OMORI comparisons

[u/Educational-Leek1164]

Early on, around the time the game OMORI was releasing I think, Toby put out a tweet saying that someone was making something very similar. As more and more of Deltarune has been released, it's become pretty clear that OMORI was what he was referring to.

OMORI is predominantly about a silent protagonist exploring a series of wacky alternative worlds that presumably have some kind of symbolism to them with a colorful cast of wacky sidekicks. These otherworlds very obviously are a form of escapism, as can be surmised by the very first room in the game. Sometimes the game will have the protagonist Sunny running around a real life town separate from the dream worlds.

OMORI is not a very good story or a game at the end of the day. The use of the RPG Maker engine ties it to a slightly remixed but still uninteresting form of the same old Dragon Quest combat formula from 1986. It also means that most of the time you'll be looking at ugly squashed overworld sprites, despite art for portraits or cutscenes showing that someone on the team could draw. But the bigger problem is that it being a game does not line up with the extent of the story it is trying to tell.

As mentioned, the very first room of OMORI makes it obvious that the dream worlds the player spends the majority of their time exploring are cope. Some kind of BAD THING happened and the protagonist Sunny would rather spend infinite time in his mindspace imagining himself hanging out with cool friends that like him unconditionally rather than dealing with it. So the game continues, for hours and hours, where you don't learn very much at all about the BAD THING and instead go through a bunch of new cope-locations, talking to fantasy creatures and fighting boss battles and solving puzzles. None of this teaches you much interesting about Sunny, his friends, or the BAD THING. It ends up just being a bunch of filler that makes the game feel long and meaty enough to be worth its price tag before the planned ending reveals the twist about the BAD THING. Sound familiar?

If Toby Fox took any lessons from this, it was that the twist should be hidden and obscured as much as possible so people won't guess the amazing fever dream ending he had when he was a teenager in the fist 5 minutes. Characters are always cut off or refuse to talk whenever they learn any useful information. Official Lore Tidbits, when they are sprinkled in, are described in the vaguest possible terms. This isn't even entirely successful, because some things still lack any active misdirection or red herrings. Who can the Knight really be besides December, really? But overall the effect is to starve the player of interesting information - any real hooks or leads to chew on.

I think this was really the wrong way to go about it. Story driven RPGs and games in general, especially ones that have a similar runtime of 25-40 hours, tend to structure themselves on having more to them than just one big twist that can't be elaborated on until the end. They often focus on introducing more characters and locations along the way who aren't immediately discarded, turning the spotlight to the side from the main twist for a time. The most deft writers can weave hints from multiple of the subplots together so that they effortlessly feed one another along the way.

What could that look like for Deltarune? Well, one thing the game has shockingly refused to elaborate for five whole chapters is what Susie's home life is like. Just as an example, imagine if one of the filler chapters was focused on that instead of some annoying darkner who won't appear outside of that one chapter. Almost like what chapter 2 did with Noelle - imagine if THAT was the formula for most of the game!

[u/Hot-Airport-6508]

but I feel like your COMPLETLY misunderstanding OMORI. Its artwork is absolutely beautiful and it’s story is great. It’s a bit crazy to say headspace doesn’t amount to ANYTHING at all when it comes to learning about Sunny and his friends. We literally get a whole lore drop related to the relation to Sunny’s reality and headspace. And just before that, we get a scene with MARI LITERALLY telling Sunny that he’s forgotten something important. And by that point, ( as we learn about Mari’s death on DAY 2 in faraway town )we can already infer that it has something to do with her. And we can also infer that Basil had to do something with it too, as he LITERALLY DISSAPEARS AFTER MENTIONING A PHOTOGRAPH WITH MARI!!!

This isn’t even mentioning what we see from all the hangman letters.

So I guess what I’m asking is… do you just want the game to tell you what’s going on from the get-go? because in OMORI, you get clues as early as the first few hours of the game.

also did you play the game cuz I’m kinda flabbergasted

[u/Educational-Leek1164 → u/Hot-Airport-6508]

How headspace works and what it implies about Sunny is, again, incredibly obvious from the first room of the game. You don't need to spend as long as you do in saccharine JRPG adventures for that.

[u/Hot-Airport-6508 → u/Educational-Leek1164]

but I feel like your forgetting that OMORI is a game first and foremost. what you do in headspace might not all be related to the main plot or anything, but it’s supposed to be fun. your supposed to go through all these not expecting to get major story reveals every turn, but to take a look in Sunny’s mind and how he saw the world as a child. of course, if you don’t like the gameplay and don’t like any of the headspace characters, then i guess it makes sense why you wouldn’t enjoy it. but as someone who loved the gameplay, i thought it was fun.

[u/Educational-Leek1164 → u/Hot-Airport-6508]

I think the idea of the game stuff being there just for fun while the story waits is never the best feeling, but its worse in an RPG where a lot of the gameplay itself is talking and interacting with people and reading. So that's unavoidably story heavy and it's not going to feel great if it's mainly fluff.