32 replies to this topic

[whoiscraig]

Hi guys. I just started a Fatal Frame playthrough on youtube, but don't worry, I'm not here to spam my links around everywhere. Fatal Frame is my favourite game series ever, but I haven't played it in a while.

Replaying it now started me thinking...

 

Spoiler

So at the end Miku saves the day, the ritual is finally completed and the door to hell closes... but its repeatedly said that it only lasts 10 years. They have to redo the ritual every 10 years, so by 1996 won't everything that Miku did be undone when the doors open again, and there's nobody there to close them?

[Homuranagi]

The idea is supposed to be that Kirie takes the role over eternally after the ending. There are no shrine maidens to come after her, after all, so she's the last one left who can do the job, and after being un-cursed she resolves herself to fulfil her duty... which means eternally sealing the gate. I don't remember them ever specifically saying that the ritual had to be repeated every 10 years or it would go wrong, so maybe they did that out of choice to be sure... or maybe Kirie is stronger for some reason (being a spirit herself, her will to seal the gate, etc.), but. Hopefully she doesn't decide she needs a tea break.

 

The situation at the end of 2 seems weirder to me.

[hermit-dragon]

This is a really good point actually... The whole premise of the games is about breaking the curse that caused the calamity or failure of the rituals, but these rituals were going on for ages before and now there is no one to carry on performing them. I think this may be a loophole the story writers never considered. Miku breaks the cirse of Kirie and Mio breaks Sae's curse... But the hells gate and abyss are just as evil as they always were.

Maybe, with the release caused by the failure of said rituals and then the subsiquent breaking of the curses and resealings, the evil has no conduit to re-enter our world ie: the gateways are sealed forever ... OR... After the prescribed time, the full fury of the evil breaks free and (pardon the pun) all hell breaks loose!

But i would wonder... Since the rituals faild so long before the games take place... What has the evil been up to since it was released?

For example, Kirie displays the typical Japanese horror hallmark of a vengeful ghost... But not much more. Same with Sae. There really os no evidence for some ultimate evil spilling into our world from these gates. So perhaps, there never really WAS an reason to perform these rituals in the first place and the resulting curses were in fact nothing more than the vengance of the yuri (or youkai... i always mix the two up)?

So... Maybe nothing happens after the curses are broken, cus nothing REALLY went wrong inthe first place and it was nothing more than a single (albeit friggin powerful) ghost who set the whole curse up. As for the other ghosts, maybe the main ghost held thier spirits here and they all just believed it was due to the evil from the gates?

[AnimalLover47999]

With Fatal Frame 1 basically Kirie permanently will be sealing the gate off so that it can no longer be held there.  With all the previous Shrine maidens their souls weren't bound to the world but their blood on the laceration rope would seal it away for 10 years.  As there are no longer any more maidens to seal the gate again once the rope weakens Kirie binds her soul to the gate so that it will never open again so long as she stays there forever.

 

With Fatal Frame 2 in 10 years the Abyss probably would open up again.  However the game implies that by going underground one can escape the boundaries of the Darkness and can escape back into the normal world (The underground passage through which the Runaway ending takes place in) therefore I think it has something to do with that.  With All God's village flooded the darkness wouldn't be able to spread past the village itself and no one could fall victim to it again because of the area being flooded.  And since all the spirits of the village were able to move on to the afterlife because of Mio and Mayu's ritual, no one would be suffering ever again from the Abyss, Repentance, or Darkness.

[Kouta Koikawa]

Maybe they just assumed there's some great evil waiting to be unleashed unless the ritual is repeated regularly with no real reason. In this sense it would be similar to how primitive societies/tribes have beliefs about great calamities that can be avoided by doing some kind of ritual. They never seem to even consider the possibility that maybe there is no calamity at all and it's just a superstition their ancestors came up with. It could be like this in the Himuro mansion too. Countless young maidens ripped apart and for what? Nothing. What a waste. I think it could be that Himuro Master had sadistic and homicidal tendencies and the opening of the "hell gate" gave him a subconscious opportunity to unleash all those sick and twisted thoughts he had while thinking it happened because of the calamity. In this way there was no real calamity, Just a series of murders committed by a sadistic madman. It also means that Kirie is wasting her time guarding the gate since there's probably just some old crap behind the door. Same applies to Mafuyu, of course.

[AnimalLover47999]

I HIGHLY doubt that seeing as how it's shown there is a great evil force beyond the gate.

[hermit-dragon]

Pk, I kindda like your idea that Kirie used her everlasting soul instead of her blood to hold the gate shut, since she is a ghost and her physical body is long decomposed anyway... But isnt that sortta implied of all the rope maidens? That it's thier SPIRITUAL power imbued in the blood soaked ropes that is able to hold the gates closed? Or maybe, since Kirie failed and the Malace merged with her, breaking her curse and her sacrifice to remain holding the gates closed makes all the difference?

Also, i agree that the abyss will spew forth from all gods village... But since te area is now a lake, no one can get caught in the vilage again... However, the LAKE itself may become a cursed location due to th evil from the abyss. This could be potentially very bad news since the village was flooded due to a dam being built, which sort of hints at the idea the surrounding area is under development! Eep! Maybe THAT could be the premise of FF5?

However... O'm more inclined to agree with Kouta... There never really WAS a real need to perform these rituals and they were just based on old tribal superstitions. The resulting curses portrayed in the games were nothing more than vengeful ghosts seeking thier revenge on the world for thier real or perceived wrongs done to them.

[AnimalLover47999]

Except for the fact that in Fatal Frame and Fatal Frame 2 it mentions both unnatural deaths and earthquakes as well as poor harvests ALWAYS happening whenever the 10 years of the sacrifice was about up.  That can't be a coincidence if it happens each time 10 years later.

 

And no I always felt that the other Rope Maidens died and then moved on to the afterlife once their ritual was completed.  It was their pain and their complete willingness to die that caused the blood stained ropes to seal the gate for 10 years.

 

I don't think that would be the case with All God's village since they were able to escape via the underground path and get out of the boundaries of the curse so it being flooded (and it being very deep for you to have to get into the depths of it, like scuba diving deep and no one is going to scuba dive in a dam) means that not only will no one ever succumb to it again, but also the spirits of the village are now at peace and in the afterlife because of the last ritual.

[Kouta Koikawa]

The "evil force" behind the gate is probably just some old rotten food supplies.

[AnimalLover47999]

Yeah no. XD

[Kouta Koikawa]

I think Kirie probably gets tired of guarding the old and smelling food supplies. Perhaps her righteous mind gets swayed by the thought of being with her lost lover in the afterlife. Then Mafuy will be all alone and he also loses his motivation to stay there and will return to Miku.

[hermit-dragon]

Lol... This is getting silly now.

[whoiscraig]

Do you think that because Mafuyu chose to stay with Kirie, that made her different, and able to do the job of keeping the gate closed for Eternity? Maybe that's why she can do it for longer than the others, none of the other rope maidens had a 'Mafuyu' to help.

[Yashuu]

Even though the idea of the rituals being performed on unfounded superstitions is interesting, I don't think the theory holds up in any of the games.

 

I think its actually a really neat idea for a future plot actually.

[Sigma]

Didn't the hell gate room and tunnel/cave collapse at the end of the game? That would make it pretty hard for the Hell Gate to re-open.

[hermit-dragon]

If collapsing the cave was all it took to seal it forever, I think somone would have done that a long time ago no?

[AnimalLover47999]

Flooding Minakami village is all it takes to keep the Abyss from spreading but they didn't do that. 

[Kouta Koikawa]

Flooding the whole area is quite a bit more difficult than collapsing a cave. It almost seems like they wanted to keep on sacrificing twins, to keep the tradition alive.

[AnimalLover47999]

I'm pretty sure no one wanted to do that.

[midwinter]

Flooding Minakami village is all it takes to keep the Abyss from spreading but they didn't do that. 

There's not actually any confirmation of that, though. A lot of people speculate that it's the case, and I've seen some people suggest that the Repentance was a one-time deal rather than a repeating one, but nobody knows for sure. Since the in-universe timeline has only advanced two months since the end of FF2, we really have no idea whether the flood has neutralised the Abyss.

 

However, this is drifting a bit off-topic. If people want to discuss usefulness and aftermath of the rituals in all the games, I could move this to Misc. Fatal Frame instead?

 

 

However... O'm more inclined to agree with Kouta... There never really WAS a real need to perform these rituals and they were just based on old tribal superstitions. The resulting curses portrayed in the games were nothing more than vengeful ghosts seeking thier revenge on the world for thier real or perceived wrongs done to them.

 

Like Yashuu said, I think this would be interesting to explore in future games, but it doesn't seem to mesh with the endings very well. With the exception of Spirit Camera, which is an odd one out in many ways, the endings always require completing the ritual successfully to lift the curse. The final battle with the antagonist isn't about laying them to rest, it's about buying time to finish the ritual.