Family and Death: Speculating About The Story of Splatoon 3 DLC Side Order

The Splatoon community was understandably disappointed by the new story mode “Return of the Mammalians”. It was rather safe and cliche, didn’t really have any major mysteries or lore hooks, while also doing very little to endear us to the new idol group Deep Cut. Perhaps expectations were ramped up too high after Octo Expansion - I myself was also a victim of this hype train, expecting it to be a follow-up to the exception DLC of the prequel. However, the soon-to-be-released Side Order DLC seems to be going back to the darker tone of the previous expansion once again, with extensive use of death imagery. In this short blog, I will discuss my observations of all details about the DLC that have potentially been hinting us at its story and share my personal speculation about this new story.

It has been long-speculated since Side Order was announced that Marina would be involved as an antagonist in this story, be it willing or unwilling, due to past Splatoon tropes and the theme of the DLC being about the team who lost the final fest of the prequel. Many fans also initially thought the playable Octoling was Marina until they confirmed officially that you will be playing as Agent 8. Recent new information from the Deep Cut concert and the latest Side Order trailer has revealed some interesting information that kind of confirm these two popular initial theories. That Marina is a creator of the Side Order world to some extent, with Pearl knowing about and supporting Marina to build this project.

And that this story will deal with Marina’s past in some capacity, with items believed to be related to Marina’s past being shown in a mem cake(?) cube. Because, as we all know mem cakes represent compressed memories, which was the basis for my original theory about the potential subject matter of Side Order. 

 

With her past as a child prodigy who started working for the Octarian army, we can assume Marina is not close with her "birth family”. Based on the book showing a baby octoling/octarian growing into an octo engineer, we can surmise that Marina was raised to be an engineer from birth. Which is an interesting contrast next to the pianos which signify her love for music.

 

 

So why is this important? In the latest Side Order trailer, we learn of the currency used in the DLC campaign. It is localized as “Pearlz” in English, further strengthening Marina’s connection to this simulated world, and in Japanese it is called “シンジュ” (shinjū).

 

All of the potential meanings of shinjū, in katakana and kanji forms, are related to the realms of family and death. “Tree of heaven” is used in literature to refer to the relationship between a father and a spoiled child.On a side note, one of the potential meanings of shinjū in its kanji form is “pearl”. In Asia, a child is typically referred to as a treasure (pearl) of the parents. Some cultures have "pearl" as potential baby names. And it's safe to say that Pearl has become Marina's found family at this point, so the localization as "Pearlz" is also quite apt, despite lacking the negative connotation of the  “tree of heaven” term. 

 

Specifically, the use of shinjū in literature has interesting implications for the child (aka Marina?). The metaphor is applied to children who, like stump sprouts of the tree, will not develop into a worthwhile human being if they don't follow rules or traditions. As we all know she was originally a dutiful Octarian until she was converted by Calamari Inkantation and eventually chose to follow the path of music, betraying the way of the Octarians. 

 

Also, this might not apply to the birth of Octolings, only Octarians, but according to The Art of Splatoon, Octarians are not able to reproduce on their own. Instead, they are “born” by cutting off a tentacle from a host, with their intelligence and rank are linked to how many limbs they possess. It’s unknown whether DJ Oktavio is this host, thus being the “father” in this analogy, but the Octarian army was fiercy loyal to him until they were infected by the fuzzy ooze in Return of the Mammalians. It reminds me of one of the original concept art(?) of Side Order that made people speculate that the story will deal with cloning or how Octolings/Octarians are created.

My guess is that Side Order will deal with Marina's past and how Pearl became her new family. The premise is possibly Marina wanting to find out about her birth family and Pearl helped her to build this side project but things went off rails quickly. According to early reviews of Side Order, Marina is “definitely in” the campaign, and that the DLC has 10 initial tutorial levels. And the real Pearl in the flesh actually showed up in one of the new trailers! Which begs the question of how did she end up as a Pearl drone in the first place and when this appearance in the flesh took place, and my guess is earlygame as they don’t usually spoil lategame content in trailers.

Considering the very idea of a roguelite, my guess is that the real Pearl was the one who woke you up at the start of Side Order, and you complete the 10 tutorial levels before a major story event kicking out down the bottom floor to start climbing back up once again with new upgrades (Pearl drone and Acht’s colour chips), essentially showcasing the core gameplay loop right in the tutorial itself.

Regarding how Agent 4 fit into this story, since it’s almost confirmed she’s part of the story based on the most recent poster, there are a few things they can do. As little is known about Agent 4’s background, there is a lot they can tinker with to integrate her in the DLC. We know that 4 is very studious and her home is quite far from Inkopolis, so it's possible she has to leave her parents to pursue her studies in the metropolis. She's also Agent 8's roommate, but from what we've seen in Octo Expansion, 8 seems more interested in Agent 3 and her being 4's roommate is more of a footnote info. So the developers can definitely create a thematically fitting story to fit Agent 4 into Side Order's plot by exploring her relationships with her family and roommate to justify why she’s seemingly on the antagonist side.  

As for Dedf1sh/Acht, she represents the musician who is so fully devoted to art that she partially sanitized herself, not too dissimilar to sanitized Octarians devoted to the cause of the army. Since she basically has no backstory nor relationships outside from the one with Marina, the developers are basically free to give her a fitting story to be involved in Side Order, and she can serve as an interesting foil of sorts to our Marina.

My condensed version of this theory is available on my Twitter, and I sure hope this blog won’t be entirely invalid in 8 days when Side Order comes out. I’m looking forward to the DLC and hope you enjoy the read!