Author Topic: Touhou 16 「東方天空璋(とうほうてんくうしょう) ~ Hidden Star in Four Seasons」 announced  (Read 295076 times)

Jeremie

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ummmm excuse me it's actually going to be murasa because the name 水蜜 is a variety of peach

Oh.

Best Touhou game confirmed even more then!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by Rumia.

Tengukami

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ummmm excuse me it's actually going to be murasa because the name 水蜜 is a variety of peach

This is fine.

"Human history and growth are both linked closely to strife. Without conflict, humanity would have no impetus for growth. When humans are satisfied with their present condition, they may as well give up on life."

R. P. Genocraft

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I actually was thinking about Tenshi when I wrote that. But Toyohime works, too. Hey, this time you can beat the crap outta her.
ummmm excuse me it's actually going to be murasa because the name 水蜜 is a variety of peach
The three of them then :V

Playing Touhou since 18 March 2012. Playing video games since 19XX.
Normal 1CC: EoSD, PCB, IN, PoFV, MoF, SA, UFO, TD, DDC, HSiFS, CtC.
Extra 1CC: EoSD, PCB+Phantasm, IN, PoFV (K&S), MoF, SA, TD, HSiFS, CtC+Phantasm.
Hard 1CC: EoSD, PCB, IN, MoF, TD, CtC.
Lunatic 1CC: EoSD

HistoryoftheMoon

all of them as stage 4 boss variations.
Depending on how many times you die leading up to stage 4, you fight a different peach girl. The one chosen by dying an absurd amount of times is worth a lot of points, just to troll scorerunners by wasting their resources.

Failure McFailFace

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Depending on how many times you die leading up to stage 4, you fight a different peach girl. The one chosen by dying an absurd amount of times is worth a lot of points, just to troll scorerunners by wasting their resources.
That sounds both horrifying for score and amazing for survival.

Maybe stage 5's gimmick is based on something similar, where the amount of lives, bombs, and score determines the bullets spawned. A perfect run, with max possible score, would yield no bullets at all. No spell card scores, invincible boss, etc. The boss just won't let you get a single point from her. But then if you are going really badly, then you get some score from the boss to help you on your way.
1cc Easy: DDC (all) | 1cc Normal: UFO (SanA autobomb),  DDC (ReiA, SakA) , LoLK (Sanae PD)| EX clears: DDC (MarB Ultra) | Puzzle Games: StB: 10-X, DS: Hatate unlock, ISC: All clear

cuc

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So, here's a bit farfetched theory. The story of TH16 will allude to the story of Momotaro.

  • Nemuno represents the monkey, because a hag looks human, and human is somewhat closely related to a monkey
Also associated with Kintaro, another oni-slaying child hero with miraculous birth.

DDC also based its central character on a hero of children's tales (LoLK was a Very Special Episode and a pattern breaker like EoSD and SA), so this theory is not farfetched by any means. All we need is to somehow hybridize it with another story that connects it to astronomy and the seasons (lol that's da hard part).
« Last Edit: June 05, 2017, 03:35:23 AM by cuc »
Touhou Fantasy News: twitter

What was DDC cross-legended with? I didn't realize it was anything other than Issun boshi...

Spoiler:
legended
[/s]
My name is Tres. It sounds like "Tray". Tressert is "Tray-zurt"; like Tres dessert.
I've cleared every touhou game on Lunatic, and beaten every extra except SoEW.
NMNB: MoF Hard, SA Extra, UFO Extra

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The motivator for DDC was the tsukomogami-fication of tools and the attempted rise of weakling youkai. That was then planted into Issun-Boushi and the amanojaku. Point here is that these were connected by the flipping of the weak; you'd need something to connect the seasons to Momotaro.

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Oh, I misunderstood. I thought they were saying DDC featured another legend that was fused with Issun Boshi a la Mikaboshi being crossed with Lucifer in TLC. I get you now.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2017, 03:56:51 AM by TresserT »
My name is Tres. It sounds like "Tray". Tressert is "Tray-zurt"; like Tres dessert.
I've cleared every touhou game on Lunatic, and beaten every extra except SoEW.
NMNB: MoF Hard, SA Extra, UFO Extra

DDC also based its central character on a hero of children's tales (LoLK was a Very Special Episode and a pattern breaker like EoSD and SA), so this theory is not farfetched by any means. All we need is to somehow hybridize it with another story that connects it to astronomy and the seasons (lol that's da hard part).
The farfetched bit is connecting the three bosses to Momotaro's companions.

Also consider that DDC has no hints to Issun-Boushi at all, except maybe the "Kishinjou" part. We were expecting more "Japanese youkai with Western counterparts".

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Also associated with Kintaro, another oni-slaying child hero with miraculous birth.
Hmm, Kintaro later became one of the retainers of Minamoto no Yorimasa, who with the other retainers destroyed the gang of Shuten-douji.

Now I want Nemuno to appear in WaHH and interact with Suika/Yuugi/Kasen.

cuc

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What was DDC cross-legended with? I didn't realize it was anything other than Issun boshi...
Actually that's what I meant. This was another find by Itsuari (FiveAnts), The Touhou Fan Who Gets the Most Things Right(tm).

The in-game plot of DDC appears inspired by one particular tale about Ishino Houden, "the Stone Treasure Hall", a rock carved to a near-cubic shape about 6 meters on each side, seemingly meant to be a house with a pyramid-shaped top, but unfinished and lying on its side - although to our modern eyes, it may look more like a CRT television.

In the version relevant to DDC, two gods, Ōkuninushi (=Ōnamuchi in the linked page above; intentionally but erroneously rendered "Daikoku" in the SSiB English translation) and his diminutive mentor-sidekick Sukuna-bikona tasked an amanojaku with building a stone hall over one night. As roosters crowed to the coming dawn, the amanojaku fled the site, leaving the palace incomplete and well, incorrectly oriented.

The clue that confirms the connection is in the long interview for DDC: ZUN mentioned the original plan for DDC's final boss to be a team of one giant and one dwarf, which mirror the two gods in the legend.


EDIT: Byyyy the way, as far as speculation goes, I slightly favor the legend of Tanabata and Weaver Princess myself.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2017, 09:37:27 AM by cuc »
Touhou Fantasy News: twitter

Scenario: Yuuka is an extra stage midboss

EDIT: Byyyy the way, as far as speculation goes, I slightly favor the legend of Tanabata and Weaver Princess myself.

I was actually thinking a lot about Tanabata myself too, especially since it's all about stars. 

Curiously the popular Fangame Book of Star Mythology's plot also revolves around it, so it'd be even more curious to see ZUN's take on it!

HistoryoftheMoon

EDIT: Byyyy the way, as far as speculation goes, I slightly favor the legend of Tanabata and Weaver Princess myself.
Oooh, that looks promising. It's got the star... Just not the "hidden."

As for how to incorporate seasons... The two lovers could enlist someone with power over seasons to make people unsure of the date so that they can see each other more often.

Also, the 7th day of the 7th month would end up somewhere in midsummer, which is when HSiFS takes place.

cuc

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Forgot to dump my general opinions, so here they are:

1. DDC was unprecedented in that the demo gave us absolutely no clue about what to expect in the second half. We were never told anything about the existence of storm or castle until the official DDC website went up.

HSiFS has a different problem: we know Stage 4 will take place in the Magic Forest, but still don't have enough information to know where we are headed. Touhou's 4th stages are always a long corridor gauntlet inside or leading towards the final enemy bastion, and we have no prior knowledge of such a thing being there. Perhaps we will be told that some structure has either always existed in the forest or newly sprung up, or we will see a portal (doesn't have to literally be one) at the end of Stage 4 that accomplishes the transition from Magic Forest to the bastion.

Unless of course, the last two stages will return to the sky directly above Gensokyo.

2. You know how the four seasons correspond to four of the five Chinese elements? What about the remaining central element, Earth?

To some pre-BC Chinese scholars, the answer was obvious: they knew of a fifth season in the middle of the year, the Long Summer (often translated "Late Summer"), roughly equivalent to "dog days" in Western culture. This must be the season of Earth.

However, some later medical theorists were not content, since there's no avoiding the fact this Long Summer is barely a month long, while also taking away a part of summer or autumn proper. Thus a more advanced theory was developed to balance all five elements: now the last 18 days in EACH of the four seasons belong to Earth, called 土用 ("For Earth").

The concept has come to be far more popular in Japan (seriously, I doubt one in 10,000 Chinese has ever heard of the term), though in Japan, 土用 doyou generally only refers to the summer one, turning it into the Japanese word for dog days. In other words, we have come full circle. If you read wiki translations, you can see it in Patchouli's Earth-elemented fighting game skill, "Doyou Spear" (mistranslated into "Dew Spear" in the old patches).

TL;DR: Neat background knowledge: the hot late summer days can be considered a fifth season.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2017, 08:51:42 AM by cuc »
Touhou Fantasy News: twitter

I have to disagree with a bit of that- DDC was by no means the first game where the demo gives us no clues. In fact, I'd go as far to say that we get 0 or very few clues from the demo more often than not.

I guess I can kind of sort of see where you're coming from... even though we didn't get anything about makai or buddhists from the UFO demo (which was the "main point" of the second half), we still could pretty much tell that stage 4 would be on the ship, whereas with DDC we had no idea whatsoever what places we'd see in the second half. Though even then, I'd argue that PCB, IN, and TD all gave us no indication either.

My point being, trying to find the plot of the game from the demo has always been wild guessing. DDC was correctly guessed once the jewel case was released, but that was a bit of a special situation due to Sukuna's unusual appearance.
My name is Tres. It sounds like "Tray". Tressert is "Tray-zurt"; like Tres dessert.
I've cleared every touhou game on Lunatic, and beaten every extra except SoEW.
NMNB: MoF Hard, SA Extra, UFO Extra

HSiFS has a different problem: we know Stage 4 will take place in the Magic Forest, but still don't have enough information to know where we are headed. Touhou's 4th stages are always a long corridor gauntlet inside or leading towards the final enemy bastion, and we have no prior knowledge of such a thing being there. Perhaps we will be told that some structure has either always existed in the forest or newly sprung up, or we will see a portal (doesn't have to literally be one) at the end of Stage 4 that accomplishes the transition from Magic Forest to the bastion.
Stage 5 will be Marisa's House, distorted by whatever magic artifact Marisa collected but forgot about. Final boss is the tsukumogami of said artifact :v

Joking aside, this is the first time we actually go to Hakurei Shrine and Forest of Magic in the Windows shooting games, huh.

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The hot late summer days can be considered a fifth season. This has a decent chance to be relevant.
Maybe the fourth stage will be the late summer days instead. If we look at the cycle of destruction on the elements: Fire (summer) destroys Metal. Metal (autumn) destroys Wood. Wood (spring) destroys Earth.

It fits with the progression of the stages.

DDC demo was a huge pile of Castlevania refs and my entire JP feed exploded with jokes about it the instant the announcement for the demo went up. (And Yugioh in the music room.) Considering we got an inverted castle I'm absolutely certain the references were on purpose.

he named it Kishinjou (Kishin's Castle) for crying out loud it was right there in the name

edit: i mean, this video was from before the demo even came out
« Last Edit: June 06, 2017, 02:56:02 AM by mauve »

cuc

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My bad. I meant "where the second half is set", or more strictly "any dialogue about your next destination". This is all about plot momentum and player motivation, nothing to do with backstory or theme at all. We generally get that at the end of Stage 3. It is the most tenuous in IN, which only has Keine giving a direction meaningless to you the player, but in all six routes of DDC you didn't even see that.

On story predictions:

DDC demo:
We'd just freshly come off Touhou Shinkirou, where not only is the "mirage tower" purely metaphorical, it only appeared three times in the dialogue, in addition to obliquely referenced through the stage title "The Tragedy of Fata Morgana". It also happened on the heels of a notoriously unpredictable roster reveal. There was reason to feel trepidation when faced with yet another building-themed name; the lack of hints in the demo added to the uncertainty.

IN:
The demo offered little on backstory and theme, but once the cover was revealed, Kaguya would have the easiest to read silhouette. On the topic of silhouettes, ZUN said in last week's Nikenme Radio stream: "everybody seemed to have predicted it's Kaguya-hime, which was appropriate given it was the trilogy finale."

TD demo:
Of all games, TD keeps its cards under wraps the least. You start off with Yuyuko, the single wisest Touhou character laying out the entire theme of the story before you ("the people's desires make past heroes into gods"). A Japanese blogger was able to guess Prince Shoutoku based on the title reveal alone. They then found ample support in the demo: what Yuyuko said, the suggestion of a religious war, the "Grand Mausoleum" Daishi-byou / "Mausoleum of the Crown Prince" Taishi-byou pun...

If we look at the cycle of destruction on the elements: Fire (summer) destroys Metal. Metal (autumn) destroys Wood. Wood (spring) destroys Earth.

It fits with the progression of the stages.
Yes, a sultry Stage 4 before the wintry Forest of Magic. Itsuari also suggested this possibility.
« Last Edit: July 03, 2017, 06:35:07 AM by cuc »
Touhou Fantasy News: twitter

Now having the forest of magic as stage 5 would be pretty weird and unprecedented. I don't think we've ever had a game where the "new location" was revealed in stage 6. It'd be pretty odd to have stages 1-5 be various known locations around Gensokyo then have stage 6 be somewhere completely new.

I can't imagine ZUN wouldn't introduce a new location either; the only games that didn't introduce a new place in the end game were UFO and LoLK, both of which were special cases and both of which introduced a new place in the demo (which HSiFS hasn't).
My name is Tres. It sounds like "Tray". Tressert is "Tray-zurt"; like Tres dessert.
I've cleared every touhou game on Lunatic, and beaten every extra except SoEW.
NMNB: MoF Hard, SA Extra, UFO Extra

cuc

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the only games that didn't introduce a new place in the end game were UFO and LoLK, both of which were special cases and both of which introduced a new place in the demo (which HSiFS hasn't).
From another perspective, Makai was new to Windows games, and the moon was new to games, period. The HSiFS demo also has a somewhat new stage: the Hakurei Shrine, which has not served as a shooting game backdrop since SoEW. It's not very exciting, but it is a thing.

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I don't think we've ever had a game where the "new location" was revealed in stage 6. It'd be pretty odd to have stages 1-5 be various known locations around Gensokyo then have stage 6 be somewhere completely new.
Agreed and agreed. Even Stage 4 being this close to home (the Forest of Magic was featured in GFW, in addition to being one of the most thoroughly explored locations in the manga) is unprecedented. This is why I find the topic interesting in the first place.
Touhou Fantasy News: twitter

i feel like the thing with DDC was that the entire game's setting concept started as a joke and he worked backwards from there. first three bosses a merman, dullahan, and werewolf? naming the game kishin's castle? an inverted castle? i mean...

but while the theming was all really obvious Castlevania jokes, the story was focused entirely on the tsukumogami. which is barely mentioned in the demo outside of the player's weapons, at character select.

he does this pattern a lot, tbh; game theming is generally separated from the game's core story.

PCB: theme was seasons, real story was the cherry blossom trees (core game mechanic)
IN: theme was a false moon, real story was those who came from the moon (mentioned in the intro)
MoF: theme was a mountain in fall, real story was gods (the first three bosses before nitori being gods)
SA: theme was a trip underground, real story was the geyser (again, mentioned in the intro)

etc etc. this goes on. always misdirection, with not much mention given to the real.

so if you want my opinion: the four seasons are absolutely a red herring, as the main theme has been so in every game so far has been.

my bet? it's not the four seasons part that's important, it's the hidden star part.

celestials up to no good, clearly. except more likely celestial bodies, given the game's title.

finding this god to be a fairly plausible reference, tbh
« Last Edit: June 06, 2017, 07:56:54 AM by mauve »

Considering the trend following the past few games where ZUN uses one game's plot as fuel for another's (The whole religious arc, or the Lunarian invasion's shenanigans), part of me wonders if something from LoLK or ULiL/AoCF will be what ultimately prompted HSiFS's plot.

The only far-fetched relation-and-theory I can come up with of would have something to do with Hecatia's 'arrival' at Gensokyo prompting another western god to show up?  Not that I can think of any western deity which could relate with the incident (or a Jade Scepter/Hidden Star for the most part). 

While it's pretty obvious it isn't ZUN's MO to consult much of Western Mythology for his games, since Heca's shown up on LoLK there's always the possibility of him trying to expand his horizons once again, eh?

That radio tower from Oriental Sacred Palace is in the Forest of Magic, right? If the fairies actually finished doing what they were doing, it'd be a sacred place in the Forest of Magic. Maybe that could have something to do with something.

Considering the trend following the past few games where ZUN uses one game's plot as fuel for another's (The whole religious arc, or the Lunarian invasion's shenanigans), part of me wonders if something from LoLK or ULiL/AoCF will be what ultimately prompted HSiFS's plot.

The only far-fetched relation-and-theory I can come up with of would have something to do with Hecatia's 'arrival' at Gensokyo prompting another western god to show up?  Not that I can think of any western deity which could relate with the incident (or a Jade Scepter/Hidden Star for the most part). 

While it's pretty obvious it isn't ZUN's MO to consult much of Western Mythology for his games, since Heca's shown up on LoLK there's always the possibility of him trying to expand his horizons once again, eh?

It would be nice to see ZUN connect HSiFS to LoLK since there seems to be an ongoing story arc but who knows with him. And I wouldn't be surprised if in this or a future game we may get at least one more Western Mythological being. Just my own theories.

IIRC he said the ULiL story arc would be ending with AoCF, though that doesn't necessarily mean HSiFS will have nothing to do with LoLK. I also don't have a source so I could just be remembering wrong.
My name is Tres. It sounds like "Tray". Tressert is "Tray-zurt"; like Tres dessert.
I've cleared every touhou game on Lunatic, and beaten every extra except SoEW.
NMNB: MoF Hard, SA Extra, UFO Extra

HistoryoftheMoon

As for Western Mythological Beings(TM), I think that the Stage 4 boss could be a Celestial/Hermit/Heaven-person/whatever who represents the constellation Orion. Orion because it's a well-known constellation, and it's a winter one, which corresponds with the Forest of Magic being all wintry. The midboss could be a rabbit or dog representing the constellations of Canis or Lepus respectively. Idk, probably not likely, so it's just an idea.

As for stages 5 and 6, I think they're going to be the tsukumogami of the Jade Scepter and the Dragon God (or an avatar of the big DG), regardless of who the stage 4 boss is.

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Yes, a sultry Stage 4 before the wintry Forest of Magic. Itsuari also suggested this possibility.
A bit late, but I think the 5th season could be a better fit for extra stage : considering that the 4 usual seasons are already used for difficulty (ie : winter / lunatic) and that extra stages usually have some sort of fancy but thematically relevant difficulty name, I think midsummer  would work pretty well for extra, even moreso since the actual season they're supposed to be in is midsummer (assuming we don?t go the LoLK route and the season issue gets fixed by the end of the main storyline). Extra could be like "damp midsummer" or something like that.

TheTeff007

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If the incident is fixed by the end of the main game, the extra stage could take place in either the current season or a place where the effect of the seasons doesn't reach. On the other hand, if the extra boss is the culprit,maybe the stage will cycle in seasons. Wouldn't be the first time ZUN makes changes to the stage (IN Stage 6, MoF Stage 4, UFO stage 3 technically)
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