Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-673245-20150612004034

Author's Notes: ''> I'm Italian and this is the translated version of a pasta I wrote on an italian forum. I'm sure it contains a lot of mistakes of all kind, so I need your help to fix it. Not only grammar mistakes, but content itself too. Ideas to improve it will be much appreciated.'' > If you're going to play Child of Eden, be careful: this pasta may contain spoilers.

I don’t know how many people know it, but I believe that someone probably heard about Child of Eden. Maybe you saw a trailer, read an article, and probably you may have bought a copy. For the few people that don’t know it I’ll take care of giving information about it instead.

Child of Eden was created by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the same mind behind games like REZ (of which CoE appears to be the spiritual successor) and Lumines, developed by Q Entertainment and published by UbiSoft in 2011, released for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. It is a game with a particular gameplay, similar to REZ, between a rail shooter and rhythm game with bright tones and an abstract appearance. It tells about a girl named Lumi, born and raised on the International Space Station in September 11th, 2019. She held inside her heart the wish of visiting the planet until she died, then her body was preserved and the many memories gathered by the girl recorded and archived. In the second half of the 21st century, the Net grows, becoming an archive accessible anywhere in Space and all the users start to call it by its new name of Eden. At the start of the XXIII century, through an experiment called "Project Lumi", they attempt to create a human personality using the girl’s memories. However, when the project is close to the end, a virus threatening to erase every memory attacks Eden.

The goal of the game is to complete five levels called "Archives" that form Eden and eliminate all the viruses inside each one. You have three weapons: a Laser that can lock on up to eight targets at the same time; a Tracer, which is less powerful, without the lock on feature but with a faster shot and then some "smart bombs" called Euphoria, which can inflict heavy damages to all viruses on the screen.

The game itself is quite short: only five levels that can be finished in ten minutes or so, making the overall game time of about one hour. It’s extremely arcade style and is high-score based. It has many unlockables like wallpapers and creatures for the interactive menu. Besides, you can also change the graphical and sound appearance for the gameplay in the Extra menu, the so-called "Filters".

The game, despite of success at the E3 2010 and many positive reviews, it didn’t seem to obtain the same success with sales, probably because the gameplay was quite unappealing for the audience. It still got a little fanbase thanks to the visuals, which makes it a unique experience.

Some of these fans made many theories about this game to explain the unsuccessful sales. One of these tells about a pre-release version of the game that represents the original concept: longer levels even with branching paths, more unlockables, and a option to listen personal music in Lumi’s Garden, just to list some of them. However, for many reasons, those features were never officially implemented, probably because of the too short deadlines. Some rumors say that some copies of the pre-release have been erroneously printed and marketed, containing just some of the already mentioned features. This mistake led Ubisoft to take action and suspend the diffusion.

Rumors didn’t specify for which platform the copies are available, but they explain that will appear exactly as a "standard" copy of the game. The only difference is that the language will change automatically to the one set on the console, as usually happens, but it may be a little ill-formed because it’s based on the original Japanese release and many translations were made quickly. Those copies won’t show anything strange, all the levels can be played normally and all extras can be unlocked. At least until certain prerequisites won’t be met, and that’s the point where the copies may reveal what they’re hiding.

In the Extras menu, as said before, it’s possible to select Audio Filters that will change how sounds are played. These will be unlocked after finishing the game at least once, but if you own the "pre-release" version, one more option called “Whisper” may be added. This won’t always happen and the procedures to unlock it are not clear. The most common rumor says that you must obtain 100% of Purification in all main levels, except in the secret one called "Hope" where a score of 888.000 points and not one more must be obtained while playing in Hard mode. Once the requirements will be met, "Whisper" will be available in the Sound Filters menu but it won’t be possible to select it immediately: first, “Trip” must be set as a Visual Filter and the Feel Eden mode, which makes the player impossible to kill, must be activated. Once done, "Whisper" will become available.

After all this messing around it will be possible to play again each Level with the new settings. The audio differences will be obvious at this point: first, the music will be played at a lower volume compared to normal but still audible. It won’t have anything strange, but gabbles can be heard each time the Tracer hits purple targets or projectiles (usually a sound of a percussion instrument is played). Those gabbles will remind vaguely the ones heard in the videogame NieR each time an enemy is killed and Grimoire Weiss absorbs the blood, with the difference that it won’t be too loud but will instead sound, as the name of the Filter itself suggests, like whispers. There will also be a second difference: while the gabbles heard in NieR are an unintelligible bustle, by paying attention you will notice that the ones in Child of Eden, if heard in order, will form a coherent sentence. A specific sentence for each level, including the secret one, which will be looped replacing the typical sounds played by the Tracer.

Nobody knows where these mysterious "pre-release" copies can be found. However, some time ago, a Spanish blogger on blogspot said to have one of them and that he recorded the audio during the gameplay since, as he did not have the right knowledge, he couldn’t decrypt the game files and extract them. Exactly one day later, the blog was closed and every sign erased, to the point to become unavailable even with the Wayback Machine of Internet Archive.

However, a user managed to download the audio files and subsequently tried to make textual transcriptions. Transcriptions that for obvious reason weren’t published on the normal Internet but on an .onion site, accessible only via TOR Browser. Sometime later, waters settled and now it’s possible to share them with less risks, also because the audio files can’t be found at the moment and as such it’s impossible to prove their authenticity, so any possible charge of spreading sensitive data is unlikely to happen. Shown below, there are the transcriptions and next to them the name of the Archive where is possible to listen each one of them:

•	«Today I managed to look out the window. It’s so beautiful outside. I’d like to smell again the scents of the earth.», "Matrix" Archive •	«In my room a flower has grown. The way it tried to turn towards the light made me feel almost like it.», "Evolution" Archive •	«A mirror shattered. I gathered the shards and put them aside. Who knows, I may need them someday.», "Beauty" Archive •	«I feel a pressing need to get out from here. I think I’m losing my mind. Why am I here? What do they want?», "Passion" Archive •	«I feel like everything is going to end well. Finally. I want to go away from this prison.», "Journey" Archive •	«Ticking and creaking all round me. They want to bury me here. I don’t want this slow agony. Luckily I still have the mirror shards. I’m ready to go.» Secret Archive ("Hope")

Those messages at first seem simple considerations by Lumi, but as you saw, they become more and more frantic. The audio files are not available, disappeared with the original blog and there are no news about either the blogger or the mysterious copy of the game. Supposedly, those sentences are telling the reasons of Lumi’s death, feeling trapped inside the space station. Even more insane theories, think instead that those are real words that Rachel Rhodes, the girl who impersonates the character, said while seeming threatened for unknown reasons.

Questions without any answer. To have better clues the original files extracted from the game should be listened. However, as said, no one knows if the “pre-release” copies are still around or have been destroyed. We can only wait updates from external sources. 