Rewriting the end of .hack// without "Real Digitalize"

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Crow
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Rewriting the end of .hack// without "Real Digitalize"

Post by Crow »

SPOILERS AHEAD
I havn't read/watched every single entry in the .hack universe, so bear with me on this one. Feel free to crit or correct stuff when you comment!

One of the things that really, really bothered me about LINK was digitalization of physical bodies. It doesn't make sense given the rest of the .hack universe (which is more technologically advanced than ours, but even with that it doesn't make sense that they've managed to master quantum physics enough to turn physical matter into photons and have a machine read them. That's star Trek levels of technology.) furthermore it is completely unnecessary. It has already been shown since the very first episodes of SIGN and LIMINALITY that when you are comatose in game, you feel everything as if it were real, and in real life your body undergoes changes depending on what happens to you in game (heart rate and breathing changes in stressful situations, Tsukasa's dad temporarily unplugging the life support machine causing in game agony). Even with MaMa's goals in mind, wiping out humanity without actually killing them if still possible without "doublewares". In fact, it's possible to completely exclude real digitalization, still keep the same affects, and actually keep the plot within the "rules" set for this fictional universe.

In this rewrite, MaMa accomplishes their goals not by physically digitalizing everyone, but by using the already well established mind/soul digitalization. While humans are knocked out, the omnipotent power the world has on electronics (as seen in the events of Liminality and the Movie) would shut down factories, electricity, etc. Now everyone is in a coma but they have no means to actually take care of their bodies which quickly perish. However this wouldn't actually "kill" the person, only their bodies as their mind, soul, whatever actually makes them "them" is digitalized. Aura would be the goddess of this new world, but CC Corp invents the Sophia security system because well... The World does not have a good track record between computer viruses and databugs. They launch the virus seen in the movie in order to not only sell their antivirus product, but to assure that their product will work and that by founding what will keep everyone protected they will in effect become their own gods in this new world once everyone is digitalized. Starting a fire and putting it out to make yourself look like a hero. Obviously this fails miserably over the course of the movie.

This would also make more sense given VERSUS, where the player is for some reason immune to digitalization. It is never explained why, and to be honest I don't think they could ever come up with a satisfactory explaination. When you send out a frequency that turns soild matter into photons, what exactly makes the matter in one human being fundamentally different than the matter in another such that the frequency has no affect? This makes no sense physically, since all humans have very very little variation on the biological level and on the matter level basically we are all the same. Instead, the player is completely resistant to soul/mind digitalization or the good ol falling into a coma. It was established in Liminality that some people are more affected then others by whatever mechanism causes players to fall into a coma (Mai managed to not fall into a coma while Tomonari did, and then they encounter Skeith again she can through off the headset while Junichiro is twitchy before he's even datadrained). This also makes Tokio and his group's mission that much more dangerous in Versus, since if he's caught his body is essentially a sitting duck.

Speaking of Tokio, what would make him so special without being a "doubleware"? Remember that the same way physical bodies are affected by what happens to the player in the world (Doll Syndrome), what affects the body also affects the player in the World. Tokio is special not because he does or does not become digitialized, it's that once he is digitalized his mind and body are truly separate from one another. Also, Tokio is a test subject for digitalization itself. While other players who went comatose already had their digital self in the form of a character, Tokio had never created a character and thus he appears as himself within the game. In this alternate to LINK, CC Corp and/or Schicksal would be monitoring his body in the real world the same way previous cases of lost ones have. However there is still another flaw with digitalization...

Outer dependency syndrome, which was the one major flaw with the digitalization of human bodies could also work with mind/soul digitalization. Going back to earlier in the series, it was very easy for Morgana to manipulate Tsukasa's memories and felt like something was "missing" after dieing and being reborn in game. Once Sora was datadrained by Skeith, he wandered the Game broken until he was freed by Kite, and when he woke up in the real world he had total amnesia of even playing the game. It is likely that as lost ones remain in the game for too long, die in game and are brought back, or are infected with a data bug, it has the same end as outer dependency syndrome either due to the physical limitations of code or due to the phychological stress humans were never adapted to weather. Jyotaro Amagi was in the game for years between the events of GU and LINK while real body was killed (either by suicide or an accomplice) and while he had no body to return to he deteriorated.

So how did this all get started? During his work in the RA plan, Jyotaro managed to isolate whatever function causes players to fall comatose to begin with and isolated it.
Saika's disc is a sort of black box terminal that contains whatever mechanism causes players to become mentally trapped in the game in the first place as well as a access to The World's servers. Tokio is studied by schicksal to test how far along soul digitalization has come. The "static" in his code is not a result of being a doubleware but because of his unusual method of digitalization and how it affects his body (or in his case a lackthereof). When the entire world is "digitalized" the mechanism is sent throughout the web all at once, instead of being blasted at a single player. Everyone blanks out for a few seconds, and then thinks nothing of it really. Most people would regard at as a really weird daydream and move on with their lives. (another thing that bugged me about LINK: nobody cared about being physically transported into a game even if it was just for a few seconds?!)

Originally, the mechanism that causes players to be sucked into the game wasn't present. It was added in by members of CC Corp working for Mama. The first run was Deadly Flash which failed and killed people, Pluto's Kiss was test to see if the world could be successfully "shut down" in human's absence. The Lost Ones were the original test for human digitalization after the relative success of Saya. This was successful, but there were still flaws to work out related to how digitalization affects the mind and body. It was tested again in GU's time, but then Doll Syndrome was a new and worse extension of the original problem (much of the original code was lost and the new code had unexpected side effects) HOWEVER they also make a major step forward with Midori. While the world R:2 continued, they worked on the flaws in the coding and trying to hack Aura to get a better code, and when they felt confident enough to test again the World R:X was released. Once that phase was complete, they moved to the World Force:ERA and tested security measures as they were more confident in the upcoming digitalization of humanity.
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Re: Rewriting the end of .hack// without "Real Digitalize"

Post by GyppyGirl2021 »

Good to see I'm not the only one who thought real digitalization was stupid :P
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Re: Rewriting the end of .hack// without "Real Digitalize"

Post by Crow »

GyppyGirl2021 wrote:Good to see I'm not the only one who thought real digitalization was stupid :P
I havn't really participated in the online .hack fandom but I don't think I know a single person irl who likes .hack and didn't think that was stupid. (that and that everyone gets an Xth form and all the characters are back but aren't the players. That I can forgive since Tokio is from what I understand going through Aura's "memories" and they are just data anyways.)
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Re: Rewriting the end of .hack// without "Real Digitalize"

Post by Kuukai »

Crow wrote:It has already been shown since the very first episodes of SIGN and LIMINALITY that when you are comatose in game, you feel everything as if it were real, and in real life your body undergoes changes depending on what happens to you in game (heart rate and breathing changes in stressful situations, Tsukasa's dad temporarily unplugging the life support machine causing in game agony).
They already charge so far into the world of the fantastical with this, I don't see why why real digitalization "breaks" anything.
Crow wrote:Now everyone is in a coma but they have no means to actually take care of their bodies which quickly perish. However this wouldn't actually "kill" the person, only their bodies as their mind, soul, whatever actually makes them "them" is digitalized.
The scene you mentioned above implied the opposite, and in the world of .hack that doesn't really seem to work.

There are a lot of things lost here. The connection between Tokio and AIKA beautifully connected to the idea of real digitalization. A lot of the Schicksal infighting and philosophy, the foolishness and hubris of Amagi's plan, the general epicness of the "Twilight" that is portrayed. It removes a whole dimension from Link's story, which was quite good and one of the best things about this season, just to make things slightly less fictional.
Crow wrote:This would also make more sense given VERSUS, where the player is for some reason immune to digitalization. It is never explained why, and to be honest I don't think they could ever come up with a satisfactory explaination.
That will be covered in the next installment, since they both feature  Tanaka and his allies. We've only ever seen one doubleware before, so we don't know exactly what his abilities are, if he even is the same thing.
Crow wrote:When you send out a frequency that turns soild matter into photons, what exactly makes the matter in one human being fundamentally different than the matter in another such that the frequency has no affect?
They waltz into The World as a kind of analog program, which can interact with digital words and digital moves and digital cheeseburgers. The driving force behind this isn't their matter, matter is just the media. The software is the "person." And some are more capable of adapting than others. In some places it's implied that they're converted on some level, since sleep and some other bodily functions are no longer required.

To me, it would seem like a major retcon to throw in something as big as outer dependency syndrome at this point. The AIDA did a great job Soul Digitalizing an entire server, seems like Mama would have done more of that if it was going to work... It really isn't possible to "rewrite" the story of Link and keep everything but that.

You can probably ignore it for a while if you want, Pi in Quantum sure does, but as the story continues it looks like there will be a stronger connection than ever between The World and the real world.
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Re: Rewriting the end of .hack// without "Real Digitalize"

Post by Crow »

I'm not suggesting a total retcon, LINK has happened and I know they are going to continue with this. I just disagree that it would be impossible to take away the aspect of physically transporting a person into cyberspace without negatively impacting the story of LINK. I don't think it is impossible to salvage the idea, but it just doesn't feel like .hack to me at this point, and I know I'm not the only one. The main point was that I think that the concept of physically digitalizing a person detracts from the series and that it is possible to have the same results using mind/soul digitalization that has been established from day 1.

What I mean as far as "breaking the rules" goes, is that every fictional universe has it's own set of rules for reality. In the .hack universe it was established that their world is more advanced than ours technologically, however looking at their technology it's not too far advanced. Aside from being able to upload someone' mind to a computer and the super sophisticated AI, nothing in the series is that big of a technological leap from what we already have. It was established in universe that if a person is soul digitalized then they can feel things as if they were actually there (same as being physically digitalized) that they can become seriously damaged mentally (like outer dependency syndrome). Real digitalization adds nothing aside from getting rid of the presence of a body in the real world which really is a moot point if your plan is to stop humans from polluting the planet and the series has shown your soul can be digitalized while your body is dead. I'm not writing a new script for the game or proposing that, but I think everything you described being lost by dropping the concept of real digitalization could have been a part of the game anyways. Of course I'm not an expert on the game since all I've seen are the translated videos of the main storyline so I might be missing something vital, but that's the impression I have from what I have seen.

The ability to digitalize a person physically is a HUGE leap forward in technology that I don't think can be justified in the series, and it doesn't make sense that some people can't be digitalized given the mechanism for transforming matter. I know that some fans will agree with me, and some fans won't. I can respect that.
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Re: Rewriting the end of .hack// without "Real Digitalize"

Post by Erroneous »

Someone hasn't watched TRON! This technology, digitizing lives since the 1982, during the days of the Apple II computers!
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Re: Rewriting the end of .hack// without "Real Digitalize"

Post by Bullet Biter »

Crow wrote:It was established in universe that if a person is soul digitalized then they can feel things as if they were actually there (same as being physically digitalized) that they can become seriously damaged mentally (like outer dependency syndrome). Real digitalization adds nothing aside from getting rid of the presence of a body in the real world which really is a moot point if your plan is to stop humans from polluting the planet and the series has shown your soul can be digitalized while your body is dead. I'm not writing a new script for the game or proposing that, but I think everything you described being lost by dropping the concept of real digitalization could have been a part of the game anyways. Of course I'm not an expert on the game since all I've seen are the translated videos of the main storyline so I might be missing something vital, but that's the impression I have from what I have seen.

The ability to digitalize a person physically is a HUGE leap forward in technology that I don't think can be justified in the series, and it doesn't make sense that some people can't be digitalized given the mechanism for transforming matter. I know that some fans will agree with me, and some fans won't. I can respect that.
I might be wrong, but doesn't Outer Dependency Syndrome actually apply to the people physically trapped in digital space? Like Amagi showed that you could suffer from the syndrome and still return to reality and his body...though with an altered mental state.
And having people physically transferred into a digital world is much more productive than just having a bunch of comatose bodies everywhere because those bodies still consume energy and produce waste. If you want to halt all human activity on the planet that means life support and all of that as well. So the Real Digitalization plot actually makes more sense.

Arguing technology logic in a sci-fi universe is always kind of a moot point to try and make. Like Insydius said above me, we had a movie set in the 80's where someone got sucked into a computer and no one questioned it. Right now we can't make too many assumptions about how the real digitalization plot will go yet since it hasn't been explored as much. The fact that there are people who can't be digitalized could be a giant flaw in Mama's plan that will probably lead to an even bigger conflict between them and the world.

They might now have explained things very well, but when has anything in .hack ever been explained fully and in a timely manner? Getting picky now is silly.
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Re: Rewriting the end of .hack// without "Real Digitalize"

Post by TheSorrow »

Crow, you remind me so much to how i was. When LINK was first announced, and it was revealed that it was going to involve EVERY OTHER CHARACTER in the series, with a main character that looked like Taichi from Digimon who was apparently some gamer that idolized the .Hack heroes, i was ANGRY, it was just SO RIDICULOUS, it made NO SENSE with anything that we've seen from .Hack before, and it just couldn't possibly be for real, let alone canon. Then the whole deal with Real Digitalization appeared, that this .Hack//Digimon dude also had the same ability as those digital creatures of actually teleporting into the game world, physical body and all, and PFFT, that just broke ALL LOGIC of .Hack, breaking it's own set of rules of reality as you say, going way too far and too ridiculous, and it could all either be a joke or the worst mistake CC2 and Hiroshi Matsuyama could EVER make. Then the game was actually released, people that can read le japz played it, information was released all around, and i was still equally angry, ignoring the game entirely (because even on top of that, it looked RIDICULOUS...and let's be honest, as a game itself without considering story and just gameplay and features it does kinda suck 'XD), and everytime there was discussion about it, i had to butt in and complain about how horrible everything was...that is, until some seriously intelligent members, like Kuukai here, seriously shut me up with complete explanations of how everything really made sense and how WRONG i was in everything that i was led to assume D: And honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if THAT was Hiroshi's and everyone's real intention...release information that would OBVIOUSLY piss off loyal fans, only to hide how COMPLEX the story really was, and so deeply connected to the CORE story of the .Hack universe, one that, through SIGN/IMOQ/Roots/GU/etc, we actually didn't know about (the whole deal with MaMa and the origins of The World itself).

Aaaanyways o3o
Your biggest complain with everything is that Real Digitalization doesn't make sense, it breaks whatever reality the .Hack universe had already established, is far too technological from what we've seen, and it's so out of .Hack that it could be simply removed and the story would make even better sense. Alright c:
Now, explain to me how Soul Digitalization works. Explain, in pure scientific form with the current technology that we've seen in our own world or the .Hack one, how is possible for a person to be "inside" a game, acting entirely on their own conscious will, learning new information that is actually stored on their physical neurons, or even developing actual physical damage in their body originating from the game, when the person is in an entire different place from said game, and even when the interface in which they "became trapped" is turned off, or even destroyed...or hell, even when the PHYSICAL BODY is killed off (which you say is possible, body perished but mind/soul/etc. alive...which i honestly don't remember as in all cases it was either the entire body inside, or not the mind/soul but "remnants" of their data). Or simply, just explain the "soul" to me, with pure science and technology, and nothing that could be passed off as spiritual, metaphysical, astral, or such kind of pseudo-studies. If you can, then congratulations, you have already debunked my entire argument, and you should go get a nobel prize for your findings XD But more than likely, you won't be able to, as with all our current technological researches, and even those that we theorize of, we have NO IDEA what the soul is, what is made of, what kind of information it contains, or how it could be manipulated in any way, let alone transfer into bits that could be interpreted as a computer to emulate your entire "self", and allow you to survive with it even when your body is far away, perhaps even dead. And yet, we DO know that it's possible to convert matter into light, perhaps not as "easily" as shown in the .Hack universe, but there have been successful experiments where a particle has been transformed into a "beam" that can be interpreted and still contains all the information of said particle, and by some mega-extrapolation and gigantic scientific calculus, it COULD be possible to convert the entire matter of a living person into light, carry it to a machine strong enough to interpretate it (which should be a machine with AT LEAST as much processing capabilities as the human brain, otherwise the brain will be incomplete and it'll just convert retards), and well, allow the person to exist as data, except that the body itself will decay as much as data decays, which is...pretty much never. So, how can you say that Real Digitalization is too ridiculous and far from their technological capabilities, while Soul Digitalization is FAR, FAR, WAY TOO FAR more technological, so much our current humanity has NO IDEA about the components of the soul, and perhaps it's even IMPOSSIBLE, as the soul might as well not be real and just a creation of humanity given the way our minds make us think of ourselves as "entity", and the fear of not knowing what happens to "us" after we die (and you can add as many theories and explanation of rebirth, astral projection and such, but that'll be all spiritual and based on human thinking, not nearly as real as turning matter into light).

Ever since .Hack explained that a "soul" could be trapped inside a game, an actual soul, entirely independent from the physical body, it already travelled to a realm way too far from our own reality, far more than the largest sophisticated AI you could ever imagine. And ANYTHING ELSE, even Real Digitalization, is "easy technology" that we could even achieve in our own universe. And speaking about that, i wouldn't call the .Hack universe as a "world just like ours, but more technologically advanced". Many of the things they say are new in 2017-2018 (RFID chips, paying stuff with your cellphone or controlling remote devices with it, etc.) are things we already had since 2012 or perhaps less. And i'm pretty sure an Alienware is more powerful than whatever they were using to play The World R:1. I would call the .Hack universe an "alternate reality", or even "alternate universe"...one that is VERY similar to ours, yes, perhaps even the history up until 1970 or so was IDENTICAL, but their technology progressed different, some things are more advanced, some things aren't, and the inner workings of the world and the universe itself are so different that they can interact with the "soul", they can play a videogame where the characters can perform LIMITLESS actions through just a normal controller and a headset display, and why not, can convert matter into data with just a single frequency. And speaking about that, you also complain that it doesn't make sense that a frequency could digitalize a human and fail to digitalize another when they're both "made" of the same thing and there shouldn't be such a vital difference between one and other. And well, do you know about the workings of their digitalization, enough to say when it should or shouldn't work? During the dark ages of our humanity, certain people fell sick to epidemics while others showed no signs of infection whatsoever, and they just WOULDN'T be able to know why, because they didn't have the knowledge to understand that inside them they had certain little things called antibodies or certain microorganisms that made them immune. And using a bit of fiction but that i love, in Issac Asimov's Foundation series, a kid is born with the ability of messing with people's heads, and likewise they were unable to figure out why...and it was just a very small mutation, appearing out of an immense amount of randomness and luck, in a way they would never be able to predict (...well, they sorta could, but let's not get on that XD lol). So, what's there to say that, whatever way the mechanism of digitalization works like, it wouldn't be able to convert certain matter to light, because of maybe a certain microorganism, a certain DNA strand, a certain mutation, or anything that they just wouldn't be able to know until then? And heck, if you're already accepting the idea of Soul Digitalization and so the idea that their universe could be fundamentally different to ours, then maybe their entire matter is composed from different particles as in our universe, maybe their matter can transform easier into data but also with much more restrictions that we can imagine, or maybe it's even some sort of "aura", related to the soul, that "protects" them from whatever the frequency does. We just can't know, as we can't know how the hell the soul itself works, and i actually think that more .Hack material will be able to give a proper explanation of why they can't be digitalized, and it'll actually make fitting sense with everything else that has been explained in .Hack, even the things that seemed so ridiculous at first...but if you just try to compare it to our world, you'll get nowhere.

...
And Bullet Biter kinda ninja'd me .3. But all i said still applies. And i forgot you also mentioned about MaMa's plot and not making sense with Real Digitalization...but in my opinion, it makes MUCH MORE sense that they want to digitalize ENTIRE people, not just their minds. If i recall correctly, they want to SAVE humanity, and let them be able to live in a never-decaying world, before they ruin their current one, not just trap them and let their bodies rot away, which according to everything i remember from .Hack it'd actually lead to their souls dying too.
And i LOVE debating about sci-fi .3. lol
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Re: Rewriting the end of .hack// without "Real Digitalize"

Post by Kuukai »

To me one important part is how AIKA remains affected by her brush with reality (via Tokio). It doesn't really make as much sense any other way.

But everyone's entitled to their opinion, and some people hate it.

When the new Archives comes out I'm sure we'll see more about the thought process behind it. But part of it was about creating 5characters (Tokio, the Amagis, and their clones) with their destinies entwined in a special and different way.
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