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tezsaltblogsrhpc · 6 years

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I Lost Track Because I Was So Mad: Nemesia Nonsense Marathon From Hell (Part 2)

As I redo the popemobile fight because I forgot to charge my 3DS and it died, I find myself pondering how weird it's always seemed to me that healing spells in RH don't actually increase in power with the caster's magic stat. Area G-Heal heals 150 HP whether it's Eruca with Freikugel Mercy and 3 Thauma Charms casting it or Marco with a sword with no magic bonus. This is so weird to me that sometimes I forget it and have to load up an old save file and test to remind myself.

Anyway, last time we left off, something really, really profoundly stupid was about to happen.

"(If the core is at all relevant, it must have something to do with Noah himself.)" Don't we all love magic plot intuition based on absolutely nothing? This is still a thing the original is guilty of, and it's still a thing I don't like.

"(But back in my world, Noah has been dead for a few years…)" You don't actually know when he died, dude. It could be anytime in the last five years. Even with player knowledge, he could theoretically even still have been alive at the beginning of AH; hell, he could genuinely have written the melted snow speech.

"Hold on... I assumed he was dead after seeing that doll... but I never actually saw his body. Is it possible that Noah is still alive?"

"That would explain Noah's words in that other potential world." PC has not stopped thinking its players are morons in the last ten seconds.

Nemesia: "The question now is who to show the core he gave you." Stocke: "It has to be Hugo."

Because it's not like Stocke knows anyone else it would make much more sense to show a mysterious piece of medical thaumatech to!

"He's the one who was hiding the truth about Noah from the people of Alistel." Because that's totally an argument for having a conversation about it with him.

"Good idea." No, it isn't.

Anyway, now that I'm free of the cutscenes, I can check out the ~Gopherwood Ring~ I stole off the popemobile. It is "shaped like an ark," in case you hadn't gotten the thematically incoherent reference yet, and is basically an upgrade from Viola's Vesper Ring.

(That name, for the record, is a thematically coherent reference: Vesper is the Roman form of Hesperus, a.k.a. the planet Venus as the Evening Star. Hugo has the Venus Ring. The other aspect of Venus is the Morning Star, a.k.a. Phosphorus, which translates to “bearer of light,” so the Roman name for it is...)

Before I go any farther, I want to point something out:

Hugo would, presumably, have to be keeping Noah's body either in wherever they claim Noah's chambers are or somewhere deep in the supervillain lair under the castle. In both cases, Raul's troops would have thoroughly swept them. Nobody wants to be surprised by a berserk thautomaton or a rogue squadron of crazed, half-starved brainwashed soldiers who have no idea the war is over; hell, there would have been people trying to find Noah's body specifically, so they could give him a funeral. And there were researchers down there who clearly had no idea what was going on when Stocke broke in; a lot of them would probably spill the beans on every secret project they could remember if they thought it would save their skins.

Even if Raul's men missed wherever Hugo hid the pod on the first sweep, Noah's body has supposedly been perfectly fine in suspended animation for several years. There's no time crunch, even for Stocke; there's days at a minimum and maybe even weeks between taking back Alistel and when he goes back to Granorg.

Literally the only thing Hugo might maybe be necessary for is to get the location of Noah's body out of him, and that's assuming it was hidden well enough that all those people looking didn't find it and there were no scientists or engineers involved in constructing or maintaining the suspended animation system who know where it is. (Even Fennel is more trustworthy and more likely to spill the beans than Hugo, especially if it means he gets to show off his cool thing.) And there's a hell of a lot of reason to try anything else first: Hugo has a long history of lying and backstabbing, hates Stocke personally, has plenty of practical reason to prefer Noah out of the way, seems completely out of his gourd at the only time Stocke can ask him that wouldn't torpedo the timeline, and is generally about as trustworthy as a chocolate frying pan.

By far a simpler and more logical option would be to tell Raul that he found out from Mysterious Specint Sources that there was a project to preserve Noah's body before his death so he could be revived with better medical care and to be on the lookout for it, then pass the ~core~ off to Sonja.

The only reason for what we are about to do is Because The Plot Says So.

...Oh, and the item description on Noah's pacemaker is "The core of Noah's body, made with the best of Flux technology.", because the PC devs earnestly wanted to validate my snarking last time about its name and remind me that they didn't bother to learn what this game's worldbuilding terms mean, I guess.

Oops: 93

...AAAND I just saw that this quest was in continuity with the previous Noah quest.

The one that ended with HUGO BEING ARRESTED.

I guess I shouldn't expect it to remember how the original story works when it can't even remember what happens in its own.

Oops: 94

...Jeez, that opens up sooo many new plot holes. Besides the fact that Hugo is somehow free to hang around in the basement when he was arrested, how does the supervillain lair exist at all if Noah was alive, in charge, and not heavily funding thaumatech? Have Hugo and Fennel been embezzling on an unspeakably massive scale? Not only that, Noah died extremely publicly, in the middle of the castle courtyard: just how bad was Raul's security on the body of a dead head of state that Fennel could run off with it?

"(Should I show Hugo the core I got from Noah?)" As I just explained at length, absolutely not, but we're going to have to do it anyway.

"(I should show Hugo the core and find out if Noah is really still alive.)" No you should not, and I'd like to register yet another complaint about PC constantly explaining exactly what is going on to you in excruciating literalness in case you are an idiot.

"(I should find out how Hugo reacts when he sees the core Noah entrusted to me.)" This is astonishingly bad decision-point writing.

"(I can't discount the possibility that Noah is still alive, even if no one has seen him lately.)"

I literally stopped and stared off into space for five minutes at this point because I could not put words around my reaction to this phrasing of this sentiment. I eventually gave up because everything about this line is repugnant to me.

FUCK YOU AND THE HELL SPIDER YOU RODE IN ON: 22

And Stocke saying that Noah is alive magically makes Hugo stop being glowing-eyes and I hate PC.

Raynie: "Wait, if Noah's still alive, how has Hugo been doing all this!?" Stocke: "Noah's health has presumably deteriorated to a point where he can no longer appear in public."

… Zombie Noah on a backflipping tricycle.

1) PC's own questline claims that... basically every single bad thing Hugo did still happened when Noah was in charge. The answer to Raynie's question is apparently, "Noah wouldn't have stopped it even if he was around to do so."

2) We are now having Stocke literally parrot exactly what Hugo's official announcements have been saying for years and having people act like this is a surprising deduction.

3) I want to direct you to some of Raynie's dialogue from SH Chapter freaking One:

But please, tell me how she'd be ~so surprised~ that Hugo could do Hugo things without Noah stopping him.

4) Yet another point in PC's tally of "thing that if people knew all along the plot would have fallen apart, treated like people knew it all along."

FUCK YOU AND THE HELL SPIDER YOU RODE IN ON: 23

"This will help Noah recover... right?" How the hell would Hugo know? He's not a thaumatech engineer, he's a politician.

Hugo: "That's- No, that's impossible! Where did you get that?" Stocke: "Someone trusted me to see it safely into your hands."

Noah's ghost: "oOoOoOo... Actually, I meant for you to hand it to Sonja to improve the lives of ordinary people because I'm fucking ninety and even if I recovered I could have an aneurysm any day... I had a DNR order on file... Maybe I should have been a little clearer about that... oOoOoOo..."

Seriously, though, they're not even trying to give any reason at all that Stocke would trust Hugo, even though they even led into this event with Nemesia telling Stocke not to let down his guard. He's just suddenly civil and respectful to this asshole who lied to an entire nation for years to usurp power, tried to commit genocide, conspired with the enemy to try to kill Rosch, framed Rosch for treason when that didn't work, deliberately got a bunch of nearly-green recruits killed (and Kiel cannot have possibly been out of his teens), ordered the creation and deployment of a superweapon that killed thousands of people and probably did untold amounts of environmental damage, and IN THIS SCENE tried to trick him into a position of vulnerability to murder all his friends. If you walk around Alistel when you get access to the lab, NPCs will tell you that people in Alistel no longer leave their homes because they're so scared of Hugo.

I've said it before and I'll almost certainly say it again: the farther I get into PC, the more convinced I become that it was written based on a plot summary by people who hadn't played the game. Because the thought process that led to this mess might almost make sense if it was. If all you have is a list of events, how deeply Hugo has his fingers in every bad thing Alistel does probably doesn't stand out. And you certainly don't have the emotional connection to hate him. And aww, look, it says he dies smiling and talking about Noah, he Really Cared <3.

This is so infuriating it's genuinely hard to keep going.

I'm going to turn the sound off and just hope this goddamn scene ends soon.

"The Prophet's mechanical body has been malfunctioning for years. Therefore, I asked Fennel to preserve him in a state of suspended animation." PC absolutely does not understand the flavor that original!RH's magitech has- clunky, bulky, unsubtle and heavily mechanical, rough and unnatural where it applies to living people- but that's old news and the least of its sins at this point.

Stocke: "Fennel, but he…" Hugo: *sadface* "That's right. I killed him."

My heart bleeds for you. -_-

Hugo: "Without Fennel, the core is useless."

I hate PC.

"God, what have I done?" I hate PC.

And then of course Fennel just trundles in, because this is PC and death is cheap and no obstacle can last longer than about ten seconds.

"I predicted that once Historica was used on you, you'd lose your already feeble mind and attack. I was quite right to install an auxiliary power source and an auto-repair program within me." I HATE PC.

"I sincerely apologize for that. Please forgive me." So, like, are we going to get an apology for the war crimes and genocide? Please, explain to this nine-year-old child why you told everyone she was an abomination who had to be purged from the earth. She's waiting. She has knives. She can get a piggyback ride from the guy whose entire command you got killed because you were paranoid he'd be a political threat if you'd rather speak to her at closer to eye level.

"Well, staring at your bald head is getting boring." It got boring about four Nemesia quests ago.

"In the hidden room next door, sleeping." ...PC doesn't actually know what "suspended animation" means, does it.

"Reviving him will be a delicate process, so stay put. You with the core, though, come with us." Note: Historica has not activated. There is no indication that Hugo has lost his Flux powers. Two villains are asking Stocke to come with them alone into another room, carrying a valuable plot coupon, and one of those villains is know for doing stuff like, oh, offering an armistice and then doing this:

I. Hate. PC.

And of course they didn't make a new map, they just recycled Fennel's lab and Noah is just lying on the slab where there's usually a thaumachine.

"What in the- This is different from the core I know!" WHY IS THIS A SURPRISE WHEN THE CORE YOU KNOW IS INSIDE NOAH'S BODY. IF IT WASN'T DIFFERENT, THERE WOULD BE NO POINT TO THIS.

"Oho! A fusion with the structure of a thaumachine's core unit? What a quantum way of thinking!" *muffled screaming into a pillow because WORDS MEAN THINGS, and YES, that includes the word "quantum"*

FUCK YOU AND THE HELL SPIDER YOU RODE IN ON: 24

"With new specs like these, overcoming the design flaws will be child's play!" My previous observations about how vanilla!Fennel is an actual researcher who needs time and resources and data and PC!Fennel can just magic up anything the plot demands on the spot with no prep time stand. Also, I don't think the writer knows what "specs" means.

"Truly!? Then we shall be blessed to see the Prophet restored to his former glory!" I'm positively overcome with joy. -_-

"But was the one who made it a genius... or a madman? Such a bold attempt couldn't have been made without putting Noah's life in danger." This scene is taking forever for me to get through because I keep stopping to bury my face in my hands. There's just. So much stupid to unpack crammed into lines like this. No such thing as a prototype, no such thing as testing (even though we have canonical proof that Fennel is 100% down with unethical human experimentation), and Fennel for some reason assumes that this thing was made for and connected to Noah even though THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE, because Stocke has it and Noah has been down here for years and IS still down here and IT IS NOT IN HIS BODY.

And, in typical PC fashion, Fennel says it can't save Noah and then immediately says he can totally revive Noah because he has it, and I hate PC.

"I can't tell you how long I've waited for this day to arrive."

"I prepared for it by pretending to be you for years, making us the most unpopular people on the continent, arranging the deaths of any and all promising up-and-coming officers, crippling the government, and botching a campaign of imperialism and genocide so badly that Alistel is now being held by a coalition of forces from every other country on the continent and most of our army has surrendered or deserted!"

"Much has happened while I slumbered, it seems. Perhaps it would be for the best if the public believed me dead." Because we wouldn't want to actually have Noah contribute anything to the narrative or in any way react to any of the horrible things that were done in his name! Why would we care about that!

"Alistel is on the cusp of being born anew... I do not want the past to hold back the future." Because it's not like the people of Alistel deserve to know the truth of what's been going on in their country!

"I've decided to follow Noah wherever he may go. There's nothing left for me here." ...How about a war crimes trial, because we have a multinational army here specifically to drag you out of your hole and hold you accountable for your atrocities, you sack of crusty dildos?

"Let the records state that I died alongside the Prophet."

FUCK YOU AND THE HELL SPIDER YOU RODE IN ON: 25

"I'll say the revival failed, and Hugo committed suicide to join Noah beyond the veil of death."

...

......

I am incandescent with rage right now.

FUCK YOU AND THE HELL SPIDER YOU RODE IN ON: 26

To put that sentiment in Stocke's mouth. At this point. Knowing who he is.

If I had played PC first, I probably would have started actively hating him here.

FUCK YOU AND THE HELL SPIDER YOU RODE IN ON: 27

...Fuck it. I’m declaring that the way Nemesia is brainwashing Stocke is through the activation of the ~prism~, and the reason it went off three times in that last quest was because she needed to crush his will as much as possible because that was the only way to get him to go along with what she wanted. Which is Hugo alive, because those Flux powers he stole from Historica will be delicious when she devours him.

Nyarlamesia: 52

And they repeated that stupid "son of possibility" crap from one of the Nemesia quests because of course they did.

"When the Snow Melts" has been added to the White Chronicle.

...Wow, that's just. The cherry on top, isn't it. They really, fundamentally did not understand what the melted snow speech was about, did they.

Fennel: "I'm still going to continue my research, for your information." Stocke: "Of course. Do as you will."

...You mean the federally-funded research that Fennel absolutely cannot do without governmental support that Stocke is in no position to provide?

...And, of course, they don't even bother to change Lippti's line, "Hugo and Protea have been slain."

Oops: 95

We just let a lying, manipulative, delusional, genocidal, perpetually power-grubbing bastard WHO STILL HAS INVINCIBLE TIME POWERS go for literally no reason.

In short:

Tally:

Why was this changed? 476

Changes I Don’t Hate: 223

Poor choice of expressions/voice clips/sound effects: 125

Oops: 95

How Do I Art: 76

Nyarlamesia: 52

Annoying Sound Effects: 43

Handy-dandy gameplay changes: 29

FUCK YOU AND THE HELL SPIDER YOU RODE IN ON: 27

Great budget priorities: 22

The monkey's paw is flipping me off: 15

Let Stocke Say Ass: 12

Save Me From Fanservice: 8

#gameblogging #this was excruciating

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