When They Cry 5 Pre-Release Discussion & Speculation

07th Discussion
#163

Regarding the recent tweets relaying Ryuukishi’s words about WTC5: I’m keeping an open mind since Ryuukishi already said that WTC5 would be completely different from Higurashi and Umineko. Still, I can’t help but notice that a “concrete jungle” seems non-conducive to mysteries, since I take it as referring to physical locations that are so complicated you’re not expected to know how many sub-areas they contain, how they connect, and what they could plausibly contain. Then again, maybe that’s only half the stage, and part of the story will be set in a more precisely laid out area like a private estate near or within a city. What I personally want most in WTC5 isn’t (Umineko Episode 2 spoiler) time loops or murder mysteries, it’s intricate detail regarding both the character dynamic and the sequence of meaningful events that I expect to take place.

(I was originally going to post this in the news thread, but I thought it might fit here better since it’s largely speculation about WTC5.)

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#164

Keep in mind that Higurashi was never a closed room mystery series, that’s unique to Umineko. I don’t expect to see any closed rooms in WTC5.

#165

Oh, definitely. Although Higurashi didn’t have closed room mysteries, it did have mysteries in the broader sense of having odd things happen which encouraged you to speculate about them. If WTC5 has a focus on mysteries, as I hope it does, I feel like it could benefit more from locations with intricate detail, and less from a concrete jungle which wiktionary defines as involving a “high density of buildings”. To me, it doesn’t even matter whether there are murders, or whether it’s an open world or closed one, but I really did like all the elegantly delineated locations in Hinamizawa/Shirakawa-go, to say nothing of Rokkenjima which can be practically mapped.

#166

I think open world by definition prevents you from establishing a familiar locale setting, unless there is a base of operations that is continuously returned to.

#167

My impression is that in the original tweet, “open” is contrasted with the term closed circle which refers to people being unable to leave or exit a location. If that’s the case, perhaps “open world” is just another way of saying that WTC5 doesn’t center around a single location that people are trapped within. So that wouldn’t stop WTC5 from, for example, largely centering around a building like the Rokkenjima mansion, as long as it’s not isolated and people can freely leave or go.

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#168

If the clue was taken in isolation that would be true, however consider that Haworthia is one of the possible outcomes of Ryukishi’s new game board (and I will assume he keeps the gameboard concept). At most you could have a base, like a spaceship or “the end of time” (or outside the board) that would be a consistent locale between scenarios.

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#169

Mmmh… I find it very difficult to make any guesses. If the differences between Higurashi and Umineko are any indication, then Ryukishi makes it a point to use very contrasting narrative choices, genres and themes. If I want to focus only on the parts they have in common, then the only sure aspects that make a “When they Cry” story a “When they Cry” story, than we have these:

  • events that are repeating in a cycle of variations
  • unreliable narration
  • a fair play mystery one way or another
  • people get killed

That’s essentially all I can say for sure.

Looking at the pictures and reading the hints… I cannot help but think that Ryukishi got his ideas when writing the Lucia route for Rewrite. Which was amazing, I have to say, but… I must admit that it also makes me very anxious. I hated the ending of Rewrite and hated its ‘aesop’ with every fibre of my being. If Ryukishi wants to fix that ending with his own Sci-Fi story, I would rejoice, but there is this sense of dread that he might share Romeo Tanakas cynical view on mankind’s future.
Hell, I’m just saying what Ryukishi does best is adhering to that famous William Faulkner quote “The problems of the human heart in conflict with itself alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”. His characters have heart. And seeing them agonizing about their actions makes them real and human. I am just not so sure that he can do political commentary just as well. For that reason I found Rose Guns Days very hard to stomach…

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#170

Oh, I also think that WTC5 will probably feature a variety of locations, since Ryuukishi did say it’s a global story–I was just commenting on what can be deduced from the closed circle/open world terms by definition.

@Dschehuti I hope you’re right that all of those are sure aspects of the WTC series. I’ve been bracing myself for change ever since Ryuukishi said back in December that it’d be completely different. I had thought that the core of WTC was at least the community discussion it fostered, but he even said in April that he wasn’t sure whether it make it more entertainment- or more discussion-oriented. But I’m still expecting that WTC5 will be ambitious, that it will tell its story over the course of multiple chapters–and that I’ll enjoy it, especially if it’s true that it will borrow ideas from Tsuru no Ongaeshi since I liked what was done with that in Sakura no Uta and Kyousougiga.

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#171

I thought I was the only one pining for cranes to be the central animal.

Even with all the new information presented, cranes are an apt choice. Concrete jungle <—> traditional architecture are both homely environments for the eminent crane (after WWII for the concrete jungle and throughout most eastern mythology for traditional architecture). The relationship between the settings is, as well, dichotomistic; present versus past, urban versus rural, developed versus neglected, secular versus pious, decadent versus wholesome and of course to the culmination of post-WWII Japan versus pre-WWII Japan, both of which are great for the crane.

I may make a post after @Bernkastelle and the rest complete Haworthia translation. Haworthia’s characters themselves were not critical to my theory, and this in fact helps, because they are relegated to offering purely thematic connections to WTC5, which is my strength.

#172

Alright, I’m just going to put up my incomplete guess, because I think I can’t get past this point without being culturally Japanese.

I believe that the game board will appear as a rebirth/reincarnation setup, with the same characters reappearing in different scenarios each chapter (ie Spirit Circle if anyone read it). Time will not be a limitation if Haworthia was a discarded set up, as that was placed in the future while the teaser pic is recent/current. Locale does not seem to be set as the Dubai skyline differs from the Haworthia landscapes.

The mystery will appear to carry over grudges/revenge or as fated outcomes from previous or later rebirth/reincarnation scenarios, tying into the Buddhist theme of the escaping the cycle of suffering and rebirth. However R7 will meta-troll us and make us question whether or not this was a cycle of rebirths at all. EP1 will probably be set modern introducing the recurring characters followed by a mysterious crime(s) with no clear motive then EP2 will kick start the cycles.

I cannot figure out the Something that cries. Should bring to mind the cycle of rebirth or a story along those lines.

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#173

@Arietta Yeah, your crane theory is exactly the one I was thinking of when I brought that up. Although I’d only just noticed your post earlier the same day, and have yet to take a deep look at it (like most of the posts in this thread), I think the choice of crane would make sense in a lot of ways. The themes of “people and nature” and “human-like beings who aren’t really human” apparently present in Haworthia remind me of Tsuru no Ongaeshi, and most of all, it fits with what Ryuukishi said in April about the title giving too much away, because Japanese people are familiar with Tsuru no Ongaeshi. Although it’s possible it’s all coincidental and there’s some other animal that fits even more than a crane, I still really like your theory.

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#174

I love me a good reincarnation story. A certain other visual novel comes to mind.

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#175

Damn that would actually be amazing. The same characters reappearing in different settings but still falling in the same patterns over and over again, in an initial ‘history will always continue repeating itself’ kind of setup. Rather than just looking closely at a single incident it could take a wider look at how to affect things for the better over the long term (tho I guess RGD kinda did that already).

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#176

I decided to cut this part from my post in the other thread, since it’s more about WTC5 than Haworthia itself. This is just my shallow impression, but (Haworthia sample voice drama impressions) the plot of Haworthia by itself seems so epic, and to cover the entire course of events about what happened with the forest / the Organics Automata / that United Nations organization, to the point it seems to embody its own complete theme about the relationship between humanity and earth. With that in mind, I’m further inclined to think that Haworthia may be a set of Ryuukishi’s early ideas that didn’t mesh with the rest of WTC5, perhaps because their scope and ambition would’ve overpowered the rest of WTC5’s themes, and so were turned into their own story.

Or to put it another way, if Haworthia really is a set of events that took place in the same world as or a world somehow connected to WTC5, yet doesn’t even qualify as a spoiler for WTC5, then I can only think that WTC5 will be incredibly thematically broad.

Anyway, it’s fun to think about.

Edit - While I’m in the thread, I’d like to make a random observation about that 8,000 character piece of info in the tweets. That may seem like a lot, but if you look at Umineko, the script is 2.75 MB for EP1-4. That’s about .6875 MB per Episode, which is 720,896 bytes. Each Japanese character is 2 bytes, so that’s 360,448 characters per Episode, which means that Ryuukishi’s only written about 2.2% of the scenario, if the estimated size can be compared to an Episode of Umineko.

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#177

I wont speculate on plot, I’ll just wait to be surprised and amazed. :smile:

But I reckon there’s going to be a scene with EPIC ARGUMENTS and HOTBLOODED FINGER POINTING.

<Dread of the Grave is now playing in your head.>

Cause it probably wont repeat Umineko’s style again, but it will give a one-time call back. :laughing:

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#178

I have great hope that he’ll spin another wonderful tale.

What I hope for most is a soundtrack that can meet the transcendent quality of the Umineko complete soundtrack. By and far the thing that impacted my enjoyment the most was the fantastic soundtrack accompanying every scene, and I can only hope that Umineko’s OST will get a real successor, and if not a successor, at least a satisfactory, if not equal, followup.

I doubt it’ll use the argumentation style that made episodes 1-4 really special for me, but hopefully he’ll think of something new and exciting to keep things interesting.

Umineko and Higurashi were quite a bit different to each other, so this 3rd (5th?) installment should prove to be something interesting, and I will patiently wait for the translation’s completion to go into the experience as blindly as possible, which’ll make getting hyped up for the game little more than a calendar countdown :joy:.

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