Work Text:
So, I was messing around with Omori, as you do. Played it a bunch of times with a bunch of mods and I was getting bored of it. Then, I heard about this glitch that speed runners do, where they skip cutscene activation against the fight with King Crawler by bringing up the tag menu right as they walk into the part where the cutscene activates.
When I heard that, I wondered to myself: where else could you do that? I could’ve looked it up, but it’s a lot more fun to find things yourself I think. Anyways, I replayed through the game again, grabbing a save file that starts around the Junkyard cause that’s where the tag system is available, and went on my journey.
It…didn’t really pan out that well. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t seem to get it to happen anywhere else. And I practiced a LOT on the King Crawler skip, so I can do it pretty consistently.
Eventually, though…it did work, on one other cutscene. The cutscene where Mari and Omori are at the bridge and you walk up towards the window. Despite the tag option not showing up here, I still did it anyways, just for fun. So imagine my surprise when I pressed the tag button while walking over the cutscene tile and it worked! I then went on to the end of the bridge and entered the water with Mari. The window was still there, but it had no collision so we swam right through it. As we did, the screen blackened, and I heard the weird sound that happens when you enter the whirlpool, and I ended up in Deep Well with Mari still on my team!
Needless to say, I was ecstatic (lol) at this. I wondered how this game would break with Mari still being here, so I decided to continue onwards. I just needed to hope that Kel joining wouldn’t break it before I got to save.
Thankfully it didn’t, in fact Kel started walking behind Mari! I guess it’s an rpgmaker thing. After seeing the cutscene with Mari hugging Omori (and giggling a bit seeing this other Mari watch on blankly), I saved and got to playing.
Entering a fight with a gator guy, I noticed that there was a blank emotion box set right in the middle of the screen. Whenever it did anything, it showed 4 of those empty boxes where the name would be, so I guess it’s Mari? She only had two skills, one which healed everyone to full and one that did 999 damage to all enemies. My guess is, this was a test character for the combat system.
That’s all that’s happened so far! I’ll be sure to write as I go from now on!
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Destroyed Shark Daddy and Pluto Expanded. Combat is pretty easy cause of Mari. One thing I noticed, though, is that no one is gaining experience. I also neglected to mention that Mari had no health and no juice. Her skills are thankfully free.
Okay holy shit all right. So, I decided to mess with that doll thing in one of the rooms. The one that you throw in the trash over and over again until it looks like Sunny. I think it’s only on the hikki route that you can use it to reenter blackspace but I’m not sure. Anyways, I did that over and over, cause it’s honestly one of my favorite weird details in this game, but instead of it being Sunny, it looks like Mari! And not dream Mari either, it had gray clothes like Ghost Mari! And then I interacted with it and we’re suddenly in Blackspace! This game is probably all kinds of broken now, I can’t wait to see what comes next.
It’s only Mari with me now. The others don’t come to Blackspace even on the hikki route, but the code must miss Mari because she’s not supposed to be here in the first place. It’s the Omori faces room, the one with the weird red orbs in the middle of the room. One of my favorites, I always wondered what
Mari just spoke. It was for a second, but I heard it, and I saw it. I couldn’t quite read it in time, I think she said “Omori?”, but the text box disappeared on its own. I’m examining everything in this room. Every single tile.
Okay! When I examined the orb thing, Mari said “Omori, what is this place… Why did you bring me here?” Then, a weird scratching noise started coming from the game. I think it was used before, maybe on the spider phobia stairs part? I don’t know, I’m too excited to think. I’m gonna try and leave the room.
God, the Red Maze. This shit always freaked me out. Just gotta make sure not to touch the toasts. Mari seems scared too, when we entered, all she said was “…”. If I exit here, I can enter the pier place. I know a couple places I can go from here, see if Mari reacts to them.
I went to see Hero first, and Mari reacted pretty much as I expected her to. Well, I say that, but this is all new stuff. Her dialogue was sad, something like “Oh, Hero…you’re down here too, huh?” We then went off to what I’m really excited for: The Mari is Home event. Mari seemed shocked when we entered her home, there was even a little cutscene that played where she looked around the living room. Then I brought her over to where Hero, Kel, and Aubrey were. When they talked about how Omori should bring Mari over, Mari looks over concerned. She walks up towards Aubrey, and gives her a hug. Aubrey doesn’t react at all. Mari walks back over to Omori, and her face portrait looks miserable. She says “Omori, I don’t wanna be here anymore. Please, let’s go home.”
Unfortunately for her, I still have a couple things I wanna show her. I go down the ladder until we get to the door, and I choose not to open it. Mari even said not to, saying “This seems dangerous, let’s just go back.” Unfortunately for her, Hellmari comes out and chases us. I was a bit scared that Hellmari might get her, but thankfully it was far enough away once we started running. At that point, I decided to leave the house and go on my last route before I finish exploring. There’s a room really far in the pier, the I’m Sorry room. Once I see her reaction to that, I’ll go on and leave it.
While we were on our way there, Mari kept talking. She kept on saying she doesn’t wanna be here anymore and she doesn’t understand why Omori insists on being here. It’s honestly starting to get a bit hard to sit through, for more than one reason. We thankfully managed to get to the well without too much time lost, and all that’s left to do is climb down.
As we entered the bottom of the well, and saw the two beds, Mari walks up to them, then looks back to Omori. She says “Is this what you wanted me to see?” She stays there as I examine the bed, pushing it aside and showing another ladder. She says nothing as she rejoins the team, climmbing down with me.
A cutscene starts when she sees the words. I’m Sorry. “Oh…..Sunny….” She gets on her knees, and collapses. Her face portrait has tears on it. “I’m sorry too, Sunny. I’m so so sorry…” Sounds of actual crying start coming from my speakers, which freaked me out not gonna lie. I decided that I was finished now, so I’m gonna stab myself (in the game : p) and go ahead and close it after I save.
I’m still in the room. I’m still in the room and I can’t move. Mari is still here. Omori isn’t. She’s currently walking around frantically. She said “Wait!” and ran up to Omori before he just disappeared. The crying sounds have stopped, but it’s been replaced with sounds of rough breathing. I am kinda freaking out right now honestly! She’s saying something. “Sunny! Sunny please! I’m sorry! Don’t leave me here!” The breathing is getting more intense, and louder. God I wish I had some recording equipment or something!
I unplugged my computer entirely in panic. It just started…screaming. Mari collapsed on the ground and started screaming and didn’t stop. I tried to close the game but I was in full screen mode so I couldn’t find the X button and my dumb panicking brain forgot about alt+tab, so I just…unplugged my computer. God, that was…more intense than anything else I’ve ever seen in Omori. I don’t like the idea of Mari being trapped there. Though, I didn’t really get a chance to save, so…we should still be at the Last Resort now.
When I opened up the game again, instead of Omori being there, I saw the picture of hanged Mari you see during the truth sequence. I reentered the save file and we’re back at Last Resort, thankfully. And exiting it, the title screen went back to normal as well.
But…Mari wasn’t there. Not in our team anymore I mean. I guess the game unglitched itself when I loaded in. That’s a shame.