Spoilerific Meditation of the Unreliable Narrator

This pretty deeply spoils Date Night At Mary-Jane's Therapy Club, so please make sure you read through it before checking this out. 

Besides that, I very vaguely talk about spoilers about early DRV3 , Raging Loop, Saya no Uta and Higurashi (in the sense that I'm using them as examples, not that I really say anything about what happens) I also very vaguely talk about spoilers in my past two titles in the same way, if you want to go read them first (cough cough WINK cough)

There are also some Bioshock spoilers,  at least how a me from a long time ago interpreted something I'd only learned about the game second-hand, and even then I try not to go into full detail about what happens.

 Game Design might be a weird topic to place this under? But then again, VNs and games do have a certain degree of separation, so hopefully talking about narrative design still works in this case. Either way, my thoughts will be long, though hopefully coherent.

 Whether or not you read this on the reflection thread in the community tab, I'll reiterate it here - I absolutely, without a doubt, 100%, considered not bothering with the jam when the theme came out - the Unreliable Narrator. It's a good trope that is in so many series I like, but goddamn it, my past two games ALSO used it in its most conventional ways.

My mind was trapped in a state of binary thinking - two of the most common ways to do the unreliable narrator are to either have the POV hide certain things they're doing, or their intentions for doing so from the reader(think DRV3 chapter 1, Raging Loop) or it comes from the POV being delusional or reduced in their capacity to recognize reality (think Higurashi and to a certain extent, Saya no Uta) I did one with Midday Monsters, and I did the other with 51st Floor (though arguably, 51st Floor did a blend of both, depending on how you interpret the mental state of its lead)

This way of thinking, of course, ignores a few other ways that the trope can be used (that can be seen done well in a variety of different VNs in this very jam), and of course you can see by my choices of examples above that I was a touch blind to going outside a very certain genre (horror/thriller lmao), an element which did bleed heavily into the final product. but I digress.

Now, you can argue that Date Night goes into the delusional category, that the lie told by the narrator is about the existence of Cherika, with Parvin being forced to forget even a fake, dream version of her and instead remember a different fake dream date, for reasons that I'd like to continue to hide, for the time being. (We'll get to why soon, though the answer might be obvious) That IS true (and hopefully covers my ass if my real thought process actually doesn't count as Unreliable Narrator), but it's not that which I intended to be the answer to the question of "what is the lie/untruth that makes the narrator unreliable?"

So, a day in, I was thinking about Bioshock. Kind of.

You see, I don't really play many triple-A titles. I'm more about VNs, Rhythm Games, RPG Maker games and what have you. But one thing I WAS about as a dinky middle schooler was watching Gamer Top 10 Videos, the likes of Joshscorcher and Alex Rochon back when he just went by peanut3423, and they talked a WHOLE lot about game spoilers that I ate up with glee. In one video (god forbid I remember whose or if its even still up on youtube, but I'm fairly certain it was about Plot Twists or shocking moments) they bring up the "Would You Kindly" scene from Bioshock, and how it turns the act of following quests/orders/etc. in a video game on it's head, something that left enough of an impression on me to recall almost a decade and a half later. So of course, I wondered "well why not do something in that vein (taking advantage of a common mechanic of playing a game), but in a VN narrative way?"

So, I looked into my collection of stories I have (this one that I've low-key developed since 2012, that I simply refer to as "the VN" to my friend who co-developed very early concepts with me for it in high school but mostly does end up being my audience to talk about my ideas for it) and it was perfect for the idea I was slowly developing in my head.

So, what was this idea, exactly? Well, that the lie, the unreliable nature of it all, wasn't about what the narrator was telling you (though of course, that is a MAJOR factor). It was about who you were playing as in the first place.

The earliest obvious glimpse you can get of it, albeit in hindsight if you did so, is what the character's default name is, when you leave the entry blank. I won't specify right now for the sake of how I'm telling this, but feel free to check for yourself ahead of time if you wish.

You also, of course, see something weird when you get one of the normal endings. Doesn't it look like two people, just a little bit? One of them appears to be looking at a screen of some kind.

Your next biggest hint is if you play Chika's Coquelicot date, and happen to bring up the topic of the waitress, Zoey. If you did play it, you might have noticed a certain moment where the game goes a little... wonky, but what's important to note is the narration starts referring to Parvin in the third person. This is your biggest clue, before the ending.

Once you get to the true end,  however, it starts to become more clear. The narration goes from second person to first person, and Parvin is given both actual dialogue (that isn't a choice or the narrator just telling you that they said something), and a name. 

The very ending scene is meant to cement it, however - when the two (or three, perhaps? Ooooo~) unknown individuals are discussing the matter, and one, the one that remains by the end, is named "Cleo". The person who proceeds to then make three fake girls, and speaks the very first second perspective lines in the game.

Remember when I mentioned the default name you get when you leave the name entry blank? Or the individual on the end card, looking at the screen.

Until the True End, you were never playing as Parvin, with a second perspective narrator.

You were playing as the main figure on the end card, the person whose upside-down silhouette is on the title screen - you play most of the game as 'Cleo', in what's technically in the first perspective for them, telling Parvin what to do/think in the dream.

(though of course, it's still second perspective)

Of course, from there I'm curious what people might think of that kind of a plot twist. Was it well telegraphed, too ambiguous, or too obvious? Though I won't deny my fondness for making the reader go through a sudden, horrifying realization, pretentious as such a thing may be to say.