-
A bit of a disclaimer - as stated on the main page, these are
- entirely my thoughts from observations while developing the game, some
- of the information may be innacurate.
- First, let's get this out of the way - Serial Experiments Lain PSX isn't
- a "game" in a traditional sense, it's more like a visual novel which you
- piece together yourself. The story revolves around Lain and her
- interactions with her psychiatrist - Touko.
-
A common misconception about the game is that there's no
- specific order, and that you just randomly watch stuff and come up with
- an explanation yourself. From what I've noticed, this is not entirely
- true. Let me explain:
+ Welcome to lainTSX: a web-based, open source, English recreation of the
+ underappreciated 1998 PlayStation game Serial Experiments Lain.
+ In an interview with character designer Yoshitoshi Abe, he said that the
+ game started development before the far better known anime of the same
+ name, which means that SEL was intended to be a mixed media project.
+ Unfortunately, the game never took off as well as its television
+ counterpart and ended up getting left in the dust. Although you could
+ experience either the game or the anime first, the game will make more
+ sense if you have seen the anime and not so much vise-versa.
- The blue orbs that you navigate through (we'll call those blue orbs
- "nodes" from now on) contain either:
+ As for how to actually play lainTSX, that’s a bit trickier to explain.
+ This isn’t really a video game and I’d even struggle to call it a visual
+ novel (although it is closer to the latter). The “gameplay” revolves
+ around selecting files in a menu and eventually getting to experience
+ all of them.
- A. Media (audio/video)
+ The file types are:
- B. Collectibles
+ Touko’s Diary (Tda) - Touko’s personal thoughts.
- C. Upgrades
+ Lain’s Diary (Lda) - Lain’s personal thoughts.
+
+ Counseling (Cou) - Interactions between Touko and Lain.
+
+ Diagnosis (Dia) - Touko’s diagnosis of Lain.
+
+ Digital Camera (Dc) - Video clips.
+
+ Polytan (P2) - parts of Lain’s bear, Polytan.
+
+ Saisei-kun (SSkn) - upgrades needed to access more nodes.
+
+ Gate Passes (GaTE) - upgrades needed to access Site B.
+
+ Talk (TaK) - Random quotes by Lain.
- There are also multiple "types" of nodes. You can tell them apart by
- their names and icons.
-
- Here's a basic list of these nodes according to their names in their
- respective categories:
-
-
A category (Media) - Tda, Lda, Dia, Cou, TaK, Dc
-
B category (Collectibles) - P2
-
C category (Upgrades) - SSkn, GaTE
-
- Let's step through each of these one by one:
+ At the beginning, you’ll see an odd and clunky hub with a bunch of blue
+ orbs. This is the main menu, so you better get used to it. Those orbs
+ are called nodes, and they each represent a specific file. Blue nodes
+ haven’t been assessed yet and grey nodes have. If a node you already
+ went through is still blue, that means you haven’t actually
+ listened/watched all of it. There’s a progress bar on the top right of
+ the screen which will show how far you are into the clip, so I recommend
+ checking that before leaving the file.
- Category A - Media:
-
Tda - Touko's diary - Touko's personal thoughts.
-
- Lda - Lain's diary - Lain's personal thoughts.
-
- Dia - Diagnosis - Lain's diagnosis after their interactions, provided by
- Touko.
-
- Cou - Counseling - Lain and Touko's interactions.
-
- TaK - Not sure what TaK stands for - Random quotes by Lain.
-
- Dc - Videos.
+ If you try to access a node by selecting it, there’s a good chance
+ you’ll be greeted with an animation of Lain either knocking on the node
+ with no result, knocking on the node and falling on her face, or getting
+ shot at with lasers coming from the node. This is the only real puzzle
+ that the game provides you with. What you need to do is access all the
+ SSkn files in numerical order, meaning that you’re gonna have to search
+ through four of these nodes starting from the very bottom of the map.
+ There are also six P2 files, and after accessing them all you will
+ unlock two more files. The GaTE files are the last collectable, and
+ collecting all four will unlock Site B; Site B is another area that can
+ be accessed by going to the menu and selecting “Change”, although I
+ wouldn’t recommend doing this quite yet.
- This is where the no-real-order issue comes into play - each of these
- separate types are put in chronological order, meaning After Lda001
- comes Lda002, then Lda003, etc. This is identical for every other node
- type I mentioned.
- What might lead some people to believe that there is no real order is
- that the way you UNLOCK them may not be entirely chronological, for
- example, the first node you'll most likely interact with from Tda is
- Tda028, since that's the closest to where you start from at the
- beginning of the game.
-
- There's also another issue - despite these separate types being put in a
- specific order, it is unclear how they interact with each other. For
- example, there is no way (to my knowledge) to tell which Cou comes after
- which Lda judging by their names alone. What might help here are the
- "words" you select while you play them (on the right hand side there are
- 3 floating things on each audio node which you can select).
-
- Category B - Collectibles:
- P2 - Polytan - You collect parts of Lain's bear, after you collect all
- the pieces, 2 extra idle media files become available.
-
- Category C - Upgrades:
+ Now that you have all these files at your disposal, you’re probably
+ extremely overwhelmed. “Oh no,” you might be saying to yourself. “How
+ will I be able to experience this story in a streamlined, linear order?”
+ Try as much as you want to go in a straightforward path, but the game
+ will constantly discourage you. There is no direct order to experience
+ everything in, even with the individual files being numbered and each
+ level being a direct progression from the last. Even having gone through
+ all the collectibles and upgrades, there’s still a ton of stuff you
+ haven’t yet unlocked. As you chug through the game, more and more files
+ will pile up. On top of this, each audio file contains three key words
+ of literal or thematic importance, and each word brings you to a file
+ that will most likely be on a completely different level. I strongly
+ believe that part of the artistic vision behind this game was to have
+ players jump around the map and experience it in their own unique order
+ through whichever key words or plot elements they find themselves most
+ interested in. Take this however you want and go through the files in
+ whatever way you find the most engaging. Personally, I took full
+ advantage of this unique system and found myself loving the game even
+ more for it. It becomes a bit tedious when you only have a few nodes
+ left since you’re booted so often to files you’ve already gone through,
+ so at that point I just directly exited out of files after listening to
+ them and selected the blue node closest to me.
- SSkn - Saisei-kun (roughly translates to Mr. Recovery) - The main
- upgrade inside the game. Some nodes have an "upgrade requirement" that
- you need to meet to be able to view them, the way you do that is by
- collecting these. So, the next time you see Lain try to knock on a node
- and fall over, know that you need to collect more SSkn nodes.
- GaTE - Gate (I guess) - A "gate pass" as the game calls it - after
- collecting all of them, you unlock Site B, which contains more nodes and
- is the place where you continue the story.
-
+ Once every single node on all twenty-two levels has become gray, it’s
+ time for you to go to Site B! This is a direct continuation of the story
+ in Site A, and there are only thirteen levels this time around. There
+ are no P2 or GaTE files in Site B, but you will have to find three more
+ SSkn files before you can freely access everything you see. There’s also
+ a one-shot manga called Serial Experiments Lain: The Nightmare of
+ Fabrication that takes place sometime during the events of Site B, so
+ you’re gonna want to read that.
+
+
+
+ Everything below this line is post-game, so you should have watched the
+ ending before reading this final paragraph.
+