Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club (Let's put a smile on that face!)

What do you think Emio ("Smiling Man") is?  Best answer gets... naff-all probably.

Balla wrote:

What do you think Emio ("Smiling Man") is? Best answer gets... naff-all probably.

I'd like this to surprise everyone but with Bloober team apparently at the helm my confidence isn't high.

Buskalilly wrote:

Nailed the cheesey Nintendo voice over.

Buskalilly wrote:

o_o
-_-
o_o

I mean it's as likely as anything

Top drawer.

The_Jaster wrote:

I'd like this to surprise everyone but with Bloober team apparently at the helm my confidence isn't high.

Good news everyone!

Bloober get a lot of stick, yet The Medium is pretty good like if that was called Silent Hill: The Medium everyone would love it.

There's been new rumblings around Emio and what it actually is.

From everything I've heard about Bloober Team's handling of mental health issues, I think they deserve all the shit they get

Not heard anything about that, at this rate though who's games left to play? Jimbob's?

I just know people just don't like there games, sure I've played The Medium which as I say is good (still one of the few 9th gen games as well) and go urghh on Silent Hill 2 remake which did look dreadful at the State of Play but then much better at the Transmission, which I don't think many people watched.

So, with this now being a confirmed as a Famicom detective club game I have to ask, is that series anywhere close to being similar to Ace Attorney/Ghost Trick?

Think they're pretty close to a VN, Balla will be able to tell ya more as he played the two remakes.

I'm very excited about this.  I can't see you being the same Jas.  At the same time though, I don't really know what to expect.

The initial two FDC games were, well, remakes of Famicom games.  They had all the hallmarks of visual novels or detective games of around that time: the interface hindered more than it helped, and it was often quite obscure how you were meant to progress.  At the same time, I ended up liking the second one.  It was a little less obscure in its progression (the original game got an SNES remake so perhaps it had already received some TLC), the soundtrack had a bit of variety and richness to go alongside those lovely visuals, and the characters weren't all bloody awful apart from the eventual villain.  It even had a brief attempt at being a detective game where you tried to figure out what had happened to the victim, rather than a detective game where you tried to figure out what precise command would progress the game.

All of which is to say, I don't know what a truly modern FDC game would look like, and that's exciting!  Presumably it wouldn't be so much of a battle against the interface?  Maybe it'd be more of a detective sim in the vein of, say, Chicken Police?  Or maybe there'd be more of the Ace Attorneys to it?  I can't see it being as good as Ace Attorney, let alone Ghost Trick, but I wouldn't be surprised if it took a turn in that direction.

But... you probably won't like it Jas.  That's my guess.

Cheers! I'll probably still keep an eye for reviews.

I think the news that it's Famicon Detective Club disappointed me because I just imagine Nintendo could absolutely knock it out the park with a horror game. That's being said the more I look at it the more I'm up for this, I never played the remakes but I understand they didn't age well whereas I'm sure this'll have a much better QoL alongside an interesting story.

Hmm. I'm not a fan of horror games at all... is what I would have said before Paranormasight's opening stages won me over. Regardless, I know that Eternal Darkness is a thing that people loved, so to some degree I can see why people would be excited for a horror game from Nintendo. For me, this feels a bit closer to what they do well.

Only a bit, mind. I'm surprised Miyamoto hasn't asked them to consider replacing the smiling man with a character from Super Mario World.

Rumour has it Emio was supposed to be the strong male playable character for Echoes of Wisdom until the Wokaratti infiltrated Nintendo.

Surprised its still Famicom Detective Club and not Single Adoptive Mother Computer Detective Club.

Turn EMIO upside-down and it reads "OIW3", short for "oh I'm woke 3" where "3" looks like the devil's horns.

For those who have missed it, Emio is getting a three-chapter staggered demo. I believe the first chapter is out today.

More interesting for me is this hands-on from Nintendo Life - interesting and frustrating. The majority of the preview is broadly factual or optimistic, but this paragraph just makes me think they haven't taken the opportunity to learn from the past, and so were doomed to repeat it:

Quote :

Of course, not everything here is right up our street. This is a series that's often been criticised — even in its revamped 2021 form — for being very old-fashioned in its trial-and-error design. We're already seeing that stuff creep in again early on in this new adventure, with some choices in dialogue or resolutions to discussions requiring us to exhaust every available option. Again, with the strength and depth of the writing, this isn't something that bothers us personally, but if you don't jibe with the slow nature of things, and if trial and error bothers you, well, it's something to be keenly aware of.

Sigh. Yep, that was right on the money. Anyway, I want to talk about something Emio does at the end. I'll try and keep it free of proper spoilers, but if anybody wants to buy it in a sale and go into it completely blind then they might want to leave it.

Spoiler:

That's interesting. I wonder if it was a late-in-the-day Nintendo decision who were worried about putting out something too offputting?

Now that you mention it that makes a lot of sense, and it's something I can see Nintendo doing.  The main argument against is that the production values of that anime film are noticeably high, as they are throughout the whole game.  I don't know how easy it would be to put that together at short notice.  It might be!  Or maybe they stitched the film together from what would otherwise have been segments of cut-scene throughout the game?

Anyway.  Very strange, and your suggestion makes as much sense as any.