That picture can be found at Gamespot among the official art, so I would guess it was some sort of concept art from the very early stages of game development, before the characters of the game were established. But I don’t know anything for certain about that picture.

Thanks in advance!

Second, I find it interesting how Jennifer interacts with Wendy and Brown in this chapter. Wendy is left behind, despite her pleading, to be locked away in the orphanage. At the same time, brown is locked away in the shed on the Strange Hill. In fact, though I can’t confirm it, it almost sounds as if she’s locking the shed right whenever she closes it. My immediate thoughts are twofold:

A) Jennifer must leave Wendy behind subconsciously – ‘let her go,’ if you will – in order to move on with her own life.

B) Jennifer is sealing Brown away in a special place within her mind, perhaps so that she’ll never forget him and always be able to ‘revisit’ his memory.

I think I dealt with this topic most directly in my blog-post:
Comparing Endings: “El Orfanato” (“The Orphanage”) and “Rule of Rose” (warning, movie spoilers!)

Unfortunately, that blog-post has some big spoilers about the film “The Orphanage” (“El Orfanato”) that you might want to avoid if you haven’t seen that movie yet.

I’ll reply in stages, as there is so much in your comment.

PaulAsaran wrote:

First of all, in the chapter “Once Upon A Time,” I noticed two things. First, I was interested if anybody’s noted the fact that you can hear the other orphans calling to Jennifer in that chapter. Is this just her memories playing games with her, or is there perhaps a deeper meaning to it?

This has been noted before. See my blog-posts:
The Sounds and Voices of the “Once Upon A Time” Chapter (Part 1): Description
The Sounds and Voices of the “Once Upon A Time” Chapter (Part 2): Analysis
“The Once Upon A Time” Chapter: Happy Sounds, But Disturbing Sights

It is not only orphans that can be heard, but also Mr. Hoffman. And he sounds happy and genuinely affectionate. The orphans sound playful (in a good way) and inclusive of Jennifer (calling out her name in an inviting way). It seems to me that these are either Jennifer’s happiest memories of the orphanage, or these “memories” are wishful thinking on her part.

It might, or might not, be significant that we don’t hear Martha. Why isn’t Martha included?

Nothing wrong with having brought up this topic up here (there are so many of my blog-posts that it isn’t easy to find the most suitable ones), but let’s move further discussion of this part of your (PaulAsaran’s) comment to the comment threads of the above links. In this way, we’ll keep related discussions grouped together (people won’t easily find this discussion if we continue it here, in a Month-iversary post , once the “recent comments” feature doesn’t list it any more).

Now, I haven’t had time to go through all the posts (understandably, I’ve only been visiting for three days), but I wanted to ask some questions that, hopefully, have not already been answered (or, at least, hypothesized at).

First of all, in the chapter “Once Upon A Time,” I noticed two things. First, I was interested if anybody’s noted the fact that you can hear the other orphans calling to Jennifer in that chapter. Is this just her memories playing games with her, or is there perhaps a deeper meaning to it?

Second, I find it interesting how Jennifer interacts with Wendy and Brown in this chapter. Wendy is left behind, despite her pleading, to be locked away in the orphanage. At the same time, brown is locked away in the shed on the Strange Hill. In fact, though I can’t confirm it, it almost sounds as if she’s locking the shed right whenever she closes it. My immediate thoughts are twofold:

A) Jennifer must leave Wendy behind subconsciously – ‘let her go,’ if you will – in order to move on with her own life.

B) Jennifer is sealing Brown away in a special place within her mind, perhaps so that she’ll never forget him and always be able to ‘revisit’ his memory.

These are just the ideas that popped into my head on the spot. I was wondering about what other thought.

I also had a question regarding the origins of Jennifer. Specifically: could it be that Jennifer was born an aristocrat or, at the very least, of an elite family?

This is possible by her very presence on the blimp: as the maiden voyage of Britain’s greatest airship, there’s no question that powerful or wealthy people would be the first to get on board. This leaves a potential opening for Jennifer’s family to have been highborn.

My second reason for suspecting this is due to the repeated references throughout the game of Jennifer skipping her duties. Jennifer openly admitted that she did laundry on a daily basis at the orphanage, and didn’t mind doing so because she liked the results of her work. In every other chore, however, it seems she was the slowpoke, the one who didn’t do much. She’s directly ridiculed in “The Funeral” by Mr. Hoffman for not doing chores ‘like the other children.’

The reason this seems so important to me is thus: if Jennifer was born of a wealthy family, she would potentially have a childhood free of personal responsibility. She certainly wouldn’t have any of the household chores that are required at the orphanage. Then, when she was taken in by Gregory, she was essentially locked away in his basement. She certainly wouldn’t have had much to do in the way of chores and responsibilities when she can’t even get out of her own room. All of this means that when she gets to the orphanage, she has no experience doing such things, for she’s never been required to do them. This would explain why she would skip her duties prior to finding Brown; she’d not really have a clue what she’s doing, and perhaps she avoided the work because of a personal fear that she couldn’t do it. She is a fairly weak-willed girl prior to Wendy’s ousting, after all. Brown himself only perpetuates the issue by giving her something interesting to distract her.

This might also help to explain a little of why the other orphans were so mean to her. Certainly one who skips chores while they’re doing the required work would be worthy of scorn.

I also point to Jennifer’s timid nature throughout most of the game. It could just be her personality, but I look at it from the perspective of one raised in luxury. If Jennifer, as a little girl prior to the crash, was in a wealthy family, there would probably be servants who would be required to obey her (in theory, at least). Suddenly being thrust into an orphanage setting, where she’s suddenly at the bottom of the food chain, could have had a dramatic effect: at this point, she’d have never had anyone say ‘no’ to her, much less give her orders. Perhaps her reaction to this was to simply obey and follow along.

Having the Red Rose Aristocrats already present at the orphanage could facilitate this transition, as well. If Jennifer were from a wealthy family, she’d be very aware of the difference of ‘class,’ and thus being set at the bottom of the Aristocrats chain could have had a very strong impact upon her.

These are all just my thoughts, developed over the past couple of days. If someone else has already brought this up, here’s just a little more for them to use in their defense. For my part, I’m just trying to piece the puzzle together and wanted input.

Wow, this was long. Sorry folks, I’m a long-winded writer. I do hope I’m not overshooting this.

I’ve watched “Whispering Corridors: Wishing Stairs”, but haven’t yet watched “Whispering Corridors: Memento Mori”. Thanks for bringing my attention to its similarity (in some respects) to RoR. I want to check that out.

Unfortunately, the movie, although listed at Netflix, has the notation “availability unknown” given with it when I put it in my queue (I suspect that means they can’t find any of their dvd’s of it), so I’ll have to look for it elsewhere.