As I said in the first post, I’ll be going over everyone’s personal conversations at once at the end of the episode. Have some characterization.

“What do you say? You wanna hang out and help me grill the little spud?”

Mahk is flippant at first, but gets really flustered when Marie brings up Ivoronus. Marie decides to toss the ball to me, rhetorically asking what Mahk needs to be concerned about besides his performance.

Ha! Ros should really have more options for wisecracking. Or maybe she does, and I just haven’t seen them since I usually select low imagination for her. But for now, I think it’s a good idea to not antagonize Marie just when I’ve gotten on her good side. Playing along with her script gets me a PT boost.

Marie: “I know some of us are having a harder time with these ‘feelings’ than others, but that excuse is wearing thin.”

Okay woah, slow down. What’s this about?

I touched on this when I covered the main story, and I’d like to use this as an opportunity to go into more detail. We learn through bits and pieces that people used to suppress their emotions, but the Shine was such a shock that it snapped them out of it (…somehow). The problem is, we never learn any details about this, despite it being as quintessential to the setting as the emitters and Typelog. How thorough was it? What did people look like while they were under it? Why did they do it? Why aren’t they doing it again? How does it work? How do people feel about the difference? We only get answers to the last question, and even then only fleeting, tangential ones. Despite this, the narrative acts as if we have intimate knowledge of the situation, making me feel like I missed an exposition dump somewhere. It’s really bizarre. It would have been nice to have an article on it, like we got for emitters and Typelog recovery, but despite it being extremely relevant to the story’s major theme of logic vs. emotion, we get nothing. My best guess is that it was some sort of chemical treatment; that could explain why they can’t re-implement it (lack of resources), but it doesn’t really explain how trauma can permanently reverse it.

And, I already brought this up with Chac, but I don’t think characters’ reactions to it are very realistic. For once there’s something to justify the quirky, off-the-wall personalities, but the story doesn’t seem to think those need justification. Everyone is portrayed as pretty normal, and they also act like emotions are a totally standard thing except for a few token lines to remind you we’re in sci-fi, like here. (Notice how Marie is acting like the emotion boom is the only reason they’ve tolerated Mahk this long, but they hated him from the start, as if that wasn’t actually a consideration.) Which is ridiculous! Characters should find all of this totally weird and new, especially since we’re told they have to swap out memories so they may not even remember what emotions felt like or how to control them. There should be more people like Chac who are confused by or afraid of their emotions and don’t know how to cope. Most importantly, it should be a consideration in how people interact: Everyone should be in an awkward state where they try to regress back to a purely logical perspective because it’s what they’re used to, only for emotions to suddenly flare up and throw a wrench into things because emotions are annoying like that. They’re trapped between two extremes they can no longer adhere to, but they don’t know how to live in-between anymore either. These should not be orderly, well-adjusted individuals. (The few who are still suppressed, like Tezkhra, should also be constantly moderating their peers to make sure their emotions don’t get out of control, as I discussed back in episode 0.) Oh! And as a bonus, this would strengthen Ros’ role: as someone who didn’t go through suppression or emotional trauma, they’re way more stable and capable of acting normally. Regardless of if they’re emotional or logical, they can act as a voice of reason to ground their erratic colleagues, justifying their role as commander.

You could handwave this by saying it’s been a while since the Shine and things have settled down, but that’s so boring! Why introduce an element like this if you’re not going to explore its implications? One of the themes of IMTS is supposed to be human transcendence, how humanity changes from the present day given so much time and technological advancement; this would be a logical outgrowth of that.

But back to the story. Marie goes on to justify the stat-boosting mechanic by pointing out that Ros can’t command people effectively if they don’t trust her, so Mahk is dragging down the team’s performance by being abrasive. Weirdly, Mahk is immediately swayed by this and agrees to reflect on his attitude. So I guess he really is a pushover. After he leaves, Marie starts musing about… emotions, I think?

Marie: “It’s weird having to focus on that sort of thing. It wasn’t a problem before the Shine. but, it’s like everyone ended up different. Maybe it’s what we were like originally. Maybe it’s something else.”

See, I don’t understand what she’s talking about here, but I get the impression I would if I understood more about suppression. It really does read like the developer assumed you knew about this and just forgot to provide the exposition.

Marie then waffles a bit about how it’s so hard to adjust to post-Shine life and that maybe things weren’t so great before. See, this is kind of like what I was talking about, but it never goes beyond noncommittal musing like this, which feels like a show-don’t-tell issue.

On to the second conversation. She wonders how exactly the Sikohlon are a “family”, and if it really means anything.

Aw, that’s cute, Ros. I can’t help but pick it. This gives a PT boost, which actually strikes me as a bit weird, because Marie then goes on to say that she has actual family out there somewhere, from before all this spacefaring business. This is really important to her, so I feel like she’d find such a trivial comparison insulting.

Marie: “I feel like they mean a lot to me, but I lost that feeling once we were all suppressed. Now that it’s returned… I… I hate it. I don’t like feeling so alone. But I don’t want to let it go again…”

Yes good, this is exactly what I was talking about. Now if only this could carry over to the main story, where it could actually matter.

On to my next target. Rami gives me a scan, and starts chatting about emitters and aging. He thinks aging sucks and immortality is great. I agree. He then gives us some historical info:

Rami: “There’s actually some SOL and AUG humans who actually lived in that star system, ya know?”

oh gods that is so stilted why can’t you write out the actual name

“Most of us were born after that, before we quit multiplyin’. You know… I think Marie mighta been one…”

So, everyone is sterilized (obviously, since continued growth is incompatible with immortality), but it seems that didn’t happen until after space exploration was already underway. That seems weird, to me, since I thought the emitters happened before space travel? Possibly this is supposed to imply that they started exploring with generation ships or cryostasis and the emitters weren’t invented until later. That or they didn’t realize that reproduction + immortality was a recipe for disaster until later, which I find depressingly likely.

He also brings up lacertians, and how cool it was to discover a whole new civilization. Unfortunately, they haven’t found any more since, which is pretty dispiriting. He asks me if I think there’s more life out there.

Aaaand Ros is talking like a robot again. I pick the one closest to the response I want, which is “YES ABSOLUTELY :D :D :D”

Next up…

That sounds, uh, really creepy. Whatever happened to doctor-patient confidentiality?

And indeed, the answer appears to be “no”. What is going on here. Rami brushes her off, but she goes along with it. After the scan, he springs the trap: he wants to know about the Sol system. Wow, he’s nosy. Marie just gets really flustered and says that most of her memories from back then were flashed away. Rami is undeterred and keeps pushing, asking if she has any core memories. Marie suddenly goes OH LOOK IS THAT THE TIME and runs off.

Rami: “Huh. Eh, she’ll be fine. Her memory’s kind of a mess. She can’t let some things go in their entirety, so it’s… …wait a minute! Confidential! Er, yeah. I can’t tell you too much about her history. Sorry, boss. It’s the rules.”

Rami is really bad at this.

But I can’t throw stones, I’m super nosy too. I MUST KNOW EVERYTHING.

Rami: “Yyyyeah… but not yet. If she thinks you should know that sort of thing, she’ll tell you herself.”

But… you just tried to get her to spill everything in front of me. In a really pushy way. You cannot seriously expect me to believe you deeply respect her privacy. Was he swapped with the good twin during the scene transition?

Well, that was weird. Onto giant lizard friend. He just informs me he’s a theoretical physicist specializing in energy manipulation. Relevantly, he reveals that his “Stardraw” technology is an energy condenser; it can absorb all forms of residual energy from the surroundings. That sounds like magic science and also super dangerous if it can draw from people.

Tezkhra: “Everything will change once I am able to perfect the technology and can properly weild it. Everything…”

Okay, way to sound like a supervillain again. How exactly will this change everything? When you think about it, it’s no different than any other form of energy production; if you boil it down, every generator can be described as taking energy from the surroundings and converting it into a more useful form. This is just a flashy, more expedient version for the sake of sci-fi… unless there’s something more to it that he’s not telling us. Perhaps there is a more sinister side to a machine that focuses on condensing energy to a single point?

This conversation happens after “Enlightenment”. It’s time for Mr. Rational to be super irrational again.

“That creature… the Lesser. Did it truly know me? Or was it merely some misdirected form of aggression? […] I still believe its feigned recognition of me was purely instinct. A reaction, amidst the confusion.”

WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN. I could buy him rationalizing it as a case of mistaken identity, but… what is he even trying to say here? That Blacky was just lashing out at him because lol Lessers, so indiscriminately violent? Even though he specifically singled out Tezkhra and have a long spiel about how he, specifically, had to die? That’s a pretty extreme form of denial even for normal people, it beggars belief that the guy whose whole shtick is being smart would be this stupid.

“[Mahk] said it resembled me. Superficially. I want you to know that it was just a coincidence. Nothing more.”

Seriously, the game isn’t even trying.

You know, I haven’t seen much Star Trek, but I think this might be a Lord of the Rings esque situation where something gets codified and imitated so much that people forget why things were like that originally. To my understanding, the reason Spock snaps and gets super emotional sometimes is because he isn’t actually a being of perfect logic; he has just as many emotions as a normal person, but he’s purposefully keeping them in check through mental conditioning. Under that framework, it makes sense that deeper, more insidious emotional motives would creep through, and also that he’d get more emotional in times of stress, where he can’t keep up the Zen attitude anymore. The message is that repression is bad: emotions are an intrinsic part of us and trying to suppress them all the time will just make it blow up in your face. But if you don’t think about it too deeply, all you see is “Haha, the logic guy was actually super emotional the whole time! Smart people are so dumb.” So derivative sci-fi creates Spock clones that hit the same beats, without consideration for if the end result still makes sense with the changes they made to the character’s background.

Here, Tezkhra isn’t a logical robot because he’s really Zen. He’s a logical robot because he’s suppressed, which admittedly we don’t know the details of but seems to involve inhibition on a chemical, physical level. Tezkhra acts this way because he literally cannot feel emotions, not because he’s super repressed. Under that framework, it doesn’t make sense that he should be allowing these irrational rationalizations to slip through; the suppression should prevent that kneejerk reaction from happening in the first place.

Once again, I’m disappointed because this is a case where the game could have done something interesting by being different. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a logical character act truly logical instead of just being a strawman for how logic bad emotion good. Having the Spock clone act truly logical by not holding a massive idiot ball and actually investigating this would be so refreshing, and would provide more interesting plot opportunities. Possibly the developer wanted an excuse for preventing us from learning Blacky’s deal in this game because ~mysteries~, but this was still a really hackneyed way to do it.

Hmm. I’m really tempted to press him, but if he wants to act like an idiot that’s not going to get me anywhere. I’ll just smile and nod.

Tezkhra: “Then, why did it not attack? Why take time to communicate? It does not make sense, given its threats.”

So you admit you’re being irrational and your chosen explanation doesn’t make sense. Argh. Then he abruptly decides he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore and runs off.

Onto tiny lizard hatefriend. He banters with me a bit, and for some reason likes it when I banter back even though he hated that in episode 0. Then, awkward segue:

Mahk: “Before the Shine, there was no such thing as pleasure. Just existence. Do your part. Keep existing.”

Well, that sounds pretty miserable. Why would anyone agree to that? I suppose it would be helpful if we knew when the suppression craze started. If it happened early, then it makes sense that people might assume it was necessary to keep such a large, disconnected society stable. But if it only happened after people had been colonizing planets without issue for a while, it seems like overkill. I suppose you could also justify it by saying there was some petty war or something and everyone went NEVER AGAIN afterward, but we never hear anything like that. More early-era, pre-suppression information on their society would have been really helpful in general.

Anyway, Mahk just gets super emotional all of a sudden and says he doesn’t want to fail, which nets me an automatic PT boost. Okay. Onto the next…

Uhh, I guess? But if we want to get really technical, someone who creates weaponry would be more like bone marrow in this tortured metaphor.

Mahk starts musing about how he doesn’t know Ivoronus very well. He says he doesn’t even know what he did pre-Shine, which seems like a continuity error. There’s a dialogue branch in the mission briefing of episode 0 that I didn’t cover where Marie says she’s shocked the Machinatorium survived the Shine, which means it existed before that. To further muddle things, Mahk says Ivoronus raised them to be suppressed, even though suppression was supposed to wear off after the Shine. Maybe it’s trying to say he raised them as if they were suppressed, since that’s all he knew…? But Mahk then goes on to say that all the Sikohlon turned out to be special snowflakes and Ivoronus seems okay with that, so ???

Mahk: “Mmmph. Look at me, giving away family secrets to the likes of you. I suppose, though, you aren’t all bad… I should finish these results, but… please do come by after our next assignment, Ouranos.”

Wow, he’s really tsundere.

For some reason Mahk gets three chats instead of two.

They’re having a geek fight. Tez thinks auroral weapons are best, Mahk thinks contact weapons are superior.

Mahk: “[Contact] requires no ammunition other than pure focus, finesse, and timing. It is the perfect form of weaponry.”

This is actually an interesting point. Ammunition is never a concern in gameplay — unless you count health costs, and contact weapons have those too. Logically, this could be a valid reason for why melee weapons exist at all, especially since resources are supposed to be scarce in this post-apocalyptic world.

Nooo, none of these are good. Thinking back, I actually wish I had picked the third option, but it seems I was too committed to being polite. My attempt at compromise doesn’t please either of them, though.

Tezkhra brings up how emotions make battles unpredictable, which prompts Mahk to go off on a rant about how Tez is an emotionless robot. Tez retaliates by grilling him on his obsession with being a “proper” lacertian. For some reason, Mahk doesn’t have a response prepared for this, and just ends up flustered. I roll my eyes and say it doesn’t matter, which Tez likes. Tez then decides he’s done with this and says he can totally fire Mahk if he keeps making a nuisance of himself. Then he storms out.

Mahk: “I know, I know. I should do my best to… get along with others. Including the strange ones.”

Didn’t we already do this-

“However, Tezkhra is far too reserved. He is hiding something.”

Oh wait, that’s new.

“If I demonstrate that I am not subject to his little facade, perhaps I can make him open up. To all of us.”

So he’s not just being a dick for no reason. That’s actually an interesting development. Still, I don’t see why he thinks that pushing harder is going to work if Tez is so stubborn. It seems like a better idea to play along and get him to open up on his own terms. Though perhaps Mahk isn’t as optimistic as me.

…Oh hey, wait a minute. Why does he describe it as a “facade”? Shouldn’t he be able to tell Tez is suppressed and is therefore not faking his stoicism? Unless… that little detail wasn’t in the original draft, and was only added in later? Now that I think about it, that would fit. If Tez really is suppressing his emotions mentally rather than physically, suddenly it makes sense for him to be treading the standard Spock arc, and for Mahk to try to find cracks in the armor. Doesn’t change the fact that that plot is still lazy and uninspired, but at least it’s no longer breaking the setting.

And now, the new guy. He introduces himself and says he made my command interface, in addition to some other IT stuff. He brings up life before the Shine, but just vaguely waffles about it being hard to say whether it was better or worse. Darn it, game, give me some details here.

This is actually interesting. He’s found some digitized memories of people from an old colony, but the Shine probably killed them all, so this is all that’s left of them.

Neff: “Does that make the memories worthless, or priceless? Whatcha think?”

I think it’s weird that everyone expects me to dispense definitive answers for their philosophical hangups.

And I guess Ros agrees with me, because she’s back in stilted robot mode. I’ll pick the option that doesn’t make me sound like a combat junkie. Neff says he’ll try to trace them back to see where they came from. Except he thinks it was destroyed, so why would that be useful…?

Moving on to the optional characters. Chac remembers that the Mixcoatl was more colorful than the Inquiry (and we can see some evidence of that in his uniform). He doesn’t remember why, though. I say “Maybe they wanted to be different,” and he replies “There was no ‘want’ before the Shine. Only ‘need.’ There must have been a logical reason for such colors to exist.” So then why can’t he remember why, if there was a concrete reason? If he was an officer he should have known about the ship. Making this into a mystery is really forced, and we never get an explanation, so this detail is just here, being weird.

Chac’s never been outside until now, so he hadn’t seen all the devastation until I took him out flying. It’s come as a bit of a shock, but he’s able to keep his own emotions under control for now. He feels concern and empathy for the other survivors, since he believes they’re going through something similar to what he did, and he hopes the Inquiry project can help them. Yay, it’s nice to see characters being good people.

Unfortunately, it’s time for that good feeling to crawl in a hole and die. Luke thanks me for taking him in even though he’s not very good at fighting. Well, at least he knows he sucks. Then he says he’s been trying to get to know the crew, and starts listing them. We all know where this is going.

Luke: “This is gonna sound funny, but, I’d like to get to know Marie better. A lot better, if you catch my drift. Problem is, at the same time, she’s completely… impenetrable! I don’t get her at all! She’s just so… so…”

And the game still won’t let go of this. I’m just going to point to this as an example for people who say it’s not a gendered slur: if it was really just another way of saying “angry” or “aggressive”, it would be redundant with the other two options here.

Sadly there is no option for “Just not into you, you disgusting creep” so I’ll go with the option that’s least disrespectful to Marie.

Luke: “Good! So you know what I mean! I think. A-anyway, I’ll get on her good side too, eventually.”

Because as a man, he is entitled to affection from any woman he chooses. The possibility that he should back off never occurs to him: he wants Marie, therefore it is inevitable that she will warm up to him. He always gets what he wants; that is just how the world works.

Still, that wasn’t too bad. Let’s see what else he has to say; maybe if just focuses on himself, he won’t be as creepy. Of course, my hope is foolish; after saying he was just on his own so there’s not much to say, he turns the question back on me.

Luke: “So what about you? I hear you were being kept in a gel tank? […] What was it like?”

I’m not sure if I really have an opinion on this? Ros seems to dislike it but eh, it doesn’t seem terribly traumatic. I’ll go with the neutral option.

Luke: “Gross. And yet, strangely erotic.”

I have no words. Oh wait, I have one: eeeuuuugghhh.

This also gets me a PT boost. I don’t know why he thinks talking about his fetishes makes us better friends. I don’t think I want to know.

He then starts talking about Marie because of course he does. Unsurprisingly, it turns out the only reason he’s been hanging out in the crew quarters is in the hope that Marie would show up.

Luke: “I bet she never leaves that giant command room, huh? I was hoping to catch her alone. Someplace… quiet.”

…

Is there a way to interpret this other than that he is planning to rape her in a dark alley? Because I can’t think of one.

This shows he does not actually care about getting to know her on her own terms, and also shows that his previous statement that he was willing to wait for her to come around was a lie. The only reason for wanting to confront someone somewhere where they can’t get help is if you want to intimidate or coerce them into doing something for you. This is not reasonable, empathetic behavior. Luke only cares about himself and will do whatever it takes to get what he wants.

Also… I feel the need to point out something. You often hear reactionaries claim that social critics are just choosing to be offended by this stuff, playing it up for the audiences. That is, of course, awful, and do you know why? When I read this (and Luke’s introduction), I had a physical stress response: my heartrate accelerated, I tensed up, etc. I did not have control over that — the writing made me physically, involuntarily uncomfortable. And I know I’m a delicate flower, but if I’m a man who’s never had to put up with someone like Luke in real life, just how do you think someone without that privilege is going to react to this? For me, my discomfort was minor and I was able to ignore it, but I doubt that’s the case for everyone. At least in this case the awfulness is a minor optional subplot you can opt out of; otherwise, I could easily see this being a ragequit point.

…

I have one more thing to talk about, though. Let’s try to end this on a good note.

[pause]

I love these guys.

Mr. Right and Mr. Left are the game’s sidequest purveyors. In every episode, they’ll set me up with various optional boss encounters, for some bonus challenge. But what I really love about them is just how much personality they have. There are other NPCs that serve various gameplay functions, but they’re all pretty bland, and I never really interact with them outside of the service they provide. These two, however, are always a delight to talk to. Just look at some of this dialogue:

Mr. Right: “Can we count on your cooperation in capturing these criminals, Ouranos?”
Mr. Left: “Can we place our trust in you, Ros?”
Mr. Right: “You would not think to betray our operations to said individuals?”
Mr. Left: “Betrayal would be wrong.”
Mr. Right: “Wrong.”
Mr. Left: “Wrong. But we know that you will do what is right.”

Their speech patterns are just so wonderful. They zip back and forth so quickly, and oscillate between formal and informal, like with the deadpan “betrayal would be wrong” here. I think part of it might be due to another quirk: Most character messages appear one letter at a time, which creates a smooth motion that feels like natural speech. Mr. Right’s and Mr. Left’s messages appear one sentence at a time, giving the impression that they talk in a speedy, clipped manner. It’s just another thing that makes them amusingly baffling.

I think this is an example of quirkiness done well. They’re not involved in the main plot — they don’t even interact with anyone outside of themselves — so their weirdness doesn’t distract from it and they don’t need to have fully-formed characters that might clash with their quirks. Quirky is all they have to be, so the game can turn it up to 11 without consequence. Another part might be that their quirk is more reserved than the usual lolrandom — people acting overly stiff and serious doesn’t wear thin as quickly as people bouncing off the walls, I think.

One thing that’s neat about these missions is that there’s usually some puzzle or gimmick needed to engage them in the first place. In practice they tend to be pretty simple and underwhelming, but it still helps to spice things up. There’s also special music, which I like — I think the alternation between the light and heavy riffs does a good job of capturing both the sillyness of the setup and the seriousness of the fights.

This target is the “MOD Master”, a scientist who’s trying to amass an army of MOD units. The puzzle here is very simple — I just have to hide in the central corner and end my turn, at which point the second group will stupidly move out of my way and give me a clear shot at him.

The MOD Master himself isn’t too tough. The only threatening thing about him is that he starts the battle with four relatively strong flunkies. However, two have different weapons that target a different health type, and neither of them target the same type as the MOD Master’s own weapon, so — say it with me — they can’t coordinate any attacks! It’s pretty easy to crush them while they futilely attempt to whittle me down.

Also, if you’re a nerd like me, you might appreciate that the MOD Master has a special weapon that can’t be replicated by the Machinatorium, because auroral weapons can’t be kinetic. The game will often try to be clever and come up with weapons that defy the normal element limitations, but sometimes you really have to acknowledge that some combinations are just physically impossible. Here, for instance, I’m pretty sure pressure waves can’t be transmitted through a vacuum, so this doesn’t make sense. But it looks kinda cool, I guess.

You’ll often get special weapons as rewards for these missions, which can be neat, but they tend to become obsolete pretty quickly. Also I’m pretty sure this one costs 4 AP, so it’s inherently inferior to a Machinatorium weapon.

Mr. Right: “You were successful. Good.”
Mr. Left: “Good. We shall contend with the perpetrators as you capture them. For now, you rest.”
Mr. Right: “Yes, rest. Come back next time for another assignment. Next time. Next… episode.”

These two will also poke the fourth wall sometimes. Once again, I think this works just because their presence is so strange and meta in the first place.

And with that, we are truly done with episode 1. Next update, the plot continues.

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