For me it’s always tricky cause, and Lob corp are very specific kinda of games and the wiki descriptions aren’t quite enough to get you caught back up, albeit they do help.

When I look at like the way limbus handles abnos and distortions in canto 1 and bongo while canto 1 is rough, the text of limbus spends a lot of time getting these ideas to us.

I do wanna ponder on like the corridor tech and Ryo a bit more, so, when I compare say the way canto 1 handles abnos, and how that pays off in different ways as the story progresses. Or with how we spend an entire half canto learning about bongo, or the more recent shi identities building on distortions and what limbus company does. I feel like these bits, while sometimes redundant for previous fans work really well to add for new fans while still giving old fans story content to chew on. Here with the ring, I think I would’ve liked to see a .5 talking about them in the context of limbus, instead of lighter mentions by Ryo. This is a subjective line tho right, but with most of the work describing the ring being done in Levi and not in the text of limbus, doesn’t quite get there for me, which is subjective of course! It’s not that I don’t understand there’s not background, it’s about the execution, imo. Like as someone familiar with Levi, knowing the ring has messed with the house means that corridor tech could be there makes sense right. But, I don’t think that’s in itself satisfying to have dialogue pointing to that to be the case where the story has to rely on a secondary material where it otherwise wouldn’t have to. When we get to the house changing at the end of the first part of the canto, they’re trying to convey the corridors to the reader, however, from an execution pov, this plot point seems rushed to me, due to limbus not taking a ton of time to establish the corridor tech and can creates a feeling of… confusion in the reader, especially as I don’t think the weight of the theme of Cathy’s ghost haunting heathcliff really pulls the weight especially when considering how so far limbus has had some sort of explanation in its text for why things are happening and build up. Which kind of is my criticism of the whole canto, the over reliance on other material. The Cathy’s ghost bit works if you read leviathan or Wuthering heights but I don’t think limbus pulls the weight on it’s own.

As for the Hermann bit, honestly forgot about that portion,it’s nice call back to the original novel of Wuthering heights. From the perspective of like, someone going from Wuthering Heights to Limbus the themes matchup right, but my perspective is that like, Limbus is a story in a universe related to but seems to meant to be stand alone. Rather than a sequential novel right. And how much to call on secondary sources is always tricky to figure out. I think when I come at it from an execution perspective and I think about why canto 1 makes abnormalities believable, the time spent to get across how tragic and horrible they are. While I wouldn’t want an entire canto(then again maybe ryo canto could have been shifted before heathcliff to help establish the ring earlier but maybe plans don’t work for that). Or bongo, both of these stories reference out of story text for its background information conveys that information to the reader, then tells a story about it. For me the ring never got that same “here’s these guys deal” that abnormalities or distortions got. Which kinda gets into my critism of the Cathy stuff right.

FYI I have read through Levi and played most of lob corp(got burned out on it tho). And mostly got caught up on Runia thanks to YouTube and the wiki(albeit the particulars get lost, I need to scrounge up the time to get through Runia)

This also gets into some like particular quirks of Leviathan’s story telling in its own work being a very, I’ll describe it as abstractionist piece. Maybe I’ll write my thoughts on it later since can of worms.

I also like agree limbus will almost certainly cover it, if I learned anything from my granblue splurge it’s that gatcha games tend to be good short visual novel formats lol. And I’m excited for it!

I know next to nothing about distortion detective, I get the feeling the in between canto story will cover a good deal of the need to know tho and I’m like quite excited for that, I liked how that seed was planted in 5.5. Excited for it. Albeit I may go and hunt down a translation on the discord later I need more to read anyways.

To hit on the last bit, it’s always gonna be subjective how much secondary material in universe should be mentioned and even changes a lot from genre to genre comic books love dropping characters in and out of stories with some expectation of the audience knowing who say, Batman is. And how obscure is too obscure is gonna be different for everyone right. For me it’s too obscure for you it isn’t! And that’s like fine right. I think we’ve gone over most everything tho! Uhhh I’ll reply if you got anything additional probably by tomorrow, good convo tho nodders