[Untagged Spoilers Allowed Here] The Spoiler Discussion Thread (for Marie's story and onwards)

[tristePinguino]

damb brain drain yuor boobies

 

[Kittens]

I really liked it! After the kind of meh Webtoons pacing, it's great to come back to the story modes and how they go full anime in the best way.
Also, getting a timeline where the undead aren't exclusive to the Heart anymore opens up a lot of possibilities!

Now, are we calling the second game Chromegirls, or what?

Personally, I have questions about Filia and Squigly's fates. The story kind of loses them after the first battle.

Yeah, this one was a weird bit, they could've at least mentioned they got lost in the Gehenna tunnels since that was a whole thing. Parasoul also just loses once and gives up, though this being a combined story mode, it's unclear if she fought her before the team-up on Marie.

 

[Sun]

damb brain drain yuor boobies

valentine got a coat and brain drain got buffed truly peak skullgirls

 

[Big Boy Beo]

Okay, time to bring this thread back

We've been waiting for this.

Did you like Marie's Story Mode?

Personally, I have questions about Filia and Squigly's fates. The story kind of loses them after the first battle.

Nice to finally see Marie making her wish. Nice to see the previous Skullgirls. Nice to see my boy The Skeleton as an important character.
Also, did they retcon Joe the Skeleton into one of the Medici goons that died while protecting Lorenzo in SGM?

From a gameplay point of view, I really like the use of Bloody Marie in the story mode. Heck, that was amazing. Also, nice to see that the predictions about Marie fighting her boss version were true. It was too good not to implement.

I really liked it! I think ending it on Marie dying would have been appropriate but pretty cliche (and she dies in every other story too), so having her survive and escape with Peacock is a great twist to it. I also enjoyed seeing how Marie and Peacock were before the slavers -- Marie's willingness to help because she feels a debt to Hilgard, Patricia being a shut-in and obsessed with the TV as a defense mechanism, and Hilgard was a great character all around. I wish we could have seen a bit more of him, but he made a great impression.

I'm glad we got some discussion on what it is the Trinity wants and a mention about Queen Lamia from Leviathan. While I assumed this would be a lot bigger in terms of story and lore, I think it would have been very hard to just lore-dump a ton of stuff into what should be an intimate story about Marie and Peacock's past and present. I also think we should have seen Filia and Squigly more (it was a great callback that Peacock and Squigly can manipulate time and space) but it's a minor nitpick. Marie's story feels like it's the last part to setting off the canon (or true, whatever you call it) story, since most of the other DLC stories in Season 1 were building up to it too.

All in all, l'm satisfied with what we got! Past all of the insanity about patches and changes, I'm still excited about Skullgirls and it's great to finally see Marie playable. I also want to see what Brain Drain's plan is with the artificial Heart.

 

[missingno]

I just loved every single line out of Peacock's mouth.

 

[Holy Goose]

I also want to see what Brain Drain's plan is with the artificial Heart.

I caught some vibes from Robo-Fortune's story mode with this one. They may have a connection, plot-wise. Also, it reminds me of the unused alternative ending of Valentine's...

I wonder if there ever would be a True Story Mode. It could have been, at a certain point. Who knows.

 

[tristePinguino]

Seeing the Trinity directly speak to a mortal was a treat, lol. As was parsing who was saying what.

Samson referred to Leviathan's space-time powers as new, right? Guess that means he didn't have them before Squigly was reanimated by Skullgirl magic.


So... Are subsequent Skullgirls still a possibility?

 

[Sun]

I really liked it! After the kind of meh Webtoons pacing, it's great to come back to the story modes and how they go full anime in the best way.
Also, getting a timeline where the undead aren't exclusive to the Heart anymore opens up a lot of possibilities!

Now, are we calling the second game Chromegirls, or what?



Yeah, this one was a weird bit, they could've at least mentioned they got lost in the Gehenna tunnels since that was a whole thing. Parasoul also just loses once and gives up, though this being a combined story mode, it's unclear if she fought her before the team-up on Marie.

well i heard a theory in the discord that filia and squigly might have been dealing with the rest of the skullheart pieces who separated and might be causing trouble maybe parasoul is doing the same

 

[Chrono_Tata]

Nice to finally see Marie making her wish. Nice to see the previous Skullgirls. Nice to see my boy The Skeleton as an important character.
Also, did they retcon Joe the Skeleton into one of the Medici goons that died while protecting Lorenzo in SGM?

It's not really a retcon. It was shown in SGM Main Story so that was always the assumption, even if the Main Story isn't technically canon.

Samson referred to Leviathan's space-time powers as new, right? Guess that means he didn't have them before Squigly was reanimated by Skullgirl magic.

It's basically outright stated in Squigly's design document that Leviathan's space manipulation power was gained from their connection to Abaddon, Venus's Parasite. You can see in Squigly story that, right before she was "woken up" by Marie, Abaddon lunged at and seemed to attach itself to them. In Venus's IGG bio, there is also an apparent reference to it, that she has an "unwilling foothold on the outside".

well i heard a theory in the discord that filia and squigly might have been dealing with the rest of the skullheart pieces who separated and might be causing trouble maybe parasoul is doing the same

Yeah I think that's my theory. It would make the most sense to me, and it sort of builds into the next part of the story that the main characters would have things to deal with even if Marie has been defeated. I know Marie's story isn't canon, but I think the circumstances that lead to the Heart being shattered and the explanation for Marie's survival could be assumed to be part of the canon path.

Anyway updating the thread title to reflect Marie's story release. I'm gonna be away for the next week but when I'm back I'd like to write a full thoughts and analysis on the story. At least it gives me more time to think through it.

 

[Holy Goose]

It's not really a retcon. It was shown in SGM Main Story so that was always the assumption, even if the Main Story isn't technically canon.

No, I know about this (it was a pretty epic moment in SGM and Webtoon).
I mean the name. The development team referred to the "standard" Skeleton as Joe. And this Medici guy gets a personalised skeleton version

well i heard a theory in the discord that filia and squigly might have been dealing with the rest of the skullheart pieces who separated and might be causing trouble maybe parasoul is doing the same

It makes a lot of sense.
But I wonder about Squigly's status in this one. The Skull Heart was shattered, would that affect her activity? Would one shard be enough for her to stay "alive"?

 

[Chrono_Tata]

No, I know about this (it was a pretty epic moment in SGM and Webtoon).
I mean the name. The development team referred to the "standard" Skeleton as Joe. And this Medici guy gets a personalised skeleton version

Ooh yeah I remember something like that.

It makes a lot of sense.
But I wonder about Squigly's status in this one. The Skull Heart was shattered, would that affect her activity? Would one shard be enough for her to stay "alive"?

If it's good enough for Marie I think it's good enough for Squigly.

 

[Kittens]

It makes a lot of sense.
But I wonder about Squigly's status in this one. The Skull Heart was shattered, would that affect her activity? Would one shard be enough for her to stay "alive"?

All of Marie's undead buddies are in one piece, so as long as the other shards aren't too far from Squigly, she's probably good. If it's just Marie's piece then she's probably too far, just like Queen Renoir was too far away to awaken her before.

 

[Chrono_Tata]

Putting this here cause I don't want to create a new thread for this. So it was heavily implied by Cellsai the other day on the Discord that the new Black Dahlia variant, Hex Caliber, released on SGM, the Bayonetta reference palette, has some hidden stuff in her palette-specific effects. Particularly, the magic circle that appears when she does her supers.

So after looking at it for a bit, I figured out that the texts written in the circles are practically the same scripts that was used for Hungern's dialogues in Umbrella's story, which was something I posted about on this thread a while back. Using the old translation guide and filling in for some new letters which didn't appear in Umbrella's story, I figured out the hidden text:

Spoiler: Hidden Text

So yeah. Very interesting to say the least!

Some thoughts on the matter after having discussed it on Discord for the past few days:

- Is this some sort of reference to Bayonetta or some actual reference to Skullgirls lore, or both? It seems way too elaborate for me to just be a Bayonetta reference

- I wonder if it's literally talking about butterfly wings, as in there is some sort of character or being it is referring to, or if it's a reference to the Butterfly Effect. Marie's story makes a reference to the events that would lead up to them being able to escape is a highly improbable event that required series of coincidences like none in aeons

- Based on Marie's story, it appears that the Trinity is taking and enslaving the will of mortals as part of their plan to escape the Abyss. In a religious view, the will could be seen as the soul of mortals - it's what gives us free will and make humans humans. In Greek mythology, the goddess Psyche is the goddess of the soul and is depicted as a woman with butterfly wings. Psyche in Greek also means soul and in formal Greek can be translated to butterfly. The butterfly is seen as a symbol for the soul

- Butterflies are also symbolic of change and transformation. Might mean something although that's way too vague

- It was pointed out by BoopedFleeb on Discord that there are some possible similarity between the wing-shaped veins that appears behind Marie to the shape of butterfly wings. Might be a stretch but it's an interesting thought

- May be unrelated to this particular text, but there are several wing-themed motifs that appear several times connected through the Skull Heart, such as in the game's logo, and the wings that appear behind Marie. Perhaps some sort of clue to the origin of the Skull Heart. Maybe it's some sort of fallen angel?

- Also, with the Hungern script being used outside of the context of Hungern speaking, it does make me wonder where the language could have originated from. It seems unlikely that Hungern just invented a language for himself. Perhaps some sort of ancient, long-forgotten language of the Golgotha civilisation?

- It is also worth noting that there are some interesting differences in the way the Hungern dialogues were written compared to the way the script was written in this magic circle. Maybe the difference can simply be explained by different devs writing them, or maybe on a deeper lore level, there are different ways the script could be written based on the age? Perhaps the language that Hungern uses is from a different, possibly more ancient age

In any case it's probably worth to update the Hungern text translation guide at some point, given the variations in writing and new letters being revealed. When I have time lol