#thread: these sidequests never seem to end

[pheraemarquess]

When Eliwood first heard of Burrowhaven and it's plight, he knew he needed to help the people there achieve a new normal. It was only what was right after the ones he was affiliated with had wrecked their previous lives. Of course, the reclusive village did not welcome him with open arms, seeming wary of outsiders. He couldn't blame them.

However, one decided to give him a chance to prove himself. The seamstress had asked him to fetch her some new needles and a new pair of scissors. Eliwood accepted eagerly, ready to lend a helping hand in any way he could.

Along the way, he found a young blonde man who he remembered seeing around the monastery. A student he was pretty sure, but still it should be fine to ask for a little assistance.

"Excuse me, but you're with the Officer's Academy, right? Do you mind helping me find my way around? I keep getting turned around looking for the blacksmith." It was kind of embarrassing to admit as he had always thought himself good with directions, but the second they went underground, his natural compass seemed out of order.

@freedomarrow

These Sidequests Never Seem to End

[Authority +1] - Eliwood and Leonardo

[ohnoitstbskyen]

Oh no. Sir I believe I'm going to need you to explain that Dragon Age 2 opinion, that is a BLAZING hot take

I really don't think it is. Although of course all of this is personal opinion, not some sort of divine proclamation on high about which video games people are allowed to prefer, so take please it in the spirit it is offered.

Origins is a worldbuilding walking tour as much about explaining its own in-universe lore and fantasy history as it is about either its characters or the actual story that is happening in the game. It's a cool world! With some great lore! But also it is built entirely around Generic Fantasy Plot Structure #1 and never particularly seems interested in innovating, or surprising the player. On top of which, a lot of its setting and lore is pretty weakly sketched and doesn't really get developed into something either visually or narratively compelling until it gets built out in later games.

And while Inquisition has some genuinely fantastic characters, everything else about the game suffers very badly from the plague of BioWare Magic™, i.e. the production was an absolute mess up until the last minute when five hundred extremely overworked and underpaid creative geniuses somehow managed to wring a functional experience out of the trainwreck. It was made with fucking Frostbite of all things, jesus christ, it's holding together with spit and duct tape.

Now, Dragon Age 2 shares a bunch of the problems of Origins and Inquisition. It too bears the hallmarks of "our executives couldn't plan a healthy game production cycle if their lives depended on it" with a lot of unfinished content, half-assed sidequests and a truly frustrating over-reliance on a combat system that isn't half as engaging to use as it needed to be.

But Dragon Age 2 also has something neither of its siblings could ever even hope to match: an actual compelling protagonist.

Like, listen, I know people adore their headcanons about their Wardens and Inquisitors, and it has made for some truly amazing fanworks, but Hawke is literally the only actual character out of all of them. Hawke has conflicts, problems, needs and drives that actually inform and push the story forward, they have a family and a history and a reason to give a sh** about the central conflict of the narrative.

In Origins and Inquisition both, your character becomes the main character of the story entirely because of fate and random chance. You are the Chosen One and you are the only one who can Save The World because you're the last of the super special elite fantasy Hero Squad, or because you got some green magic stuck in your hand by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because the character is a complete blank slate onto which the player is expected to project themselves, random chance and circumstance are the only tools the plot can use to position them as main characters. There is no character to drive them to it.

In Dragon Age 2, Hawke becomes the champion because they're trying to build a new life for their family in Kirkwall, and end up embroiled in the chaos and politics that befall the city as a natural consequence of living in it and dealing with the conditions of it. Hawke and their family's needs and wants drive their actions, and push them to engage in endeavors that influence the course of history. They have agency (in the conceit of the narrative, at least) over how their life turns out, they make choices that have consequences, rather than being dictated into the position of Main Character by a literal looming apocalypse that permits no other course of action.

And I'm not about to sit here and claim that Dragon Age 2's story is perfect or that every character is a masterpiece or that every plotline is amazing. No, there's plenty of scuff and jank and things that have aged poorly and unresolved plot threads and all the rest of it.

And I am definitely not forgetting the godsdamned DLC where BioWare threw it all overboard by inventing a Special Bloodline Plot where oops it turns out Hawke actually IS a special chosen one specially chosen by a special fate to have a special role in Saving The World because they're special because of fate and destiny and blah blah, I still think that was phenomenally stupid (especially when Corypheus wasn't even Hawke's goddamn main villain to deal with what was any of this supposed to add to their character ffs BioWare)

But even with all its problems, the simple fact that Hawke is a character you can give a shit about independent of your own projection as a player - the fact that Hawke isn't just an empty bland blank slate with no personality, no traits, no wants or needs or drives - that has made Dragon Age 2 infinitely more memorable to me than either Origins and Inquisition. I think about it to this day. I think about Hawke to this day. I care about what happens to the character in a way that I just simply could never bring myself to do with either my Wardens or my Inquisitors.

[pommmec]

FFXVI

I just finished playing FFXVI. I've kept a twitter thread on non spoiler thoughts here but this post is strictly on SPOILERS so be warned!!

vvvv Read more for my thoughts on FF16 vvvvv

First thing I want to state is that I played this with Japanese voices! I plan on watching lets plays of it which usually have it in English. I will do an update or a separate post once I've seen a full playthrough just to compare.

Combat I never played DMC5 so I don't know how that plays. I've played this without any of the accessibility accessories since I wanted to have a challenge. Its definitely not as hard or frustrating as Dark Souls. Even after playing probably 60+ hours I still find the dodge timing hard. Fighting giant beasts was the most frustrating. It was hard for me to get hits in. The gameplay does remind me alot of ff14 since there's your combos and cooldowns so I often spam buttons. Commanding Torgal does remind me of Nier Automata with commanding the pod but I didn't use Torgal as much as I probably should. It was hard to pick which eikon skills to keep. I mostly kept the high attack ones to spam when staggered. I really like the Bahamut laser beam since it does huge damage. I really like the look of Odin's but it was hard to use.

The Eikon fights were mostly cinematic which is fine. The arenas were quite busy and even busier with the spell effects lol Its very Kaiju battle or even Attack on Titan like. I didn't ever die during them. But as regular Clive I did die a handful of times and luckily the game is nice enough to have checkpoints and give you full inventory of potions. I died more times in Hunts than msq boss fights. I played Octopath 2 a couple months ago which is a turn based game. There's a secret boss that took me over an hour to fight it so I appreciate that FF16 doesn't make me do that, but it is also much easier in comparison. I did find the final boss fights underwhelming, but it does have some annoying af moves that I have no idea how to avoid getting hit by. The fight with Titan is my favorite just for the song and how neat it all was!

STORY Its was quite a ride, but it hasn't moved me as much as FF14 did. The sidequests got me more than the msq. Mostly since they're chains and you spend a lot more time with these characters than the enemy dominants themselves. I like the sidequests ladies more than Jill. I wish they didn't have her get captured multiple times lol I thought she was going to die to give Clive her Shiva powers but seems like you can just give it to him. Jill is an ok character. I wish they did a bit more with her but she ended up having to stay behind. There was a scene or two where she watches instead of helping that bothered me more than it should lol

Having Clive take up Cid's name surprised me. And to have some of the folks in the hideaway call him that too took me a bit to get use to. I did not expect Cid to die so soon or at all. And to have the hideaway destroyed gave me FF14 waking sands vibes.

Dion being gay and having a kissing scene surprised me and wish they do this in FF14! I'm glad they did an obvious gay couple with no stereotyping in a mainline FF game. I did not expect him to last as long as he did since the others died so quick. Quite a tragic character too. I was hoping he'd make it.

I love uncle Byron! What a great character and unexpected comedy relief lol I loved him almost immediately and also feared for his life. So I was very relived that not a single hair in his body was harmed in this game!

I'm glad Joshua is alive! I had a feeling since he seemed too important to just be a memory. Though I don't understand who the hooded figure is in the flashback that Clive saw. Also don't understand why he avoided Clive till the fight with Bahamut. Idk what he sounds like in eng yet but his jp voice is really nice. I was worried he was going to die again and it did upset me when it did happen. For Clive to have all his memories of him flash before his eyes was emotional. And for him to get resurrected and write a book called Final Fantasy in the post credits pleased me.

They did the Sephiroth route with the main antagonist, Ultima. Where they appear throughout the story to mess with you. I thought there might be a surprise never-heard-of last boss but no its all Ultima. I didn't find them to be the most interesting villain since its another alien god being. I did like the argument at the end that they're just the same as human.

Clive is a good boy! Judging by the subtitles eng Clive seems to have a different vibe than jp Clive. Jp Clive's voice has that smooth, kind, and strong quality. He's very much like a wol who chooses the good guy choice. I didn't expect him to die. To have the red star fade and Torgal crying does seem to confirm that he's gone. Definitely not the happiest ending. Idk if the Blight is still a problem lol

With the logo having both Phoenix and Ifrit the story is definitely about the brothers. It seems to come full circle with the beginning having them fight each other and in the end they're one. Joshua dies in the beginning, Clive dies at the end. Makes me wish there were more brotherly moments between them than the sidequest.

Overall I enjoyed FF16! I don't think I'd rate it higher than FF14 or FF7 but its definitely an improvement from FF15. While FF15 did make me cry a lot more than FF16 did, the eye candy that is Clive is really what sells the game to me lol

There was no Cactuar or tonberries! :(

Also the vibrations on the PS5 is rather neat. I've kept it on just because I've heard people say how good it is. The vibrations are happening most of the time in cutscenes but sometimes I don't notice it at all. Its not at all like previous controllers where it rumbles and be annoying. I usually turn it off but I think I wont do that for the PS5 controller.

[halflingkima]

I am going to detail the ps3 saga. It is for my own reference, because it's getting to the point where I may forget things I've tried (or perhaps "done to it") to fix it.

I'd appreciate advice, but I'm not exactly asking for it lol

Initial Stage

seemingly no problems. Games played to completion during this phase were Bioshock 1-3, Fallout 3, Dragon Age 1-2, Sly 2 (digital). DLC for Dragon Age 1&2 was also purchased and downloaded, and played without issue (unless you count download speed).

I played all of these without regard for time; the shortest sessions were likely no less than 2hrs, probably more often averaging out at 5 or 6. The only issue I ran into was some freezing (I think twice) during really heavy load non-essential areas of Fo3. And that was after hours; I think I managed to access the area normally at least once.

DA: Inquisition

NB: It's been years. I'm as deep in reddit as I can get without an account. Multiple people in my real life (and a couple on here) have tried to help me with this. I understand the general "fix" is to give up on the game. The current issue is that this is no longer restricted to this game. I'm simply outlining things I did in the name of trying to play this game.

Here is where trouble begins. Not a strictly delineated stage, since I tested it between playing the others. Dragon Age: Inquisition crashes the console entirely. I've tried it so many times I don't quite remember the order of the operations, so I'll outline the fixes.

[[Sidequest where I learned about the whole DA Keep thing and made an EA account to make a Keep account to input my worldstate, then was banned from EA for unknown reason, then my wifi was too weak so I wrangled our home network into this decade with naught but google and a prayer]]

I begin the game, but before exiting the character creator, the console beeps three times, the red light starts flashing, and the screen goes black. This occurs every attempt. It often crashes earlier, but I never get past character creator. I casually try some fixes over the course of a couple years (trying when the console is ice cold, trying different outlets and cord ports, simple things.) I go long stretches without trying it – I've basically written the game off.

Until one random try, I get past character creation. I get into a (feels like) 15-minute-long cutscene. I slam a manual save at the first opportunity. I think I manage to get to the end of the tutorial before it crashes. (3 beeps, flashing red).

Now that I have a save, I can technically play the game! For the next few weeks, I try with renewed vigor. Never again do I get that long of a stretch of uninterrupted play. I walk a knife's edge of manual saves that will tax the console but safeguard my progress for the inevitable crash. I resort to timing sessions between crashes. I get as far as 5 minutes including having to safe-boot the console from the previous crash.

I realize I cannot go on like this, but I am unfortunately motivated anew to find a fix.

It's not the disc; I bought digital copy of the game, and it behaves exactly the same.

It's not storage; I purged the system so the only game on it was DA:I. I did this with both disc and digital.

Also, my spite motivation is through the roof because this issue seems specific to me. All the threads I find discuss crashes after hours of gameplay; no one is complaining about minutes.

Cleaning

Having seen it as a suggestion and having watching one (1) youtube video, I decided to open the ps3 to clean it. It wasn't a difficult task, but it was impressively clean, and I didn't feel like it made a difference.

(In the process, I lost two outer chassis screws, and have a clip* and the security screw that I couldn't put back in. Everything worked fine tho.)

At this stage, I played Assassin's Creed 4 to completion, again in long stretches (4-6hrs), and again with no problems. DA:I behaved the same as at first (three beeps, flashing red, crashing out pre-character creator).

Thermal Stage

Replacing the thermal paste was the final fix I was willing to attempt, and only because a friend very nicely gave me some he had left over. I took the console apart again, this time more granularly. This time I had to disconnect the power button, whose ribbon cable disintegrated in my hand. Other than that, I didn't perceive issues when reassembling.

In fact, the console worked fine without the ribbon cable, using the controller to turn it on! I played some game for a bit before testing DA:I – which behaved exactly the same; crashing out at character creation with three beeps and a flashing red light. Except the only way to boot up after that crash is with the (now disconnected) power button. So I ordered & installed a new ribbon cable, and all seemed fine.

I played a point & click in its entirety (again, large chunks of time) without issue. I played some of Bioshock 1&2 and a chunk of AC4 without issue.

New, Scary Stage

I recently bought Fallout: New Vegas GOTY, after specifically checking if it had big problems on ps3. General consensus seemed to be that it runs as well as Fo3 (not perfectly, but playable). I played it fine for 3-4 hours one night without issue. The next night, I played for an hour or so, then it crashed.

first crash: no sound, solid red light, screen simply blacked out. It was warm, so I stood it up for better air flow

rebooted with intent to get through safe start and turn it back off; it crashed on the menu, this time with 3 beeps and a flashing red light

rebooted now with intent to eject the disc; did so, left it on to see if it would cool down/sleep/the fans would stop. it didn't.

shut it down, but as it turned off, beeped thrice & blinking red light.

rebooted once more to get through safe start, then shut it down and didn't touch it for 24 hours.

next day, i booted it to see if there were similar issues; didn't appear so, so I went to shut it down; as it turned off, it beeped thrice & blinking red light.

booted once more to check for safe start, then shut it down, blessedly without issue. I have not touched it since.

Current Thoughts

I'm gonna replace the (original) HDMI cable and see if that does anything; it's something we need in the house anyway

I found an engineer's(?) blog post that suggests the issue is with the bluray drive. I think only certain games are on bluray disc, so I'll try to avoid them if I can.

On that note, I'm gonna avoid FO:NV; the GOTY edition is explicitly a bluray disc. I may buy the regular edition if its clear the bluray is the problem

I'll look into cleaning the disc drive (maaaybe replacing it? again, if I can confirm it's the real issue)

I've been referencing fasttech so far; they seem professional and their tutorials have been real helpful

[sleepymarmot]

Not to be like “person who has only seen one slow-paced 12 episode long TV show about the fight against a totalitarian state, watching their second TV show”, but Andor (2022) and Seventeen Moments of Spring (1973) are an interesting combination to watch one right after the other. The post contains spoilers for both shows as I compare my impressions of them from a few angles.

I’m going to start with a comparison that is not in Andor’s favor, be warned. The first thing 17MoS made me realize was how tired of “origin story”-itis I’d been. Everything needs to be an origin story! I remember how everyone praised Spiderverse, and then I watched it and was disappointed that it was another goddamn Spider-man origin story. One of Andor’s biggest flaws, in my opinion, is that it follows the same trend. It throws out the established origin story of its protagonist, which was the foundation of one of the main character conflicts in the original movie, and replaces it with a direct opposite in order to show how he started to work for the protagonist faction from the beginning. It takes an entire 12-episode long season to maneuver him from being an independent opportunist into committing to the Rebellion. It feels as if the writers think the audience is only able to comprehend and relate to a typical reluctant hero, and frankly it’s an insulting idea. Imagine how lame it would have been if Seventeen Moments of Spring began by explaining how and why the protagonist became a spy! Thankfully, it doesn’t.

Which brings me to the next point: pacing. Both shows are slow-paced, but in pretty different ways. I know there are two camps, one of which says that nothing happens in the first episodes of Andor, and the other is appalled by that idea. I’m in the first one. Throughout at least the first half of the first season, Cassian’s (mis)adventures seem like sidequests, and it's not really clear what role they play in the bigger picture; plus, Cassian is never under significant threat until he gets arrested. 17MoS’s individual scenes are way slower than Andor’s individual scenes, and with my limited attention span, I often had to pause or long for the modern TV pacing. But the main mission of the entire show is established by the end of the first episode, and the hero and his main ally are in big trouble from at least the beginning of episode 4.

17MoS does share another sin of the modern TV storytelling: reliance on a sequel. Yes I know it was based on one book out of a series! Still, it’s disappointing to watch something assuming it to be standalone, and be left with a major plot thread kind of flapping in the wind.

Another interesting similarity between the two shows is that the protagonists are less expressive than the characters around them. In both cases it’s not an accident but an important part of the concept. Cassian is someone who stays out of the spotlight, representing the many people who make the Rebellion possible but never become one of its starts (see this interview by Diego Luna). Stierlitz, in many ways, is a classic hero that Cassian is a subversion of — but he’s a spy and must constantly hold back his true reactions, everything he lets out is highly controlled and purposeful — and to be able to do this job for two decades, he must be someone to whom it comes naturally. In both cases, the protagonist refrains from making showy speeches but acts as a catalyst that prompts others to make them. Both shows use a similar technique to reveal the reserved protagonist’s internal life: nonverbal lyrical scenes set to a music with a recognizable leitmotif. Compare the ending of episode 11 of Andor with any scene set to “Song of the Distant Homeland”. (In the latter case it's also deeply impressive how well the singer’s voice and performance match the character.)

---

Episode 9 of Andor has so many similarities to episode 9 of Seventeen Moments of Spring that I’m half-convinced Tony Gilroy is paying a tribute to it. I mean, he’s worked in the espionage genre before, and he referenced Soviet history in interviews, it’s not impossible that he has seen the most famous Soviet spy story! Let’s recap — in both episodes:

a young woman, old friend of the protagonist, is psychologically tortured with child suffering, being made to listen to their screams

an old man, who has worked with the protagonist for a short time, dies after a lot of torturous suspense, but at least he dies quickly; surviving for much longer would have been a fate worse than death for him

at the end of this very bleak episode, a middle-aged man, who has previously obediently followed the fascists’ instructions and helped them enforce imprisonment, has hit his limit and finally rebelled, siding with the viewpoint character prisoner

To continue the similarity, in both episodes 10 the latter dies.

---

According to what I’ve read online, Seventeen Moments of Spring glamourized Nazism in the eyes of many viewers. But when I started watching, I thought that the Nazis in it were refreshingly non-glamourous and normal-looking in comparison to Imperials from Andor! Sure, they wear well-tailored uniforms, but these uniforms aren’t ethereally smooth and almost glowing, their interiors aren’t semi-abstract fields of blinding pure white, and they speak in a more casual/realistic manner.

[dioptre-hertz]

Pathologic 2 ending thoughts

i don’t really use tumblr much anymore, but i recently finished Pathologic 2 and i have thoughts on the ending, which i felt was somewhat incongruous with the rest of the game’s themes and ideas. and tumblr felt like the right place to put a long-form post about it. so, here i am, haha!

MAJOR spoilers for Pathologic 2 below, obviously. this post will probably only be interesting to you if you’ve already played the game, so if you haven’t, be warned! hehehe!

okay, so. i have a lot of thoughts about the ending stuff, but basically it boils down to: i think the ending as presented would have been a good ending for a different game.

quick summary: towards the end of the game, Artemy learns that the Polyhedron, a physics-defying tower and architectural wonder, is rooted into the ground with a long metal spike that pierces the Living Earth. destroying the Polyhedron would therefore open a gaping wound in the Earth, spilling rivers of blood that could be used to mass-produce a cure for the plague. however, doing so would not only destroy the Polyhedron, but also kill the Living Earth, and by extension the Kin. alternately, Artemy can choose to preserve the Polyhedron, which would prevent the Living Earth from bleeding out and dying; but it would come at the cost of the lives of everyone in the town, since the plague would then be unstoppable.

so, the ending choice is principally about this: you have to choose between preserving the magical wonders of the world, the Kin and the Polyhedron and the Living Earth, but at the expense of the actual living humans of the town; or, you save the town and all its mundanities and its ordinary people you've worked so hard to protect, but at the expense of your cultural heritage and all the magical, impossible things of the Steppe. do you choose a world that is dreamlike, enchanted and strange, even if there is no place for regular humans in that world; or do you choose an ordinary, realistic world, one in which there is life for common folk but not for magic and fairy tales?

here’s what irks me though: this dichotomy is not at all what the game is about. or, to be more precise, it never felt to me personally like this was what the narrative was setting up. the choice as presented is fine in a vacuum! there’s nothing wrong with telling a story that creates this kind of clash between magic and realism, and asks you to choose between them. but it doesn’t feel congruous with the rest of the game’s story. let me elaborate.

so, part of what’s going on here is that the game is asking you to make a sacrifice. as the game itself repeatedly tells you: “you can’t save everyone”. either the Kin, the magical steppe creatures, and the Polyhedron are destroyed; or, the ordinary humans of the town are destroyed. you can’t protect both. Pathologic 2 goes to great lengths to show you that you are not a magical fantasy RPG hero who can complete every quest, rescue every NPC, overcome any obstacle and get the Perfect Ending. that’s the whole point of the overly punishing hunger and exhaustion mechanics; that’s why you die so easily in combat, why you’re always running out of time, and why the game is perfectly willing to punish you for every single mistake you make. it’s not a game about being the chosen one, who has magic powers and is uniquely capable of saving the day. right?

except... it kind of is precisely that, if you think about it. Artemy’s story is very clearly a traditional “chosen one” narrative! he is the sole inheritor of his father’s legacy, he is the town’s only menkhu, and so much of the story revolves around his spiritual journey. over the course of the game, Artemy undergoes a coming-of-age of sorts, reconnecting with his heritage, unlocking the secrets of being a menkhu, brewing magical tinctures that slow down and ultimately cure the plague. multiple characters make it explicit that Artemy is important - Foreman Oyun, Aspity, Isidor, and various minor characters of the Kin (like Nara) all talk at length about how Artemy is special, and his role (should he embrace it) is to lead the Kin once he is ready. and the entire conflict with Rubin revolves around the fact that Rubin isn’t the “chosen one” the way Artemy is!

this whole plot thread reaches its climax when Artemy ventures into the Abattoir to seek answers. there, he undergoes a series of harrowing spiritual experiences. several really important things happen here, and i want to focus on two of them.

firstly: upon reaching the central chamber of the Abattoir, Artemy is tasked with performing “surgery” on three seemingly random objects: a candlestick, a fingernail coin, and a spindle of thread. he has a metaphysical conversation with the odongh he meets there and then “connects” these objects into a living, beating heart, and the heart speaks to him. this scene is either hallucinatory or supernatural (or both), but it doesn’t matter which; the point of the scene is that Artemy has finally learned to read the Lines, learned to see how seemingly disparate objects can be spiritually connected into a singular whole. he takes three items that appear to have nothing in common, and he forges a beating heart out of them, a living thing. as Artemy himself learns:

This system isn't symmetrical. It's not just "Nerves, Bones, Skin." Or "Nerves, Bones, Flesh." Or "Spirit, Hair, Blood." Any triad is correct.

Truth is not a set point, but an intersection and confluence of many small truths. Knowing this, I can match and connect anything.

furthermore, shortly after leaving the Abattoir, Artemy has a dream in which he returns there and speaks to the ghost of Isidor, his father. here, he learns a difficult truth: that Isidor intentionally brought the plague back to the town, believing - essentially - that it was necessary for the town’s growth. the decision seems monstrous. Isidor justifies it thus:

This town was… connected wrong. Its parts were tied with artificial seams—so different, so awkward. One could say that Simon, the Mistresses, and I held it all together by force.

So I tore it apart, so you can sew it all back, better than before. Because you're better, and smarter, than I am.

so here we have the high point of Artemy’s spiritual journey, the part of the story where he finally understands why things are the way they are, and what it is he must do.

and this is where things start going wrong, in my opinion.

because all of this, all of what we’ve seen, seems to point in one very clear direction: Artemy will find a way to connect the Kin, the Town, and the Polyhedron into a single coherent whole. it fits so perfectly! Artemy learns that there is a way to mass-produce a cure, but doing so would require him to destroy the Polyhedron and the Living Earth. it appears as though the Polyhedron, the Living Earth, and the Town cannot all coexist; something must be sacrificed. but this choice is presented right after we’re told that Artemy’s destiny is to “sew it all back, better than before”. it is presented once we’ve seen that Artemy can connect a coin, a candlestick, and a spindle of thread into a living, beating heart, no matter how impossible that may sound. knowing this, he can match and connect anything.

and yet, he... doesn’t. the game does not end with a solution that connects the Kin, the Polyhedron and the Town. ultimately, Artemy fails to sew it all back together - and it’s not just that he fails, it’s that the game itself seems utterly unconcerned with that possibility once it heads into its final act. the mere idea that there could be a solution that “connects things right“ goes unexplored. even if the game wanted to be pessimistic and suggest that it can’t be done after all, it should at least acknowledge the thought! the game does admittedly have a focus on the idea that “you can’t save everyone”; this is one of its core motifs. so, fair enough! but since it fails to address that cynicism, it feels less like a statement on the game’s part and more like a lack of awareness.

but that’s not all! there’s a second thing that really bugs me. see, there’s another major event that takes place in the Abattoir: Artemy finally has his fateful encounter with Nara, the Herb Bride who has haunted him throughout the game, insisting that their destinies are intertwined and that he will one day kill her. here, Artemy finally comes to understand what it all means. in the depths of the Abattoir, Nara is waiting for him; the other Herb Brides give Artemy a menkhu’s knife, and they task him with cutting open Nara’s body without killing her:

We know how to open things up. Our way. You know how to open things up. Your way. Do you want to know why the sand pest passes us by? Show yourself.

Cut a living sister in such a way that she stays living. You can do it, if you know the Lines.

Artemy follows through, and he converses with Nara even as he cuts into her flesh; they talk to each other right until the end, when Artemy retrieves a spindle of thread from her body, and she dies.

now, this scene is somewhat tricky to interpret; Artemy must show that he can “cut a living sister in such a way that she stays living”, but in the end, Nara does die. so was he successful or not? well, i would argue that he is; even though Nara dies, he proves that he is able to read the Lines with such precision that she can speak calmly with him until the very end.

more importantly, this scene is the high point of a recurring theme in the game: Artemy’s skill as surgeon.

on Day 1, the very first part of the game, Artemy is sent by his old friend Bad Grief to perform surgery on Piecework, one of the thugs in Bad Grief’s gang. Piecework has gotten in a fight and been stabbed in the gut with a lockpick; without Artemy’s intervention, he will die. you can choose to save him, flub the surgery and kill him, or ignore the sidequest altogether; in any case, this early quest introduces the player to the surgery mechanic and serves to establish Artemy’s unique skills as a surgeon.

on Day 11, the last day of proper gameplay, you have a repeat of this encounter. while pursuing the main quest for the day, you wind up in a pub, where a gang of local bandits have set up shop. they threaten you and order you to rescue one of their pals, who has been shot in the stomach and is about to die. here you again perform surgery to save a man’s life, but this time you don’t do it through the usual surgery minigame - it happens entirely through dialogue choices, and i’m actually not even sure if it’s possible to fail this interaction. in any case, you retrieve the bullet from the man’s stomach and inform his friends that he’ll live.

so what’s the point of all that then? well, the way i see it, the point of all this is to foreshadow a climactic conclusion: Artemy will remove the Polyhedron without killing the Living Earth.

the game spends a lot of time setting this up! on Day 1, Artemy saves a man by removing a long metal spike from his gut non-lethally; in the Abattoir, Artemy proves his spiritual growth by demonstrating that he can “cut a living sister in such a way that she stays living”; and on Day 11, the game throws yet another surgery vignette at you in a scene that frankly feels a bit out of place otherwise.

all of this feels, to me, like it's foreshadowing and setting up one very obvious result: Artemy, having mastered not only practical surgery but also the art of reading the Lines, of being a menkhu, is the one person who can remove the Polyhedron without killing the Living Earth! the game spends all this time explaining that in the Steppe culture, cutting open flesh, or the earth itself, is taboo: only a menkhu is allowed to do so, because a menkhu is someone who knows how to read the Lines, who knows how to cut in a way that will not harm the Living Earth. the culmination of the story, therefore, needs to be that Artemy puts this exact skill to use. that was the point of his character arc, right?

except... no, it isn’t. in the end, there is no way to surgically extract the metal spike from the Living Earth. the only two choices we are presented with are: botch the surgery, or leave it be.

...

in the end, i feel that the ending(s) of Pathologic 2 aren’t appropriate conclusions to the ideas, motifs, and overall narrative progression we’re shown throughout the earlier parts of the game. Pathologic 2 is in many ways brilliant, and i do not hesitate to call it a masterpiece, aforementioned criticisms notwithstanding - but that’s precisely why i cared enough to write all this down! it’s a story that gets into your head, really stays with you, and maybe that’s the reason why i have such strong feelings about the direction the story takes in its final act.

if you reached the end of this post: thank you so much for reading it! i hope you enjoyed my thoughts, and i hope you have a great day!

[itsbenedict]

I didn’t post about everything I played this year, so here’s my opinions on the stuff I played that I didn’t make a rec post for:

Raging Loop 

Raging Loop is one of them twisty meta Zero Escape-y branching-path visual novels where an ensemble cast is trapped in a mysterious circumstance where people are dying gruesomely, and you have to find out what’s happening and stop it by looping a bunch. 

I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it, because... it tries to have its cake and eat it too with the supernatural elements. Clearly magic is real and has important impacts on the scenario, but then other parts are trickery you’re supposed to see through, and it’s entirely uninterested in cluing you in to how that trickery was accomplished. Not exactly a fair play mystery, in that regard- you have to kind of just be along for the ride, rather than try to figure it out.

That said, it’s a good ride- pretty strong character writing, and the central conceit of the Werewolf/Mafia-style murder scenario creates really interesting drama. It’s more concerned with making itself feel clever than letting the player feel clever, but it’s still well-paced and gripping and has a pretty decent resolution.

Detective Grimoire

I recommended Tangle Tower, the sequel, pretty strongly- and this one, while obviously a little rougher around the edges with the art and mechanics (the suspicion tracker system is a total dud; I didn’t even realize it existed until I realized I was missing an achievement for using it), it’s still pretty darn good. Really fun character designs and animations, fully-voiced, and a solid whodunit backing it all. Plus- while the two are more or less self-contained, the continuity threads with Tangle Tower raised some really interesting questions.

Contradiction - the all-video murder mystery

This one was pretty fun, largely on the strength of the actors. The main mechanic of interrogating people on evidence and using their own statements against each other was some good stuff, too. Definitely had that Phoenix Wright quality to the deductions, and Jenks is a really fun character. (Had a few points where progression was just linked to standing in a certain previously-abandoned area of the map where a clue was suddenly there for no reason, there- good thing it had a hint system.)

As a mystery, it could use a little work- most of what you end up finding out is sequel bait (for a sequel that never actually came together, unfortunately), and the actual whodunit is just sort of hiding in the cracks of all that. And... cornering the culprit just sort of happens out of nowhere once you’ve got your hands on the right piece of evidence, without much fanfare. You’re following up on leads like usual, you find a little lie in someone’s testimony, and then- oh, shit, they’re just confessing everything! Unlike all the previous times you questioned them and they were super evasive like everyone else! And then the game is over. 

All in all, it’s pretty meaty and entertaining and I’d recommend it, but unfortunately the creators have moved on to other things, so there’s not going to be any follow-up on the stuff it left unresolved.

Ikenfell

Ikenfell is a tightly-designed RPG about kids at a magic school, with Paper Mario-style action command mechanics and a battle system that makes a big deal out of careful positioning and movement, which was really enjoyable. The difficulty’s a little high (I recommend always always always speccing into max damage because killing things before they kill you is worth more than any amount of defense, speed doesn’t work, and healing is cheap), but I found it really satisfying.

There’s... something... off? About... I don’t know how to put it, it’s... doing that “yes, everyone is queer and mentally ill, deal with it” thing, which, sure, okay. But for a lot of them it’s such a background thing, like... half the playable cast is unambiguously nonbinary, but like... I don’t know if it’s trying to make some statement on how there are no rules to being NB and you can 100% perform a particular binary gender presentation but still count, or if they wrote the whole story and then changed the pronouns of some of the characters for Representation Points, or what. Probably the former? I dunno, it just feels weird. Maybe I’m just not woke enough to Get It.

(unrelatedly: why the heck is the official art they use everywhere so... off-model? none of them look like they do in-game- they look like the creator commissioned someone to draw a group shot with one reference image each and didn’t tell them anything about the characters. how much you wanna bet they commissioned a friend and it came out wrong but they were too polite to say “sorry, no, this is wrong, can you do it over?”)

Trails of Cold Steel IV

Hoo boy. It’s... not great, and it’s not great in a pretty predictable way for an even-numbered entry in the Trails series. It happens every time- first there’s a game in a new engine with new characters and a new world to explore, and it’s really nice and does interesting things... and then it ends on a cliffhanger, and then there’s a sequel game in the same engine with the same characters and the same world, reusing as many assets as possible. Also the League Of Generically Evil Anime Supervillains is there causing trouble for reasons they refuse to explain, and the plot is a storm of magicbabble and macguffin-chasing that makes little to no sense. 

Cold Steel IV is that for Cold Steel III, full stop. Welcome back to all the same places you visited last game, except this time there’s some stupid magic apocalypse happening (not that it stops you from taking the time to do random sidequests constantly, of course). The whole “oh, the evil curse mind controls people and that’s why they do stupid bullshit that’s in no one’s interest” plot point is leaned on super hard, and it’s just a big yawn the whole way through.

It’s still really fun, though, because the battle system remains really well-designed. (The same battle system that was just as fun in Cold Steel III, mind you, but it hasn’t gotten old.) And- though they’re struggling to square it with the dumb mind control apocalypse plot, the NPC dialogue continues to make the world feel believable and lived-in. They don’t slack on the parts that make Trails good- it’s just the parts that make Trails bad are making themselves more evident than ever.

did finally get to date Towa though so that’s a win

One Step From Eden

OSFE is... uh. It’s fucking hard is what it is. It’s sort of a deckbuilding roguelike, and there’s this combat that takes place on a grid, and- wait, it’s like Mega Man Battle Network, it’s exactly like Mega Man Battle Network. Man, I forgot about that, but the mechanical influence is extremely obvious. It’s MMBN meets Slay the Spire.

Except it’s super duper hard as hell, because unlike MMBN you can’t pause and swap out chips or anything- everything is just always happening so much, all at once, everywhere, and you have no recourse but to git gud and learn all the enemy patterns and the behavior of your own spells and develop the twitch reflexes necessary to not fucking die from all the shit that’s on the screen always.

(What’s the story? Uhhhh, there was some kind of magic apocalypse, and some anime girls are trying to reach a city for some reason that doesn’t really get explained ever. The game doesn’t really care to build its world at all- it’s all mechanics plus a little token character dialogue that doesn’t say much.)

The point is it’s really frickin’ hard but I am an epic pro gamer and I got ALL THE ACHIEVEMENTS, MOTHERFUCKER. If you’ve played it, I expect you to be really god damn impressed with me, okay???

A Short Hike

This one was really relaxing! It’s a platformer where you explore an Animal Crossing-y island of cartoon animal people, collecting mobility upgrades- but like, mainly it’s about straight chillin’. The flight controls are fun and there’s lots of little secrets to find and it’s just a nice time that doesn’t drag on too long. Not too much to say about this one.

Pokémon Sword

Ehhhhh.

I’m not here for the hot takes about how Dexit is good actually. Development hell happened, they had to make cuts for time, I get it. It’s disappointing and makes the game a little bit worse, but it’s not the end of the world.

Apart from that... perfectly serviceable? The Wild Area could’ve used a little more technical polish (as could most things in the game, really) but was a step in the right direction, giving the player a wider array of early-game team-building options than ever before. No HMs is good. Story and characters were kind of nothing, but that’s par for the course. “At least this time they’re not shoehorning in some kind of stupid evil-team-wants-legendary-pokemon-to-destroy-the-world apocalypse plot”, I thought to myself before they managed to shoehorn one in at the last minute with zero buildup- but, hey, beats wasting half the game on it.

It’s nothing special and it’s missing a lot of polish, but its problems are mainly due to being rushed, and presumably next gen they’ll be able to reuse a lot of the models and animations (maybe even improve the animations so they’re not so boring??? a man can dream) and make something interesting. SwSh seem like they were testing the waters for something else, and not taking too many chances in the meantime. 

(yo why would you sell all these cosmetic items and then turn them all off during gym battles, though) 

Hades

Hades is- oh, who am I kidding? Everyone knows Hades, it’s the game of the year, greatest thing since sliced bread, Supergiant are heroes, yada yada yada. I’ve played almost 300 hours of it and I’ve completed everything except all the Resources Director levels (currently a Sigma Wraith), it’s extremely fun and you don’t need me to tell you that.

Petal Crash

It was that thing the Paranatural creator helped on? It’s, uh. It’s a block-sliding puzzle game thing, sort of in a Puyo Puyo vein. It has fun character designs and some good dialogue, like you’d expect from Zack’s involvement, but it didn’t really leave an impression otherwise (besides how got dang infuriating some of its Turn Trial puzzles can be.) The story is... kinda heartwarming, kinda didactic, kinda childish, not especially deep or interesting. Hard for it to be, when it’s told through little bits of fluffy character dialogue that exist to set up a puzzle battle as quickly as possible. Not super recommended unless you really really like block-sliding puzzles.

Hollow Knight

Man, why’d I sleep on this for so long? It’s a metroidvania platformer with heavy Dark Souls inspiration, in terms of tone and difficulty and death mechanics and environmental storytelling. And it’s... apart from all that, just really good as a game, with tight controls and juicy movement and great animation. Progression is linked as much to mastery as it is to upgrades collected- I found myself in lategame areas facing down things that would’ve killed me ten times over at the start- not because I had the best gear, but because I’d learned the game’s language and understood how to move in ways that wouldn’t get me killed.

(Usually. Sometimes I’d walk into a room and sit on a bench and suddenly there’d be a boss fight and I’d get slaughtered. Ain’t that just the way it goes?)

Anyway, on top of all that it’s just charming as hell, with a really unique and well-realized world full of little bug people. I love how, like, your character is clearly some kind of eldritch abomination, but it’s small and cute and so everyone (besides enemies that attack you on sight because they’re possessed by some kinda evil mold) is like “awww, who’s this little guy? want some help, little guy?”

(except Zote, who is just an ass hole. i love him.)

[dgcatanisiri]

Welcome to DG’s Listing of Wish These DLC Existed, where I theorize, speculate, and just kinda generally throw ideas at the wall about DLCs for games I love that never happened and never will happen, but damn, I’d like to see them anyway.

Because I have ideas, I can’t get them made as mods, I don’t have time to make them into fic, and they’re never going to happen anyway, so why not put them up in a public place? After all, they’re tie ins to games I have no control over anyway, so it’s not like I’ll ever make money off of them anyway. And, as I’m not bound by any hardware limitations in terms of crafting ideas, or production cycles dictating when the game’s endpoint is, these can and do go on a great deal longer than the standard lifespan of a game.

A review of the format: There will be a name for the DLC, a brief synopsis, a reference to when this hypothetical DLC would become available/if and when it becomes unavailable, and then an expansion/write up of the ideas going in to them. Some ideas will have more expansion than others, because I’ve just plainly put more thought into them - in a lot of cases, I wrote them down just on the basis of ‘this idea seems pretty cool,’ and then gave them more context later on.

Feedback is welcome! Like an idea? Don’t like an idea? I welcome conversation and interaction on these ideas. Keep it civil, remember that these are just one person’s ideas, we can discuss them. Perhaps you’ll even help inspire a part two for these write ups! Because I do reserve the right to come up with more ideas in the future - these are the ideas that I’ve had to this point, but the whole reason this series exists is because I come up with new ideas for old stories.

So I HAVE actually been working on my ongoing series of hypothetical DLC to games that I love over the last year (it was the end of January 2020 when my last one of these got posted, this is going up at the beginning of May 2021). Which, yes, some is pandemic related because *screams* but... I was looking over what I’ve been working on, and realized that I was at about the combined length of my first two of these in my present examination, and I was only about a third of the way through the ideas that I had. I could either keep going and do these all at once in a massive post in like another year or two, or I could break it up into chunks.

So instead of waiting, this is going to be Part 1 of (I hope) 3 in an examination at ideas and possibilities of what additional content could have been made for Mass Effect 2, which for some is considered the best of the series. Me, I’m a little more critical of it. To me, this game is a textbook example of bridge syndrome, of the plot spinning its wheels to hold off on the payoff until the third part of the trilogy - the Collectors are, in practice, an entirely separate threat from the Reapers, even acknowledging the connection in the plot. We see this in the impact that the ME2 characters have in the next game - most are in side missions, all perform roles in the plot that literally can have them swapped out, even if it’s to the ultimate detriment of your War Asset count.

So in my mind, there’s a lot of room to make these DLCs, these glimpses into further areas of the world of Mass Effect at large. Because for me, what ME2 SHOULD have been was about making the alliances with the galaxy at large, rather than the big set piece of the Suicide Mission. We got some of this in ME2 proper, but that’s where the core of my focus and attention is with these DLCs.

Admittedly, I am aware of the difficulties of working around ME2 having both optional companions (Thane, Samara, and Tali don’t have to be recruited at all, Zaeed and Kasumi are DLC, many missions are available before you necessarily pick up certain companions...) and the ability to hold off on doing the DLC until after the Suicide Mission, where any or all of your companions may end up dying. However, for simplicity’s sake (because these things are long enough as it is without having a dozen variations apiece), we will assume that all companions are recruited and alive for the sake of plot advancement. Minds greater than mine can figure out how these would work without a given character – me, I tend to clear out the quest log before the Suicide Mission (aside from Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival, both of which are minimal on the squadmates from the rest of the game) and rarely let myself lose someone on the Suicide Mission, and since these are my ideas, we’re working in my framework.

Also, timeline note: Like ME2′s actual DLC, the fact that these would unlock at certain points in the game’s timeline does not necessarily reflect when they would best be played in the in-game timeline. Like Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival are (as I mentioned above), at least in my personal timeline, post-Suicide Mision content. BUT, they both become available to play after Horizon. Just because they unlock at certain points in the plot, that doesn’t mean that they best fit the timeline in that point. It was just a convenient way to organize things in my notes. So there will be ones that unlock at plot point A, but probably play best after plot point B. Players would be able to decide where they fit as it works for them.

Ghost of the Machine

A phenomenon is spreading across colonies in Citadel space. Machine cultists are cropping up on planets. Shortly thereafter, these colonies go dead quiet – often overrun by husks. To Admiral Anderson, this sounds like Reaper tech, and there’s only one person who he trusts to investigate the truth of the machine cults...

(Post-Freedom’s Progress)

So back to the machine cultists. In our last installment, there was Evolution, which featured them. Here, though, we’re looking at something that kinda resolves this little storyline. Y’know, since ME3 isn’t really going to have the time for this sort of thing. Which, sure, I’m saying this becomes unlocked before you can unlock this game’s machine cultist sidequest, but shush – just because it unlocks at this point doesn’t mean it has to be played at this point. This time, it’s not just about learning about the problem, but we’re also going to see what we can do to understand it, especially since we’re now acknowledging that this is a recurring problem within the universe and maybe we want to find a proper solution to it before stumbling blindly into it gets more and more people killed.

So this takes Shepard to a planet that’s making its first steps at colonization, yet again (because I am trying to be cognizant of what practical realities exist in the game development, even acknowledging that this is a hypothetical thing anyway – early colonization means limited extras wandering around out in the open and a self-contained area to play around in). Those seem to be the places where these devices mainly get uncovered, so that’s why this is here.

Of course, we have a situation where the devices are known about, so there’s an immediate lockdown, and the reason that Shepard and crew are getting sent out is because Reaper experience is needed – in the event that this colony can have anyone saved, who is it and how do we get them out safely?

I kinda look at this as revealing the process – the previous encounters were the parts that told us the existence of the metaphorical monster of this story, here we’re getting to see the “monster” properly in action. And I feel like this should be about also introducing some of what will become ME3’s foot soldiers among the Reaper armies – we know about the husks from ME1, now we’re going to encounter another for the first time. Probably the marauders. Given that they and the cannibals (who are so numerous in part because of the batarian worlds being first in the invasion path) are the most numerous in ME3 aside from husks, we should at least get to see them be pre-established because of their involvement ahead of time – they don’t get any proper introduction as is in ME3, just accepted as being there.

The honest general idea in this one is tying off this thread that was seemingly built, by way of being a repeated thread in both ME1 and ME2, but goes entirely unmentioned in ME3. Obvious reasons are obvious, but that’s why these hypothetical DLCs “exist,” to address things that the games didn’t have time for. (And that’s a big part of a lot of these, so... buckle up.)

Obviously, we have some of the supplementary material to work off of here – I’m specifically thinking of the Illusive Man’s comic series, Evolution. (Side note, TIM’s involvement there should probably also be part of the reason he’s quick to send Shepard in here – he knows what these artifacts can do.) You can read the wiki page as easily as this, but to quickly detail the important part, we know what these are through them, artifacts meant to ease the way for the eventual arrival of the Reapers by doing the huskifying work ahead of time, without the need for things like the Dragon’s Teeth (which... I want to bring these into this in some fashion, considering they seemed to have importance in ME1, but as the numbers of husks increased in the later games, they fell by the wayside – ME3 claimed that they were basically just to increase a subject’s adrenaline and spread the Reaper tech through the victim’s body quicker from the fear of impalement, and that seems like a lot of effort for little reward, since nothing indicates a way to come back after infection anyway).

So why are these on far-flung colonies, especially when the husks definitely don’t have the mental capacity to control ships and spread out that way?

Since, again, there’s no way to come back after infection anyway, that’s going to be one of the core questions. This seems like a highly inefficient way to set about conquering the galaxy. Why spread this if there’s no reliable method of getting it to go beyond any singular world? (Obviously, the original idea seems to be a) BioWare shock value and b) something to horrify the audience with no reason attached – so it’s time to add that reason). What is the purpose?

So that’s going to be a running thread, probably the major subplot of the story. Obviously, though, the first priority is Shepard trying to escape getting caught up in this colony that is descending into Reaper control. Also, since I said we’re introducing the marauders here, I think we need a turian contact on the ground – I almost said make them a female turian, introduce them to the world of Mass Effect well ahead of the DLC for ME3 (a-HEM!), but I also think that we’ve got another situation of seeing them get infected and die as a result – it IS a consistent point in this series that coming back from Reaper infections Is Not Done. And repeating that here makes it a consistent theme, considering Nyreen.

So while I still say there should be female turians making their appearance among the turians of the colony, our turian buddy is going to be a guy, just for the sake of not stuffing another named female turian in the fridge. I’ll get to a more proper introduction of a female turian later, promise. (And, I like to imagine, with the number of DLCs I’m writing up here, there’s some kind of ability to retroactively introduce female turians into the crowds in the base game as a “patch” through at least one of them, as well as into ME3 proper... Hey, this is all fantasy as it is, let me have that one.)

Anyway, the turian contact is going to be frosty with Shepard – he (I don’t have a name for him at this point) not only doesn’t trust Cerberus, he was also friends with Saren, making him distrust Shepard. While Saren was a traitor, it’s got an element of ‘guilt by association’ to have had close ties to him, so Shepard’s kind of a living embodiment of the hit to his good name. Even if he didn’t do what he did because of Shepard specifically, they’re still associated. But he is still on a mission and Shepard is here and willing to assist him, so...

That said, he’s a Cerberus contact – Cerberus may be human first, but, given the ME2 crew, they can cultivate non-human contacts and aid, and under the circumstances of this colony, being a joint endeavor of humans and turians (probably throw in some callbacks to the last edition of these hypothetical DLCs and mention Ambassador Goyle and the Planet of Peace story). He’s been influenced by Cerberus operatives because hey, it’s good for humanity and turians to make peace if there’s a greater threat, right? Shepard meets with him on the outskirts of the colony proper – in order not to be influenced, they’re acting as much outside of the colony as possible. (Come to think about it, it might be a good idea to make recruiting Mordin a pre-req for this, at least handwave him having come up with a measure meant to protect from Indoctrination and the effects of these artifacts.)

The artifact is already influencing colonists, of course, and our turian friend is ready to write them off immediately – they’ve read the reports, and indoctrination can’t be reversed. I picture a brief discussion about how horrible indoctrination is as a weapon, making the Reapers enemies into their servants, and so warping their minds and perceptions that they’d never be able to trust that any thought they have afterwards is their own, even if they could be saved. Because seriously, that’s one of the most unsettling things for me in this franchise.

The idea is, of course, to get in to where this artifact is and destroy it unseen. That probably means a stealth segment through this colony – honestly, do it like the batarian base in Arrival, I don’t think that it would be so bad. That offered some nice variation, if a little spare on interactable things. Here are going to be some interactable things, things you can get to if you’re good, pay enough attention to the line of sights and such, but will still risk discovery.

Those interactable things are going to be some of the background of the artifact and what’s the whole deal – y’know, codex stuff, things that aren’t essential to the story but good background. Lay some groundwork for the idea of what the Reapers want out of these things being left behind.

Stealth section comes before the inevitable action section, of course. Here, the artifact is in underground caverns (like normal) and our turian buddy sets out to make some quick scans, get the information they need. And, of course, it activates at his approach, zapping him with energy. He tries to shake off any effects but... Well, I already said that he was gonna get infected and die.

So here’s where we start seeing the husks show up. It’d be really nifty if we could get them in varying states of their evolution (or devolution, depending how you look at it), some people just having glowing eyes, others being full on huskified.

And, of course, our turian contact is now in the process of becoming a marauder. I’m thinking we’re having something of the same thing as with Saren here – now that the Reapers made contact with him, they’re framing him as their “herald,” the one who’s going to act as their instrument. Shepard rightly gets to point out the comparison, which does at least get some hesitation – he’s being indoctrinated, is in the process of becoming a pure Reaper tool, but isn’t all the way there yet, the process isn’t 100% immediate.

Also I figure this is a good time to really establish (in terms of ME2’s plot) that the Reapers are so interested in Shepard and why. Like, yeah, sure, we do get Harbinger’s whole thing, but that’s not really a dialogue where we get to ask questions. It’s not even an interrogation where Harbinger demands information. Harbinger just spouts out dialogue of “this hurts you” and such. That’s not really telling us anything. So, yeah, there’s the basic “Shepard defeated a Reaper,” but hey, let’s just get a little more out of it.

I mean, we can intuit what Shepard means for the Reapers, sure, but if it’s important enough to be a major motivation, it’s important enough to say outright, you know? So Shepard is a pinnacle for this cycle – they killed a Reaper, delayed the advancement of the cycle for a few years, that’s a bit of a big deal when it comes before the harvest proper starts up – and the Reapers (like Leviathan will later) want to better understand what makes them tick. If this is unique to Shepard or the human condition, and, if it’s the later, how to break this down to its basic chemical composition and make it their own.

Turian buddy is also here to mouthpiece the explanation for what the Reapers even expect to gain from this. Slaves who can’t operate the mechanisms that they’ll be using are poor servants. I figure it’s as much an intimidation matter as anything – prompt the effective burning of a colony without deeper investigation, sow some fear about the unknown and keep people staying to the comfortable and familiar areas of the space that they live in, corral them in the familiar patterns. It’s a plan with the intent of intimidation – it isn’t until the harvest that they need the servants, so until then, they just want the borders firmly established.

Seems simple enough, sure, but this is still a mystery as far as the game proper is concerned, and I am trying to work within the established structure of the trilogy, rather than come up with some massive reveal that changes our understanding of everything – if I WERE just going to rewrite the franchise, I could do that, instead of writing up synopses of add-ons to the main game, y’know?

Of course Shepard’s gonna get free – I’m thinking that it’s a rescue effort by some of the other crew on the Normandy (because it really bugs me that, when the game is focused around Shepard gathering up the “Dirty Dozen” for their “Suicide Squad” (look, I had to get that out of my system), they only take two members out on missions at a time, so hey, look, they get up to something while Shepard’s busy doing the dirty work. This being ME2, we have to shoot our way out even further to get back to the artifact, which is where our turian ‘friend’ waits.

Paragon/Renegade choice here – do we try and reach out to him, get him to help us blow the artifact to hell, or just jump straight to the boss fight? By this point he has some additional help, by way of our introduction to a harvester – these were dropped into ME3, on Menae, with no exploration, and non-Reaper ones were meant to be enemies during the development of this game, so call this the natural evolution of matters. We’re introducing the marauders and the harvesters ahead of time, explaining the lack of fanfare that these enter the “proper” storyline with. The difference is if our turian friend is aiding us or the harvester, the harvester being our big end boss for this DLC.

The harvester gets killed, the artifact is blown up with the turian (he chooses to remain if Paragoned, a reminder of the permanent effects of the indoctrination process and how this is something that can’t be fixed – hammer home some of the fear and anguish that will be impacting those left behind from the inevitable fighting). Shepard returns to the Normandy for a debrief (I do kinda picture Miranda being involved in that, because, again, squadmates get additional dialogue here, and she IS the ranking Cerberus officer). Also some set up about discussing about Cerberus efforts to better understand indoctrination (foreshadowing for Henry Lawson’s experiments on Horizon next game).

Post Game Followups:

ME3: Indoctrination has seen further study, providing a war asset. Dialogue changes to reference Shepard having encountered marauders and harvesters before.

 Commander Shepard

The Suicide Mission is coming, and the Illusive Man has asked for all of Shepard’s companions to have their heads cleared. Now it’s Shepard’s turn. Their burdens have remained – the loss of the Normandy, the death on Virmire, and their death at the hands of the Collectors. The rest of the team has to clear their heads, and now so must Commander Shepard.

(Post-Horizon)

Yeah, why is it that, while we’re dealing with having to clear the heads of our crew, our PC, who has canonically been killed and resurrected, does NOT have to do this? So, yeah, Shepard needs a good head clearing. (For the record, I have written a fic of this: Lazarus Risen, and that’s effectively where I’m going with this, so if you’re so inclined, check it out instead of reading this, since while the recap is shorter, the fic itself is not too long.)

So, if you don’t want to read that, my idea when I made the fic was to explore both the idea of “Commander Shepard’s loyalty mission,” or the one where Shepard clears their head, AND the thought of just what the heck required Shepard to take all their companions on a mission and leave the Normandy vulnerable to the Collector attack after obtaining the IFF. Now, I’m saying that this mission unlocks after Horizon, but in my mind, that’s when and where this mission takes place. I just don’t know how to implement it within the game design that presently exists, so we’re gonna leave that open to player interpretation.

So the starting point of the fic (and thus, this DLC – like I said, that’s effectively where I’m going with this) is that Kelly Chambers, in her role as the Normandy’s official unofficial counselor/therapist, has recognized that Shepard has a lot of trauma associated with their death and resurrection they have not worked through, and so that’s gone into her reports to the Illusive Man. Mister Illusive contacts the Normandy, declaring that Shepard’s going in to a Cerberus facility, along with their crew, for a full psychiatric workup – the mission is too important to not have all these issues dealt with before going into things.

A bit of fun with this, on the basis of it being why Shepard is taking their whole squad off the ship, is that there’s the opportunity for some banter and genuine crew interaction, something that is sadly missing from the base game itself. Since I’m me, and this is about what I want from these, this is also an opportunity for some character stuff with Shepard, both playing referee (maybe getting a chance to recover some of the loyalty divisions from the confrontations if need be?) and getting to be able to better build and display the growth these characters are going through from seeing their loyalty missions resolved (cuz you DO resolve all the loyalty missions before activating the Reaper IFF, right?). The whole point of doing them was to clear their heads, encourage growth, and the thing is, we don’t get much of that forward arc in ME2, with ME3 just catching us up later. At least half the point of these is some retroactive continuity to smooth out the trilogy’s edges, after all.

Moving on. The arrival at the Cerberus Station (I am assuming this is the same one from the early part of the game, the one Miranda and Jacob take Shepard after they escape the Lazarus facility, though it doesn’t have to be, just a convenient use of model reuse) is uh... complicated. After all, Shepard’s motley crew is not exactly Cerberus approved (even if TIM authorized it – remember how Brooks in Citadel will mention that “Cerberus was a human organization bringing in aliens”?). There is a stir. A handful of situations have to be defused before everything properly gets under way.

This isn’t in my fic because that was focused on the one thing, while, as DLC, this would have to fill out some additional content to justify the time spent and the resultant price tag players spend to buy it, but I kinda figure this is where we can start seeing where the dissent is for Miranda in particular (probably Jacob too), given her Cerberus loyalties. This is a Shepard-focused mission, but I do see Miranda having a relatively decent role in any sidequests, character bits, and dialogue, given that we presently have in her a Cerberus loyalist right up to the point that she sees the human Reaper in the endgame. Especially if she isn’t part of the endgame squad, I feel we should have some material that connects those dots somewhat. I mean, I expect all the characters SHOULD get some, but Miranda in specific is the one with the almost explicit arc of taking her from Cerberus loyalist to her “consider this my resignation” remark to the Illusive Man at the endgame.

The Cerberus station director (my fic said her name is Doctor Nuwali, so we’ll be going with that) tries to organize the chaos that is Shepard’s squad (Shepard being as helpful or obstructionistic as the player chooses to allow, because Cerberus and authorities figures are always fun to poke at, and we’re getting both of those rolled up in one). Building off the above point with Miranda, there’s also clearly tension between her and Nuwali – Nuwali is, in many ways, a reflection of who she was at the start of the game, the pure, uncompromising believer to the cause and the results-driven focus without acknowledging the human cost, while Miranda has been in the position of growing and developing and questioning (Like I said, connective tissue for her character arc).

Nuwali directs Shepard into a private room for their psych evaluation, insisting on the separation of Shepard from the squad. (Just go with it, it’s for plot purposes.) Within is a prothean artifact, and it begins to react at Shepard’s arrival. It flashes-

-and Shepard finds they’re now in the Virmire facility. This is the requisite combat segment stuff that I can brush past during the recapping. The point is that they’re making their way through the geth to the area where the bomb was deployed, to find Ashley or Kaidan, whoever was left behind on Virmire (even if they were left with the distraction team and Shepard didn’t go back for the bomb, Shepard is guaranteed to have been at the bomb site, not the other area, so...).

They assist Shepard in clearing out the geth and then go into confrontation mode – “you’re working with Cerberus now, what the hell?” You know all the fan debates about why is Shepard working with Cerberus, given the horrors they uncover in ME1, especially if you roll a Sole Survivor (and, considering that is the default Shepard background, that’s clearly BioWare’s preference, so it’s not even like this shouldn’t come up – DLC is better than nothing, you know?).

Yes, we’re doing a “defending your life” style thing here. Hey, the game could use that, considering how Cerberus is the bad guy and we’re working with them. We deserve a more critical examination of this concept.

It’s a bit of a verbal joust – Ashley/Kaidan question what Shepard’s doing, their purpose in working with Cerberus, why they aren’t just leaving, how they could have tried to turn them in to the Alliance and the Council after they were given the Normandy and use the information in the ship’s databases as evidence of the Collector threat? There were ways for the story to progress that weren’t this deal with the devil. Shepard gets to acknowledge their points, struggle to justify what they’re doing. Emphasizing that this IS a deal with the devil, and if Shepard doesn’t find a loophole out of it, they’ll be condemned alongside Cerberus as well – not blowing them to hell in the here and now can make them culpable for their future activities, especially if Cerberus tries to bank on the idea of “Commander Shepard worked with us” (like they do with Conrad Verner in ME3).

Call it “preempting the ‘we should have been able to side with Cerberus’ discussion” that cropped up after ME3 – people, we ARE talking about a xenophobic terrorist group, how were they EVER gonna come out of this series looking like the good guys in the final analysis?

The ultimate point is that this is not a good situation – whatever good might come of Cerberus in general, Cerberus cannot be trusted. Ashley/Kaidan point blank ask can Shepard truly justify staying with them, doing the Illusive Man’s bidding, regardless of their good intentions. And I don’t really think there’s a good answer here – again, in my head, this plays as the mission Shepard’s on when the Collectors attack the Normandy, and, because I make sure to do all the loyalty missions before going to the Collector Base, Shepard is about to cut ties with Cerberus by way of a massive explosion (because I’d never trust the Illusive Man with the Collector Base), this is basically laying groundwork for that moment.

If you don’t do things that way... Well, sorry, but this is my hypothetical DLC, so we’re playing things my way.

Anyway, this sends Shepard on their way to the next installment of “defending your life.” Because we’re absolutely following the Rule of Three here, so there’s more than just the one segment. More requisite combat stuff happens, this time fighting through the Citadel tower again. At the end is Saren. Because why wouldn’t we have an encounter with him when Shepard is doing questionable things in the name of defending the galaxy?

He, of course, is rather smug about the fact that Shepard is allying with the devil in the name of fighting the Reapers – to him, it comes across as something of a victory, because here Shepard is, the person who came after him for his alliance with Sovereign, having made his own deal with the devil. If Ashley/Kaidan were the angel on Shepard’s shoulder, the voice of their conscience, telling them that they are making a mistake working with Cerberus, Saren is here to be the devil on the other shoulder, pointing out all the value there is in working with them, in doing whatever the mission calls for to put an end to the Collectors and the Reapers.

One would hope that this kind of rhetoric from the villain of the first game would make it very clear that Cerberus are the bad guys. As if to drive the point home, Saren also brings up that Shepard was rebuilt by them – with what is certainly Reaper tech. Shepard has begun the process of ascending to the Reapers level, what’s some more, melding more with their tech, bringing that melding, that joining, that unification of organic and machine, to the people of the galaxy, of doing the Reapers a favor and acting as their instrument in raising up galactic civilization?

Things of course descend into a firefight (because we’ve got to have our action quota). This time, Shepard gets to pull the trigger and personally kill Saren – sure, I get satisfaction out of persuading him to shoot himself, and I can always take the other options if I’m really pressed to face off against him, but I want the visceral satisfaction of having Shepard standing over Saren themselves and pulling the trigger.

It’s the little things, you know?

Anyway, because Rule of Three, this proceeds Shepard to the third point. They are back on Lazarus Station. No combat this time, just proceeding through the halls until they find themselves in the spot where they met Jacob in the prologue. Here, they see Miranda and Liara, discussing the act of giving Shepard to Cerberus to rebuild. While at first they’re talking to each other (whether or not you want to interpret this as Shepard somehow having heard the conversation or this just being Shepard’s interpretation, that’s up to you – we’re already in the center of Shepard’s mind here, does that really need explaining?), eventually, Shepard gets to speak, raise concerns, raise their voice.

Shepard gets options – do they understand and appreciate what was done to them, the resurrection and effective drafting into Cerberus? Or are they angry and pissed off – they were dead, and then someone else comes along and decides not to let them rest. For me, this has always been an issue of bodily autonomy, where, with Liara using the reasoning, and I quote, that she “couldn’t let [Shepard] go,” SHE is the one deciding what to do with Shepard’s body. Whatever you might say about what that did to make the galaxy a better place... Was it what Shepard would have wanted done with their corpse, to be handed off to a terrorist group culpable in acts of horrific deeds so that they could play Frankenstein with it? This is, in the games proper, just completely ignored – the one option to be angry is about Liara hiding this from them, not about her DOING it, and in ME3, Shepard – without player input – frames Miranda and the Lazarus Project as “giving them back their life.”

Yeah, no. I can forgive Miranda’s actions, given her characterization is actively about her going from looking at Shepard as a resource to be tapped to a friend (or possibly lover). It’s not perfect, but it’s still part of her arc, and she does at least make an apology (even if the writing doesn’t focus on the part I want it to, that ME3 conversation being focused on her wanting to implant Shepard with a control chip).

But I NEED to be able to express anger at Liara in some way just to like her, considering her canonical reason for doing this is all about HER – not that she considered Shepard the only one in the galaxy who could stand against the Reapers, but that SHE couldn’t let Shepard go. When in my games, she has no right to that. She’s not the one my Shepard’s are in a relationship with. So what those who romance her probably see as an act of love and devotion, I, not romancing her, can’t see it as anything but an act of obsession. And, even if I have to limit myself to a mental simulacrum of her, because there’s not a better place to include such a thing in these DLCs, it will help me, because it’s at least acknowledgement that hey, maybe Shepard is kinda pissed about people making decisions about them for them.

*ahem*

Right, so, where were we? Right, the reaction to Miranda and Liara discussing what to do with Shepard’s body. So as Shepard reacts, this prompts appearances from Ashley, Kaidan, and Saren, all of them playing Greek chorus about the decisions made about Shepard and how Shepard is reacting to them all. And yes, now we have both Ashley and Kaidan, regardless of who was left on Virmire, because why not – if we have one of them showing up for this DLC, why NOT include both of them? You’d have both actors in the studio anyway, so... Basically this is the big character confrontation where they all make the points that fans can debate and nitpick over when they bring up this topic, until finally the question gets put as, effectively, “well, however you feel about it, it has been done, so what are you going to do now?”

And to answer that, Shepard has to reenter the room they woke up in. Because we’re not quite done here yet.

Yeah, that whole conversation piece? THAT was the third “fight” or “combat” scene of this sequence, done in dialogue. Think the Atris confrontation in KOTOR 2, a verbal standoff. The actual interaction that Shepard has to face in the operating room... is themselves.

And their mirror image is offering similar questions, now wanting Shepard to respond, rather than having other characters voice opinions for them. How do you play Shepard’s reaction to their death and resurrection? To the fact that they are spending this game working with Cerberus, who is responsible for a traumatic event in roughly one third of all Shepard histories? Who Shepard uncovered multiple instances of their mad science in ME1 that crossed every ethical line? Who have it repeated rather consistently, is a humanity-first organization who will put human interests (and Cerberus interests, claiming they’re the same) ahead of galactic ones? If the Collector Base has (or is) a Reaper weapon, do they legitimately trust the Illusive Man with this power? Does Cerberus or the Illusive Man REALLY deserve any loyalty from Shepard?

Think of this as “stage two” of the verbal boss battle.

So, the confrontation with themselves concludes with, effectively, Shepard making their decision for going forward – the idea is that it has all been a mental debate, Shepard talking to themselves and coming to a conclusion that they needed to make. The general idea probably is one that, if you’re an obsessive fan with a penchant for filling in the gaps of canon (hey how are you?), you may have imagined these kinds of thoughts and discussions and conversations happening, but isn’t it more satisfying to actually have them take place on screen? And two, Shepard confronting themselves is, in and of itself, always a big deal. As I said at the beginning, this is Shepard’s loyalty mission, done to clear their head. How could it not result in Shepard facing themselves and asking themselves these big questions directly?

When Shepard officially makes their decision for the forward march, you know, figuring out how to handle Cerberus from here on in, which basically come to, effectively, use them for their resources and cut them loose at the end of the crisis or cut ties now and let the chips fall – since, after all, aside from Miranda and Jacob, whose loyalties to Cerberus are already wavering, Shepard has a squad full of the most dangerous people in the galaxy, so they could handle a mutiny of any kind (and, on the player end, there’s the knowledge that, while all this is taking place, EDI is getting unshackled and effectively is capable of running the ship) – they’re kicked back to reality.

And yes, those are the only two results of this, because, just to hammer it home, Cerberus is NOT. THE GOOD GUYS. The Illusive Man is not secretly good, he’s just using the “humanity needs protection” line to justify his actions and attitudes that are about seizing power. And anyone who thought that we would, should, or could side with Cerberus come ME3 was kidding themselves.

Granted, with this line of thinking, I’m not sure what the motivation would be to give Cerberus the Collector Base at the endgame (I mean, I never have, so...). Maybe the idea of “indoctrinate yourself, get taken in by the Reapers, you bastard,” but... That doesn’t seem right for Shepard’s characterization. Eh, like I said, much of this is based in how I play in the first place, so if you want to try and figure that out, feel free, but my list, we go by my way of approaching things. Because that’s just how I roll.

So I haven’t explained what, exactly, this prothean artifact is. Well, it’s effectively nothing more than a plot device, but let’s say there’s a note that becomes interactable, that basically talks up the artifact as being what I’ve called it so far, something that is meant to allow the user a chance to directly interact with themselves, face the truths they deny. Again, this really is a plot device meant to allow the circumstances of the plot, and while I could go into the details of how I assume it works, it really just needs to exist, but that’s my handwave excuse to justify how it worked. It works very well, thank you for asking. The reality is the how is less important than what it brings up.

So, Shepard is back in the physical world, and sets about putting the ideas into motion – the Illusive Man wanted them here? Yeah, no. Not doing that anymore. Shepard gets their crew out of there, upsetting doc Nuwali (giving the impression that there were some sketchy ideas in mind for Shepard’s companions when they were alone themselves, invasive procedures that they’d knock them out and see if they could take them apart and put them back together, now loyal to the Cerberus banner that sort of thing) and has a brief chat with Miranda as they fly back to the Normandy.

...You know, which, based on my time table, is currently under Collector attack. Fun times!

Post Game Followups:

ME3: The artifact as a war asset, reports about Nuwali being captured by Alliance officers while in the process of having attempted some of those ‘sketchy ideas’ she’d meant to enact on Shepard’s companions.

The Lights of Klencory

The planet Klencory is rumored to hold secrets regarding ‘the machine devils.’ Admiral Hackett of the Alliance has suspicions these are references to the Reapers, and has been secretly investigating these. Now, a team of Alliance soldiers have vanished out there, and he’s calling in Commander Shepard as a specialist, along with an old friend...

Bonus Companion: Ashley Williams/Kaidan Alenko

(Post-Horizon)

So back on the old days of the BSN, before Arrival came out, the speculation was, after Lair of the Shadow Broker, that the successive DLC would feature Ashley or Kaidan, give them the same treatment Liara got by featuring them in a DLC. One of my favorite ideas featured the concept of the “machine devils” of Klencory. You know, the planet blurb from ME1 where a volus is digging into a planet in search of evidence of “lost crypts of beings of light,” the indication being that he’d had his mind scrambled by a prothean beacon. So, hey, guess where we’re going?

I mean, obviously Illium, duh.

Actually, that’s not a bad starting point. Illium in general seems to be fairly neutral territory – sure, technically a planet in Citadel space, given its an asari world, but with many Citadel laws relaxed, it makes for a place where “an Alliance operative” will meet with Shepard (We’re starting by way of a letter from Hackett, for the record) without it being considered suspicious behavior by those looking in who are not in the know about the tacit support that both Hackett and Anderson are offering Shepard. There’s a lot of questions coming into this on Shepard’s part, given that, at this point in time, they’re not really an Alliance officer, and yet this is apparently something that is getting them called on? Probably means Reapers.

It gets complicated once Shepard arrives for the meeting and finds Ashley/Kaidan is their contact.

So, before we go further, I want to acknowledge, by the nature of having any real contact between Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan between the encounter on Horizon and the opening of ME3, I am effectively breaking one of my cardinal rules for these, namely the idea of not screwing with the pre-existing structure of the games’ plots in allowing Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan SOME form of genuine contact and communication, to the point of a chance for a legitimate conversation about things and where they stand with one another (Yes, the previous entry was bending that rule, but this is an outright breaking of it).

Thing is, this is one thing that really SHOULD have existed in the games proper, I shouldn’t have to have built something up to include here, and I will 100% die mad about it. Ashley and Kaidan got shafted by BioWare’s handling of things, and I’m not willing to forgive it (if you follow my liveblogs of replaying the games, you’ll know I frequently complain that Arrival really was gift-wrapped to serve this function, and yet it doesn’t so much as mentioned Ashley/Kaidan). So yeah, we’re having an opportunity to address this stuff right off, it’s taking place in the game “proper” (for a given value, considering all of this is made up, but...). I’ll get into how this will impact their interactions come ME3 in the “Post Game Followups” section, for now, we’re just going with this.

Also on the “to note” element, I am mostly going to refer to Ashley/Kaidan in the sense of swapping them into place for one another, since, obviously, they are mutually exclusive at this point in the trilogy. But I do want it understood that I am not viewing them as interchangeable characters but as individuals. Just... If I stop to explain all the little differences of how they interact with Shepard in this, the variations of what they say and do on the character level, I’d basically be writing this out twice, which this is going to be long enough as it is, you don’t need to read the plot summary twice, and I certainly don’t need to write it twice. Assume that, even if not explicitly indicated, there ARE differences in behavior and dialogue that are reflective of them as separate characters and people, even if the overall plot must go forward regardless of how differently they’d react as individuals.

And you might want to pay close attention, since there will be a lot of use of “they” pronouns ahead, since Ashley/Kaidan is more awkward to write and I make it a point to not address the player character (in this case, Shepard) by one gender or the other in these write-ups, given that that’s variable, so things might get a little confusing if you’re not paying close enough attention to the context.

So... The meeting with Ashley/Kaidan begins... awkwardly. They’re uncertain how to really react to Shepard – sure, the encounter on Horizon means they know that Shepard is back, but now they’re really having to deal with this particular reality. So they’re going to aim to jump to business. Alliance intel has intercepted some messages from mercs hired out near Klencory, which got Admiral Hackett paying attention to things happening out there – like Shepard will acknowledge, between the circumstances of this meeting and the quick summary of the reason for the mercs all being out there, this sounds like it’s connected to the Reapers. Hackett wants to have Shepard as a “special consultant” as the Alliance has someone (re: Ashley/Kaidan) investigate (“consultant” since Shepard may not have had their Spectre status restored, so it gives them legitimacy either way). It could, potentially, just all be a massive coincidence. But since when are things ever “just” a coincidence?

Ashley/Kaidan are willing to use the Normandy as transport – Hackett figured that, between the stealth systems, and the lack of official Alliance authority in the area, the Normandy is the better option for getting there without being told to get lost. The bigger question is how they’ll be received – it’s not like merc gangs take well to outside interference, and the Alliance having any jurisdiction out there is questionable at best. But they should at least TRY to go in with civility. If this volus billionaire spending all this money on this (his name, for the record, is canonically given as Kumun Shol, so hey, less work for me, having to come up with a name!), then if he hears from someone who seems to be taking him seriously, it might get them invited in explicitly.

Obviously, though, if they’re hitching a ride on the Normandy, if things remain unspoken, the trip out there will be very awkward and seem longer than it is. So they have to address Horizon. They’re not going to apologize for not joining Shepard – Shepard is still operating on a ship flying Cerberus colors, even with good intentions, that is a betrayal of their oaths to the Alliance, Cerberus are terrorists and xenophobes, who want to secure human dominance. But they will acknowledge that they reacted to Shepard’s return in a way that wasn’t their best. I am not going all the way to “they admit that they were wrong,” because based solely on the information that they had, they handled things as best as they realistically could. But they will regret that things ended on the terms that they did.

Shepard gets to respond to that – are they accepting that it was a bad reaction to unexpected information, do they still hold a grudge, whatever. The conversation continues to a point of conclusion – Ashley/Kaidan don’t trust Cerberus, they want to trust Shepard, but the connection between the two at the moment makes that difficult, and they don’t know how to bridge that gap as things stand, but they’re going to try this.

We will be coming back to this, never you fear. But, of course, that’s more for the ending than it is the beginning, and this one conversation is far from the end.

Klencory is a world with a toxic atmosphere, so they first have to gain access to a semi-decent landing zone near where Shol has established himself. Because, naturally, he’s not interested in visitors – the brief communication we get with him is him effectively talking himself into the idea that Shepard is “the agent of the machine devils,” which... I mean, considering the prothean beacons and communications with the Reapers, it’s not crazy that he goes there, even if (by the rest of his actions), Shol’s gone a little nuts.

Shooty shooty bang bang, fight through the exterior guards and into the facility proper. Ashley/Kaidan are a little uncomfortable about what’s gone on – this really isn’t how they pictured things going, given the legitimate credentials they were supposed to be coming in with, and they can recognize the fighting is because of Shol not giving them an alternative, but it does still make them feel like they’re acting as little more than the thugs they’re dispatching.

Call this a reaction to the fact that Shepard doesn’t exactly get much of a differentiation in the game themselves. Particularly when they can call out looters on Omega while swiping whatever’s not nailed down.

This is another conversation that’s going to be part of that “coming back to” thing – assume there’s some kind of tracking metric for all of this in the same vein as how ME3 tracked how Ashley/Kaidan responded to Shepard as a lead in to the confrontation during the coup. Just, I’ll get to how that all plays out at the end.

Because a band of mercs aren’t enough to hold off Shepard, Ashley/Kaidan, and the third companion (yay party balance), they reach Shol’s central command. He’s a little batty, but it finally gets through to him that Shepard is not the agent of the machine devils. He is skeptical of Shepard being the savior from them, though. Instead, he wants Shepard and company to do something for him.

There is a vault. A vault none of his men have come back from. Shol declares that, if Shepard can enter, learn its secrets, and survive, then they will have proven themselves to be salvation from the machine devils. Since this is the advancement of the plot, Shepard will have to go ahead with this, even with the natural objections of Ashley/Kaidan (and, probably, Shepard themselves).

Another pause for a dialogue – Ashley/Kaidan are skeptical of Shol’s motives, and believe it may be too dangerous to just do what he says. Especially considering that he’s clearly not entirely stable. This is a situation that really calls for calling for backup. But there’s really not the option of waiting, because if they don’t do as Shol says, he’ll throw all his mercs at Shepard – even if we’re assuming that Shepard versus countless mercs ends well for Shepard (because, after all, it’s Shepard), it’s just a senseless loss of life.

Going in is a set piece of suspense. Think the Peragus mine, with a dash of Korriban for good measure, from KOTOR 2 – lot of littered corpses, this creeping and foreboding unease and feeling of being watched, this overbearing expectation of SOMETHING appearing down every dead end... Build the tension. This is a place that, the littered dead aside, no one has entered in thousands of years, it should absolutely be a place that could chill you to the bone. The examination of anything should feel like it’s disturbing the dead.

You know there’s some ancient security device active, right? I mean, something’s killing the people who trespass here. Obviously, it has to be something that will put up a fight as our end boss, and it needs to be something that is able to last a long time. I’m thinking an ancient robot (my mind is going in the direction of something similar in design to the ancient droids of KOTOR’s Star Forge), a last defense, left behind by a precursor to the protheans.

Yeah, it feels like an underwhelming result to me too, but it makes logical sense all the same – we have some evidence of things from prior cycles, not just the prothean cycle, making it through to the next ones, not the least of which is the plans for the Crucible. Seeing as how that bit of intel is just dropped into our laps come ME3, this is at least making it functionally foreshadowed, if indirectly, by actually showing us ancient technology that is still functional and viable even after more than fifty, a hundred thousand years. Plus the foreshadowing of things surviving to this cycle in the vein of Javik. Things lasting this long in forms beyond just ruins at least makes all of that happening in ME3 at least have some groundwork laid in these prior games – otherwise, we only have a few codex references to ancient civilizations, as opposed to it being an actual component of gameplay, things that the player MUST interact with.

But yeah, the threat may be underwhelming, but the payoff is what it guarded – the last remnants of this ancient culture. The corpses have been preserved, given that it’s a bunker into the planet’s mantle – the toxic nature of the atmosphere now came about because of the Reapers, though, of course, this is only spoken of in the material available as “the machine devils.” There could be a great wealth of information among this stuff.

Thing is, now that the threat’s dealt with, Shol wants his prize. He spent years of his life and a great deal of his money on this, and now he wants to use it – and, because he still is a paranoid bastard, he’s not particularly inclined to uphold his end of the bargain, having expected to have Shepard and the “guardian” of the tomb (for lack of a better term) kill each other. He just wants all of this to increase his own fortune – he’ll sell everything within to the highest bidder and damn what the Alliance, the Citadel, anyone might be able to get from the archives. Giving it to private collectors – like, say, the Illusive Man, or even any interested faction of capital-c Collectors (as in “the enemies we fight throughout ME2”) – will enrich him and it doesn’t matter what that information might do to help make the galaxy ready for war against the Reapers.

Now, normally you would think this would lead to a Paragon/Renegade choice. BUT, instead, we’re going to have a variation moment for Ashley and Kaidan. They’ll deal with Shol, but in unique ways. Ashley, having marine hand to hand combat skills (as she mentions in character discussion during the first game), manages to get close and disable the volus’s suit enough to render him unconscious, while Kaidan uses his biotics to get the same result. So they get to have a moment of protecting Shepard (not necessarily “saving” them, because a volus getting the drop on Shepard would certainly be an embarrassing way to go, but definitely helping them sidestep a situation).

NOW’S the time for the Paragon/Renegade choice, dealing with Shol himself. He is an obstacle, considering that dealing with the legal claim to this cache of information leaves the door open to some sticky situations as a result – the last thing they need is to have anything that might be useful be wrapped up in the legal battle. But he DOES have a valid claim. Just unilaterally taking this place from him is questionable at best – even if Shepard’s still a Spectre, are they REALLY able to just come in and declare the location to no longer be the property of the individual with the legal claim on it? Likewise, there’s a lot of sticky issues with the idea of killing him – after all, as mentioned above, he does have a bunch of trained mercenaries on hand, and it’s reasonable to try and walk out without adding to the bloodshed. But if it’s made clear that his madness has overtaken him (which, I mean... it kinda HAS), then there’s room for the Citadel to be able to legally seize his assets, including his claim on Klencory and its vault. But this still means institutionalizing a person because they’re inconvenient.

That’s the choice – institutionalize Shol and seize his assets, despite the subsequent legal battle that he and his kin can draw everyone in to, or cut through the red tape preemptively, kill him, and claim what amounts to squatter’s rights, since with him dead, no one else is there to take charge of the archive, whatever it contains. Ashley/Kaidan are going to say they have no intention of letting Shepard kill Shol (because that would certainly always be a line for them), but there will be a Renegade interrupt to take that choice out of their hands anyway, and Shepard can make an argument that, if they don’t do SOMETHING, Shol’s men will come in and try to kill them, while if he’s dead, that denies them their paycheck (because for one time ever, can we just have the mercs give up and run off once the source of their paycheck is dead?!). Shol certainly isn’t going to tell them to back down, and “survival instincts” have never been at the top of their hiring priorities.

Ashley/Kaidan will have some words about the decision Shepard is making, but they can be swayed to understand Shepard’s motivations, at least, in the moment, though any disagreements they have are more in the “waiting for a more opportune moment” than “what you say goes, Commander.” More on that shortly. With that matter resolved, Shepard calls for a pickup.

Back on the Normandy, Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan are having an informal debriefing in Shepard’s cabin (save the jokes for the end of the scene everyone, we’ll get to that). They do a brief discussion of what the likely followup will be – the fact is, the Reapers are probably already uncomfortably close at the moment already, so there’s not likely to be much opportunity to examine this place too much before they show. Still, every little bit is going to help.

The big thing is going to be how Shepard’s handled things through to this point. This was an accumulation metric (in the same style as Aria showing mercy on Petrovsky or not during Omega), so the various Paragon/Renegade decisions through to this point will lead to their reaction. Paragon Shepards get Ashley/Kaidan acknowledging that Shepard is still someone they respect, and that perhaps this whole Cerberus alliance was one of necessity. Renegade Shepards are leaving them questioning what Cerberus is doing to them, and are they really the person that they once were.

That leads to the question of where they stand if they’re a romance – like with Liara in Lair of the Shadow Broker, this leads to a romance rekindling, but only for Paragon Shepard, because that’s the version that has shown that Shepard is still the person they followed to hell and back, still the person they loved.

Yes, while I try and offer reasonably similar options for both Paragon and Renegade versions of Shepard, this is dependent on that. Because it’s about setting their concerns at ease, about listening to them and allowing them to be angry and upset and come around. Renegade Shepard will have shown they don’t care about that, so why WOULD Ashley/Kaidan take them back?

Anyway, insert “debriefing” joke here.

And, y’know, a reminder that, in these DLCs I’m writing, we’re going with the assumption that Ashley and Kaidan both were bisexual romance options back in the first game, and it’s an option to rekindle for both gendered Shepards.

After the interlude (however it plays out), there’s the discussion of what’s coming next for Ashley/Kaidan. They’re returning to the Alliance, of course – with Shepard’s official ties still in limbo, taking them out of the official chain, Hackett has made them a floating troubleshooter at points where he suspects Reaper involvement in some fashion, be it machine cultists and husks, Collectors, or what have you. However they feel about Shepard, Hackett is still seeming inclined to trust them on this, so they expect that the intel will still reach Shepard as they do their work. They make it clear they expect this to be the calm before the storm, and when the fight starts, they know Shepard will be on the front line. Paragons get them promising to back Shepard up when the time comes, Renegades get them hoping that they’ll still be on the same side when that happens.

Post Game Followups:

So here’s the part where, typically, I’d talk about how this impacts War Assets for ME3. But this is giving the ability to resolve the major Ashley/Kaidan element of ME3 before we even get there (like we should have in the first place...) and that means we have to deal with that. To that end, I obviously have left the door open for the lack of trust by way of Renegade Shepard, and that’ll go through things as they are, the same as if this DLC didn’t exist (I mean, it doesn’t exist anyway, but... You know what I mean!). The alternative for a Paragon completion is that there will be a distinct lessening of the tension between Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan in ME3, leading to some serious dialogue changes on Mars – more of an acceptance, instead of distrust.

I’m also thinking that, with the air cleared, there’s no moment of hesitation among them during the Citadel Coup, that it basically defaults them to trusting Shepard, regardless of how much they interact with them in Huerta and “clear the air” of Horizon. After all, Shepard already allayed their concerns with their practical involvement, gave them the chance to see them as the person they were, rather than the possibility that they were no longer the person they trusted. This changes the dynamics of their earlier interactions, and if you have rekindled the romance during the debriefing (no I’m not going to stop using that gag), then the dialogue will have more romantic undertones, the conversations more focused on matters of both them and the future together, trying to figure out if they even have a future, what with the invasion commencing, let alone where they stand with one another in that future.

I feel like I should have more done here, really, but I am really, genuinely TRYING to remain within the basic structures of the games as they are with this, because I totally could trash them and rebuild them from the start, but that’s defeating the purpose of this as additional material to the games, so that’s the most I’m offering on that. I want to do more, Ashley/Kaidan deserve a bigger and better role in ME3’s plot (which I’ll be trying to address further when we get to the ME3 hypothetical DLC, but that’s not here), but I’m trying not to totally rewrite ME3 as it is, that would probably be its own long involved project, and this is already ongoing. The original version of events can still be involved in the game proper, as the Renegade version, but that won’t be the only version any more.

Oh, and, we’re getting some war assets out of the place we discovered. That feels like an afterthought here, though. This has been about Ashley/Kaidan and their relationship with Shepard, more than anything, and we really did deserve this as much as Lair of the Shadow Broker.

 The Omega Heist

An old contact of Miranda and Jacob’s draws them – and Commander Shepard – back to Omega, where, with the merc bands decimated, an old threat they thought they’d dealt with long ago has reemerged. With Commander Shepard’s help, they must try their utmost to put this genie back in its bottle before it’s unleashed on the whole of Omega – and, potentially, the rest of the galaxy!

(Post-Horizon)

Considering Omega’s status as the dark reflection of the Citadel, the answer to it in the Terminus Systems, I just really want to explore it some more. Tie in to that, Miranda and Jacob have great prominence when they’re literally your only crewmates, but the second you start picking up the rest of the crew, they start falling off the map. Given that they’re our viewpoints into Cerberus as an organization, this feels like a mistake. Cerberus spends both the preceding and following game as enemies, and I think we need to spend some time at exploring why either of them would even fall under Cerberus and the Illusive Man’s sway.

It begins with Miranda asking to speak to Shepard. I’m gonna assume that, considering the unlock pattern of loyalty missions, this is most likely going to be played post-loyalty mission for both of them, since they’re both the first to unlock. Just to firmly establish where the characterization is going in to this. So both of them are at a point where they’re starting to question their loyalty to Cerberus (hence why I’m considering it a default that, in particular, Miranda’s loyalty has been obtained).

She’s heard from a contact on Omega about something that she wants to get Shepard involved in. The meeting moves to her office, where Jacob joins them. This concerns a mission they’d both undertaken shortly after their first mission together (see Mass Effect Galaxy, the mission Jacob talks to Shepard about having lost his faith in the Alliance over). They had an assignment to dispose of a biological sample – their assignment had been not to ‘get curious’ and investigate what it was, just get rid of it. The orders had come directly from the Illusive Man, so they were actually obeyed.

Jacob had been suspicious of the whole thing – when you’re moving something that you’re not supposed to investigate, it’s usually something that could blow up in your face. He opted for a little extra security monitoring, with Miranda agreeing and having kept track of it. That’s why this is now coming to her attention. They still don’t know what this was, but they can’t imagine that it getting let loose where any idiot could stumble across it would be a good thing.

So we’re returning to Omega. Personally, I’m disappointed that there’s no real change in Omega as ME2 carries on, even though you have to both clear out merc gangs and an active plague in the course of the game – recruiting Garrus and Mordin are mandatory quests, after all, so their joining the crew, their recruitment missions, these have to happen regardless of anything else Shepard may decide to do. So we’re getting another hub area on Omega besides Afterlife and the Gozu District market place. If Omega is the Citadel of the lawless Terminus Systems, then it can certainly fit in more of this (plus give more life to this place that, we know, will have people threatened come ME3 and the Omega DLC there).

Our central hub sector will be a safehouse established near the Kenzo District (picked because beyond existing as where Garrus had his run-in with Garm, we know nothing specific about it, so it can be used however the plot needs it to be). Under the circumstances – meaning “since we stored dangerous material on Omega without even speaking with Aria on the subject” – the idea here is stealth. Shepard, Miranda, and Jacob arrived via a transient shuttle rather than via the Normandy, and did so hopefully with some element of stealth. It’s not that Aria is going to be a threat here, just that she wouldn’t be happy learning about this going on under her nose and Cerberus is trying to cultivate some of her resources (sort of tie-in to the Cerberus takeover of Omega come ME3).

Their contact is my chance to get that female turian I mentioned a ways back into things – a turian trader who I’ll name Naevia (what, I’m a Spartacus fan and the reference makes me smile). The biological sample has fallen into the hands of a gang that’s trying to take up the space left by the biggest gangs of Omega losing their leadership (I’m thinking one of the gangs from our last edition of hypothetical DLCs, from “The Clean-Up,” because continuity!).

It’s around here that Shepard does ask the most important question on the subject that I think we’re all thinking – why the hell was this dangerous and hazardous sample kept rather than destroyed? Naevia admits she thought the same thing, but she was paid enough not to care, just to watch it. Miranda states that there was a possibility of using it for something in the future – this is a sign of her beginning to waver, because she can’t really justify the use of this sample, the fact that, though they’d been told to get rid of it, the “disposal team” had kept it, and were keeping it in a place with a population.

Granted this is a long standing tradition with dangerous science, but still, it needs to be called out.

The important thing is that it’s there, on Omega, and in particular when the station is already in the recovery process of a plague that targeted every race except humanity – there is still a lot of anti-human resentment on Omega, and the last thing that Cerberus should want is a human-spawned crisis breaking out (because no matter where the sample came from, a human organization, known to have a humans-first bent to it, was the group that stashed it here on Omega). Hence our presence.

We’re gonna have plenty of time to talk with Miranda and Jacob, so assume character conversations sprinkled here throughout (much as I cite it as reason that I don’t particularly care for their loyalty missions in comparison to others, that their loyalty missions also only have one ending, that once you start the mission, the only resolution is obtaining their loyalty, makes for a useful method of characterization trajectory here). This is here for the sake of exploring and deepening their character arcs, their division with Cerberus from the endgame, given that they’re both set against Cerberus come ME3, so we’re going with that.

We also get to spend some time with Naevia and getting a new perspective with the turians – she is a free agent, sort of like Vetra ended up being in Andromeda, in the sense that she’s a rebel to the status quo of turian military discipline. She’s looser and less rule-bound. She lives on the fringe of society and that shapes her reactions. She has no need for the turian rules of combat and prefers to take preemptive action – the rules of combat are a great idea in theory, when you have enemies who will respect them. But the Terminus is full of people who won’t. And, while she hasn’t been read into the Reaper matters, she is clearly picking up on the undercurrent between Shepard, Miranda, and Jacob.

Now if you’re assuming that this is leading to Naevia turning out to be involved in matters with this sample... Well, that’s definitely going to be a thing to follow, but let’s just keep going for now.

And yes, I have been cagey about what this sample even is. Remember, that’s because it’s a mystery even to Miranda and Jacob – they were still in a point where they were willing to listen to the Illusive Man’s orders without questioning them. The assumption was that the team they were giving it off to was a proper disposal team, and the failure of either of them to investigate it beyond his word. Y’know, the idea being they’re both starting to push themselves to look beyond the word they’re officially given by their boss and question him.

So… investigative work. We’ve already been over how in these summaries, that’s not where I focus on, not having a layout or anything to work with and such. So I’ve given the core ideas of character work and plot that plays out over the course of things, let’s cut to the climax.

The sample is being held by one of the gangs and a member of the Cerberus disposal squad. Because hey, look at that, a Cerberus agent went rogue and started killing all their guys, Commander Shepard, can you take care of that? He explains just what this sample is – a contaminant that can devastate a planetary atmosphere, hence why it was being kept on Omega, a space station. Of course, the problem with it is that it won’t discriminate and a rapid atmospheric dissolution will kill human lives as well. This is one of those things that it’s actually entirely justifiable that the Illusive Man didn’t want to use... y’know, if it weren’t for the fact that he still kept it, but...

Anyway, here’s where we come to Naevia’s sudden but inevitable betrayal, citing the profit to be earned – it’s easy enough to live on ships instead of a planet, so she’ll come out of this fine. Shepard gets the chance to shoot her with a Renegade interrupt, and look at that! She WASN’T betraying the team, just pretending to in order to slide a knife in the bad guy’s gut. It doesn’t kill him, and it still leads to a fight, but it’s easier if you don’t take the interrupt (because as much as I like the interrupt system, I think there should occasionally be consequences for taking a quick and reflexive response rather than the more considerate and thoughtful and examinative approach to a situation).

A multi-stage boss fight ensues – basic ground troops, interspersed with standard LOKI mechs, a YMIR mech joining the fight with reinforcements, and then a gunship. Maybe the gunship peels off midway and lets in another YMIR mech, just to really hammer the ‘boss fight’ element, or at the least let that be a higher level difficulty challenge. I mean you can only do so much with the mechanics of the game to create boss fights, right?

Anyway, Naevia is either dying, laughing at how her turncoat act was too effective, or she’s made it through with a few scratches and is patching them up as Miranda and Jacob are recovering the sample. Here’s the expected Paragon/Renegade choice of destroying the sample or storing it somewhere else – I can even see a reasoning for keeping in the idea of ‘once knowledge exists, it can’t just be destroyed, we need to study this to be able to devise a countermeasure.’ It’s a sucky one, for the record, but it’s a way to justify the Renegade stance.

This is where you see the culmination of Miranda and Jacob’s development. Jacob is open about wanting to correct their prior mistake of leaving this sample around to be used by anyone who might try to actually use it. No matter what, he sees no possible good coming from it and wants it destroyed. Miranda is conflicted. Her trust in the Illusive Man tells her that it would be right to hold on to this, it’s a weapon that could protect humanity if the aliens were to attack them – which is something that can’t be discounted as a possibility, considering the batarian hostility and the general aggravation of other races like the turians (see the previous Hypothetical DLC entry for more expansion on why I consider that a thing gets brought up). But she also knows that if this exists, then there’s a chance humanity can’t control it. She is looking to Shepard for guidance on this – she’s not turning to the Illusive Man’s standing orders here.

When the group returns to their safehouse, they find Aria there. Because this has been happening on Omega, and it’s her business to be fully aware of what’s happening on Omega. She thanks Shepard for disposing of that little business – if the sample was spared, she does imply that she knows about it, but, so long as it’s leaving Omega, she’s not going to be concerned about it. After all, she only cares about Omega’s interests. But, as a reward for what Shepard’s done for Omega, from the plague to Archangel to this (plus, potentially, dealing with Morinth, given that was the presence of an Ardat-Yakshi on Omega), she is offering a reward for Shepard – a penthouse suite.

Yes, I’m letting Shepard get an Omega apartment. I mean, okay, having one right before the Cerberus takeover of Omega come ME3 is not exactly the most prime real estate, but hey, Shepard deserves a place to relax, right? Plus it also comes with access to a special Omega market, a place where Shepard will be able to purchase any weapons or upgrades they might have been missed in the course of their missions (and any that get added through the DLC, including these). Because really, we should be able to have access to those things somehow, as in the game as is, if you miss it, it’s gone forever.

Anyway, Miranda and Jacob will also have follow up conversations when they return to the Normandy, discuss the way that things have played out and how they’ve evolved as people in the course of the game. Because as I said at the start, the two of them, in terms of their character development, kinda falls off the map in the course of the second half of the game. So they get a little additional content that helps fit them into the big picture of their character arcs.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: If Naevia survived, she’s an available war asset in regards to her underworld connections and such to send help Shepard’s way. If it’s kept intact, the sample also has some benefit for Alliance scientists in the study of reversing its effects and how to restore ravaged worlds. Also some additional content in the Omega DLC, though I’m not sure about the details of that right now.

And, y’know, since Naevia’s existence means that we have a female turian model built and developed circa ME2, this SHOULD mean that there are female turians scattered throughout both further DLC (as in ‘assume their existence in further installments, even if it goes unsaid’) and (because now they’d “exist” prior to the release of ME3) there would be numerous turian females in ME3 as assorted extras and such. Should go without saying, but I’m saying it. There will still be a few important female turian NPCs I introduce in further installments, but these are now part the standard background NPC collection.

 Battle Scars

Alliance officers on shore leave have been disappearing from the Citadel with no trace. Ambassador Anderson suspects there’s more to this than the standard dangers of a space station that’s practically its own world. Though Shepard is in a questionable position among the Council, they’re the one person Anderson can trust to solve this.

(Post-Horizon)

The Citadel being so limited a space in ME2 always bothered me. Y’know, I get the thematic idea, that ME2 was about exploring the darker underside of the galaxy at large. But I liked the Citadel. There was a lot about it to explore, all things considered – we’re talking about the galactic hub of politics and commerce. This really should be a major location, no matter the game. And as I’ve said elsewhere, there could be a whole game set on the Citadel with room for more. So yeah, we’re doing this here, exploring an area of the Citadel that we never got to see before.

There are Alliance officers going missing and Anderson gets Shepard involved. Obviously, the synopsis covered that bit. The idea here is that we’re going into areas of the Citadel that normally, Shepard has no business in, and in areas that are more like vacation areas. You know what this means? It means we’re going to have non-combat segments, in the same vein as Kasumi’s mission. There’s gonna be an extended sequence of Shepard out of combat armor in this one, because Shepard is not being called on to be a soldier but to infiltrate and be seen as a civilian more than a combat fighter. (I’m thinking this is going to involve a new casual outfit as well.)

And we’re gonna say that this is happening at an exclusive resort, meant to be a location that’s relaxing – a resort on the Citadel, effectively. It’s primarily a place for Citadel-aligned soldiers (Alliance and other races) to recover after combat, a therapeutic place for soldiers to get treatment for their PTSD (think a place where they’d probably have sent the PTSD asari in ME3 to if there wasn’t an existential war on). It’s why it’s a popular place for these Alliance soldiers to be, and we’re also going to rate it as having the highest success rate as a psychological and therapeutic facility in the known galaxy (because, being on the Citadel, why wouldn’t a place like this have a reputation of being the best, given how the Citadel is effectively the metaphorical center of the galaxy) and it’s a bit of a mixing bowl of Citadel culture, which allows for the rest of the party to come along.

I’m going to stick with mandatory companions here for a handful of reasons – one, Shepard’s got an eclectic band, and I feel like if they walk around a Citadel resort with Grunt and Legion, for example, that’s probably going to blow their cover. For two, I like the idea of mandating some pairings and developing the relationships more. Last entry was about Miranda and Jacob. Here, I’m thinking... For a resort, I honestly lean towards Samara and Kasumi, characters who, respectively, can blend in with “high society” and can pass through unseen by others. Kasumi, of course, does her cloaking to accompany Shepard – she does prefer going unseen. Samara, though, is playing at being a Matriarch – given the setting, let’s say that she’s pretending to be looking for a facility for her rambunctious daughter who is ‘disgracing’ the family name – sort of playing on her own history with Morinth (because Samara’s method that way), while still being a role she plays.

Yes, I’m aware that Kasumi is a DLC character, not everyone necessarily has her, but hey. If you’re playing DLC in the first place, you’ve probably collected other DLC, particularly a new companion, we’re just gonna roll with it, because I’m not going to develop an alternative without her, so consider them connected – I don’t know, say they got packaged in a sale together or something. This is all hypothetical in the first place, remember, does it REALLY matter that she’s not in the base game?

Shepard, of course, is going in as what they’re looking for, an Alliance officer looking for leave. This way there can be a solo segment, and the tension of “will Shepard run into trouble they can’t handle on their own before their companions come to their rescue?” Obviously, there does have to be some addressing of Shepard’s fame and notoriety, but it’s not like Shepard’s not doing other things that are putting their famous mug in places they shouldn’t be, particularly when it comes to involving Kasumi (The Hock heist, anyone? How, exactly, was the most famous human in the galaxy supposed to keep a low profile there?). So we’re just gonna handwave that, like you do.

As always when these are investigative sequences, I’m just gonna gloss over that part for the sake of convenience – the basic facts are that we have a lot of suspects with no clear motive at the outset of things. You know, get your basic archetypes wandering around – look at any show that features a recovery center, you’ll find them, I’m not gonna go into detail on the incidental characters.

The trick is that Shepard is going to be doing their initial investigating solo – they have to get entrenched before their companions show up (given that Samara’s cover is going to have her supposedly only there to look the place over, rather than sign herself in as needing “treatment” and Kasumi is going to be cloaked, searching for the things that Shepard can’t get access to – yes, for the record, I’m setting up for a Big Damn Heroes moment, I would think that would be obvious). They’ll meet with the above mentioned archetypes, learning details.

The details are more for the flavor – how well does Shepard figure out the scheme (which I’m getting to) before the villain shows up to explain in a monologue? Because, y’know, what villain doesn’t love explaining their nefarious deeds with a monologue? Shepard figuring out more and more of the plot before they confront the bad guy will impact the way the end fight goes down – figure it all out, you can sidestep the big final confrontation, figure most of it out, the fight’s significantly easier, stick to the bare minimum, it’s the hardest it can be.

This of course gets Shepard caught by our villain of the piece. So, what’s going on? Well, it’s an attempt by one of the doctors at this facility at cooking up the same shady shit Cerberus has, in the form of cyborg soldiers – the soldiers who have been kidnapped have been converted into these cybernetically enhanced soldiers. Problem is, they’re mindless automatons – higher brain functions didn’t survive the implantation process. So while these six million credit men are superior soldiers for combat, able to shrug off the kind of injuries that would cripple any other organic soldier, probably even have like nano-tech that speeds up any kind of healing and recovery process, they’re ONLY for combat, there is no human mind, no individual still alive in these shells – they’ll do as ordered because of the computer control chips in their heads, but only because those chips fire off the impulses needed.

“No glands, replaced by tech. No digestive system, replaced by tech. No soul. Replaced by tech. Whatever they were, gone forever.”

This is a point that I wanted to bring up in Miranda’s chat about “disposable soldiers” – the concept of soldiers being disposable is the kind of thought that cleans up war, something that the very idea is MEANT to be “dirty.” When you have these disposable soldiers, something that replaces the flesh and blood troops, you’re now in a position where going to war is not a difficult choice – you’re not sacrificing anything in the fight, because your best and brightest are safely out of the line of fire. When you don’t fear war, you’re going to turn to it as the first option, not the last. And, as pointed out by the use of Mordin’s quote above, at some point, your “disposable soldiers” become exactly what the Collectors are, mindless automatons who perform the duties of their masters, and, because of that distance, their masters’ own humanity erodes, because they never have to get their own hands dirty, while their servants are incapable of arguing with the orders.

This is when we get the aforementioned Big Damn Heroes moment, where Samara and Kasumi rejoin the party – since I’m assuming Shepard is being restrained at the moment, we have Kasumi Overload the controls and get them loose while Samara covers her by biotically handling the guards (because there are always guards).

So we get to that ending of how the boss fight can go down – Shepard gets to argue about the whole “disposable soldier” thing, bringing up and expanding on the above argument. If they uncovered all the details of the plot prior to the point they’re found out and taken captive, they can talk the doctor out of the inevitable fight (they still can choose to fight, of course, but the option is there to avoid a fight altogether) and have them shut down the project, effectively take their “prototypes” of these cyborg soldiers off life support and let them all die out (because, again, it’s the cybernetics that are even keeping them alive at this point), they can try and fail because of a lack of information, or they can actually agree with the idea, just that this doctor isn’t the one to be controlling them – it’s a valid choice, after all, to have a viable standing army to face the Reapers with.

I did debate making that last an option, just because I am morally opposed to the idea, but I am trying to respect that the Paragon/Renegade division was meant to be more than “goody-two-shoes versus puppy-kicking-monster,” and approach it from a level of “win with morals versus ends justify the means” – if you’re looking for something that can face the Reapers, like Shepard is aiming for throughout the trilogy, then a pragmatic approach says “we can use this resource, and I’ll deal with the moral weight of it later.”

Thinking about it, this does kinda make a flaw of the Kasumi-Samara team, because I do struggle with seeing how they’d just casually go along with Shepard saying “zombie cyborg army? Sign me up!” But maybe the Justicar code says that, regardless of origin, their existence has purpose and use, while Kasumi is horrified at the idea of using – and defiling – the dead like this. Basically, I want there to be a shoulder angel-devil scenario here, but I may not have selected the right companion pairing for this. Still, I’m not going back and rewriting this to make that work, so we’re just going to acknowledge that and move on – they’re both on the team, and there are other Renegade choices Shepard has available that they both just accept, so we’ll accept that.

And, y’know, I have a personal preference for Paragon at these decision points, and would probably stick to choosing to wipe out the zombie cyborg soldiers myself, and these are my ideas so I roll with what works for my decision making process, so nyah.

This still leads to the question of what, exactly, should be done with this facility – this is the head of the place we’re talking about as being responsible, with them out of commission (either being killed by Shepard or taken into C-Sec custody, depending on your choice), it’s entirely possible the place will be shuttered, or at least in chaos for a time, and that means all of its current residents are going to be kicked out – this is one of those “well intentions doesn’t change negative results” scenarios. Of course, Anderson will try to step in and do something, but... He can only do so much. Especially with having to clear out the devices and secret lab material and such, there’s a lot in this that just... is not going to have this place in a condition to be what it’s meant to be. Especially if things turned into a fight with the doctor and trashed the place.

Shepard themselves can only do so much – they can make a recommendation, but ultimately, there will be a board decision. They can offer a suggestion, a way for the staff to try and focus going forward, but it’s going to mean downsizing their care in some fashion – either they focus only on the immediately at-risk patients, going in the way of ‘if you’re not an active threat to yourself or others, you have to find somewhere else to seek treatment,’ or they limit themselves to just the care of a single species, because the psychological experts for multiple species is a resource drain.

And this one is NOT a Paragon/Renegade choice. It’s player’s best take on the subject, because there is no “right” choice in this scenario. Either way, someone is getting screwed over. You can hope sending the not at-risk patients won’t exacerbate their conditions, but you can’t be sure of that – especially when it comes to people who have been there for some time, PTSD and other conditions won’t just go away, they need to be managed and treated, and if you go from one facility and one medical professional to another, that can throw off your recovery. And you can specialize in the treatment and wellness of a single species, but what about the members of the other species? What about the “melting pot” nature of the Citadel and how, realistically, reinforcing those barriers between species only makes it harder for these species to get along with one another?

It’s a “no good choice” scenario, and I think it’s worth a discussion with Anderson at the end (rather than back on the Normandy with all the companions, just because I don’t think the game can really account for everyone there having an opinion). Though let’s also give a follow-up conversation with Kelly – y’know, the therapist – and let her have more to do in this game.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: If the doctor was taken in to custody, they’re among the Cerberus scientists during the mission on Gellix – Mister Illusive stepped in to get their work under his banner, and, like Gavin Archer, Shepard’s involvement eventually made them hesitate to do his bidding. If the cyborgs were kept on, they’re a decent strength war asset.

 The Batarian Connection

A Cerberus vessel goes missing out near the batarian border. While the Collectors are still the first priority for Commander Shepard and company, the Illusive Man is concerned this may be the first stage of a batarian incursion of Alliance space. He tasks Shepard and company with recovering the missing ship. The batarians, however, have other ideas...

(Post-Horizon)

We hear a lot of talk about the batarians making slave grabs throughout the first two games, and the Colonist background has this as a part of the things Shepard has been through. But we don’t actually see it. And we probably can’t manage to see the absolute worst horrors of the batarian slavers, but that’s not the full point of this.

No, the point is to start showing another face to the batarians. See, we’re going in with the idea of the batarians slavers we’re after handing off the captives they take – of various races, though krogan and turian are not likely, given their own, more aggressive nature (maybe useful in gladiatorial rings... We might be coming back to that before these DLC are done), and the quarians aren’t going to be as numerous, that still leaves humans, asari, salarians, and other batarians. And we know from Mass Effect 3, having the Cannibals being introduced in the first segment of the game, the Reapers have access to a lot of batarian genetic material, so they’ve already spent a lot of time developing how they intend to repurpose the batarians into the servants they need to wage war in this cycle.

Codex material speaks of how the Collectors want certain specific types of people to collect, and that is going to be what’s happening here – while the Collectors main focus in the game is to gather up humans to turn into Reaper slurry, we’re also looking at the other races, because there’s a history of the other races being taken by the Collectors for various unknown reasons. It wasn’t clear if there would have been an intent to build additional Reapers out of the other races – an asari Reaper, a turian Reaper, etc. - or if they’d just be left to rot, possibly slurried alongside the humans and just put in the same shell. To build off the idea of “organic preservation” of the species who consist of a cycle, I’m going to assume that they would be fused into a Reaper of their own, though there’s room to argue they were going to just be pulped into the same Reaper or left as the Collectors of the next cycle. But my ideas, my interpretation of things. And if BioWare wants to fight my interpretation, hey, should have included it in the game.

So yeah, the batarian slavers we’re coming across were going to offer the Collectors more of those captives of various races and such. The idea here is to not just have a look at the horrors of batarian slavery, but also an upfront acknowledgment that the batarians do this to their own people as well. The crappy situation for your average batarian is reduced to codex and one-liners, so we don’t actually have this knowledge available for the common players, and this is a thing that needs correcting.

We’re also going to have an encounter with a different Collector ship (just to avoid too much of the whole “small universe syndrome” of the same ship dogging Shepard for two years – it wasn’t until ME3 and James’s backstory that I got the impression that the Collectors had more than the one ship, since they made this one ship out to be this major force). Because, really, if the Collectors taking colonies was something of a plan B when the Citadel didn’t open, then they should be readying themselves for more than just humanity to be taken.

Among the batarians is a sense of distrust – batarian propaganda says the galaxy hates them, and, because we get the slavers and mercs running around in the games, the audience is probably not inclined to disprove that theory (particularly if there’s a Colonist Shepard doing the run – because I say so, there can be plenty of statements from them on the subject that fit the background specifically, because it’s nice that these are all theoretical and I can throw in whatever I like). Still, the general idea is that Shepard does feel a moral responsibility to save them, even if, as in the case of Renegade Shepard, it’s just in the name of preventing the Collectors get their claws on them.

But, thing is, ME2 offers no ship piloting mechanic, and I’m not bringing that in. And, y’know, I still get war flashbacks of getting ambushed by Sith fighters in KOTOR. So that means that the Normandy heads off, Shepard ordering them to find help (we’re gonna say that this is taking place somewhere near the batarian-turian border, so the Normandy can go find a few turian ships – going back to my idea of “shaking up companions” concept, I don’t have any particular choices to go with Shepard this time, but this makes it almost mandatory for a companion other than Garrus to come along, since Garrus can sway the turians to come to the rescue of alien nationals – and this ship ends up crashing, with Shepard and companions still on board – as are the freed slaves.

And we’re not crashing on a habitable planet. Because while there’s the helmets and all, I feel sometimes like the franchise as a whole underplays how much the atmosphere of planets being conducive to life as we know it is kind of rare. So while the cargo hold, settled in the heart of the ship and surrounded by the various additional decks of the ship, makes it through, there are portions of the ship that have been vented into space.

And the Collectors are coming.

Shepard gets to make a Paragon/Renegade “inspiration” speech to the captives, recommending that they get to trying to save themselves. Paragon will get a majority on their side, Renegade only a particularly brave soul. This one would be the Paragon’s contact/coordinator, just so that I can have a clearly identifiable person to turn to. And, yeah, we’re punishing Renegades here, but here’s the thing about this – we have stolen people, taken prisoner, made into slaves, about to be handed off to aliens who are only known to the galaxy as kidnapping and experimenting on people who never return, and then crashed on a deadly planet, with their only shelter pocked with holes letting out the valuable atmosphere that keeps them alive. I’m sorry, but being an asshole to these traumatized people? Even in the name of saving their asses from said kidnapping and experimenting aliens, they are NOT going to be ready to take up arms and fight. Read the room.

So, it becomes a game of causing enough losses to the Collectors for them to retreat for the Normandy to arrive with rescue vessels. Cat and mouse combat, with interspersed dialogue with our batarian coordinator (Making a name up on the spot... Kahvahr). That’s giving the expansion on both him as a character, talking about himself – a political exile, he spoke out against the Hegemony’s attitudes and practices, that they are so isolationistic that the necessary trade with the Citadel races, trade that could reduce their reliance on slavery, is killing them, which led to him attempting to leave, an attempt that ended up putting him into the hands of the slavers he argued against, and he’s certain that the Hegemony’s leaders basically gave him up. Talk about the beauty of Khar’shan, as a planet and place, something more tangible for us the audience of this place that we never get to go – he speaks longingly of these natural wonders he doesn’t expect he’ll ever see again.

The aid of the batarians Kahvahr leads can offer some combat segments getting avoided, but I do want to include some elements of the Collector faction from ME3 in combat segments all the same, the Collector Captain in specific. Because these things never appeared in ME2, so let’s remedy that.

And our end boss is going to be some variant of the Collector drones we see in Paragon Lost, which are these giant sized Collectors. So they get some additional tricks and are a clear case that Shepard is now facing the worst forces the Collectors can throw at them. Because I figure you can give them some interesting additional boss tricks.

The turians arrive and the Collectors withdraw, so Shepard gets to pass on what to do with these batarians – treat them as refugees who are seeking asylum in Citadel space or ship them back to batarian space. Because the thing is... batarians in Citadel space are probably not going to have things pretty well. Like there’s a reason we see batarians on Omega but not the Citadel. And a lot of these batarians still have families in the Hegemony. So there’s a very real argument to the idea that they’d be better off going back. It’s probably bull, considering the Hegemony’s leadership (and definitely bull on the basis of the Reapers being about to steamroll the batarians in between games), but... It can be made.

And it also speaks to how well Shepard is responding to Kahvahr – Kahvahr makes it clear, batarian slaves tend to be those who speak out. How much good can they really do going back to the Hegemony? Sure, you can argue that it’s in the name of encouraging rebellion against the Hegemony’s leadership, but realistically? It’s signing a death warrant – if this attempt at silencing him didn’t work, the Hegemony will likely just go straight to killing him.

And maybe Shepard’s okay with that – the whole reason we’re doing this is because the portrayal of batarians through the rest of the series is almost exclusively them as an always chaotic evil antagonistic force. What do they contribute to the galaxy, right? But this whole thing has been to help paint the batarians in a new light – now, shipping these batarians back to their people isn’t a mercy but a death sentence. What can I say, I like that script-flipping. But, as always, it is a choice for Shepard, for the players. Because apparently, people who play these games like the chance to play the asshole. Fine, you can, but you’re definitely getting judged for it.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: If given asylum, a batarian militia will have formed, both the survivors of the crash and of batarian refugees, wanting to aid the Citadel forces, Kahvahr himself as an asset.

 Shadow Dance

Shepard’s connections to Cerberus have not gone unnoticed. A Spectre – Vexx Liranus – has decided that they are a key component to Cerberus plans (not untrue) and that their capture or death would be useful in combatting Cerberus (definitely untrue). With a fellow Spectre nipping at their heels, Shepard has to face what should be a comrade in arms in a deadly game of cat and mouse!

(Post-Horizon)

We meet three other Spectres in the trilogy, and only one of them, Jondum Bau, in ME3, is actually an ally. This is turning that on its head – all things considered, Vexx Liranus should be an ally. After all, we’re talking about a fellow Spectre, working for the Council, and Cerberus IS using Shepard for their plans, so taking Shepard out would make sense.

It’s just Shepard is a good guy, working with Cerberus as more an alliance of necessity, rather than any ideological alignment. And while I’m sure if you had a chance to sit down and talk to another Spectre, they’d probably eventually come around to the idea, well... Where’s the fun in that.

So Vexx. We had Naevia above in “The Omega Heist” as our “first” female turian for the trilogy, though she does potentially get killed. So we’re gonna have another female turian here, just to really sell the “no fridging female turians” concept. She is a badass turian soldier, like I want a planet with an “r” name to say she had a major incident on so that she can be “the Raptor of [wherever].” Because I love alliteration. I picture her being voiced by Claudia Christian (who was a favorite of mine to voice a female turian back before we knew anything about Mass Effect Andromeda, and while I’m absolutely a fan of Danielle Rayne’s performance as Vetra, I still regret that lack, so I’m making this happen here).

As for the actual plot, we’re gonna start on a small waystation location. It’s a standard resupply place, in the vein of like those Fuel Depots or something, a place like the Citadel but smaller. Because I think that space stations are an underdeveloped aspect of the Mass Effect universe. Like in Star Trek, there are Starbases and Deep Space Stations (such as DS9). Surely the various militaries of the Citadel races are doing the same, building their own stations that act as refuel and resupply, as well as standard rest and relaxation – Spacer Shepard will talk about living on ships, but I don’t see a child actually being raised on military vessels. But a space station that acts as a rallying point and home base for a vessel? That I’ll buy.

So this begins with the Normandy pulling in to one of these types of stations. You know, a little bit of a supply run, something simple. Things do not go according to plan, though, because, y’know, why would they, we wouldn’t have a plot if they did.

It begins simply. They settle in for a resupply, Miranda suggesting that the operational crew get a chance for some break time, Kelly adding that crew like Rolston and Hadley should have an opportunity to contact their families. That’s how we get here. As Shepard proceeds to look through the market, we get other angles of Vexx monitoring and observing Shepard. Shepard will begin to get that feeling of being watched, and that’s when she makes her first strike.

Now, yeah, I say right off in the synopsis that Vexx is a Spectre, but in the story proper? This is going to be kept quiet for a while. Sorta like how Vasir gets this intro that kinda clearly marks her as someone who we’re going to have to fight later, Vexx is getting the appearance of being a straight up antagonist. Because in her mind, she IS an antagonist to Shepard. She just believes that she’s the protagonist of the story, specifically because of Shepard’s ties to Cerberus, coming to this place in a vessel flying Cerberus colors, operating with a Cerberus crew. In her mind, she has discovered a threat to the Citadel and the Council.

While I’m still on the “give the companions more of a role” train, in this case, we’re going to see Shepard cut off from the crew – they come under fire from Vexx, they give the command to evacuate the station, return to the Normandy, and get out until they give the signal. Paragon Shepard wants to minimize casualties, Renegade Shepard wants to handle this themselves – Vexx interrupts their leave? It’s on now.

This leads to a chase through the station, and finding that she’s gotten things pretty well set up for this chase – I figure at some point, Shepard comes across like a secured bunker she’d been using as a command base, finds logs that have been tracking them since they landed on Omega at the start of the game. (Timeline being what it is, meaning as variable as it is, I’m gonna say that this is taking place functionally around, say, the Collector ship mission.)

That discovery is also when her Spectre status is made clear. Now, while there’s a good chance that Shepard’s had their Spectre status reinstated (thank you Dad!miral Anderson), well, we still need a plot here. Vexx doesn’t believe Shepard’s claim to have Council approval – after all, she certainly can’t just casually check this out while on a mission, Spectres are supposed to function independently of the Council. And she’s pretty good with the “better beg forgiveness than to ask permission” approach – Shepard helping Cerberus, even as a double agent, is a threat (for a less competent example of why, see how Shepard helping Cerberus in ME2 leads to Conrad Verner preaching Cerberus values in ME3).

The hunt continues. I’m basically picturing this functionally working a lot like a lower-levelled version of Arrival’s Project Base level, just with like security drones and such, and Vexx popping in and out of combat range. This is a hunting mission, on both sides, and the idea is that Shepard (and, by extension, the player) should feel like Vexx or her drones might show up around any corner. If nothing else, call it useful practice and experience.

Now, I said before I wanted to avoid stuffing our first female turian in the fridge. While Naevia could survive, she also could die. So I want to guarantee that at least one female turian of prominence is introduced without killing her off. That means that we’re going to have to find a peaceful resolution, as well as an alternative that allows the bloodthirsty playerbase to be satisfied.

That means an outside agent, a third party, getting in on this. I’m thinking a krogan merc with a grudge and a krantt and a blood oath against Vexx he’s more than willing to extend to Shepard, the Spectres, and the Council – with Vexx, it’s personal, having tangled with her before, with Shepard, they’re in the way, and with the Spectres, they work for the Council, and the Council gave the go-ahead on the genophage, so hey, it’s a good day to be him.

This eventually leads to, after some three-way combat, Shepard suggesting a truce for the time being – the krogan (Vargan, for want of a name) is a bigger threat to them both at the moment, since he’s distracting them and endangering the station as a whole. Vexx sees the wisdom in this and is willing to work with Shepard.

This gives a little more time to explore her, now that Shepard can talk to her. Vargan’s grudge stems from her disbanding his merc pack a while pack – they had ideas similar to the Blood Pack and Clan Weyrloc (re: Mordin’s loyalty mission), just without the aid of any salarian scientists. Maybe they’d sought out Okeer (possibly part of the reason that Okeer became a “very hated name,” as Wrex puts it? I don’t know, I’m spitballing here). Whatever the goal, however, she managed to put a stop to it, enough that Vargan was stripped of his clan name – given the structure of krogan society, I figure that in doing that, a krogan loses all right to even attempt to mate with the females, a big blow to a proud krogan leader, basically leading him to a voluntary exile from Tuchanka. That he still has a krantt after that still speaks to his skill and prowess, but also makes it clear that these are his only allies in the galaxy.

Shoot-y shoot-y stuff happens, yadda yadda... We’ve been over how writing about combat in these write-ups is boring. End result, we learn more about Vexx, develop and establish her further, give her this likeable air now that we’re on the same side, and get to Vargan, taking out his krantt in the process. Now that he’s alone, he is ready to die. He got everyone loyal to him killed, that means he’ll never regain a clan name now. He wants to die.

Typically, Paragon/Renegade decisions are a clear binary of “good means letting people live, bad means letting people die!” But here, Paragon is understanding the krogan mindset – he wants to die because he will never have a place in krogan society if he lives. He got his krantt killed, so he will never be able to gather a krantt again. He will never have that trust again, and so his death is the only way he can have an honorable ending. Meanwhile, Renegade is saying “no, I’m not going to grant you the mercy of death, live with your failure.” And doing that will likely mean he will strike out and go on some kind of suicide run (indeed, I picture that result being a news announcement overheard on the galactic news points).

Because I like the idea of twisting the Paragon/Renegade assumptions around – the idea behind it is supposed to be more nuanced than “good = blue, bad = red,” but in context, a lot of the use of the system through most of the series is a lot more binary. So this is showing the flip side of both ideas’ general attitudes – you are saving more lives and respecting his attitudes and beliefs by killing him, while knowingly leaving a threat to others that you KNOW he’ll act on by keeping him alive.

Vargan defeated, it comes back to Shepard and Vexx. She’s more impressed by Shepard at this point. Paragon Shepard showed an understanding of non-human mindsets, and that more than anything makes her hesitate to paint them with the same brush as Cerberus. Renegade Shepard showed enough martial skill that she’s concerned that things will only reach the point of a stalemate, and likely do too much damage to the station for it to continue operation.

So she offers Shepard what she’s going to call a deal – keep to the Terminus Systems, like they have been, and she’ll let things stand as they are, with the added note that, if their Council reinstatement is genuine, she’ll also send a letter with a fuller apology after the DLC concludes. Yeah, it’s basically going back to the status quo, but one, I’ve been clear that my goal is to make these slot in comfortably with the existing game, and two, back to the in-universe justifications, it also means that she can prevent other Spectres from coming after Shepard – after all, we learned with Saren, the only real way to respond to a Spectre going rogue is to send another Spectre after them. If Vexx is in Shepard’s corner, it prevents other Spectres from coming after them later.

Probably should lead to a line or two in reference to Vexx from Tela Vasir, depending on when Lair of the Shadow Broker is played – alternatively, I suppose Vexx should have some comments about Vasir’s death as well, but I did say above that I see this functionally being roughly around the point of the Collector Ship in the timeline, and I always view Lair of the Shadow Broker as taking place after the Suicide Mission, and my write-ups, my timeline. Moving on.

Shepard has to agree to this, because see above: not fridging female turians when the trilogy is so bereft of them in the first place. We don’t kill Vexx. Because, really, that would mean that Shepard would have killed three of the four fellow Spectres they encounter in the course of the trilogy, and their numbers are said to only go to about a hundred or so. That’s a three percent fatality rate for the Spectres, and a seventy-five percent fatality rate of meeting Shepard. Someone has to think those numbers look bad. So, in accepting the deal, Vexx walks away and Shepard calls the Normandy for a pick up.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: Vexx has a sidequest on the post-Coup Citadel, regarding her work with the unifying of turian and krogan forces. Given Shepard having contributed, she’s asking them to join in her efforts. Complete that and she gets to be an asset and there’s a boost for both of those groups as well.

 Underworld

Illium is home to many elite in the galaxy. It’s called the gateway to the Terminus Systems. But it’s equally a warning that there is as much danger in Illium’s shadows as on Omega. And now a high-profile Alliance official goes missing there. Ambassador Anderson asks Shepard to investigate as he keeps the disappearance quiet, and Shepard gets drawn into a web of conspiracy...

(Post-Horizon)

Illium seems like it should be a bigger deal, don’t you think? I mean, in ME2 we get three hub worlds in Omega, the Citadel, and Illium, but Illium is introduced after Horizon, being locked to (on console) disc two, and, while Lair of the Shadow Broker gave us more of Illium in general... Hey. Let’s explore more. Cuz now we can open up some new areas that can stick around and still be explorable after the DLC ends.

We open with a message from Anderson – “one of our people went missing out on Illium, I’d like you to look into this as a favor to me,” that sort of thing. This official is an ambassadorial figure from the Alliance to the asari (so, for the sake of a name, I’m in a Power Rangers mood right now, I’m gonna call her Kimberly Hart). She’s been attempting to shore up some diplomatic ties – I’d figure this would include matters like getting stronger ties between the asari in the name of gaining access to teachers for Grissom Academy, better relations in the name of biotic rights, that sort of thing.

Illium, being a free trade world, is a place where these kinds of negotiations take place without government oversight – I figure, based on things like the asari on Noveria in ME1 who wants to protect asari patents by getting Shepard to help her engage in corporate espionage, the asari government is extremely strict about their “secrets” while humans, who are still struggling to get a handle on what to do with first and second gen biotics, are willing to take on free agents more than like the commandos and such. Also, don’t want a repeat of Vyrnnus, so the turians are definitely out. It’s “asari free agents” who they’re looking at bringing on for this.

But with her having gone missing, that’s concerning – again, we have the asari being fiercely protective of what they view as their copyrights (which I do want to have a running theme here surrounding the idea “how do you copyright something that has this melding with the life it is bonded to?” ��� amps working as they do, mapped to biological systems as they are, this seems like it borders on trying to patent people in the process, since they’ll gain full maps of the people those amps are implanted in). Anderson wants Shepard to go in, since they’re off the official books.

Now we return to that earlier concept of mandatory companions. Because of the matter of biotics, this feels like a mission that Jack pushes her way in to – both because she’s been the subject of biotic experimentation, and she wants to ensure that this doesn’t turn in to the Teltin facility all over again, and to help give some foreshadowing for her becoming one of Grissom Academy’s teachers next game. Additionally, I’ll go with Thane as the other companion for this – he’s done work in Illium’s criminal underworld.

Now then, to our central hub of Illium. We’re on a different city than Nos Astra, but it’s going to have a similar flavor to it, in the same way that Azure still felt like it wasn’t all that out of place alongside the trading center. Nos Vidia, I’ll call it (sounds suitably asari, anyway). It’s not as major a hub of intergalactic trade and commerce, meaning that Shepard and company are going to stand out in the crowd.

This is also one of the more “crime” areas, where the black market has moved in. We have Eclipse symbols on the wall and, while they’re not wearing the uniform, many of the people around here are obviously in the gang. Which also makes Shepard stand out. Thane, however, manages to bring up a former contact, someone who has been able to stay alive this long, meaning they’re skilled enough that they’ve survived.

The contact is an asari I’m gonna call Kassria. Kassria has picked up some Eclipse chatter that references our missing ambassador. That means Eclipse has her, but it’s not clear so much if her being taken is because of her getting in the way of Eclipse as a gang or if the Eclipse are working for some asari company.

We pause for some talk about the various asari copyrights, explore that conversation, with Jack having quite a few words on the subject of trying to make people property. That kind of thinking creates situations that create the same kind of science as Teltin. Thane offers something of the drell perspective – he’s the one who argues that he was raised and trained as a weapon for the hanar, and that he was not responsible for the lives he took. Who owns the abilities, the user or the one calling for their use? (I mean, there’s an obvious answer, but Thane’s bringing up the alternative to this – the people who are broken down and made into weapons at the hands of others.)

Like actually, let’s make that aside a point of having Jack and Thane – in Jack’s eyes, Thane’s attitude towards the people he’s killed is much how Cerberus would have wanted her to have ended up, as a weapon for them to point, pull the trigger, and give no concern for the ways that it impacts the person who acts because of that order.

It’s the same argument that we have with Miranda – the idea of “disposable troops” does not make it a matter of saving lives, just a matter of how war becomes easier, having these weapons to unleash upon others with no risk to the people who are supposedly being protected by them. It’s a way of absolving yourself for creating slaves by giving them some higher purpose.

This really is going to be a turning point with Jack’s arc proper, with how it leads to her being a teacher, because she wants to protect the young biotics. It’s not just about her protecting the kids at the Ascension Project from ending up tortured like the kidnapped victims at the Teltin facility. It’s also about reclaiming and maintaining personhood.

And while it’s hard for me to really give the separation theory Thane speaks of (we ARE going to come back to issues of the drell in general a few DLCs from here, so consider this to be foreshadowing and set up for that bit), I’m going to try and offer his point of view – that of “if you hone someone to only be a weapon, to only look at the world from that perspective, is it really on them as an individual that they proceed to see the world from that viewpoint?”

Of course, yes, I’m aware that the inherent flaw of ALL of this is that we’re not talking about drell youths giving themselves up to the hanar in the fulfillment of the Compact or with “different brain structures” to humans. It’s the tangent that they end up on because they’re along for the ride, and Shepard eventually has to get them back on track – finding Ambassador Hart. Whether or not the asari corporations are intending to use people as weapons, the Eclipse sisters presently have her held captive, and this means staging a rescue operation.

I want to take this chance to get a better idea of Eclipse’s organization (which, by extension, showcases the ideas that are moving the other merc gangs in the series). Like, what goals do they really have – Blood Pack are basically chaotic berserkers who want the world to burn (which, fitting, considering the general krogan mindset following the genophage and the vorcha having a complete lack of survival instincts because they never needed to evolve them), while Blue Suns have the veneer of respectability, acting as private security. But when we meet Jona Sedaris in ME3, she’s a raving psychopath, ready to kill anyone in her way. So what does the Eclipse gang want? I mean, besides the obvious of money.

Kassria is a former Eclipse sister, so she offers this insight – Eclipse doesn’t even really know itself. The non-asari members are almost leaning towards biotic extremism, given how the other races tend to mistreat and look down on the biotics among them, which makes them angry and want to lash out at those who’ve hurt them. Meanwhile, the asari who join in are often driven by other motivations, given that all asari have biotics – some are outcasts (purebloods, in pureblood relationships, or people with the Ardat-Yakshi mutation – let’s just assume Samara will have shared about her loyalty mission by the time this mission is unlocked so we don’t have to have the characters explain this to Shepard), others are maidens looking for glory (think Elnora the mercenary from Samara’s recruitment mission), some are obsessed with killing (like Sedaris), and some are just looking for a purpose.

She suggests that, if given something better, Eclipse might be a valuable asset for Shepard – not just in biotics, but also in their mechs. It’d be something to use when the Reapers come calling, not that she knows about the Reapers, just that she can figure that whatever Shepard’s up to, they’ll want an army at their back (because we’re still ME2 here, so this means we don’t know that Aria will be assembling the merc gangs under her banner).

This leads to an assault on the Eclipse base and trying to reach Hart before anyone proceeds to try and kill her or worse. As we continue, we find out that there is a high-ranking Eclipse member among this group – Jona Sedaris.

Yes, that’s right, we’re going to be responsible for her getting locked up come ME3. Obviously, this does mean she’ll survive the inevitable conflict and boss battle, but hey, we’re gonna have other things to deal with in the final analysis, so hold all questions to the end.

The Eclipse sisters and the techs with their mechs are heavy throughout the place, but eventually, we reach the place they’re holding Hart. She’s been roughed up a bit, but she’s alive. She’d made contact with an asari firm who’d claimed to be willing to trade some “asari patents” in the name of cross-cultural cooperation, but Hart got suspicious of what was happening. Turns out, she was being used – the company (a minor company, not one of our major equipment suppliers from the actual games, that she had gone to them in the name of avoiding those big names) was going to give her access, only to revoke it and claim that she had stolen these patents. That would give them an opening to start consolidating biotic patents in a human market, because humans would now be running amps and implants with copyrighted asari material, and, by extension, that would mean the company would own those human biotics.

That, of course, gets Jack’s ire up, and she’s ready to tear the place apart – people aren’t things to be owned. Even Thane’s ready to join in – even accepting his claims of lacking a responsibility for the lives that his employers hired him to take (again, we’ll be digging deeper into this in the future), this is trying to force people to be under the control of this company – based on his reaction when Shepard suggests that the Compact between the hanar and the drell constitutes slavery, Thane’s definitely not on board with that idea. And even on Illium, a planet with legalized “indentured servitude,” this contract is definitely sketchy – but it would be just legal enough that the company leadership would be able to get their foot in the door, and make it harder for human biotics to be able to exist without “company oversight,” giving them access to the human biotics before they have a chance to stabilize their position in human society.

It’s some further asari haughtiness, the idea of asari like Erinya, the lawyer who holds the contract to the Feros colonists, that the asari are “better” than the other races. The asari in charge of this company are of the belief that only the asari “deserve” biotics, and want to keep all biotics in the galaxy under their control. These asari in particular don’t see any race other than asari as even deserving of evolving out of the primordial muck. Not a mainstream view, but one that we do have foundation for existing in the universe proper, and, let’s be honest, it’s not hard to imagine this being a thing anyway based on our world (We’ll touch on these themes in more detail later). And this idea, especially combined with the asari willingness to indulge in “indentured servitude” on Illium, if no where else, gets taken to its natural endpoint – they see human biotics as little more than pack mules, livestock.

Short step from there to going along with batarian or Collector ideas, but really, it’s not like we don’t know exactly where that endpoint is from our history.

Obviously, Shepard is a walking contradiction to those ideas, so combat is the only way through. Sedaris might be an unrepentant murderer, but we do still have to take her into custody – this is where Kassria comes in, taking her down and intending to hand her over to the authorities in the name of getting a slice of the Eclipse pie with her out of the picture. It won’t be a clean takeover, which will justify why Sayn is running things for Sedaris outside of prison instead of Kassria (who would DEFINITELY just leave Sedaris to rot and probably arrange an ‘accident’ for her), but it’s getting her more power.

As for the company, they’re JUST on the side of legality – the efforts of Eclipse on their behalf were by way of verbal contracts, and no lawyer on Illium is going to take the word of a mercenary over those of these high-ranking business officials. Hart swears that she can make things hell for them, lose them some very lucrative contracts with the Alliance. Thing is, that also makes her job all the more difficult, now that she’s been found out having attempted to make these grey legality ties for the sake of “getting an edge” in the biotics market – they have the resources to make this a fight that, meanwhile, would set the cause of human biotics back. (Which, as we’ve been over in other write-ups, actually is a bit of a thing that has some deeper ties in to the overall universe that the people of this setting are still working on figuring out.)

The Paragon/Renegade choice here becomes the rather obvious “do we take the option that handles this cleanly but lets the bad guys escape responsibility, or the messy alternative that may not even get the result we want?” choice. Because the thing about asari litigation is that they can afford to tie things up for decades without concern for the “short term” consequences. So if this DOES go to courts, they can wrap things up and keep them there for a long time – which will impact how things go for the human biotics, the whole idea of ‘owning’ people because they have these abilities. Because then their legality, their agency, their right to choose for themselves would be being litigated, and being done so in the court of aliens.

It doesn’t feel GOOD to me to have it left like this, honestly, but I don’t really see this as something that is supposed to have a conclusion that feels good – we’re talking about issues of corporate ownership of individuals, and the truth is... that exploitation just goes on, it doesn’t resolve itself with a few showy displays of violence. It gets caught up in red tape and paperwork, and people lose, even as they win. And the point of this has basically been, at its heart, to show that the “underworld” isn’t the black and grey markets that scrounge a semblance of society. It’s the businesses who will crush people underfoot then complain about the mess they stepped in. The design of a lot of the locations introduced in ME2 had this cyberpunk dystopia look to them, but only really focused on the criminal gangs – the core of this is approaching the white collar criminal element that was not shown off as much, how it encourages both further street crime and the depersonalization that comes from treating humans as a commodity.

Jack is pissed either way because this is all kinds of bullshit – it’s Shepard who points out that as angry as Jack defaults to, this is, for once, her being pissed at something beyond herself, where it’s not just that she wants to cause mayhem, but that she wants to make things different for others. To do something to protect future human biotics, kids who are in need. It’s her actively wanting to find a way to make a different, not just chaos.

As for Thane, he is still drell, still a proponent of the Compact (again, we’ll be coming back to this issue), but he does understand how easy it is to see something ostensibly done to the benefit of people turns around and is used by malicious actors to take advantage of them. It’s one of those things that he certainly understood in the abstract, but it’s another thing to see in practice. He leaves it on the note that “this has given me much to consider.”

As for Ambassador Hart, she knows that either way, she’s tanked her chances for getting the instructors that she’d been hoping for. Basically, the diplomatic ties she’d wanted from the asari government are off the table, given the combination of asari tied to the company and just general political embarrassment at the fact that all of this even happened – they want to ignore it, paint things over in pastels, and she is a living embodiment of the event to the asari, able to bring up the reality at a time of her choosing. The asari would rather that this go away, rather than have this constant reminder. Still, she’s grateful for Shepard’s rescue – the Eclipse might not have actively been planning on her death, but it wasn’t a good position. And, at this point, she can at least salvage a career going forward. Maybe not with the asari, but there’s a chance that relations with the turians have thawed out some.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: The fate of the company plays a part in War Assets – being tied up in legal red tape, they’re not able to contribute to the war effort, or, in a magnanimous show of “inter-species cooperation,” they’re sharing some patents with the other races. Additionally, Ambassador Hart shows up for a sidequest after the Cerberus Coup, making another go at the effort, now that Grissom is gone and the human biotics are here – might as well make the effort to get these asari instructors anyway, and she wants Shepard to help her out with smoothing the ruffled feathers (since this would still be in that period of time where the asari are still trying to avoid joining the active war effort).

Also, while this wouldn’t really impact anything via saved game import, I also figure this would at least tie in to Andromeda, that several human biotics joined the Initiative in the name of getting away from the corporations who want to hold them as “patented property” and such. Probably would be a way to help at least make Cora’s arc tighten up a little – it’s not just that she thought she’d only be a “useful freak” as a human biotic, as opposed to an asari commando or an Initiative Pathfinder, but that in getting away from Citadel space, she’d be allowed to just be, to find out who it is that she is beyond her biotics, rather than have to have her biotics “registered” with a corporation who’d exploit them and her. Not sure how to incorporate that into Andromeda proper, but it’s something that would be acknowledged.

End of Part 1, link to Part 2 forthcoming.

[pheraemarquess]

May Activity Check

Status: Passed!!

Points Gained: Any Skill +1

Allocation: Sword 2 -> 3 Rank D+ Acquired!

Claims:

Classes: Pending! Inventory: Wind chime bracelet, Pending! Mastery: None!

Threads:

Completed: made of light; paperthin final WC: 1,427 Dropped: None! In progress: those are his hooves, you bitch "We Got Torture Labyrinth Tomorrow" cheers! When Does a Ripple Become a Tidal Wave? These Sidequests Never Seem to End

[tartcherryscones]

The Abuser and Victim in Emprise du Lion

So, I was polishing off the last of the dragons today for the punch card (buy ten dragons, get the next one free) and saw something new. Near the Highland Ravager's den, there is a stabbed corpse on a cliff. This corpse, formerly named Aldric, is part of a sidequest called, "Turning the Tables."

Here he is, waving. But don't be deceived by his jaunty manner and smudgy face-like thing on the front of his model's head; Aldric is not, or rather was not, a nice man. He was a fungating breast cancer that had taken human form. That happens sometimes. Don't argue with me. It's science, ok? Read a biology book. Also, he was an abuser.

In this sidequest, there's a story provided to the player in two threads, one being letters from a woman, Diane, to someone named, "Delle," and other being the diary entries of Diane's ex/stalker/aspiring kidnapper, the creepy, faceless, oddly behatted Aldric (seriously, that hat is so big, such a poor fashion choice).

Before today, I thought that story had a happy ending. After all, there's a letter the player finds that says, "I got him," left by Diane. It says that she got Aldric and implies that she then went home to her friends and family. Now, I always thought it was odd that she left all her letters behind, but I excused it as being required for player comprehension of the situation.

Bioware lets the story sag that way all the time. I mean, in Solasan, this ancient temple in the Orlesian desert that hasn't been opened in thousands of years, there's an Arishok's Vitaar... from when the Arishok lived in Kirkwall... less than a decade ago. I don't care if it's useful, it's completely ridiculous and a terrible missed opportunity storytelling-wise, because of what it could have been. It could have been anything. It could have been ancient elven weapons, or ancient elven children's toys, or ancient elven religious supplies, because, like, what even did the elves use to worship their gods? How cool would it be to find that? Did they have prayer mats, or thuribles, or sacred vestments? Did they do nothing in temple but walk single file on glowing tiles until they let out for lunch??? I get that votive candles wouldn't still be intact after thousands of years, but give me something! I poop on your fancy, noisy, light-up tiles, Bioware! They are totally insufficient to meet the needs of my curiosity! Do more worldbuilding!

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is the story in this game doesn't always make sense and the player just has to ignore that. However, today I looked over the edge of the ledge that Aldric's emphatically stabbed corpse is on and I saw something.

Son of a mother, there's another corpse down there!

Oh, flapjacks, I think that's Diane!

It could be the same body model as Aldric's corpse, but I think it's probably meant to be her. It seems like she wrote that last letter the player found to psych herself up for the fight... and then they killed each other. That's why she never went back for the letters; Diane died in her final confrontation with Aldric. She stabbed him and he threw her off the cliff. What a bummer.

Turns out, "Turning the Tables" was a bit of a misnomer. Tables not exactly turned. Tables actually flipped. And stabbed, but mostly flipped... Off a cliff. Anyway, it was game over for everybody.

[warsofasoiaf]

I'd love to hear your thoughts about Cyberpunk 2077 when you are ready/have finished the game. Maybe besides the game itself you have an opinion about the crunch, bugs and general feeling of disappointment in a good portion of the fans

Sure thing. It’s going to be a long write-up and there are going to be spoilers, so you better believe that this is going to have a cut. Reader beware. For context, I have beat the game, and I played it on PC and only on PC.

I’ve been a fan of the cyberpunk genre for a long time. Transhuman and techno-utopian sci-fi always struck me the wrong way; that it was too optimistic and ignored a less savory element of human nature that simply would not go away with the advent of new technologies. While I only briefly dipped my toes in the water of the Cyberpunk tabletop game (I was always a bigger fan of Shadowrun), I did enjoy the genre and was eager to see a AAA cyberpunk game. I also really liked CD Projekt Red with what they did with RPG’s like the Witcher 3. Particularly when it came to the smaller sidequests, they really found a way to bring a lot of noir elements and hard-hitting character moments to the game, and I believed that it could translate very well into a cyberpunk game. After all, noir was a similar response to detective fiction to what the cyberpunk genre was to earlier elements of sci-fi. So I was quite optimistic when it came out. What we got was...well, it didn’t quite meet up with expectations.

There are some good things about the game. Assuming you have a beefy rig, PC cyberpunk looks pretty good. Not only does it look good, but it looks like the dismal 1980′s inspired future that had defined the genre, with its neon lights, omnipresent advertising to the point of satire (amphetamines are available from vending machines in a variety of flavors and commercials are completely ridiculous). The fixers are great examples of different cyberpunk archetypes like Regina Jones being a media or the Padre being an underclass civic leader looking to protect his community with a bit of a violent streak. Plenty of the characters had great personality, the nomads and Panam were enjoyable, Judy had a great questline that detailed optimism and bitter disappointment (and the character looks cool and is a bit of a cinnamon roll), River’s quest was a perfectly serviceable cop questline with enough horror elements, they were all fine. Keanu wasn’t a great voice actor, but he did serviceably and was apparently just wonderful with the staff, so I’m willing to cut him a pass. The level design can encourage a variety of different play styles, with attribute points opening up certain pathways. Given that it’s an open-world sandbox game, the goal should be to immerse yourself in the world, and touch on elements of cyberpunk as you go through the various quests, and you do see some of that. You see the gross exploitations of dolls in the sex trade when you go to Clouds, the bizarre elements of self-expression that new technologies can offer such as the twins in Kabuki, Pacifica is an abandoned recreation ground for the rich with the nice image of rotting Ferris wheels and abandoned malls, and you can see the divide between the have’s and have-not’s on full display both in the opening (compare and contrast the Street Kid with the Corpo beginnings) or take a look at the Peralez’s penthouse apartment versus Judy’s cramped digs. Honestly, one of my favorite things in the game were just the consumables to highlight the different food and drink available to the people of Night City. The heavy population means that foods like fried ants or locust pepperoni are common, amphetamines are available in a variety of flavors, and there are no less than 20 burrito vending machines on every street (the future is not all bad it seems). I like little worldbuilding moments like this in video games because it does give a sense of completion and immersion within the world. I honestly felt bad for Johnny Silverhand, because by the end of the game I had to be a bloated man-ball of Holobites Peach Pie and Cirrus Cola. 

The game even took a few things that had aged poorly in the cyberpunk genre and improved them. The Mox is a gang specifically meant to stop the Disposable Sex Worker trope, it’s small and part of the reason it survives is that it’s small, but it offers a chance of improvement over the exploitation that the Tyger Claws offer. The cyberpyscho quest is probably the best one of this. Earlier Cyberpunk had cyberpsychosis as a serious concern directly correlated with how many implants you got. The Solo archetype even spoke about how you risk losing your humanity with your implants as you became stronger, better, faster. Even later iterations had depersonalization/derealization disorders as people who could see in the dark lost connection to those who couldn’t. A quick thought in our present though, changes this. My eyesight and hearing is just fine, but I don’t lose connection or common empathy with individuals who are blind or deaf. I have two arms and two legs and I have not lost empathy for amputees. Why then, would I lose empathy and connection with someone with average human eyesight after I get my eyes replaced and now I have the ability to see in the dark or have telescopic sight? The cyberpsycho quest actually took this concept to task; cyberpsychos around the city are seen as horrifying threats that need the high-threat response of MaxTac to deal with, but Regina is looking to see if she can cure cyberpsychosis. Mechanically, the cyberpsychos are boss-fights with elements of puzzle gameplay (how to handle the different skillsets that they have) and a bonus reward for non-lethal damage which rewards certain playstyle archetypes or prepwork for those who ensure that they have a non-lethal option. The information you find around each cyberpyscho showcase different problems in the target’s life, no real common thread or inciting incident that you can trace the onset of cyberpsychosis toward and identify a culprit. After you complete the quest, you learn the twist: there is no such thing as cyberpsychosis. Each of the targets were actually just experiencing different stressors within their lives, such as PTSD, losing their job, drug abuse, etc. and the breakdown is made much worse because these individuals have the ability to toss dumpsters like they were baseballs or pick the wings off a fly with a cybernetically enhanced brain with a .50 cal. Some of these individuals had terrible implant surgery done by bargain-basement ripperdocs and temporarily lost the ability to discern reality from fantasy, something that could easily be seen as a science fiction adaptation of temporary insanity brought on by a poor reaction to medicine. It’s backed up by the game too. V can fill every slot in their cyberware deck but never once experiences cyberpsychosis. Oda has ultra-legs and flaming-hot mantis blades and is in perfect control at every point in the game, even when he’s trying to jab those mantis blade through your sternum. Cyberpyschosis isn’t real, the irresponsible media just ran with it because fear sells. For all the flaws of the game, I respect the game for taking cyberpsychosis in that direction.

But for all those good things, the game couldn’t help but feel shallower than the Witcher 3. The side-gigs were formulaic to the point where they even led with a category. There were few twists and very little that was surprising. Exposition for these quests was limited to a short text dump and a minute voice-over. Night City was big but it was relatively sparse. NCPD never seemed to intervene in any crimes (giving the character the chance to do so) but every so often they were around a taped-off crime scene, giving a sense of inconsistency that hampered the world. While it was a bustling city, it felt empty, most of the people I saw on the street were meaningless, just NPC’s walking around to give a sense of activity. There was little in the way of things to see and experience that was unique or different about these NPC’s. They weren’t crowds I could hide in like Hitman, they didn’t have ambient dialogue that showcased something like the Witcher 3. Much like other open-world games, this sense of shallowness pervaded much of the empty space of the world; it was incredibly *big* but there was little in it. Much of the time I was driving or running through empty space that was completely worthless to me. Normal for city living, but all of that is wasted time going from point A to point B, and unlike the Witcher 3, there were no small in-game beats to help flesh it out or build it. I never had Millie from “Where the Wolf and Cat Play” give me a little picture, I never had people from a liberated village say “hey, look, it’s that guy Geralt, thanks for killing those harpies.” These were things that made the Witcher 3′s world really come alive. I didn’t have that, and I was left

Of course, we also have to handle the elephant in the room, and that was CDPR’s conduct both during production and after release. Crunch has become an increasingly common part of video game development and it’s not healthy to developers. CDPR had been called out on it once before, but it seemed there was little change in how that happens. I’m not quite sure if there’s anything we can do, and I’m sympathetic to the need to hit target deadlines to actually deliver a finished product, but there’s got to be a better way, whether that’s a change to the incentive structure, or something, because it’s hurting folks. I like games like Witcher 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2, but I understand that there was a real human cost to these masterpieces, and I wonder if there’s something we can do about that. 

Similarly, what happened after launch was beyond terrible. The last-gen console version were simply not ready for release and shouldn’t have been released to the public. CDPR openly covered up this, by only previewing the PC version, they hid the fact that the game wasn’t ready, and they avoided delaying the last-gen console version because they were looking to capitalize on holiday sales. I’m sympathetic for the need to generate sales, but the flip of this is that you have to deliver the product you advertise, and for last-gen consoles, they didn’t do so. Bugs are one thing, these games are massive undertakings of interacting systems and bugs are inevitable; some of my favorite games were buggy at release, notably Fallout: New Vegas, Witcher 3, and so on. But this went past bugs and into malpractice and deception, and that’s something that’s less forgivable. I personally had few bugs that were out-and-out game breaking but things not loading, quests bugging out, floating bags and other physics wonkiness, all of that hurt the immersion. I’d be more willing to forgive the game without the deception; I can laugh at bugs but not at ignoring quality control to get holiday sales instead of delivering a quality product. Consumers are angry at CDPR and have every reason to be, and I’m one of them. I can express my disappointment and I will do so, we need developers to stop these practices and the only way we can do that is through our wallets and words. I’m not going to tell anyone not to buy CDPR games, that’s entirely your decision because I’m a radical individualist. But I am going to say that they’ve burned a lot of their good karma with me; credibility is a hard beast to gain back. Much like other big name developers, CDPR has hurt their standing in my eyes. Whether that means I need to resort to going to indie games for a little bit or something else, I don’t know, but it’s rough. I liked CDPR and wanted to believe it’d be different, but it seems to not be the case.

Overall, I think it’s another AAA open-world game only made better by my love of the genre, and that stings. I enjoyed some aspects of it, and I hope that through Free DLC, patching, and other good deeds, the game can redeem itself and stimulate new love of the genre. But CDPR needs to do a lot more than that to win back my affection. If anyone has anything specifically that they want to know about the game, such as talk about the main story, individual characters, or so on, just ask.

Thanks for the question, Khef.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[silver-wield]

I like how the illusion of choice transitioned from FF7 to FF7R. In OG, choice only mattered for how you got the GS date and HW scene, but the endgame's the same no matter what. In FF7R, your choices don't mean sh*t. 20 or 30 min? Place still explodes. Don't want the flower? Too bad. Visit Jessie or not? Answer still points to no. Tried to avoid trainroll? Narrative said otherwise. Tried getting 1 resolution? Guess what, all of them are canon and happened on the same night. We have no say anymor

That's what I keep saying and people still seem to think they have a choice because option boxes appear.

YOU HAVE NO CHOICE.

Imma go through them all just to prove the point. The branching dialogues and even side quests for Cloud's dress all result in the same conclusion. They rejoin the main narrative. They do not splinter off into their own mini narrative that results in slight dialogue changes through the rest of the game. Why? Because it would be ridiculously expensive to film, animate and code that. Not to mention all of the translation teams would have to be on the same page, and they clearly weren't for part one, so that would result in even greater diversity in the continuity of the overall story. That's why no matter what you choose there is only one main narrative.

The reactor timer isn't a choice, although I have run it out and, yeah, you die.

1. The flower. You will take it, no matter what option you choose. In the walk through midgar book there's a conversation snippet of chain link references from key words and the canon narrative from the key word flower in this case is to refuse, then accept, so Cloud hears the girlfriend line. The conversation doesn't go to the next line about how much gil he'll offer for it.

There is no option for gifting the flower. It goes to Tifa.

2. The drink. You will have two drinks. Refuse and Tifa will make one. Accept and Tifa will make one. Either way, Cloud calls her beautiful after the second.

3. Jessie's proposition. No matter which option you choose, Cloud refuses and Jessie says "Psych" and sticks her tongue out.

4. Alone at last. Achieved through completing all of the sidequests in sector 7, there's several narrative threads during the conversation that link it to the main story. You also get to choose Tifa's alternate dress for wall market. If you don't do the quests, the game still acts like you did by putting Tifa in her canon outfit. This means the conversation and date offer, with acceptance took place.

5. The train roll. Even if you run out the timer to avoid seeing the cut scene between Cloud and Tifa the ultimania main digest says the canon narrative is it happened. No matter what you do, you still end up in the train tunnel with Tifa and Barret.

6. Chapter 8 sidequests. The amount you do affects the dress Aerith wears later. By completing them all you also get the language of flowers discovery. But if you do none, there is no default dress for Aerith. She isn't automatically in the red dress, so to get that does rely on the player completing quests that Cloud wouldn't (whack a box?). But even if you do none, Aerith will still appear in a wall market dress, so your choice results in the same conclusion, with a few minor optional scenes to draw the branching narrative back to the main storyline.

7. Cloud's dresses. No matter which set of sidequests you do, or even if you do none, Cloud will end up dancing at the honeybee inn and wear a dress. The options you make to get the sidequests for the dress all branch and then merge to this final result.

8. The sewers. Even if you don't choose the canon narrative, which is Tifa, as shown in the ultimania, there's references to her resolution later in the story and ultimania main digest that show it happened.

9. Chapter 14 sidequests. Even if you don't do any, you still scale the wall and Barret and Tifa talk to Cloud beforehand. The only slight difference is the level of trust and comradeship they display.

10. Stairs or elevator. Even if you take the stairs, Domino's dialogue only fits if you took the elevator.

So, that's all the choices and even when things branch more than once, you still end up with the exact same result. What you choose doesn't matter to the story. It only affects some changes to the characters dialogues. Because it'd be too expensive to produce that many dialogue options that result in changes to the story. They'd have to reshoot the same scenes over and over. And that also why we're gonna have mandatory party members. It's not 97. SE can't produce those options on the scale that 7R is at. We'd be in development hell longer than FF15 was. Gotta sacrifice something, and dialogue trees that muddy the storyline, and optional party members that result in some characters never being used are the easier and healthiest changes to make.

[moniquill]

I’m going to talk about Greedfall. Fight me.

So recently Greedfall was on 70% off on Steam, and I bought it.

I did so fully in the knowledge that this game is a garbage fire. I knew from the moment I saw the trailers back in August 2019, and I made some posts about it:

https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/187141616836/greedfall-comes-out-next-month-on-the-10th-get-so

https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/187185773016/no-i-will-not-absolve-you-geek-friend

https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/187213116466/i-think-youve-fundamentally-misunderstood-the

And reblogged people saying more and better things: 

https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/187152585746/dalishious-untilthisdreamisgone-akedhi

A particularly large FUCK YOU to Darkfreya, who said this in the comments:

“ I will definitely buy this and hope it does well. We need more games like this. The fact that is a game about colonization does not bother me at all. Your character is neutral (and probably desperate trying search for a cure to a disease that is killing your people) Who you side with is your choice, and I seriously doubt siding with colonizers is seen as being the “good” choice.”

But there’s a valid argument to be made that you can’t REALLY criticize a game just based on trailers and synopses and lets plays and all that. You need to PLAY it, to play it all the way through and get the CONTEXT of the STORY.

So strap in chucklefucks, I did that. All spoilers, no repentance. 

 Note: I am writing this reaction on the fly as I play. I have had no spoilers except what’s in the promotional material. This isn’t so much a game review as an admonition of bullshit; I will be focusing on the main questline; the things that the game forces you to do to progress the story. I’ll also follow native-specific sidequests.

I am De Sardet, a man or woman who is the cousin of the new governor of The Congregations’ colony on Teer Fradee. I have an unexplained green birthmark on my face. My first quest item is saying goodbye to my mother, the Princess De Sardet, who has the mysterious and fatal illness that’s plaguing the land - the malichor. 

There is no mention whatsoever of my father at this time.

In Serene, I futz about doing minor sidequests, meeting my first two companions (Kurt and Vasco), and levelling up by looting boxes and murdering bandits. I get to witness the ravages of the malichor; the streets are full of dead and dying people, there're corpse wagons and bonfires, generally looks like a good time.

I meet with the two representatives of the Not!European nations that The Congregation is a neutral ally to both of. One is Theleme, the super religious spanish inquisition types who dress in Cromwell-era English and French clothing. The other is The Bridge Alliance, who are all about science and technology and seem vaguely middle east to north african flavored - they wear turbans and kaftans, their architecture has domes and minarets, etc. Each representative gives me a quest with MORAL DILEMMAS! Do I deliver the heretics to the guard for arrest, or allow them to escape? Do I do the same for the charlatan alchemist? If I listen to them, they’re all totally innocent, but letting them go is bad for my reputation with the diplomats. Except that I can lie. So yeah… this is pretty much a ‘Do you BE EVIL because you can, or do you act benevolent at absolutely no expense to yourself?’ choice.

As I’m getting on the boat to head to Teer Fradee, I am railroaded into my first boss fight! This bursts out of the side of an adjacent ship:

All I know about it is that it was brought back from Teer Fradee, and that ‘it was supposed to be out for days’ - presumably it’s drugged. It’s visibly injured. I see it take another bad hit from a falling mast in the pre-battle cutscene.

I have no choice but to kill it.

I beat it into submission (with magic, because that's what I spec’d into) and then get a cutscene where it’s helpless and desperately scrambling away from me, gazing at me with intelligent, desperate eyes.

I dispassionately shoot it in the head.

I am hailed as a hero.

Like seriously here’s the video (not mine, just pulled from youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQfIHBIJiAU

We cutscene across the ocean, Vasco gets real serious with some shorebirds, and we arrive at Teer Fradee.

On the steps of the governor’s palace, I have my first encounter with a native - Siora, daughter of a chieftain, who is here to seek an audience with the governor. She speaks to me in the native tongue, presuming that I will understand. She has a facial marking similar to my own. I use my political clout to get her into the palace. When we meet my cousin the governor, he goes on and on about how similar Siora and I look; as if we could be related.

This is the first clue, in the story, that I - De Sardet - have native ancestry. There is no avenue for me to explore this at this time.

Siora wants us to be allies to her clan in their hostilities with the Bridge Alliance. I’m sent to speak with Mal Bladnid - the chieftain, her mom.

I’d like to mention at this time that the designers clearly went out of their way to NOT invoke NDN visual tropes with regards to be people of Teer Fradee - No beads, braids, and buckskins, no flute and drum music. They have an irish/celtic/norse/pagan vibe, as I read it. They have a ‘what even is that’ accent. They also wear a ton of different styles of face paint, the significance of which are never explained. 

The game at large seems to assign characters without regard to phenotype - any person of any faction may be european/black/asian in appearance. There are about a dozen faces in the entire game, endlessly recycled. It comes off as :FINGERS IN EARS, SHOUTING “WE DON’T SEE RACE!!!”:

At the first opportunity to talk to Siora back at my legate pad in New Serene, I can ask Siora if she really thought I was a Native. She says that yeah, she did, because I look like one, and she’s never seen a foreigner who’s an on ol menawi - she doesn’t tell me what that means, and I don’t have an option to ask. 

Following the main quest line and going to see Siora’s mom, I learn that she’s already taken off to fight a battle. We catch up at the tail end of the battle, hundreds of people on both sides are dead. I meet Siora’s sister, and I can talk her down from a roaring rampage of revenge. We find out that their mom’s been taken. We spend some time optionally looking for and healing survivors - you can also just let them die. Save them, and you gain a reputation boost with the natives. Then we explore the ruins, which are continental in style, and learn about the legend of super doom battle of old vs wave of colonizers the first - the native people made a pact with the land which raised guardians, and in exchange certain people become ol menawi. What this means is not explained at this time, other than it’s a pact with the land and why the native people have magic. 

At this point I diverge from the main quest to find out what happened to Siora’s mom; we go to the Bridge Alliance camp and find that she died on the way there. We have to argue/finagle/blackmail the captain of the outpost into allowing us to take her body.

Upon returning to Siora’s village, we find that her mother’s remains have been delivered, but new complication: there are missionaries from Theleme insisting that they had an agreement with queen Bladnid - the village would convert to Not!Christianity and in exchange Teleme would aid them against the Bridge Alliance. If they agree to this, they’ll have to bury Bladvid according to Theleme religious standards. Siora thinks this is bullshit, we must investigate. It is unclear how I’m supposed to pursue this. 

I return to Constantin and report on the ancient ruins where the battle took place. He tells me to go see Lady Morange, who tells me to go check out some other ruins near some mines. This continues the Ancient Mystery questline.

I proceed to San Mateus (which is also where I need to go for main questline things regarding talking to the Theleme leaders on the island) 

Entering the city for the first time thrusts me into a cutscene so fucking upsetting that I had to put the game away for a while and come back later. Upon entering the main square, I see a priest strangling a native man, while a creature not unlike the one I was forced to fight back in the first boss battle is being burned alive. The priest is demanding that the native man denounce his gods. He then strangles him to death. I am given no opportunity to intervene. Afterward, when I’m able to talk to the priest, I can declare myself as a believer or not - I can answer yes or no, or attempt charisma to weasel out of the question. If I fail charisma I have to answer yes or no. If I declare that I’m not a believer, we have a fight scene. I am not allowed to kill this man; the fight ends as soon as he’s incapacitated. He wanders off, declaring that he won’t forget this and that I’ll have to fight him again later.

THE BURNED CORPSE OF THE TREE-BEING REMAINS IN THE SAN MATEUS SQUARE FOR THE REST OF THE GAME.

In the palace I meet Petrus, after talking to the Mother Cardinal, Petrus becomes one of my companions. The Mother Cardinal asks me to investigate a native village that she believes is worshipping a demon. Yeah sure I’ll get right on that.

I proceed to Hikmet to talk about their science team’s work on the Malichor, and learn that the natives are very antagonistic toward their people. A soldier interrupts the conversation to tell us that an outpost has been routed in a native attack. I’m asked to assemble a team to investigate a science party that’s gone missing.

I return to Constantin to tell him about meeting the governors; he tells me to proceed with all the questlines I’ve opened and whines about how his parents never loved him. Worth noting at this time that Constantin appears not at all well. He’s pale and has dark circles under his eyes. He claims to be fine, just nauseated.

My main questline threads are now:

An Ancient Mystery

Scholars in the Expedition

Demonicial Cult

I choose to follow the cult one first, because Native involvement.

I proceed to Tir Dob, and meet with the investigators. The leader is frustrated because the natives don’t want to talk to her, and she’s convinced that there’s deep evil afoot. When I talk to the villagers, they dismiss me and tell me it’s not my business. Which, I mean, fair!

Notably, one woman asks about my mark/status an on ol manawi. When I say I’m not bound to anything/I didn’t do anything to bind myself, she tells me that one of my parents must have been a doneigad. I have no opportunity to pursue this.

There is no story-continuing option for me to leave it, or to pursue a path of gaining the villagers’ trust. I am required, by the game’s narrative, to spy on a villager. I break into his house and look at his things; I comment on how terrifying his fresco is and how morbid his altar and how horrible his mask. Siora points out that the mask is just worn to intimidate enemies in battle. It’s identical to the warthog spirit mask I can buy at any number of native merchants and wear. Petrus says that there’s obviously demon worship going on.

I tell sister Ephesia, and she sends me to follow the villager on his journey into a secret place in the forest. He disappears into a sacred grotto. I commune with a tree and experience a narrative, then have to solve a very obvious puzzle to enter the grotto - to invade a sacred place that I am obviously not welcome in. There is no option to refuse to do this that forwards the story. In the grotto I witness a ceremony that’s presented, through cinematography and music, to be SO TERRIFYING AND OBVIOUSLY EVIL because there’s… a small amount of bloodletting? A glowing tree spirit speaks at the end of the ritual and all participants triumphantly shout.

Siora, if in the party, says that the rituals of her tribe aren’t so scary, cementing that the game feels that this ritual is intrinsically horrifying in some way.

We go to ask the chief of the village about what we spied on, and she explains that it’s a ritual to evoke the strength of warriors and invoke a blessing against the Theleme investigators. She tells us that the voice we heard one one of the many faces of nature, and that if we proceed to another location and perform a ritual, we may hear from another face of nature - but that we might not be happy with the results.

We proceed to Vedvilvie, where we meet Aged Hermit. He tells us that a detachment of Bridge Alliance soldiers was here a long time ago, and gives us information about where to find their camp. We explore the swamp, looking at assorted corpses and ruined tents and ancient frescoes, then talk to Aged Hermit again, who tells us about a ritual to summon the earth. 

We perform the ritual, and are thrust into a boss battle with Nadaig Vedemen. There is literally no choice but to kill her. The Aged Hermit rebukes us for having done so, calling us murderers and monsters. Gotta say, I absolutely agree with him. Siora tells him to calm down, that we were only defending ourselves. She explains to me that he knew her before she became a Nadaig - that Nadaig are Doneigada who’ve called upon the power of the island to the point of physical transformation. That it will happen to her and to me, eventually. That’s what on ol menawi and the mark means.

There is no opportunity for me, as a player, to avoid killing the Nadaig.

We return to Tir Dob and confront Derdre about sending us into a death trap; she had hoped the Nadaig would kill us. We now know secrets that no one outside the clan has ever known. She asks us not to tell. 

I proceed to the Bridge Alliance Scholars’ camp and find they’ve been captured by locals, who want to trade them for prisoners that the Alliance has previously taken. We run into some locals who give us important information about where the prisoners are being held, because they feel it would be better if the prisoners were gone. We meet Aphra, who joins the party and leads us to where prisoners are being held. Two options here - guns blazing bloodbath, or ghost sneak mission where we bust the prisoners out undetected and harm no one. I choose the ghost option. Regardless, upon bringing the rescued scholars back to camp I’m confronted by three natives who I have to fight with. Once defeated, I have the option to either spare their lives or finish them off. Only Siora argues that I should let them live. I do.

We return to Hikmet and talk to the governor. This opens the Search for Panacea questline. Aphra is now a permanent possible companion. 

Aphra’s personal quest: More required spying on the natives. Siora greatly disapproves. I have no option to shut this shit down, to tell her ‘No, we are not doing that.’ We spy on the elders, who are having a meditative session where they listen to the voice of en on mil frichtimen. They catch us spying and call us down, chastise us, and then invite us to watch the rest. Aphra makes comments about how ‘it’s almost like they really can hear a voice on the wind; must be delusion-level faith!’ She then says she has to mull this over and to talk about it later.

We proceed to the ruins that Lady Morange mentioned; two of the three required fetch items are in the general vicinity of a Nadaig. It is possible, through sneaking, to reach them without having to fight the Nadaig, so I do that. We find that the people who built the ruins were…. DUN DUN DUN…. From the congregation! We used to be EVIL! Like we’re totally not now!

We report to Constantin, who is looking even more sickly. He tells us to investigate this history with the Nauts and laments more about his daddy issues. He also says that I look too much like a native for it to be a coincidence which, at this point, fucking DUH. This opens the The Prince’s Secret questline. 

Meanwhile, on the quest for panacea, I head back to the village where I freed the Alliance prisoners to talk to the chief. There’s several dialog options, since I didn’t go bloodbath when rescuing the prisoners, but there’s also a spying option. One way or another, I gain the information that I need to go to the village of Vigshadir in Frasoneigad to find the Tierna harch cadachtas. Siora knows how to get there.

Upon arriving, I’m told that this is one of the holiest sites on the island and I’m not welcome. Alas, I can’t continue the story while respecting that answer - I can insist forcefully or I can gain the villagers’ trust with a couple of fetch quests. Either way, I end up learning where the Tierna harch cadachtas can be found. I disturb her taking a nap with some salamanders. She’s not at all happy to see me, even when Siora speaks on my behalf. She sicks her salamanders on me and takes off; I have to kill them. I then follow her up a path to a root door that requires an offering to unlock. Siora suggests that it’s a seed; we go back to the village and talk her bodyguard into letting us into her house to poke around. I should mention that there’s a bunch of lootable stuff in her house, and the game doesn’t punish me in any way for taking it. I find the correct seed and we proceed through the root door to a maze that Siora says is SUPER SACRED. Nevertheless, I’m forced to kill a bunch of animals on my way through. I tried sneaking several times; due to bottlenecking, the animals always become hostile.  Toward the end of the path, we also come upon an instantly hostile native man, who I am also forced to kill. 

We come out on the other side of the maze in Credgwen, just in time to witness the tierna running from and being gunned down by an Alliance solider. Cradling a bullet wound to her abdomen, the soldier is poised to execute her with a pisol shot to the head when Nadaig Fresamen appears and throws him ass over head. The Tierna then tells Nadaig Fresamen to attack us, and I’m once again in a mandatory boss battle where I am forced by the narrative to kill a Nadaig. Once again it ends in a cutscene where I shoot the Nadaig in the head. I think maybe the game designers think this looks badass, instead of coldly sociopathic? The Tierna is visibly distraught, screaming and crying at what we’ve done. She’s about to attack us when she’s shot in the back by the Alliance Soldier, who then says a bunch of Evily McEvil things, then tries to fight us. Upon besting him, I get to either kill or spare him. 

I kill the shit out of him. 

We bring the very very wounded tierna back to her village, where she wakes up and tries to kill me (Siora calling her off). She explains that the panacea she made is to treat islanders who’ve escaped captivity from the Alliance; those who are captured are gruesomely tortured in the name of science.  She suggests that the malichor might be a curse from En on mil frichtimen. 

We take this news to Constantin. It is now super duper obvious that he is very sick.

Siora tells us who we need to talk to about En on mil frichtimen, Constantin tells us to do that. 

I’m level 16 now.

I hop back to the other main questline, grabbing Petrus and Vasco to go to San Matheus and investigate the Nauts’ problems there. Go to talk to Bishop Domitius but am pulled into a cutscene where Mother Cornelia asks me to get back some sacred tablets that she thinks were stolen by island natives. Yeah, lady, I’ll get right on that. I talk to Bishop Domitius, who accuses the Nauts of being the origin of the malichor. I go to the docs to investigate the rumors. Long story short, the Nauts are fine and I shut down the Inquisition’s investigation of them. When I get back to my residence, there’s a letter asking me to come see some natives at the embassy. Because Native rep[resentation and Native storylines are pretty much all I care about in this game, I pause everything else to pursue that, bringing Siora and Petrus.

I meet with them in the woods, where they’re camped out with the body of an inquisitor they killed. Petrus greatly disapproves. We get some keys and a letter from them, learn that there’s a camp that Native captives are being brought to, and go to investigate the inquisitor’s house for more details. We rummage through his house, find another letter detailing the camp and a chest in the order headquarters. We also find a key to said chest. On our way out, we’re confronted by a bunch of ordo luminus thugs. I have the option to get Petus to talk them down, so I do.

We go back to the place where the natives are holed up and find we’ve been followed by inquisitors. Talk talk fight; we kill them. The natives thank us and say they’ll report this to queen Derdre. I’m now level 17.

I head back to Admiral Cabral to tell her about shutting down the Naut investigation. She tells me that the Nauts discovered the island 200 years ago, the congregation tried to colonize, a few bad apple lords got all tyrannical, and both the natives and thier own workers rebelled against them. The colony was destroyed and only a few survivors made it out. The princes of the congregation swept it all under the rug in humiliation. Then she drops the bomb that I’ve been waiting for the whole game: I am the product of a later Congregation expedition. I’m the child of a Native and was born on a Naut ship. So yeah, I’ve been playing as a stolen child divorced from my native culture this whole time. I’m just gonna leave this link here:

https://www.vox.com/2019/10/14/20913408/us-stole-thousands-of-native-american-children

I immediately go to demand answers from Constantin.

This is a major act shift; things I find out in the next string of cutscenes:

Constantin has the malichor and is totally dying.

Kurt comes in to warn us about a coup d’etat that’s in the works - the coin guard plants to take out all three governors and seize control of the island. Apparently if you haven’t followed his personal questline about abuse within the coin guard ranks, he betrays you at this time. I’ve been doing the companion quests all along but not commenting on ones that don’t involve natives. 

After putting down the coup d’etat, I go back to Constantin to rally. We’re now in Act Two, and my main quests are as follows:

The Suffering of Constantin, where I have three leads - San Matheus, Hikmet, and Native.

The Trial of the Waters, where I need to go speak to Glendan.

So I head to Wenshaveye to talk to the healer there. The village is having problems with missionaries and with abruptly and violently aggressive tenlens - animals that are usually docile. The aggressive tenlen attacks started right about the same time the missionaries showed up. Hmm.

There’s an interlude here where I come upon a bunch of merchants fighting a Nadaig and for a brilliant moment I thought I could kill the merchants and save the Nadaig but no. It’s instantly hostile to me and I have to kill it. The killing of Nadaig in this game is treated as a neutral action, like killing wild animals. 

So yeah turns out the missionaries brought a vicious white tenlen, holed it up in a cave, it was riling up the others, it killed two village kids who went into the woods to canoodle. I shut all that down, kicked the missionaries out, and was able to bring the healer to Constantin. Plot thread resolved! Let’s go see Glendan.

I can’t get in to see the council without having a seal proving that I’m the chosen representative of a current council member. Fetch quest time - literally I just have to go back and talk to Cadasach, the healer, and he hands me the seal I need. I presume it’s more involved if I’d chosen one of the other healing paths. 

I talk to Glendan, he tells me I need to complete the trial of the waters, a new questline opens. Also, the next part of Siora’s questline - promises set in stone - opens. I drop everything and follow that because I’m kind of in love with Siora.

We head to her village and talk to the missionaries, they send us to go see the stone that the agreement was engraved on, we get there and fight a bunch of enemies, the stone is destroyed and we can’t read it. Time to go see the engraver, Caradeg. We get to his house to find it absolutely destroyed. The only clue is a stone bearing the mark of the Dunncas’ clan. So we head to Vigyigidaw. Dunncas tells us that they exiled Caradeg because he wanted to make war on the settlers. Have fun, bootlicker. On my way out of the village I’m snagged by a guy with a side quest; he wants me to get some settlers to stop preventing the clan from going into a sacred glade to replant trees that the settler clear cut. See sidequests for details on that.

Before doing Trial of the Waters, I decide to go check up on Eden and Father Iustinius, bringing Siora and Petrus.

Stolen tablets, lots of talk about how primitive and naive the natives are and how those who aren’t converted are obviously worshiping demons and that’s who must have stolen the tablets.

Siora comments that this place is horrifying, and wonders how the people could have tolerated the priests building continental-style buildings over the top of their village.

We go to talk to the theologians, then to Ler. Because I’m not awesome at Charisma, I’m left with no option except to threaten and bully my way into him giving me the name of an old woman, mother of one of the warriors who left the village. I lose re with both the natives at large and Siora personally. The old woman tells us where to find the exiles, and gives us hints on how to avoid traps and sneak in unseen. She implores us not to hurt her son.

We head for the exiles’ camp. I choose the option where I sneak in and don’t murder everyone, and the old woman meets us as we’re leaving and thanks us for that, saying she’s going to try and talk her son into finding a new clan. We head back to Eden.

They thank us for the tablets, are excited to set out a new expedition, the game tells me to wait 24 hours for the results. So I have to hike my ass to out camp, sleep 24 hours, and haul back to where I just was to find out that a party that went into the swamp ran afoul of…. something.

Siora points out that the survivor was obviously bitten by a poisonous swamp creature and that a local healer probably knows the remedy. We go talk to Ler again.

Ler tells us that the village doneigad is one of the exiles, but that the old woman we talked to earlier knows plants well. I’m pretty sure that if we’d murdered her son to death in the previous quest, she’d refuse to help us. Because we didn’t, she makes us a potion. The wounded guy wakes up and begs us to go and rescue his dumbass loser friends, so of course I do. 

We’re going back to Vedvilvie, because of course we are.

We arrive at the camp, listen to both the ordo luminous guy and the research sister whine about how the other is mean/incompetant, and go to investigate the dig sites. We find a dude with a caved in skull who was clearly struck from behind with a mace, a guy who was killed to death by lewolans (big lizards), and a poor chump was was obviously stabbed to death before being fed to lewolans. Siora says it’s pretty clear that Mr Inquisition orchestrated this to frame the research lady. I agree. We go to confront him. Choices: Take a bribe and side with him, tell him to leave the expedition, expose his bullshit to everyone.

The ‘correct’ choice in the game is not to reveal his crimes before everyone, but to banish him. Because [Centrist.jpeg goes here]

We follow the path of San Matheus, come up against a nadaig magamen, murder it to death, and enter a cavern. Long story short, Saint Mat totally became a doneigad. He saw on en mil frichtimen as an extension of the concept of light and prayed to him. Also I found a bitchin’ set of holy armor. I put it on Petrus. 

Theleme’s gonna be big mad. We head back to Eugenia to tell her, are confronted by Virgil and the Inquisition. He wants to destroy the relics and evidence that Sait Mat converted to the faith of the island, we kill him to death and go tattle to Mommy Cardinal. I push her to make the decision to reveal the truth to the masses, and to visit the cave herself. 

Theleme is not, in fact, big mad.

Anyway, returning to the main questline.

So there’s two options through the cave of testing, bloodbath or sneak. I chose sneak. Touch a basin, have a vision, solve a very easy puzzle - just like the tree one from earlier. 

There’s a Nadiag waiting, and the command prompt I have for it after solving the puzzle is ‘Tame’... yanno, like one does with an animal. Because indigenous people are fauna. Fucking gross.

I see a fresco depicting a spirit of the volcano. I go to talk to Glendan. He sends me to find the high king, who is missing. I need to see the rest of the high council: Derdre, Dunncas, Ullan. Guess it’s time to finally deal with the Ullan plotline. See side quests for details.

When I head back to Hikmet, I get a whole string of cutscenes because it’s been a while since I’ve been there - including one where I follow up with the islander rebellion. The governor asks me to parlay with the leaders of the rebellion, where I find out that the on ol menawi who the alliance have been kidnapping from villages have been taken to laboratories for experiments - where they have been tortured and killed. This lines up with all earlier accusations, and with that Hikmet dude who was trying to murder the tierna and me - he said they were going to dissect her. So yeah. I go to thier main camp, and fucking surprise, I was followed by Alliance soldiers who promptly stark attacking. I have two choices: fight alongside the natives or put an end to the rebellion. I, of course, fight on Team Native. I then proceed back to Hikmet to ask What The Entire Fuck, Sir? He denies knowing anything about natives being captured; he assures me that this lab is a medical research center. I declare that I”m gonna take a look at it myself.

 I grab Aphra for this, and in the process agree to continue her personal questline. We ask the young apprentices about how to get into the Cave of Knowledge, which, I cannot state enough, IS A SACRED PLACE CLOSED TO OUTSIDERS. Only people who are becoming doneigad are supposed to go there. The narrative makes me. This happening, over and over, gives lie to the premise that the game allows you to make good or evil moral choices - that you can DECIDE to be a good guy or a bad guy. You can’t. You can either choose to violate the sacred spaces of the indigenous people or -not play this game-. There is no ‘Sit Aphra down and tell her that it is implicitly wrong to do this’ option. 

So we go to the cave, it has a seed gate, we find some brigands who’ve murdered a native, they’re planning to dynamite thier way into the cave, we can talk them inot leaving or murder them to death, guess which one I chose just guess. We get the seed and enter the cave.

In the cave, we examine several frescoes; one depicts a ritual where, in a circle, someone is pouring blood on a stone in the presence of a Nadaig. Another depicts the same figure, but now marked as an on ol menawi. We then hear people coming and are prompted to hide, because being caught here would sure lose us the trust of the natives. Which we do not deserve at all, after this. The game prompts me to spy on the young people, which I do, listening in on thier conversation. When we leave the cave, Aphra says that clearly we need to spy on a whole, actual ritual. The game teases me with ‘accept’ or ‘refuse’, but the choice are actually ‘start the time now, or later’ - the story doesn’t allow me to ACTUALLY refuse. We show up, and Dunncas actually gives us permission to watch if we don’t interfere.

After the ritual, Alliance soldiers show up. We kill them to death. The chiefs thanks us for having been there. Aphra says we should look into Dr. Asili. So off to the lab we go.

I’m pretty sure, narratively, that I’m supposed to have stealthed my way through this. However, after seeing a pit of burning bodies and people in cages right as I entered, I just bloodbathed my way through. Also arrested the apprentices and killed the fuck out of Asili. Fun fact: Asili gave Constantin the malichor! Also me, but I’m resistant, since native and on ol menawi. 

I return to talk to Constantin about the sanctuary and the Hikmet problem and everything and find that he’s gone on a journey with the doneigad healer and things have gone wrong. I set out after him. I follow combat signs and talk to Aiden in wenshaveye, then head to the alliance outpost. We catch up with a badly wounded and unconscious survivor, get him a potion, and then have to wait 24 hours. This is a repeated feature of the game an annoying as hell, because the only way to wait is to return to camp. When he’s awake he describes the attack; animals controlled by some kind of native sorcerer and fire and explosions. A native grabbed Constantin and ran off with him. We continue the investigation - I go to talk to Daren. Daren says that they weren’t behind the attack - no one would ever attack Catasach. Catasach is, btw, super dead. I examine the body. He was killed by something than can wield magma. Good times. Daren tells us there’s a ritual by which a doneigad can see the last moments of his life - only tierna can perform it. Good thing we saved her earlier…. From danger that we put her in….

So we head off to see tierna, and she readily agrees because I avenged her earlier. Pretty sure it would have taken more convincing if I’d let the dude who shot her live. One fetch quest to get spell components later, we’re able to perform the ritual. 

Vinbarr did it.

I go to question Derdre, Ullan, or Duncas. The latter two have the best opinion of me, so I hit up Dunncas first. Dunncas tells me to go to Wennshavar. Folks there give me some backstory, tell me to find Cera at the cave of knowledge. 

We come upon alliance folks torturing a native woman, presumably Cera. This bitch has a whole ass villian speech. I’m pretty sure she’s one of the people I saved with Aphra’s science team? Could just be a recycled face though. We run down to interrupt. Aphra wants to reason with her, Siora wants to kill her. Yep, it’s the science team I saved. I have several options here; fight them, use intuition to remind them I saved them, threaten them, or let Aphra speak. I choose to let Aphra speak more because I want to hear what she says than anything.

Aphra shames her and reminds her that they left Asili together because of his cruelty. She whines that Aphra knows she’s not REALLY like that, and stomps off like an angry toddler. No fight. Cera thanks us for saving her, leads us to the cave, and opens it for us.

Inside the cave we find a fresh new fresco; it shows Vinbarr going to talk to the spirit of the mountain. He’s gone to join En on mil frichtimen. We see another fresco depicting a nadaig meneimen - the bird/mountain form. Vinnbar’s gonna turn into one. We look at some other murals, I let slip that I’m looking for Constantin, Cera peaces out and seals us in the cave because she thinks we’re looking for Vinnbar on a vengeance quest. We find another way out. The path is now laden with traps because she doesn’t want to be followed. Sorry, Cera, that no one informed you that I am a protagonist and thus no one can prevail against me. 

We go to the mountain passage depicted in the fresco, go through a cave maze, and find the mountain trail to the sanctuary. We meet up with Cera, who forces us to fight her. We snag a seed from her body after killing her and her folks to death. Which the game offered no way out of doing. Now we have both seeds and can open the sanctuary. We scamper through some scenic vista and arrive to find Vinnbar burying Constantin with rocks using telekinesis. He says the on en mil frichtimen told him constantine is the bringer of doomtimes. Now we have to have a boss fight. Partway through, he transforms into a nadaig. We continue fighting andf kill him to death. 

I sure do murder a lot of nadaig in this game.

We return Constantin to New Serene and I’m pretty sure this is the break into act 3… Catasach made Constantin on ol menawi and he is stoked about it. He has branch antlers and pointy teeth and yellow eyes and feels great. I am concerned. 

Time to go talk to Glendan again. 

I lose three rep with the natives over, yanno, having murdered their high king to death. I now have to go and talk to the three potential high kings and gain the support of one of them - Derdre, Dunncas, or Ullan. Of those three, Dunncas is the only one who hasn’t tried to murder me or betrayed my trust so… off to Dunncas. His agenda is balance and healing. He easily agrees to let me see en on mil frichtimen if he’s chosen, and tells me how to make sure that he is - if I get a spectacular ancient crown from the grave of the high king that became the first guardian. He expresses distaste for using such a method. Siora is also worried about me making a decision that will impact all of her people. Gotta say that I agree, I have absolutely no place being involved in this decision at all - let’s see if the narrative lets me opt out of meddling! I go to see the other two candidates and hear out their agendas, out of fairness. 

Ullan’s agenda is peace and alliance with the colonizers. He also readily agrees to help me.

Derdre wants to repel the colonists and take back the island. She says she’ll let me see en on mil frichtimen only if I rally Eseld/Siora’s tribe and join in the attack on the Ordo Luminous camp. Which, morally, I am absolutely all for. However, it seems like the game is heavily leaning on Dunncas as ‘the right choice’.

But yeah, fuck it, I’m backing Derdre all day long. Lets fuck up some Spanish Inquisition!

I have the option to inform the mother cardinal of the coming attack. Why the entire fuck would I do that?

So I destroy the fuck out of the camp and murder a bunch of inquiition torturers and free the surviving prisoners and gather evidence of war crimes. Then I go to mommy cardinal, who is big mad (Theleme -2 rep) that I didn’t tell her first. Boo. Fucking. Hoo. 

Having done that, no there is no way to proceed in the questline without retrieving the crown, which involved murdering a Nadaig Magamen. I get the crown, and Derdre meets me there and rebukes me for entering a sacred place, trying to take the crown and throw the election, as an outsider. She is 100% correct. I give her the crown. 

I wait two days and then go see en on mil frichtimen, who tells me that the malichor is the result of how the continental people treat their land. I’d like to pause here and talk about the role of Magical Natives in Green Aesop stories. Let’s review some tropes: 

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CloserToEarth

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InHarmonyWithNature

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalNativeAmerican

This some some colors of the wind / Avatar’s blue cat people bullshit, the idea that indigenous people are implicitly and intrinsically more -one with the earth- and that ‘modern civilization’ has lost this, to their detriment, and can only heal through <s>cultural appropriation</s> learning and adopting deep earthy truths known by indigenous people. The point of this in the story is to tell a Green Aesop - https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GreenAesop - it sets a paradeigm of indigenous people being the noblest of noble savages - https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NobleSavage - of indigenous people as a simpler, greener form of humanity. It’s othering. I’ve written a lot about this in the past, check out my post about woo: https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/32577796262/the-following-is-a-post-about-woo

This particular brand of othering of indigenous people directly and personally fucked me up, as an indigenous person, when I was a kid. That could be why I have a personal grudge against it. 

Moving along. 

en on mil frichtimen alo tells me that Constantin is the bringer of doom times, and that Catasach essentially stole power from the island to keep him alive. I need to put a stop to his endless bitter hateful hunger. So yeah, that’s a thing. I go check up on my dear cousin.

When I show up, emissaries from the alliance and theleme are there begging Constantin for troops and also me; they’re suffering horrible attacks on their outposts and people. They’re blaming the natives. I mean, to be fair I did just crown queen Derdre Kill ‘Em All so….just saying. But moving on, I talk to Constantin about the sanctuary. He...doesn’t react well to the warnings about himself. When I ask him about his body with the island, it sure does seem like he got high on apotheosis and wants another hit. He doesn’t believe that the malichor on the continent is the fault of the continentals. 

My main quest lines are now

The attack on San Matheus

The attack on Hikmet 

And honestly fuck both those places because both of them were running torture camps but whatever, I guess I’m off to investigate.

Mommy Cardinal over in San Mateus wants me to hit up an outpost that’s being attacked relentlessly by wild animals. Speculation is that ‘island demons’ are controlling them.

Governor Burhan says the same thing’s happening to his folks. 

Upon checking it out, the islanders are also being attacked; the animals are attacking indiscriminately, and while having that conversation a guy bursts in to say the guardian of the village (a nadaig glendemen) has turned on his people.  So we kill it to death in a boss fight and it’s revealed that the corrupted nadaig was causing the animals to be killrabid. Now that it’s dead, the animals are back to normal. 

Samesies over near San Matheus. 

A human must be responsible, the creatures wouldn’t be so coordinated otherwise.

Is it my cousin? I bet it’s my cousin. 

We go talk to Constantin.

He says ‘ha ha ha nothing to worry about….peace out, my adorable cousin!’ and takes off to parts unknown. I shake down his guards, but all they can tell me is that he’s going north outside the city. I rummage through his papers, and find his journal. Yeeeeah he’s super high on apotheosis and wants to become a god. Like, supplant and replace on en mil frichtimen. And he’s off to ‘get rid of’ some natives in Cwenvar who saw him the other night and might denounce his actions. I’m gonna have to take out my cousin by the end of this game and it will be a tearjerker cutscene. Calling it now. 

We head to Cwenvar to talk to the natives. They show me how to spy on Constantin. We follow him to a sacred grove, where he’s clearly gone cuckoo bananas. He’s commanding a corrupted nadaig, which he tells to hold us back - but not kill me. SO we kill the nadaig, and then have a chat with on en mil frichtamen, who confirms that Constantin is trying to gain godhood by murdering god and taking his power. Yanno, as one does. In a cutscene, I list all the people who will totally help me against Constantin. This includes… pretty much everyone, because I’ve diplomatted my way through the game and everyone likes me. Time to go rally armies. 

It’s worth noting at this time that on en mil frichtamen calls me ‘flesh of my earth’ and earliet called me ‘the child that was stolen’ - there’s a very ‘YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE’ vibe here, implying that I’m only able to succeed at this task because I’m native by blood - I’m not REALLY a continental and thus a Tainted Person made of Endless Greed. It is my native-ness and my bond to on en mil frichtamen, passed down from my donegiad parent, that allows me to be the hero of this game. 

I want you, dear reader, to stop and think about the gross racial implications of that.

Moving forward: We go to ask Dunncas for help in how to break Constantin’s links to the land. He gives me seeds to place at the base of the stone Constantin has erected, to topple them. I have to fight a corrupted Nadaig each time. At this interval Siora points out how wise and attuned to en on mil frichtimen Dunncas is, and I express regret at not choosing him to be high king. TOO SUBTLE, GAME.

So yeah, couple of tedious boss fights. 

Having broken his links and gathered my allies, it’s time for the endgame. We go back to the sacred grove where I talked to en on mil frichtimen, I get a series of heartwarming cutscenes with my companions and allies as I ascend to Constantine’s heart stronghold. 

I reach Constantin. I have to fight a big bad ultra nadaig, which Constantin tells not to kill me. 

He has a long cutscene in which he pleads his case, asking me to bond with him and rule together. I can either bond with him and join him in godhood, which is implied to doom all of humanity to eventually succumb to the malichor because no land can ever be healed now, or I can kill him and save the world like a big damned hero. 

Then Mr. deCourcillion narrates the epilogue, where I get to hear about the consequences of all my decisions through the game. My decision to crown Derdre results in forcible decolonization of the island and healing thereof, but the old world nations are plunged into war and the malichor gets worse there. Am I supposed to feel bad? I don’t! 

In the ‘best’ ending, Magical Native Healers travel to the continent and teach the sad tained continentals how to live in harmony with nature and heal their lands. 

Here, have an every possible ending video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcUByGfNXgY

Know what weirds me out as an actual indigenous person? Learning that I’m a stolen child way back in Act 1 never resulted in a quest where I in any way question or explore my real ancestry. I never try to find out what clan my real mother was from or if I have any living relatives. I never look into why the Congregation abducted my mother and why I was raised by Princess De Sardet. The game just feels that this is unimportant. The important thing was that I have Magical Native Blood. 

So yeah. That’s the game.

In studying the fandom presence of this game, roughly no one is interrogating the fuckedness of the premise or narrative. The active fandom seems to be mostly people who want to bang Vasco, people who think Constantin is a sad wooby who deserved better (including a lot of people who chose the ‘bad’ ending because they wub himb) and people who want to bang Constantin and justify it because he and De Sardet aren’t REALLY cousins… and people who are just here for The Aesthetic. Fun fact there are exactly 12 F/F fics on a03 set in this universe.

Here, have some examples, all from https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/GREEDFALL and https://archiveofourown.org/tags/GreedFall%20(Video%20Game)/works

https://destiny-rahl.tumblr.com/post/616743783790460928/constantin-de-sardet-my-beloved-otp-this

https://swiveldiscourse.tumblr.com/post/615782041344147456/not-sure-who-needs-to-hear-this-but-this-game

https://totallyamoral.tumblr.com/post/615651870535532545

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20766497/chapters/49345631

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20676554/chapters/49106921

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20747450

Lots of people compared this game to Dragon Age: Inquisition when it first came out because the gameplay looks similar. But here’s the thing… the first time I finished DA:I, I immediately wanted to turn around and play it again, as a different character, as someone who made different decisions and followed a different romance and brought different companions with me on quests to see their different reactions. 

I do not want that with Greedfall.

My first thought upon fisnishing was ‘Oh thank fuck, I’ve seen this to fruition, I don’t have to play this anymore.’

That is not how I should feel at the end of a game.

I feel tired and broken and hurt and used, much like I felt after reading Sister Raven.

https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/165881710831/so-today-i-read-a-book-called-sister-raven

 Native-specific sidequests of note: 

In An Aspiring Merchant, you meet a native merchant in New Serene who’s trying to set up shop; because he doesn’t have the correct paperwork and didn’t follow the bureaucratic process, his stuff keeps getting confiscated. I do not have any opportunity to explore why his lack of paperwork gets his stuff repeatedly confiscated, rather than just getting him sent home.

While I’m getting the paperwork for him, his cousin arrives with a shipment of goods. The guards confiscate the goods again, and arrest the cousin. I go to investigate, and find that cousin threw some punches when the guards once again confiscated all of the goods, and was arrested for disorderly conduct. Ok. So I proceed to the jail and find that he has been sent to fight -to the death- in the arena?! When the prison guard says ‘Hey, it wasn’t me, I was just following orders’ I’m not given an opportunity to ask who’s giving the orders or pursue the miscarriage of justice. I head to the Arena. Despite being a Legate, one of the highest governing offices of the colony, I have no option to put a stop to these shenanigans. I can’t just spring him, or pay bail; I am required to fight beside him to secure his freedom. 

Completing this quest opens the Ullan/Vignamri questline.

Ullan wants to trade with Hikmet, Hikmet wants us to secure the roads, we visit another chieftain, he agrees to a meeting, Ullan shows up and shanks him, I shout at Ullan about how that was bad to do, Ullan thanks me for giving him the opportunity. 

In Logging Expedition, I follow up on the quest hook about settlers clear cutting a glade that I got in vigyigidaw. Standoff between the natives and the settlers, natives want to plant trees, settlers won’t let them. Three settler woodcutters died recently - after investigation there was a conspiracy to poison them by an elder in vigyigidaw - my character refers to this as an act of vengeance by a hateful old man. Despite having literally just had it explained to us that it was supposed to be an object lesson in why not to clearcut the forest - the meat would have been fine if it had been prepared with a particular (possibly now extinct?) berry.

So we pop all the way down to the congregation colony to ask Mr. Courcillon how to diplomacy this ‘property disagreement’. He tells us to go to the basement archives and then see Lady Morange. Just from a gameplay perspective, this - like many sidequests - is fucking tedious. Just running from one place to another, grabbing a few lines of dialog in each place, with no player decision or engagement. This is a poorly designed game. So we hash out the contract, which was created back where neither side had any understanding of the other side’s ideas of what land ownership means. Manhattan was bought for 60 guilders worth of glass beads, etc etc.  https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/12657/was-manhattan-really-bought-24

We have to prosecute the old man for murder if we want a new land deal signed. To prosecute the old man, we have to go stop a mining operation. It’s just one thing after another, and all of it boring and tedious. I had to stop in the middle of this questline and put the game down not because it was upsetting, but because it was -boring-. I hope that the readers appreciate the work I’m putting into making a detailed critique of this garbage fire.

[silenthillmutual]

I beg your pardon! It’s me who is going mad.

So, I know I did a Twitter thread about the ways Daniil is manipulated in Classic, and I thought I’d put it on here too.

I’m going to stop short of calling it gaslighting here though, because too many people are using that term who don’t really understand what it means. Gaslighting is specifically a form of abuse where the intention is to make the victim feel they are going insane. Not all manipulation or abuse is gaslighting - which doesn’t make it less bad, just...not gaslighting.

That being said: in Classic, there are quite a few times where Daniil can say that he thinks he’s losing his mind, and there are times when the game seems constructed to make you feel this way. Particularly I had in mind the ending of the game, and not just the part where you find out you’re a toy and always have been (that falls more under cosmic horror). What bugs me about the end and how that fits into things, is the fact that the Sand Pest and its outcomes have been chasing you - the clouds, the angels, the muggers, the firestarters, the rats, literally chasing you through houses and through town, only for all of it to completely vanish without a trace on the exact day you’re meant to give a solution to it all. I made a point on Twitter about how people attempting to gaslight you will submit you to a large amount of damage - physical, verbal, emotional, take your pick - and then remove the abuse and any signs of it just before they’re caught. it’s how they show to others that it’s you who’s the problem, not them. 

Regardless of whether you think the intention is to make Daniil feel he’s losing is sanity or not, the question would be who is manipulating Daniil, and why? There are a couple answers.

The first answer is the Town. The first playthrough as the Bachelor of the game is probably the closest fitting to psychological horror as the game gets. Like Silent Hill, the Town is full of horrors that seem tailor-made to torture Daniil specifically: most of these people are uneducated (the Town doesn’t even have a school), their cultural beliefs (mostly appropriated from the steppe culture) actively prevent him from doing his job as a doctor, his word and name are constantly weaponized by people with ulterior motives, and men run around on the first two days beating women to death or burning them alive and intervening actively costs you reputation - which you need to do anything. He arrives with the hope of finding evidence to keep his lab opening and, as we later learn, keep himself from execution, only to find that both the man who would serve as this evidence and the colleague who informed you of his existence have been murdered just before your arrival. You have a lot of things riding on your success, and everything about where you are is actively working against you. The government wants you to find a cure single-handedly, but the Town has other plans for you. 

And those plans are: errand boy, and scapegoat. People throughout the Town will inform you that they are scared of you when you’ve barely interacted with them, let alone in ways that should inspire fear. It doesn’t matter how good your reputation as Daniil is (and through the course of the game, there’s very little you’re made to do that lowers your reputation, and it never gets bad enough for you to be attacked on the street or refused sale from shops), what matters is the fact that everyone in Town, from the nameless NPCs to the rulers, are putting every bad thing they’ve done down as being your fault. 

But the Town has another way it’s manipulating Daniil, by almost making him a member of it. I don’t think I got a screenshot, but I’m sure that somewhere along the line Daniil comments that he’s starting to talk like one of the townsfolk. You can see this happens to Andrey, too, later in the game; he talks in what Daniil calls “Griefisms”. 

You have been sent here to fight an adversary that inherently cannot be beaten - in foolish hopes that a miracle would happen and your outstanding mind would stumble upon a once-in-a-million chance. And just so that you wouldn’t give up, they kept insisting that the adversary must be destroyed. Do you see how insidious the Powers That Be are?     > But why? Their motives are becoming less and less comprehensible to me by the day.

The second answer is the Powers That Be.

Three people enter the Town that the Powers That Be want to get rid of: the Bachelor, the Inquisitor, and the Commander. It wants them all to fix or solve or demolish something in the town, and doesn’t really care what happens to any of them. Pathologic 2 spells it out clearer for you that Aglaya, Block, and Daniil will all be executed upon return to the Capital if their answers are not what the Powers That Be want to hear. And for the time that you are in the Town as Daniil Dankovsky, the Powers That Be - like the town itself - actively work against you. The trains that are meant to bring food and medication never, to my knowledge, arrive, and most days bring about a new letter from the Powers spelling out for you how disappointed in you and your progress they are. Some of the ways they attempt to manipulate Daniil through these letters are subtle, but most of them are unsubtle suggestions that what he’s been able to accomplish is not good enough, that he was meant to work alone.

Even one of your first letters from them is suspicious; early on in the game, they write to let you know that they are in no way responsible for the outbreak, which is an incredibly suspicious thing to say. What is the point of sending such a letter? Would the player have really thought that they were if they hadn’t suggested as much through denial? After all, what called you to Town was a letter from Isidor Burakh. But yet, the Powers That Be are the ones who leave you stranded in the Town with limited resources, no help, and constantly shifting goalposts. Aglaya makes this clear to you when she arrives: you were never supposed to be successful. 

The letters from the Powers That Be do not serve any purpose other than to upset Daniil, and most if not all of them contain lies: that a train will be arriving, that they don’t mind if you have help in carrying out your plans, that Thanatica still exists, referencing conversations you’ve never had, signing drafts of letters you didn’t consult on with your name. One of the reasons i had put this down as gaslighting is because people who gaslight like to keep you off balance and emotionally fragile so that you’re easier to manipulate. You’ll do whatever they want to make the feeling stop, because you just can’t handle the stress anymore, and in the process you come across to others as unreasonable, unhinged, crazy, dangerous, so that no one will trust you. And that’s exactly how Daniil starts to come across to the townspeople: deranged, strung out, dangerous, untrustworthy.

You can contrast all that to a different letter they send you where they claim to be proud to call you one of your own. Combine the two, and you get honeymooning. They want to remind you of the good (or at least, not-as-bad) times you’ve had with them. This behavior serves two, sometimes three purposes: to keep you off balance from the violent back-and-forth, dizzying nature of what they’re doing to you, and so that you’ll defend them to people who can see what’s going on and want to get you out of it. You’ll even convince yourself that you’re not really being mistreated. If you were being abused, would they be so nice to you? 

You are the last friend our family has. I hope our attachment to you doesn’t look obtrusive.      > It requires too much from me. I’m not comfortable with it.     > No, not at all. 

The third answer is the Kains. Specifically, Georgiy and Maria repeatedly manipulate Daniil, though I’ve no doubt in the text above Victor stating their attachment to Daniil is also a manipulation, and one possibly planned by either or perhaps both of them. The text above probably looks normal, but think about the purpose it serves: to reinforce that Daniil is friendly with the Kains. Your only two options are to say that it doesn’t bother you, or to express that you feel your boundaries are being violated by their attention. But I even thinking about picking that option... Well, it feels mean. 

Throughout the game, people will comment on Maria’s attachment to you and what they feel is your predestination to be romantically paired with her. All this, despite the fact that you don’t really interact with her that much. I’ve seen this be explained as forced heterosexuality, but I think it also is a way of the Kains manipulating Daniil into doing what they want. Daniil gets upset whenever people cry; when children cry, he tries to calm them and fix whatever’s upset them - there’s an entire sidequest after the army arrives in which Daniil kills a group of soldiers, spurred into action by upset children. Whenever he encounters Maria crying, he reacts with discomfort, and she uses these tears and upset to manipulate Daniil into thinking Aglaya has lied to him, effectively distancing him from one of the only people in the game with a rational mind to show him support and tell him the truth. I don’t think the two are in any way unconnected. Something abusers, manipulators, gaslighters love to do is isolate you so that you only have one source of information to go to. If they cut you off from other people, they can continue to feed off of you. You’ll never have a chance to question if what you’re being told about yourself or others is correct, you’ll just be a constant supply of drama for them. 

DANIIL: Was there any particularly notable backstory? I’m deadly tired of all these people. They’re inhuman. They tell the future, believe in walking zombies, and die in all manners of painfully abnormal ways. 

AGLAYA: Your line of thinking is obviously fallacious - and I was implying something rather mundane. I promise you no one can really tell the future around here and neither are deaths inspired by third parties uncommon. Mysterious phenomenons do occur here sometimes... but hardly more often than anywhere else.

You can see, first, the effect all this has had on Daniil, how dispiriting the past several days have been to him. But you can also see here exactly why a family that prides itself on multi-generational reincarnation and manipulation through “fortune-telling” wants to keep its blunt instrument in the dark. 

That is, ultimately, why they are manipulating Daniil. Georgiy knows full well when he tells Daniil at the beginning that everyone, even himself, will lie to Daniil, that being that honest upfront is more likely to lead Daniil to trusting him. They want to sway him to their cause; this is why you are told that your success here depends on the wellbeing of the people Maria considers useful: herself, her father and uncle - who she gets out of the way later on to come into her power, the architects of the Polyhedron - which she will use to ascend to power, and the theatre director who has pledged himself to be her loyal servant. Eva’s on the list, too, but her inclusion was deliberately set up to make you depend on the Kains later in the game, considering that it’s Maria who convinced her to commit suicide:

DANIIL: Why did Eva die then? AGLAYA: I have a distinct suspicion she was made to die. DANIIL: By whom?  AGLAYA: One of the Kains. I’d even go so far as to claim that they may have performed human sacrifice.

It’s a two-for-one deal: try in vain to make a Focus of the Cathedral, and remove from Daniil the last piece of influence who was not totally in love with Maria. Maria “cries” and is “upset” at you for thinking Eva’s death is her fault, but no one directly tells you Maria is responsible - all Aglaya does is tell you the Kains are at fault. The rest is just you remembering how nasty Maria was about Eva at the beginning of the game. I wouldn’t even say that Maria was removing a rival for Daniil’s affection. She really does only view Daniil as an object: if you speak to her on day 12, she assumes that you’re leaving, and doesn’t even ask you to stay (for kicks, contrast this with either ending of Pathologic 2 when you speak to Daniil as Artemy, where he’s supposed to be your rival. what was all that about Maria being in love with you...?); he’s not even present in his own ending cutscene. Even Mark Immortell says you’re leaving -

And actually, that’s a really fascinating conversation you can have with him on day 12. It’s where the game outright admits exactly what Aglaya told you: it’s all fake. Maria cannot really see the future, you’ve just been manipulated the entire game to achieve someone else’s goals, and unless you’ve gone around and saved Artemy’s or Clara’s bound, it’s too late for you to turn back and make a different decision. If you’ve picked Daniil’s ending, you just destroyed an entire town on the basis of outright lies. 

[ghitathepanda]

There's a twitter thread I read once that was about the way Digimon lore works before Kakudo (the director for Digimon Adventure) was brought on to make Adventure and adding more of his own lore stuff to it.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, because a few things makes much more sense with the Adventure reboot when you are actually aware of what was present prior to stuff Kakudo added. Also, I made a post at one point talking about how Digimon Survive expands on what was established in Adventure in a new continuity while the Adventure reboot (which we will call Psi for simplicity sakes) was placing the characters in a more modern setting. Obviously some of the reblogs are clearly liking what Survive is doing more than what Psi is doing.

So a bit of a recap for those unaware of the kind of lore that was present prior to and after Adventure.

V-pet lore: Digimon are evolved computer programs that became sentient that live in the computer network. The Dark Ocean is also established via profiles of the dark demonic Digimon on the old Digimon website as well as the Net Ocean. File Island was a man-made island in the Digital World made to research Digimon. DigiLab is one of the organizations made for that purpose and in the Sega Saturn vpet game, Hackers were established as people who use Digimon for evil purposes and someone in the DigiLab research team ended up sending the player a Digimon to raise to deal with them (for those who played Cyber Sleuth this all seems familiar does it?)

Adventure lore: Digimon are creatures that existed alongside humans even before digital technology was a thing and in the past had been subjugated or manifested as other mythical creatures like Yokai. Once digital technology become a thing, these creatures uses the tech to properly manifest themselves. Human thought and emotions also have an influence over Digimon. The Digital World is now made clear to be a separate thing from the computer network that some people assume where that world is but said network can function as a medium of sorts. Koushiro/Izzy initially assumed the Digital World function the way it does with the Vpet lore but finds it doesn't, making it clear Digimon Adventure lore functions very differently from what was established prior.

And that's just how much Adventure established its own lore and does its own thing, adding a more mythical/fantastical element to the lore.

Some of the following Digimon series have gone back to the more technological roots (though I don't know if any of the seasons afterwards goes hard into the more mythical based stuff like the Adventure seasons and movies did), with Appmon's lore being just full on pre-adventure Vpet lore updated for the modern setting. Idk how well they did financially though.

As for the video games side of things, the Cyber Sleuth continuity is definitely on the Adventure side of things but thanks to the updated setting, manages to incorporate some of the Vpet lore proper while still making it clear the Digimon are of the Adventure-origin (the sidequests that was covered throughout the span of both Cyber Sleuth and Hacker's Memory made it SUPER clear). Even then, most of the game prior to the second half are focused onto the Vpet lore, heavily based on concepts introduced from the Sega Saturn game, Digital Monster Version. S, like Hackers and the DigiLab (which makes SEGA's logo being kept in the game's version of Akihabara all the more appropriate).

Survive meanwhile, as explained earlier, goes full on to the mythical Adventure side of things and exploring that further (and now includes more deaths if you screw up so have fun feeling guilty of accidentally killing important characters!). Now the question is... where does Adventure Psi fall into this whole thing?

Well, Bandai have been releasing the Digital Monster Ver 20th vpets, as well as a few other Japanese-exclusive (but mostly in English text) vpets like the Digimon Pendulum Version 20th vpets and a new line of vpets called the Digital Monster X which are not just rereleases of old versions compiled into singular devices with their own exclusive eggs but actually having their own different lineup of mons, with X3 being the latest versions adding not just more monsters but also more "areas" for the "Quest mode". The English versions of the DM20ths are getting a second wave of vpets with a few new mons to raise. We're also getting a new card game and we have Last Evolution Kizuna, which serves as a farewell to the Adventure cast.

When you look at it, Psi is pretty much part of a checklist of a proper "revival" or "revitalization" of the brand. While the brand itself isn't exactly "dead" to begin with, there hasn't been exactly much else they can do prior to this. While they did continue the Adventure storyline with Tri, it's very much restricted to the 02 epilogue, and probably to a well established history (haven't watch Last Evo yet and probably never will thanks to recent events).

But then one thinks... what if? What if...? What if we make Adventure... and actually be able incorporate its more technological side of the lore as part of the brand revival that was already part of a checklist of the whole thing, especially in a modern age with the more advanced network and digital technology? (And based on both the official information and the thread I brought up earlier, it seems to be more technological based)

If you look at it from that perspective, it's still understandable that some would consider it nostalgia pandering cash-in, but at least it feels like there is some other purpose and premise behind the reboot beyond money. Last Evolution being the last entry of the original Adventure continuity has a bit more meaning when you think about it like that.

[tumblunni]

Randomly thinking some more about that old game idea of mine that i just call Dark Pokemon for now, lol

Basically a monster catching game where they're treated as monsters? Normal people are all terrified of them and trainers get treated with a 50/50 mix of reverence and hatred. Because trainers are the only way that humans can try and exterminate the monsters, yet theyre seen as cursed people who dont even count as human anymore. Sort of a way to explain little cliches of the genre like kids being thrown out completely alone to travel the world, and you never really having any reason to revisit past towns after you beat the gym. I was thinking itd be a cool way to do it if the game started off seeming like a normal mon catching game and then before you get the big reveal of the darkness you can get subtle hints if you try and turn around and reenter the starting area. Because it goes against expectations it might be missed by a lot of players.

Also the towns are so small and the routes are so straight and narrow because thats how humanity builds society in a world of monster fear. 90% of the world is uninhabited wilderness where only monsters live. Human towns are sorta like sci fi dome cities without the scifi? Surrounded by protective salt barriers and charms and stuff. And if a monster even touches anything its considered cursed, so if one of them makes it past a salt barrier that town is abandoned and any people caught up in the chaos of the barrier's collapse are left to die just in case they've been corrupted. And the roads between the towns are manned by armed guards who are constantly vigilant to repair the salt barriers. But this means they have to live their entire life alone in these limbo spaces between society and the wild, and often most narrier breaches are caused by the guards getting paranoid from the pressure. You need to keep watch for monsters so any movement in the shadows could be one of them, right?? You get situations of roads being blocked off by some crazed guard who starts seeing people as monsters, or one of them pulling the alarm and getting a town falsely burnt down for being corrupted when the monster was really just a leaf blowing in the wind. Or the worst case scenario where nobody ever knows WHAT happened! You just find the road destroyed and the guard gone. It might have happened days ago and nobody knew until a merchant tries to travel between towns and discovers the only road of escape is gone and everyone is doomed to slow starvation. And you can still see the other end of the road just a few meters away, but the superstition is so strong that nobody will risk taking that single step into monster territory. You'll be cursed and that's worse than death, right? You don't want to turn into a trainer...

And then also nobody really knows what determines who's chosen to be a trainer. Inevitably whenever someone shows signs of powers the town will turn on them and make up any excuse that they somehow invited the curse by being promoscuous or athiest or something. And you need to be removed for everyone's safety! Thus begins the ten year old's journey walking the earth in search of a place they can belong...

Tho usually its not just kids, the protagonist and rival is a rare case. All your neighbours are torn between 'its so tragic it happened to kids' and 'they must be REALLY evil to get chosen despite their age!' And i think maybe the rival would be like a sympathetic gary type? Theyre so determined to be better than you because they think if they can prove theyre good then their parents will let them go back home. And this desperation leads them to make bad choices and reject the only friend they have left :( Also them being bad to their monster pals would feel more justified when they were raised in a society that says monster pals are evil and you cant let your guard down cos theyre just trying to tempt you. Listen to the assholes who dont care about you, because anyone being nice is a lying sinner!

Also i was thinking maybe you catch monsters with a magic song or throwing herbs at them or absorbing them into a jewel pendant or something else more magicky yknow? Maybe magical bandages enscribed with spell runes that wrap arpund them like a collar? And so trainers are divided up into weavers who make these catching tools, and then the actual kind of trainer who uses them to catch mons. Weavers are able to stay in human society and act like the pokeball shops, theyre sorta like a 'town witch' or something. Like 'we will tolerate your magic if you never actually make a contract with a monster'. But then of course catching monsters is necessary to defend against monsters, so weavers have to be allowed to make the catching threads and sell them to travellers. But only travellers are allowed to do that sinful mon hugging! But also hey sinful traveller will you please save us from our doom? Basically this is why most trainers work as mercenaries, all this bullshit means that you gotta be employed by some asshole who hates your guts just cos u need food to eat. But blablabla town limit of X days before you have to leave, etc etc...

Also i was considering an element of different towns having different mythology around monsters and trainers? So you never really know whats real or if all of it is bullshit. Every time you go to a new place theyre equally fanatically convinced that some new thing is the real sin and everything the last guy said is eeeeeevil corruption. Sigh! And a subplot i was thinking of is a town with very sexist mythology, where the roles of weavers and tamers are seen as one gender only. And the town weaver is this nice grandma thats trapped in an abusive relationship with a super misogynist gramps. And one of those cloyingly fake-softspoken "rational" sexists who's all 'im just trying to protec u, wrong gender roles are bad for your immortal soul'. And has a million "logical" explanations for why his bigotry is true. Like technically he's "valuing her as important" by not letting her leave the house or socialize with friends, because yknow "im a nice guy who's nice to you trainers, i know your job is important so shouldnt the weavers be working 24/7 to support you?" The frustrating feeling of starting to trust a guy cos he's not bigoted against your particular minority, but then finding out he's bigoted against someone else... Ugh. So ultimately in the end you can succeed at this sidequest and help the grandma make a pact with a cute fairy monster and kick his ass and leave. And possibly get into a cute and mutually healthy relationship with another grandma in another town, so you get to see that and have a bonus happy note to the sidequest, yknow? Also they give you a hug and bake u cookies. (The monster is wearing a cute chef hat!) And then you'd have a place to stay in that town that doesnt have the 'it gets more expensive every night to try and make you leave' bullshit of all the normal inns. And you get to see a cute animation of your monsters all cuddled up in bed too cos they dont force you to leave them outside in the Designated Monster Containment Cage.

Oh! Also randomly i was thinking of another way of foreshadowing! Like when you go to the first inn you dont know any of this stuff about people hating monster tamers and not trusting your tamed mons even if theyre tame. So you'd probably just think that you not seeing your monsters when you sleep is just the game's limited graphics or you keep them in some pokeball equivelant thing. But when you walk arpund the outside of the inn you can see a door to a basement cellar that's got weirdly heavy duty chains and bars even if you assume they store their valuables down there. And maybe when you heal at the inn it never restores your mons to full health, always 10hp away from maximum or something? Or other small hints that theyre afraid of going to the inn and your protagonist is wary about doing it even if you'd think theres no downside to healing. Or maybe you can see another monster tamer visit the place at one point and you can hear banging and growling from the basement...? Or see some of the chains have bite marks in the morning. And the townsfolk wpuld be all 'can you believe how much noise they made?' and expressing fear about monsters being in the town, though itd have to be written carefully to remain vague. But yeah 'lets mistreat these small animals because we fear them' -> they panic and cry for their one human friend in the world while theyre forced to sleep in a damp dark tiny room -> 'that just proves theyre inherantly violent!' Also the trainer is an ungrateful bastard for acting so sullen when they couldnt sleep from worry over their friends :(

But it wont be all depressing yo!!! All the darkness of the setting is dark but the monster pals are still just as pals! I give u grimdark world so i can give u a protagonist of kindness who fights the system and saves people in every town who eventually rise up and are swayed by their kindness into fighting The Old Ways and making a better world as the story goes on! Its like an adventure of creating the pokemon world? You try and sell everyone on the idea of trusting cute monsters instead of being so damn paranoid you inflict all these atrocities upon other humans and even yourself because 'sacrifices are necessary to keep the monsters away'. Fight the symbol of all bigotry!!! The evil team is Team Bad Dads And Politicians!!!

...sorry lol my story ideas are Weird.