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Day 3: Establishing Boundaries

No video for this one. 90% of my recording was just me driving around empty wilderness or battling game bugs. All the notable moments are here in GIF form.



All right, it’s a new day with new possibilities. Not an especially nice day mind you, judging by the looks of whatever The Mist situation is going on outside, but still. In case you’re wondering, Emily is fanning herself with her hand, not taking some kind of oath of all—wait, what the fuck is that outside?!

Hello…?



Oh, it’s just Vera. Jesus, that freaked me right the fuck out for a moment.



…Hold on a second. Vera? Why are you wandering out into the forest in the middle of a thunderstorm?



It is seriously popping off out there, too. Unreal Engine really putting in some legwork on this game. It looks absolutely gorgeous at times.

Anyway, Emily is chilling out in the lobby of the main building and Vera is wandering off into the woods for some insane reason. I sure as hell am not about to go after Vera, because that’s how you end up getting Predator’d. Instead, let’s try and find out what our third guest is up to this morning.



Nana? Where are you, girl? …Shit, I should know how to say this… uh… どこにいますか?



Probably sound like a total dumbass saying that. Yeah, yeah, you have to make mistakes in order to learn and all that, but I still feel like—



…Huh.



Nana? You do realize that there’s a thunderstorm going on, right? Not sure now is the best time for a dip in the pool. On a rooftop. In a forest clearing.

Max said there are some weird locations around here. He didn’t say exactly where, and then he’s gone.



No, but I intend on looking for them shortly. There’s just one little thing I need from a local store first.

I don’t come here often, I only know a few places. But it’s really dangerous if you go alone!

I would say that this warning seems more appropriate for Vera, but that ship has already set sail.

Don’t worry! I always travel around and make videos. After all this is my interest, and my job too.

Still, you should be really careful. Contact me if you need anything.



We say goodbye to Nana as she is illuminated by a bolt of lightning that no doubt struck about 50 feet away from our current position. I’m not kidding, the time between the lightning and the sound of the thunder is no more than 2 seconds. That shit is directly above us.



I also spot Vera coming back from her nature hike. It once again freaks me the hell out because the character models stick out against the environment just enough that you can spot them moving between the trees from like a kilometer away. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was standing on the top floor I probably would have started firing wildly into the trees at that shape. I only realized it was Vera after I used the cell camera to zoom in on her.



This is what I initially saw as I finished talking to Nana. Unsettling.

Anyway, we leave Nana to her business, which apparently involves standing in the rooftop pool and repeatedly DX crotch-chopping at Zeus, just daring him to try it.



Now that she has returned to a public area with lots of witnesses visibility, let’s find out what Vera was up to.

Let me guess, you found good coffee?

That you’ll have to ask my brother!

Not sure why there’s an exclamation point on that, but I like to imagine that James is yelling that line at the top of his lungs in order to be heard over the earth-rumbling booms of thunder and the Biblical downpour happening all around them.

This is so annoying. We’ve been having a lot of trouble since you’re brother’s gone. Don’t be like your brother, couldn’t find him when we needed him.

Christ, Vera. You do realize that this man’s brother disappeared into the wilderness, right? Max didn’t just decide to say “Fuck it” one day and catch a flight to Barbados. Best case scenario is that the man got injured or trapped somewhere out in the forest and is struggling to survive until rescue arrives.

Worst (and more likely) case is that he is straight up dead.

I know you’re a director, but I’m not your employee, be nice!

Ah! You’re a rookie, you don’t have any experience running a BnB, do you?



I was not in the BnB business before, are you even listening?

I’ll call you when I need you. I don’t have anything right now!! Go ask someone else!

You little sack of sh—



…No. No. Calm down, PK. We all know that it’s just going to result in having to sit around for two minutes while you reload from a Game Over. She’s not worth it. …Not yet, anyway.



Let’s check in with Emily before we go exploring.

We get a choice of response here. One of the options is “You seemed hot!” Let’s not open this conversation by blurting that out, shall we?

It’s all because my brother, that asshole!

Okay, not sure that was an appropriate response to Emily’s comment either, but at least we don’t seem like a creepy perv. Just an irrationally angry one.

You seemed better than him!

Once again, the game gives us the option to say that Emily seemed hot. Stop that, game.

Thanks! I’ll try my best! I hope I can meet your needs.

Thanks!



So that’s how it’s going to be, huh? Well screw you, I just won’t answer. That was a natural stopping point for a conversation, anyway.

It’s been so hot this morning. I can’t stand it anymore.

OHHH! You meant that she looked like she was feeling hot. Based on the fact that we were talking about Emily having called James last night, I assumed that comment was some creepy attempt at flattery.



Actually, never mind. Maybe I’m giving the script too much credit.

Maybe you can go swimming.

Seems to be working out for Nana.

The swimming pool on the rooftop is so beautiful, too bad I didn’t bring my swimsuit over.

Call your boyfriend and ask him to bring it over!

*Emily laughs at this*

How will a nerdy teacher from a girls’ school have a boyfriend?

Oh right, my mistake. I wonder how a 24-year old busty supermodel British teacher with a stable career and a responsible personality could ever find herself a boyfriend?

Emily, if you aren't interested in relationships or haven't found the right person, just say so. Don't bullshit me with this "Oh my god, how could some nobody like me ever find a date?"

Sure, I talk like that all the time, but I'm a bridge troll. There's also the whole... wait, I'm getting off track.

Let me guess, English Literature?

*Emily shakes her head “no”, kinda*

I like it though! But I’m a high school history teacher.

I’ll definitely get straight A’s if I had a teacher like you.

Calm your pants, James.

Good student!

So is there anything I can do to help, teacher?



Too much information, Emily.

Oh, I can help.



All right, should be easy enough. I’m going to do shopping anyway.

That is what you want.

We could have also said “What the hell is baby powder?” Come on James, get with the program. That said, I’d probably go looking for some Gold Bond or something rather than baby powder, but whatever.

Mine’s are all gone. I hope I can find it around here.

I’m on it.

We’ve got ourselves an objective. Well, an objective other than blind exploration. Let’s head over to the garage and burn some rubber ba—


♪I bless the rains down in Aaafricaaaa!♪

Vera! What the hell?!



We’re able to teleport to the different stores now, but I opt to just set a waypoint and drive there. I like to drive. Also, it gives us the opportunity to keep our eyes out for anything weird.



Do you sell baby powder?

Yep! In the back of the second isle.

Cool. You want to point me to the ocean or lake where such an isle would be?

I’ll check it out.

I’m just ribbing you, man. We sure do have fun, don’t we Eric? Remember that time I walked in and shot you in the head without saying a word? Then you turned to liquid on the floor while your head made a break for the window? Memories…

Anyway, let’s go check out the aisle in the back, as in the passageway and not the landmass. English: The Easiest Language to Learn! (According to English speakers with an 8th Grade reading level)



Are you kidding me? This is the one thing in the store that’s sold out?

I actually went back and checked my first recording just to make sure. This powder is indeed sold out at the start of the game as well. It’s not a situation where Emily asking for it results in it suddenly disappearing from the shelf.



Didn’t see it on the shelf.

Ah, all gone. We still have some in stock. Just a second, I’ll get it for you.

Eric gets up and heads out back to search for the Baby Powder, which the store shelf has labeled as “Body Powder.” Whatever, it’s all the same crap.



Great, what fresh hell is this?



Maybe don’t go traipsing through the Rocky Mountains then?

I’m outside, what’s up?

Facial tissue.

We can respond with “What’s up?”, or…

I’m here to help, I’m not a servant!

……….

Could you be so kind and buy some, tough guy!

Will this do?

It’s better, although I still feel like decking you in the face.

Okay!

I’m already sick of Vera and her shitty attitude.



Thanks!



He is telling the truth, by the way. You can only buy a single bottle of Body Powder. That fact will become frustratingly relevant very soon.



I grab the Body Powder for Emily. While I’m at it, I also pick up some Facial Tissue for Her Royal Tsarevna.



Hm… Seems like Emily has the shades pulled down. She must be in the bath. Could have sworn she was going to take a shower, though. Whatever. Let’s just get this powder to her and then track down Vera so I can focus on exploring.



Hey! Emily! Come get your powder!

After knocking on the door and waiting around for a minute, I try knocking a few more times. There’s no response at all from Emily.



Emily! Powder! Hurry up! I want to go exploring!



I’m attempting to do that, game. Shut your mouth.



Son of a… Wait a second… Didn’t I have a car just a few moments ago?



Oops. Reminder: Make sure that car has completely stopped before hopping out. Didn’t realize that it was capable of rolling away on me like that.

Giving up on Emily for the time being, I instead try and find Vera. Maybe Emily will be out of the bath by the time I manage to offload these facial tissues.

I drive around the property a little bit to see if Vera is still wandering aimlessly around the forest.



I also flash the high beams directly into Emily’s bathroom in an attempt to get her attention. It doesn’t work.



I search every room in all the buildings, including this weirdly sealed room next to the lobby. By crouching near the window outside, I can clip through the wall and see what’s in there. Disappointingly, it’s just an empty room. Unlike the warehouse, this door can’t be interacted with and doesn’t spit out a message about being unlocked at a later time. I guess the developers simply couldn’t think of anything to put in here, so they just disabled the door and shut the curtains. Seems like a waste of a perfectly good room in my opinion, but .



After searching everywhere, teleporting around to the stores, and reloading the game, I discover that the Body Powder is not present in my inventory. I return to Eric’s, but the bottle that was on the counter is gone now (because I bought it), there’s no more in stock, and Eric’s dialogue has reverted to asking if there’s anything I need, with the only response from James being “nah!”

After loading an older save, I go back through everything I just did with the exception of buying the facial tissues for Vera. The Body Powder remains in my inventory. Apparently, attempting to be efficient by simply buying both items at the same time results in the facial tissue overwriting the mission-specific Body Powder. Since Eric only had one bottle of Body Powder, this results in a soft-lock. Wonderful.



Yes. After much frustration and annoyance. Take the damn powder so I can be done with this.

Here!

You found it! Thank you so much, I’ll see you later!

*Our favourability with Emily rises by 11.0. I have no idea if that’s good or not, because I have no scale on which to judge it by*

Oh, by the way. Vera was looking for you. I think she’s in the auditorium. Bye!



As soon as Emily shuts the door, I run around the corner to check and see if she’s teleported back to the bath. She hasn’t, but she has managed to get fully dressed within 2 seconds without moving from the door. Impressive.

Anyway, let’s get Vera’s stupid request done. I make sure to update my saves at this point. Now that I’m aware of game-breaking bugs like this, I need to make sure I’m keeping a wide range of saves to rotate through.



After teleporting to Eric’s store and back (I no longer have the desire to drive there after what I just went through), I find Vera chilling out in the theater room just staring at a blank screen.



Here!

Oh, you’re really efficient, thanks!

Shut up. Don’t patronize me you snotty asshole.

I should also point out that if you talk to her before going to get the facial tissue, she refers to it as “toilet papers.” Whatever. Wipe your ass or wipe your face, I don’t care much either way.

Anything else?

God willing, no! Now excuse me while I go explor—

Can you get me a glass of…

NO! Get it yourself. I’m trying to track down this dude’s brother or some—

*There’s the sound of glass shattering and someone shrieking*

Nana was downstairs a while ago, what happened?



Vera takes point, which I’m totally okay with. I should have a clear shot at whatever serial killer or forest creature just offed Nana while it’s busy tearing into Vera.



Who the hell is that guy? Is that Max?! Does that mean the game is over and I’m free to go do whatever I want while he takes care of the guests?! Because that would be awesome.



Whhhhoops! That was not intentional. My view got locked into Event Mode, so I tried to adjust the camera by clicking and dragging, but apparently the gun does not abide by the rules of dialogue scenes and is still fully functional.

Maybe I shouldn’t be running around the BnB with the gun constantly drawn, like an insane person.

Let’s try that again. This time I make sure the gun is safely holstered before going down the stairs.



Oh, hi Mark. Who… who exactly are you?

I’m really sorry. I scared her by accident, and she knocked over her drink.

It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m alright.

I made a reservation a few days ago, just wondering which one’s my room.

I am the landlord’s brother, James. The landlord is not here now, I couldn’t log into the B&B’s system right now, can’t check you in though.



You got a receipt to prove that? Because if not then I guess it sucks to be you.

Also, what is that phrase exactly? Italian? Portuguese?

Fine, I don’t know which room did you reserve. But room number 2 upstairs is free, you can have it! Here’s your key!

Great, thanks! (obligato!)

*And then the scene fades out for a bit while all the character models/the bucket are removed*



Well, I guess Mark is joining our cast now. We can see him from the lobby stairway taking selfies in his room. That’s the room that’s just down the hall from Max’s, by the way.

While I’m not comfortable with the fact that this strange man is now right down the hall from us, I suppose it’s better than putting him up in that vacant room in the guest building, where the women can be within easy strangling distance of him… or he can be within strangling distance of them, I suppose. Either is a possibility at this stage.



Mark is now added to our profiles section. I guess that was Portuguese he was speaking, since he’s apparently from Brazil. He also has a bigger bust than any of the ladies, assuming that’s relevant information to you.

Here’s the thing about Mark: I have seen absolutely no reference to him anywhere. I don’t recall him appearing in the trailers or in the store screenshots. I haven’t read every discussion post on the Steam message boards, but based on the thread titles there don’t appear to be any mentions of him in there either.

There is one thread about someone saying that this game really needs gay options, but there’s no mention of Mark in that thread either. It’s also the only thread on the Steam boards that’s been locked.



That said, we can interact with Mark the same way we interact with the ladies. We can give him stuff, invite him to do things, and he has a Favourability gauge of his own.

Weird.

Hi! How did your brother come up with the idea of opening a Bnb? Although it’s beautiful out here, it’s still in the middle of nowhere!

We actually grew up around here, we’re used to life here.

I see! Did he say when he will return?

I also wanted to ask him…

Well I’d better let you get back to your work!



Goddamn, you are a handsome man…

What were we doing again? Oh! Right! I’m now free to go exploring. Nobody else is bugging me about doing random errands, so I’d better escape while I can.



First things first, gonna get me that assault rifle.



Aww yeah. Unlike the handgun, the rifle doesn’t seem to need reloading at all. You can reload it if you want to, but I fired at least 100 rounds and it didn’t run dry.



Hmm… One of the abandoned houses near the gun shop seems to be open.



This is very creepy.



Excuse me?



Okaaaay. There’s an unlocked safe in this abandoned house that has about 6k just laying around in it. What the hell is going on in this place? Who the hell just abandons more than $200 in cash out in the wilderness?



In case you are playing along (first of all, why would you?), then you can find the random cash in this house. The house by the car icon, I mean. The cursor just happens to be pointing at a different house I had already visited.

Well, that was creepy. Let’s go check those other three houses to the south.



One of those houses also has an unlocked safe with 6k inside.



There’s also a bed with a bunch of clothing scattered on and around it.



This house, at the very southwestern point of the map, can also be entered. It looks a little different than the others, with some weird windmill things set up in the yard.



It’s also a tiny bit cleaner than the other houses I’ve visited. There’s a safe in this house as well, but it contains 9k in cash instead of 6k.



Getting to the edge of the map at the south reveals a roadblock. If you try to drive around it, the game will say that the area “is not yet open.” No idea if that means that more of the map will be added in as development continues, or if it’s just a poor English translation that meant to say, “You can’t go any further.” I’ll guess we’ll find out some day.

I drive around the edge of the map for quite a long time after that. All the major roadways leading outside the map have the same roadblock set up. To my disappointment, I could not find that collapsed tunnel from the trailer. Maybe that shot was from an earlier build of the game. Or it’s like a GTA3 situation where it exists somewhere outside the playable boundary and is only used for a cinematic/trailer shot.



The car gets stuck several times during my journey. It’s not especially good at surmounting small rocks or branches. Thankfully, user Nidoking pointed out that the car can be easily dislodged by shooting at it.

Roadside Assistance will move you and your car to the nearest road, but sometimes those roads can be far away. It’s better to get out and try to dislodge the car with gunfire first. There’s no guarantee it will work, but it’s worth a try if you are caught somewhere way out in the forest.



Eventually I make my way over to this incredibly remote house on the eastern edge of the map. It seems to be the only building east of the BnB.



Looks like this one can be entered as well. I wonder if there’s some fr—



OH SWEET JESUS WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING!?





No joke, that scared the shit out of me. I take a hit as I mash the keyboard trying to remember how to pull the gun out, then spray enough bullets to turn whatever the hell that thing is completely red with blood.

After searching the corpse, I get a Black Wolf Skin. Sure. That’s what we’ll pretend that is, instead of some werewolf or nightmare beast that tanked nearly 20 rifle rounds.

I gingerly enter the house, nervously checking every corner as I go, but discover nothing else. There’s no money safe or any other giant wolves inside.



The only other thing of note that happens on my travels is that I manage to drag the car up the side of a mountain to that wind turbine we saw earlier in the game. There’s nothing up there, though. Well, other than an amazing view.



Can see the BnB from up here too. I wonder if someone killed Mark during the nearly 24 in-game hours I’ve been gone?



I return to the house and head to bed. Mark is still alive, as he texts us in the morning about some guy that called the BnB with info about Max.

Maybe you want to check it out…

Is it the one by the lake?

I don’t know… he didn’t say much.

Sure. I’ll have a look. Thanks!

Crap. There’s only one house out that way and it’s the one I was just at.



Another wolf tears ass out of the house, but I’m prepared for it this time and remain safely inside the car. I actually spotted it through the broken window, meaning that it probably spawns in the empty living room.

After the wolf realizes that it can’t get to me inside the car, it turns around and tries to dart off into the trees.



I’m sorry, did I imply that I was finished with you? Get your ass back here! Like hell I’m going to let you run off into the trees so you can ambush me later.



Screw you.



With the threat (hopefully) eliminated… again… I return to the house. There’s something here that wasn’t here just yesterday.





Welp, that looks like the end of current story content. A mysterious man called the BnB, told Mark that Max had been spotted out by this house (in the middle of nowhere, which is itself in the middle of nowhere), and all we find upon arriving is a vicious giant black wolf and a bio detector.



The biological detector allows us to see where all the animals are on the map. We can hunt those to acquire skins that can be sold to Logan for cash. This is how we fund the dating-sim aspect of the game.


And so that’s where we stop this LP for now. I tried to buy some ingredients to cook, but there’s no prompt to prepare anything. After looking up a post from the developer on the day I was writing this update, I discover that cooking is planned for the next major update.



Which is set to include the following. Nice to see that they will be giving the dub a second pass. I’m interested to hear how that turns out.

But, that’s for some nebulous time in the future. As far as I know, the only things left to do with this now are to creep on the women (and possibly Mark?). Judging by the trailer, there seems to be some kind of “Get each girl drunk on wine” event, but I don’t think that’s worthy of a dedicated update.