When I return to the Inquiry, a curt announcement orders me to attend a briefing. Sorenson’s taken notice, it seems.
“And taking orders, no less. Out on missions, fighting off MODs, saving the universe. Impressive.”
Sounds like someone’s gone around the bend.
Alicia was caught stealing and he wants an explanation. Wow, Marie didn’t even keep her end of the deal? Charitably, we could speculate that she didn’t actually have the authority to authorize Alicia’s demands and didn’t think it’d go over well with Sorenson, but it’s still pretty manipulative of her to agree to promises she knows she can’t keep. Marie tries to cover by saying Alicia’s part of the crew so she’s allowed to access the storage.
Sorenson: “Hmm. She was walking around like she owns the place. Much like you did at one time, Marie.”
What’s this about? Is he seriously bringing up her behavior in the prologue now? Talk about a grudge. I’m also not clear why it was wrong of her to do that – she was a high-ranking officer, she did own the place. Marie doesn’t respond so we get no explanation for this.
Ros wants to know what’s going on. He tries to blow her off but the crew pushes and Sorenson decides to get dramatic about it:
Sorenson: “Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a little blue planet…”
Yes, seriously. (Also hey, why is he saying “planet”! If you’re going to make up nonsense terminology at least stick to it, game!) He goes off on a pretty typical human-nature-is-conflict spiel about how we formed big powerful groups that all disagreed and eventually caused an apocalypse. Like so many post-apocalyptic stories nowadays the disaster is unspecified, just that it left Earth a “burned husk”. That implies nukes but I guess there’s room for eco-collapse in there too. A few hundred survivors jumped ship, like the Typelog history said. This seems like confirmation he’s pre-breach, since he seems to be speaking from personal experience, but it might be more interesting if he’s actually just going off the histories. That could explain why he didn’t see this coming and why he doesn’t know how to stop it.
He then despairs over how nothing has changed and we’re right back where we started, with superpowers tearing everything apart.
Sorenson: “Now, I ask… where can we flee to this time? The universe is big, but is it big enough?”
The universe is infinite, so I’m pretty sure the answer is yes. This sounds dramatic but it’s not addressing the real issue. They haven’t spread beyond the Milky Way at the moment, and a single galaxy is a tiny speck in the grand scheme of the whole universe. They totally could do a second breach. It would take aeons to reach another galaxy, but their technology is magic and apparently hasn’t broken down in millions of years. If people shot themselves at Andromeda they could totally make it. What I think the game is trying to say here is that it’s only treating the symptoms and not the cause; if human nature is the problem, this disaster will inevitably repeat itself. Still, if your concern is that humanity won’t survive the current conflict that’s not actually a problem. Even if it’s kicking the can down the road, this does ensure humanity will survive at least one more iteration. And if that’s not what he wants, what does he want? Does he think he can solve the root of the problem? That seems pretty incongruous with his moping about how this is totally inevitable and there’s no way to fix it.
I think another important thing to bring up here is livable space. The reason people are so panicked about us ruining the planet right now is because we need a lot of resources to survive, and those resources are limited. If a nuke vaporizes a city and leaves an irradiated crater, we’ve lost that area as a means of housing and resource production. Global warming disrupts weather cycles, leaving us with less arable land, and it will eventually kill the algae, depriving us of the oxygen we need to live. Earth is too small of a system; everything’s interconnected, and we’re already so crowded that even a few changes to the equilibrium can destroy us.
But the situation they have here is very different. They can wave their magic science wands and make all their resource needs disappear. If the EROS MODs had succeeded in dismantling Alicia’s hab, her crew would still be fine as long as they got to their ships in time. As long as you have an emitter, you can survive anywhere. You’re not dependent on any other lifeforms or resource systems, so you don’t have to worry about vital components getting ruined by unintended consequences: if someone nukes the other side of the galaxy, there are no air currents to carry the radiation to you, and there’s no atmosphere to poison. Typelog’s memory maintenance seems like the only thing you can really compare this to, but apparently people have come up with their own systems just fine. When your living environments are completely artificial, they’re replaceable: if Typelog cuts you off you make your own system, and if your hab gets blown up you can just build a new one. Besides, space is so big that I have a hard time believing it’s that hard to just hide. Even with light-speed engines and automated drones, no one can possibly occupy every mile of the galaxy all the time. Even if you run into something, you can run away and probably be good for a few more thousand years. Worked for Cassidy and Cole, after all.
I believe that what we’re seeing here is that the story can’t decide what it wants to do. It started off by showing us how radically different this society is from anything we know, but now it’s trying to backpedal and say that actually it’s not REALLY different because humans are just inherently terrible and history will always repeat itself in the exact same ways. A clever idea in theory, but it’s forgotten to show its work, so all the different elements are now working at cross-purposes. There are reasons why societies act this way, there are reasons why the current state of affairs is so precarious, there are reasons why we don’t know how to fix it and can’t just run away. If you want to make meaningful commentary on that, you can’t just ignore those reasons, accidentally fix them, and then substitute in vague, pretentious nihilism when you realize you still need drama. You need to think about the underlying factors logically.
…This is why more science fiction needs to be written by actual scientists.
Kara brings up the elephant in the room, that he’s one of the superpowers and thus part of the problem.
Sorenson: “I am. That is why I’m telling you this. For your benefit. You can cooperate and survive, or…”
Telling them… what, exactly? That the last time this happened, even the superpowers didn’t survive? That really sends the opposite message. Maybe the emphasis is supposed to be on him saying a second breach isn’t possible even though it totally is, therefore their only option is to stick with him in the hopes the last man standing won’t blow himself up this time. This could be a lot clearer.
Ros calls him out on betraying his own ideals of peacekeeping.
Sorenson: “It was a noble effort, but against forces like Typelog and EROS, we would be no match.”
But… that’s… exactly what he’s doing now? I can see why he’d think this with his baseline resources, but he’s clearly acquired an army since the last time. Isn’t that army still under his orders? How does this in any way conflict with peacekeeping? Why has he given up on making them listen to force now that he actually has force? Despite this having all the setup of a dramatic infodump, we still know absolutely nothing about his goals and motives. What is he actually trying to accomplish here? The same thing as EROS and Typelog? What even are they trying to accomplish, total annihilation of the other side? This seems to have fallen so deep into the war is Hell mantra that it’s reached a point where war is just inherently nonsensical and knowing people’s motives won’t change anything and/or is simply beyond our understanding, but that’s just not true. Everyone does things for a reason, even if that reason is an incredibly shallow or petty one. The only way to really stop a war is to understand why the other side is doing this and use that to your advantage. If we knew what motivated these people, we could figure out how they might be satisfied in a less violent way, or how to negotiate them down to a less extreme standpoint. Knowing Sorenson’s motives is also important for the question of if he’s just as evil as the rest or not. Without any of this information we can’t take a moral stance on anything, thus preventing us from engaging with the issue. This whole situation ends up feeling hollow, artificial, and uninteractive, like, say, a bad video game.
Anyway. Ros just wants to know what he’s going to do with her now. He says the large-scale battles are too different from the missions she’s used to, so she’s not fit to command them. He sticks her on patrol duty instead – they need their own comm networks because of the situation with Typelog, and Lessers have been sniffing around.
Sorenson: “You will not object to me, Ros Ouranos. Technically, you should not be alive at all.”
And where does this come from? What is he even referring to? Was he planning to kill his ace in the hole for absolutely no reason? We still don’t know why he suddenly hates Ros so much, or why he kept her locked away throughout all of this. No one speaks up for Ros, so no answers are forthcoming.
This mission is actually pretty fun, and difficult too! Like in the mining mission last episode, enemies will appear continuously as time goes on and I have to dispatch them all. If they reach the green nodes, they destroy the relay and my post-mission reward suffers. Enemies appear on multiple sides of the map simultaneously, so I have to use all my fleets if I want to take this seriously. Fortunately, I’m actually prepared for this. I only have one set of cutting-edge weaponry on my main fleet, but the lower-level weapons I’ve been making throughout the game have stuck around, so I have plenty of hand-me-downs to pass around. Everyone has coverage of all three health types now, pretty much. Their weapons are weak, but enemies are still made of tissue paper so that’s not a problem. Even the crap weapons I started the game with can three-shot these guys at minimum, and remember people get three attacks per round.
And hey look, enemies are finally managing to be about as threatening as bosses! That’s still not very threatening, of course.
To my disappointment, the mission seems glitchy. Three enemies appear after the first turn and I have to scramble to get them all, but afterwards they only appear one at a time, which is trivial. For the last few turns no fleets show up at all! What gives? Was I so awesome I destroyed all the fleets too early? I use my free time to cleansweep the map, and end up with some nice vendor trash. Sorenson is impressed with my performance and gives me a perfect contact shell. Nice.
Eventually a surprise shows up: a massive ship bigger than the Inquiry. He demands to be let on board.
Remember how the game kept making a big deal about how Ros had a Mysterious Past but never went anywhere with it? Well in true Reconstruction fashion it’s time for the resolution to fall into the heroes’ laps, since they clearly aren’t going to investigate it themselves.
Thomas is… uh… huh. That empty space on the right is very conspicuous. Is there secret dialogue here if you get the final party member before this? I know Chac had a special line if you got him as soon as possible. Maybe I’ll investigate this if I have time to kill.
Anyway, Thomas is Ros’ original owner. The Ouranos siblings were a science project, of which Thomas was a patron. This is all apparently “from long before the Shine”, yet for all their advancement since then replicating Ros is apparently outside of EROS’ capabilities. Just what have they been doing all this time? Anyway, he wants what he paid for, so he plans to steal Ros back. Why it took him so long to do this I have no idea. Sorenson, despite previously threatening to murder Ros over a slight, is now very clingy and says he can’t give her up on such short notice. Thomas just scoffs and says he’s wasting her potential. He wants to see her command a major battle, a position currently managed by dozens of people.
Thomas: “But in return… you must hear me out on something.”
Sorenson: “What is it?”
Thomas: “I can’t tell you now. I feel that piece of information is even more valuable than Ros.”
9_9
Still not as grating as Syri.
Thomas: “Ros Ouranos… don’t forget… I own you. So, try to put on a good show, won’t you?”
Does this oh-so-great utopia not have anti-slavery laws? Ros can’t possibly be the first artificial being. What’s the status on created people like her? Are the authorities really willing to let fully functional, sapient beings be enslaved by their creators? That’s insane.
Logically this should be the end of the cutscene, but there’s an unnecessary team bonding episode afterward where the crew wails about how much they love Ros and don’t want her taken away. This might be more interesting if the protagonist didn’t have such a solid support structure to fall back on.
And oh look, I get another choice! Come on though, is there really any other option than this? Sorenson has clearly shattered under the pressure and why would I be loyal to some jerk who showed up out of nowhere claiming to own me? Maybe it’s supposed to mean that I’m worried about the threat he poses, but this game is terrible at conveying tone. Only Daszk, Rami, and Alicia appreciate this. The rest of them are ungrateful jerks!
There’s also some really stupid exposition about the spacesuits:
Kara: “Such antiquated technology, though. I didn’t think any of them had survived after all this time.”
YOU LIVE IN SPACE
HOW ARE SPACESUITS NOT EVERYWHERE
GHDSSAGJHDGH
You can’t even handwave this with emitters! This is like the one thing they don’t cover! You can’t survive in a vacuum, period! Is this why so many people died in the Shine?!?!?
Also I’m going to be a hypocrite and drag things out further by covering the post-mission article. Apparently there’s a “core” and “splinters” of the horde now? What are they, bees? I get the impression the developer understands all the mechanics of how the Lessers are working and why, but forgot to work in a proper explanation. This stuff is just so weird. I’m particularly baffled by why anyone would think to recruit them when so far they’re been categorized as cartoonishly unintelligible ragemonsters.
But alright, with that over we can move on to the action.
Interesting. The developer has said in his design articles that something he considers important is giving each character a distinctive voice, such that you should be able to tell who’s speaking even if there’s no name attached. I think that’s a good principle (as Farla’s experiences with multiple-POV first-person books can attest), and this is a pretty good example of it. A shame that it’s inconsistent about the indents, though.
Sorenson finally explains what he’s trying to do: He hopes that by creating a buffer region between Typelog and EROS, he can reduce the number of direct confrontations and eventually negotiate a ceasefire. That seems like it would just make Typelog and EROS angry and more likely to cut a swathe through the Inquiry zone. Ros actually lampshades this and he just dismisses it with “Leave the diplomacy to me.” Encouraging. At least it’s finally confirmed that he does have noble motives here, but I don’t see why he didn’t explain this sooner.
I then get a massive tutorial on the mechanics. Basically, I can move each fleet one space per turn. When enemy fleets engage, subtract the lower strength from the higher and that’s the strength of the surviving fleet, with attacking fleets getting a +1 bonus. Fleets regain 1 strength every turn when they’re in the area. Overall, pretty straightforward; there’s nothing that can really trip you up. You also start with the most fleets, so you have a distinct advantage. It’s pretty hard to lose.
Aaand that’s the jamming pulse explosion effect, so I’m murdering people. Hooray. Because of that I try to play conservatively and end up taking way longer than I’m supposed to.
Ros enjoys killing people, I see.
Now that Thomas’ grandstanding has been satisfied, he’s willing to explain himself. Turns out Ros was actually created through messy, unreliable selective breeding rather than nice, precise genetic engineering because we’re in backwards land today. This seems to be the explanation for why Ros’ talent can’t be cloned or replicated because the developer doesn’t know how DNA works.
Just… seriously, this is making my brain break! It’s just inconceivable to me that someone could make such a basic error from even the most cursory glance at the subject! Genes are not special and untouchable just because they evolved naturally instead of being synthesized, THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. Want protein → find gene → insert gene → get protein is like the simplest and most basic molecular biology concept ever, we’ve been doing it for decades! A lot of DNA stuff is incredibly complex and mysterious but not this! Ros’ protein has to correspond to a gene and even with today’s technology reverse-engineering it would be possible – with their tech it should be trivial! It should totally be possible to clone her.
If the game wants to insist she’s unique it needs a better justification than “nature is magic”. There are lots of things that could make it hard to replicate, and it would make perfect sense for her creators to spring for that kind of copy protection. Maybe the protein is degenerative without a dizzying web of regulatory sequences and secondary machinery – while isolating the basic structure of the protein would be easy, scouring her entire genome for all the interactions necessary to keep it working is a prohibitive task. Or, like I said at the start, have it be something more complicated than the textbook example of the most basic bioengineering process ever seriously did the dev even read the Wikipedia article on this? Even then… the only real obstacle to decrypting a specific scientific problem is time, and time is no object to these people. We mapped the entire human genome over the course of about a decade – a decent length of time to us, but the blink of an eye to immortals. It is totally within their capabilities to painstakingly examine every possible aspect of her physiology – sure, it’ll take them ages, but so does traveling between stars and they seem fine with that. Scientific rigor + infinite time means any problem can be solved. I’d find this a lot easier to swallow if one of those factors was removed from play (if things were more chaotic at the beginning, for instance, and we didn’t have long timeskips the scientists spent twiddling their thumbs) instead of the game insisting that Ros is just so special that science will never understand her despite its best efforts.
How did anyone even take this project seriously? Thomas doesn’t even say that the breeding was selective, just that the Ouranos protein was a random mutation. What were the scientists doing? Just letting humans continue popping out babies and going hey, maybe something will happen? That’s a convincing sales pitch. Thomas goes on to say that there was a specific purpose to this, and that was to create a living weapon, which to me just confirms they had no idea what they were doing. Ros is not a good weapon on her own; she still needs people to command for her abilities to have any use. She can’t actually help you if you’re outgunned. She’s useful, certainly, but commanding prowess alone doesn’t win your battles. This sounds more like the donors threatened to cut off funding and the scientists went OH CRAP FIND SOMETHING TO THROW AT THEM.
Thomas: “The Ouranos Project changed hands many times as it became more apparent something was coming.”
Tezkhra: “You mean… the Shine.”
What. The entire point of the Shine is that it was unexpected. If he knew it was coming he’s a monster for not warning everyone else. Thomas doesn’t say anything. I’ll choose to believe it’s because he thinks Tez’s comment is too stupid to warrant a response.
Rami then makes a smart observation, which is that with everyone suppressed, there was no conflict and no need for military strength. Alicia immediately says she wasn’t suppressed, which implies it was indeed an external imposition and not a passive mental state like Tez thought. Yet Rami was convinced that absolutely everyone was suppressed, so… did they never interact with anyone? Unless they completely cut themselves off like EROS, society should have noticed there were unsuppressed people around.
Thomas explains that the authorities knew there would never be total compliance, so they wanted an ace in the hole in case the fringe groups caused trouble. This is why the Ouranos siblings started with full emotions: they were never suppressed to begin with. This is treated like a dramatic reveal but I thought it was obvious? It’s not like it was ever important, since it just meant Ros was like everyone else. Confusingly, Thomas says this is actually because the Ouranos project predates the suppression movement as well. Everyone acts like they’ve been suppressed for a really long time, so how long ago was this? He also spoke as if the Ouranoses were designed specifically to deal with the post-suppression world, so this just muddles things. This does, at least, provide a good reason for why the Ouranoses weren’t suppressed – if they were supposed to be tools, I would expect people to remove their emotions as a factor.
Thomas: “[The three Ouranos siblings] were captured, wiped, and put into storage for benefit of the highest bidder. That was me.”
Okay wow so this is literally slave trade. Again, how in the world was this legal? Why would they even want to do this when the whole point is for the Ouranoses to be a government weapon pulled out only in the most dire of circumstances? The whole thing makes a lot more sense if you assume Thomas is lying about the noble goals stuff and this is actually just a shady black market thing. That would also explain why the science behind this is so shoddy!
But before he could take his prize, the Shine happened, and the Inquiry stumbled across the holding facility instead. Mahk then asks the same question I have: why has he only appeared now?
Thomas: “Two words for you, Commander Sorenson: Lazarus… Ouranos. […] I am here to warn you personally, because… He is not happy.”
Be enlightened. Lazarus will be stealing The Black One’s leitmotif for this episode. I have no complaints, because he fulfills the antagonist role far better than Blacky ever did.
The crew freaks out, because they were certain he died. I dunno, they really should have seen this coming from a guy called Lazarus. I’ve seen some really tacky Meaningful Names in my time, and this is definitely one of the worse ones.
Ros: “He’s my brother?”
HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT CONCEPT. HOW DOES IT HAVE ANY MEANING TO YOU. UUURGGHH.
But okay, we finally, FINALLY get some exposition on what happened with the previous Ouranos siblings. Lazarus was the first one they awakened. He tried to bail in the evacuation pods first chance he got, but when they got him back they quickly discovered he was a violent, unstable psychopath. The next time he booked it Sorenson flagged his craft as hostile, which he thought would intimidate Lazarus into surrendering… somehow. This had the side effect of disabling his evac routine (since it no longer had a “safe point” and these pilots are apparently incapable of evacuating on their own), and he got blasted apart by Lessers before they could recover him. So, uh, how did he survive that exactly? It sounded like his craft was completely destroyed, and we know from jamming pulses that that’s not survivable. Was his craft not actually torn to pieces and they assumed the damage was worse than it was? But why would they make that mistake when they presumably wanted to recover him at all costs?
Sorenson: “You see now why we took extra precautions in your preparation, Ros. You were our final hope.”
Ha, what extra precautions? I assume this is meant to justify the hostility towards Ros at the beginning, but actually it just makes less sense. Psychopaths don’t respond well to aggression – antagonizing them just makes it more likely they’ll turn on you. Even if these people have negative emotional IQ thanks to the suppression, they should still be able to recognize the pattern that it didn’t work the last two times. They should also be able to recognize the pattern that YOU DON’T LET PSYCHOPATHS OUT OF YOUR SIGHT SERIOUSLY MARIE YOU ARE THE WORST SECURITY OFFICER.
Anyway, point is, Thomas is worried that he’s going to amass a large fleet and use it to kill everyone. This was the real point of the previous demonstration: if Ros could annihilate the Typelog and EROS fleets that easily, so can Lazarus. However, this still brings us back to what I brought up earlier: even the best commander needs a fleet to command. How does a bloodthirsty psycho plan to convince people to fight for him? He might get some support from the criminal sphere, but it’ll take him a while to amass the necessary strength, and there’s a pretty good chance he’ll get himself killed trying. It’s a good idea to keep tabs on him, but he’s hardly an existential threat.
So, that’s the plan now: Thomas wants the Inquiry to clean up its mess by killing Lazarus. Afterward, Ros is being sealed away permanently.
Thomas: “You hold far too much power for one being. Power that never should have been released.”
Oh bull. Am I really supposed to believe the guy who bought her planned to keep her locked up the whole time? He could have had a change of heart after seeing the damage Lazarus did, except that Lazarus hasn’t done any damage yet.
Sorenson says that the war is still his priority.
Marie: “You’re afraid of him, aren’t you? You signed his death warrant, after all. Bet he’s pret-ty mad.”
What the frick, Marie. I thought you weren’t an unreasonable dick anymore.
Sorenson snaps at the obvious bait before Tez acts as mediator and says the rest of them can deal with Lazarus while Sorenson manages the war.
Alicia: “Wow! Big T grew a spine, for once!”
o_O How does she have anything to compare to? She just met him! That wasn’t even particularly insubordinate.
Sorenson wanders off and Thomas stays behind to brief me on the next mission. For some reason we get an intermission here. I can stretch my legs, but the previous mission didn’t actually count as an event refresh so there’s nothing to do. I feel like leaving Thomas hanging, so I’ll round off the post with some odds and ends:
We get another one of these after the mission. My best guess is that we’re supposed to think the “something” is Lazarus, but it’s actually something we’re going to learn about in episode 5.
We also have something else to take care of. After recruiting all characters and finishing Mahk’s personal chats, he’ll have something new to say when you talk to him. He think Ivoronus isn’t giving the Inquiry enough respect and wants to show him what’s what. Mahk heads to the Machinatorium and says he wants to renegotiate their terms, but this flops because Ivoronus already had everything he wants and doesn’t care. Ros spills the real reason he came here, which gets Mahk flustered.
Ivoronus: “She was correct [that I disliked the Inquiry project] at one point, you know. I assumed your little peace-keeping operation was doomed to fail.”
Uh, okay? And he never brought this up until now because…? Maybe he told Sorenson, who blew him off. Ivoronus has changed his tune, however – he’s impressed how long they’ve held out against the other factions. He turns to face the screen, blinks, and…
…opens his eyes. How symbolic. He says he’s tired of being cooped up in his office and wants to see the world for himself.
Ivoronus: “I can fly, too, you know. I have flown for far longer than either of you two has been alive.”
Hm, has he? Lacertians were around before suppression, but so was Ros, supposedly.
Ros: “Whatever you say, Mister President…”
Ivoronus: “And enough with this ‘President’ nonsense. Does this look like an elected position? Just call me Ivoronus.”
Ros: “All right, Mister Ivoronus.”
For once I like informal Ros.
Ivoronus: “I must confess that ‘Ivoronus’ is not even my name. It is a title. I would give you my true name, friend, if the situation were a bit… less complex from what it is.”
Oh pfft your real name is a title too, don’t be so melodramatic. We’re going to learn more about this in the bonus section, but I’m going to say right now that the thing he wanted Ros to find in the abandoned databanks and the meaning of his name are the same, so I don’t know why he’d consider Ros trustworthy enough for one but not the other. The only consistent thread is that he’s being as obfuscating as possible.
Ivoronus is the ultimate final party member. Storywise he is not nearly as impressive as Tezkhra was, and causes far fewer changes to the story, but after how much Tez hogged the spotlight in The Reconstruction I’m fine with that. Gameplay-wise, he’s far more worth it. His only downside is his poor reaction time, but eh, like he needs to dodge with those defenses. White Cleave – a reference to The Reconstruction, you may notice – is a luminous contact weapon, which the Machinatorium won’t make for me but will make for him, evidently. For extra specialness it has the same range as a ballistic weapon, probably because it’s a laser sword or something. And yes, that’s a rather interesting ID number he has there. I believe the canon explanation is that it’s fake. Pretty ballsy of him to strut around with an obviously fake ID, but that is in-character.
I think Ivoronus might be designed as a one-man fleet, as the last fleet can never be filled, but even he isn’t quite good enough for that, and that’s a waste of his talents anyway. Instead I’ll have him replace Jessamine in my main fleet, though I may shuffle him around. The upcoming missions are going to stretch my resources pretty thin.