Introduction

Two years ago I tried to start a Let's Play of Rhapsody (Red Edition). It didn't get far. When the developers released a strange 'update' called Bad Weather, I got sidetracked and the whole thing sort of got away from me. Now I'm back and I want to tackle it. If you know about what happened with Bad Weather then hit me up via email. The whole Bad Weather episode feels like a bad dream now, so I'm going back to basics. Red Edition was not, as the developers claimed, a test of the game engine. In as much as any of the game was 'a real thing', Red Edition was the real thing. I know I'm going to get confused. I know I'm going to start referring to Red Edition as Bad Weather at some point, but it's the nature of the beast. For all intents and purposes just ignore everything you read prior to this. I'm going to try and see if I can recap everything important and give this stupid thing some kind of structure. Let's see if 2015 is my year.

I'm going to post the first post I made, but I'm editing out information which is no longer true or changed as the game was updated and patched and whatever else they did with it. I'm taking out all the cheery greeting stuff as well because it hardly seems appropriate any more. - VM

Below is a streamlined version of my original post made in August 2013.

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Before we go any further there are some things you need to know about Rhapsody (Red Edition).  Firstly, the title is too long to type over and over so from now on I will mostly be referring to it as RRE.  Secondly, the game is… strange.  The whole video games as art discussion has been brought up too many times for any really interesting new points to ever arise, and I would discourage people from talking about it in this thread, but I WOULD say that RRE is perhaps the best example of an ‘artistic’ video game I have ever experienced.  A big part of this comes from how surreal the game is, even from the very start.  The horror in RRE, and there is a lot of it, is constantly exacerbated by the bizarreness of what you are playing.  How much of this is just bad coding is a matter of much debate, but the overall effect is one that makes me feel very uncomfortable whenever playing.  Speaking of bugs, holy shit there are a lot of bugs.  Horror games pretending to crash or dropping you to desktop without warning are hardly a new thing, but RRE does it with gusto, and does it so seemingly randomly, that it feels like it can’t be on purpose.  Nothing works properly, nothing interacts the way it feels like it should, and again there is huge debate as to what is TRULY working correctly and what is just buggy. 

Rhapsody (Red Edition) is a game released for the PC some time in 2012 by Eastern European developer Heaven Echo Studios.  And there, in a single introductory sentence, we crash head first into one of the big problems about discussing the game.  Nothing is concrete.  Yes, the game is called Rhapsody (Red Edition), but so far as anyone is able to see, there is no alternative edition. At various points it is referred to as Bad Weather or Rhapsody: Bad Weather.  Yes, the game RUNS on the PC, but as far as I can tell it never had any form of commercial release anywhere in the world, and I gained access to it via the same method as anyone else who says they have played it.  I don’t want to be banned for :files: so I won’t be linking to it, but it’s out there.  Yes, the date on the opening screen says 2012, but there doesn’t seem to be any record to it existing before 2013.  Perhaps people with better google skills can prove me wrong, but the first reference to it that I can find is a single mention in a review for Amnesia the Dark Descent from February of 2013.  I can find no reference to any artistic studio with a portfolio of work named Heaven Echo Studios, nor as a business with a registered address.  So there, in a single introductory sentence, you get what RRE is about.  It’s a cliché, but nothing with the game is as it seems.  If you’re already sick of this you’ll want to stop reading now.

RRE does appear to be Eastern European in design.  The game is usually found on “the Russian quarter” of the internet.  4Chan seem to think it might be Estonian.  You control the point of view character, using the mouse to look around, the WASD keys to move and ctrl to crouch.  There is, to my knowledge, only one other thing you can do, and if RRE has a gimmick or hook, that thing is it, but I’ll get into that when we start Chapter One.

I don’t want to make this first post any longer, but I will explain one more thing before I start writing up the chapter I have already played.  The first thing I did after downloading the game was examine the folder ‘Rhapsody (Red Edition)’.  Inside were several things of note, alongside the normal game stuff. 

An executable file, the icon of which is a black square until you run the installer, at which point it changes to a mostly black square with a hint of grey.  This file launches the game.

A folder named ‘Install’ within which lies the installer.  I downloaded RRE three times in the end because I thought I had downloaded incomplete files.  This is because the installer itself isn’t labelled as such, but as ‘Finale.txt’

A jpeg called Right Hand which contains a photograph of a cell phone.  It is fairly modern looking, and is of a fictional brand named “Abit”.  Someone on 4chan claims that this might be Estonian for helpless or something, but I don’t know if that’s true.  The photograph is legitimate, in the sense that it is a photograph, not a drawing.  There is also a jpeg called…

Left Hand which contains a disturbingly graphic photograph of a blood-soaked meat cleaver – the first jump scare of the game begins before you even install it.