Headscratchers / Digital Devil Saga

• Heat:"Well, now do you see where I stand?", eh no. I don't. What was up with Heat in the second game? Was he just super pissed off because he discovered Serph was a major dick in his last life? His entire purpose is to protect Serra, even more so than the other A.I.s since it's a trait he even had as a human, yet what we see him do in this game is fight to keep Serra locked up in the EGG (maybe it can be rationalized he doesn't want her growing old outside of it but it's clear that she wants out) and then after she's released the only other thing we see him do is outright fight Serra and try to eat her. I'm not seeing his logic. Can someone please explain? I only played the second game and even then my data got corrupted before I could beat the second Heat fight though I watched the rest of the cutscenes online. Maybe I am missing some vital explanation that I didn't see.
  • My interpretation is that Heat defected because he thought that Serph and Sheffield were still the same person. Sheffield manipulated Sera into thinking that he was a kind person, and Heat might have thought that Serph was using him and the Embryon the whole time. I think that Heat doesn't know that he, Serph, Argilla, and Cielo were AIs that Sera designed, not someone's reincarnation, which might have affected his judgement. After he killed Serph, Heat realized that they weren't the same; Serph took the blow without resisting, and for selfless reasons (either to protect Sera or because he wouldn't hurt a comrade), which Sheffield would never do. Heat regretted killing Serph, which is why he's crying in the EGG. He attacks Sera because he wants the party to kill him; partially because he wants a Suicide by Cop, and partially because he thinks that revenge will make them happy. He fights Serph when he's revealed to be alive because he wants to be punished for fighting against him.
• The Jailer's favorite treat is human meat that's been aged for 15 years. Where is he getting it from? The Demon Virus is very recent, so there couldn't have been any cans from back then. Is he getting it from graveyards?
  • Maybe it's aged 15 years as in he likes to eat 15 year olds.
• Sera is seven years old at the start of the game, and she spent the past five years locked in the EGG. How is she able to speak and understand complex sentences? It's not a matter of questioning her intelligence; people need to listen, read, or write to gain language skills, and Sera wasn't in a position to do any of that.
  • Her main job was talking to god. So it stands to reason they taught her how to actually talk.
• Serph was based off of someone named Serph Sheffield. Heat was based off of Heat O'Brien. Gale comes from David Gale. Greg's full name isn't known, but his son knew that someone named Lupa was his father. So how did Colonel William van / Terrence E. Beck end up with the name of 'Varin Omega'?
  • Given that everyone in the novels have normal names as humans, this is possibly a consequence of the writer change, and they were't originally intended to have the same names as humans.
• What is the "one word" that could have prevented the whole conflict?
  • 'Shanti' or, peace. It shows up after the credits and is also part of the lyrics to Sera's song Pray. (May it open your eyes, to the truth Shanti, Shanti), and it's thematically relevant to the Hindu and Buddhist message the game has
• Perhaps I'm just not well versed in the Hindu cosmology, but how exactly were Serph and Sera reincarnated if Seraph became enlightened? Wasn't Seraph the two of them combined?
  • Seraph was the one that became enlightened, not Serph and Sera. That's why they were reincarnated.
• In That's Catch 22, why is it such a big deal that O'Brien is Irish? His father's family looks down on him and his mother, his professor hates him, etc.
  • Discrimination against the Irish was pretty widespread in the past, not so much now a days though, so *shrug* maybe the writer just lacked the modern cultural context and was gong off of old sterotypes.