i've read a ton of forums about this issue and i still can't solve it :(
i reinstalled cxbx a couple of times, updated graphic drivers, applied threading hacks, managed 3d settings in nvidia control panel and yet nothing works
i have intel i7 and rtx 4060 for laptops. btw i had no issue with playing in the past
When I first played the Killer7 I thought of it as an arthouse-y funny game. Few days later, I found a few story/character analyses and went down a big, big rabbit hole. In this essay, or whatever you may call it, I will try to tell all of the main aspects of this exquisite game and my theories.
Firstly, I must make a thesis. There are 3 forms of Harman Smith (Deltahead):
1. Harman Smith as a human being – a principal at Coburn Elementary, the real body of Harman;
2. Harman as a divine being – the God-Killer;
3. Young Harman, as another personality, the one working with the government and the one who supposedly leads Garcian/Emir
That being said, the storyline of K7 can also be divided into three projections:
world politics and problems of US government society, the battle between the light and the dark (as if the eternal battle of Harman and Kun Lan), and the personality conflict of Garcian Smith. All of storylines are tightly intertwined, btw. So, I will try to enlighten on all three topics.
I. Human beings and real-life conflicts.
As I said before, I initially found this game funky and loopy and I couldn’t understand the message behind Cloudman and Alter Ego. (I gotta say that it’s not deadly important to understand the game :) I just feel guilty for not digging it through)
Regardless, I tried to pinpoint the exact problems within every chapter. Chapters Angel, Smile and Lion mostly center around the plot of Multifoliate Personae Phenomenon, therefore being more related to showing the battle between Harman & Kun Lan and the distress of Garcian. I will return to them later.
However, chapters Sunset, Cloudman, Encounter and Alter Ego, despite all the nonsense revolving around them, show us the hypocrisy of the US government in particular. Despite declaring world peace, banning internet and avia transportation, they only create an illusion of utopia. By the way, that’s exactly what Ulmeyda says!
Sunset sets the rules of the world we explore. We get to know what Yakumo is and the parties of Japan, as well as who Kenjiro Matsuoka and Toru Fukushima are and what role do they play. I can’t recall anything else I could mention about this chapter.
Cloudman, being quite different from the rest of the game, starts to show the said hypocrisy of the US government. Ulmeyda founds a fake corporation that only runs commercials, thereby representing how corporations fool people and how people believe what they are being told. Everyone in the town believes that Andre has actually struck gold and has founded a great corporation. Also, I got to mention a point I’ve heard online about the military that got killed when Andre turns into Heaven Smile – military is only a material to waste until the upper ones can deal with it. Killer7 are basically immune to Heaven Smiles, making them the “diplomats” in the tangle with Ulmeyda. Another topic of Cloudman is personality cult, but it’s apparent. Andre tries to build a cult around his identity, being the face of imaginary corp., infecting himself with deadly viruses AND overcoming them, making his followers believe he IS God.
A similar topic arises in Alter Ego. Pop culture and mass media brainwash people to serve them specific topics. Trevor Pearlharbor (I can’t believe Suda had the audacity to name him that XD) is basically an author who thinks he can influence the future until his own creation kills him. Now that’s capitalism – a commodity outlives the creator.
As for Encounter… basically the whole absurd story with Jeffrey Epstein (I hate to even mention this horrid piece of ///) – telling us that even government workers are not saints and can have a “retirement hobby” like Curtis did. Interestingly, all of the Killer7 except Garcian are technically immigrants. And we know how USA treats immigrants.
II. The eternal battle of good and bad.
It’s not hard to understand that Harman and Kun Lan are polar opposites and represent the good and the bad, and the east and west. However, in the case of these characters I can’t really say one of them is good, but rather that they are the sides of the same coin.
For example: with the help of Curtis Blackburn and Pedro Montana at the immigration center, Kun Lan or his followers create new Heaven Smiles. But Dan Smith, being an assassin of the opposing group was still involved by being Blackburn’s apprentice.
The main Kun Lan and Harman’s eternal battle conveys is that no matter what kind of control people take over conflicts, there will be a soil for it. “Earth doesn’t change; it just keeps spinning”.
III. Emir and the personalities.
So, Angel, Smile and Lion tell us about the mess of personalities.
For some reason, a lot of people (at least from what I’ve seen) believe that’s it’s Emir who absorbed the personalities, which is obviously not true. I didn’t want to rely on Hand in Killer 7 because of the inconsistencies, but one thing in hik7 seemed similar to the plot. That thing is Young Harman being an independent product of Multifoliate Personae Phenomenon. He is a personality created by Deltahead but not dependent on him, for some reason. He is the one who saved Emir and it’s also him who prolongs Emir’s delusions of being Garcian Smith.
I also don’t think Garcian was the one to be the vessel of other personas. He was more of a mediator between Harman and the other personalities, because he killed them first before killing himself. After all, he is officially stated as Harman’s dominant persona, taking the place of the leader because of Harmans disability. This also applies to his skills of resurrection.
We know that Young Harman works for the government and K7 also work for the government. YH’s goal was to control Garcian and his identity as the Smith which also relates to the main message of the game – the world is built on disinformation, therefore that’s why we saw Cloudman and Alter Ego.
Samantha’s (and Mills’, at some point) job was to manipulate Garcian. Her death (and Mills’ obviously) was a symbol that Emir/Garcian starts to understand things.
Other things related to Emir’s awareness are the vision ring and the third eye. When Emir commits suicide, his third eye closes, and that’s when he becomes Garcian – the manipulated and unaware one. The giveaway of the vision ring and Garcian bleeding after seeing the corpse of Deltahead may symbolize that Garcian starts to remember things that happened at the Union Hotel – his third eye opening and Emir becoming aware again.
I can’t say for sure how Emir was absorbed since YH was the one to find him, and YH is just a persona. Mayhaps YH and Deltahead can share the ability.
As for the forbidden room and Harman with Kun Lan being shocked could also mean that Emir realizes things (and it happens right after we discover the death of Samantha). At the end, YH kills Harman and Kun Lan in the forbidden room, a metaphor of him ultimately destroying the illusion of Smiths that controlled Emir. And that is when Emir wakes up.