Part 16: Unfortunate Series Continuity

I can't save… anyone?

We rejoin Aya Brea in the frozen blood sea anime exposition realm as she collapses to her knees and begins sniffling over the loss of Gabrielle… again. Apparently, it took her a solid five minutes from Gabrielle getting time-fragged to her actually reacting, if the time stamps are to believe. Also, we’ll go ahead and ignore the fact she did, in fact, successfully save Thelonious Cray.



*chokes back tears*
Don’t give up.



Who are you?!









That’s one way to object to a wedding.


New Music: Girl in the Dream



You wanted some continuity from the old Parasite Eve games, beyond the protagonist with a completely different personality and skill set? That’s a fucked up thing to drag into The 3rd Birthday. But you asked for it. Here’s confirmation that alien acne face and the girl Aya seemed intent on putting a bullet in during flashbacks dreams is Eve from Parasite Eve 2. And that Aya has some sort of magic plot amnesia that is only cured by beating boss fights at the end of episodes to regain pieces of her memory.



I found it. Memories of my family - of Eve, my baby sister.
Also something about a Maya…? But it’s not ringing any bells right now.



Aya finds herself out of the blood sea anime zone and back in the ruins of Spanish Harlem. All of the SWAT unit has buggered off following the battle with Gabrielle. Which begs the question as to why they left behind poor Maurice Aldag, who has presumably been staring off into space and mumbling to himself this entire time. Some team mates.







Now that Aya has remembered Eve, her weird clone adopted sister who is apparently stuck as a 12 year old girl forever, she of course immediately appears before Aya for a happy reunion.





Haha. Psyche. At least Aya didn’t face plant like Yuna when she got a ghost hug fake out at the end of Final Fantasy X.



We’re only wrapping up Episode 2 of 6 (but really 7 since there was an Episode 0) here, Aya. You didn’t think you’d get away with a happy ending without needing to wade through far more anime bullshit, now did you?


New Music: Unforgettable Man





Aya is not thrilled to find Eve taking a liking to a mysterious stranger, which is definitely not also from Aya’s past, over Aya herself.



You don't know who I am?



Aya responds by staring confused and breathing heavily. I swear they gave Aya asthma between games. I don’t think there’s been a scene with even the mildest of action where she wasn’t panting like she just ran a triathlon.



*chuckle*
You have to let her go.
You know I'd like to, but I can't. I wish I could.





Aya strikes a pose and fires a warning shot into the air. Again, it’s good all the SWAT men and the man-jeep hybrid pulled out, or this whole scene would be very awkward.





Eve looks mildly concerned in a bit of a “what’s this crazy person’s deal” sort of way, while mystery man is fully unimpressed.



There's just no way I can do that.



Eve, over here!
I don’t know what happened between us with the whole possibly shooting you thing. But it’s in the past!
…



Nah. Eve is out. This is weird and probably going to end up real dumb.



…
Are you gonna use that?
Stay there! What was that about? Where is Eve? Where did she go?
Why is she sometimes a ghost or running around with an alien face? What is going on?



Her soul wanders through the gaps of time.
Hence the whole ghost appearance thing. I’m not sure about the latter point. That’s new to me.



She's... dead?
You mean you forgot?
*navel gazing while breathing heavily*
Yes. Amnesia…
*tilts head* Wait, really? Who on earth actually gets amnesia?
…



Unfortunately, it looks like our time chatting with mysterious ghost man about our unstuck from time ghost sister is at its end…





*turns and begins walking away* I'll meet you at the Babel in the red fog.





Reminder that some non-descript uniformed SWAT member has been standing here by himself talking to extra dimensional ghost people for the last twenty minutes.



Anyway, now that Aya’s business in Spanish Harlem is concluded, her soul leaps out of the SWAT cop, who crumples like a ragdoll to the ground. Hopefully there’s no stray twisted in the area that come upon him while he’s taking a dirt nap. Not that Aya or anyone else cares.







And here’s some more Parasite Eve 2 continuity.



The mysterious man hanging out with Eve, who has clearly read ahead in the script already, is Kyle Madigan, the government operative of questionable allegiance, but on Aya’s side in the end, from Parasite Eve 2. Parasite Eve 2 was basically Square does Resident Evil 2 and Madigan was essentially a male-Ada Wong. Just instead of being a sexy Asian spy, he just kind of looked like a douchebag in a tactical turtleneck. Also Aya all but rolled her eyes and made a jerk-off motion every time he showed up pulling his mysterious agent routine.

In the good ending epilogue of Parasite Eve 2, Madigan had resigned from being a government special agent and was on the run for knowing too much about the government’s dumbass schemes from that game. The post credits scene of the good ending has him meeting up with Aya and Eve while they’re visiting the Museum of Natural History and... well then this game happened a decade later. Bummer.



It’s also worth noting that Madigan got his left leg blown the fuck off by an orbital cannon attack impacting right next to him and in the epilogue it sounded a bit like he had a metal prosthetic leg. The 3rd Birthday is just going to go ahead and completely ignore that fact. He’s a weird Time Lord now. He clearly regenerated… just by looking mostly the same, save having both legs, a hipster douchebag haircut, and a sad wispy pube beard.



With that all said, we are now done with Episode 2: A Lost Soul – Operation Black Storm of The 3rd Birthday. Nearly two dozen soldiers died on Aya’s watch. But she Overdived a ton of enemies and sniped a good amount of Stinkers, so it’s a solid B performance. I’ll take it.

Tune in next time when we see how we’ve altered history this time, mostly forget Gabrielle got time-fragged, and learn of our new assignment in throwing rocks into the time stream and seeing what happens. It’ll be a thing!






Video: Episode 2 Ending Cutscene





Kyle Madigan – 13 years later and that’s the best beard he could manage to grow.