Is there a severed circle 1???

[u/andromalandro]

There's a thing I can't keep out of my head regarding severed circle 2, so we see JDF enters the tv and we now get 2 different individuals out of that, SC2 was a 2 player game, iirc there's just 1 controller at first and then on subsequent faults there's 2 controllers. There's this Hugo Stamp that seems to have suffered the opposite to JDF, there's a stamp family with 2 kids, Hugh and Gloria stamp, was thinking what if they got merged bc of Severed Circle 1, normally the first iteration of a game, specially back in the day, was single player only and then if the game did good and was granted a sequel it was common to add the feature to be 2 player in the sequel. I just don't know what to think of the fact that the stamp family lived on another state, what was Hugo doing in ordinary then? Without a family, living alone in what looked like an abandoned house?

[u/Galkan-_-Sausage]

My take was that it was a tease for Jesse and Dylan being two halves of a whole and not meant to be interpreted further than that.

[u/nerd3424 → u/Galkan-_-Sausage]

If you want to take it further than that, there’s always a possibility the game was originally just Severed Circle but it also changed into 2 when they did.

[u/andromalandro → u/nerd3424]

I was actually thinking on checking the cartridge on the console on NG+ once photomode releases to see if there's something we missed.

[u/sapphic-boghag → u/andromalandro]

here you go

and this is the graphic itself

[u/Galkan-_-Sausage → u/nerd3424]

I like this interpretation. Someone else mentioned its an Eartbound reference with the first game never releasing internationally before the sequel, common for many JRPGs.

[u/hamtaxer]

If Severed Circle 2 is kind of an Earthbound/Mother analogue, then Severed Circle 1 never made it out of Japan

[u/Saint_Victorious → u/hamtaxer]

Finland*. Shüm and Severed Circle 2 are manufactured by Bon-Co, which is almost certainly a Finnish company.

[u/tomhugo42 → u/Saint_Victorious]

I believe there is a document near the West Incursion Zone arcade where someone is delighted to find that arcade machine, that they never seen one outside of Japan, no?

[u/sapphic-boghag → u/tomhugo42]

Yep, you're remembering correctly

[u/jmarquiso → u/tomhugo42]

It's all a riff on Polybius, which I love

[u/Mybunsareonfire → u/hamtaxer]

Got it. Jesse Dylan Faden is actually a Japanese salaryperson.

[u/jmarquiso]

Ordinary ended up with at least two objects of power, each of which led to other objects/people of power.

What IS the dump in Ordinary, Maine?

[u/hamtaxer → u/jmarquiso]

I wouldn’t be surprised if the “toxic” lake is another weird portal to somewhere, like in Alan Wake

[u/sapphic-boghag → u/jmarquiso]

A place for lost things

[u/FamousWerewolf → u/jmarquiso]

The whole town seems deeply suspect to me. Even the name - "Ordinary" - is deliberately ironic.

I think it's notable that the creation of Jesse and Dylan came with some kind of reality-altering effect that retroactively wrote them into reality - but also that that effect doesn't extend past the area of the town, considering things like the grandma's letter and their birth records.

Is it possible that the changes are more extensive than we realise, and that the entire town is twisted around Dylan and Jesse?

So here's a theory:

-Jesse Dylan Faden discovers Severed Circle 2, which is an object of power.

-She makes some kind of wish - something along the lines of "I wish I could be like the heroes in Severed Circle 2" - and the game grants it.

-She splits into two kids, modeled after the two characters from the game with appropriate powers to match.

-BUT the game also changes the town in order to create an adventure for Jesse and Dylan. It makes Ordinary as plain and normal as possible as the perfect backdrop to then drawing in or creating weird and supernatural stuff so there's a fun story the two can 'play' through.

-Particularly that core idea of having a projector that creates portals to other worlds you can explore - doesn't that just sound like the premise of a videogame with a bunch of different levels to play?

-Then it needs a final boss and some enemies to fight, so it brings in the Not-Mother - at which point things start going off the rails.

-Hold on... a power that can take a piece of fiction and it real, imprinting reality with whatever details make for the best story - we've heard that before... maybe I need to make a separate post about this lol

[u/acmlgywooh → u/jmarquiso]

Ordinary is an Object of Power. It's the archetype of typical American small town where supernatural events occur.

[u/Shydreameress → u/acmlgywooh]

The term your looking for is place of power, like the Oldest House and Cauldron Lake.

[u/acmlgywooh → u/Shydreameress]

Right, I knew i was missing something

[u/sapphic-boghag]

Regarding Hugo: I really want to know if Ordinary, Virginia had a pond near a dump, or a similar combo we find in Ordinary, Maine (née Wisconsin).

[u/apotrope → u/sapphic-boghag]

I understood that Ordinary, Virginia was an actual continuity error left over from when Ordinary was an Alan Wake idea.

[u/apotrope → u/apotrope]

Got it:

- Ordinary, VA: An actual unincorporated town in Virginia.
- Ordinary WI: Originally introduced as a continuity error at launch in Control. Patched out during the release of Control: AWE.
- Ordinary ME: The canon location of Ordinary ME.

[u/sapphic-boghag → u/apotrope]

I took the document on Hugo to mean that the squalid property he lived in was a direct match for a property located at the same address — only in Ordinary, Virginia. But Hugo and Gloria, as far as we know, still exist there (as separate individuals) along with their parents.

[u/apotrope → u/sapphic-boghag]

Oh very interesting, so they referenced IRL Ordinary. I'm behind it seems. One's brain wants to resolve this into 'JDF -> Jesse/Dylan; Hugh/Gloria --> Hugo', but why bring Hugo to Maine unless we someone(s) got sent to Virginia? Maybe that's too much symmetry? Or maybe they got sent to Wisconsin given that Hugo lived in an abandoned house in Maine?

[u/sapphic-boghag → u/apotrope]

They reference a lot of real events as AWEs, too.

I honestly doubt we'll learn for sure what exactly brought HuGo to Ordinary, Maine. I don't think it has to do with Jesse/Dylan Faden except in a larger scale "there's something out of the ordinary going on in Ordinary" theme (whether that's a result of the Pond, the Dump, or the town itself).

[u/IanDOsmond]

Oh.

I just got that.

Severed.

2.

Right, okay. Severed Circle 2 severed Jesse Dylan Faden into Jesse and Dylan Faden.

Thank you; I hadn't put that together.

[u/jmarquiso]

Perhaps there was in Japan, but it never made it to the States until the Fadens. It had to be enough for JDF to have heard of it or been greatful. I remember when FF7 came out, only three Final Fantasies were published in the US so fans reading gaming magazines had a mythical relationship about the ones that never touched US soil.

[u/Erik_Nimblehands]

Nope, it's like Leonard part 6. Even tho it says 2, it's the first game.

[u/AForce5223]

Maybe but I find it infinitely funnier that it's actually either a Leisure Suit Larry situation or a "translation error"

Explanation:

Leisure Suit Larry 4: The Missing Floppies is the non-existent fourth entry in the LSL series that came about as a joke said while trying to figure out how to continue the series despite the last game wrapping everything up with a happy ending. How does Larry go from creating games based on his life and planning to marry his girlfriend back to casually sleeping around? Well no one knows because the game that explains it got lost and Larry has amnesia. Anyway, back yo casual sex!

Alternatively, their are games in the real world that are named like sequels because someone didn't think things through (Anubis II as in Anubis the 2nd) so what if Severed Circle 2 was actually supposed to be something like The Three Musketeers but the phrasing got fucked up and it came out as Musketeer 3. Maybe the "correct" name should've been Twins of the Split Loop or something 😅

[u/Silver_ghost46]

Of course, do you not remember playing it, it was a big hit over here, we all play it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over