Community Visual Novel Book Club - Spooktober 2020 - The Letter

[Exzyleph]

Welcome to the 13th 14th MetaCouncil visual novel book club!

This is the second Spooktober visual novel book club and for this book club we will be reading Yangyang Mobile's The Letter, a visual novel about seven people who fall prey to a vicious curse, and who discover that horror rests not from the shadows lurking about, but within themselves. Bookclub participants can obtain The Letter on Steam, on Android, and on iOS. A single playthrough of The Letter is estimated to take 21 hours (HLBT), but the game also features a large number of choices and alternative endings.​

Bookclub participants who are not in the mood for a long or a very spooky visual novel can find a number of shorter and less spooky Spooktober themed suggestions in the first Spooktober visual novel book club thread. In addition, the just released, short VN Wherehouse is available for free during October. You are also welcome to post your own suggestions. Just remember to specify which novel you are reading when you post.​

This is an informal book club, so there is no fixed schedule; you simply read a visual novel at your own pace, and share your thoughts along the way or when you are done reading. Just remember to use spoiler tags liberally. For general information about past and future book clubs, please see the main MetaCouncil Book Club thread. The main thread also includes a preliminary schedule for the rest of 2020, and suggestions are very welcome both for 2020 and beyond.​

The Story

"In the outskirts of Luxbourne City stands a 17th-century English mansion, rumored to be haunted by vengeful spirits. After reading a letter discovered inside on the day of its open house, seven people find themselves trapped in a vicious cycle of madness plaguing the Ermengarde Mansion for centuries.

Will they be able to free themselves from it, or will they become another casualty?"

[Taken from the official website]​

Walkthroughs

A detailed guide to obtaining all endings in The Letter can be found here:​

​

Next Month

Next month is the Spooktober Visual Novel Book Club and the scheduled visual novel is Jack-In-A-Castle (VNDB), a visual novel about searching for a missing king, dealing with the most troublesome king's hand, and some other jerks. Also, you can kiss dudes.​

 

[Exzyleph]

I finished reading the first chapter of the letter and it is quite impressive. Granted, the story so far is fairly standard horror fare so far, but it is well executed and the game has a ton of nice touches. Those include animated sprites and animated backgrounds, a logbook that records events, a built-in flowchart, and English voice-acting that sounds fine to my ears. It is certainly made to a much higher standard than the average English visual novel.

The Letter - Chapter 1

The first chapter introduces the main cast of characters, the mansion, and the ghost, though so far it is only Isabella who has realized that the mansion is actually cursed. I gotta admit to feeling some morbid anticipation of the rest of the cast being confronted with the ghost, especially Ash. We also learn that the ghost has been killing people for some time and has been mistaken for a serial killer operating in the area; the so-called Anslem Butcher.

I think the biggest question so far is the identity of the ghost. The obvious answer would be Charlotte Ermengarde, the daughter of the people who built the mansion, who killed herself. However, the fact that the ghost has black hair seemingly disproves that, considering that Charlotte had blonde hair, as depicted in the painting and mosaic window in the entrance hall. But if not Charlotte, then who? We have some minor evidence from the location where the titular letter was found, namely the attic bedroom. The fact that the letter was found there leads me to suspect that the person who became that ghost was confined to this room, though by whom and for what reason is however yet to be revealed.

The nature of the ghost's physical appearance also suggests that they were subjected to a lot of violence, with open sores, missing nails, and broken bones. The most likely perpetrator would be Charlotte, as the death of this person and their subsequent haunting could have driven Charlotte to suicide, though it is of course unclear why she would confine and torture somebody. Another option is that the Charlotte's parents, William and Elizabeth, were not as kindhearted as the introduction makes them sound.

There is also the nature of the letter. The first part, "Help Me", would naturally fit with somebody confined against their will, but to be honest the last part reads like a bit of a joke: "Send this to 5 people or else .....". I look forward to seeing where the authors take this, though I do hope that they do not play it straight or gloss over it.

My choices were as follows and notably ended with Isabella and Ash becoming a lot closer:

1. I eat other things too!
2. Be brave and look up!
3. We'll check with our supervisor
4. Show the letter to Rose
5. Change the subject
6. Stay for the movie
7. Meet with the professor
8. My instant noodle days are over!
9. I know you're trying to help
10. You're not bad after all
11. Talk about her cat
12. Go to work

 

[Exzyleph]

Finished reading Chapter 2 of The Letter and discovered that I am bad at making choices.

The Letter - Chapter 2

I was kind of apprehensive about this chapter, both due to how Hannah is presented in Chapter 1 and how it starts, but it quickly humanizes her and instead paints Luke as the main source of conflict and a terrible person. While I suspect that every chapter is going be biased with regards to the point of view, though Luke's own actions ultimately underscored my impressions of him.

The highlight of this chapter for me was probably the segment in which Zach and Hannah toured the house, even if she was a bit mean to Zach, and I was looking forward to seeing more of their interactions. Johannes, the butler attending to the couple, was also a delight.

My reading ended with a very public confrontation between Luke and Hannah, triggered by a third party accusing Luke of infidelity, followed by a promise of reconciliation. Unfortunately, things were hashed out at the pointy end of a knife, and now Hannah is dead. Whoops. It'll be interesting to see how the rest of the story handles one of the main characters being dead and, in particular, how this is handled in Luke's chapter.

As the chapter ends, we see a "memory fragment" showing (I believe) Charlotte Emergarde having a tryst with a man that may or may not be her fiancé, witnessed by an unknown woman with black hair. This calls for wild speculation, so I immediately identified the black-haired woman as the ghost of Ermengarde mansion and the man in question as somebody other than Charlotte's fiancé. Charlotte being witnessed in such a compromising situation could explain why she confined the black-haired woman to the attic, namely to prevent her from telling anyone about what she saw.

There is also a line spoken by Becky, earlier on, that I think lampshades what happened to the ghost before she died: "I don't think you can just sit around, trapped in some tower and hope for the best".

Now on to Zach's chapter.

Choices made:

1. Remain silent
2. Free up my schedule
3. Ask for her silence
4. Stop it
5. I was with Zachery
6. Call them out
7. Be honest with me

 

[Exzyleph]

Another chapter down and ..

The Letter - Chapter 3

Chapter 3 focuses on Zach, who we learn was originally from America before migrating to England after the racially motivated murder of his parents. My reading of the chapter mainly involved learning that Ash has started taking Isabella seriously regarding the hauntings, though he is still very skeptical. Ash also seems to have a lot trepidation about the Wrights, making me wonder if Hannah was not his first victim. It is also hinted that something has happened involving Isabella's family, as she got a phone-call from her mother, most likely something about her father's condition. I also got a long scene involving shopping with Hannah, in which we learn that she was pregnant with Luke's child.

However, due to my making the mistake of having Zach investigate Hannah's bedroom, he finds that Luke has seemingly tried to fabricate evidence that she was murdered by the Anslem Butcher and when Zach is found in the room he is immediately framed by Luke. The chapter ends with Zach trapped in a cell with an angry ghost and thus another protagonist is dead.

The chapter ends with another memory fragment unlocked, this time showing the woman I believe to be the ghost being raped by a man as Charlotte Ermengarde watches. I suspect that the next fragment will see this woman confined to the attic.

My choices:

1. Tell the truth
2. I cooked up a feast!
3. Show the photo to Hannah
4. I am a photographer for Luxuary Living'
5. I think that one looks cute
6. Never mind
7. We can still fix this
8. Look into it

 

[Exzyleph]

The Letter - Chapter 4

Marianne starts with her nearly having a fling with Luke, and if there was any doubt that he'd cheat on Hannah then it is gone now. Though the chapter does involve Luke taking a much greater interest in his wife's happiness than you'd expect considering her grisly end at his hands in her chapter. However, it seemed to me unclear if this interest was purely self-motivated or out of genuine affection for her. We also learn that Luke has an inexplicable fondness for Daffodils, something that doesn't quite fit the rest of his outwards personality.

Hannah also seems to be suffering from a haunting of her own, though perhaps it is just a mere delusion. The voice of a student by the name Amy Lorraine, whose love was she seemingly rejected by Marianne. Lorraine is dead and Hannah seems to blame herself, though it is unclear what happened.

However, the peak of Hannah's chapter is the discovery that the Ermengarde mansion had a dungeon hidden beneath it, one filled with human remains. I had previously speculated that Charlotte or her parents were up to no good and the fact that they had a secret dungeon would seem to confirm this. If it was meant to confine lawbreakers and the like, then surely it would have been public knowledge, rather than something hidden away. It is, however, not clear if the dungeon was part of the original mansion or something added by Charlotte.

My reading ended with Marianne getting trapped in a cell, though surprisingly it did not end with her dead.

1. This is wrong
2. You have something to say?
3. Continue waiting
4. I just remembered something
5. Yes, it sounds fair
6. Check the first floor
7. You should ask her
8. Try to lighten the mood
9. Go in

 

[Exzyleph]

Haha, whoops.

The Letter - Chapter 5

Rebecca's chapter was mainly interesting for what we learned about other characters.

We finally learn the name of the ghost, Takako, as told by Kylie who consider her a friend. However, considering that Takako is seemingly using Kylie for her whims, possessing her both in Zach's and Rebecca's chapter, it seems like a very precarious relationship.

We also learn more details about Luke, giving more suggestions that he did actually care for Hannah, though he also seems be suffering from feelings of inferiority. Overall this chapter does a lot to humanize Luke, though it is kinda hard to take too seriously considering what he did to Hannah in her chapter.

Finally, we learn about the origin of the woman who most likely became the ghost: A slave freed by Charlotte Ermengarde, only for Charlotte to later accuse her of being a witch and having her burned at the stake. For whatever reason this part of the Ermengarde history was obscured, though this chapter does not tell us why that would be the case. However, considering the existence of a dungeon, and her acts against the Takako(?) in the memory fragments, it seems likely that somebody tried to cover up the abuses carried out by Charlotte Ermengarde.

As Rebecca is about to leave the library Takako chases after her, resulting in a blind choice of where to run. I made a bad choice (stairs) that resulted in Rebecca taking a dive off a building. RIP. Not too fond of this kind of choices, but I'll roll with it.

As the chapter ends, another fragment is unlocked, showing Charlotte, Takako and another man, with the man having received a beating at the hands of somebody and Takako being abused at the hands of Charlotte herself. The man looks to be Charlotte's fiancé, and is possibly the man in the other memory fragments. However, the hair-cut seems to be different, suggesting that Charlotte was cheating on her fiancé in that first memory fragment.

My choices:

1. I'm not in the mood to talk
2. Sorry for the trouble
3. Hit him where it hurts
4. Apologize to Luke
5. Is this why you didn't go home last night?
6. You're good at handling her
7. Okay, but only because Kylie asked
8. I don't need to answer that
9. I-I might've seen her
10. Head upstairs

 

[Exzyleph]

The Letter - Chapter 6

Not a lot to say here. Ashton's chapter mainly served to give us a lot greater insight into Luke's hidden persona, and explains why Ashton has been so careful around him. It also has a great scene when Ashton finally comes face to face with the ghost and has to run for his life. When he finally makes his way to the mansion, Ashton randomly drops into the hidden dungeon which seems a bit of a plot contrivance. However, the chapter does end on one hell of a cliff-hanger, when a stand-off with Luke is interrupted by the dead Hannah suddenly showing up.

1. Insist it's confidential
2. Tell me about him
3. Take her offer
4. Call him out
5. I know damn it!
6. It's dangerous
7. Beg him to listen

 

[Exzyleph]

The Letter - Chapter 7

Luke's chapter starts with him murdering Hannah and from the start is apparent that he is under the influence of the Mansion. It is made clear that he did care for her, and that the murder was perhaps partially due to Takako's jealousy towards Hannah, though we also learn that Hannah was far from his first victim. Luke it turns out was an illegitimate child born to a mother who worked as a prostitute, who was chosen to be the heir to the Wright family simply because the other, eldest child was female. The Wrights seem to be something akin to a mafia family and largely have the city under their control.

Seemingly due to his similarity to the former Lord of the mansion (Charlotte's fiancé?), Takako has decided that he must be the new Lord and tries her best to make him take on that role. A series of flashbacks put context to the memory fragments I unlocked, suggesting that Charlotte first had Takako raped out of anger from her being seen in an act of infidelity and then later turned on both Takako and her fiancé out of jealousy. However, I had unlocked just 3 fragments leaving most details unclear.

Luke ultimately burns the letter which seems to exorcise Takako from the mansion. To be honest, that seems like a bit of a unclimatic ending and I would have expected that more would have been required. And indeed, after the credits Kylie is shown in the clutches of a Takako who "is still here!"; Kylie pleads only to have her neck snapped by Takako. Perhaps the true ending will involve her final exorcism?

In the epilogue Luke's shady dealings are discovered and he goes into hiding, only to eventually strike a friendship with Marianne, who had likewise left the city. Isabella accept an art scholarship, while Ashton is promoted, and the two remain friends.

I made just one choice in this chapter, probably owning to the number of dead protagonists I had left behind: 'Burn the letter'.

Having cleared a handful of epilogues, I'll just go through and try to see everything I've missed with the help of the guide linked in the OP. Posts will probably be a bit more irregular from here on out.

 

[Ascheroth]

Got it with the current Humble Bundle, so I'll definitely be leaving my thoughts in here once I get to it - very unlikely I'll get far this month though, ha.
I gave it a quick 20-30 minutes try. The production values are pretty impressive, saw some creepy stuff and the opening theme is great.

 

[Exzyleph]

Having spent another bunch of hours getting the remaining epilogues, I am now done with The Letter. To be honest, while there were a lot of cool story branches to see, it was not worth the effort to get every single epilogue. This is a VN that is best experienced in just a couple of play-throughs (making very different choices in each), even if that means missing a lot of unique scenes.

The following is some brief recommendations for people reading the letter. There are some spoilers, sso I'd recommend not reading it until you've played through the game once:

The Letter - How much to complete

As you might already have noticed, the game has about 90 epilogues. Just over a third of these are variants and I would not commend going for all of these. Each variant of an epilogue only differs in a single line or two, depending on the fate of other characters.

If you just want to see the major story branches, then I'd recommend that you see the true ending epilogues (excluding variants), that you see everyone die and that you see everyone live, that you see a protagonist end up in a coma (stay home as Isabella, then meet up with Rebecca), and that you see a protagonist get possessed by the ghost (open the trap-door as Hannah). Those are the main points where the story diverges and the rest are just combinations of those events with minor difference based on your choices and the resulting relationships.

Be sure to wait to see the post-credit scene with or without a protagonist having been possessed.

In practical terms, you want to disable QTEs in the settings once you've seen them all or once you've gotten tired of skipping past them. I'd also recommend enabling instant skipping, since that greatly reduces the amount of time you have to wait for new text. However, instant skipping has a tendency to cause the game to crash if you skip after the last choice in chapter 5, so I'd recommend saving and switching to classic skipping at that point.

Regarding the story itself:

The Letter - All Epilogues

The amount of variation in outcomes was quite impressive, but overall it didn't add a whole lot of new information compared to my first playthrough. More memory fragments reveal Charlotte to be a cruel woman, but Takako was also shown to be motivated by jealousy towards Charlotte.

The final Memory Fragment unlocked reveals that it was Charlotte who wrote the letter, but sometime around the nth time seeing the handheld-camera scene in the dungeon I realized that the implication was that those students had added the chain-letter part at the end: The original letter merely said "HELP ME". I previously commented that the last part sounded like a joke, and this explains that. However, the fact that Takako wrote the letter makes it kinda odd that burning it would exorcise her, as it was shown that Takako was already haunting Charlotte when she wrote the letter.

I had also hoped for a more definite ending, especially considering the post-credit scene showing Takako killing Kylie which implied a true ending in which Takako was truly exorcised, but that was not the case. It kinda feels like the developers had a sequel in mind, and the scant details in the fragments make it seem that they also had a prequel in mind. I'll definitely be interested in reading either of a prequel or a sequel, but the vagueness did disappoint.

I'll also note that while Luke was still an arse even when didn't kill Hannah, I quite enjoyed the play-throughs where the two had a good relationship. It's fair to say that I have a love/hate relationship with him.

As a final note, I have to touch on the death scenes for the protagonists. I had somehow managed to avoid the worst ones during my first playthrough, but Isabella, Rebecca, and Marianne's deaths gave me pause for how gruesome the CGs were, especially for Isabella (both bad ends).

That's it for me this time around.
The next post will be for next month's book club, where we will be reading Jack-In-A-Castle:

 

[Exzyleph]

If you've been thinking of getting The Letter, then now is a good time as it is 60% off:

 

[Exzyleph]

The 15th VN Book Club thread is now up and this time we'll be reading the short VN Jack-In-A-Castle:

Community - Visual Novel Book Club - Jack-In-A-Castle

Welcome to the 15th MetaCouncil visual novel book club! For this book club we will be reading Nemlei's Jack-In-A-Castle, a visual novel about a young man's search for a lost king in a warped castle in a kingdom of toys. Bookclub participants can obtain Jack-In-A-Castle on Steam and on Itch...

metacouncil.com

 

[Ascheroth]

It took longer than I expected, but I've finally picked it up again and played through Chapter 1!

My overall impression is still is that this is some really high quality stuff in terms of presentation. I'm finding the creepy scenes to also be very good at making me creeped out. Good stuff. Lots of choices too, and it seems some can really drastically alter things

Chapter 1

I tried both branches at the end of Chapter 1 and uhhhh..... One is an extreme shake-up that makes me want to go follow it out of sheer morbid curiosity, but maybe in a second playthrough, I kind of want to go with the "better" choice this time (at least I think it will be).
Overall I almost completely choose the same answes as Exzyleph and yep, Isabella and Ashton got a lot closer there.
Also very very curious how the other characters will react when confronted with the ghost.