Fatal Frame meta for Fandom_Level, level 1

[estirose]

I'm doing five levels (40 metas) for Fandom_Level. I figured it would be a change from writing fic.

Here are the metas I'm using to clear level 1. Note that these are all spoilery for the games.

1: Abduction as Seduction, or an alternate view of Mafuyu's motivations at the end of Fatal Frame I.
2: Amnesia, or the awareness of ghosts in the games.
3: Angst, which pretty much describes the whole game for players, characters, and ghosts.
4: Alternate Universes, which ponders how the various game endings can be thought of as semi-canonical alternate universes.
5: Bad Boys, or why Itsuki's good idea to rebel ultimately caused everything to go wrong.
6: Blindness, or tactics of the blind and blinding ghosts of the game.
7: Girls, or a discussion on International Womens' day of why I like the Fatal Frame games.
8: Blood, and how it's used to great effect in the games.

Also, thank you to the people who maintain the wiki at "Beyond the Camera's Lens", which I've found very useful for checking my facts.

Comments

Meta 6: Blindness

[estirose]

Three (Or Five) Blind Ghosts: Sight and fighting ability in the first three games. 803 words.

Of all the ghosts in the Fatal Frame, three ghosts/ghost types in the games are blind, and two others have the ability to tempoarily blind the protagonist during fights. These ghost fights are dealt with in slightly different ways for each ghost, which provides an interesting variation when playing the games. Interestingly enough, the only character in these games with bad sight that was born that way was Chitose Tachibana, but her sight is merely bad and has nothing much to do with her fighting ability, or lack thereof.

The prototype for the entire series is Blinded. She doesn't have a name, but we presume she's a Himuro family member, as she was chosen in a ritual at about age 7-8 to become the next Blinded maiden and pick out the next Rope Shrine Maiden. She's chosen at the same time as Kirie, and then left for ten years, until she is blinded in a cruel ceremony as an adult, as shown in her flashbacks. Understandably, she's not good at navigating around. However, in fights, she has extremely good hearing; the standard fighting advice given for her is "move as little as possible, only one or two steps after a Shutter Chance." She also has the uncanny ability to teleport right behind Miku, but despite this, she doesn't always notice that she has; it's quite possible to have her walk away after a teleport and not notice that Miku is right there.

To make things more challenging for players of the first game, the second game also has blind ghosts, but their tactics are different from Blinded's. The Mourners are the blind ghosts of the second game, mostly encountered in the underground passages below the village. They've been blinded so that they don't look into the abyss, and are mostly made up of criminals/undesirables. Unlike Blinded of the first game, these ghosts don't teleport by default, unless they have done a Dark Return (Deep Crimson Butterfly only). But they have very long reach and they're fond of charging in the direction they last knew you to be in. So, someone used to the tactics of fighting the first game's blinded ghost will get injured; you have to run far away in order to be safe, and woe betide you if you're trying to fight them in a tiny space!

The third game's ghosts are the Engravers, and they basically act like they're sighted. It really doesn't matter if you move or not for them, because they act more like sighted ghosts. Perhaps it's because of their origin; they willingly went through the blinding procedure for their art - they did it in order to work on the Tattooed Priestess - perhaps it's because the designers got tired of coding blind ghosts. They're mostly well-known for sneaking up in combat while the player/character is in Finder Mode, having inherited the ability from Blinded to teleport right behind. Unlike Blinded, they know fully where they are and use it to their advantage. Most guides state to drop Finder Mode whenever possible when dealing with these ghosts, for good reason. In most battles, you're constantly in Finder Mode; in this one, it's a really bad idea.

In addition to these games, there are two ghosts, one each in the first two games, that have the ability to cause blindness in the player/character. In each of these, even though being blinded has essentially the same game effect, dealing with the ghosts is different. In the first game, the blinding ghost is Junsei Takamine, the Boss for the first Night. When he loses about half his hit points, he starts screaming unless you as Miku shoot him with a Shutter Chance. He also has a nasty habit of jumping up and landing where you don't expect, and usually behind Miku. Worse, he will teleport right in front of where you're running, so you can't blindly run away.

Chitose in the second game, who Mio runs across three times, is a little easier. Mio's sight goes out when she cries a certain way, and likewise, only a Zero Shot (Shutter Chance) will stop her from doing that. Chitose's pattern is a little less predictable, however. She teleports a lot more than Takamine, but she's less likely to hit Mio. With her, running is an option; half the time she's crying or feeling her way around, and her attacks are mostly random - like Blinded, she rushes in when she can see you, but she can't see you too well.

Each of these five different ghosts - or sets of ghosts - you fight a little bit differently. Some are blind themselves, some of them blind you. But each provides a different challenge to you, the player, and the characters you play as, and that's the strength of the games.