TAO, A Let's Play

Hello everyone.

Today I'm going to introduce you to Tao: The Way. It's an NES game that came out about 1989 that has an interesting plot, mostly due to the agenda of the creators. I'm not going to go too far into that for now, but I will be explaining the various religious themes that get mentioned.

The game is best explained as a text adventure game with a very simple RPG mechanic thrown in. Sadly this turns the game into a grind fest towards the end, and the clues and dialogue were very...cryptically translated due to space constraints.

But that's why I'll be playing it and not you!!



Above is the basic interface. The Mouth and Eyeball are basically the talking commands, although the eyeball will also let you spot things (half the time it's just a way to get extra dialogue.)

The box gives you a selection of items to use, and the hand lets you take new items.

The sword gives you a list of weapons you can either equip or use, depending on their nature. The arrows let you exit to the world map if you're in a fight.

The feet let you run away from battles, while the swords clashing are used to fight things.

The circle gives you a rundown of your stats, and the doorway gives you a password.

With that said, I plan on keeping a weekly update schedule.

I hope everyone will enjoy.

The games basic interface looks easy to use. How simple s the games rpg element?

yay!

I eagerly anticipate updates.

It begins.



"A seed of life in loves embrace. Set free a baby cries. Truth forgotten, a journey begins.





This is the year 1999, in the town of Angolmois. You may notice something about that date and those names, if you're a fan of Nostradamus:

“In the year 1999 and seven months, from the sky will come the great King of Terror. He will bring back to life the great King of Angolmois. Before and after Mars reigns supreme.”

There are a ton of alternate translations for this, and most of them try to change Angolmois into something else, like "The Mongols" or "Angola." The Nostradamus prophecies are certainly not an exact science. "Mars reigns supreme" is often translated as "War reigns supreme," as another example.

Let's go see our house!



"Mama is angry!"

Oh ma, always with the curlers, always with the ritually burning crosses into your palm.

Better explore the town!

There's a museum.



Oh hey a girl. Will you be showing me around ma'am?



AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Ah...ah...

The curator here shows us a sacred urn and a sacred vessel. One is a bronze container and the other a vase looking thing. Not too exciting yet.

We talk to some of the villagers and learn that a meteor recently struck. That probably explains the huge crater. Let's check it out!


"Right by our science laboratory! Hah! We're collecting meteor fragments for study. Oh?! New discovery!"




Assistant: "Yabahama, we should celebrate!"



Ok, so we've got mysterious pottery at the site of the asteroid crash, being studied by a professor Yabahama and his assistant. I'm sure this is just part of the world building and will never be important again.

Man this town kind of sucks, let's bounce.



Damn, guess we need to activate some flags! I wonder what's outside the town?



Here is the first overworld map. We learn from the people in the houses that storms are covering the Earth, and that the monks in our home town's temple believe in reincarnation. There's a field below the middle house called "Wild Beast Crossing," remember that for later. The very bottom house has a wise old man™.


"Understand and master time. Ancient one knows Satori."

Satori is the ability to see the world's true nature, the state of Buddhist enlightenment.

Well, everyone's talking about Buddha stuff so we might as well go to that shrine.



Oh no there's not going to be another curator is there?!



Oh thank God. Anyways the temple isn't that exciting. All the monks just talk about reincarnation and how "Mara" is really cool. If you're familiar with the Megaten games you know Mara as a giant penis of evil, but here it's just a different name for the historical Siddhartha Buddha. Potato, potahto.

In one of the Stupas (towers) a monk mentions that they have the Maha Mara Scroll, where Mara's teachings are written.




Become enlightened! Form of...FISH.

Let's check out the main shrine.


Gohonzon is a Japanese term for a Buddhist idol.


"He became a Buddha and his flesh...divine."

So they have a corpse in their temple. Still not nearly as bad as that curator.

It's also worth noting that that particular kind of corpse is a thing that certain Buddhists do. A monk will have himself buried alive, meditating the entire time, with a tube for breathing. Later the monks pour poison down the tube, which helps preserve the body. If the body doesn't rot, they are declared a Buddha and their corpse is kept as a Gohonzon.


Elsewhere in the temple we find a mysterious door.

"When it opens...a joyous day."

Probably nothing important.

After exploring the shrine, if we go back to the Wild Beast Crossing...


And carry this old woman back. She thanks us for helping her to the shrine, saying that old people can be ambushed...

THEN SHE TRANSFORMS INTO-


A not very threatening demon...seriously the curator was way worse than this guy. The Chinese character on his crotch flap is the word for "Power." It's a popular tattoo for people who can't read Chinese.

Well I only know one place where anything can be looted at the temple, so let's check the Stupa with the Maha Mara Scroll.




Well damn Buddha scrolls must be like steroids for demons. Hell's baseball league is always testing for Mantra chants.

Well...no one knows WE brought that thing here...let's just see how the head monk is handling all this.



"Tears fall from the skies...Our faith is in you brave initiate!"

Initiate? Wha? Hey dude, I just visited like, one time. I know I nodded when you talked and stuff but-



"8 elements compose the Trigram. You have 1 find 7 more. The five elements of the Trigram are Wood Fire Water Earth and Metal. Restore order to the Cosmos. Make the Trigram!"

Restore order to the cosmos? Hey man I live in a village and my mom screams at me while burning herself with cigarettes. I don't think I'm really qualified. I don't even have any cool stuff to help save the world.



TAAAAAAO!!!!

Well great, now we have a wooden box and we have to save the Cosmos. Too bad we have no idea where that demon went. If we visit the door again we see it's open, and the monk there tells us that the Earth used to be protected by Guardian Angels, and that Suzaku the bird is the guardian of the South, and he is enshrined in the temple.

I guess this "savior" business is as good an excuse as any to get on a train and out of this dump.



And thankfully the train is working now. It's too bad trains run on those tracks, or else the Earthquake wouldn't have affected us getting out of here while the getting was good eh?


















TAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAO!!!!

Oh shit, it's a literal Dinosaur Train!

I'm going to enjoy this journey - your narrative will help a lot.

brother, when did you get here

I'm loving this interface

That curator is exactly how I've always pictured Mr. Lapage from the song Everyone's Gone to the Movies by Steely Dan. Just so you all know.

Looking forward to more updates, and seeing more of this crazy, crazy world.

So in order to become enlightened, once must become a sun fish. The dino tarin is also cool.

I literally laughed out loud reading this, good show.

And now it's time for...

"THE HELL IS THIS?!"

Episode 1: Trigrams.

You may have noticed that EIGHT elements make up a TRIgram. Well it's not as simple as that. A trigram is a set of three lines, these lines can be solid or with a dash in the middle, so for example-

___
_ _
___

That up there would be a solid line, a broken line and a solid line. Solid lines represent "Yang" while broken lines represent "Yin." Yang is considered male, positive, bright, hot and dry, while Yin is considered female, negative, dark, cold and wet.

How many combinations can you make out of three binary digits? 8! Each of these is assigned an element. So all Yang is Heaven, and all Yin is Earth, with other elements filling in the middle.

In fact, if you're a computer nerd you can set these all as binary digits, in which you'd end up with something like:

000 = Earth
001 = Thunder
010 = Water
100 = Mountain
011 = Lake
101 = Fire
110 = Wind
111 = Heaven

The easiest place to find trigrams nowadays is the I-Ching, which is a system of fortune telling by using multiple trigrams. They're also prominently displayed on the South Korean flag, flanking a Yin Yang no less.

In the game TAO you're never alerted to picking up Trigrams, so to be honest I'm not entirely sure how you get them, except for you WILL get them as you continue through the plot. Later on in the game some enemies will use Trigrams as a fairly weak attack. Since the game offers no animation it's never explained how you'd attack someone with one.

Keep on keeping on!

Maybe it's like holding up a crucifix to repel a vampire?

Here we are in Moskov, which is probably supposed to be Moscow. This is also our first clue as to where Angolmois is. Since it's accessible to Moscow by train/sauropod, Angolmois is probably in either India or China.

The people here are worried about animals disappearing. Well, that and door-to-door evangelists.



There is some talk of a Nun who is trying to renovate the church above. If we try to visit the church we find it locked, although we can hear voices inside.



This friendly looking fellow tells us to check out a mountain witch. Sounds like good video game advice!



This is the overworld of Moscov. To the left is the best building in the game.



This dude will totally heal you for 20 coins. It's not worth anything right now, but in the future this will be the *only* spot in the game where you can heal yourself. So you'll find yourself coming back to Moscov often.


"We must pacify his wrath."

Yugh. This village is mainly notable for having that creepy idol. The building at the very bottom is a prison for violent criminals, which at the moment doesn't interest us. The mountain however...



"The worlds fate is lonliness and suffering. Ah...You, born as heaven's messenger."

Mountain of fear? More like EMO mountain! Let's check it out.



BAM! BATTLE TIME!



This little guy is a "Crawler," and he's the weakest thing in the game. At this point the main character has 300 Skill and 300 Power (HP.) I'm not totally sure how stats work in this game but Crawler has 280 Power, 4 attack and 1 speed. That 4 attack does NOT mean he does 4 damage though, he takes a long time to kill you but it doesn't require 80 hits or anything. You fight by button mashing which improves your chance of hitting them and avoiding their attacks. Counter-intuitively your HP is the bar on the right and the enemies is on the left. The first time I played I had no idea what was happening, but assumed I was winning because the bar on the right kept slowly going down, and then I died. Crawler here can only use "Bump Rump" for his attack, and so if you happen to button mash at all you'll win.


"I must give you this."

Oh hey you must be the Mountain Witch. Listen if it's a wooden box we don't need it.


"Strike enemies vital points from the side!! The Ajna figure is so powerful!"

This is a pretty awesome little item early on. Now we have a new thing we can do on our menu, symbolized by a little statue. This and other chakra statues we find will be present. They all seem to do about the same thing though, which is hit enemies for more damage than most attacks would do. Ajna here uses the cryptic attack "Brow." Which may or may not be "Blow."


"Far away Khalibad."

Aw yeah she mentioned a new place. Whenever that happens you can be pretty sure there's a new place you can travel too. Sure enough when we go to the Moscov train station we get a choice between either Angolmois or Khalibad.

We ride!