessity, is unfinished. Then there’s the Tomb of King Tongmyŏng, where people are lining up, just dying’ to get in.
Finally, we all called for our hotel, the Yanggakdo, after yet another mausoleum, the Kumsusan Memorial Palace of the Sun.
Arches or tombs. Such a stunning array of monuments and places of less than moderate interest.
We were interested in Mirae Scientists street (Future Scientists street). It is a street in a newly developed area in Pyongyang to house scientific institutions of the Kim Chaek University of Technology and its employees. But we were told that it was too late, there was not much there to see, we needed to express written permission to visit, and we’d be going there tomorrow or next week.
We wheel into the parking lot of the Yanggakdo Hotel and are immediately unimpressed by the pseudo-Baroque concrete fiasco that appears to stand, wobbly, before us. It’s a page right out of the Soviet Construction-For-The-Masses Handbook. A cold, gray concrete edifice with multitudes of seemingly little, tiny windows. A perfect metaphor for our travels thus far; look at the expansiveness of Best Korean wonders, through this pinhole.
However, we judged too soon. We were told to go inside and check-in, whilst our luggage would be de-bussed for us and handled by the expertly efficient hotel staff. The lobby was opulent, tastefully laid out in earth tones of facades of veneers of marble, granite, some garnet-mica schist, if my hand lens doesn’t lie, some Prepaleozoic anatectic migmatite, displaying intricate and intense plication, xenoliths, and graphic delineation of minerals by segregation through melting points. There was a gigantic well-appointed and well kept up aquarium, complete with snuffling sharks and nuclear-submarine sized groupers.
Very handsome indeed. Impressions increasing slightly.
Then we see that there’s a bloody casino on the bottom floor of the hotel, several bars interspersed throughout the hotel, and karaoke, of which I’m not terribly fond, but some of my European counterparts almost swooned at the prospect. There are a large pool and weight rooms/gymnasia, saunas and places to relax outside of one’s room, but still under the watchful eye of the thousands of ill-concealed video cameras at every turn.
“Covert surveillance” may be a thing in Best Korea, but it’s a practice still leaves a lot to be desired. The Eastern Siberian Russians back before the wall fell were more covert with their obvious button audio microphones woven into the fabric covering the headboard of your Intourist bed than the Best Koreans here. Their cameras were ‘disguised’ as flower arrangements, overhead lights, and speakers inexplicably placed into things like standing ashtrays, refuse bins, and randomly placed holes in the wall.
The floors were all covered with exquisite what looked to be hand-woven rugs of most vibrant crimson and gold; the usual Communistic colors. Always with some sort of floral pattern or pattern that’s supposed to be reflective of nature, as I was told. Evidently, for workers to remember what nature was as they don’t get out much with 14 to 16 hours workdays here in the Worker’s Paradise.
Enough of the travelogue; we all wander up to the front desk, and each with their own passport in hand, request our reserved rooms. We supposed that we would all have rooms on different floors as the reservations were made, expired, re-made, juggled, rebooked, allowed to expire, re-jiggered, and finally formalized a scant week before we left the UK.
Nope. No such luck. We were all on the 39th floor. The place boasts 47 floors, of which, the top floor is a revolving restaurant. Evidently, food tastes better when you’re rotating.
However, it won’t spin unless you first buy a drink.
We had that thing whirling like a NASA centrifuge after its discovery the second night.
Yeah, all 12 of us are bivouacked on the 39th floor. A floor with approximately 30 rooms.
I guess we could have played “Room Roulette” and see who got which room and who’s luggage. Or we could switch every day or two to drive our handlers nuts. Or, we could just take our assigned rooms, which were conveniently located one empty room apart.
Meaning, no one had adjoining rooms. Why? Fuck if I know. We didn’t spend much time in our rooms, and that time was either sleeping or showering. We’d all meet at the bar, casino, restaurant, karaoke, bowling alley (all three lanes) or actual meeting rooms every once in a while when we thought we should get together and compare notes. It was the most inexplicable situation.
Plus, we spent an inordinate amount of time waiting on the fucking elevators to take us to our room. These elevators, and if you think you’re going to get a batch of aging senior scientists to schlep it up 39 floor’s worth of stairs, think again; are the slowest elevators in the civilized world. And that was the consensus of scientists representing not only Europe and North America, but Russia as well. 15-25 minutes added to each journey, up or down; stopping on every floor, except 5, on the way down..
Jesus Q. Fuck, dudes. If you can’t construct a bleedin’ elevator that works better than those at the Sozvezdie Medveditsy Guest House in Lesosibirsk, Eastern Siberia; then I suggest you seriously rethink your plans for world domination and new world order.
Grako and Erwin once, while waiting for the fucking elevator, figured out that we were earning some US$25 each just to wait for the lift to arrive and take us to our rooms. Every day. Sometimes several times per day.
With that, we all agreed to toss our “waiting time” funds into a kitty and on our last day of captivity here, blow it all in the hotel casino. Whatever became of that would be donated to the Koreans we thought most deserving of our largesse.
Would it be our handlers? How about the Korean Scientists we’d be meeting? The affable and most accommodating concierge? Or that plucky little Korean charwoman who was always on our floor and kept everything spotless, right down to our freshly laundered and pressed field clothes and newly polished field boots; done without our requesting or knowledge?
Only time would tell.
It could be a fortune or it could be bupkiss. Just like our expectations of the Heavenly Kingdom where we were currently sequestered.
As it was, with our official protestations, they kept only photocopies of our passports as we roundly refused and threatened a full-scale karaoke battle right here in the lobby if they didn’t relinquish our passports immediately. I had broken out my nastiest cigar and was primed to offend.
With that, we all had our keys and trooped over to the elevators for our first, of many, inexplicable waits. We made many uncharitable and potentially nasty remarks about the Anti-Western posters that made up some of the wall décor. Once we finally made it to our floor, we all fanned out to find our rooms. Viv found his first and was quite pleased to report to the rest of us that there was a “Welcome” basket in his room.
We all hoped that we would be receiving one a well.
I was in room 3914; which I considered a close call, but later only wondered as there was no 3913. Upon entering, I saw it was 1980s Hotel 6 opulent, but with an excellent over-city view. True it was late, dark, and the city was only somewhat lit up; I was looking forward to the view of the town in full daylight.
The room had a ‘king’ bed; that is if the king in question was Tutankhamen, the stubby, Egyptian boy king. The bed had no mattress pad and no box spring but it was hard enough for my liking. Many of my compatriots didn’t agree and complained bitterly. They eventually received thin mattress pads for all their kvetching.
There was an ancient Japanese color television, which only had 2 English language channels - Al Jazeera and the BBC, which was on a dated news loop. Watching the local channel is amusing though; the ads for ‘personal enhancements’ were hilarious, even without understanding a word of the language.
There were a couple of chairs and a low table, built-in dresser drawers for our clothes, a rusty and probably unusable room safe with corroded batteries, a small table built out of the wall that would serve as my travel office, and would-you-believe, a rotary telephone; how’s that for nostalgia?
There was an old-model radio built into the nightstand next to the bed. I was very surprised to find it not only received AM, FM but shortwave as well. I had brought along a pair of Bose headphones and during some rainy down days, spent many fun-filled, and I mean that sincerely, hours DXing from the comfort of my ‘enormous’ king bed.
Beyond that, the room was very nondescript. Like any other of the millions of rooms in hotels around the world that unlike here, aren’t claiming a 5-star rating. I mean, it was clean, if not a little long in the tooth. But didn’t smell too terrible, even after I took care of that with my Camacho offerings. It was utilitarian, everything worked, even the water pressure, which surprisingly could strip off layers of one’s skin if you weren’t careful.
The bathroom, though no Jacuzzi, had a large enough bathtub for the occasional soaking period. Western accouterments in the bathroom were also welcome additions. My knees can’t handle the traditional squat-holes any longer.
There were an electric teapot and several brands of tea, but no coffee. A quick “Gee! I sure wish I had some coffee!” to the four walls and damned if 30 minutes later, a porter didn’t arrive to replenish my tea and courtesy in-room coffee…
There was a small Japanese brand in-room refrigerator which I thought might house a mini-bar. Oh, no! It was actually a complimentary larder stocked with all sorts of Best Korean goodies. Multiple cans of Taedonggang beer. Several bottles of Pyongyang Soju, in various flavors ranging anywhere from 16.8 to 53 percent alcohol by volume. My fridge was skewed towards the right-hand side of the bell curve; the more heavy-duty boozy side.
Evidently, my reputation had preceded me again.
There was a selection of German-style wheat beers from the Taedonggang Brewery and the more familiar ales, steam beers, and lagers. There were some imported beers like Heineken, Bavaria, Pils, a couple of Japanese brands: Asahi and Kirin, and something called ‘Hello Beer’ from Singapore.
There were also ‘sampler’ bottles of Apricot Pit wine, and a couple of high-alcohol fruity liquors made from constituents such as apple or pear, and mushrooms. There were also special medicinal liquors like ‘Rason’s Seal Penis Liquor’.
That is going home with me unopened.
There were a couple of bottles of local sake, called Chonju. Finally, there was a couple ‘samplers’ of homemade alcohol known as Makkoli. Plus there was something called ‘Corn Grotto’, which for the life of me, looks and tastes much like a very passable Kentucky Sippin’ Bourbon.
I put our concierge on instant danger money the very next day. He’s yet to source me more than a fifth of the stuff so far.
I found that there is a popular drink here which mirrors the Yorsch of Mother Russia. Beer and soju can be mixed to create *somaek’; a foamy, frothy, funky drink of many flavors, depending on the soju chosen.
Is ethnoimbibology at thing? The science of how different cultures drink and the effects of drinking culture on different societies. If not, now I have another Ph.D. to pursue after I endow a chair at some likely Asian university.
Anyways, in everyone’s room was a “welcome” basket, just chock full of Best Korean goodies. Postcards, stamps, ads for coin sets, stamp proofs and other goodies that could be purchased at the hotel. There was a field notebook, which I thought was a very nice addition, newspapers, cookies, crackers, biscuits, candies, fruit drinks, and some fresh fruit; although tamarind chewies and durian chips aren’t on my list of personal favorites.
There were a couple of tour books, just chock full of staged photos. These were very nice as well, as so far, we haven’t had much time for shopping outside of government stores or smaller family-run shops in town or out in the boonies.
A few of us were hungry and decided to see what the hotel had to offer room service-wise.
Bupkiss.
But, they did have a selection of restaurants. There is a Chinese restaurant, a European restaurant, and a Korean restaurant on site but they all serve the same food...a Best Korean attempt at western food. And it was weird being the only ones in the restaurant even though it was fully staffed.
We grazed lightly and decided to do some late-night perambulations around our hotel. Our handlers admonished us to stay within the confines of the hotel, or see them if it was absolutely necessary to go walkabout. In the hotel, we were on our own.
We found that there were tunnels in the hotel’s basement. The basement tunnels were a real bonus. There’s a bar with pool tables, a karaoke room, bowling, and a massage parlor, where I was beaten and pummeled into submission by tiny, diminutive, little Korean lassies fully 1/5th my size.
It was wonderful.
There was a hairdresser’s, who were completely befuddled by my shoulder-length silver-gray locks and full gray Grizzly Adams beard. They did provide a lovely shampoo/cranial massage though for the equivalent of US$2.
There were a couple of shops selling Chinese goods rather than local stuff, which was sort of disappointing, a cold noodle bar, and another casino. No shops selling Korean Communist propaganda posters, as I wanted to augment my Soviet-era collection. Perhaps I’ll find something in-country later on.
We were shocked to find that the casino had WiFi that was uncensored and we were able to access; after a fee of liquor miniatures and a cigar or two. We were supposed to have access to the global internet, not local intranet, from the universities that we would be visiting. However, all of that was under the heavily squinting eyes of handlers and guys in shiny suits wearing fake Ray-Bans.
I still had my secret satellite internet lash-up available, but that was iffy, a pain in the ass to set up, and ridiculously expensive. However, it did work on the 39th floor and the times I used it instead of wandering down to the tunnels, no one appeared to be the wiser. Thus far.
So typically, we’d just head to the basement casino with our laptops, iPads, and phones. Bam! Robert’s your Sister’s Husband, we could connect more-or-less free with the outside world; hence how you are reading this now.
Herro! “Yes, I’d sure like another beer. This time a porter, if you please.”
The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain. Or the more they put into locks, the easier they are to pick.
Besides, we were told we’d have access to unfettered and free internet. OK, so we just found it for ourselves. Whaddya expect? We’re scientists, motherfucker, back off.
Ahem.
Back to reality.
The breakfast buffet the next morning had a wide choice of Asian and Western food, although the choices seemed to be the same every day. The main event was to beat the Chinese tourists to the egg station every morning. Breakfast always included fried eggs, a limited selection of pork, kippered fish, potatoes, rice, fruit, and a very Titanium-dioxide-white white bread
After a while, I took to going to the small market behind the lobby, buying some imported Chinese or Japanese nibbly bits and heading to the tunnels for a few breakfast beers before the long hard day’s work. It took almost a week, but I gained the trust of some of the workers in the tunnels and they showed me the on-site microbrewery at the hotel. It produced very passable, and very, very cheap beers of several varieties.
Liquid bread. Beer. Is there nothing it can’t do?
After breakfast our first day at the hotel, we were told to meet in the Conference Room “Il-sung” as we were going to have a ‘Welcome foreign imperialist scientists’ introduction and indoctrination.
Besides our handlers and the shiny-suit squad, there were several Korean folks we didn’t recognize. These were students, scientists, and scholars from the Kim Chaek University of Technology, Kim Il-sung University, the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology; all hailing from Pyongyang, and the University of Geology from North Hwanghae Province.
“Oh, marvelous”, Erlen remarked, “It’s going to be a bloody Chautauqua. We’ll be here all day.”
“Well”, I replied, “It could be worse. We could be on a bus headed off on another unscheduled road trip.”
As we found our seats, our Korean counterparts were busily setting up portable screens, like the ones your grandfather had for showing his 2.1 Googleplex worth of travel slides every Christmas or Thanksgiving get-together. They had a couple of ancient Chinese brand laptops that could have doubled for body armor, they were so thick and heavy.
While they fiddled with running cords for the overhead projectors and 16mm film projector; yes, it was going to be movie time as well, the hotel’s restaurant folks wheeled in carts laden with scones, cupcakes, and other sweet sorts of bakery. Another cart was wheeled in with pump-pots of hot water, tea, and coffee. Usual scientific meeting fare.
There was one final cart that made the day bearable. It held a pony keg of hotel micro-brewed beer on ice, with several dozen frosty mugs available for all who wanted to partake.
There were instantly 12 mugs that were spoken for.
I grabbed a cold beer and wandered around the conference room, sipping beer, chewing on an unlit cigar, and just trying to be pleasant to our hosts and their scientific guests. I was surprised when one North Korean professor, who spoke amazingly British-tinged English, offered me a light for my cigar.
“Is smoking allowed here?” I asked.
“Allowed?” he laughed heartily, “My good man, it’s practically a prerequisite.”
“Here then”, I said, offering him a nice, unctuous Camacho, “Try one of mine.”
Dr. P'ung Kwang-Seon of the North Korean University of Geology became my instant and lifelong friend at that moment.
We had a very nice chat, much to the chagrin of the gray suit cadre, who could hear what we were talking about, but probably didn’t understand anything beyond every 8th word.
After a while, we were asked to take our seats, after refreshing our drinks, and introduced to the group of Korean geoscientists we’d be interacting with during our stay here in Best Korea.
I tried to record every name, but between the students, other scholars, and professors from the various universities, I decided I’d ask for a list of participants once the day had worn on. After all, they had all our names, references, and resumes if the thick folio they kept referring to was any indication.
There were a couple of hours of introductions, as every one of the Korean geoscientists there introduced themselves, mostly through translators, told of their personal area of specialty, and their latest work.
Most were what would be considered geoscientists, but oddly enough, not one that you would consider a petroleum geoscientist, however tangentially.
There were geomorphologists, structural geologists, petrologists, mineralogists, marine geologists, engineering geologists, and seismologists. However, there were no stratigraphers, sedimentologists, paleontologists, or geochemists. We were all geoscientists, but apart from the obvious Korean:English disparity, it was as if we spoke different scientific languages as well.
That would be our first hurdle to overcome.
They had no oil industry here; none whatsoever, therefore why one would bother with the geosciences that fed directly into petroleum? That, in and of itself, would make it difficult to explore for oil in the country. Couple that with the fact that they’re so insular, think their version of ‘science’ is the best, at least that’s the official line, and think all other’s ‘science’ is capitalistic, substandard, and inferior doesn’t bode well for your country discovering anything either oily or gassy.
We were having another conclave around the beer keg, ack, err…a ‘coffee break’ and I mentioned this fact to my scientific colleagues.
“Guys”, I need input here, “We’re going to get precisely nowhere if they won’t even acknowledge that they have major problems from the start.”
Ivan replies, “Very true. I’ve seen this before back home. You get a group so entrenched in their own little corner of science, they can’t even accept or acknowledge that others exist. Not only exist but actually know more about a certain problem than do you.”
Dax joins the fray, “Sure, that’s very true, but who’s going to tell them this unfortunate fact? They could take that as a personal, national, and global insult. Imagine you’re at an international conference and a bunch of foreigners walk in just to tell you you’ve been doing it all wrong for the last 75 years.”
I add, “Remember, though. These characters are scientists as well. I think it’ll be a good measure of seeing what sort of science and scientist we’re dealing with here. If they are truly researchers, they’ll listen to and evaluate what we say as for veracity and accuracy. If they’re just a bunch of Commie goons; no offense, Comrade Academician Ivan, they’ll get all pissed off, kick us out, and we get to go home and enjoy our triple Force Majeure pay.”
Ivan walks over and deliberately steps on the toes of my newly polished field boots.
“In Soviet Russia, field boots walk on YOU.” He laughs in his heavily inflected, and scary, Soviet-era speech…
“Yes, I agree”, Joon adds, “But who is going to address this issue with our hosts? Perhaps one of our Russian comrades, as they are, or were, more politically aligned with our Korean friends and perhaps best understand the issue?”
Ack speaks up, grinning maniacally, “No, I disagree. We should have the one person here who so encapsulates the ideologies and political leanings that they love to hate here so much. You know; the quiet, diminutive, and soft-spoken North American…”
Dax recoils, “Oh, no! I’m not going out in front of this mob of ornery Orientals…”
I smile wanly and tell Dax to cool out.
“Relax, Dax. They’re talking about me.”
“Oh, yes”, a collective group of voices replies, “Yes. Let out fearless Team Leader break the bad news to our Eastern Colleagues. That way we can gauge their reactions to being bounced around scientifically by a member of the Evil Capitalist Cartel.”
“OK”, I reply, “I’ll do it. But be forewarned, my fine feathered fiends. I get stuck on a topic that’s not precisely my bailiwick, I’m going to throw your ass to the wolves. Remember, we’re all in this together.”
Whoops, and catcalls were reduced to mumbles and ‘Aw, fucks.’.
Chautauqua resumption was called and I asked for the floor.
It was a bit off the agenda, but since they’ve been chewing the air for the last several hours, they understood it would be appropriate for us to at least try and get a word in edgewise.
I downed my beer, and grabbed a fresh one as what I was going to say was going to be harsh, cut-and-dried, and rather pointed. But delivered in a pleasant manner.
I hoped.
This all had to be filtered through a series of translators, one for general conversational Korean and another for the more technical and scientific transliterations. I realized I was going to be up here for a while. So, I brought a cigar.
One way or another, I was going to deliver our pronouncements and hell, I may as well be comfortable while doing it.
.
“Greetings and felicitations, my Eastern Colleagues. Let me first say how nice it is to be here in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea as part of the ….”
I’m going to fast-forward through all the flowery bullshit and introductory happiness; I’ll going to just cut to the guts of the matter.
“…Now, you do know why there has been virtually no oil, gas nor any other hydrocarbon related deposit discovered here in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea?” I asked by way of a rhetorical question.
I sipped my beer and lit my cigar. In for a chon, in for a won.
I let the buzzing subside on the side of our eastern counterparts.
“Because, and please do not take this as insulting or derogatory, but as a statement of irrefutable fact, no one with the proper training nor experience has been looking. You’re historically guilty of applying the science incorrectly and letting dogma and politics guide your search, instead of the scientific method and the facts. Geology, like all natural science, is just as truth based on the facts for a capitalist as it is for a communist. Reality is not influenced by your beliefs, be they scientific or political, secular or spiritual, ‘trusted’ rather than ‘thought’; any more than by your wish that it wouldn’t rain today during a raging thunderstorm.”
Little Boy over Hiroshima was dropped with less effect.
Our Democratic People's Republic of Korea colleagues erupted into a chaotic mixture of stuttering, internecine yelling, accusations, and sputtering.
Calling for decorum, I figured that since I was this far gone, I may as well push the plunger all the way to the bottom.
“Gentlemen, I do not denigrate the science of geology as taught and practiced here in Best Korea.” I actually said that, sort of a slip of the tongue. Continuing, “However, one would not fish for Bluefin tuna from a rowboat in a pond with a fly rod. One does not hunt bear in the city with a slingshot. Just as one doesn’t search for oil and gas with mining engineers, geomorphologists, and seismologists.”
I let that sink in and after the translation, they calmed a bit and wanted to hear the rest of what I had to say. I could sense a couple was less than thrilled with what I had to say, but forging onward…
“One fishes for Bluefin tuna in the deep ocean with huge rods, reels and a specialist boat captained by someone with deep experience in hunting the elusive fish. One hunts bear in the proper environment, the taiga or forest, with the proper tools and guided by one with the education, learnedness, and experience to know how to make the hunt come out successful.”
Hit them with some analogies they can relate to and digest. Now, go for the carotid.
“Just like one does not hunt oil and gas without stratigraphers, sedimentologists, geophysicists, petrophysicists, and other oil and gas experts who have the education, experience, and knowledge to know where to look. Knowing which environment looks most conductive to hide your quarry, if you’ll pardon the pun, and how best to find them, the guys who know how to corral and de-risk them once you find them, and the engineers and technologists who know how to bring them to the surface so they can be utilized.”
They had stopped being irritated and were listening in rapt attention.
“My colleagues and I have spent the last few days going over, in detail the geology of your country. There is nothing we can see that would preclude the development, entrapment, and preservation of economic quantities of oil and gas. Ture, the geology is quite complex as is the structural history of the entire peninsula. That’s one other thing you will have to accept. Geology doesn’t give the tiniest shit about political boundaries. One must look at the big picture, and that doesn’t stop at some man-made borders. Ignore that fact at your peril, because if you continue to view the geology here as not existing across political boundaries, you are preadapting yourself for failure.”
Drs. Ivan, Volna, and Morse make certain that everyone sees the ex-Soviets agreeing with the bushy-bearded, cigar-chomping American capitalist.
“So,” I said, hoping to bring this little spit-balling session to a fortuitous close, “If we can have an agreement; scientific agreement, on these points, then I am certain we can find a way forward with not only this discussion but the program we can devise for the best Korean (notice phase shift?) geologists to take the project forward both scientifically soundly and economically successful.”
My North Korean counterpart gets up from his seat in the conference room, goes to the keg, taps a couple of beers and walks up to the podium where I was standing.
“Thank you, Dr. Rocknocker, for saying what needed to be said”, he spoke in perfect English as he handed me a beer.
I grinned and gratefully accepted the beer.
“Why, Dr. Chang Kwang-Su”, I said, as that was his name, “You old fraud. You do speak English; and very well, I must add.”
“Yes, almost all of us do”, he relayed, “But, as you said, we are most reserved. We were more or less under orders of the ‘most illustrious’, to play coy, and act as if we spoke no English.”
“I see.” I said, “I’ve worked in several FSU countries as well as Russia and saw that there as well. I guess old habits die hard.”
“That they do, Doctor.”, he replied, “But, we must now tell you the truth. We knew exactly what you said is true, and we agree. We are not as totally insulated from the outside world as some suspect.”
“Well, I was going on what your superiors related to us. Like the police that had all their toilets stolen, I had nothing else to go on.” I replied.
“Ah, ha! Quite!”, he chuckled, “We had long suspected that we were lacking in certain areas of scholarship. What you said cements that fact as it was an independent conclusion. We can now present that to our superiors with the caveat that unless we bolster work and training in these areas, the hunt of hydrocarbon resources here will be for naught.”
“I am relieved”, I said, truthfully. “I was slightly concerned that some might take umbrage to being told their science is not up to specifications. I tried to be the bearer of that bad news but deliver it gently. Here, I find you need that to use that as a truncheon to smack one’s boss upside the head and tell him that an upgrade is required. And fast.”
“Ah, so”, he replies, “We are in total agreement. Now that is out of the way, we would appreciate it if you’d help in designing a course of study for up and coming local geoscientists. Then, we can go forward with a great plan to search for oil and gas here in…Korea. Correct?”
“Absolutely”, I remarked, “You’ve got over 400 man-years of science and exploration expertise here in this room alone. Let’s shoot for the moon, so to speak. Let’s get you up to speed on scientific journals and articles that are available out there in all of academia and industry. Let’s get you communicating on a global basis. Let’s prove that you can talk science with global scientists and still not have it affect your political or nationalistic aspirations one little bit. Let’s see if we can drag you, figuratively speaking, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.”
“Doctor”, Dr. Chang remarked, “You are the embodiment of what we were always told what Americans are. Brash, loud, confident, and evil. Except for evil, you are American as we were led to believe.”
“Hey, I take that as a compliment”, I exclaim. “You think that’s bad, I’ve got a bunch of earnest Europeans, raucous Russians, and a couple of cagey Canadians on my side as well. Before we’re finished here, we’ll have you ordering hachee, dining on Caldo Verde, snacking on salmiakki, drinking Russkaya vodka with Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, eating poutine, and rooting for the Packers.”
“Doctor, I don’t know what half of that means, but I hope it comes to pass. It sounds most fascinating.” Dr. Chang chuckles.
The rest of the day was spent with various groups crystallizing and breaking off from the main crowd; then reforming as different groups. This was good, as it showed an interest across not only national borders but across ideologies and scientific specialties.
Most everyone here spoke English with some degree of fluency, so the translators were called in only occasionally.
I made certain they were included in everything that transpired that day. I want everyone to feel ‘part of the team’. How better to show the classlessness of Western science to include everyone in on both sides of every discussion and activity?
To be continued…

So I just beat Royal about 2 weeks ago and had an absolute blast. 10/10 would do again
Whist playing, however, I actually made a list of everything I personally discovered, though some things may be wrong.
If you want to add anything to the list, suggestions are appreciated!! And if you notice any mistakes, please tell me and I'll fix it up a bit, thanks!!
Oh, and there are no 3rd semester spoilers! I only wrote down things between the first day and Christmas day, so don't worry about anything too major in this post djsjshks and I didn't write much about any of the Palaces besides from story related things
Anyway, here's literally everything I wrote down!! Enjoy, my dudes 🤠

The Atlus/Criwear intros have now been improved, with Atlus's intro having a bit of Joker at the start doing Jokery things
The loading screen for starting up the game now includes the PTs logo with 3 spotlights
Palace "distortions" that can be seen surrounding the screen now have a new look
You can now see the sillohetes of future party members in the Casino
The dialogue between Futaba and Ryuji are now actual dialogue boxes, not side dialogue that you'd see in Mementos
Loading screens are SO much faster and the "walking" loading screens now include more people
You can see Takemi walking towards the clinic when you arrive in Yogen
The scene after you cleanup your room, and going to school is now fully voiced
Sojiro generally has a kinder tone
The "New day" screen now has gone through some improvements. The clouds now move!!
Kawakami will accidentally hand you something whilst giving you your student ID. She quickly takes it back though before you can see it. Most likely maid service stuff
The ride back home now has additional dialogue of the road being extra packed at the end of Sojiro's monologue
You can meet Ohya interrogating a Station officer about the train crash
Arsène now has an "è" in his name
Arsène also talks with a "shouting" dialogue box. It's like a normal dialogue box, but it's shouting now
Not sure if this was in the original or not, but Ryuji has a bit of extra dialogue for him throwing the key away (not much, just a simple "ngh" but still)
The "ugh woe is me I'm a teacher and he's late boo hoo" is now voiced
A fuck tone of dialogue has been rewritten to sound better. Definitely an improvement
Sae now mentions what Kamoshida's crimes were ("He was guilty of everything - the abuse, the... violations...") (I think I'm not sure tho jdhdgh)
Kawakami when shittalking Ryuji will now get cutoff as soon as he approaches
While Ryuji waits for you on the roof, you can find Haru on the 3rd floor talking to a teacher!!! The teacher says how they'll leave the rooftop open so she go to the planters that she volunteered to take care of
The planters are already on the rooftop. I'm not sure if it was there last time in the original, but if it's not, it's a cool touch lmao
Sojiro's scolding for ditching half a day is now rewritten a bit +new dialogue options for Akiren
New dialogue from Justine about how neglecting your fate will lead to his death
New Kasumi scene
New Ushimaru question (The answer is Villians, or C)
New student thoughts scene talking about Kasumi
Kamoshida + Ann scene is now voiced + rewritten
Ryuji's search for the castle is now voiced (though it could've been in the original, in not sure)
Palaces now start at 40% security when you enter instead of 0%
After going through the Palace and meeting Morgana again, the dialogue of them going back into the Palace + so much more that I'm not bothered to write is now voiced
Safe room enterences are now all wiggly and distorted
Ammo is now replenished after battles
Morgana will ask after the gun tutorial if you want to directly command him or act freely instead of making new players go to the menu and find it
New scene of Ryuji and you discussing plans to take down Kamoshida + Goro and Sae walking in the background
New IM background. Messages now have sakura petals floating in the background
Whilst you're stuck at Leblanc, unable to go out, you can up all your stats! Studying at the booth helps your Knowledge, making Coffee ups your Charm, making Curry helps your guts, you can now clean Leblanc to up your Kindness (+some points for Sojiro if he's there) and making Tools helps your Proficiency!
Ann + Shiho can be seen walking in the background at 4/13
Some students walking to school now have voices
After the rally, Ryuji complaints about Kamoshida are now voiced
One victim of Kamoshida that you interrogate now has a voice
Students you can listen into now have a slighty darker "chatter" icon once you talk to them. Same with the "whisper" icon
Wrong answers to Ryuji's question about any names turning up are now voiced
After school when Morgana tells you about changing hearts, there's a little scene where you can get the students options on Ann
The scene after you chase Ann is now voiced
Ryuji post-suicide scene is now voiced
Makoto can be found post-suicide scene right outside the courtyard talking to a teacher about Shiho's suicide (Teacher's worried about it turning into a scandal while Makoto's like "bro wtf what about the fucking student??? Huh????")
Ryuji post running off to the PE office is now voiced
Ryuji shakes his arms when he gets pissed off at Kamoshida
Shadow Kamoshida's speech to the Knights after you enter the palace is now voiced + the scene after that
When a new weapon is found in a treasure chest, the person it belongs to will ask if you want to equip the item
After Ann's awakening, there's a little scene of the crew returning to the real world and talking about what the hell just happened
Sae's dialogue about Ann has changed
Sojiro tells you to "Stay upstairs while we're open for business." Not sure if it's in the original, but it's also voiced
Takemi has a new voice actor!!!
God, fuck, there's so many new voice lines, I'm not gonna put them in anymore since there's so MANY. I'll just mention important scenes that have voices from now on
Friends that go to Shujin will sometimes catch up to you and you'll both walk to school together
Some new people appear on Yongen street when you go to Takemi's for the first time! There's a stern old man who can't hear you (he thinks you're talking about Kindergarten), there's a talkative women (who actually mentions a "very good doctor who's very reliable." Possibly the Doc from Takemi's Route?) And a sick man who says he wants to go in, but doesn't have the guts. (alluding to Takemi needing Guts to rank up)
Iwai's first meeting is now voiced
Kawakami will talk to you after Kamoshida tries to get you expelled. There's now a new scene with Kawakami, Kamoshida and Kasumi
New student comments about you + Kasumi
There are new "thoughts" when quick traveling down near the lower right-hand side of the screen that give you hints (e.g. when hovering over the Library, it says "I think I could improve my Knowledge...")
By sitting on the toilet, you can find out how close you are to improving your stats
You can see your friends (Makoto, Haru, ect) walk to school
New Hiruta question (The answer is they're both the same, or C)
There is now a tutorial for baton passing since it's no longer a confidant ability
Chests now have a weird glitchy sound to them
Some items will give you some additional moves (Wind Ring will give you Garu, ect)
The twins will have new features for you in the Velvet room after you secure the route to the treasure.
The "Next Day" screen's weather will change depending on the weather in game
On 4/21, you can see Makoto and Sae hanging out in the background
The "Next Day" screen will also change when you send the calling card! A card will fly into the date instead of a dagger and the sky will become black and red
You cannot resell guns to Iwai anymore
The Palace security will actually go up to 100% when you send the Calling Card, not 99% like in the original
The Ass Chalice now has a sound effect for when you break it
Shiho and Mishima now appears as apart of Kamoshida's boss fight
New question, forgot which teacher tho (the answer is D, or all of them)
Morgana will tell you to work on your Kindness so you can talk to Ann
Confidants will now sometimes call you
Confidants will also have a little after scene after you hang out with them, mostly by phone call
The amount of people on the train will change depending on the time of day
You can get multiple choices for what to buy from the Home shopping channel now
Teachers will now sometimes call on your dumbass friends and ask them questions. Be a bro and help them out
New Kawakami question (answer is B, you stand by it no matter what, and then C, you have a duty to correct it)
Sometimes, when you're at the trainstation, confidants will come to talk to you. They are now voiced
New Usami question (the answer is B, or Four Colour Theorem)
Achievements for destroying Palaces have different titles now
Walking around the Wilton Buffet to get food is now voiced
Thieves Den, baby!!!!!!
Kawakami's lecture about Kamoshida is now voiced
When Kawakami goes on to explain multiple personalities and stuff like that, Akiren sits up a bit
There are more Chalk throwings by Ushimaru
The Library assistant will actually apologize to you if you spend enough time at the library!
New Kawakami question (Answer is Fatal Woman, or C)
The Monamobile will now purr when you rub the touch pad, and will yowl when you press it
Ryuji's Rank 5 now starts with a little scene of you two entering the alley to Protein Lovers gym (probably to show players where the gym is)
You can now also quick travel to the gym when you enter it
New Inui question (The answer is the Heian period, or C)
When traveling to places such as Inokashira Park, the windows on the train can change depending on the weather and scenery
New scene on 5/11. A school assembly is apparently happening on 5/13 after exams. Enter Maruki (He's the Counciler!!)
Maruki can now ask you questions in the classroom (Answer is the Placebo effect, or C)
The Morgana train button mash incident is now voiced
New scene on how to get to Madarame's shack
New Inui question (the answer is Hokusai Katsushika, or B)
New Usami question (the answer is 1:1.414, or B)
Treasure demon fights now have a new effect for when you enter battles with them (not unlike Disaster enemies, but this time it's yellow and sparkly)
New Chouno question (Answer is Together, or C, then Senses, or B, and then "Senses coming together," or B)
On 5/24, Kawakami announces a public cleanup campaign that the school will be participating in on the 30th
In Madarame's Palace, instead of you having to travel all the way back to the beginning to traverse the paintings, you can hop back in where you exited out of
Madarame's security guard is now no longer origami man, but instead it's this weird, blue angel dude with like a seashell horn?? Sorry idk all of the Persona names
New Kawakami question (The answer is Authur Conan Doyle, or B)
Operation Maidwatch is now voiced!
New Maruki class/question (The answer is the Halo effect, or B)
New scene with Ryuji, we're going to Kichijoji, baby!!!
When you unlock Lockdown during the Strength confidant, Lockdown will have a new feature called Incense. Incense will improve your Persona's focus and gives them more strength. You can find Incense not only in the Metaverse, but in daily life too.
The day when Ryuji forgets to change over to his Summer uniform, or 6/6, he will now catch up to you in the right uniform
The students walking around in the loading screens are now wearing their summer uniforms
Ann now wears a clover necklace with her Summer uniform (in her sprite atleast. Not sure if that was in the original)
Even MORE chalk throwing incidents with Ushimaru
New Kasumi scene
New Hiruta question (The answer is the number of legs, or C)
New Public Thoughts scene discussing Akechi and the Phantom Thieves (this is right before the Social Studies trip)
New Maruki class/question (The answer is Controlling public thought, or C)
Not sure if it's just me, but Kobayakawa seems a bit more of an asshole to Makoto
You actually exchange numbers with Akechi this time
New Hiruta question (The answer is Green, or B)
New Ushimaru question (The answer is Coins, or B)
Kinda newish scene of Makoto/Sae sister time? It's the same dialogue, but they're not eating this time and instead are talking in their living room
New scene of Makoto and Iida (the guy who got blackmailed by Kaneshiro and co.)
New scene of you and Ryuji finding the right line to take you to Shinjuku
The two trolls of Shinjuku scene has been rewritten.
New Usami question and Ann needs help answering it (The answer is Smartphone, or B)
Kaneshiro's introduction is now slighty different (the camera focuses on him talking to Makoto before zooming out and seeing her struggling on the floor)
New Inui question (The answer is a Pope, or C)
Kawakami's IM pfp has now been changed to her maid outfit
New scene on 6/25. Morgana/Ann's showtime introduction
When you enter Kaneshiro's palace, a dog enemy will spot you and will initiate a battle. You will be able to trigger Ann/Morgana's showtime!
New technical tutorial in the middle of Kaneshiro's palace since this is the first time you encounter enemies without weaknesses
Treasure demons will now sometimes appear in battles with other enemies
Kaneshiro's security cameras now have a sound effect for when they go out
In Kaneshiro's Palace, there's a miniboss right before the giant lock. In the og, right as you walked down the stairs, you were forced to fight before you could save in the safe room behind you. Now, in Royal, you can save before going to fight! (Credit to u/Theroonco for this fact!!)
Kaneshiro's palace now has golden doors you need to pay for to open up (Specifically 10,000 yen.) Fortunately, you can just beat the shit out of them to get them to open.
Kaneshiro's Guard near the end of the palace has been changed. Instead of Armless Brainless mcgee it's horse skeleton man with weird hat (again, idk persona names fdjdhsk)
Special animations will play for Caroline and Justice when lockdown is in effect
New lines from Caroline/Justine when lockdown is in effect
New Chouno question (The answer is Dogs, or C)
On 6/28, new scene with Ryuji/Makoto for their showtime introduction though the date may differ depending on your playthrough. I got mine just as I was about to send the calling card, so who knows?
New Kawakami question (The answer is Gold, or B)
Kaneshiro's entire first phase has been deleted. Instead, you just skip to Piggytron
Kaneshiro also now has 3 phases
New Inui question (The answer is Barbarian's Head, or C)
New Chouno question (The answer is Julius and Augustus, or B)
New Kawakami question (The answer is The Milky Way, or B and then Soumen Noodles, or A)
New Usami question (The answer is a Triangle, or D)
New Maruki class/question (The answer is Memories that last for a long time, or B, then Infinite, or C and finally Forever, or C)
New Makoto scene
New Kasumi/Goro scene (I literally gasped outloud as soon as I saw him I'm not kidding that really caught me by surprise dkdkshhs)
New Inui question (The answer is Thievery, or D)
New Maruki/Makoto scene
New scene with some Gossiping students taking shit about Kasumi and Maruki
New scene on 7/17!!! Festival, baby!!!!! + Ryuji/Yusuke showtime introduction
On the day of the fireworks festival, on the train loading screens, you can see people dressed up in Yukatas!
Not sure if it was in the game last time, but there's now dialogue of Medjed claiming to be modern day Robin Hoods
New scene with Ryuji asking you to check with people in your neighbourhood about Futaba
You can no longer slide down the sand in front of Futaba's Palace while in your normal attire
Anubis will now warn you if he'll perform Mudoon or Hamaon (Anublis tips towards Curse (Mudoon) / Bless (Hamaon) or Anus reset balance (if Anubis decides to stop the Insta kills))
New mementos rooms
New Treasure Demon dialogue if you already have that Treasure Demon in your party
I've also noticed that there are a lot more Treasure demons in Mementos, whether they spawn in or appear right after battle with another enemy
You can sometimes fall into the ground in Mementos
I'm not sure if this was in the original, but you cannot hang out with your confidants in certain areas if the weather is bad
The Big Bang challenge without the special on is 2000 yen on the burger's second phase and 2500 yen on burger's final form
Cognitive Wakaba's 1st phase has now been sped up. She will now dive down on her third turn
New animations for Futaba working in Necronomicon whilst she is talking to Sphinx Wakaba
New Cognitive Sphinx Wakaba + Futaba Dialogue
Just as jobs can now text you and ask if you can come in, Lala can now text you and ask if you can take a shift. She even has a unique Profile colour!
Also, more people will come in on Sundays to Crossroads. Instead of receiving 7200 yen, you'll get 12000 yen instead for your hard work
Kasumi's ending text (Unbreakable bond) is now different. Also, I think it was a different voice?? It said you gained a glimpse, not the ultimate secret though. Very interesting
Also, there's no new Persona for you to fuse for her and Kasumi herself doesn't get a new persona (I finished this before she even awakened so huh??? Wha???)
Futaba's integration into the PTs is now voiced
The Shinjuku Trolls/Lobster incident is now voiced
New scene of the Gang hanging out at the beach (it's animated, but it's one of the 3D ones with the models)
The Movie Theatre Mementos request is now right after Medjed's takedown, and you do not need to search for the name this time as Mishima just gives it to you. You can still find Yasuo Jochi (the target) at the movie theatre threating the old man
New scene on 8/30. Ryuji didn't do his Summer homework
The Takases (Kawakami's blackmail no-good doers) turn into the butterfly man and green girl fairy now (I think. I could've sworn they turned into a Succubus and an Incubus but who knows? I do remember fighting the enemies they turn into now though so again, who knows?)
Naguri (the guy that attacks indiscriminately and can be found out through gossip in the Flower shop) is also now a Kin Ki (again, not sure if it was in the og but I do not remember fighting a Kin Ki)
New Inui question (The answer is Prosperity, or C)
New Maruki class (The answer is Chronostasis, or B) (I'm also pretty sure the second hand stopping question was in the og, but now Maruki asks you the question.)
Not sure if this is actually in the fight, but whilst I was exploring the Thieves Den, I noticed Kamoshida (Monster oogly bloogly form) had a mini him on the Ann Cup.
The Yusuke Hawaii incident is now voiced
New scene with Kawakami
New scene with Maruki, Sojiro, Futaba and Morgana
New scene of the gang + Kasumi shopping for soveineurs (with an additional Haru in the background!!) (Also, unfortunately, instead of the original scene of Kasumi scaring you (she originally said "Konichi-WA") being translated to "Alo-HA", it just got translated to "Hello, SENPAI" which kinda saddens me but it's eh)
When you get back from Hawaii, if you say "Aloha!" to Futaba, instead of saying "He's been influenced..." she now says "He's been Hawaiianized..." Not sure why they changed it, I mean, it was fine to begin with but it's whatever ¯_(ツ)_/¯
New scene with Ryuji and Kasumi
The conversation with Futaba about Morgana's fissy fit is now voiced
New Inui question (The answer is Money loans for collateral, or A)
If you interact with the stuff in your room whilst the game forces you to sleep and Morgana is missing, you'll get text like "There's something that relates to the cat... I'm worried about Morgana..." (E.g if you interact with your work bench, it says "A cat left paw prints in the dust... I'm worried about Morgana..."
Haru's Metaverse outfit sprites have been remade
After Morgana's + Haru's little spiel, if you check on the stuff in your room again whilst the game tells you to go the fuck to sleep, it'll have different dialogue. It's mostly Akiren wondering who "Beauty Thief" was and being worried about Morgana
Again, even more dialogue about Morgana and Haru on the next day. "Why didn't I noticed that something was bothering Morgana...?" oh Akiren you sweet little child hit me right in the Kokoro
New Chouno question (The answer is Cats eating human tongues, or B)
The Morgana chase scene is now voiced
Finally, when Morgana returns, he'll comment on everything saying shit like "Oooh this place is as drab as ever lmao I'm glad to be back ahahah"
New Kawakami question (The answer is Centeral Europe, or B)
ALSO VERY IMPORTANT!!! If you check on your calendar, you can see Akiren's thoughts and what he did that day!!! I didn't know until now djdjdh (also, Hawaii has some cool stamps?? Stickers?? Probably not stickers but they're cool lmao (ALSO THE BIG BANG CHALLENGES ARE CALLED "TRIAL BY BURGER" KSJDHDHH)
New Usami question (The answer is 20 white, 12 black or B)
New scene of Yusuke/Ann for their showtime
The Sad Oh no Okumura Robot dying wahh scene is now voiced
Maruki can now meet you at the station, surprisingly
New scene with Haru and Morgana for their Showtime
New Ushimaru question (The answer is Imperial Household Agency, or B)
God, I tried to not include that much Palace stuff in here - especially the bosses - but holy fucking shit Okumura is fucking hard as shit and it took me 3 tries to beat him oh my god beware of the Borger man and forehead girl I'm actually shaking as I'm writing this just know I hate Okumura and his stupid bossfight
New scene with Kasumi, Maruki and some random teacher
New Hiruta question (The answer is Stars, or B)
New scene with Kasumi and anime scene!! and WHOOPS we've accidentally entered the metaverse WHAT
Gun Customisation has a new screen and new mechanics
You can also now instantly go to the Gun Customisation screen when you buy a new gun
New Inui question (The answer is Joseph-Igance Guillotin, or D)
New Usami question (The answer is Bouba, or B)
New scene with Kawakami at lunch at 10/11 telling you to go see Maruki + Kasumi and Maruki afterwards
New scene with Maruki and Haru on 10/20
New Usami question (The answer is 15, or A)
Instead of Makoto getting Akechi's number from Sae, we give his number directly to Makoto since we actually exchange contact info this time
New Maruki class/question (The answer is Memory Bias, or B)
New scene after the school festival. Yusuke is missing and is found by Maruki
The post-festival party is now accompanied by Kasumi, though afterwards you can hang out with your friends
New anime scene too!!
Ryuji's phone call about being the shittiest of shitbags is now voiced
Goro's prince outfit reveal is now voiced
Also, I forgot if I mentioned this before, but Akechi's pfp is now a different colour. It was grey before, but now it's light brownish
Not sure if it just randomly happens in October, but on 10/30, I saw people dressed up in costumes! Nice little detail (I even saw a Jack Frost lmao)
You can also find people walking around Shibuya in costumes!
Haru will instead be outside the school tending to the plants instead on the roof on Sundays if you want to hang out with her
New scene with Makoto and Haru!! It's the girls' showtime!!! Time to kick ass
I only noticed until now, but if you hold down the R2 button, (the button that makes you dash if you're unfamiliar with the PS controller like I am) you'll instantly perform actions such as jumping across ledges and climbing up walls
Sae now has actual cognitive-human bodyguards when she approaches you whilst you wander around the Casino (they actually kinda look similar from the bodyguards at the beginning whilst you're being chased lmao)
In Sae's Dice room, instead of crawling through the vent to reach the backrooms, you can just select "crawl" on the vent and instantly teleport there without having to crawl through since the two rooms are in seperate "areas"
New scene with Kawakami! She informs the class that Maruki will leave on the 18th, so make sure to rank him up to Rank 9 so you can unlock the 3rd semester!
Not sure if I just didn't notice before, but there are now people in the Dark Maze
Didn't notice earlier since my sneaking skills are so good, but safe rooms now bring Palace Security down to 0%, or something like that idk I was on 10% so it could be something like 15% or 20%, who knows lmao (edit: According to u/Theroonco, apparently this is a new confidant ability from Ohya! Thanks, worst girl, my opinion of you has slightly improved)
The battle areana is now voiced
Just like Maruki, Akechi will warn you that you will not be able to see him after the deadline, so rank him up so you can get to the 3rd semester!!
New Inui question (The answer is A Share of Stolen Goods, or C)
New Chouno question (The answer is a Sword, or B)
Futaba's Mementos scan is now a lot quicker
Also, I guess now is a good time to mention, but areas in Mementos can have certain qualities to them, such as all the shadows turning into the big hulky ones and the floor being weak which makes Morgana slip through them to the floor below. There's also a chance that the Reaper will spawn right away, which Futaba/Morgana will warn you that there's a certain strong shadow you have to look out for. These areas however will go back to normal after you leave them
New Ushimaru question (The answer is Any Age, or A) (And this was technically in the og, but they've reworded it so I'm just gonna put it in anyway lmao)
New Kawakami question (The answer is Crows eyes are hard to see, or B)
Nee Ushimaru question (The answer is because of high altitude, or C)
New Usami question (The answer is Cochleoid, or B)
New scene with Kasumi on 11/17
New scene with Maruki on 11/18, which is the day that he leaves
On 11/20, (the actual 11/20, not the one at the beginning of the game) you can see the SIU Director's face in the phone call thingymajig
True Justice now has actual text, not just question marks (it says "Cooperate as comrades who fight for justice and seek the truth")
Futaba's computer has now been translated in the subtitles, though I didn't get to read that much
New scene with Morgana. After the whole Interrogation Room incident, he asks you if it was Kasumi that helped you
New scene with Kasumi on 11/25
New angle/actions when hanging out at the downstairs Leblanc hideout
The Rats scene in Shido's palace is now voiced (And the rats voices are weird lmao rats rats we're the rats)
You can now eat cheese as a Rat in Shido's palace to regain Sp
After securing the route, Akiren thinks about keeping Akechi's promise to duel with him again (if you make it up to rank 8, that is)
The Eternal Lockpick is now called the Perma-Pick
On days that it is snowing, Snowflakes will fall across the IM screen instead of Sakura Petals (though they disappeared for some reason. Maybe because spring ended?)
New Vegetables for Haru!! Earth Beans that have the same effect as Charge and Star Onions that have the same effect as Concentrate
New scenes with Kasumi right before Exams and during Exams
Mementos Depths now have collectables that you can steal from
If you have reached the skill Live Painting (obtained on Rank 6), you can ask Yusuke to create skill cards in safe rooms
Your teammates speeches in the Velvet Room are now completely voiced
New ending Cutscene
And the entire 3rd semester :))

And that's about it!! Again, if anything is missing or incorrect, feel free to tell me!
Thanks for reading kdjsjs 🤠🤠🤠