Rule of Rose Mysteries

See the YouTube video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGmZDvOUbl0

See Octopus-Jennifer pet Crab-Brown.
See the location of the October Ticket (required to unlock the costume set).
See a tuna used to slay imps!

See this YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlZ0DnOuwqE

See this YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS5_Wz54-vU.

Players of Rule of Rose have long complained about not being able to pet Brown, or complained that they only achieved it one time but not ever again.

This is the method that I developed to be able to repeatably pet Brown.

Summary of the method: Use the “O” button to call Brown and use the “O” button to attempt to pet Brown. Always call Brown to Jennifer in order to make the computer align Jennifer and Brown. Don’t bother trying to align Jennifer and Brown manually by moving Jennifer to Brown. If the petting behavior doesn’t occur after two or three presses of “O” in a particular alignment of Jennifer and Brown, move to another position, create another alignment by calling Brown, and try again.

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In the “Bird of Happiness” chapter, when Jennifer has Brown follow the scent of the red feather, the path that Brown takes is marked, at first, by drawings of a red bird. These drawings have been made on corridor walls as if to represent the red bird flying down these corridors. It might be that there is the idea being conveyed that Jennifer is following the flying red bird.

Along the way, Jennifer can encounter Eleanor searching for the red bird. See my previous blog post: Eleanor in the Sector 9 Turbine Area During the “Bird of Happiness” .

Brown eventually comes to a halt shortly after entering the 3rd Passenger Corridor, where a trail of fallen, and falling, red feathers begins.

Is it a coincidence that the place in the corridor where Brown halts and barks is in the vicinity of the door to the Women’s Lavatory, and the end of the trail of feathers will also be a Women’s Lavatory?

The trail of feathers is made up of feathers too large to belong to the red bird, and there are far too many on the floor, and falling from above, to belong to any single bird.

What does it mean that the feathers are continuously falling from above? The impression I get is that it means that whatever happened to the red bird was very recent… the feathers haven’t even had sufficient time to have all hit the floor yet.

Jennifer can follow these feathers up the stairs, through the one-leaf clover door, into the 2nd passenger corridor, and to the door of a Women’s Lavatory.

Once inside the Women’s Lavatory the trail of feathers is much different. More realistic.

The feathers are now small enough to have come from the red bird. And there are only just a few feathers, not so many feathers that they couldn’t have come from a single bird. And there are some dark red drops along the path that look like blood that has dripped down to the floor.

I get the impression from this scene that the previous trail of over-sized and over-many feathers was a dream exaggeration of this trail that we see now, this trail of feathers being the truer and more realistic memory upon which the dream-exaggerated trail was built. (Yes, I know that we will learn in the “Once Upon A Time” chapter that the red bird was a doll and not a living bird… nonetheless, the impression given by this scene—in my opinion—is that we have transitioned from a fantasy exaggeration of a memory to a true—or truer—memory).
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Don’t neglect to notice that the category for this blog-post is “humor”. This isn’t a serious theory!

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In the “dog ending” of Silent Hill 2, we learn that it was the dog who was secretly controlling Silent Hill and making all of the bad things happen.

See the YouTube video of the “dog ending” of Silent Hill 2.

Could it be that this can give us a blazing insight into the true solution of Rule of Rose’s mysteries?

Jennifer found a stray dog and named it Brown. A stray dog!   Think about it.  Brown is actually the only character in the game that is truly a stray dog!

A chalk drawing on the the outside of the orphanage has the caption: “Stray Dog gives us sweets.” How did Jennifer obtain sweets throughout the course of the game? Brown led Jennifer to the sweets, that’s how!

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The first scene of “The Gingerbread House” chapter begins with Gregory standing next to Jennifer, who is lying on the ground. They are in the rose garden. Gregory is gazing down at Jennifer. The scene darkens to black.

The scene re-appears and Gregory walks away as Jennifer awakens. He makes a low sound in his throat, of which it is hard to interpret the meaning, but it seems to be a satisfied or approving sort of sound. Perhaps, seeing that Jennifer is awakening, he is satisfied that she is O.K. I get the impression, from the darkening to black interruption of the scene, that we are to recognize that Gregory stood over her for an extended period of time watching over Jennifer until she awakened.

Jennifer stands.

Narrator:

When the unlucky girl awoke, she was in a rose garden. The place was strange, but familiar. Looking around, the girl noticed that her faithful companion was missing. The lonely, unlucky girl became very sad…

The statement by the narrator, “her faithful companion was missing,” relates the dream-plot to Jennifer’s forgotten (“the place was strange, but familiar”) past. Brown had been with Jennifer on the dream-airship. Gregory grabbed Jennifer from the dream-airship and brought her to the rose garden. But now—according to the chapter date—it is June 1929. At that time, in Jennifer’s forgotten past, Jennifer had not yet found Brown. Indeed, Brown would, almost certainly, not have been born yet.

In the dream, Gregory watches over Jennifer until she awakened, and then, satisfied that she was O.K., left her in the rose garden. Could Jennifer have arrived at Gregory’s house in exactly the same way during her forgotten past?  Had Gregory, at that time (i.e. in “real life”), watched over Jennifer until she awakened, and then, satisfied that she was O.K., left her in the rose garden? Read the rest of this entry »

The “Once Upon A Time” chapter is a very important chapter for our understanding of Rule of Rose.  In this series of blog-posts I will offer my description and analysis of the sounds and voices of the “Once Upon A Time” chapter.

I would characterize the music (solo piano) of the “Once Upon A Time” chapter as sweet and nostalgic.  This is admittedly subjective opinion. If it affects you differently, feel free to post a comment about it.

No voices are ever heard in any of the rooms of the mansion or in the very tiny hallways (such as the one connecting the filth room with the 2nd floor lavatory).  And no voices are ever heard anywhere in the basement.  Voices are only heard in the major hallways and stairways.

In the various rooms we only hear the songs of birds from outside, except in the lavatories where some water drip noises are heard as well.

All of the voices heard inside of the mansion are disembodied voices (that is, no person associated with a voice is ever seen by us).  We hear:

—Children giggling and laughing.

—Children making animal noises:  a goat bleat, pig snorting, a roar (?). [I would guess that the goat bleats are made by Nicholas and the pig snorts are made by Xavier, as they are the boys associated with those animals.]

—A teasing sound is repeated good-naturedly in different ways and by different voices.  [How can I describe it in words?  Do you understand what I mean if I say that the voices use the tones of "Na na nana na" but don't use the "n"s?]

—Jennifer’s name is sometimes whispered, some times called out.  Various voices do this, including Mr. Hoffman’s voice (gently and good-naturedly).

Never do any of voices the seem (in my opinion) to be in the least bit hostile or threatening.

Are there any voices in the mansion that you recognize?

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Bird songs are heard louder outside than inside the mansion, naturally.

In the front yard, a burst of wind can be heard to blow away Wendy’s hat.

Press “x” three times at the front gate of the orphanage, once it has closed, to hear Wendy speak the following:

“Jennifer?  Where are you going?  Please?  Don’t leave me.“

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The theory that Brown was actually just a doll and not a living breathing dog is actually quite an old old theory. It may even date back as far as the Gamespot/GameFAQs forum in the days before the English language version of Rule of Rose existed, and all of us on that forum theorized about the game without understanding any of the written text whatsoever. In fact, the theory is so old that I can’t even remember if I myself was the first to think of the theory. But I am fairly confident, at any rate, that I was one of the first (one of the very very few, actually, if there were any others at all) to really try to build a case for it in those days.

You can look at this theory as a blast from the past, or as an alternate Rule of Rose that might have been. The story of Rule of Rose is, in many ways, sort of like clouds that one can gaze at in the sky and imagine as castles or giraffes… theorizing “out-of-the-box” can be fun.

So, for the rest of this blog-post I will set aside negative thinking about this theory and do my best to make a positive case for it. Then we will see how well it holds up. Whether or not it is “true”, I think it makes for an interesting story.

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In the “Once Upon A Time” chapter, Jennifer tells us (in the library by a white goat doll):

“It’s a stuffed goat… The white goat Mary. The black goat Sally.

The goats Mary and Sally, that we see as living goats in the airship chapters, were actually dolls in Jennifer’s true past.

Jennifer also tells us, in the “Once Upon A Time” chapter (on the balcony by the birdcage):

“The red bird in the cage… The doll Eleanor treasured.

Eleanor’s red bird was also a doll, but we see it as a living bird during the airship chapters.

Given that we’ve seen these dolls as living animals during the game, how do we know that Brown is not also a dog doll that we see as a living dog?

Consider these similarities among the red bird, the goats Mary and Sally, and Jennifer’s dog-friend Brown:

—The red bird is shown to us as having been killed at the end of the “Bird of Happiness” chapter (July 1930), but we can see it alive again later in time in the “Rag Princess Sews” chapter (October 1930).

—We see Mary having been killed, stuffed, and placed inside of a grandfather clock in the “Goat Sisters” chapter (September 1930), but we can see Mary and Sally alive and well in a livestock area later in time in the “Rag Princess Sews” chapter (October 1930).

—Brown has been understood to have been killed in “The Funeral” chapter (November 1930). But he will be seen alive again at the end of the “Stray Dog and the Lying Princess” chapter (December 1930), having helped Jennifer, even though the Stray Dog’s massacre of the orphans must have occurred after Brown’s “death”.

Like the red bird, and like Sally the goat, Brown dies and then appears to be alive again later. Could this be because Brown, like the red bird, and like Mary and Sally, was actually a doll and not a flesh-and-blood dog, and he was never really and truly alive at all except in Jennifer’s mind?

Take a look at Brown’s death scene, during the first 35 seconds of this YouTube video: The Death of Brown.

First, what we see is a dead dog, but ultimately, all we see at the end is a destroyed dog doll. Is Jennifer suppressing her memory of seeing her pet dog dead (putting a destroyed dog doll in its place in her mind), or did Jennifer have a flash of reality break through her fantasies and see the truth: a beloved dog doll that had been destroyed. Very soon after this, reality will massively break through and she will see herself as she really was back then, a little girl, not a grown up girl.

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Thomas made two drawings of a skull on the floor of the upstairs hallway near the Sewing Room. One of the drawings is labeled “skeltin” but there is really only a skull drawn there, not a full skeleton.

In the “Once Upon A Time” chapter of Rule of Rose, pressing “x” at the drawing labeled “skeltin” gives the subtitle:

There are doodles everywhere. No matter how many we cleaned, more would show up the next day.

This is yet another example of Jennifer giving a relatively uninformative comment about a significant clue. Jennifer never really ever opens up about the juicy mysteries of her past… the goings-on at Gregory’s house, the disappearances of Martha, Hoffman, and Clara, the sacrificial offerings, the creepy dolls and the blood in the Cell of Bliss, Hoffman’s sexual predation, etc… and this, I believe, is another example of her avoidance of opening up to us about something important.

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Near the end of the Hallway is the door to the Closet Room.

Once inside of the Closet Room, we can see one of the most glaring discrepancies between the structure of the outside of the orphanage mansion and the structure of the inside of the mansion.  From the outside of the mansion, we saw that a window should be here, but inside of the Closet Room there is no window.

One who pays attention to the features of the inside of the Closet Room will find that this room of the orphanage mansion is present in a transformed way in the airship as the Dressing Room and the Four Leaf Clover Room.

The wallpaper is basically identical in the Closet Room (a little bit bluer), the Dressing Room (a little bit grayer), and the Four Leaf Clover Room (a little bit greener).  And each room has red carpeting.

The Dressing Room and the Four Leaf Clover Room have square mirrors, rather than round ones like the Closet Room, but the light fixtures just above the mirrors are identical in all of the rooms.

The chairs with the green padded seats, and wood filigree backs, are identical in each of the rooms.

All three rooms have a high shelf on which boxes are stored, and a high wood trim at the same level where there are no shelves.

On the shelf in each of the rooms one can find two black top hats, two metal boxes with metal handles, and two round red hat boxes.  There are more correspondences among the items on the shelves but I didn’t bother to catalog them.  If anyone wants to add to the list of correspondences, please feel free to do so.

Each of the three rooms contains a violin case and a cello case.

Each of the three rooms has a free-standing metal frame with a bar and hangers for hanging clothes.

There is a table with the same vase of flowers in both the Closet Room and the Dressing Room, but I didn’t see this vase in the Four Leaf Clover Room.

The Four Leaf Clover Room cannot be entered during the first play-through of Rule of Rose.  One can only use the Four leaf Clover Key to enter during a re-play.

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