lainTSX/guide.html at master · ad044/lainTSX · GitHub

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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <meta charset="UTF-8" />
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
        <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/images/icon.png" />
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="/src/static/css/style.css" />
        <title>< notes ></title>
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    <body>
        <div class="header">
            <div class="nav-links">
                <a href="/" class="header-link">main</a>
                <a href="/notes.html" class="header-link">notes</a>
                <a href="/game.html" class="header-link">start</a>
                <button class="header-link" id="settings-button">options</button>
                <a href="/guide.html" class="header-link">guide</a>
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        </div>
        <main>
            <div class="guide-text">
                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.
                <br /><br />
                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.
                <br /><br />
                The file types are: <br />Touko's Diary (Tda) - Touko's personal thoughts. <br />Lain's Diary
                (Lda) - Lain's personal thoughts.<br />
                Counseling (Cou) - Interactions between Touko and Lain. <br />Diagnosis (Dia) - Touko's
                diagnosis of Lain. <br />Digital Camera (Dc) - Video clips. <br />Polytan (P2) - parts of
                Lain's bear, Polytan. <br />Saisei-kun (SSkn) - upgrades needed to access more nodes.
                <br />Gate Passes (GaTE) - upgrades needed to access Site B. <br />Talk (TaK) - Random quotes
                by Lain. <br /><br />
                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.
                <br /><br />
                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.
                <br /><br />
                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.
                <br /><br />
                Everything below this line is post-game, so you should have watched the ending before reading
                this final paragraph.
                <hr />
                After watching the final cutscene and pressing continue, you will be booted back to Site A.
                This time, there are a ton of added blue nodes! While some of these are useful or add to the
                story, there's a new file type labeled TaK which is pretty much just a five-second quote from
                Lain. A majority of these new nodes are TaK files. If you want to unlock even more stuff, you
                will have to go through each and every one of these; there are one-hundred and twenty-one in
                total, counting those on both sites. After all your nodes are gray once again, watch the
                ending and you'll get the remaining nodes—sixty-one of which are more TaK files. If you grind
                your way through all of these and watch the ending once again, you'll get… nothing. This is
                it. You're done. The post-game is pretty arduous (although that's probably part of the point),
                so you decide if you're Lain enough to complete it.
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