Street Fighter is and always will be the backbone of this blog, but I have been wanting to do an official Mane Street theory on a different game for some time. I’ve considered other fighting games, but I just don’t know the lore of those games as well as Street Fighter. I do enjoy RPGs, but Pokemon has been covered to death by several other game theorists. Final Fantasy was an option, but there are enough theories on that series of games that it doesn’t need any of my insight to come up with something good (Squall is dead, people). Same with Undertale. I could also do the EarthBound series, which has enough mysteries and weirdness to do an entire blog on, but considering that I’ve only ever played Mother 3 (with the unofficial but very well done fan translation), I wouldn’t be the right guy to cover it; I’ll leave the EarthBound fans to that. However, there is one RPG game that I can do since, while there is an already established community around it, the game itself hasn’t been released yet. It’s a very EarthBound-like game that could pass for a fan sequel to Mother 3.
Because it originally was.
That’s right. This theory is on Oddity.
Why am I doing a theory on Oddity? There are a number of clues in the reveal trailer as well as a piece of official art that leads me to believe that I know what the core of the plot will be. In fact, we’ve seen two trailers, one when the game was Mother 4 and one with the rebrand released in January of this year, that have certain similarities and details we can explore to determine it
We can start off by looking at the original Mother 4 trailer and comparing it to Oddity’s trailer.
Mother 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_5ljnUCeDU
Oddity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CBwIXnbUuY
There’s a few things you’ll notice. First of all, the setting of the game has not changed. It’s still Pleiades, and it appears that the exact same city elements in Mother 4 will remain the same in Oddity. Even Pleiades flag remains the same.
Floyd retains the ability to talk to monsters, Meryl is using a slightly changed variant of PK/PSI abilities called VOX, and Leo… is just as mysterious as he was before, although his section in the Oddity trailer contains one very interesting detail that appears to be lifted from Earthbound. Let’s see if you can spot it, then scroll down to see if you were right….
In keeping tradition with the game they were inspired by, the developers have continued to keep the holiday naming aesthetic that Mother 1 used (Mother’s Day, Valentine, etc.). It’s safe to say we’ll see more counties in the game named after holidays, such as Easter, 4th of July, Halloween, and Thanksgiving. It’s also safe to say that those counties will each hold several areas within its borders. For example, Christmas County would hold the Magicant variant we see at the very beginning of the trailer (that Leo finds himself floating over).
We also see the Modern Mind in both trailers. In fact, with the presence of both the Modern Mind and the spire from Mother 4 in Oddity, it tells me that the story has not changed much from the original, if at all. The developers are sticking with what they had in mind from the beginning.
“Great,” you say. “But you’re just pointing out the obvious. Is there anything different you can add than what we already know? Even the developers have said they’re not changing too much. They’re just getting rid of copyrighted assets.”
Yes, but I feel the urge to point out a few more things that stick out to me (some obvious, some not) before I can get into that. And that starts with the official piece of art I alluded to earlier.
This art holds several items of information that we can take it note of. The first thing I noticed is the recurring characters from Mother 4, Travis, Floyd, Meryl, Leo, Zack… and the yellow alien at the top of the picture. For no reason, here’s what the alien(s) looked like in Mother 4.
We also see new characters. Besides Radio Flynn, who we first saw in the Oddity trailer, we have a bunch of unnamed characters, specifically the guy with the yellow heart sunglasses, the old woman, the young kid, and the dark, horned demon sitting in front of the yellow alien (that appears to be laughing at the demon since the young kid was throwing popcorn at them). Two of the characters really stood out to me though. The first is the gentleman in the suit. Based on his similarities to the way the Modern Mind is dressed, we can assume he’s one of the primary antagonists of the game. However, he seems to have a strange quirk: he appears to carry a teddy bear with him at all times. This tells me he’ll be a strong villain that will provide some comic relief, similar to Fassad from Mother 3.
It’s the second character I’m really interested in though: the person standing behind Leo and touching his shoulder. Who is that?
There were a few things that came to mind: a lost love, a memory of the past, or a dark manifestation of Leo’s powers. There is one other possibility. Since the person is darker in color, I suspect the person is deceased or zombified in some way, and based on how they look, they just may be someone from the Oddity trailer – a member of Jacky Friendly’s gang.
The candidates for who the person touching Leo’s shoulder is comes down to three people: the two guys on the left, the one with the long blond hair and the one with the brown hair that has the same nose as the person touching Leo’s shoulder, or the most likely – Jacky Friendly himself, who has a similar nose and long blond hair.
Let’s assume the person is a resurrected Jacky (and even though they appear to be female with the long hair and what appears to be dark lipstick, let’s also assume for this theory that they’re male). This would imply that there was some dark force that brought him back to life (from a death we’re still not sure about yet). Based on the admittedly little evidence available, it may be why the spire exists at all – they’re creating something to sustain and resurrect life.
If you look at the spire carefully, you’ll notice something: the green blobs that are collecting on the tips.
I believe I know what they are.
As I looked into it further, I found a similar phenomenon in real life. A jelly-like substance called biofilm can form in many different ecosystems, but are usually found in places that have good sources of water, from hot springs and air conditioners to the human body. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofilm
In Oddity, the spire is located near a source of water – a lake.
However, mysterious jelly-like substances have been found in grasses and branches of trees in real life with different characteristics, mainly color. They’ve been said to only appear after meteor showers. The collective name of these substances? Star jelly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_jelly
Based on what I’m seeing in the game, this is what the spire is collecting. The star jelly in game would have life-giver properties that the primary, suit-wearing antagonists would covet. Since real-life star jelly does not have this property, however, the spire must be creating the jelly from something other than bacterial colonies.
My guess? They’re creating the jelly from VOX transmissions.
VOX transmissions in game can be used to strike down enemies, and, if the EarthBound games are any indication, will also have the ability to heal your allies. The spire must be draining the earth of the ability to transmit communications, and during Leo’s part in the Oddity trailer, there is communications interference on the “Footage Seized” part at 1:11.
The transformation of the earth’s transmissions into jelly is clearly seen on Oddity’s logo at 1:53 of the trailer. A star, referencing the space theme of Oddity from Pleiades to star jelly, even traces out the logo. You can see the planet part better if you look at the game’s Twitter account. https://twitter.com/OddityRPG
Finally, we need to ask one more thing: what’s happening to the people who are disappearing in the game? If the person touching Leo’s shoulder really is a zombified Jacky Friendly, then we already know – they’re being killed and turned into zombies to become an army for the primary antagonists.
…Kind of like what’s happening with G and Q.
Street Fighter Game Lore Theories 