Hi, you donât know me but I think a big part of the reason a lot of people in the fandom donât care about DDLC+ and its HUGE lore drops is because itâs not just âomg game where cute high school girls revolve practically their entire existence around the MC/meâ anymore. The girls have their own fleshed out personalities/motivations, their flaws are written as flaws, and theyâre actually BONDING with each other. That, to them, is uninteresting because whatâs the point in having cute anime girl protagonists without a corresponding MALE protagonist to fix them and magically solve their problems? And omg donât get me started on their opinions on Pjct Libitina/Metaverse. Going on a bit of a tangent here, 100% subjective, but wdym youâre mad because the game known for having a setting where everything isnât as it seems, has a setting where everything isnât as it seems? DDLC was *never* supposed to be a normal VN dating simâwe can see that through how flexible the script is and how the girls were going through awful situations even before Monikaâs tamperingâand itâs always had a connection to Project Libitina, we just never knew exactly why or how before DDLC+, and itâs explanation deadass makes so much sense! But ig you canât truly appreciate a game with a shit ton of seemingly convoluted plot points trying to explain said seemingly convoluted plot points without being apart of the FNaF fandom đ„ (I lowk have Stockholm syndrome) but yeah end of rant holy yap.
As someone who's been a fan since 2017 and someone who has extensive knowledge of ddlc and it's lore. The girls weren't 2 dimensional in base game, much like real life we simply weren't close enough with them to fully understand them yet but that was the point, Unlike a 2d dating sim where you know all about a girl just from talking to her once in ddlc one of it's strengths is that we don't know everything about them, this is a negative of the side stories they're incredibly heavy handed and pretty much spoon feed the reader on who the characters are and how they're feeling. Seriously the pacing makes all of their arcs go by so quickly and more importantly the side stories feel like they were written with the fans in mind rather than just as themselves.
To be incredibly honest from my personal opinion and from what I saw people didn't care about the lore drops from plus is because it's overcomplicated, takes away the original mystery of ddlc, introduces many plot holes and in the grand scheme of ddlc as a narrative it's unnecessary, most fans don't DISLIKE plus they're usually apathetic to it because it's easily ignorable this has to do with how ddlc+ lore was implemented. Many fans see plus as something new entirely rather than something that answers ddlc and well that's kinda what plus is
This is from October 2018 on the Team Salvato website. Plus wasn't always planned it's something the team came up with for the fans, so all of the secrets in base game ddlc were really just eater eggs for fans to find for fun. All the of the mes lore was new lore written to explain how the game could be on a console. The explanations we're given really only give us more questions that are never going to be answered since ddlc won't EVER get new content (according to Dan himself). How did Sayori become aware if only Monika is coded to have the epiphany? How could Monika have made MC if she's supposed to be bad at coding causing the events of the game? If Monika is supposed this god of coding who has Kernel access why even do what she did in base game at all? Questions that will never be answered. Plus shatters our immersion and gives us boring answers to questions that didn't really need them at all.
Also I don't know if you know this but project libitina doesn't actually exist at all it's just a fan theory that everyone just beileved.
And yeah ddlc WAS meant to be an actual dating sim that was the whole tag line, A dating sim gone wrong and half of the game ddlc functions as an actual dating sim.
Lastly ddlc has regular degular dating aspects for 3 whole hours of it's runtime so if fans are upset that they won't get to do that anymore I think it's reasonable, whether you like it or not ddlc is 50% a game about dating anime girls, The creator likes anime girls come one it's natural that fans would want more content similar to that
That's my rant I hope you read it.
Edit: I forgot to mention this but the lore of plus renders what many consider to be the best part of the game non-canon đ but wait the side stories have them being themselves without Monika's influence so it's more canon I guess???
Sorry, I worded this post very poorly. I wasnât saying that the girls were 2 dimensional in the base game, just that they were more fleshed out in the side stories universe, which makes sense considering that we learn it functions as a sort of âcontrol groupâ (evidence for this is a little further down) for all of the other universes/simulations. This ALSO makes sense because their personalities, interests, and motivations feel so much more âhumanâ than they ever did in the first game. And this is very much an intentional writing choice, as seen below đ
The emails/files in DDLC+ straight-up tell us that DDLC was not supposed to be a game, but a âreal-worldâ simulation.
This explains why DDLC doesnât really have the typical functions of a normal VN dating sim in Act 2-3. And Iâm not just talking about Monikaâs tamperingâthe games script really shouldnât be as flexible as it is because thatâs just not how VNs work. The story, routes, etc, are always set in stone, if an important character or asset was missing, the game wouldnât rewrite itself, it would just stop working. I guess you could stretch it and say Monika was the one rewriting it, but I severely doubt thatâs the case because if that were true why wouldnât she just rewrite the entire thing to work in her favor? Plus sheâs rlly shit at coding. It just wouldnât makes sense. It *would* make sense however if the game was originally meant to be a simulation. Just think about it, simulations are meant to have flexible scripts, advanced AI that can at least decently emulate real situations/human hardships, which was why Sayori still had depression, Natsukiâs dad still abused/neglected her, and Yuri was still cutting(?) even before Monika started messing with their files. This is why it was *never* supposed to be a normal, cutesy dating sim, the only reason the game presents itself that way in Act 1 is because someone on the MES team dumbed down their characters to fit into âmoeâ archetypes and MADE it that way. And that would be đ
Heâs been consistently shown and described to be a guy that fucks around. The secret emails/files you get throughout DDLC+ also establish that heâs the one who wanted to make DDLC into a game in the first place
He even creates a âsecret team within a secret teamâ, as he puts it, to do so
So yeah, heâs why DDLC seems like a normal game at first. Iâd say this also explains this strange email from Lib, it wasnât Monika who wrote MC into existence in the base game, but Ive. He *does* have a strange fascination with the girls (saying itâd be a waste not to spend some âquality timeâ with them, calling them cute, etc) so it wouldnât be surprising if he turned it into a stupid dating sim. He sounds like the kind of guy that would do that. And neither Lib nor Paula would know about it because heâs doing it discreetly (as seen in the ss above), so the next somewhat obvious choice would be Monika. Splitting this into 2 posts because I have more evidence (via screenshots of emails) of the existence of Project Libitina, itâs connection to the girls, and how it might come into play later
Oh sorry I wasn't referring to the actual in universe lore of ddlc I was more so talking about how ddlc was written. Dan had no plans to make ddlc+ and originally ddlc was supposed to be a VN I was trying to say that ddlc+ retconned a lot of the lore from the base game, but for the most part what you say is true, everything above is canon to ddlc it just wasn't planned from the start.
I really donât think thatâs trueânot completely, anyway. I feel like at the *very* least he had a ârough draftââlike all creators do, of courseâof the story behind the base game. Obviously he probably didnât have every character/plot point fully fleshed out, but itâs not fair to act like he didnât have a fair amount of this planned. Otherwise most of the information we get from DDLCâs secret files/poems (like the ones below) wouldnât match up so well with the information we get from DDLC+âs emails/secret files/the test VM, like there being multiple games/universes within the world ddlc takes place in is nothing new. Itâs been implied (via the message in Monikaâs character file) and weâve been speculating about it for ages! And itâs not like thereâs any prior information (that I can think of) that really contradicts Metaverseâs existence, so itâs less of a âretconâ than it is an explanation. But yeah, I get it, there was a 4-year gap between the games and that gave people plenty of time to get comfortable with their personal or collective headcanons, and that makes it harder to be open-minded. I guess Iâm just way too used to how the fnaf fandom is with their (very convoluted) lore.
Well that's where we differ then because Dan has made it clear that he had no intention to continue ddlc's story back in 2017 so ddlc wasn't wrriten with plus in mind and only dan only wrote due to fan demand and even with the screenshots you've shown they really don't alluded to MES or plus, they're just vague medical notes and references that never really go anywhere It's more likely than not that a lot of the stuff from ddlc's files are just Easter eggs and The portrait of markov? Team salvato bought the rights to it YEARS AGO but recently they let it go simply because it's not gonna go anywhere
Could you tell me how any of the screenshots remotely allude to mes that wouldn't be a stretch?
Also like I said Sayori becoming aware contradicts mes giving monika awareness and more important mes and ddlc+ makes it so the events of ddlc are forced to a script, something the original game goes against. So that's a pretty big controdiction
I never said any of the screenshots proved MESâ existence, I said it never *contradicted* it, so itâs less of a retcon than it is an explanation/reveal. And I wasnât saying he had MESâor even Plus, reallyâ*specifically* in mind, just that he -probably- had a rough idea of it considering itâs always been implied that thereâs some kind of âhigher powerâ behind it all. Like heâs not making stuff up as he goes, you can tell thereâs been actual thought, effort, and research into it for a while now. And those medical notes are heavily alluded to in the Test VM in DDLC+ (link to screenshots below, thereâs a lot but I think theyâre worth looking into).
Also! Itâs stated in the emails that the elevated access levels can be customizable for âone or more entitiesâ, in other words, elevated access doesnât *have* to be exclusive to Monika. So we can probably just assume itâs because the simulation is designed to have a âbackupâ or a âplan bâ for if/whenever Monikaâs not present. Which makes sense because at the end of the day, the goal of the project is to observe how âsentienceâ/having elevated access affects a person and how they interact the world around them. To them, Monikaâs a convenience, not a requirement. Plus, a variety of test subjects = a variety results that can be applicable to different people.
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That's the issues why leave such an important story beat up to interpretation? Yeah we can assume there's back up but that's all it is an assumption. The medical notes I really don't see how they're connected to the screenshot,
None of the questions here are answered with the medical notes we saw.
As for what you said about how Dan isn't just making stuff up as he goes I'll agree with that, but personally much of plus lore wasn't always the intention it was just something he wrote later but it becomes a matter of opinion.
Also I should add that my issues with plus has less to do with how lore the connects but rather the lore itself.
Like I personally don't find the world bulling in plus to be as interesting as the original because the mystique of ddlc is lost and replaced with unnecessary lore and questions that won't ever really answered at least anytime soon. We know this because Dan doesn't really plan on making any new content for ddlc anytime soon.
That screen shot is unrelated to the medical notes, I added that in to connect to my last point. You can see the references to the medical notes in the link to the Test VM screenshots at the very bottom of the post đȘđŸ and itâs not *purely* up to interpretation, they for sure added in that information for a reason + thereâs sound logic to it. And yea, I get what you mean, game development takes a LOT of time, not to mention Danâs said the teams working on like 3 different projects rn so Iâm sure theyâve got their hands full.
I misclicked and relogged now by accident but team Salvato primarily Dan is working on his amiga game and the other 2 don't really have anything known about them yet and it's been that way for years so we can assume it really hasn't started yet. Finally I'm still inclined to disagree when you say "they for sure added in that information for a reason" If there really was a reason they would not have said this is the last we'll see of ddlc, It just feels incomplete. Also we got far away from your original point people just don't not care plus lore because they can't be mc there's other reasons to not care for it. Do you at least agree with that?
The reason was to give us insight as to why Sayori might have had the same epiphany Monika had near the end of the game, I rlly donât think itâs meant to foreshadow anything and I didnât mean to give you that impression. And yeah, I agree thereâs a very, very, very, very, very low chance that thereâs ever going to be a direct sequel to ddlcâwhich honestly, not mad atâbut always bet on a vaguely connected VM2/Project Libitina game because itâs premise sounds really interesting and highkey disturbing đ„đ„ and I promise I was never saying that it was the sole reason people were uninterested, I know nerdy, complicated, lore shit isnât everyoneâs cup of tea, I just meant it was a big part of the reason. Like if MC *had* played a more important role in the game Iâm sure people would be more into it. Even when the game released a lot of people were like âSayori needs her MC!â âWhy isnât MC in the side stories??â When she was doing just fine without him (something something society) and I feel like people like that missed the point. It was never his or even our story, it was the girlsâ. Itâs just a bit frustrating.