Author: Yun Ji
Loretta is a psychological thriller game that uses retro pixel style and a lot of text content to recreate the turbulent life experienced by an American housewife in the 1940s. In addition to the game's easy to make players feel a little awkward in terms of operation, it brings players great audiovisual enjoyment in other aspects of the game, and even can be treated as a game of the same type of content as Stephen King's novel. Because only when the player is immersed can he feel the protagonist Loretta's desperate struggle between good and evil.
Black and white mode and color mode can be selected at the beginning of the game, plus the opening and self-description of the old-fashioned movie, which is no different from those classic American thriller movies. Interestingly, the game seems to be made in Russia, but the publisher is from Japan (what an American joke). However, the Chinese translation of the full text is very delicate and artistic (the introduction at the beginning also specifically indicates the translator of the book), which is also a big surprise for our players. In addition, multiple endings can also be easily adjusted out of the story (each chapter can be played independently) at any time, giving players who like to collect all endings convenient.
However, if you want to consider the gameplay here, this game is still not suitable for everyone to play.
First of all, its operation is not very in line with everyone's senses, and some scenes will stutter inexplicably; The chapter switching is not natural enough, especially those mini-games, which seem simple, but there is no guide to the content description, and the content feels more difficult to connect with Loretta, making its meaning unclear; In addition to the key options, the rest of the options do not have a large sense of existence, but this is easy for players to miss the necessary options, and the sense of participation will be destroyed to varying degrees. Therefore, the game is more suitable for players who can accept to enjoy the story alone, and I will also start to officially talk about the game plot that I can't help but write an article about.
As mentioned earlier, the whole game unfolds from Loretta's perspective, but because the game's timeline is interspersed with flashbacks of different times, we need to follow Loreta to understand everything to understand how she became a serial murderer step by step. And the beginning of all this came from after she killed her husband. Although we don't know why she did this at the beginning, we may think that Loreta is unhappy with her following her husband Walter back to the country. After all, in the early 1940s, the United States was still thriving and unaffected by the war, and many people yearned to live in big cities and live a very good life.
But as the plot develops, Loretta's husband's daughter, lover, publisher and others come to the door one by one. We also began to understand Walter's domestic violence and cheating behavior (he never puts onions in cooking, but the details that her husband has always had onion smell are particularly good), and he is also full of vices, making Loretta very insecure in this unfamiliar place, let alone disgusted. So Loretta's motives seem plausible here (but not learnable), because she forgets that once she takes this step, many things can't stop and stop – and Walter's daughter Kelly is coming to visit them.
Before anyone arrives, we can find clues in the house that Loretta was pregnant twice, and she gave birth to a boy the second time. But here we don't know why the boy didn't survive. However, from the experience of having children, it is speculated that Loretta was not so murderous to Kelly at the beginning. It's just that after she knew that her husband was famous, and the manuscript and insurance money could get her $30,000, Kelly wanted her father to give a sum of money to fly away with her lover at this time. How do you think Loretta will choose?
Of course, the game's multiple endings already show that we don't need to let Loretta kill all the way to the end. But if we need to know everything about Loretta, we have to continue down this path. A digression here, in fact, Kelly is more or less the same as Loretta, because Loretta used beauty to kill her lover. And we can see from the conversation between Loretta and Kelly's lover that even if Kelly can take money with this man and leave, or inherit the farm, she will eventually become the second Loretta. This is also the game's side reinforcement of the player's classic female dilemma impression, and Mistress has the same effect (but she is the opposite to illustrate).
So after this opening, Loretta needs to use more lies to cover up the secret of her murder to the world (even herself). It's just that her cleverness is still not like those women she "yearns for" after all, she ignores that the abandoned well will eventually affect the underground water quality, and the big house will eventually have uninvited guests to discover her hidden secrets.
However, at this time, the game also arranged for Loretta to push her demon, and the game is a bit like the suspenseful thriller point of "The Shining" to arrange at this point. In addition to the salesman we met with Loretta at the gas station who sold her rat poison, the rats we found at home, the date of birth of Loretta's son, the strange phone call in the bar, the dark hole in the basement... So in order to relieve herself and leave this place that she felt depressed, she chose to raise the butcher knife again.
In that era, Loretta was pathetic, even if she calculated all possibilities, she still could not escape the clamping on women in that era (although it is now a society ruled by law, women in the world have the opportunity to speak, but it has to be admitted that women still have a long way to go to get true equality). I also learned from other endings that there were many ununderstood gynecological diseases of that era, and the medicine of the time attributed these diseases to female hysteria. And Loretta was taken to the doctor by Walter, which can be understood as a mental depression, coupled with the pain of losing a child twice and taking medication for a long time, and tetanus has been dragging on and dying. Her psychological state is not difficult to guess, and she can see a ghost like a normal person.
In addition, what I can't figure out is that Margaret, as a junior, is also a woman, but she can talk to Loretta so arrogantly, and even treat herself like Kelly's mother to Loretta Yin and Yang (and it makes people want to spit on the author, why is one of all the endings she is dead?!). ）。 Until a certain ending, she finally let her guard down and chose to take the manuscript to shield Loretta - because Loretta told her during the confrontation between the two that Walter had contracted the whole family with syphilis, so her son drowned in the bathroom.
Whether Margaret thinks of herself, or of the sad Loretta and her son as a mother, Margaret's awakening may have endangered her own interests to escape from the patriarchal society for a while (because her original insistence may have been that she knew that Walter would leave money for her daughter and her, and then take her away, and Loreta was abandoned in this soon-to-be-sold farm with nothing), hateful and pathetic.
There is also a woman who is related to Walter, she is the daughter of a rich family, before Walter was not a famous writer, he had partnered with several people to kidnap people for a high ransom, but something happened, and finally the woman was buried under the rice field of the farm, and it was also because of the previous winter ending that he waited for the final "justice".
So all the endings are less important after piecing together so many things, whether it's the ridicule of the demons in the madhouse or the confessions of Black Mulan in prison, they are all bland, and there is nothing more emotional than these experiences, and some more expansive point endings are not presented. On the contrary, there are two ending lines that choose to return the game to the day when someone was killed, and there is a sense of powerlessness that I want to complain but don't know where to complain. Or the winter ending, at least the gates of hell will refuse Loretta's visit, she can also go to heaven to meet her son, and also give the player a short period of mental pleasure.
After all, Lolita at this time was not welcomed by hell and was spiritually liberated. There is no need to keep singing the song of hell, step by step to the abyss from which there is no turning back.