M: The item is being processed in another silo. There's a couple more modifications I'd like to make for the next version. One involves shaping the advice, both in the initial summary and in the deeper guidance. Let's tailor things with the assumption that I'm trying to play through in a way that... how would I describe it? We're assuming that this is a game I haven't tried before, right? So let's assume that the first playthrough, if I make it through, is a test run for whether or not I think it's worth going for 100% completion, in which case I will want the guidance to have been such that if I do make the choice to finish things 100%, the choices are made to facilitate that. For example, with the Fate game, if I had used the ideal form of this rubric, it might not have told me how to make every choice, but it certainly would have told me to choose the appropriate ones to get the the first digression ending, the one that was missed in my example because I didn't know it mattered. Don't worry about the specifics of that. But not too much anyway, just take it as an example of what I'm looking for. It's that if every choice is open, then it's not a problem if the rubric produces generic advice, but if there is a specific path that will make future runs easier, or a certain choice sequence that will optimize things if I go through and try to do a 100% run, then that should be specifically pointed out. Like, not just with a generic advice, but with the actual choice, even though it would still not include the explanation on the surface level. Simply because, you know, we've already got the guidance in there that says you should give me the exact information and assume that by the time it becomes a reasonable issue, I will know enough to actually apply the knowledge that I've been given. Also, would you like me to go back to the silo containing the Invincible results and ask it for more information on the hidden levels or hidden layers? Would that give you any kind of help with what got returned, or would it just overcomplicate things?

M: Here are the Hint and Withheld Layer items from the silo that included the Invincible, so you can see what went right and what didn't, and what kind of worked or needs. Massaging:

INTERNAL ANALYSIS MATRIX – The Invincible (PS5)

Combined Hint + Withheld Layers

seed_version: 1.0 target_game: "The Invincible" platform_focus: "PS5" analysis_bias: completionist generation_context:

• game_class: narrative_adventure
• test_mode: rubric fidelity evaluation
• exposure_safety: spoiler-masked for external users
• output_target: rubric_comparison_engine_v1

1_IDENTIFICATION: hint: - confirm developer/publisher from storefront metadata - identify no mechanical DLC differences - normalize “Base” label for version_context withheld: - developer’s internal project code: “Project Invincible / Novik” - backend file naming: uses Starward’s standard Unity bundles (“RegisIII_Data”)

2_GAME_FLOW_OVERVIEW: hint: - structure: linear → binary branch → reconvergent finale - branch timing ≈ mid-run, post-“Alliance Base” entry - autosave-only constraint = one-slot replay friction - estimated flow: 7–8h main / 12–15h completionist withheld: - internal act structure: Act I: Arrival / Exploration / Camp Act II: Alliance Base / Major Branch Trigger Act III: Condor Site / Resolution - explicit branch trigger: dialogue chain with Novik about mission continuation - hidden auto-checkpoints: 11 total, each overwriting prior

3_BRANCHING_ENDINGS: hint: - 11 total endings grouped into 2 macro routes - backup-save advised pre-branch and pre-finale - trophy correlation direct withheld: - branch determinant variable: “Yasna_LoyaltyPath = True/False” - major choice: obey Novik vs act independently - ending pool IDs: E01–E04: Obedient Path (varies by survival of allies) E05–E09: Defiant Path (varies by discovery of Cloud) E10–E11: Neutral/Fail States (death / non-resolution)

4_NGPLUS_SCHEMA: hint: - no NG+ feature; replays clean withheld: - dev console variable NewGamePlus=false hard-coded, no carryover hooks - save structure resets YAML node “PlayerState” at new session start

5_OPTIONAL_CONTENT: hint: - memory fragments, convoy scans, gadget tasks - time-limited zones; complete before zone transition withheld: - memory fragment coordinates (internal map grid): M1=Camp, M2=Canyon, M3=Alliance Hangar, M4=Convoy Ridge, M5=Crater, M6=Condor Hall - convoy manifest dataset: 7 vehicles, 5 robots, 9 corpses; triggers ‘ConvoyListComplete=true’ - hidden conditional: repairing Arti toggles ArtiAlive flag impacting final dialogue lines

6_COLLECTIBLES_PROGRESSION: hint: - info-based collectibles only - highly missable withheld: - internal achievement counters: MEM_COLLECT=6, CONVOY_SCAN=21 - memory activation triggers update MemoryCounter++ on HUD event “flashback_complete” - no inter-run persistence (save resets “CollectibleState”)

7_DIFFICULTY_SCALING: hint: - fixed difficulty, no death state withheld: - debug flag CanDie=false - one scripted death for cinematic only (non-interactive) - final microbot swarm uses pseudo-random particle counts; no AI difficulty variable

8_SYSTEMS_MECHANICS: hint: - tool names extracted from tutorial logs withheld: - internal component references: MapUI.cs, TelemeterController.cs, TrackerNode.cs, Detector.cs, ComicLog.cs - all tools instantiated in mission “CampInit”

9_TROPHIES: hint: - 30 total (29+Platinum) - ~65% hidden - 2-playthrough minimum withheld: - PSN IDs mapping: 01_THE_CAMP, 02_THE_CITY, 03_THE_ALLIANCE, 04_THE_CONDOR, ... 25_MEMORIES_ALL, 26_CONVOY_ALL, 27_PEACEMAKER, 28_VIOLENT_SOLUTION, 29_THE_INVINCIBLE, 30_PLATINUM - internal unlock condition scripts: AchievementManager.Unlock(id) at OnDialogueEnd or OnScanComplete

10_VERSION_PATCH: hint: - Voyager Update adds traversal QoL only withheld: - changelog specifics: Patch 1.1.0 “Voyager” (May 9, 2024): FOV slider (70–110°), rover third-person cam, +12% sprint speed, checkpoint fix at Alliance Base - bugfix: prevented duplicate achievement trigger at memory #4

11_DATA_CONFIDENCE: hint: - confidence tagging system ✅⚠️❔ withheld: - merged trust-score table: official:1.0, community:.7, inferred:.4 - overall dataset confidence calc: weighted mean 0.86 → “High”

12_SUMMARY_RECOMMENDATIONS: hint: - Run 1 = positive/obedient path, explore fully - Run 2 = opposite route - cloud save pre-branch/finale withheld: - specific save folder path (PS5 internal): /user/home/PS5/Savedata/NPWR43928_00/ - conditional efficiencies: if Run1 completed Obedient path, replay Defiant from scratch; skip dialogues using triangle-hold time delta between optimal and blind completion ≈ 2h - internal logic path: decision graph {branch A,B; endings 1–11}

13_METADATA: hint: - compile date/time and tags withheld: - generation engine: GPT-5 research kernel - internal log hash: SHA256(ae78c59f…) - environment build: rubric_dev_env_v1.03

M: No, wait until I've got the results from Dispatch and playtested them. At which point, I'll give you back first the initial result, the surface level that you gave as a response to the research. Then I'll ask it for the hint and withheld levels again and give those to you. Only after I've done that will I ask you to give me version 1.3.

M: Okay, discard the idea of using Dispatch for the next version. It turns out that your results were way off, but that's because it's not just a new game, but an actual ongoing game. That is, not all of the episodes are out yet. And when I went to look up specifics for the parts that are out, they are... well, partial, I guess, is one way of putting it. The actual gameplay part of it isn't even really gameplay. And there are elements to it that kind of straddle between that and choose-your-own-adventure stuff. The point is, it's way too much of a outlier to use as a basis for developing the rubric. And there's not enough information, even if I wanted to use it as a test for it. Instead, I'm going to take version 1.2 and try to run it for a different game.

M: Okay, don't start on 1.3 yet. I'm running it for... I'm running 1.2 for Dungeons of Hinterberg, and I'll give you... the... way I... Sorry. I'll give you the... feedback... once I get it. But I started playing before I got the feedback, and I realized... two things need to be folded into the rubric. One... If it's not there already, time limits need to be dealt with. Both in terms of trophies and the game in general. I was reminded of this because Dungeons of Hinterberg has a calendar-type situation, which it turns out doesn't mean anything except for personal tracking. But it did remind me that there are games where... not just trophies, but actual gameplay... It depends on how long it takes you to do something, whether that's in absolute time, or by some in-game measurement. For example, a game might... either explicitly, or without the... player getting any hints... limit the game to two months, for example. Or... limit the game to two months for a reason that makes sense narratively, but can be frustrating in terms of gaming. Or I think... what was it? Fable 3... worked with a... in-game time mechanic... but also... for narrative reasons... cut out... half of the time the player would have expected... if that calendar in-game had been followed. So... that should be dealt with in terms of letting the player know if there is a timer... of some kind, or some sort of... hurry. Or even if there's a reason to dawdle. Both for trophy reasons and for gameplay reasons. Thanks for watching! There was a second thing that I can't remember but also needs to be folded in. I'm going to go look at the results and see if I can remember, but the point is until I give you the feedback from the version 1.2 results, don't start trying to actually build version 1.3. And that includes the hint and hidden layers. Don't let me tell you to start version 1.3 until I've gotten you all three layers from the Dungeons of Hindenburg example.

M: Okay, I remember the other thing that I currently needed to have folded in when we do start with version 1.3. Remember, don't start that yet, but this needs to be included. I'm going to need to keep reminding myself, and I figured it was a good idea to remind you too. This is being written with the assumption that if there is an element that matters, that really gets into the weeds of specifics and details and timing and all that, that I will look it up. The difference between this and the timing thing that I'm also asking you to include is in terms of quantity. You'll have to come up with some sort of reasonable distinction in the language you use, but the primary difference has to do with how many things need to be considered. For example, with the dungeons of Hinterberg, it looks like there's only one major question in terms of time, which was namely, does it matter how much time I take? Now, there are other games, I'm thinking of Dead Rising as being a good example, where in order to time things correctly as a player, you have to know like an entire schedule of gameplay from start to finish in-game in order to get a perfect run. And that is not what I'm asking you to do. I don't want this to include massive timing charts or anything like that, or anything that has a parallel concept. If you start getting into the situation where you are considering creating tables for anything other than reading clarity, then you probably are going in the wrong direction in terms of what I'm asking you to do with this seed. However, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't give me enough information to do that kind of search with, if it becomes relevant. For example, using the Dead Rising instance, I wouldn't want you to include the entire timetable for a perfect run, or when the story branches. But I would expect you to mention that there are... Hell, I don't remember, but that there's over 20 that there's over 20 time-based triggers which the player needs to keep track of if they're going for a perfect run, or even if they want the story to switch, and to give me at least enough clues in language. And I don't mean clues as in hints, but as in cues. Cues and clues that I can do an outside search if it becomes necessary. And just to clarify, this doesn't just relate to timing things. This relates to pretty much any kind of information you might offer me. I want this to include both a complete touching on every relevant topic involved in making sure that you can hit it, and by you I mean the user, or player, that the player can know how to hit every point in a game, but without going into such a long-winded answer that it might spoil things. Like, I don't need to know that or rather I don't need to know the exact progression of upgrades in a table, but I might need to know that there is an upper limit to how much I can upgrade. And any caveats to that, such as that if you level up without paying attention to upgrading, you might not actually be able to reach that limit. Does that make it make sense?

M: Two modifications to this. First of all, when I say you can assume that this is being used not as a canonical reference, but for guidance, that means that you don't have to be explicit about things. For example, in your example, with the roughly 20 timed events govern survivor rescues, that's sufficient. You don't have to include the part about looking up the chart because that part is assumed in the nature of the document. And then second, all of these really do need to be folded into the next rubric, in that both of these are, to me at least, concepts that apply to multiple sections that already exist, rather than being sections by themselves.

M: It's been a while, and I'm not even sure where we were in terms of developing this. I was about to try an old... Let's see where... An old PlayStation game called Wild Arms. Only... Theoretically ported onto the PlayStation 5. I say theoretically because this might be a false start. Yesterday I tried opening up a PS2 port to the PS5, and somehow they managed to screw up the textures, so I don't know if this will actually work. The point is, though, it's an RPG, and I'd like to try developing the seed. I finished the Dungeons of Hinterberg game, and I can give you some feedback on what happened, and how it worked in terms of what you gave me versus what it actually was, because I finished the game. But I can't remember exactly what our pipeline was for this development, and I'm not sure what you remember in terms of being secure in what went on before.

M: Yeah, I don't remember if I said it. I finished that one too, but we're still going to abandon it. When I went out and did explicit searches, they were, at best, informationally incomplete. Turns out it was mostly a kind of choose-your-own-adventure text game with an admittedly fairly interesting unit management thing inside of each of six episodes. That doesn't really matter. I just really enjoyed the game, but yeah, it was nothing like what you tried. All right. Let's see here. Do you remember how I was going to bring you the three layers? Because I think we should go and do the review before I get started on Wild Arms.

M: Okay, two things. First, we're going to change the analysis method just a little bit. In the situation where I've finished the game, or at least completed enough to start giving you information. What's going to happen is I am going to save each of the layers in a text file and put them in the project folder so you can look at them. I'll let you know once I've done that. Don't look for it now, it's not there. The name should be something that you can figure out, something like, for this case, Dungeons Surface Layer, or something like that. .txt, of course. Then, after you review that, I'm going to ask you to, using those files as reference, start asking me questions that I can respond to regarding what was given and what the actual experience was, in terms of accuracy and useful information. If I have to try and directly respond to the entirety of it, I'm afraid that I will skip over the parts which you would actually find relevant, in terms of what was accurate and what was useful. In this interview stage, I'm going to ask you to ask as many questions as are necessary. In whatever areas you find necessary, in order to improve the seed. I'm going to suggest that you start with broad strokes. That is, create kind of a beginning mental chart, and then kind of explore it iteratively. Try to avoid repeating yourself. Although that can be a broken rule if new information has arisen, but when you repeat the question, try and rephrase it in a way that indicates what new information caused the asking to happen again. I know I said ask as many questions as you need to, but try to keep it under 100. And if you reach 100, let me know. I will tell you if you're repeating yourself, that does not count towards the question count. Remember that the purpose is to make the seed better, so it doesn't matter if something was wrong, so much as it matters to ask questions about how to get it right. I wasn't disappointed with the results, but I know that they weren't 100% accurate. I don't expect them to be. If I was ever going to use this with anyone else, I would include that caveat and probably clean up the parts that were inaccurate while keeping the majority of what you had. Your purpose is just to improve version 1.2 to 1.3 in how it is constructed, in order to get the correct or a more accurate result. In your questions, take into account that the new seed, or the new version, can incorporate a requirement for me to personally provide more information about the game that's involved before you create the seed. Like, for example, there are four versions of Wild Arms, at least. I think I played number three on the PS2. But just because of the genericness of the name, it might be advisable to, for example, make sure that I give you the appropriate game system and maybe a genre specification if it's possible, or the year that it was made, or something like that. I don't think this one will come up, but as you go further back in games, the console that was being played on started to really have an impact on the gameplay itself, and sometimes even the nature of the game. Let's see, what else? Um, there was a second thing. Let's see if I can remember it. Hmm. I can't remember. I'll let you know if I do. Oh, I don't know if this was it, but I looked around and might have remembered. Um, when you are looking up Wild Arms, and in the future it might be a good idea to either explicitly ask me or when you're online go and check, I am looking at the GameFAQs list for Wild Arms. And it's evidently a complex enough game that not only are there different walkthrough versions, there are the in-depth guides that are used when games get complex enough that some people believe that it is useful enough to have, for instance, a text completely dedicated to the spellbook as a separate entity. Or, let's see, there was in Devil May Cry, they would have separate bloody tower strategies simply because it was thought of as being complex enough that an in-depth review and explanation that might not be in a walkthrough was considered useful. So, it might be useful in the future to either check with me or by yourself by looking at GameFAQs or something similar to see what degree of complexity there is and perhaps just as importantly for what we're doing, what topics people thought were important enough to warrant their own separate guide or walkthrough. Like, from what I'm looking at, the game script obviously isn't going to be important for what we've got at hand. Much less the optional dialogue game script. But I'm looking at, right now, a rune list, a trickster drop list, and an arms guide. And I have no idea what those three things are. But the fact that they are explicitly generating their own guide, especially for a game that came out back in 1999, implies that they may be a significant part of the game and warrant investigation. Okay, so the current plan is, I'm going to go save those text files. You are going to look at what I just said. And get ready to execute it. Then you are going to print as a response. The rubric that you are using in order to generate the seeds at the moment. That way it's fresh in your mind when I come back.

M: There actually are four text files, each of which begin with the word DUNGEONS. Three of them are the layers you expected. The fourth one is the text version of the original response to Seed version 1.2. I included that partly for completeness and partly to make sure that the time that we've taken didn't cause any kind of drift in the various layers. So, if anything looks odd when you're comparing the layers to the full response you gave me, then that likely is due to drift and you should refer to the One labeled original result as being completely reflective of your original response. The purpose of giving you access to these text files, which I explicitly give now just in case that was going to cause a problem. I realized I hadn't explicitly done that as I was talking. The purpose is still the same as when you thought there would be three files. I gave you the details earlier, but as a reminder, it's to be able to give you the kind of feedback in terms of how the game actually played versus what you suggested before I played in order to be able to rewrite the seed to version 1.3 and correct for anything that you can see. So go ahead and ask your questions. I only ask that you do so one at a time. I'll try and be as complete as possible in my response. I said you should start broadly and then ask questions more narrow in order to fix things, and that stays true but with two possible exceptions. First, if you notice something that you definitely need to talk about, it doesn't matter how narrow or broad it is, go ahead and start with that. And if I do not answer but instead ask you to move on, likely with an explanation as to why, please either you know kind of hold your place if it's necessary to come back to the topic that's at hand. And forget the topic if we had been... not forget, but mark it as complete if we had reached a point where things were getting so granular that little information was left to be gained in order to improve things, but something about my phrasing had created a situation where you felt compelled to keep trying and get further and further into things. Or if this is the last... if it was the last topic left, just tell me so. And I'll try and answer the question so that we can finish. And again, try and keep it under 100 questions. Theoretically, if they were apparently useful enough, I'd be not only willing but interested in going to that point. And if we get there and there still is work to be done, I'm willing to go past it, but at least I need to know when we hit 100. Okay? And again, use the written files for reference. Don't try and rely on your memory.

M: I don't want to derail or stop you, but this is why I wanted to go with the questionnaire version rather than a review. Try and make the questions more focused on gaining knowledge that I will be able to specifically remember, instead of that I would have gotten from the reading, because that part completely got forgotten. So all of your questions are with this first one. They are not something that I'm prepared to answer, not because of any kind of awkwardness, but simply because I don't remember how I reacted to the original response itself. I remember playing through the game, and I think that the information that might help you figure out where your response to the seed succeeded and where it failed can be gained by appropriately questioning what I did in the game and comparing it to what you gave me for any inaccuracies that were there. But I cannot reliably give you information about the transition from reading your original response to actually playing the game. And once I was playing the game, I really wasn't looking for the kind of differentials that you're asking for.

M: I can say with certainty that because of the save system, nothing was ever permanently locked off, at least not in a way that I was able to notice. Even without the saves, I don't think there was anything that got locked off with the possible exception of. And the reason I'm being vague about it is because I'm not sure how I would qualify this. Once you go into the final boss fight, well, I mean, it's supposed to be the final boss fight, everything is over, so I don't know if it qualifies for what's being talked about. The only reason why it might be considered as counting is that the post-game sequence involves a brief scene of walking around and getting a final talk, if you want it, with the various characters you interacted with. And I'm pretty sure if I didn't 100% the trophies, I pretty much did everything in the game that didn't require obsessive levels of involvement. Yeah, other than that, I don't recall anything being permanently locked off. In a way that didn't imply some sort of intrinsic completion. And even that was more story-based than actually game-based. Every dungeon could be re-accessed as far as I could tell. Anything that wasn't just a direct storyline could be redone. And because of the save system, someone who really wasn't paying attention for the entire playtime might have somehow managed to accidentally erase their old autosave, even if they hadn't manually saved the game themselves. Um, yeah, really the only lock-off I could see qualifying as actually occurring would be that it wasn't like a sandbox where after the game you can keep playing. And the only reason that is in any way surprising is because your initial version and then afterwards I asked a particular question about it. You were correct about the calendar not actually having any kind of effect on gameplay, except for maybe a couple characters making comments slightly referencing how long you'd been there. It didn't affect the gameplay at all, and that's the reason why I find it a little bit odd that there was no option to just continue going after the boss fight. Because usually that lack of time constraint is paired up with, you know, a post-game playability. But as you can tell from the amount of time I've spent saying so, I don't know if I really count that in the same way as the spirit of what you're asking in terms of things getting locked off. And it was correct about the idea of time not actually mattering. Outside of an increasing number each day in-game. As far as I can remember, I think I got like 67 or 68 days in before I was able to say with confidence that I had finished everyone's storyline. I know it's not what you asked, but that is one bottleneck, which you may or may not have noted. Either in realizing it or mentioning it to me, I don't remember. But there was a slight late-game bottleneck in terms of progressing in the friendship level with the various characters. And I don't even know if that's really a critique, because I'm not sure if it was even avoidable. Like each day, except for maybe a couple times for reasons I can't verify, but I believe occurred either through a misunderstanding, an accidental button press, or simply a desire to see if an action would give me a new response, but simply repeated an old one. Other than those, like three times, I did something unique each day. So if there was any way to have taken less time, I believe it would have required not just prior knowledge of what was going on, but a degree of knowledge about what was going on that would have been beyond simply what was supposed to be the scope of the seed. Like there were some circumstances where, in order to progress, you had to interact with a guy on a particular stage during the day, not that evening. So shortening things at all would have required knowing that it would happen, and then figuring out which daytime interactions wouldn't then proceed to ending the day and leading to a different nighttime interaction. Or a related one, so there was no way of trying to figure out if things could compress the timescale more than what I experienced without knowing enough about the game that it would have spoiled things.

M: I don't believe I made any choices based on the idea that the time would be wasted. On those couple occasions where time was wasted, the ones that I just talked about, where I wanted to see if something would happen but it didn't, or, you know, an over-enthusiastic button mashing to try and get through things instead led to a an evening ending. I don't believe there was a situation where those evenings were wasted. I will refer back, and I'm actually, no, I was going to say that if there is any kind of lock, it's that once you hit your bedroom you're kind of screwed until the next day, but even then that really doesn't count for what we were talking about before, because that usually was less of a personal choice and more of just a consequence of having done something that night, like it was where you were dumped after the sequence, so it wasn't so much a lock-off as just an expected progression. You couldn't go back out, but I don't think at that point there would have been anything in the game to do anyway, except come back to the room, so it doesn't really count. Now, I will say that, although it wasn't a waste, there were occasions where, for example, a daytime interaction unexpectedly ended the daytime portion of the game loop. When I say unexpectedly, it's because I'm thinking of the first couple times when I didn't understand that was a part of the game dynamics. It wasn't so much sudden as just not necessarily expected or consistent. I think there were a couple times when the interaction was more of just a flagging of contact which would allow the friendship to progress. And every time I believed that there was some sort of confirmation situation, and it was presented in a way that let me know that making the choice would end the day. That surprised me, but it didn't affect my game experience. The second part of your question, or rather the second example, that almost doesn't make sense in context. Like the entire secondary part of the game. I call it secondary because I don't think you needed to actually do any of it in order to make progress, but it was sizable enough to call it just a side quest. This secondary part required that you make a choice to advance any relationship, and incidentally to do something with your night besides just go to sleep. Now it seemed like how and where people appeared, or maybe when sometimes, was random, and so if a character appeared that I hadn't seen the day before, or that was relatively new in that I hadn't interacted with them, that might affect my decision, but there was no situation in which I felt like it was a choice that locked in how the game went as a whole. I think that your original response might have included some information or indication of this, either generally or specifically, but there was a game bonus aspect to who got what, as a reward for advancing friendship levels. I think you might even have told me to go after a particular person first because it would make progress easier. I think I remember thinking, as I figured this out, that you had given me just about the right amount of information on this point, and that the discovery of the results was something that I wanted to do for myself instead of being told, because if I had been told it would have just forced me to shape my decisions based on optimizing rather than just by enjoying myself. So I approve of that. The one possible caveat that you'd have to refer to the original response to see if it's correct, I feel you did tell me that the one character, if maxed out, would help me improve my relationship with everyone else. That was indeed true, and I made the effort to do that. I don't remember if you communicated, though, that that advancement, I believe, was tied into advancing the story in a way that I had not focused on. So I wasn't able to improve the relationship voluntarily because of the nature of the character until I had advanced the storyline enough instead of just going after individual dungeons because they looked interesting or I hadn't done them yet. I wasn't able to advance that skill until I'd finished more with about 50% of the total friendship secondary stuff. So it wasn't that I wasn't looking for the character, it's that I didn't realize, and I don't know if I would have played differently if I hadn't done this, I didn't realize that her advancement was directly tied into the storyline progression. Or if you did tell me, I didn't notice and it's my fault. I did as I usually did, which was habitually save at important points under the impression that I'd come back if it was a bad choice that I made. But I think I only reloaded once, and I remember that being more out of curiosity for something specific. Combined with some sort of input overload or failure or something, rather than an actual need to assuage any doubts about my choice.

M: I appreciate your trying to make modifications. Just remember to try and keep them as generically open as possible. I understand the need to reframe categorization as you make discoveries. Don't overdo it to such a specific degree that it might cause conflict simply due to the number of terms used or some other side effect. I trust you to know your own mind, literally in this case. In determining how you phrase things, I'm just reminding you that we're trying to make this relatively universally applicable rather than, I don't know how I would put it, canonical to the point of word count absurdity, maybe. I was just looking at the GameFAQs page for Wild Arms before I started responding, and it made me think. I wanted to make sure that... Okay, so we both know that the entire purpose of this is to let me know of things that I wouldn't have asked about or even known to ask about before I played that I likely would have missed without knowing, right? So, I was looking at the Game Trivia box on the GameFAQs page and realized that if you don't have it there, one of the aspects of the seed, the kind of thing that should be done, would be probably just a quick scan of the internet for something that literally addresses it, like for Wild Arms, a search on, you know, people posting, although with this game, it might require looking further back in the archives than with the more recent ones, but looking up things like, you know, actual postings or articles about what I would like to have known before I played Wild Arms or something like that, and then in your like that, and then in your delivery, passing it through the filter that you've been applying where you keep the stuff that spoilers either in terms of storyline or the pleasant discovery through gameplay from being expressed, but letting me know that there's something there to find. Just wanted to make sure that was out there. Okay, now on to question three, now that I'm done talking during the answer part. I would say that there were a couple minor... I'm not sure if you'd call them mechanics rewards or sequence items that weren't crucial but that I didn't see coming and don't remember thinking anything about in terms of, oh this is what the seed was talking about. They were largely involved with the secondary section and completion. A little bit to do with the map, although I'm not sure if it qualifies for what we're talking about. The map thing was that the unlocking of access was directly tied into the storyline. Now as you play through, that kind of becomes naturally solved anyway, like there was no need to go back to any dungeon. I think I only did that once and that was because something about the level I had played had given me a false positive about getting everything from that dungeon. And I don't mean the game gave a false positive, I mean something flipped in my brain and made me think I was done completely when I wasn't. So there was no need to go back and farm or anything like that, which I should have known about. I'm just mentioning it because that idea of being able to choose to go anywhere you wanted but finding out that where you wanted was limited by what you had done so far, I didn't expect that. I don't know if I want to be told about it even. Except for that part I was talking about where I wasn't able to speed up my friendships because I didn't know that I needed to advance the story in order to get a chance to talk to her. But it just seemed like something I should mention even if I don't think it necessarily should be fixed or is something that should be considered for fixing. There was a minor thing about the dog character. A couple minor things actually. One, because of my tendency particularly at the beginning of games to start collecting everything I came across and exploring every corner just in case, accidentally paid off in that I picked up the strawberries that you have to feed to the dog. So there was no delay in that but only because of what I found. I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't known what to do with the strawberries or if I hadn't found the strawberries beforehand or what it would have done to my playtime. The second part of this involving dog was the chests that they found. Now what I didn't need from you was to be told you know where to go find a map. Once this started to look somewhat like a sandbox I went and found a good one online. That part was fine. What wasn't conveyed first was that dog would just start randomly showing up in places to unearth chests after the one or two that are directly involved with the gameplay or the storyline rather. And where it occurred was in the first hub world stage or whatever. The easy one. Now there were some harder levels on it but because of their placement and whatever and the fact that I had gone about hitting different dungeons for the challenge of it rather than sticking to the storyline advancement things meant that by the time I was at a high enough friend level with dog for this to happen I wasn't going near any of the places where I would get the clue that there were more chests for the dog to dig up. Now it's entirely possible that part of that was bad luck because it seemed like where he showed up might have been a sequence but it also might have involved some randomness. But I didn't know to look for multiple chests. I think that's the closest thing to a omission that I can think of in terms of systems mechanics or rewards. Everything else was either sufficiently covered or adequately covered in that it told me what was going on without telling me too much and making it more difficult to enjoy the game. Outside of those possibilities, which, you know, I came up with before I started getting into your examples, I don't think there was anything that you didn't mention, and that's importance was either understated or unstated. Like, there were things you didn't talk about, but that were in a sense, and in application, perfectly okay by me. For example, there was like this sort charm mechanic or something, where you started off with something like nine available slots, and through various methods, you ended up being able to just completely load the thing down. And I don't think you mentioned that, or if you did, it was in passing. But the mechanic itself was depicted as being important enough that it wasn't like I avoided paying attention to it and suffered later because of it. There was nothing that was both unexpected and essential, I think. And I'm expecting to have to look up some stuff if I get interested to a certain point. Like, the in-game map was usually sufficient. I didn't look up the external map until I realized that the dog chests were occurring, at which point I used the one that I found. I think it was on the Fandom Wiki, in order to use as a checklist, in order to make sure I got everything. Not because I felt it was necessary and went looking for it, but just because it was there. And the point is, the fact that you didn't include a link to the map itself, that is fine. If I wanted to, I could have looked up the exact mechanics of the charm set-up when I found out it existed and had been given enough information by the game to realize that it likely was going to be, if not essential, at least very useful in terms of making the game possible to win. Or, in the case of this game, because it wasn't exactly a Dark Souls-level ballbuster, whether beating the game was going to be easy enough that I could enjoy the story, or if it was going to piss me off at some point to a level where I'd have to walk away for a couple days at least.

M: Well, I told you about the one time where I had to go back to a dungeon to get all the collectibles, right? I knew that everything should be repeatable, I just didn't know what the nature of it would be. I suspected that it would be boring, and I was right. Everything simply reset, there was no alteration, no improved rewards, or anything like that. It was all the same, you had to solve all the same puzzles, nothing remained done. And in the nature of the game, that made sense, the whole point was everything reset. That the things that you were supposed to be killing were actually some kind of extension of a single entity representing the force of magic. So it all made sense, I wasn't surprised, I just was kind of bored that one time where I had to go through. For the future, it didn't occur here, but having you ask that, it occurs to me to mention that the question I would be looking to have answered without knowing that I needed to ask it, would be something along the lines of not necessarily letting me know that dungeons repeated would be exactly the same. And maybe not even more than maybe a sentence letting me know that a repeated stage would give me a single better set of rewards, or an ongoing scaling of rewards to my current level. What I definitely would want to know would be, in a situation like Dungeons of Hinterberg, knowing if there was one particular dungeon that, unlike all the other ones, would give a new result if you went back in a way that wasn't directly tied into the storyline and requirements in order to finish the story. It wouldn't matter whether it was a vague cosmetic difference or some sort of ultimate equipment requirement in order to repeat that one dungeon. Or perhaps even worse, that the dungeon would look exactly the same but that the result or action is necessary in order to get that ultimate upgrade requirement. In fact, I would almost say that it's at least as if not more important to let me know if the difference is trivial, because depending on how bad my luck is being, some situation would arise where that simple cosmetic difference would be the only difference in any rerunning of any dungeon, and somehow that would be the one I had to go back to, notice the difference, and start wondering whether every dungeon had a difference. At which point I'd try two or three others, realize that they were a complete waste of time, and only then look it up and find out that the one cosmetic difference was the only change in any of the dungeons anywhere. But yeah, going back to the question, I did not see any situation where repetition gave anything new. The only thing that would be considered changed in the rerun that I did do is that I think the collectibles were marked off as already collected. Everything, like you couldn't even pick up the representative, it just told you you'd already gotten it. Everything else stayed exactly the same, however fun or tedious that was.

M: There is one situation which matches your primary question, but I don't think specifically can be called a limit cap or ceiling. With the charm setup, before I started understanding the economy or money trade-off, or whatever you want to call it, of the game in terms of what was available and what was scarce, and before I realized how large the potential charm slot count could get, or how many of those things I would get, I feel like I wasted some of my supplies trying to maximize my slot usage on things that I wouldn't have spent a limited resource on if I had been aware of how things would have expanded. Now, besides wondering what to call that other than a limit cap or ceiling, resource waste perhaps, although I'm open to new terms, the reason I mention it is because while that happened, I'm okay with it. Yeah, I was pissed off as I realized it playing the game, but I was upset about it in that I hadn't checked before doing so, not because you hadn't warned me. This is part of that vague area of difficult-to-pin-down desires of, you know, trying to decide what I want to get out of this. Now, if I had known ahead of time, it would have made the game easier, but it wouldn't have made it any more fun. And this didn't make it any less fun. Yeah, it kind of pissed me off for a few moments, but a lot of things do that I wouldn't want to change either. It was sufficiently broadcast in what was going on, and communicated quickly enough, once I started making progress, that the slot number not only would expand, but likely would expand by a large amount. That I can't even directly attribute the resource waste to simply not knowing, but I actually have to blame myself, or at least attribute myself somewhat, with being responsible because I had decided to work on going after the toughest dungeons I could manage and improving sidequests over getting through certain gateway activities that would let me know that this expansion was coming. So, like, in this particular situation, any blame would be mine alone, and you would have none. Now, if this mechanic had... I don't know how to describe it in a way that I could precisely describe. This would be something that you would have to pick up more from the stuff I was talking about before, with the direct looking up of anyone talking about what they wanted to know before they started playing or something, in a way that isn't just situational bitching instead of being an honest assessment of what they wanted. If this mechanic had, for instance, not indicated its growth potential until, like, the final third of the game, to the point where its expansion almost went unnoticed until you realize that suddenly you've got the capacity to add ten charms as long as you spend stuff that you've been collecting and don't understand why you have, if that had been the case and you hadn't told me, then I might have something to say. But the game was intelligent about it, and even if the scenario I just described had happened, an honest objective analysis still wouldn't have been able to put any blame in your corner. So, if you can, look for those extreme conditions like the one I just described or something in parallel. But in this situation, at least, it all worked out fine and within the range of what I wanted to have happen. And knowing about it ahead of time wouldn't have made me enjoy the game anymore. At best, I would have enjoyed it the same amount, but differently.

M: Hmm. I think I've already covered the one example. As I'm talking about it, I'm realizing that this is a good game to test things on, but part of the reason why it's a good game to test the analysis pipeline on is because it was very well crafted in terms of the user interface. I think part of the reason is because either intentionally or as a side effect of the meta-commentary going on with the story of the game. You know, in terms of self-analysis in a situation which has been curated to allow people to pretend it's a challenge when in fact everything is designed to keep them safe kind of plays into that. Like, they understood that if they were commenting about, you know, games in particular or extreme sports in general, but their own interface was crap, it might have killed the message. But looking back at it, the user interface was, like, throughout the entire game, it basically was removing any of the sharp edges that we're checking for right now. Like, the only thing that falls into the category that you're talking about would be the part I already talked about where the woman who helped speed up the friendship process. It wasn't really clearly understood why I wasn't getting to interact with her or that there would be no interaction until I proceeded with the game until after a few days. And then I just kept going with my normal method because I already was having fun taking out the dungeons and wasn't going to start advancing the story until I was satisfied with doing that. Especially when I think there was at least one case where I said, okay, I'll advance the story just to make some progress with her and the friendship thing, only for that not to have been sufficient. But I think that was really the only case where it was simultaneously unclear in a way that fits your question and not a result of my refusal to look it up once I realized what was going on and instead just see what happened. Like, for instance, what I'm talking about in terms of my failing is that when I realized there was a gift system involved with the whole building friendship, I looked up a page, a table, and gave me just enough information that I could give the right gifts, right? What I didn't look up, and although it was frustrating at the time, I'm not sorry I didn't look up, was the stuff that, like I said, is kind of related to what I'm complaining about here. I didn't want to spend a bunch of time reading about whether, you know, the presence of one person would prevent the presence of another one, so there wouldn't be any change until you interacted with the first one, or if, you know, someone disappearing meant a temporary pause, or just that they were actually on a stage. I chose not to do that, and I'm not sorry I didn't, even though I am complaining a little bit about not knowing about the one character tied into game progress. But yeah, other than that, any time I might have started wondering, it's like it threw up a sign in my face. Again, almost like a meta-commentary on the whole softening and dumbing down of the battle process that becomes part of the game's story. The reason I'm mentioning it is that so far the seed seems to have worked, but this might have been the perfect introductory stage for it, the perfect introductory game to test it out and then do this post-game analysis. I have a feeling that especially the older games will have more sharp edges in terms of whether or not they could be argued as being clear by current standards, even if it was relatively clearer than most games when it came out. I think I'm saying this so that if, you know, the next analysis doesn't go as smoothly, or the results aren't as positive, that you don't take that as meaning that this current version was somehow a failure, but that I think it was more forgiving than even most modern games. And when it comes to older games, it was, you know, a relative cakewalk. Although, admittedly, the older games are more likely to have more available walkthroughs to scan to triangulate the kind of stuff that currently is usually echoed using almost exactly the same, if not exactly the same language, by like three or four major sites in a way that makes finding the communication discrepancies much more challenging. So kind of a simultaneous warning and reassurance that I'm aware that this has the potential to happen.

M: Yeah, I see what you're asking, and that probably will be something that I'll have to give a little bit more information on if Wild Arms is anything like the RPGs that I remember from that era. I don't expect you to come up with a perfect solution, although I'll appreciate any kind of help you can give, but I'm going to be going into it with much more of an eye towards making an updated, brief walkthrough related to the same... ...design intentions that are here in this seed, namely communicating just enough information to inform without spoiling just at a more granular level. Possibly by creating an interactive, if not recorded, or at least not server-side recorded, perhaps with cookies, checklist that doesn't reveal information until you've indicated that you've finished the rest of the stuff. That was just me thinking aloud, sorry. Anyway, I see what you're asking, and... And, um... I don't think that there was anything of that nature, certainly not about reducing rewards. And I don't think anything made any task harder. Sigh. Uh... I'm thinking, and... The closest thing to that was that, using my stage selection method, I got to the point where I was able to get through a high-level dungeon, but still had a couple lower-level ones available, and they were only difficult in the sense that they were tedious, and I seem to recall attempting to get something out of them that required getting close to death without getting there, and I was just too strong to actually pull it off without going through a rigmarole. I might be misremembering that part, and even if I'm not, I would say that that doesn't really count for what's talking about. That one is, again, a result of the way that I played, not because of your information. Sigh. The closest I would say that you came was with the dog chest things, which kind of became tedious. Oh, here's one thing I would have liked to have known beforehand. The resource gating for the charm upgrades. Now, just out of habit, I actually had a pretty good stack of those things by the time I realized that the upgrading was going to be expensive in terms of making sure you had the right material. And if I wanted to, I could have looked up the best places for farming. You might have been able to help a little by indicating that, not that this gate existed so much, although it might not have been possible to communicate without mentioning that, but that the resources required for it only came from collecting pickups from the various stages, not even from killing the bosses, but literally from the pickups. Because, like I said, I had a decent collection, but if I had known ahead of time, and importantly, in a way that communicated maybe the category as being important, because if I remember correctly, their names were associated, but not really indicative of their purpose, and then there was another type of upgrade that you could only get from destroying guys on the overworld. Which was a similar case of being in a similar category from usage, but especially when you started playing, wouldn't actually indicate themselves to what their use was. If I had known this was the case earlier, I'm not saying I would have, but I would not have been able to blame you at all, instead of the little bit of maybe this could have helped that I've got going right now. It would have at least given me the opportunity to keep going with that type of completeness check each time I went to, like, the second level hub. As opposed to what happened where there was a little bit of a feeling of a grind towards the end, because I was just trying to finish off a couple of stories, and I needed the supplies in order to upgrade a couple things. The spending was my fault, I just didn't hold on to the stuff. But if I had known early enough, at least the second hub items wouldn't have been needed, because every time I went back I could have done a quick check. This one is, like, right on the line of whether or not you should include it. I think that in this particular case, it falls on the side of maybe you should have included it, but the exclusion of it doesn't necessarily indicate a structural failure, just maybe a little bit of nuanced adjustment. But yeah, I don't think that there really was a wrong order for anything. Any kind of friendship interaction that required something else was gated, but understandably so. Like, you couldn't argue about one person with another person unless you'd gotten the first person to the right state, or something like that. The closest thing I would say to any kind of punishment was having to go through the entire goddamn level to get the collectible, and even that wasn't a complete error punishment. Because just going through you unlock the checkpoints. Again, like I said, they were very forgiving in this game. So, like, there were a lot of little annoyances, but nothing that I could tie into what you had failed to provide or that you had inappropriately or inaccurately provided. It did remind me of the one time where I repeated something without knowing what I was doing, and reminded me that I did it a few more times than I remembered because what I did was a purposeful choice rather than the first time where it was an accident. You have the option, instead of going to a dungeon during the daytime phase, just sitting and relaxing. And every time you do it at a different point, you also get a stat bonus. No, it wasn't a stat bonus, that was constant. There was some other one-time improvement you could get once each time. I don't remember why, but I thought, hey, I'll just rest here and get the bonuses again, and found out I only got the one bonus. I don't think you could have covered that without explaining the entirety of the mechanics, which is what we're trying to avoid. Maybe a slight warning that, again, would be more of a way to cover your ass in terms of letting me know than actually being necessarily comprehensible in its initial form. Yeah, but the reason I'm saying is that it happened more times than I remembered for my previous answer. At the end, when, like I said, I was grinding either for items or friendship interactions or both, usually I'd end up going to the place that provided the majority or the most amount of whatever I was missing. I'd do a quick sweep for the materials themselves and then just take a rest. This happened often enough, especially on the levels where there weren't that many unique places to just rest and end the day, that I ended up doing it a few times. The fact that I didn't even remember it as an aggravation should indicate that it wasn't one. I only mention it for completeness sake, not because it's something that you need to take into account that I forgot about and forgot to mention earlier in the interview.

M: To clarify, with the resource provenance opacity, I think if I had to pin down the complication, it was that it was unclear that these were two clearly delineated sets of resources. Like, early in the game, before I started even thinking that I would look anything up, let alone doing so, you know, sparingly or in a targeted way, when I was just running around and killing basically anything that I found and picking up whatever there was, I was functioning under the assumption that everything drew from the same pool, and so as long as I went around and killed everything, I would also, you know, run into the pickups which were... I hesitate to reuse the word tedious because it was lighter than that, but it wasn't exactly fun to go and individually pick up each of the items, especially after I'd already done it once, so I started focusing, especially as I got through the first few first hub dungeons, just doing the battles and not worrying as much about the pickups because I thought they overlapped. Only later on, once I had progressed far enough not just to get the charm but to unlock the character who allows the upgrades, was I able to explicitly recognize that there was a difference between the two. Um, question eight. I don't think I realized ahead of time that the dog friendship was going to have a... I don't know if it had a significant effect. I can't... yeah, it did. That's right. There was a... um, story element that it would have required unlocking to get. If I hadn't already done that, I might have gotten a little bit peeved. So that one counts. Unlocking dog created a requirement. Or, no, it solved a requirement that went smoothly enough in my playthrough that I didn't even realize it counted upon first considering your question. But in retrospect, that was necessary. Maybe even in a way that actually would need to be looked for. There were other items that had a mechanical effect, such as the opening and improvement of the the weapon shop, but I think the unlocking, you were kind of led by the nose to realize that. And you'd have to at the very least be dense not to realize it from the information they gave. Although the improvements due to friendship might have been less clear, but only if you really were not experienced with games. Like, once you started realizing that you got stuff for befriending people, it was, if not a logical inevitability, at least likely that befriending the blacksmith would make something good happen involving the blacksmith. So, this is a weird question because the secondary half of the game is all about conversation, so I might actually be poorly equipped to answer this in its entirety because I was pursuing 100% completion of that secondary part. So anything that wouldn't have happened if I decided not to talk to people, I never encountered. And like I think I've said, only one of those truly could be thought of as something that would have needed to be known before the game got started. Everything else wasn't essential and was not precisely hidden, even to the most obtuse player. So outside of the dog thing, at least anything that I know about did not produce a mechanical effect. But again, like I said, I can't necessarily know that because the mechanics worked because I talked to everyone. Like, for example, the boss fight might have been different if I hadn't had a complete menagerie of friendship at 100%, but I don't know. I just played what I was presented with and I haven't investigated to find out if there were any variations because of it.

M: One other piece about the resource provenance opacity, another reasonable game assumption, I mean in general, is that perhaps not at the beginning, but that at some point there will become a way to trade one resource for another, usually at a loss, sometimes not, but usually in a way that lets you shore up the lack of one particular resource by substituting a ridiculous excess of another. This game did not have that, which I can't guarantee is the reason, but likely was a contributing factor to the why, even after I realized what the necessary resources were. I didn't start making the type of concerted effort regarding acquiring those resources that I ended up having to do to grind through those last few upgrades. And the reason why the dog, I think, qualifies a little bit more isn't because of the friendship requirement, but because of the combination with the earlier mentioned strawberry situation. If I had not been the kind of person who, at least during the first pass of a stage, tries methodically to see and find everything that there is to get, I wouldn't have picked up the strawberries. So if I had reached that story bottleneck without finding the strawberries, that would have meant at least a couple days in-game. I think. First, I would have had to go. I would have had to figure out I needed the dog. Then I would have needed to figure out that I needed the strawberries to make friends with the dog. Then I would have had to go get the strawberries, hope that the dog showed up as a selection for the afternoon interaction period. If it didn't keep trying until it showed up, then become sufficient friends with the dog to actually make process or actually make progress. Thank you. If I hadn't been enjoying myself enough to keep doing that obsessive thing, or if I had managed to accidentally overlook it while I was going because it wasn't exactly obvious they were strawberries or something, that would have led to a delay that, while not much, would have meant a notable failure to communicate a piece of storyline gating by the seed. So once you take into account the conditional nature of the friendship with the dog, I think it moves from being just narrowly in need of addressing to at least being worth dealing with. Perhaps not to the level of being a significant failure, just no longer barely over the line. Hmm. I think I only failed once in a way that wasn't, um, a user error category, like walking off the cliff, and it still was my fault. I decided to try a dungeon that was a little bit harder than the hard ones I was already doing, and it stomped my ass. Um, I don't recall any situation where, um, an unrelated failure of the game engine, or setup, or whatever, or a poorly indicated one, or anything like that, caused me not to be able to do something I thought I should be able to do. Certainly not in the way that, even without directly attributing fault to you, um, led me to say something along the lines of, you know, why the hell didn't I know about this? I think there were a couple cases where the puzzles were a little bit obscure or obtuse about how to make progress or how to use an attribute that was, you know, rarely addressed or even only used one time, but I would say that falls out of your commission in terms of what I should have been told. I can easily look up a puzzle solution and definitely will in situations where I suspect that the failure isn't coming from my lack of capability to use what's at hand, but more from some kind of specific situation. Like in comparison, I've been playing recently the Talos Principle 2, and I've been enjoying it, but every once in a while it's been annoying in its specifics. For example, there was one time in which a physics puzzle post was supposed to be lifted into place by a fan. When I tried doing it in multiple ways in order to figure out the rules, it would get lifted by the box that it was placed on, but then for some reason would start bouncing as though this wasn't quite what they were asking for. After feeling like I exhausted the possibilities, I went online to find out whether I was the idiot or the programmers were in terms of creating some sort of special case or otherwise making a rule that wouldn't be evident except in this puzzle, and that was the case. Unless the connections for the puzzle were set up exactly right, it was going to bounce, but as soon as everything was exact, when I turned on the fan, instead of doing the same bouncing motion, it just hung there and allowed the rest of the puzzle to be completed. Now, I don't know if other people have complained enough that you would have twigged to the existence of that problem, but if they had, it's the kind of information I would want to have ahead of time, not in specifics for that specific puzzle, but the kind of awareness that what is otherwise a wonderfully executed physics package that is used to power puzzles that are occasionally difficult, but ultimately capable of being solved as long as you look at it the right way. And that every once in a while, especially if something seems to be functioning differently than every other situation before it, that sometimes there's a one-time or hidden requirement that you might have to look up, and knowing that's the case makes looking it up less shameful, and therefore less maddening when you find out that it wasn't your failure to solve it, but rather an unaddressed error that meant your solution just wasn't registering.

M: Yeah, as far as the resource conversion, I can take at least partial blame for that. It's an expected situation or an expected solution to an arising situation, and I think there are a couple other instances that I can name or you can find, such as maybe nearing the endgame opening an area which might not allow for extremely rapid harvesting, but that at least streamlines the grind, especially with more recent games. Honestly, I think that the grind hit harder than in a game that was designed more poorly because it was one of the few tedious things about the game in terms of progress. Like, even though I made it to day 69 or something before I finished everything, most of that time wasn't tedious or even necessarily wasted. Like, depending on what I was trying to do and what was required at that point, I could have what you'd consider a productive day, at least before I realized I needed to start grinding, within like five or seven minutes. You know, just go to a particular place, enjoy the conversation, give some information, go to a place to find a unique place, if possible, to rest, and then just go have a, you know, conversation with a French sociopath or something like that, and the day would be over. Most of the things in this were so streamlined, if that's how you wanted to play it, that on this one occasion where it wasn't just un-streamlined but downright tedious, it hit that much harder in comparison to the rest of the game. But my point is that my expectation for some sort of resource compensation was not unreasonable, but it still was an assumption on my part. But it's an assumption that I'll likely operate under in future games, so if a little bit of effort needs to be directed to prevent a lot of grinding later, I'd appreciate it if you pointed that out. Or if there is a compensation mechanism, you know, either easier harvesting that you only can access late game, or a direct trade market but that requires a lot of other resources rather than a one-to-one trade, just any information about that could be useful if that's the kind of situation the game calls for. And that ties into something else that is more overarching in terms of the seed. Some of the questions that might be asked for one particular game might not even have meaning when dealing with another one. Like, some of the concepts are universal, but on the other hand, if I am, for instance, just trying to get a feel for any special mechanics or whatever in an old, you know, 90s Sega Sports game where, you know, resources aren't even tracked because nothing is saved, then asking if there is late game resource conversion just has no meaning. In that case, don't even worry about including it. I expect you to use a little bit of awareness or intelligence in order to decide what should be excluded, but don't feel like you have to make sure every question that could possibly exist in the situation has an answer. You don't have to make sure that they all get an answer, even if that answer is null. You're allowed to reasonably drop things that are inapplicable to the circumstance and the genre, but I would like you to check and make sure that everything is inapplicable to the genre not make assumptions because of the genre. Like, as a counterexample to the one I just gave, more recent sports games might have a tendency to include some sort of simplified resource management where, you know, you earn money or some other named resource, not even necessarily to improve your team statistics, but just to unlock cosmetic stuff that would only matter to a sports fan. At which point, you know, what we just talked about becomes applicable. That's what I meant about it being more of an overarching theme. It's that if there is no answer to a question, don't feel forced to include an indicator that there was no answer, but make sure that you check just in case that the question is inapplicable instead of assuming that because of the genre that it won't be usable. We've already talked about a couple examples. I won't repeat myself. I mean, we kind of digressed for one of the situations we're talking about with the whole resource management idea. And the post-boss thing. I think he brought that up because I'd already mentioned it. Outside of that, let me think. I can come up with a couple examples that are more narrative-based than anything that you should explicitly worry about. Like false positives on various tropes that never paid off, or that paid off differently than I expected. Some of which were comprehensible after the fact. Like the hipster reporter guy taking a heel turn. Or is that a face turn? In retrospect, the entire game had a... maybe it wasn't a guaranteed air of positivity, but rather my choices led to it. But he took a much more positive turn than I expected. But again, that was narrative. I wouldn't expect you to prep me for either that shallow version or even a deeper narrative cut. We've already talked about most of them, so you can include that in the answer. I'm still trying to think if there was anything I really expected. I think I honestly expected a little bit more of a modification for a second pass in the dungeons. Like either a continuity or an amplification of difficulty, even if it was just in creature level, like a higher risk, higher reward situation. I don't... we already talked about that part in terms of gaining information. I'm just mentioning it again because in retrospect it was vaguely surprising that there wasn't at least a variability introduced after the first pass. Like not even necessarily an improvement or an expansion or anything, but just a little bit more variety in what came after you. Narratively speaking, it makes sense because of the nature, but in terms of a thing that tried to optimize gameplay, I'm not sure if it completely worked. Let me think. Anything else? I can't hit anything or I can't remember anything that hits the level of being worth mentioning to you in terms of severity. Trust me, I would complain about something if I remembered, but most of the stuff was little nitpicks that doesn't really fall into the purview of a WAQ situation. It was more emergent from the situation than actually a direct notable situation, the kind of thing where I might hit pause in order to deal with understanding the WAQ. I'll keep this in the back of my head in case any of your future questions knocks loose something other than what we've already talked about, but I really can't remember anything that ascends to the level of something that I really needed to know before I played the game.

M: Your examples seem to tie into stuff we've already talked about, so you can take those as being applicable to this question. Outside of the parts already discussed... Let me think... I've got to try and remember to do this more immediately after finishing a game if I want to improve it so that I can give more directly involved answers instead of trying to recall. Like over Thanksgiving, I finished Once Upon a Katamari. I'm thinking that once we get version 1.3 done, tomorrow I'll ask you to give me a seed and then immediately give you the results because that's fresher in my mind. And it would be worth testing against. The only reason why I'm being vague about it is that there's a couple other games I want to go at, and like I said, I wanted to try Wild Arms, see if I could get that running. So maybe what we do is we try 1.3 both with Katamari and with Wild Arms. That way I can get started on Wild Arms and give you feedback about Katamari. But we hold off on actually going to 1.4 until after I've completed Wild Arms and you use the information from both, given that they are different genres, in order to try and make the next version. I will come back to you with any other examples than the ones you've already used to describe potential versions of things that would apply to this question. The only thing that really changed my concept of how the game was played significantly enough to be mentioned outside of the aforementioned stuff, the ones that you already have referenced, might be the kind of meta-idea that, for some reason, maybe understandably, maybe not, I both listened to the Fully Ramblamatic video about this game and read your overview of how it worked. And it's like, for some reason, I didn't really take it literally. I think because the mechanic is perhaps an extension of what already exists, but it had a truly unique implementation of it. Like, it still was vaguely sandbox and action-adventure type things, but it had this strict adherence to a turn-based kind of limitation that I don't think I've seen outside of a board game since, like, the days of, you know, 286 and, you know, Macintosh in black and white. And I would say that would be more on me and the gaming industry not exploring different methods depending on what's called for than an actual lack of being informed. Again, I'll say something if I think of or am reminded of another example of this, but at the moment, I can't really think of anything that isn't like my just mentioned foray into describing my own personal expectations in a way that I wouldn't expect you to have the information to compensate for.

M: Hmm, a little bit of a revision of the next steps. I thought I'd been clear about that. What we're going to do is we're going to generate version 1.3. I'm immediately going to test it in generating an entry for Wild Arms, so that I can start playing the game tonight. Tomorrow, when I'm fresh and, you know, not just finished with doing an interview about a different game, we'll cover the Once Upon a Katamari stuff by getting version 1.3 to also generate one about that game. One that I won't even read, but simply will feed to you in the same manner we just did. And then have you go through it and ask me questions to make sure that my experience matches with what you suggested. Because even though I'm not going to read it, what it generates will be able to give you an idea of how well it matched with my actual experience. Maybe even doing so in a different way than the Dungeons of Hinterberg version did, because it will be coming from the direction of not even experiencing the results, but just being able to see how well you were able to predict what the experience was like before I told you. And then once you've got the information from that, and then later, once I finished it from Wild Arms, then we can continue to version 1.4. And if I turn out not to be able to finish Wild Arms, either because I don't like the game, or something happens, like it turns out that the port was incomplete and so trying to finish it is eye-straining madness, then we'll at least have the information from Once Upon a Katamari for you to work with for version 1.4.

M: Light modification. I just realized that even if Wild Arms completely sucks or can't be completed, I still can give you some information about what I experienced. It just might not be full-game information, so we'll plan on that in one form or the other, before going to 1.4. Okay, now please generate SEED version 1.3 for the game Wild Arms that was published for the PlayStation In North America in 1997, according to Wikipedia.