Welcome back! When last we spoke, I was left wondering whether or not I was a bad person; I had been forced to confront the almost endless list of virtual atrocities I had committed, whether it was for a purpose or not: I had assassinated random folk as part of the Dark Brotherhood; I had destroyed the homes and stolen the goods of Minecraft villages; I couldn’t begin to even fathom how much killing I had done when entering random tombs, temples and assorted locales. All of this left us wondering whether we were on Puzzle island for some reason other than our volume control problem. Well never fear, I’ve thought about it and I’ve come up with an answer – I don’t give a flying toss. I have a mystery to solve, a Fox to chase, and likely an Orb based friend to make, so if I have to slaughter weird shadow suckers that get in my way, then I shall do exactly that! Now that I have resolved myself to do this, let’s get on with our adventure!

After bringing light to the tree, we head back to investigate. It is lucky we just decided that murder of anyone and anything was okay, because after bringing the tree to life, we have to then rip out its core to progress, and that immediately kills it. The positive of this though is that we have seen this core before. Remember I mentioned our dying ball friend imparted with us visions that hinted at an end to our loneliness? This core was in the visions, and it made up part of our future companion. Taking the core with us, it’s not long before we’re presented with a classic RiME puzzle of lining up two objects that aren’t attached, and suddenly they are attached. There is a game that was entirely based on Puzzles that used this mechanic and others called Superliminal and I definitely recommend it – If you play it, drop me a message and tell me how you found it!

Now we have our companion, true to our dying friend’s prophecy. He is lacking in mobility though, as his head is mounted on a cube. Next step, then, is to get some legs for our new friend. As luck would have it, it seems that this temple doubles as a factory for ball headed, spindly legged automatons, and our ball based son is soon taking his first tentative steps – We gave him life, he is our son. Move on. I will commend our hero though for, 3 chapters in, doing what we’ve all been desperate to see him do since we first encountered the teeny tiny boars, and then again with the fox; he shows his companion affection, and strokes the Orb Walker. RiME can finish now as far I’m concerned, that’s it. That’s the game.

Unfortunately it is not, and our Son starts to crash his way through the temple back to the tree. Of course we follow; I would die for our Orb walker son, and I will see him safe through whatever he endeavours to do. There is a moment where the Sucky Suckies appear and surround him, and doing what any good parental figure would do we scream at a ball of light. We have a development though. This time, the exploding ball reacts with the Orb head, and its power is greatly magnified. This is used to our advantage when we backtrack through the shadow rooms, as every dementor and his cousin has arrived. Orb Walker makes short work of them, and soon we are back with the Fox! Orbi and the Fox hit it off immediately, even sharing a moment to stare up at The Tower (which I thought we were inside…Oh God. What IS this place?) before they head off without us. Have you ever had those moments where you introduce two close friends, and then they really hit it off and you feel left out…? Yeah, Orbi and the Fox just cucked me. Great. 

After taking my time to feel like chopped liver, I followed them and immediately regretted it. If I thought the previous room had a lot of Shadow people, it was only because I did not know what a lot of shadow people looked like. Of course it took mere moments for Orbi to wipe them all out, and as much as I have my new found resolve about necessary slaughter, I do wonder if I have just finished off an entire race. Will there be stories about a Boy and his Orb child and how they enacted the great Purging of the Shadows? After naming it that, I bloody hope so, that sounds awesome!

The final puzzle room awaits. It combines a few different elements of the previous rooms; using Orbi to move platforms around, causing hidden staircases to unfold and to make previously “not there” platforms materialise. The worst part is that to get Obri to stand where we want, we have to play fetch with one of the small glowing orbs, and then from across the room shout at it. This leaves him feeling sad and dejected, and with his orb head low, he slowly meanders away. Side note – who knew an expressionless, featureless faceless orb could convey such emotion? Sorry Orbi, but Daddy needs to solve puzzles!  It is a very short lived feeling of guilt though, because after lining up a small glowing orb with a pedestal and another of the looking puzzles, we create a giant orb; the payoff of screaming at it this time is that Orbi is no longer alone!

With a deafening crash and grating or weird metal legs, more orb figures around the room are waking up and joining our son. I could cry, but they don’t give me time to. They begin a very slow march back to the room our first companion died in. It’s only when I stop to look around I see we now have 7 Orbis! There is a shadow based lock, which I have Orbis help with and then we’re off to the end of this floor! Whereas the First Floor ended with Sand, hinting at the desert we fled from the bird in, and Second Floor was overgrown, showing us the forest temple we started in, the exit from the Third Floor is flooded. We swim out, and we are joined by the 7 Orbis. I wonder if that means they will be present in Chapter 4?

Before we can find out, we have the final cutscene of chapter 3. We’re back on the boat in the storm from Hell, but we’re not alone! Remember Little Red Riding Ghost from chapter 1? Turns out they were a sailing companion of ours. With one huge wave, Big Red goes overboard, and the anguished look on our boy’s face tells me that red was probably Dad. Coupling that fact with the chapter beforehand being Denial, Anger and now bargaining, I am very worried that the next chapter will in fact be Depression, and I fear for our Orb based sons. With a heavy heart filled with trepidation, it is time to press on!

-Brightstarfox