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biggie-chcese · 9 months ago

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Ways I Would Change Rain Code Chapter 3, Everyone's Favorite Chapter

(let's join hands and frolic in the fields of missed potential together yayyy yippeee 🐬🌈🫧 <3 spoilers btw. this is another long ass rant/critique so warning for that too)

chapter 3 is pretty infamous for being rain code's weakest chapter but i love this game and want it to be better, so here's some changes i'd make to it. these overhauls are gonna be pretty big in some places but hey! if that's what it takes!

Part 1: The Beginning

gonna start off with saying that makoto's introduction is perfect. i would change nothing about it. he's intriguing, his exchanges with yuma are fantastic, and he lays down some nice lore and foreshadowing. no notes

AS FOR WHEN YUMA LEAVES THAT PENTHOUSE... HOO BOY

i take so much issue with the introduction of the resistance. as hilarious as it is that they kidnap yuma by simply picking him up like a piece of furniture, it just kinda ruins every subsequent interaction he has with them. he has no reason to believe a single word shachi is saying. that man can preach about non-violence all day but that doesn't change the fact that he and his crew kidnapped yuma. and if i were yuma, that would be on my mind the entire time. just from a narrative standpoint, it feels strange for him to put more stock into what the resistance says than makoto, who literally saved his life. meanwhile the resistance kidnaps him, threatens to kill him like three times, and foists a menial task on him. why is he giving them the time of day at all? just lie about taking their request and go look for your friends.

so how would i change this? it's simple: have the resistance give yuma a good first impression

picture this: after leaving makoto's place, yuma returns to where the submarine used to be. he's devastated to not see any trace of his allies and breaks down. this is where he can have his sulking session like he has on that couch after being kidnapped in canon. shinigami teases him while he's down but eventually lifts his spirits when she talks about the detective who left an impression on her. yknow. "i want to eradicate all unsolved mysteries and bring happiness to everyone!" yeah, that guy. you know him. determined to keep going, yuma gets up and decides to search around for his friends. the player has control now and can talk to several NPCs asking about them. the final NPC says to yuma, "All the gunk and trash of Kanai Ward's rivers flow down into Dohya DIstrict. If you're looking for a body, that place is your best bet." that NPC gives yuma directions to dohya district, and the area is unlocked on the map! the player can take yuma there next

when yuma steps into dohya district, he has his initial shocked reaction to the place being completely flooded. it's horrible here, but he presses on, looking around and asking a couple more people if they've seen any bodies. as he's asking around, he sorta forgets that he is a small, frail, vulnerable outsider that looks really easy to rob, and so a couple of thugs come along to remind him of that. they corner him with knives, egging him on to fork up any money he's got (which would be none. yuma's broke ass lmao) and with no other options, yuma cries out for help.

in comes the resistance! i think this is where shachi saves yuma by breaking up the conflict peacefully- quite literally practicing what he preaches (SHOW, DON'T TELL!!!). the thugs leave, and shachi asks yuma if he's okay, inviting him to their hideout in the process. this is where we can have shachi drop the lore about dohya district as they walk there together. the resistance gets introduced, and i would change very little about their introduction! however, i would leave out the parts where they threaten to kill yuma, because yuma needs a reason to trust them. and let's be honest: those scenes do nothing but unnecessarily raise stakes before fizzling out immediately. yuma can still refuse their offer for him to join them because, well, they just met. and it's still a reasonable decision for him to make without the death threats and kidnapping. maybe instead of death threats, the resistance leaders get all riled up and loud, then shachi quiets them down and tells yuma he wants to talk about the issue in private on the roof. yuma can still witness shachi get his gun through the crack in the door.

everything is the same after that, including fubuki's scene because that part is perfect. everything about her in this chapter is perfect. i think she could've had a little bit of her labyrinth development outside of it but oh well. she kinda gets that in ch 4? moving on.

Part 2: Lamp Oil? Rope? Bombs?!

i actually love the bomb threats as a concept- they add a lot of stakes to the game. however, the pacing completely ruins that. yuma wastes too much time in between them in a way that makes the bombs lose all of their urgency. so let's just cut that all out and make them yuma's first priority. let's say yuma has 15-20 minutes reach and disarm each bomb. this gives him no time for lollygagging, and he goes running around the city immediately, trying to dodge all of the peacekeepers. he can even be intercepted by guillaume and dominic at these times and narrowly escape via QTEs and detours. this still gives our culprit at least 45 minutes to enact his plan, which is plenty of time. after disarming the bombs, then yuma can return to the hideout to confront the resistance. there, he finds nobody is there except shachi's corpse, slumped against the couch, with his revolver nestled in his right hand.

shachi's clothes are wet, implying he just came in from outside before shooting himself. the safe that held the gun is wide open. nothing else seems to have been moved around. since there's no evidence of a struggle, perhaps it... truly is a suicide?

"wait that's a pretty big change" you might be thinking. or not. im not psychic. but please consider: this game has enough locked room mysteries in it, and it can survive with one less.

my idea is that this mystery should have at least one more layer of complexity to it because the entire canon mystery hinges only on icardi's escape method... i guess there's also the "suicide or homicide?" part but anyone who has ever engaged with the mystery genre will instantly figure out that shachi is left handed the very second they bring up the gun's irregular design. so why not have a situation where the body is moved? we haven't done anything like that ever since chapter 0.

my other biggest gripe with this mystery is that icardi didn't need to kill shachi at all. he could've just done his robbery and left kanai ward (or, well, tried to) without any hiccups. why kill shachi? why does the game never touch on that? i guess we could go off of icardi hating shachi's ideals but... going out of his way to kill him during his otherwise perfect heist? idk, it seems like a super lukewarm motive for all that.

so why not have shachi get in his way? shachi directly tries to stop icardi by following him in secret and confronts him at the site where he's about to bomb the hydroelectric plant. and that is where shachi dies. i think shachi's true cause of death should be drowning, since it's the best way for icardi to kill him. and how does icardi do it? well, he threatens to drown servan first. in shachi's attempt to rescue servan, icardi gets the upper hand. icardi then transports his body back to dohya via the waterways to keep anyone off his trail. he then frames it like a suicide by shooting the corpse in the head. there, he plants the gun, cleans up a bit, and leaves.

there are a number of types of evidence for yuma to deduce this later. maybe shinigami notes that the gunshot wound seems way less bloody than it should be. maybe yuma finds something belonging to shachi near the hydroelectric plant, like his necklace (maybe stuck to a grate or buried in rubble from the explosion?) along with evidence of a huge struggle. also, yuma sees multiple safes floating outside a bank near the plant. also there should be a few more red herrings among the solution keys. yuma will still interrogate margulaw to get the lore on the others, of course

i want yuma to know that shachi was trying to save servan, but i honestly dont know how to make that clear through evidence. maybe servan leaves something behind on purpose?

(yuma can meet kurumi during all this the same way too idc. i don't really think her inclusion in this chapter is necessary but w/e i wont take what little screen time she has from her. poor girl)

in the end, yuma and co get cornered by guillaume and dominic at the hydroelectric plant's bomb ruins instead of a random office, so he can get his final batch of clues right beforehand. then just before dominic crushes him into a small purple stain, he panics and goes into the labyrinth as usual.

Part 3: Down the Rabbit Hole We Go!

just a heads up, i'm changing nothing about fubuki in this labyrinth. fubuki and her interactions with shinigami are the best damn part of it, so imagine it's still there under this new format. anyway.

now i get it- this mystery still hinges on icardi's abilities. im not a mystery writer, so just imagine a lot of this stuff is more subtle than it is presented here.

let's frame it like this: the mystery casts a lot of doubt on shachi at first. from the evidence, yuma's initial assumption is that shachi did the hydroelectric bombing to send a message to the rich, then returned to his hideout and ended his own life.

as we go through the labyrinth, we first deduce that the bombs were all a diversion to keep yuma and the peacekeepers away. after that, we learn about shachi being left handed, then we deduce that this had to be a homicide. after that, we try to figure out shachi's actions before he died, eventually coming to the conclusion that he was present at the bombing of the hydroelectric plant, but if it was a homocide, someone else maybe tried to stop him. from here, we look back at how his body was discovered and figure out that his real cause of death was drowning. yuma then points the finger at icardi due to his swimming ability, and we take down his arguments accusing the others as usual.

after this, we find out his motive through actual RDM matches with his phantom instead of just mentioning it at the end of the labyrinth. through his motive, we learn more about how shachi's body was transported through the waterways and shot post-mortem at the hideout. then we can finally go to GOD shinigami mode, where icardi tries to say "this is what shachi wanted! he started the bombings and i tried to stop him. he realized the error in his ways and asked me to kill him!" but yuma counters that with the evidence servan left behind, saying that shachi has shown to be nothing but a man of peace, even til the very end.

when it's over, icardi says he hates this city and wanted to leave, but yuma scolds him on his selfishness, in how many people he endangered and how he killed a man who wanted to do some good for this world, all for money. pissed, he finishes icardi off with a silly little comic book

Part 4: Oh Yeah What About Guillaume and Dominic

imma be real with yall i do not like these two. they're just lame ass antagonists man. and maybe it's the black in me talkin but im not a fan of the dynamic where dominic, one of two characters in the entire game that's darker than a sheet of paper, is a big dumb brute whose likes include "sleeping lazily" and dislikes include "thinking," is completely loyal to this ambiguously pale little girl. i dont think guillaume herself is racist- she treats him exactly the same as her other underlings. actually she strikes me as one of those "im not racist! i hate everyone! ^w^" kinds of people and she actually means it. it's still pretty obnoxious though. sorry guillaume likers.

i'm also not even gonna accuse kodaka and the dev team of racism or colorism (though i could say something about how nearly all of the darker skinned characters in danganronpa such as akane, aoi, and yasuhiro are all portrayed as the Stupid Ones™ or the butt of a joke like daisaku from DR3 who happens to be the ultimate... farmer... ok. ok that's fine. whatever. the sole exception is sakura, an excellent character... whose appearance is still treated like a joke. also i will not complain about servan's afro + donut lips combo. i will not. do you see how all these little things build up to leaving a bad taste in my mouth? anyway im getting sidetracked). so i'll say it could just be chalked up to ignorance. either way, i think one simple fix to this is to let dominic talk... in the mystery labyrinth

a really fun payoff to his dynamic with guillaume is to simply have them swap their roles in the labyrinth. there, dominic does all of the yapping, showing he was actually paying attention to the case the whole time in the real world, and guillaume is on the sidelines occasionally making red text appear by calling yuma a little f- er- maggot. it still retains their running joke, but gives it a more memorable punchline imo. it doesn't really get rid of the weird undertones but i think it adds something to dominic that's sorely needed by showing him as smarter than he comes off as.

Part 5: The Ending

now my biggest change i'd make to this ending is making yuma recognize that he killed icardi for no reason. he... sorta does it in canon? but he's more worried about the fact that he killed icardi at all and not his trend of having a way too eager trigger finger when it comes to the labyrinth. and he hardly even hesitated either. he was so angry with icardi for killing a good man like shachi for his own selfish reasons that he mercilessly killed him for it. and i want yuma to acknowledge that more. i want him to reflect on how his tendency to just use the labyrinth the moment he feels like he's in danger is a terrible thing. please. please i want more reflection on this.

i wont change much else. however, when makoto replaces their submarine, i want there to be some consequence: all of their notes are gone. the inside of the sub is clean. the scent of yakou's cigarettes is gone. the furniture is the same, but it's all brand new. it's unsettling, but the NDA graciously accepts their new gift.

idk how much strain that'd put on the team that modeled the sub's interior, but i think it's worth it. the game needs some concept of change and consequence to it. make chapter 3 matter.

that's really all i have to say. thanks for reading!

#rain code #mdarc #raincode #master detective archives: rain code #mdarc spoilers #rain code spoilers #video game analysis #i thought about adding to the ending a part where halara and desuhiko start to suspect yuma of killing culprits #but that kinda requires adding more shit to other chapters #which is TOO much work lmao #biggie's rain code ramblings

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sofieflee · 4 months ago

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This post contains spoilers for the final Chapter of Raincode.

This is my idea for what Yuma looked like pre-canon. It is based on my headcanons for him and his backstory.

Now Yumas age during the game isn’t really revealed to us. But since the game really pushes both Kurumi (who I’m assuming is at least 18 since she’s in her final year) and Shinigami as love interests, I’m choosing to believe he’s 18~19. Because if he’s not, either he or Shinigami has to be a creep interested in teenagers. (Personally I’m not all that big of a fan of either ship but that’s irrelevant).

Now Homunculi stop aging once they’ve reached maturity, so Makoto can be the exact same age as Yuma (physically I mean). He was created 3 years before canon, so if he was created when Yuma was let’s say 15, they would both have grown into 18 year olds during the games events.

All this to explain that I suspect Yuma was a child when he started his career at the WDO. As I mentioned he’s probably not older than 20 (I think). But I think him joining the WDO, finishing his training, being a detective AND actually being number one in only 2 years time would be a little too crazy.

My theory is that he developed his forte at a young age (between like 8-10) and the WDO heard about that and took interest. Something like Yuma meeting a master detective and accidentally copying his forte, said detective then informing the WDO. We know that the Unified government has authority over the WDO and since they cloned him, they clearly have an interest in number one.

No information about number one can be known by the rest of the world, so they either paid off Yumas family or he never had any to begin with (they also could have killed his family but I think this is unlikely). I’m leaning more towards the orphan idea, since that would be most convenient story wise. Also, post-canon him doesn’t seem to make any moves to meet his family (tbf we only see him for a bit then but it’s all I’ve got).

This would make him the ideal number one for the WDO, he would already have a forte and it would be easy to make him disappear from people’s lives. If he then also demonstrates a superior level of intelligence he would literally make the perfect number one.

Granted, these things don’t have to all be correct for him be number one. This is just my theory for the how and why he did become number one. And this is the theory that is present in my work that has either pre or post-canon Yuma (none of which I’ve finished, my bad).

Now for my actual designs

I don’t want to ramble much longer so I’ll keep it short.

- For tiny Yuma, I liked the idea of Yuma having Marie-Antoinette-syndrome (alopecia areata diffuse). This is a condition that turns the hair gray prematurely. Now it is often assumed that stress plays a role in the condition. So I thought the changing of Yumas hair color throughout his career would be a good story telling tool to demonstrate how this job has psychologically aged him. It could also physically demonstrate the stress of the job and in a way explain the mental state that caused him to fail to stop the actions that led to what happened to Kanai Ward.

-Number one, he got his outfit from the fake number one excluding the sunglasses and that yellow shawl. I based his hair off of that of Izuru Kamakura. It is also meant to accentuate his blindness to everything that lead to the situation in Kanai Ward. The idea is also that when disguising himself as a trainee, he cut off his hair and, along with his resignation, cut off his responsibilities as number one.

#Sorry this is so long #I just have so many thoughts #This guy lives rent free in my head #if you have a different theory regarding his age I would love to hear it #I am very open to discussion on this #yuma kokohead #rain code #raincode #mdarc fanart #master detective archives: rain code

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