I also questioned the same thing but i think we just need to wait until the next season :')
It'd be hard to give a timeline rn coz Doha had a plan for everyone to act as NPC at the start and we don't know who's pretending and who really lost their tapes for now. What I'm sure tho is Doha losing his tape after killing the villager. Also I think he already regained his memories while playing with Seongchan when he took over the saved point in Chapter 7 (it was Seongchan's tape prob) if u reread coz he was acting weird and asking questions to Bada about what he'll do when they finish the game
Okay so all of the NPCs we knew before ? They were all players. The game starts at the tunnel where bada (an actual NPC) warns them not to venture further. At first, the 5 players play together. The others except seongchan and doha wanted out, and wanted to quit. In a new gameplay, they realise that bada knows a lot about horror movies, and start getting his help. They played with him, and he got them endings. Bada was perceptive and would start having doubts about whether he was actually a player, and that is when they’d eject his tape. It happened a lot, so they started acting like NPCs. Seongchan was scared that only one person could escape, so he took out doha’s tape, and in the new game (in the car w the og players) he diverted Doha’s attention to villagers. That is when we’re introduced (ch1) seeing Doha kill the villager, and the story goes. Seongchan has his memories then. And then the story goes as we’ve seen it. Doha and bada play, and discover seongchan and brown haired dude’s (the one who just told bada to eject his tape) tapes. Like i said, others wanted to quit, so when his tape is inserted, he doesn’t have all his memories. Because it wasn’t the og tape, it was after one of the times he quit. Seongchan’s tape is discovered already in, and they find out he’s suspicious, and the story goes.
No, when were introduced, Doha doesn’t remember when he played w seongchan, hes reduced to an NPC (in ch53, the explanation, seongchan says that doha became interested (romantically) in bada after becoming an NPC). He probably gains his memories in the middle somewhere, since he talks about bada leaving him after the game.
The last question is something I’m also confused about. Since seongchan’s cassette is still in, the game def starts from the tunnel, and not later. But since bada has his memories, he cannot fulfill his role as the NPC. Maybe now that he doesn’t have NPC duties to fulfill, he’s in the car from the start ? Because his cassette is inserted in the middle of the drive, that’s why he always wakes up then and doesn’t know anything about before that. I’m not sure either though.
That’s what i got from the story though, idk about how accurate this is.
Doha got back his memories when he replaced Seongchan’s cassette with his in early chapters. This explains why he kept on interfering with the game, because Bada is an NPC, so winning would mean going back to the real world and leaving Bada behind.
Ngl a timeline sounds really good, I might try doing one
Also ! I think the thing about him being in the car is true (he’s just asleep) because in ch 1, the other characters say they wanted to talk to him but he was asleep throughout. Since they’re not NPCs, they’ve been there since the tunnel. So bada is now probably already in the car, just asleep.
All the smarties here pls try to give a proper timeline based explanation of the events especially with regards to whose tape is taken out and when...because it is so confusing!!
Also does doha remember when he was playing with seongchan? and did he knock out bada every time the game resets because bada wakes up in the car sleeping always?