Thousand Year Door Chapter 4: For Pigs the Bell Tolls

Chapter 4 is quite possibly the best chapter in the whole trilogy, for how Doopliss quickly raises the stakes to the ceiling and how cutely they manage to subvert the legendary Super Mario. At the same time, it is also the most awful chapter to play, and even that enjoyable narrative falls short of true potential at points.

Let's start with the fakeout chapter. The Twilighters are being turned into pigs by Doopliss on a lark, and they have descended into such a horrified stupor that they would turn away anyone seeking to be their saviour rather than allow them to take a crack at the guy. There's an interesting idea here, however, when you consider that pipe in and out of the place. Doesn't let you in or out unless you have your name written down on your person, right? The people of Twilight Town know how dangerous Doopliss is- and, crucially, know his weakness. Doopliss may have free reign over the Twilighters, but unless he's willing to take a hike, he's not getting any further. I feel as if they could have leaned on that a little bit, make the Twilighters taking the piggification be by design and turning away heroism because they knew exactly this would happen, but I expect they weren't in much of a hurry to tell us about Doopliss's power early to make the trick a true surprise. Also, the fact there are people like Eve and her three kids here speaks to a very depressing idea if these people really are sacrificial lambs to save everyone else.

And then we get the actual wham reveal: Doopliss stealing our identity and our party. He returns to Twilight Town to lord his heroism over the people, dismissing the weird shadow that follows him. This pretty much kills any idea that they know Doopliss can body-snatch, so when Mario comes back alive, their celebration is to be expected. Doopliss cannot leave town, however- he has stolen our name and body, but the pipe does not recognise our name as his. This does kinda raise the question of whether trans people need to carry their deadname to enter, but considering Doopliss talked a big game about erasing us, I wonder if him succeeding would allow the name "Mario" to stick to him and get him free- and if that did happen, that would let trans people pick a new name the pipe recognises (...fortunately, one imagines there are easier ways if you don't want to steal your new identity).

And then there's Vivian. Beldam's comically overtuned abuse could only have been pointing at a story arc where Vivian bit back- anything else would've been the worst kind of comedy imaginable. This is a story that almost feels like it was written as if Vivian was trans, despite the fact she was not written as such in JP (although I wonder if the Italian translation got any mileage out of it). Mario has been robbed of his name, body and friends, and cannot identify as himself- only to be saved by a woman from an abusive environment, where her older sister denies her name, body, and the love and trust of her remaining sister. I can only wish this game was written by someone who had at least talked to a trans person once in their life, because as heartwarming as Vivian choosing doing the right thing over her family is in the game as written, this story was built for a better Vivian.

This is the part where I'd talk about the mechanics, but first, there's a crucial narrative/mechanical intersection that I need to devote some time to: the backtracking. In all, there are five trips along Twilight Trail, and considering some of the backtracking issues Chapters 1 and 2 have shown us, I feel the game could've gotten away with three trips- the different party setups you are forced to deal with on each one would even be more interesting than the stuff those early chapters make you do. The errant leg of the trip is the last one- after finding Doopliss's parrot and the letter "p" he nicked, we have to go all the way back to Twilight Town to deliver it. There are a few solutions here:

• Easiest solution: Have Doopliss play Rumpelstiltskin on a map between Twilight Trail and Creepy Steeple. The blank shed map with the Black Key lets the battle occur with that beautiful full moon in the background, but pretty much everything in the plot involving the game of cat and mouse could work if the game was moved to a different part of the trail.
• Upside: Cuts the game, keeps most of the rest of the plot intact
• Downside: Would fiddle with the pacing a little bit, why Doopliss is playing Rumpelstiltskin so far away from town while drinking the glory would stretch disbelief.
• Alternative solution: Have the first two games of Rumpelstiltskin happen outside town, but add a spawn trigger for Doopliss somewhere inside the Steeple- either in the belfry itself or some other location- to speed up the last one causing the problem.
• Upside: Fixes all the downsides of the solution listed above.
• Downside: It would be hard to communicate where it is in the Steeple, likely necessitating the two extra trips anyway, and might compromise the ability for the Partners to join the boss fight.
• Fun solution: Have the first Steeple Key work on the basement door, allowing the player to steal the letter "p" early and give Doopliss his name on the first go.
  
• Upside: Would be really, really cool.
• Downside: Not having Vivian might cause sequence-buggy issues, wouldn't help the first-timers (which might be more important than the replays), and if you forget to do this, you miss out on the benefits.
• Boring version of fun solution: Take out the first opportunity to guess the name, but leave the "p" on the keyboard when he offers the solution on the second go.
  
• Upside: Fixes all the downsides of the solution listed above.
• Downside: Downplays the Rumpelstiltskin reference, removes the cool impression that stealing the "p" gives the player, and compels the player to forget about that all those collectibles hiding in the parrot room to go straight to the boss.

I will admit that I haven't actually tried to see if the game has done solutions 2 or 3- which may be showcases of why those solutions won't work- but considering we have a text dump, I doubt it. As it was, the game of Rumpelstiltskin, Doopliss's ability to steal the letter "p" to try and make sure that his power held even if Mario was somehow able to find out his name, and desire to make sure the boss fight included the Partners- which is the coolest part of the boss fight and worth mucking around with the mechanics to force- means that the devs may have wound up with this particularly unfortunate arrangement without realising what it would do to player impressions. Or, perhaps more cynically, they didn't care about how boring backtracking could be, considering how damn much of it there is in TTYD.

On other mechanical notes, the Twilight Trail itself is absolutely terrifying. Hyper enemies and Crazee Dayzees in the same formations is something the game had no business doing, especially without Feeling Fine, and the former spawn in such great numbers considering they don't charge up all on the same turn anymore and you don't even get Vivian until the third trip anyway. Perhaps they wanted to make sure to sell how utterly horrifying combat is for Mario alone, and they did, but pairing this up with the narrow paths in the forest parts of the trail and how fast Dayzees and ground Goombas move meant that actually avoiding the enemies is rather tough, not the least paired with the fact that, if a Dayzee stun-locks you to begin with, you can't even try to run. It knows what it wants to be- frustrating- but when this frustration is spread out across five trips total, that turns from enhancing the narrative to, well, frustrating the player. The Doopliss boss fight is worth it, though- although Doopliss himself makes a bit of a disappointing Mario (although rather fitting, considering his general cowardice and incompetence), the Partners joining him- and having the Ranks you gave them- elevates the boss to a new level. The fact you can pretty much ignore Goombella and focus fire Doopliss, while matching the way enemies can fight us, means that this cool gimmick is really easy to sideline. Perhaps Doopliss could've had Quick Change and regularly switching his party to show off everyone? Just having Badges- or even attacks based on Mario's appearances in the main series (Fire Flower, anyone?) would've fleshed out a cool concept for a battle into one of the best battles in the story, and truly fitting the idea of a ghoul that has stolen the very title of Super Mario.