So I've decided to stop calling them zombies. Something very different is going on here, and even though one character makes a zombie reference in episode 8, that's clearly not what these things are. They run, they use weapons, they open doors, they talk, they drink sake, and they do their chores. These are no mindless zombies.

Siren uses the term "shibito", which simply means dead person. The more you get into the game, the more sense it makes. Sort of.

One gameplay concession that bugs me a little is that the shibito don't see the beam from the flashlight. You can turn your flashlight on and off, but there never seems to be any point since they don't respond to the light. Sneak up behind a shibito with the flashlight throwing a nice fat dynamic shadow in its line of sight, and it won't notice. Maybe it was something to do with their bleeding eyes being desensitized to light. That was the explanation I invented in my head.

But episode 8 blew that explanation. There's a point where you can distract two shibito by turning the lights off from a master switch. One shibito comes up to the other and asks if he turned off the lights (thanks to the wonder of sight jacking, you can eavesdrop on various comments and conversations). So why is it they can't see my flashlight? I guess the developers just chose to ignore that bit of internal logic. After all, realistic stealth be damned! You can't very well do away with the awesome creepiness of exploring a dark world with a single beam of light.

Spoiler talk after the jump.

Even with all the contrivances, I'm glad to see the developers have worked out some of the finer points of logic. When Sam knocks out a shibito with a hunting rifle, he naturally takes the hunting rifle. But when Sol comes up the elevator and later faces the same shibito (they always get up eventually…), it has a hunting rifle again. Cheat?

Not at all. If you explore as Sam, you'll notice a locked gate with a hunting rifle propped against the wall behind it. When Sol comes through the area, the gate is unlocked and the hunting rifle is gone. To me, that served as a nice little warning that there was a shibito with a gun up ahead. Nothing a little stealthy movement and the application of a mining pick couldn't fix.

It's nice to give Melissa a second chance. And at first I figured it was nice to give Sol a second chance. It's also great to hear him bring a bit of one-liner bravado to the shibito fatalities. Too bad things keep working out poorly for Sol.

And it seems that Seigo's mysterious past is an important part of all this. The implication from his sketchbook and the article about his parents' death is that a young couple with a child was driving near Hanuda when they were ambushed and killed. Young Seigo was stolen and handed over to the Saiga family to be raised.

One thing that's confusing is that his original name was Mitamura, but I seem to recall a Mitamura house in the village. So was the family local?

I hate that I have so many archive entries missing. I'm going to be pissed if I get through the last episode and discover that I won't get the full story unless I replay Siren to find missing archive entries.

(Click here for the previous Siren game diary.)
(Click here for the next Siren game diary.)