QTE Cinematic Ambition

Lyrics

The dev kit was warm... in the winter of 1999.

We weren't making a game.
We were mapping a memory.
Every cat in Dobuita had a schedule to keep.
The weather had to change on its own time.
We drew the phone books page by page,
so you could call a number that wouldn't answer.
We wanted every can in the vending machine
to have its own life, its own small story.
We wanted you to breathe.

And I remember the carpenters.
In the middle of the AM2 office,
they built Ryo Hazuki's house out of wood and nails.
A real room, for a virtual one.
We walked its halls to get the camera right.
We built your house twice, my love.
Once in wood, and once in light.

I spent a week on the physics of a single capsule toy.
The way it would roll down the plastic ramp.
We licensed songs for a cassette player
that most would never even find.
We made you learn to drive a forklift
just to feel the weight of a working day.
It was Yokosuka, 1986.
And the budget was a ghost at every meeting.

And I remember the carpenters.
In the middle of our digital world,
they built Ryo's house out of wood and nails.
A real room, for a virtual one.
We walked its halls to get the feeling right.
We built your house twice, my love.
Once in wood, and once in light.

Then came the flash of a button on the screen.
A life in reflexes.
A choice made in a heartbeat.
December came and you were born.
Beautiful. Perfect.
And the numbers told us you were too expensive to love.
A world so deep, a price so high.
A mirror held up to a life we couldn't quite afford to live.

They took the wooden house down.
But sometimes, late at night,
I can still smell the sawdust.
I can still hear the echo of our footsteps
in a room that was never really there.
The story isn't over.