VN Talk: Buried Stars

In which I talk (write) about visual novels from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: Switch (also on PS4 and PC)
Release: 2020 (Switch, PS4), 2021 (Windows)

Buried Stars is a mystery game, but placed in a very odd setting for the genre. It takes place in a recently renovated building being used to film the titular TV show, Buried Stars, which is described as a survival audition show where performing contestants move on to subsequent rounds based on the amount of votes they get and the lowest ranked is eliminated at the end of each episode.

At the start of the game, the contestants have been whittled down to the Top 5 and by the time voting wraps up they'll be reduced to the Top 4. Each of the five performers are introduced and given a little spiel about who they are and commentary on how their fans have responded to them, resulting in their current placement. Just after that, the stage begins to shake and the building around them collapses.

Following the collapse, the Top 5 and the floor director are trapped in an intact space in the rubble and cut off from the outside world (making them quite literally buried stars). This results in a much different cast of characters than you'd normally have in a genre more frequently populated by detectives and high school students. It was a little weird at first when the deduction mechanics start popping up before it's apparent any crime has taken place, but by the end I didn't even notice.

You play as Do-yoon, ranked #4 at the start of the evening. He's the bassist of the indie band Masquerade and nicknamed the Betrayer by the show because he originally entered the competition with his band, but continued on to the finals solo when the group as a whole washed out. The implication is that doing this broke up the band and some members (and their fans) feel like he stabbed them in the back for the sake of his own ambition.

Do-yoon is clearly unhappy about the topic and the nickname bothers him, but despite being the protagonist, his internal thoughts rarely come up in the narration, which unusually for a visual novel, is in third person. There is a reason why Do-yoon's personal thoughts are not shared with the player, which I'll get to later when I talk about the ending.

After the six survivors find each other post-collapse, it quickly becomes apparent that who they are on stage (in the in-universe introduction we just saw) is not necessarily who they are as people, which I really liked. K-pop stars are produced by a well-oiled machine, with performers being given a particular stage persona that might not be anything like who they are in real life, but it's the fantasy to be sold to the audience.

The performers in Buried Stars are no different. Inha's show character is supposed to be an arrogant snob, but we quickly see that she's extremely considerate in looking after Juyoung, who suffers from panic attacks (which naturally a portion of their audience considers fake, so she can get sympathy votes). In fact Hyesung, the current #5, is dealing with a problem at the outset of the show because he was given a more wholesome persona, and then someone dug up the fact he'd been expelled for assaulting a classmate while he was still in school. Hyesung is no saint, but as with a lot of things, the truth is more complicated than it appears.

Every member of the central six has something they haven't told the others, and they aren't necessarily harmful secrets. Some of them are things they might not be proud of and wouldn't ordinarily share with a stranger, and others are just facts they're tired of being raked over the coals for, because the show was happy to delve into whatever drama they could to sell to their viewers.

I was surprised that a critique of the Korean music industry and the pressures it puts on its stars would end up being an integral part of the story.

This being a modern day setting, the only means of communication the trapped six have with the outside world is through their show-sponsored smartwatches (with the exception of Seil, the floor producer, who lost his phone). Sometimes the signal is strong enough for them to talk on the phone with rescue workers, but most of the time, all they can manage is Phater, the in-game universe's version of Twitter, which is about as much of a trash fire during a live disaster as you'd expect.

The social media design is handled really well in this game. Reading Phater is a lot like reading Twitter with newest posts at the top, but even though this causes you to read in reverse chronological order, the posts are put together well enough that you can follow the conversation without getting confused. A single writer is called out in the credits for handling this part of the story and they aced it.

Buried Stars is perhaps unusual in how it avoids revealing a central antagonist. When the six first begin assessing their situation, they quickly conclude the building collapse happened due to the shoddy workmanship and rushed set construction under Seungyeon Shin, the show's overbearing producer. It's odd that by virtue of being on the stage when the building collapsed these six are trapped alive, when the entire audience seems to have made it out of the building, so it's easy to suspect this was all set up by the producer...

...except when we find Seungyeon, she's dead, her skull apparently bashed in by some concrete that had fallen from the ceiling. Do-yoon finds it odd that she has two injuries, one on her hand (probably used to protect herself) and another on her head, meaning she was hit twice even though there is only one chunk of debris, but he doesn't think too hard about it and settles for the more convenient conclusion that she died during the collapse.

As players we know this has to be the first murder victim since we are playing a mystery game, but it was nice for the characters to handle this more as a terribly unfortunate accident. They actually don't revisit Seungyeon's death as being a potential murder until the end of the game, because there isn't enough reason to doubt the easiest conclusion.

As the body count rises with the death of Hyesung, we're given another two possibilities. One I was fairly certain was a misdirect, because Seil is too obviously floated as being Inha's stalker (he's not, though his prickly personality and self-persecution complex make it difficult to impossible to get him to explain what was really going on), and the other I initially liked but ultimately thought was handled poorly.

That possibility is S_Seungyeon, who shows up on Phater, claiming to be the deceased Seungyeon at a time when her death is only known to the survivors and the rescue team but has not yet been made public. S_Seungyeon exhorts the contestants to "be honest" about their sins and reveals unflattering details about them that were never discussed as part of the show, culminating in a claim that the contestant with the least votes will be killed at 2am.

Voting is still live even after the accident, with the production studio leaving it open as a way for fans to express their support (even though some of said fans find that incredibly tacky), and the game likes to end story segments with a cumulative tally of how many votes everyone has and what their current placement is.

This positions the game as a battle between the mastermind S_Seungyeon versus the trapped six (and there is a shadowed character profile in the cast, so you know there is someone we don't know involved). You think the game is going to be something like Danganronpa where contestants are going to die one at a time as the game progresses, but that's not what happens at all.

Hyesung does die at approximately 2am, but the timing is actually a coincidence that his killer uses to suggest that S_Seungyeon did it. I mean, it was a good move for the killer in retrospect, but the problem is that the game then spends a lot of investigation time trying to get to the bottom of S_Seungyeon.

There are some genuinely good creep out moments like when S_Seungyeon sends out a photo that was taken from inside the collapsed building suggesting they are indeed in the same place as our survivors, but deducing S_Seungyeon's identity mostly consists of standing around talking to the other survivors, talking to PlugHole through the smartwatch (PlugHole being the hidden character), and talking to the other survivors again, all without anything else happening, making the interaction feel terrible grindy as Do-yoon grills everybody for the smallest clue to S_Seungyeon's identity.

When S_Seungyeon is finally outed as a disgruntled former staffer, who the game doesn't find important enough to even dignify with a name, it just feels underwhelming. They were never on site or a physical danger. Not only that, but after the reveal, the survivors end up in the same uncomfortable situation they were before: Hyesung was murdered, and if S_Seungyeon didn't do it, the killer must be one of them.

But once back on the trail, I really liked how the group tries to recreate what must have happened by tracking everyone's movements in the minutes leading up to Hyesung's death by using the timing of when various Phater posts appeared. They're complete non-professionals and aren't mystery fans or hobby detectives, but they manage to work out when Hyesung had to have been alive (Hyesung was a big Phater user) and bracket that with when they found his body, to find the narrow window of time when certain members of their group would have had no alibi.

It's well done and narrows the suspects to two people, neither of who end up being the actual murderer. We later find the murderer got away with it due to the smartwatch's Auto-Write function, which sends an automated message at a specific time, allowing the killer to manipulate the time of death. (I was rather pleased with myself that I had the actual murderer still on my suspect list because I hadn't forgotten about the Auto-Write.)

Overall the murderer was pretty good about covering their tracks and probably would have gotten away with it if they hadn't gone for Seil as their third victim, which unfortunately left them as the only person with the opportunity to have done it. I felt a bit disappointed that we only caught them because they got sloppy, though arguably there was a part of them that wanted to be caught out of a sense of guilt.

That said, I really liked who ended up the culprit, even though his motivation felt a little haphazard. Perhaps that's for the best though, because unusually for a game in this genre, there was no master plan behind the body count and almost all of it was done in the heat of the moment.

Long before we have a reason to suspect him, Gyu-hyuk is the single most important character outside of Do-yoon himself, by virtue of how the game starts. When the building collapses, Do-yoon hurls himself at Gyu-hyuk to knock him clear of the falling ceiling, and Gyu-hyuk is the one who digs Do-yoon out from under a pile of debris when they find themselves trapped.

He's exceedingly grateful to Do-yoon and swears that once they're out, he'll tell everyone that Do-yoon isn't a betrayer and he's actually a good man. Gyu-hyuk is #1 in the rankings and likely to win, though some would argue that his participation isn't entirely fair because he's the son of a famous (now deceased) pop star so his detractors like to say he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

If the player builds enough friendship with Gyu-hyuk over the course of the game, you get more of his backstory and learn that his father found having a family a burden and Gyu-hyuk was raised solely by his mother under less affluent circumstances. The game has some translation issues though, so while I'm pretty sure Gyu-hyuk is the son of a mistress, the game sometimes refers to her as his father's first wife.

What I like is that Gyu-hyuk didn't wake up one day planning to be a killer. If the collapse had never happened, he likely would have won the Buried Stars competition and everyone would have gone home, perhaps not happy, but at least alive.

While it's not hard to confront him about being the killer, Gyu-hyuk in most versions of the ending will accept his guilt and commit suicide by standing under the ceiling as the rescue crews break through so he'll be killed by falling debris. Finding out why he did it requires making a lot of inferences based on what we know of his backstory, and with each supposition, Gyu-hyuk will confirm Do-yoon's conclusions.

In a nutshell, Gyu-hyuk's mother committed suicide after being hounded by a tabloid TV show over her relationship with his father, and the person in charge of that show was Seungyeon Shin. Gyu-hyuk didn't realize the show was the reason for her suicide initially (he thought it was depression over her illness and being a burden to him since he had to help take care of her), but when the building collapsed Seongyeon was trapped by some debris and still alive. Gyu-hyuk was working on digging out Do-yoon (who had just saved his life), when Seungyeon yelled at him to help her, and started berating him when he wouldn't come over.

One of the things she tried to goad him with is her suspicion for the "real" reason he joined the show, and tells him that it's not her fault his mother committed suicide over her probing into her background. Gyu-hyuk hadn't suspected her of being anything other than a pushy producer, until she made him realize the connection she had to his mother was deeper than an exchange of business cards.

In a moment of anger, he killed Seungyeon (and then went back to digging out Do-yoon, which means she died just moments before the playable part of the game begins).

Hyesung was killed because he was Seungyeon's boy toy and tried to blackmail Gyu-hyuk into dropping out of the competition by revealing his parentage. Gyu-hyuk was agreeable to it, but Hyesung recorded their conversation and knowing Hyesung's impulsiveness, Gyu-hyuk realized this blackmail could come up again and decided to silence him permanently. (This murder felt the most of a stretch to me, since Hyesung had nothing to do with his mother's suicide, and I'm not sure the thought of dragging his mother's name through the mud is really enough to drive someone to murder.)

Seil was killed since he was working for Seungyeon at the time on the tabloid show and presumably was involved in the hounding of Gyu-hyuk's mother.

It's several bodies, but the thing is, the survivors who had nothing to do with his mother were never in any danger of being killed, and Gyu-hyuk, when caught, feels bad enough about it that he tries to pay with his life. In fact, one of the things he asks is for Do-yoon to reveal the truth of what he did to the world, because unlike him, Do-yoon is not actually a betrayer.

Now here's where the translation really needed a clear read through by someone who wasn't waist deep in multilingual text files.

Do-yoon gets to make one final choice, and it's timed, so the player can't dwell on it. He can either reveal the truth or bury the truth. You would think that this is in reference to Gyu-hyuk being the murderer, but it's not.

If Do-yoon reveals the truth, he once again pushes Gyu-hyuk out of harm's way (if you couldn't read between the lines before, it's pretty clear from the framing of this scene that they're the romantic couple of the game), and reveals one final twist.

Do-yoon is the betrayer people thought him to be, which is why the player is not allowed to see his internal thoughts on the matter. When his band got eliminated, Seungyeon came to him with an offer for him to continue on the finals as a solo act since the judges considered him to be far better than the rest of his group. At first he didn't want to, but Seungyeon made him realize his band was already falling apart. They previously had a fight when a label tried to sign them under the condition they replace their less performing members and Do-yoon had torpedoed the deal by refusing to break up the band. So breaking up the band when it was clearly convenient for him was not taken well by the members who had wanted to sign and lost their chance, even though it's likely the band would have broken up soon regardless.

The game tries to draw a connection between Do-yoon's feelings of having betrayed his band and his band's fans and Gyu-hyuk's guilt over murdering people behind his fellow competitors' backs, but it's really a false equivalence. I get that they both feel guilty about it, and Do-yoon's speech about having to live and confront what you've done is on point, but Do-yoon's level of backstabbing is so minor compared to… you know... actually killing people.

But this is the only way Gyu-hyuk can survive after being outed as the killer. There are a couple endings where he lives, notably one where you blame Inha for killing Seil and Hyesung, and another only available on second playthrough where Do-yoon hilariously bumps into Gyu-hyuk after he just killed Hyesung in the bathroom, but a fair number of others where he kills himself out of guilt without the reason being revealed to the player.

Though there is a clear main route through the game, there's an alternate Route B that can be accessed by maximizing friendship and unlocking all of Hyesung's profile notes that results in Hyesung surviving Gyu-hyuk's attack, but remaining unconscious. I had been hoping for a full blown alternate route, but Route B is fairly short. The group is smart enough to figure out S_Seungyeon is bluffing on their own (which means all that time with PlugHole in the main Route A felt completely unnecessary) and while everyone else is trying to get the truth out of Seil, Gyu-hyuk ends up committing suicide, likely because he knows Hyesung will reveal him as his assailant when he wakes up.

The other major ending is the mandatory bad end that you have to reach before you can complete the true ending. I was not a fan of it, since I prefer my mysteries to be solvable the first time through. The bad ending made me think I had massively screwed up, when in fact the game had dumped me on this route simply because I'd gotten far enough to see it.

I think it mostly exists to deflect suspicion from Gyu-hyuk, since everyone except Inha ends up dead in it. If he dies the player might conclude that he can't be the killer, but playing it felt like I was skipping through a lot of events (you actually go through them in greater detail on second playthrough) and I couldn't tell if I was on my way to a bad ending with no further choices or I was still on a path that could make it to the end because it was just so long and detailed.

Overall, the things about this game that stick with me the most are the game not having a mastermind, and that the murderer was actually a character I liked. Throughout the game Gyu-hyuk is the considerate and level-headed friend/romantic interest, and even when I started to realize that he was the only logical suspect left, I didn't want it to be him. That was really well done.