東方心綺楼 Hopeless Masquerade (TH13.5) - Discussion

[Totaku]

Well I think the first thing we might ask based on the translation of the pre story is... if there is a new character that is invovled.

The person must be responsible for causing the people in the human village to loose thier motivation and hope in the new religions, thus causing everyone among the religion factions to fight for the faith of the people. Since they all seem to not care what's going on.

If this is the case, then what we need to consider to what kind of mythical figure or creature could be responsible for taking away peoples' hopes.

[Hanzo K.]

Well, if we look outside Japanese myth, there's one in particular that stands out.
The story of Pandora's Box. After the box was opened, only one thing remained inside, Hope.
Many series have toyed with the idea that it's only Hope while it remains inside the box.

[BT]

Suika and Tenshi started incidents. This incident is well on its way without any new characters.

[Gpop]

Well, if we look outside Japanese myth, there's one in particular that stands out.
The story of Pandora's Box. After the box was opened, only one thing remained inside, Hope.
Many series have toyed with the idea that it's only Hope while it remains inside the box.

Street Fighter x Tekken?

Oh god no

[violumi]

The terrors found in recurring disasters and unavoidable catastrophes;
they have brought pessimism to the human village.
A gloomy atmosphere swirls about the village.
But it's not a feeling of despair.
It's more like claustrophobia.   
 "Why not?"
No one remembered speaking it, but this voice still made itself heard.
If nothing is going to change, shouldn't we just do whatever we want?
We should just live for the moment.
Little by little the hearts of humans in the village have become uncaring, and they have begun to fall into disorder.

New character who enjoys chaos? Eris

There are those who view the scene from a different perspective; the religious.
They believe that they should seize control of the people who fell into disorder.
Because as well as restoring order, it would be a great opportunity to gather faith at the same time.

The priest who has built a temple in Gensokyo,

Byakuren

the Taoist who abandoned the material world and dreams of immortality,

Miko

and the shrine maiden who seeks rehabilitation.

Reimu

They've all decided; now is their time to take the stage.

Now, with your beliefs as your weapons, battle with appeal and fight over your popularity!

[game2011]

Street Fighter x Tekken?

Oh god no

You do realize that SFxT didn't invent Pandora's Box, right?

The terrors found in recurring disasters and unavoidable catastrophes;
they have brought pessimism to the human village.
A gloomy atmosphere swirls about the village.
But it's not a feeling of despair.
It's more like claustrophobia.   
 "Why not?"
No one remembered speaking it, but this voice still made itself heard.
If nothing is going to change, shouldn't we just do whatever we want?
We should just live for the moment.
Little by little the hearts of humans in the village have become uncaring, and they have begun to fall into disorder.

Yeah, this part does imply new faces.

[Gpop]

You do realize that SFxT didn't invent Pandora's Box, right?

But they used it as their plot device

Pandora mode go

[Tengukami]

The terrors found in recurring disasters and unavoidable catastrophes;
they have brought pessimism to the human village.
A gloomy atmosphere swirls about the village.
But it's not a feeling of despair.
It's more like claustrophobia.   
 "Why not?"
No one remembered speaking it, but this voice still made itself heard.
If nothing is going to change, shouldn't we just do whatever we want?
We should just live for the moment.
Little by little the hearts of humans in the village have become uncaring, and they have begun to fall into disorder.

New character who enjoys chaos? Eris

I don't see how that quote at all implies a new character, but it would be fun if one made an appearance (although I don't count on it!)

[Hinacle]

I thought it was a loud voice so, the first person that came to mind was Kyouko.

[Clarste]

I think a new character is pretty likely. All the previous fighting games other than 12.3 have had their own incidents with a new final boss, so I don't expect this one to be different. And 12.3 was really more of an expansion pack since it didn't have a new battle system or even include all the characters unless you also owned SWR.

I also somewhat doubt it would be based on anything other than Japanese/Chinese mythology. ZUN's been pretty consistently moving away from Western myths and characters. Heck, he hasn't even had any characters with English names since Medicine in PoFV.

[Ikari]

Well, if we look at Ten Desires character I think the most logical character would be Jesus, the actually-a-loli-girl who shoots crosses and thinks Multi-divinities religions are silly.

I'm kidding, but you have to admit that Ten Desires was a ''You thought this historical character was a man? THINK AGAIN!'' party.

[AnonymousPondScum]

Why would that be the case? IAMP had Suika and SWR had the Celestials.

[Agent of the BSoD]

I think a new character is pretty likely. All the previous fighting games other than 12.3 have had their own incidents with a new final boss, so I don't expect this one to be different. And 12.3 was really more of an expansion pack since it didn't have a new battle system or even include all the characters unless you also owned SWR.

Completely agree. This seems to be where it's going. But, time will tell.

[Gpop]

I honestly would PROBABLY expect a game that includes all the previous characters from the last games BUT the HUGE difference here is that it seems the sprites and everything was completely redone, so I dunno if they'd be willing to redo the previous sprites, whereas in SWR/Soku they re-used the sprites from IaMP and just made minor improvements on them.

So in all honesty I'm expecting an entire character select do-over. So I'm expecting more new characters than old.

PS: Also, just noticed the background (shrine level) is REAL 3D, you can tell how the second screenshot there's a different perspective of the shrine compared to the other two.

[Kami-sama!]

I'm calling dibs that Yumemi is gonna butt in, because crosses

[Agent of the BSoD]

I'm calling dibs that Yumemi is gonna butt in, because crosses

Doubt it. ZUN doesn't really believe in the PC-98 era anymore, excluding Yuuka. :V

[Ikari]

Doubt it. ZUN doesn't really believe in the PC-98 era anymore, excluding Yuuka. :V

And Alice. Hell, the poor girl barely escaped, she lost her backstory and race!

I really wonder what the new character will be like... (*if there is one*)

Christian? Muslim? Scientist? Religions seems to be theme so...

[Messiah]

Going by the speculations, if by any chance the game gets many characters into it and if we get Soga as a playable, I wouldn't be surprised if Mokou were there as well, since there is this thing about their clans. (Soga as a protagonist and she encounters Mokou in her storyline).

[Ikari]

Going by the speculations, if by any chance the game gets many characters into it and if we get Soga as a playable, I wouldn't be surprised if Mokou were there as well, since there is this thing about their clans. (Soga as a protagonist and she encounters Mokou in her storyline).

And somehow, that could make up for Mokou's being unavailable in SWR/UNL.

I hope she'll be there then!

[Tengukami]

Going by the speculations, if by any chance the game gets many characters into it and if we get Soga as a playable, I wouldn't be surprised if Mokou were there as well, since there is this thing about their clans. (Soga as a protagonist and she encounters Mokou in her storyline).

That could be interesting, and reminds me that both her and Kaguya were considered for Hisoutensoku, but then scrapped due to being too strong. Maybe they've worked that out since then - who knows? Would love to see them either way.

[Amraphenson]

Well, I'm really more concerned for the game as a fighting game over a touhou game, as you can probably tell. Soku had some major balance issues regarding matchups (Sakuya>Everyone) that I was never fond of and I'm hoping this game will have less of that.

[game2011]

Doubt it. ZUN doesn't really believe in the PC-98 era anymore, excluding Yuuka. :V

Yuuka doesn't seem to get much attention from him anymore.  She only appeared in a single Windows game and then made cameos in two books, that's all.

[Clarste]

Yuuka is about as important as Medicine. Which isn't very important. She seems to have been brought back as a cameo, and may have actually been the point where ZUN decided he didn't care anymore.

[Hakurou Tengu]

Well, here's who I'd think will appear in the game for sure. SPECULATION FUNTIME, GO!

Shintoist (sort of): Reimu, Sanae, Suwako, Kanako
Buddhist: Byakuren, Shou, Ichirin(?)
Taoist: Miko, Futo, Seiga
*Insert what ever else I may be missing here*: Momiji and/or Kyouko PLOX

Reimu & Sanae are a given, and Suwako/Kanako are Goddesses. I chose Shou and Ichirin because they just seem closest to Byakuren, in my eyes. Can't say for sure on Ichirin though. Murasa seems more suited, but... I can't decide. Miko & Futo just seem to make the most sense there, and Seiga seems pretty popular/important  :V

Now, Marisa is in the game, and she's not exactly the religious type, as far as I can tell. Meaning there will likely be others who aren't, but maybe it's just because she's a protagonist. I would also imagine Suika, Iku, and Tenshi appear since they starred in the fighter games (though appeared in Double Spoiler). But with the game revolving around religious danmaku filled warfare, perhaps they won't.

If I don't get my Yuyuko, I will explode.
EDIT: Typos, because I like to rush things~

[Branneg Xy]

I'm curious to see what kind of new mechanics will be implemented seeing as we won't be using spellcards deck anymore . So far graphichs and backgrounds definitely look good  and that "faith/election/approvation meter" seems to hint at an intersting set of gimmicks .On the characters I'm somewhat pondering if we'll see Keine during this incident  because ,although she's not on my list of favourites,it should be interesting to see how she copes with the Human Village being treated like

a piece of meat to be fought over by wolves.

as Kilgamayan wrote in his reply.

[Ikari]

We seriously shouldn't expect characters to appear because they appeared in the past fighting games. While that was true for SWR and Hisoutensoku, that's because the same sprites and attacks were used over and over again. It wasn't hard to transfer them into a new game. That one uses different sprites, gameplay, etc... If anything, I'm expecting a complete change of the usual fighting game cast.

And that view of the human village reminds so much of that tactical Touhou game where the village is pretty much just ''That one base located in the middle''. I think it was called Sengoku...

[Kilgamayan]

Sengoku Gensokyo, yes. There was a good reason why, on the "Very Easy" to "Lunatic" difficulty scale in World mode, the human village's level was "Good Luck".

[Ikari]

Sengoku Gensokyo, yes. There was a good reason why, on the "Very Easy" to "Lunatic" difficulty scale in World mode, the human village's level was "Good Luck".

Reimu: Let's capture the village!
Marisa: Let's not.
Reimu: Why?
Marisa: Look at the surrouding.
Me: Uh? *sees the garden of the sun, the netherworld, the eientei, higan, hell, pretty much everyone* OH GOD DO NOT WANT DO NOT WANT.

I wonder if it'll be like this in Hopeless Masquerade...

[iK]

Going off topic, getting the human village was fine; it's getting attacked right after by 3 armies that's disheartening  :c

And onto the topic of characters again, summons would be a good way to include a larger number of characters in various religious groups without having them constitute a large part of the cast. Not necessarily the same way Sanae's summons work in Soku, but a similar vein of things.

Miko could summon out Futo and Soga for stuff, Yukari could get Chen and Ran, Seiga with a constant Yoshika standby (Think I guess like Carl and Ada?), and either Byakuren could get summons, or Shou with Nazrin, et al.

Not every character would have such assists/standbys, but they could represent a whole cast in a fuller way. Just like Alice has frametrap doll stuff unique to her, and Cirno has the "fast&puny or slow&huge" moves.

Look at me over speculating again. 

[Sonae]

You're only over-speculating things if you're examining the title and prologue word by word to figure out what they mean.

So far, it might be possible Koishi could be involved.
But that's probably just my desires overpowering my reasonable mind.
So yeah, it's probably not Koishi, but it's possible that it's someone with an ability relating to freedom, heart/feeling, etc.