So, if a person would come up to you and ask you what the game is about, since he/she is interested in it, would you be able to tell the person without spoiling parts of the game?

No, I don’t think one can meaningfully or accurately describe the game without spoilers. On forums, in this situation, I usually say that figuring out what the game is about is one of the main things that the game is about.

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Pinkemon asked:

Or would you link them to something like Tv tropes?

TV Tropes is interesting, and they say nice things about my site (and link to it), but I wouldn’t send people there, or to Wikipedia, or to Wikia, etc. to get a sense of whether they might like the game. I guess, if they had never seen the E3 promo (i.e. the pre-game) video, I might suggest that they see if that appeals to them.

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Recently, on the GameFAQs/GameSpot forum, someone asked (with a major emphasis on wanting no spoilers):

If I liked the Silent Hill series and Resident Evil, will I like this? y/n?

I replied:

I don’t think that one can easily generalize that liking any other game will carry over to liking Rule of Rose, because Rule of Rose is so unique.

That said, I think that if you enjoyed Silent Hill 2, that might correlate somewhat with liking Rule of Rose.

Silent Hill 2 has a very psychological (and good) story, and so does Rule of Rose (an extraordinary story for a game, but one that is puzzling and mysterious).

People often trash the gameplay of Rule of Rose, but that is also true of SH2, so if the gameplay shortcomings of SH2 didn’t bother you (they didn’t bother me), then perhaps you will also be forgiving of RoR’s gameplay shortcomings (as I was).

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So, if a person would come up to you and ask you what the game is about, since he/she is interested in it, would you be able to tell the person without spoiling parts of the game? (I know that you just listed some options, but I just wondered if you would actually use it for a person who doesn’t know anything about the game)

What I mean is, I can imagine it to be very hard to tell a person what this game is about without spoiling the fact that Jennifer is actually trying to remember her past, right? Or is that not considered a spoiler?

Or would you link them to something like Tv tropes?

Wow! Quite a lot of interesting material to think about in your comment! And you certainly do have me thinking… and sinking into complexities that may take me a while for me to clarify in my mind.

With your background of complex analysis of such matters, I sincerely hope you’ll take on the challenge of analyzing the story-structure of Rule of Rose further. I’d be very interested to see what you come up with.

I thought I might add in another layer of discussion, since the overall framework of the story is being mentioned and I have some context in other storytelling mediums which might help. For some reason, after finishing the game I got a distinct impression reminiscent of a novel called the Sorrow of War, by Bao Ninh. Quick overview for anyone interested in parallelisms. http://dannyreviews.com/h/The_Sorrow_of_War.html

Suffice it to say, the narrator of the overall story begins to blur with the narrator-protagonist, Kien, who most of the stories focus upon but never definitely state is the writer. He is seen almost burning the written collection of stories within the storyline, invoking multiple meta-narrative problems. Without pulling too deeply into my humanities terms, the story revolves around a frame narration. See the wikipedia entry for a brief summary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_story

There’s an entire tradition of epic stories being told with multiple layers of narration, including some major religious texts such as the Bhagavad Gita (Hindu), multiple sutras (Buddhist), and even the narration given within Abrahamic texts such as the Torah (Moses receives the laws from God), the New Testament (the Apostles as narrators, whether historically accurate or using their names), and the meta-narrative of the Quran being told to Muhammad by the archangel.

Without favoring one side over another, I’m offering an alternative route to finding Jennifer as author of the story as well as a protagonist several layers removed from the story’s genesis.

Please bear with me. Going off an unrelated (but metaphorically appropriate) framework, a human being can be considered a “god” in a given environment or world. They have complete control over all forces within the storyline as the creator and progenitor while taking part in the story as if unbeknownst to their ultimate ontological status. In fact, there might be multiple layers of narration and characterization separating the two versions of the author. One can be consider a role called “the playwright,” wherein all the events, persons, and setting originate even if this creation is completely unsettling or uncontrolled. C.S. Lewis and his group of friends called this theory of “secondary creators,” wherein human beings, created in God’s image, could become creators of their own worlds of fiction. Another convoluted but fun example comes from Hindu worshipers of Vishnu who believe Krishna is his incarnation (avatar) in India but who also view Krishna as the ultimate source of the dreaming-god Vishnu out of whose psyche all existing things come to be. This fits into the “Jennifer is dead and dreaming,” “Jennifer is comatose and dreaming,” and “Jennifer is alive, awake but psychotically living out her surpressed trauma as if dreaming” theories.

This doesn’t limit the “playwright” from having a narrator, in which case it can be someone else entirely different but most often is connected to the “playwright.” A good example of this is Vyasa, the chronicler who compiled all the Vedas (sacred texts) and an epic poem rivaling Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (Mahabharata). His son and pupil, Sanjaya, tells the story of the battle to the blind king Dhritarashtra. This action, in turn, is told about two people on the battlefield, Arjuna and Krishna, who are both protagonists but one (Krishna) who is also the ultimate “playwright.”

So, in terms of decreasing narrative control going to the right, a diagram would look something like this:

Playwright > Narrator 1 (Outer) > Narrator 2 (Inner) >… Narrator X (Inmost) > Protagonist

Where every narrator can be flawed, comment on the story, and also add his or her own embellishments.

Looking at a frame narrative, like Bao Ninh’s novel, the first narrator is given exactly ONE LINE of direct first-person use in the entire 240-page novel. Kien appears in over half the novel, oftentimes drunk, depressed, at least mildly psychotic, and *small spoiler* watching a similar problem to situations in R.O.R. Kien usually appears to be the primary narrator, but this one brief mention of Narrator 1’s eclipses his authorial control while still keeping him as the protagonist. Meanwhile, we can speculate if Narrator 1 is “really” Bao Ninh or his author avatar, but that’s not the point. In the story, he’s the “outer” narrator and the “author” is the Playwright.

With that framework, we can insert a few people into the storyline of R.O.R.

“Playwright” > “Older Male Narrator” > “Younger Narrator” > Jennifer

This is entirely sequential from the opening based solely on voice-acting. We hear Stray Dog/Gregory, whose lines blend and gradually are taken over by “Joshua/Wendy”. We then see Jennifer sitting on the bus.

Now, this is entirely based on experiencing the storyline. Any theoretical framework has to take into account why this approach is given. If first voice is most important, than Gregory seems to have outside control over the story. Yet he’s seen in the Airship and the Gingerbread House as disconnected from the actual events while foreshadowing each month’s events with his storybooks. If he is also the “Playwright,” then he’s actively using meta-narration- meaning he’s also telling a story IN his story.

While this could certainly be the case, other likely events come across as meta-theatrical. If Wendy is in control of the narration, and assuming she is the “Playwright,” she is leading Jennifer to the repressed memories and feelings while simultaneously taking part in those memories as if unaware of her active engagement in facilitating them.

These two approaches fit into some of the existing theories. Jennifer dreaming or dead could be using either of these guises as ghost-story or episodic theater to relive the experiences while still being the one in control. Each “inner” narrator would then be playing to her “outer” narrator.

My question for everyone involved is who has the best evidence for being the outermost narrator? Jennifer, Gregory, or maybe even Wendy?

Wouldn’t that mean that Gregory would know the truth about the things regarding Joshua, seeing as he and his son are in the story? Then…

Perhaps the dream-like aspects of the story really just reflect the psychotic mentality of Gregory, the creator of the story?

…I’m not sure if this would make sense, because if Gregory knows the truth about Joshua, it would mean that he was sane when he created the story, so the dream-like aspects wouldn’t be explained.

Or I dunno, it’s all so grandly confusing. XD @_@

—

Alternatively, would it be a stretch to consider that this is Gregory’s dream about Jennifer, who was possibly important to him somehow?

Like, she was Joshua’s mom. o_o

Kidding on that last bit. XD Since Gregory dies and all. ^^;; But maybe Jennifer was significant to him some other way.

wouldn’t gregory as narrator conflict with your idea of jenifer as the “Unrelaible Narrator”
(Dubious Clues blogpost)

That is an astute and interesting observation.

That might be grounds to favor the idea that Jennifer is dreaming in the mode of being in a story told by Gregory, over the idea that Jennifer is just the protagonist in a story by Gregory (but that Jennifer isn’t dreaming).

In the case of Jennifer dreaming in the mode of being in a story told by Gregory, Gregory is the narrator on one level (because the dream is in the mode of a story told by Gregory), but Jennifer’s mind would be the true author of her own dream, because it is ultimately HER dream formed by HER mind, and so everything in it—including the narration—would be the product of her mind. Therefore the narration, viewed on that deeper level, is actually her narration. Apparent contradiction solved!

For instance, why does he say-”And they all lived happily ever after” in the game over scene?

This reinforces the idea that Jennifer is the protagonist in a story told by Gregory. In the case of the game over scene, Jennifer’s story will have begun with Gregory saying “Once upon a time…” and will have ended with Gregory saying “…and they all lived happily ever after”. Gregory begins and ends the story according to the convention of fairy tale openings and endings.

…why does the game begin in the context of being a story told by gregory

Jennifer could have been remembering gregory telling her the story at the bus stop (OUAT chapter). If that was a real event from her past she would have assoiciated riding the bus she was on in the beginning with the bus stop greg read her the story at. Besides, the game developers put gregs voice in places most likely without much thought to it. For instance, why does he say-”And they all lived happily ever after” in the game over scene?