Part 42: Episode 6 Datalogs: Unlockable Email

New Music: Parasite Eve Main Theme (Orchestral Version)

Technically we cannot view any of Episode 6’s Datalogs until we’ve completed the game, since there’s no way to return back to base and access the archive computer until New Game Plus. But, ya know… That would require booting up The 3rd Birthday again after seeing the ending and I don’t think a lot of people did that. So, via the magic of having recorded the entire game already and LP editing, we can just go ahead and check out Episode 6’s Datalogs early.



We may be time traveling again. Sort of? Maybe? But regardless, we hadn’t altered the timeline by the end of Episode 6. So the only new addition is the events of the previous episode.





Feb. 16: Final Confrontation with the Grand Babel

The Coalition Forces had taken a major hit in the North Shallows Tower mission. Rallying their remaining troops, they decided to storm the Twisted Stronghold: the Grand Babel, made up of the merged bodies of lesser Babels the world over.

Their goal was to eliminate Hyde Bohr, the putative leader of the Twisted, and to bring down the Grand Babel. Their command structure already disintegrated, though, making this last-ditch mission a real challenge. Still, with CTI Agent Aya Brea, the unit managed to reach the Grand Babel's innermost core and make contact with Hyde Bohr.

After a brutal struggle, Aya Brea was sucked into the eddies of the “Doors of Zero” wormhole.

TDI Note: So, the game failed to mention that apparently the Grand Babel is EVERY SINGLE Babel on the entire planet all drawn to Manhattan. According to the last timeline update of present day, there were 193 countries on the planet (that was ALL of them in 2010) all stricken with Babels and Twisted. So yeah, the earth was carved the hell up off-screen.



To be determined…



All the named CTI members who were named and had voice actors have all received an updated bio in Episode 6. So I’m going to forgo the addition and subtraction formatting even if some of ‘em, like Aya, are just barely reworded.



----- Aya Brea -----

Half Japanese, with blonde hair and blue eyes. Her unique genetic makeup has given her the physique of a woman in her 20s.

One Christmas Eve 2010, she was found outside St. Thomas Cathedral in Manhattan, suffering from amnesia. Judging from her bloodstained wedding gown, she had been found just before or just after her own wedding ceremony, although that hasn't been confirmed. She remember nothing of herself apart from her own name.

Soon after entering CTI custody, she exhibited a mysterious ability. After much analysis, this ability was dubbed ''Overdive.'' The Overdive device made Aya the only person capable of diving into a human's past consciousness. Her chief mission was to move back into time and alter the reality that had already happened, but if she were to go beyond the limits of her abilities, her consciousness would be lost in time, never to return. In short, death during an Overdive operation had a direct effect on the physical body left behind.

Aya has testified to making contact with her former fiancé Kyle Madigan during the North Shallows Tower mission and recovering the majority of her memories.

In 2000, when Aya was a secret operative with the FBI, she crossed paths with government agent Kyle Madigan on one of her missions. She became engaged to Kyle in 2008. The two of them lived together with her younger sister Eve Brea. Their wedding ceremony was held at Manhattan's St. Thomas Cathedral on Christmas Eve, two years later. Then tragedy struck.

Eve's abilities suddenly awoke and ran amok. Aya tried to suppress them, but to no avail. She ended up shooting Eve Brea. The fragments of Eve's body brought forth the High Ones.



----- Hyde Bohr -----

A High One brought forth by Eve. It's taken over the physical body of Hyde Bohr. The incomparably powerful force the High Ones release together would easily stand up against many hundreds of Twisted.

It's thought that the pheromones released by a queen bee, commonly known as “queen substance,” have chemical properties triggering a unique response within bees of the same species. This gives the queen control over her hive. In that way, Hyde, their leader, was able to gather together and direct the other High Ones, including Emily and Kyle.

TDI Note: …But, no. He only had Gabrielle and Cray working with him. And he got Gabrielle killed in one timeline. And Cray in another. And not in the awakened High One capacity but just ganked off screen. Also, Emily Jefferson was off completely doing her own thing at the Sacrifice concert and Madigan pretty much showed up, set his house on fire, and killed his dog.



----- Blank -----

Blank died in the CTI murders on Christmas Day 2013, killed by Kyle Madigan.

Having worked with Hyde in the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, Blank noticed a change in his old friend's personality soon after taking his post at CTI. Then again, no one could really be considered “normal” at that time, given the unprecedented crisis being thrust upon the human race. Blank figured the stress must simply be affecting Hyde more acutely. In fact, the Hyde at the CTI was no longer the Hyde that Blank knew. He had turned into a High One.

Blank likely felt a kind of kinship with Aya: they were in the same boat, having both lost their pasts against their will. Blank, a man who wouldn't even reveal his real name, concealed his past in an isolation brought on by his talented mind.

TDI Note: Aya Brea – Memory zapped by her younger sister’s anime aura producing a race of evolved Time Lords. Blank – Going by an alias because he was busted by and force to work for the US government after stealing state secrets. Real kinship and remarkably similar backgrounds if you think about it, and also have a severe head injury.



----- Thelonious Cray -----

After losing both his wife and daughter on the same day, Cray didn't even realize he was becoming unhinged. His broken heart refused to accept the reality of their deaths, while his grieving mind buried the incident deep in his memory.

This is why he believed so fervently that his daughter Isabella had become a Twisted. It had nothing to do with his own transformation into a High One. Cray may have thought he could bring Isabella back to life by reclaiming his right as a father to risk his life in the name of his beloved daughter. That may have been an impossible dream, but trapped as he was in a despair beyond all despair, Cray was suffering from a severe lack of judgment.

For a man whose life was essentially one constant brush with death, Sandra and Isabella had been absolute jewels, giving Cray pure, unadulterated delight.

TDI Note: Well, there you have it. No ulterior motive or High Ones nonsense. Cray was just actually batshit crazy back during his sudden heel turn. I mean, that doesn’t explain the part where he got his act together and was relatively normal the rest of his appearance. But, details…



----- Gabrielle Monsigny -----

Gabrielle used to have a partner: Rebecca Atkinson, a fellow member of the sniper team in the FBI's Counterterrorism Division. Rebecca was gunned down during the Seattle racetrack shootings, shot in the back. She was 24. Gabrielle felt a great void, losing a partner with whom she's stared down death any number of times. She took a leave of absence for several months following the incident.

Perhaps Gabrielle saw Aya as another Rebecca, thinking of her as a little sister who'd come back home. It seems that those sentiments still remained quite strong even after Gabrielle had become a High One and Aya had lost her memories.

TDI Note: So Aya and Gabby knew each other before this whole thing, given she was attending Aya’s wedding. Did Aya ever mention she’s like a decade older than Gabrielle and just looks young because she has weird mitochondria giving her eternal youth?



----- Hunter “Boss” Owen -----

After his death, Owen's collection of antique lures was sold at auction, sparking a bidding war among a faction of enthusiastic collectors. The winning bid of $80,000 belonged to a wealthy man in Florida, who claimed he could die happy at the hands of a Twisted as long as those lures were in sight.

TDI Note: There is no timeline where Florida Man is not a dipshit. It is a universal constant.



----- Kunihiko Maeda -----

Friedrich Gehrmann's disciples immediately scattered once the Twisted appeared, devoting themselves to various research topics. This was a planned procedure meant to help satisfy Gehrmann's longing to save humanity with science.

After the earlier incident, Maeda took Aya aside for (strictly scientific) observation. His investigation into her relationship with the Twisted led him to believe she would be the key to blowing the current state of affairs wide open. His catching up with Aya after the CTI murders was necessity masquerading as coincidence. It was Maeda's strong sense of being indebted to his teacher that made him think of Aya, tenaciously tracking her down in a constantly changing world.

TDI Note: TOTALLY NOT A STALKER. IT WAS ALL FOR SCIENCE!



We’re done with the CTI for good. That’s wrap! Never again will we need to think about the Counter Twisted Investigation staff. At least in the capacity of oddly worded bio write-ups. Now about the Twisted. We’re not actually going to see any more Twisted in the game. But hey, we still have our memories…



“Putrid Puppetmaster”

Uses psychokinesis to pick up enemies hiding behind obstacles and bring them in for the kill. Its powers can likewise affect the surrounding air currents, whipping up tornadoes to further control the intruder.

The descent attacks it uses at close range turn its opponent into a Twisted. The Mudflap is the only Twisted apart from the Queen that is capable of such a feat; think of it as a kind of would-be Queen with the potential to take her place. Once you turn into a Twisted, you will never again be human. Under no circumstances should you lose your precious Overdive targets and find yourself painted into a corner.

The Mudflap fills its surroundings with poison fog, creating an absolute territory where offense, defense, and recovery of one's life force come together. After dying, it will go out in search of a new physical vessel, its disembodied form creeping up on unsuspecting foes before possessing them. Use Overdive Kills to ward off this particularly nasty move.

Sniper rifles sweet spot: Bottom of a certain extremity, i.e., the “shin” of one particular tentacle.

TDI Note: Pfft. There’s only one Queen. We’ve established this. We fought it twice.



“Blade-wielding Assassin”

Possesses a rigid shell that nullifies any and all attacks. Its offensive power, agility, and endurance are all sky-high, making it a far tougher foe than any other Twisted. It quickly dives into close-range battles, slashing at intruders with its razor-sharp blade. This is one murderous, uncontrollable monster.

The armor covering its body provides unheard-of levels of defense. The Reaper is impossible to defeat with conventional weapons. Its bloodlust intensifies in manic mode as it swings its scythe-like blade, tearing to pieces anyone unlucky enough to be in its path. Its outstanding enemy tracking skills make it next to impossible to escape this Twisted murderer.

When it enters manic mode, the Reaper creates obstacles known as Blood Walls that block off its prey's escape route, rendering them as helpless as a rat in a trap before being ripped to shreds. Using an Overdive Kill on a Reaper effectively destroys these Blood Walls.

Although an Overdive Kill can get a Reaper out of manic mode, even the best and most effective Overdive Kill won't put it out of its misery. The only thing capable of penetrating its tough armor and destroying the monster within is the Berserker, an anti-Reaper laser weapon developed by CTI design lab employee Tatiana Ilizarov.

TDI Note: Yes, the Berserker laser was developed by the CTI. The same CTI that had been defunct for coming up on two months now. They made that device. Got it. Glad that deus ex machina was accounted for in a reasonable way.



It possesses overwhelming speed and power, even for a special Twisted. The projectiles it fires are on par with Aya's energy shots. Let up for even a moment and its barrage of descent kills will make mincemeat out of you.

Having obtained the ability to Overdive from one of Aya's Overdive Kills, Hyde finds his consciousness gradually being overwritten as he starts going after Aya.



And that is it for the Twisted’s entries. Are the High Ones classified as Twisted or not? I don’t think this game even knows. Now, there are entries for all of the “Key Persons” but puzzlingly, they’re all written from the perspective of having beaten the game. So we’ll skip that for the post-game catch all update. Now… about emails.



Up to this point we’d been unlocking emails written between Blank and several other parties. I am… not entirely certain WHAT unlocks email entries. Blank has 13 emails. By the time I completed Normal mode I had only unlocked 11. So I guess the last few are unlocked from Hard difficulty. I dunno and cannot find specifics online.

I do know playing through on harder difficulties unlocks emails from Maeda after all of Blank’s are unlocked. All of the emails’ terminus for Blank and Maeda is the end of Episode 5. So we’re just going to go ahead and burn through the lot of ‘em right now, so our time mucking with datalogs is ended until the post-game wrap-up.

I was formatting the previous email entries for updates to look like actual emails. The 3rd Birthday doesn’t actually go to that degree of effort. They’re just a series of text dumps. And… there’s fucking 17 of them left here to burn through. Yeah… We’re going low budget for the rest. It’ll still be easier to digest than how they’re presented in-game with scrolling 3-lines at a time.


I forgot to post this particular email with the Episode 5 Datalogs. Which means we wouldn’t have received it until the Grand Babel had already formed and Maeda had already deduced it was another Overdive device. And of course we also know it’s for going back to Time Zero and Time Zero is obviously when Aya’s Wedding had objections.


“Once You Go Twisted, You Never Go Back” is also a popular adult film series in Southeast Asia. Puzzling enough, it’s actually an adaptation of a Japanese manga from the mid-80s.


Eve is actually going to be found merged with a space parasite that had been erased from history and cast into a sea of dead timelines where she had spontaneously produced a daughter-clone to rescue her from a the darkness beyond time.


I get the feeling Russo was meant to be a more important character than some guy that gets ganked off-screen, considering how many entries there are on him and his squadron despite their being just another generic class of mook for Aya to possess.



But regardless, that’s the last email Blank sends before Kyle Madigan rolls in and busts a cap in his ass. And presumably Jamie Denton too, for that matter. For this next slew of electronic mail exchanges, we’re meant to play the game on Hard and I think begin Insane difficulty. These all come from Kunihiko Maeda post-timeskip.

So how do you feel about The Wizard of Oz references for no particular reason? Not big on it? Tough shit. Maeda and online guild are massive fans.


If you cannot guess, Maeda is the Cowardly Lion in these exchanges. Tin Man is just some nerd he used to work with, as are any other Wizard of Oz themed contacts. They’re not important. Don’t worry about it. Also, I’m not going to ask where in the hell Maeda managed to get a hair sample off of Kyle Madigan, the literal ghost man who was only seen in a burning building and a tower that was nuked.


But wait… The timeline said that only Russo was killed and the rest of the team continued to be badasses and rescued the President and shit. Which is it, game? Could you really not have an intern read through all of this to check for consistency? I’m just one guy doing this as a lark for free and not even trying very hard to recall details in order to recognize y’all done fucked up.


Please stop bringing up the fact there is literal file footage, of which multiple people have watched but NOT the player, of Madigan attacking CTI and The 3rd Birthday not giving a damn about the whole "show, don’t tell" thing.




That RetroArch emulator is a real pain in the ass to set up. But to hell with pulling out an old PS2 to play through Parasite Eve 1 & 2. I don’t even know where my discs are anyway.


Turns out Hyde Bohr shits out wormholes now. That’s how the Overdive device was constructed. Hyde just made a fancy machine and dropped a deuce into it. This is my personal head canon. It’s more of an explanation than The 3rd Birthday will provide as to how Hyde managed to engineer the device beyond “somethingsomethinghighonesevezero”.


So basically… the entire present day plot of The 3rd Birthday happened because Hyde could only construct a mechanical device that could travel back as far as 2011, but he really needed to get back to 2010. So the entire planet’s invading alien root system was needed to overclock his rig enough to get that extra power to run The Witcher 3 at 60 FPS make it an extra year back in time. Do I have that right?


Ah. So Maeda’s House is an underground bunker. Also, he’s dragging Aya’s unconscious body to a special secret room we never saw while she’s busy Overdiving. Terrific! I needed to know that.




Oh, Arthur. You’re such a pessimist. The High Ones kind of suck. Emily got taken down by just a single squad of National Guardsmen. Gabrielle was the only one that put up a decent fight and required the equivalent of TWO SWAT Teams, a marksmen, and a turret mounted APC to take down. Cray just plain keeled over dead without doing anything. And Madigan was easily sorted out by a pair of attack helicopters. Hyde is just a ridiculous stretchy man.

For comparison, Eve (the mitochondria revolution one, not the evolved human race mother child) and her ooze uterus took an entire team of attack helicopters, several fighter jets, a nuke, and Lady Liberty to bring down. And Aya still had to jump out of helicopter to go kick the shit out of her. Then she still gave birth to a psychic super baby that wrecked an entire Navy battalion.

It’ll be fine.


I like to imagine Hyde at a computer terminal angrily pecking away at a keyboard deleting files while in his stretched out Mr. Fantastic form. It’s a fun mental image.


Toriyama and his writing staff need to take lessons from Hideo Kojima into how to properly integrate military hardware wankery trivia into their narrative structure. This is some amateur hour stuff.




Please read the Datalogs above. Cray was just out of his gourd. Which, would be fine if he weren’t also embroidered in all this end game mumbo jumbo. That just makes it real dumb.


The most absurd bit of all these emails is Maeda having friends and colleagues willing to work with him. I’m half waiting for the other shoe to drop and Cowardly Lion requesting to bum a hidden cache of highly specific, gore fetish porn from one of his co-workers.


Oh yeah! By the way! Hyde Bohr’s whole motivation for returning to Time Zero and linking up with Eve again? His dick isn’t working. The High Ones are sterile. So their race is limited to just the five idiots we’ve met. Four of which Hyde got killed. And he’s going back to Eve in hopes she can fix that defect… somehow. All of this is of course only mentioned here and maybe one other post game datalog. This game…


And finally, turns out The Twisted already destroyed the future and have been working their way back in time. But they too could come from thousands of years in the future but all just fell short of 2010.

Unfortunately, we’re given no indication as to what the Twisted, the enemy we battle for 95% of the game, has as an actual motivation for going back in time. They have some unspecified defect beyond being absurd creatures with little unified methodology behind their forms. I dunno. Maybe they cannot dance? An entire race of interdimensional time traveling creatures with a heart to groove but cursed with two left feet. Sad.



Well, folks. That is it for datalogs in The 3rd Birthday. There are some post-game info dumps and one final set of “emails”. But I’ll be collecting those in the final proper update as they’re the closest thing The 3rd Birthday gets to an epilogue.

Now if you want proper questions answered, the ending of The 3rd Birthday awaits…