Farce, in Valhalla?

“Reviewing” Muv-luv Altered Fable

My almost two months long journey through the Muv-luv series had reached its more or less natural conclusion with Alternative’s fan disc, Altered Fable. Of course, there is no such product titled Muv-luv Altered Fable on Steam, only a little thing subtitled Photomelodies including a mini game less version of Altered Fable.

The point-of-view character Takeru Shirogane had gone through the arc from happy go lucky do gamer boy to a real military man before. Now he had a decent into fuck boy hole for this farce.

The time of writing was also near the reveal of Snake Eater remake, the tenth anniversary of some MGS 5 reveal and the twentieth anniversary of MGS3 reveal during E3 2003. So, the back half of this would have some bullshit about when was the better time for Snake to sound like Jack Bauer. I started to swear, but for games where “shit” and “fuck” appear in the dialogue, why restrain oneself talking about them?

Ghost Parade, A Second “Saber” and… From Russia with love?

This screenshot is not taken from Altered Fable. Instead, it’s Alternative’s main menu after the credits rolled. Alternative has an epilogue titled, tongue-in-cheek style I might add, Muv-luv. Developer Age software seemed to fear that their Users walking away on a down note, so they gave out a taste of the sweet after a grand tragedy packed final chapter. POV character waked up in a peaceful October, 2001 again and even some minor sadness in Meiya’s backstory was wiped away here.

As much as the dev wanted to present this as a happy ending, I can still see a lot of ghosts here. Characters are introduced left to right and up to down.

The girl with braids and glasses is Chitsuru Sagaki, the tsudere class representative. Rest in peace to her counterpart in Alternative, for she self-destructed her mecha after it was overrun by those alien bastards there.

Under Chitsuru is Mikoto Yoroi who might be a boy or girl in drag in Extra. So they are dateable anywhere except there. They are pov character’s gamer friend no matter what gender they are. RIP to her counterpart in Alternative, for she died destroying a key enemy target there.

The girl with blue pony tail is Meiya Mitsurugi. Hi, honey, glad you made onto an alien planet fine in Unlimited. RIP to her counterpart in Alternative, for she died defending human’s super weapon there. Strange that there is also friendly fire involved, it weirdly feels like Honor Killing thus I facepalmed a bit when read it.

The girl with purple pony tail is Yuhi Mitsurugi, dateable for this fan disc only. She is Meiya’s twin sister. RIP to her counterpart in Extra, for she was killed along with her parents at the age of 4 there.

The shorty with fair purple hair is Kasumi Yashiro, dateable for this fan disc only. She is the quiet one some weebs really into. May her counterpart in Unlimited find some peace for she would suffer a fate worse than death there regardless of route.

The red head is Shirogane’s childhood friend Sumika Kagami. RIP to her counterpart in Alternative, for she died twice there. First time unwilling to alien invaders, for ESRB did warn you about the tentacle porn here. Second time for she was revived to get intel from enemies but ended up with two way street on that matter, so she chose death after her mission was accomplished. Just a little cherry on top of a layered tragedy cake.

The girl with raven hair and a noodle sandwich in her mouth is Kei Ayamine, a stoic jockey. She is the subject of a mandatory up skirt shot in the first Muv-luv. RIP to her counterpart in Alternative she died along with Sagaki there.

Last but not least, the shorty with pink hair is Miki Tamase, who is basically a cat. RIP to her counterpart in Alternative, for she was overrun by those alien bastard after holding down defense position. The enemies should have showed some more respect to her broken dead body.

Guess I would stick to my gun about this being the afterlife. Or at least that would make me feel better about going down the Kasumi route. For her age is never given where she looks and acts like she’s twelve. Oh, well, at least the scene where Shirogane almost fucked her was presented as a Total Recall parody. Fun fact, her counterpart in Unlimited and Alternative is a Soviet bred ESP. The name reflects it for it is how “Russia” is spelled in Japanese reversed.

A thing Muv-luv series does well is that the branches where one gets to choose the girls are well telegraphed. Altered Fable does one better by having the girls’ names are in those branches, so one can choose their poisons labeled.

Ages decidedly did not go open world with this one, for the choose places menu is menu shaped, not map shaped like them Type-moon fan discs. Maps are important in depicting combat operations in Alternative, so I consider the lack there of in Altered Fable a choice.

Other than 2 brand new potential love interests, Altered Fable also has some military adventure elements and a dumb as brick spy plot peppered in. This is expansion pack to Alternative after all, so a school ball game tournament is changed into a school war game tournament. The sad New Year Offensive of Alternative is changed into a comedic one as well.

Foreign to Japan spies are after a Mitsurugi device, but a plucky and sassy high school physics teacher Yuko Kotsuki kept them at bay in proper farce like fashion. To be fair those spies, the counterpart of Ms. Kotsuki in Alternative is a mad scientist who scored humanity’s first victory against an alien invasion. Well, she managed to miss one out of five mainly because the counterparts of other four did work for her in Alternative.

A Thorn in the This Little Slice of Paradise

Introducing Chuck Sauber. Yeah, yeah, I can already hear you asking “Who is this Kiefer Sutherland looking motherfucker? And what’s he doing in a farce for weebs?”

Well, I was not thinking “Who is this Kiefer Sutherland looking motherfucker?” until I saw the image below. “Is that Rikiya Koyama?” was what I thought. Then the 24 parody began.

Literally using the clock for chapter heads up is something Alternative already did during its combat operations. Though going this hard on being a 24 parody. For starters, the aforementioned Rikyiya Koyama did do Japanese dub over Kiefer Sutherland, including all 206 episodes of 24. I am counting the feature length prologue to seventh season here, that Guild sure loves to go strike.

Sauber in this farce would talk impatiently into a phone then hang up and yell “DAMN IT!” just like 24’s Bauer. Well, technically he yelled “KUSO!” in Japanese, something can literally be translated into “shit” or “crap” depends on what letter does one want from ESRB. Sauber has a partner named Sheryl Turner, whose character spite is just Sherry Palmer in 24, not weebed up at all. She only calls the pov character “David”, probably as in 24’s David Palmer.

Muv-luv Altered Fable came out in 2007, the same year Simpsons’ 24 Minutes aired. Sutherland of course contributed voice work there, so I guess after 24’s fifth season won an Emmy for best drama, the stick up that series’ ass loosened a bit and its cast members started to participate in parodies as long as the paychecks cleared.

Speak of voice work, yours truly really think if Hideo Kojima really wanted to cast someone played Jack Bauer as the voice of Snake, 2003 would be a much better time than 2013. But I guess with MGS3 being a reaction to the Raiden backlash, he couldn’t. The E3 2003 reveal of Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater already had Akio Otsuka voicing the player character, simply known as Snake back then. Back then whether David Hayter would be back for the English version was not set in stone.

Otsuka was great as every playable Snake of course, the less experienced in spy craft Naked Snake in Snake Eater was no exception. But if Kojima wanted to put focus on a younger Snake, Koyama would not be too bad of an option. Yours truly first knew Koyama’s voice work through 2011’s Fate Zero animated adaption where he played a sad killer who had to kill his mother figure to save the world. Naked Snake is almost, the same.

The “ever innovating” game auteur turned out to be a creature of habits like the rest us, huh? I mean by 2013, both Hayter and Otsuka were inseparable from MGS series’ playable Snakes, yet Kojima thought Sutherland phoning it in can satisfy his English-speaking patrons? It’s decade too late and way beyond the point of no return, if you ask me.

Some Final Words

Altered Fable finally decided to show its Users what Game Guy looks like, and of course it looks like Game Boy Advance, something sold like hot cakes back in 2001. It might be the first handheld I remembered with the promise of reliving some decade old classics on the go. Just like Playstation Vita one decade after it and Steam Deck two decade after it. Takeru Shirogane sure popped in a 16-bit classic and had the girl go “Oh, it’s so cute”.

I sure am glad to go through a series of visual novels “sold at full price” in handheld, mostly. Though to take screenshots for this piece, I reinstalled Steam onto the Surface Pro I am typing right now. As someone who lost most of their interest in new releases, having handhelds to relive or even discover some classic in the decades past is my cup of tea when it comes to gaming recently. I am glad that Muv-luv acknowledge the interest on that front as well.