Part 21: And Now For Something Entirely Different…

Hey, remember the time travel Ground Day-esque scenario the game was going for in its storytelling method? Eh… Turns out that wasn’t working. So you know what…?



Fuck it! We’re done with that shit! The 3rd Birthday is moving on. It’s time for a goddamn time skip!



Welcome to the brave new world of 2014. All the video games you were looking forward to are getting delayed until next year. Dark Souls 2 is out in less than a month. Guess what? I’m from even further in the future and that shit is going to be a disappointment. Wet farts like Watch_Dogs and Destiny are coming in hot! Dragon Age: Inquisition and Shadow of Mordor are going to be taking all the game of the year awards. Remember those games? Fuck no, you don’t! Those games were mediocre shit. You were just desperate in 2014. Head on over to 2015 and play The Witcher 3, a real goddamn video game. Survive 2014 by playing Wolfenstein: The New Order, another noted good game.

Just don’t play The 3rd Birthday. It’s still way hotter garbage than all the stuff I threw shade at in 2014!



Turns out the Statue of Liberty’s head stayed right on its shoulders, despite all the concept art telling us to the contrary. Wasn’t there a bunch of whirlpools and huge Babel branches in the Upper New York Bay last time we saw it? Meh. Details. There’s a submarine there now. Why not?





An intense battle is taking place as the Pentagon has ordered ground and air attacks in one last effort to take back New York.



Their target is the Babel in Lower Manhattan.



The time limit: two hours. New York - it's the moment of truth.



Hey, that’s the name of this Episode! So things have escalated quickly in the last couple of months. Despite Manhattan being wrecked by the Twisted over a year ago and CTI dicking around in the ruins for months on end to little effect. In the two months following CTI’s Bogus Christmas, things have escalated to a finally all out military blitz and Manhattan getting nuked if it fails.

Hey, remember when they were ready to nuke Manhattan within days of the whole mitochondria revolution thing Eve (the pyromancer opera singer, not the ghost child clone) cooked up in the original Parasite Eve?


New Music: How I Learned to Start Loving DNA (Recommended Listening)



…and is still continuing to grow.

So if you were sick of seeing the CTI Headquarters between every Episode, you’re in luck! Our headquarters has shifted in this time skip. Gone is the sterile CTI federal building. Replacing it is… this shitty, run down warehouse. Hey, you didn’t ask for a nice change of scenery, you ingrates.



Man, that news broadcast got uploaded to YouTube in short order. Fans of Robert Miller’s reporting are a speedy, dedicated bunch.





So here is the fourth and final unfortunate Parasite Eve refuge to appear in The 3rd Birthday. It’s our old pal from the original game…



Dr. Maeda, the bumbling and timid, but well-meaning scientist that aided Aya Brea and Daniel Dollis when they were busy dealing with weird science back in 1997. You probably mostly remember him for filling up your limited inventory space with useless luck charms. Those were happier times.

So… I’m just going to be quiet here and let this new… shall we say, reimagined Maeda give us a feel for his character…



If you need a refresher, the last time we saw Maeda in this series, he was attending an opera with the surviving cast members of Parasite Eve, when the attending audience’s eyes started glowing and some more science fuckery and mitochondria bollocks was afoot. Then Aya played through New Game Plus, made herself some crazy shotgun that fired missiles, and climbed to the top of the Chrysler Building, where she killed her resurrected twin sister to sort out her friends' eye allergies. Following that he uhh…. Went to Japan to do Japanese Scientist business. And that’s it! You’re up to speed!

How did Aya hook up with Maeda again after all these years? Why is she acting rather familiar and kind of flirtatious with him in his seedy loft? Don’t worry about that right now!



Heheehehe. I can watch you and your v-vitals as you dive without any interruptions whatsoever. Hehe. Heheh…





Aya makes a dismissive sigh the same way you’d make if a cat knocked over a cup or something. I’ll refrain from commenting just yet…

Aya walks over to Maeda’s work station…



Yes, this is our chance. We can definitely get Eve back. Heheheee heh.



Alright. He’s just a socially awkward nerd and they’re playing that up a bit too much. Dr. Maeda is just eager to help Aya in rescuing her si—







Pictured: Kunihiko Maeda’s excited response to the body of Eve Brea -- the tween clone of Aya Brea. Who I remind, is roughly 12 years old. Actually, 10ish technically assuming she's been a time ghost since 2010. So meet Dr. Maeda of The 3rd Birthday. You ever wondered what Otacon would be like if he was less an awkward nerd and more of an outright registered sex offender? What’s that? You never asked that question? Nobody in history ever asked that question? Well, too bad. The 3rd Birthday is here to serve.



*continues staring at screen of Eve* Heh heh. Heheheheeh.
*sighs and smirks before walking away* I’m going.



So if you hadn’t been reading the Datalogs or keeping up with the rich lore of The 3rd Birthday. The whole Overdiving thing? Yeah, Aya Brea can just do that without any aide. The Overdive device was just for time traveling while performing Aya’s innate talent.



*gasps* I never tire of seeing your heh… exquisite Overdive technique.
*groans in excitement a few times*
…
But now I can't go back to the past.



Aya’s Overdive fizzles out. Oh, it’s nothing that Maeda said. Aya treats the fact Maeda is almost certainly going to jerk off to her (or possibly her under-aged sister) the first chance he gets as some cute dorky thing and not horrifically creepy like a sane person would react. The 3rd Birthday. You thought we were scraping the bottom of the barrel already. You naïve fools…



Oh yeah… So you remember the whole time travel thing that had been a cornerstone of this disjointed mess of a convoluted narrative thus far? Yeah… about that… You may have been wondering what was going on with our pals at the Counter Twisted Investigation.




New Music: End of the Investigation





…Yeah, they’re all dead! Hey, remember Blank, who at no point got weird on us and was generally one of the more consistent, helpful guys on our support team?



Yeah, he’s fucking dead! They murdered his ass off camera. And I bet you’re already going, big deal! They already killed Cray and Gabrielle in previous chapters too. Aya will just go back and unsuccessfully sort that mess out again.



Nope! Sorry. We’re actually completely done with Aya performing pseudo-time travel as part of this game’s narrative. I’m not going to lie and say time travel never becomes a plot point again. But as far as our days of mulligans on CTI staff deaths? Nope. We’re done. No going back to save Blank. He’s dead for the rest of the game.

Welcome to the back half of The 3rd Birthday! It is gonna be a… thing!






Video: T3B Episode 4 Opening (Yes. You should watch this. You need to hear and see creeper Maeda for yourselves )





Blank Concept – Fucking RIP, dude. Honestly, you got out of this stupid ass game while the gettin’ was good, you lucky bastard.