Hitting the Bricks: A Return of the Mammalians Playthrough

[Hokuto]

I play games for the plot, not because I'm good at them. So why should you listen to my experience specifically? I accidentally cursed myself with an overcomplicated emergent narrative project that spans over multiple fandoms and too many timelines. My sanity went out the window two years ago.

PLAYTHROUGH PARAMETERS
I will choose Hero Gear whenever presented. Ultimately, I'd like to 100% all the sites? Other than that, no rules, just vibes.

CUSTOM CHARACTERS
Agent 3 Agent of Chaos: Bricks (they/them), a brash and brazen Octoling recruited from out of town. In Splatsville, they pop Tacticoolers and brute force through Tableturf battles with their stupid busted deck.
Li'l Buddy: Leeroy Jenkins (can't refuse a pronoun), a Smallfry Bricks gets along with better than any Inkfish they've met. If you thought Bricks could eat, wait until you see what Leeroy can do.
Captain of the New Squidbeak Splatoon: Skipper (they/them), an Inkling who sacrificed so much for Inkfish society. Ironically highly asocial, with no desire to engage with the world they made. (I don't expect them to come up more than once or twice.)

FOLLOWING ALONG
I am taking notes in a physical notebook, but instead of giving you the nice distilled version, I may put slight effort into making your thread reading experience worse. (Never in a way that hampers accessibility if I can help it.) I probably won't tag spoilers in my posts unless they're ahead of where I'm at. I've had most of Return of the Mammalians spoiled to me, but there are a few things I still don't know. Please do not ruin the rest. Tag any spoilers beyond the last site I post about. (Replies are welcome!)

OTHER INFO
Clips? Screenshots? You won't see them here. Maybe a doodle or two from time to time if I feel like it? I don't know. I'm not even doing that for my P5R playthrough. (Maybe I should...?)

 

[Hokuto]

2024/01/27
THE CRATER

• You can't say "watch out for the Fuzzy Ooze!" and not expect us to immediately run into it.
• DJ Octavio's boss music, as always, bops.
• The first-episode twist is SO GOOD. In the words of someone who questioned me one month after I wrote this down:
  

  wait you onlyplayed the "haha you thought we made another ****ty story mode" section and not the "but we actually made a really cool story mode!" section?

  • Even the clothes reveal, where the Hero Suit blows away...

ARRIVING IN ALTERNA

• (eager inhale) Smells like nuclear winter!
• I beat Octo Expansion between starting Splatoon 3 and entering the Crater for the first time. Bringing Skipper's data into the fold gave me so much trouble. I deleted my local save, forgot about my cloud save, on and on. I had to play the intro about five times, beat DJ Octavio up maybe three, but as much trouble as it was, seeing their half-effort salute was worth all the trouble.
  • I want my actions to have consequences! Let me get emotionally kneecapped!
• So why is Deep Cut down here?

 

[Hokuto]

2024/03/03 (haha funny date)

SITE 1 (100%)

• The level titles continue to be so ridiculous you can't not like them. (Come on, "Who caused the Big Bang? YOU!"? Seriously?)
• So much to take in! Bricks registered with ORCA in the decontamination chamber. (Of course you're not going to recognize this creature's genetic signature, ORCA! They're not even the same species as your former clientele!)
• Eerie quiet throughout Alterna. The gold records and level music help, at least.
• While I'm having a much easier time moving through Alterna than Octo Canyon levels (I like to think I'm better at Splatoon than I was six months ago), I still occasionally make really stupid mistakes.
• Did Octopods always explode your color when successfully taken out or is that a new feature?
• I love that they devote an entire level to parent-child bonding. Leeroy my beleeroy
• And then there's an entire level devoted to defacing a Moai with an Explosher.
• Bricks does not like to move it. I quickly understood why the First Clear reward in the Deadly Dance Hall is so generous.
  • TIL "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" is basically a very long Lord of the Flies reference.
• Agent of Chaos observations:
  • The "Gimme" as your upgrade confirmation instead of something normal like "Yes" tells you a lot about the Agent of Chaos in just one word.
  • The Clear! poses, y'all. Ostentatious. I couldn't help thinking about the Tweet that inspired Bricks.
    

    having a Legal Name implies the existence of a better, sexier Illegal Name

• The Alterna logs are disturbing. Don't know how they ended up in what's ostensibly a children's game.
  • Prediction: the Alterna survivors are going to eat the marine invertebrates that managed to live down there.
• So that's what Deep Cut is doing down here, looting the place empty.

SITE 2 (100%)

• Leeroy has garbage pathfinding. (I don't care, he's trying his best.)
• Knowing what a Soaker Block is would have helped me with Side Order. Looking at you, stage where you raise the wall to keep out the missile fish. I think I had to clear that one Lights Out once. Miserable experience, fighting them off.
• Oh no, they brought back targets on rails stages.
  • And my beloathed, Limited Ink. With the gall to give me the notoriously thirsty Range Blaster.
• The maze level was super cool. The fact that they designed it so players could/would cross it twice???
• Whoever hid the little switch on the underneath pathway in "Switching Things Up" deserves to receive their morning coffee/tea/breakfast order wrong for as long as Return of the Mammalians is playable.
  • Bricks is canonically nearsighted. So am I.
• "Tread Heavily" is such a nonsense stage, what with the big bad guy merely being shaped like one. Everything about it is stupid and overblown, but wholly enjoyable in its stupidity.
• Does Frye know how to play her eel charming flute? It kind of sounds like she's singing into it.
  • Eel puns all over the dang place. The Captain's "Make those eels squeal!" is such a comically cruel quip, I had to write it down.

 

[Hokuto]

2024/03/10
So apparently Surveying is a thing, completely separate from the NSO site completion rate? Anyway, Areas 1 through 4 have been thoroughly surveyed. (This is a really cool story mode.)

SITE 3 (100%)

• Cryogenic Hopetown gives me the same vibes as "Hope" the ROAR song, in the sense that both give me no real hope at all. Even the snow and ice are apparently fake.
  • I associate Skipper with ROAR, to my own detriment. Depressing psychedelic pop, anyone?
  • Speaking of Skipper, they gathered some Power Eggs for us!
• I got auditory pareidolia-ed into hearing "heck yeah!" out of Bricks.
• I wanted to do "Climbing the Corporate Splatter" with the Splat Dualies, but I gave myself one rule and that rule was that Bricks must use Hero Gear for the first clear on every stage that gives us the option.
  • And then they gave me that Ink Wheel level with only the Hero Gear or a Tri-Slosher. Cruel.
• "Try Curling! Alterna's 11th Most Popular Athleisure Activity" is a spectacular title for a really neat level.
• "Simulated skyborne commuter scenario," huh? You think little a-splodey guys are an acceptable addition to the flow of Alternan air traffic, ORCA?
  • New personal canon: Bricks gets road rage. (I don't know why I think this is so funny.)
  • "If one more of these missiles blocks my merge, ORCA, Alterna this car around and we're going right back where came from! Hey! STAY IN YOUR LANE!"
• I have "Rail pass." written in my notes and aside from that being the title of a level, I don't know what this was supposed to mean.
• Can't believe this game is trying to make me feel Feelings about little lost Leeroy.
• "Conveyor Belt Tightening" got me at the very last target. My hand hurt for a little bit after mashing ZR as fast as I had to.
• On the way from Future Utopia Island, I noticed a dark rift in the "sky." This Alterna Log explained why.
  • My prediction was wrong, I guess! The humans used the squids to make the "sky." (That's arguably worse than the Horror Hunger I was expecting to see.)

SITE 4 (100%)

• Landfill Dreamland looks like a nightmare to me.
  • Yes, Callie, Leeroy's going to love those Power Eggs. No, Bricks doesn't have a submarine license.
    • I don't even think they should be allowed to drive.
• What treasure is Deep Cut looking for?
• Easy ride! I'm surprised I cleared it in one go! (I think I have the Blaster to thank for that.)
• I did not "admire" my crate ORCA. (Bricks reads comix and slaps stickers on stuff and listens to "live fast, eat trash" music. They never really struck me as a fine art appreciator anyway.)
• The ORCA "mission failed" punishment is just the deadly version of Nickelodeon slime. I didn't even watch the Nickelodeon shows, it's just such a strong association.
• De-oozing rewards can be... weird. Did I really have to use 900 Power Eggs for one food ticket?
  • Bricks and Leeroy don't care! But I do!
• How do they un-fuzz someone from the Fuzzy Ooze? I have unintentionally touched it more times than I care to admit.
• The Octohopper weapon behaves like a bucket!
• "Those aren't birds..." is EVIL. I had to use a Continue to switch to Nautilus because the Dapples have no range.
• My notes are in a weird order because I fought Shiver before realizing I missed some of the regular stages. I don't feel bad for splatting Shiver. I haven't decided whether Master Mega looks stupid or cool... or both?
  • Why does the treasure from "The Pursuit of the Precious" look like a lethal weapon?
• Mr. Grizz has Cap'n Cuttlefish. (I did have Mr. Grizz spoiled to me.)
• Unironic Goo Tuber level, y'all!
• "Flying Worst Class" has fantastic commentary, except for Marie slinging Octarian slurs with an Octoling on the other side of the comms system. Does anybody ever address this?
  • If I had a nickel for every time I walked onto a zeppelin wing and immediately thought "the wavy arm is right there! we can pop this puppy!", it wouldn't begin to cover Bricks's funeral expenses.
• Who (on the devs' end) wrote Alterna Log 4? Who hurt you?! How did you get away with putting such a grim record of hubristic death and destruction in a children's game?!?

 

[Hokuto]

2024/03/13
I had to do at least a little bit for MAR13 Day. (Anyway, I fully surveyed Site 5!)

SITE 5 (100%)

• Eco-Forest Treehills? More like Eco-Turbine Tragedy.
• You'd think because I liked the Curling Bomb stage so much, I'd like the Angle Shooter stage too. Nope!
• The only compulsive collecting I'm doing is lore!
• For a canonically nearsighted Octoling, Bricks managed the fog surprisingly well!
• "So Alterna re-invented the microplastic?" is a terrible joke to make.
  • Liquid crystal. Squid. Liq-squid? Li-squid? There's a joke in there somewhere.
    • Hey, wait, Alterna also reinvented the liquid crystal display, just in a literal sense.
• Greenhouse-looking domes. Either those vegetables are somehow growing on their own or fake plastic tomatoes?
• I could have passed Site 6 and collected my 100 Power Eggs after clearing about half the stages in Site 5.
  • Where did the kettles come from? I don't think humans built them...
• Too many snipers wasn't the problem, not enough checkpoints was. Zero checkpoints!
• MAKING WAVES!!! (If I hadn't established Bricks as a Tacticooler junkie and didn't personally derive great pleasure from the "Refreshing!", I would have them main a Triple Splashdown weapon in online play. Too much fun.)
  • Do they ever give you Wave Breaker?
• "Whatever you do, don't slip." Sorry, Marie!
• I recognized the ride rail stage with the boxes as the stage in a Nintendo Direct or something where the best Splatoon player on the preview team couldn't clear it in the allotted eight minutes. In his defense, it took me way more than eight minutes.
  • Please imagine my dismay when I found out the next stage was another rails stage. At least I had Burst Bomb for the big clusters of switches.
• The goofy superhero music in the Zipcaster stages is temporarily stuck in my head.

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

• The Alterna logs are disturbing. Don't know how they ended up in what's ostensibly a children's game.

Maybe it isn't one then :)

 

[Hokuto]

2024/03/16

SITE 6 (100%)

• How was anyone researching anything in the inconvenient isolation of the Happiness Research Lab?
• If I dared to finish my survey and reassemble the Hero Suit before tackling a stage, I could have, with a couple hundred Power Eggs to spare. Alas, I the player am a coward.
  • Do you get to do anything with the remaining points or did they just want to make Max Hero Level less difficult for people who don't run themselves into the ground to find All The Things?
  • What do you do with the extra Power Eggs?
• I either loved or hated every stage in the site, with basically no opinions in between.

FUN	PAIN	MASOCHISM
Octarian Heights Torture Tour Keep It Rolling Breathe In, Breathe Out	Bet You Mist Us! Conserve Ink—Splat Sustainably Mission: Fly-Fishin' Don't Tease With the Keys Enter the Stamp Gauntlet	The Enemy Ink Is Lava! That Sinking Feeling Dive and Dash

• "Bet you mist us?" I sure didn't! (Is this the first enemy Octoling level or am I stupid. The music was at least a nostalgia blast to (checks watch) Octo Canyon six months ago.)
• In a wise and therefore out of character move, Bricks noped out of the Octarian Heights sniper trap. (All of my playable characters have historically been allowed one out of character decision I usually don't make consciously. This one feels wasted.)
• Me, a sicko: "Torture Tour is actually kind of fun!"
  • A really neat final exam level, testing everything the player should have learned from the other five sites!
• I think "pretty good, but they'll never be me" was from "Conserve Ink—Splat Sustainably?" (I love the Captain's unsportsmanlike gloating. It's really funny knowing there's a character who has to be The Best, knows it, rubs it in everybody's face. Yes, Skipper, we know we'll never be you. No offense—I don't think anyone wants to be you.)
  • I'm so glad this game correctly acknowledges my non-binary OCs, even though they didn't do that specifically for me.
• "The Enemy Ink Is Lava" is right up there with Target Town on the list of levels that made me regret my commitment to completion.
  • After many torrents of slime, many jumps off the edge to reset after bad throws, and many wasted Power Eggs, giving up, coming back, and doing it all again, I accidentally chose to start over instead of continuing at the final checkpoint. My record shows a reasonable time because I finally got the hang of it and completed the level in one payment.
    • Something tells me Bricks is a sucker for pain, but not enough where curling is still their favorite athleisure activity.
• Don't encourage Bricks to Carbon Roller competitively! They don't have the patience to sneak in for the splat!
  • Where's Leeroy in this level?
  • Or "Breathe In, Breathe Out?" Or "Dive and Dash?" You know, the ones where we Leeroy Jenkins-ed our way through?
    • I almost added "That Sinking Feeling" to that list, but the Burst Bomb saved me from that sniper. Leeroy would have eaten precious frames in addition to fuzzy tentacles.
• Comments I don't remember the level for:
  • Ya boi doesn't know how to aim! (Oh, wait, this is the Inkjet level.)
  • Who's "I" in the Alterna log? (We've been here for six sites and I still don't know who ORCA is.)
  • How can Bricks's shoe be untied if they're not wearing any? (I am ashamed to admit that both Bricks and I would fall for that trick regardless.)
• LEMME SMASH
  • I take it back, Ultra Stamp has no turn radius.
    • Morbid curiosity led me to look at the empty loadout. I gave the canned hammers one go, got gunged for not doing it, and headed straight back for the decontamination chamber.
• I do feel sorry for whaling on Big Man. Getting Sensor and Splashdown makes his boss fight as easy as stealing Treasure from a baby!
  • Big Man is my favorite Deep Cut member.
  • Apparently Big Man's whole deal is a reference to a brutal Super Mario Sunshine level.
• "It might be Ex-Captain Cuttlefish!" Ouch! No respect!
  • But Skipper supposedly cheered Bricks on. Not sure what tone my "Aww!" should take.
• Final upgrade get! (spoiler for Very Soon Events) Hope this one doesn't bite us in the butt!
  • Yeah, I had Hugefry spoiled to me. There was no way Leeroy eating gigantic gobs of an unknown substance could possibly end well. (Will this be this the horror hunger I thought I'd see in Alterna?)
  • I do not expect to have an appropriate emotional response to everything that happens once we assemble the Treasure. That's happening... tonight!

Finally, addressing the comment above, I included "ostensibly" for a reason.

 

[Hokuto]

2024/03/17
I was right, I'm not going to be Normal about this.

THE TREASURE

• Turns out I just unlocked Leeroy's last upgrade. Fortunately, Callie caught my mistake.
• At least Bricks isn't afraid of heights. (This is a joke from my Persona 5 Royal run. Please go read that too.)
• The sick, twisted grin on Skipper's face when they handled the newly assembled Killing Machine.
  • Your actions have consequences, bud. Of course pushing yourself too hard was going to hurt you again. You're not going to get away with it this time.
    • I retroactively understand why I designed them the way I did. This gives me hope, and not just in the ROAR/Cryogenic Hopetown sense.
• Marie now employs Deep Cut. I don't know what to say about this. (Who was their boss before?)

THE ROCKET

• No Hero Gear? No problem! Just Bricks and Leeroy against the brave new world.
  • But we just upgraded it, too...
• I only realized in here that Leeroy eats the Octarians. Alive.
  • Cephalopod cannibalism is real, and even though this isn't it, this still got me thinking...
• Blitzing through the Hangar with all the canned specials is so much fun.
• Let one intrusive thought win. Just go for it. (I let Bricks shoot down the Octozeppelin AFTER they got off. I wasn't about to throw the mission away that quickly.)
• Golden Egg abuse implicates Grizzco employees in multiple levels of guilt! My Splaturday morning Salmon Run will never be the same.
• Bricks in pipe! Bricks in pipe! (Honestly? More fun Inkrailing than crawling.)
• I love the reveal that Deep Cut wanted the treasure so they could support Splatsville's struggling poor. Bricks is no longer among them, but we appreciate the sentiment.
• Bricks, whatever you do, now is NOT the time to touch ooze. (Guess what they did. Go on.)
• This is where they kept the Great Zapfish? Seriously?
  • I hate Zipcaster.
• What are you doing to Cap'n Cuttlefish, Mr. Grizz?! (Yes, I AM taking notes.)
  • Cuttlefish d(r)ied. Skipper cried. Deep Cut really, really tried. And hey, they got Bricks into space!

THE BATTLE FOR SEA-CIETY

• Leeroy likes Golden Eggs even more than Power Eggs! Salmonid cannibalism is also real. Hooray...?
• We did great up until this sequence! Unfortunately, gravity hates Bricks (I now understand the significance of their name ) and we kept falling out of orbit or missing the Squid Roll over that one gap. Mr. Grizz wasn't the worst part of his own boss fight, the stage itself was.
  • What even IS Mr. Grizz? He's goopier than the average bear!
    • What mammals are left to inherit the Earth besides Mr. Grizz and the Judds?
    • (extreme spoilers I'm not supposed to know) Apparently a literal, actual monster.
• CALAMARI INKANTATION OF THE SOUL! Thanks for your help, DJ Octavio!
  • Hugefry being kaiju-ified by millennia of marine afterlives is a decidedly less scary prospect than having to fight a horribly mutated Fuzzy Hugefry. I'm glad it shook out that way; I don't ever want to hurt Leeroy.
    • Making sure that everyone who came before us did not live and die in vain. Making sure that everyone who comes after us has a world worth living on.
  • We did see the bad ending once. I don't think I like the world that Mr. Grizz made. (Hokuto, you cannot seriously entertain the Apocalypse split. Bricks exerts no control over Daytime.)
• MY SON...

THE AFTERMATH

• Mmm, credits.
• Leeroy Jenkins saved the world and nobody will ever know.
• Cap'n Cuttlefish was never all there anyway, right? ...Right?
  • I will never look at shredded ika the same way again. Blame it on the brainrot.
• Skipper's Booyah of Approval, y'all.
• Two things you can do with Power Eggs: Shel-Drone (I don't really want duplicates of most of the decorations anyway) and After Alterna. I decided on one shot at each. Bricks and I never made it past the "Watch your step!" portion, because we didn't.

And I'm finally spoilers off for the series because I looked up the Shel-Drone and got the After Alterna bonus information spoiled to me. Oh well, at least I can freely read the TV Tropes page and play more Tableturf now. Hope I didn't miss anything, because aside from suffering through After Alterna (and I'm in no rush!), I think this is it for the thread! Thanks for reading along!

 

[Hokuto]

Hokuto Reads the TV Tropes Page: A Postgame Report

• Deep Cut, amirite? (Honestly, I don't know what I wasn't supposed to know, except that they try to kill you over a big misunderstanding. Also, Big Man is apparently an aristocrat.)
• Li'l Buddy is a keiji salmon.
• How did I miss that Agent 3 is supposed to be The Stoic? This whole time, I read Bricks and their dramatic poses and whatnot as hammy/tryhard cool guy behavior.
  • The power of personal canon, baby! I can say whatever I want!
  • "I don't know any of you people" would explain why they have no real emotional connection to Deep Cut or the New Squidbeak Splatoon.
• Hooray, Skipper is finally getting paid!
• In the New Squidbeak Splatoon's defense, I also did not know that the Treasure was supposed to be a helicopter. (Does this mean I have the intelligence of a squid?)
  • Funny Background Event (ostensibly): The Captain faceplants into the "snow" after cleaning the fuzz off the launchpad. I had to go back and watch my clip. Sorry, Skipper, I know I shouldn't have laughed.
• If Cap'n Cuttlefish had his brain strained, there's no way Callie and Marie are getting him back. A fate worse than death. (Kane Chronicles spoilers) Wrinkly Cuttlefish reminds me of the senile, half-awake Ra.
  • The "death" cutscene didn't really work for me either, Tropers. I know Cap'n Cuttlefish as the politically incorrect old guy from Octo Expansion; Bricks (reminder: Octoling) would probably call him a racist. Why should they care?
• Apparently, the Captain can only "Booyah!" because player characters only communicate in three phrases. Hilarious.
• THE SNOW WAS THE LIQUID CRYSTAL DUST. (I guess I don't even have the intelligence of Leeroy, who is a literal baby and also blursed with Artificial Stupidity.)
• The TV Tropes page called the Alternan sites' names "delusional," which kind of makes sense if you think about the stir-crazy humans trying to make the best of their truly awful situation.
• The Inkfish are humanity's truest successors. This, unfortunately, messes up some of the speculative biology stuff I wanted to do with them, because this isn't the kind of canon I can ignore.
  • Parallels between Alternan humans and Inkadian Octarians. None of them are nice.
• Mr. Grizz's backstory makes me feel bad for him, but only slightly, even though it's incredibly screwed up.
  • Shame Mr. Grizz had to destroy his original body and untold masses of Salmonid eggs in his attempts to salvage the Ark Polaris mission. Those two separate genocide attempts? I dunno, I just can't get behind that.
  • Thinking about the incredibly ambiguous ORCA, whom we still know nothing about (besides the fact that it's the "I" in the Alterna Logs and that it knows basically everything). I kind of want to read fanfiction detailing its time alone, ideally with its "storyteller's flair" intact.
    • Error: this currently does not exist.
    • I am simultaneously fascinated by the potential of writing Splatoon fanfiction and uninterested in engaging with the body of work that precedes my hypothetical contributions.
• DJ Octavio encounters the same fate after his defeat as Dave the octopus from the Penguins of Madagascar movie (getting trapped in a snowglobe).
  • I read about the Penguins' TV and movie appearances (where's that "Splatoon made me..." thread when I need it?) to see if I could make Splatoon memes out of them. Unfortunately for me specifically, Skipper and Skipper are the only somewhat close match I have. Bricks, my Agent 4, and my Agent 8 don't neatly align with Kowalski, Rico, or Private. Everyone else, consider this an act of mercy.
• Addressing dissent about the Sequel Difficulty Drop compared to Octo Expansion: My mileage did not vary! I managed to complete every regular level before attempting the endgame, even with Deadly Dance Hall, Target Town, and "The Enemy Ink Is Lava!" Conversely, I only collected 40 of the 80 Mem cakes before assembling the Blender of Doom because you KNOW I wasn't going to put myself through the rest. (I should one day, just to get seabagged during Inner Agent 3.)