Responses
You should read Moritat - it has a lot of the same themes as this, but you don't find out about the true intentions until the end of the story. Your theories fit in really well with the theme of Moritat!
Ugh, sorry I wrote the same sentence twice but slightly differently. I hate it when I do that (⌒▽⌒)
THEORY #1: IS DOHA THE ONLY NPC?
What if Doha is the *only* NPC in the game? If you think about it, everyone else has tapes, right? (Bada, YongTaek, Seongchan, Bae Hyungshin) But has anyone seen Doha's tape? It doesn't seem like he's making save points. Although, there’s that one moment when he inserts a tape to make a save, but that was when Bada was walking him through the game’s basics.
Then there’s the thing Doha says about how far he’s willing to go to keep Bada by his side forever. What if Doha is just an npc who *knows* he’s an npc? And because he’s obsessed with Bada, he deliberately did something with Bada’s tape and sabotaged everyone’s gameplay in the process. This could explain why YeongTaek says in Chapter 43 that Doha is a dangerous person who needs to be kept in check, hinting at something he did in the past that caused a lot of problems.
Chapter 43 also gives us some key information about the tapes—apparently, as long as a player's tape is intact, they won’t lose their memories, even if they haven’t saved for a while. The only reason why they would stop "remembering" and behave as npc's is because their tapes are ejected. If that's the case, why did Bada lose his memories? It could be that his tape was destroyed (probably related to what Doha did) so maybe they had to use a fresh tape for him, which would explain why he seems so limited in what he remembers.
THEORY #2: BADA IS TERMINALLY ILL IRL
Another theory is that Bada is ill in the real world (vegetative state maybe?). So, Bada's friends and Doha created a game as a way to keep him alive and present with them. Otherwise, why would Doha be so hung up on him completing the game if they could just be together irl???
SO MY MAIN QUESTIONS ARE:
- What is the game's true purpose?
- How is Bada connected to the game's creator?
- Are Bada and the others real people outside the game? Or are they simply just players/characters in the game that became sentient?
- If Doha is just an npc, is he part of the game's system but has developed emotions or autonomy overtime?
- What's the direction of the plot? Is it scifi (Doha is an AI or something made specifically for the game to challenge players) or is it something spiritual (purgatory as a dream-like state and each character/player represents a deeper meaning in the MC's life)