Last time, I saw some proper action and helped a lizard get through his depression. Today, Sorenson wants to repair Typelog’s damaged communication networks so he can spread Habitation Zero’s blueprints to other survivors.

This map introduces a new gimmick: fog of war. This can actually be tricky, because there is no extended sight: when you move, you only reveal the node you land on, and that’s it. This is potentially dangerous, because if you encounter an enemy in the blind zone, they’ll get the first turn in combat. (The same thing occurs if a mobile enemy enters your node — that’s normally not a threat, but when you can’t see them coming, it’s a lot easier for enemies to get the jump on you.) Of course, combat is so easy that I’m more afraid of wasting CP by blundering into dead ends and such. What you’re supposed to do is repair the relay nodes (those blue circles), which will uncover the area around them, allowing you to deal with the enemies safely.

When I activate the last node, the comm station is revealed and the crew notices that it’s broadcasting a population of one, so someone’s already there. When they enter, they notice that a Lesser trap has been sprung. It’s blocking the hallway, which seems pretty inconvenient — the ones in Hab Zero were off to the side, so people could still get around them if they were active. What are the workers here supposed to do if they have to get to the control console but a Lesser’s blocking the way? Rami deactivates it so the crew can advance, and…

Okay but what does that actually mean. The debris looks like broken glass — and, when we see this Lesser break plasmatic bars later, there’s a shattering sound effect. Those things clearly aren’t naked plasma. Are they supposed to be, like… glass vessels that contain plasma? But what would be the point of that?

Tezkhra and Mahk can smell the Lesser, so it’s still here. Mahk says they should firebomb the place.

Yeah let’s not blow up the place we came to investigate, guys. Mahk and Tez don’t like this, saying my curiosity will get me killed. They keep going, and…

This guy has a leitmotif so you know he’s important. It’s nicely tense and guttural, which is fitting for this scene, but not so much for his later appearances.

While everyone sputters impotently, Tezkhra advances and draws his gun-arm. The Lesser turns around.

This makes everyone freak out, because apparently Lessers are supposed to be incapable of speech — specifically, Mahk says they “haven’t the means”. Now this is interesting. Clearly, they’re not physically incapable of it, so what’s the cause of the misconception? I have to wonder if maybe they have the wiring for language, but never found the need to use it.

Consider parrots. Everyone knows they can repeat speech, and the really smart ones seem capable of recombining words and coming up with their own ideas…but they don’t have a natural language of their own. (Birdsong doesn’t count; there’s a lot of technical reasons why, but basically it doesn’t fit all the requirements that linguists use to define language.) It’s exceedingly rare for parrots to come up with new expressions spontaneously, and when they do it’s in imitation of human behavior (such as laughing at another bird being stupid). Parrots will speak to us when it gets them something, but without that coaxing and conditioning, their speech is pretty random and unreliable. They’re technically capable of language, but they don’t use it for everything like we do; it’s a fringe capability of their brains that evolution never gave them reason to develop.

Lessers might be similar — although given how much scientists love teaching animals stuff, I’m surprised they wouldn’t have figured it out by now. Uplifting the lacertians must have taken a lot of effort, so I’m sure they tried really hard on the Lessers too. This could, however, be one reason for the prejudice — we do have a really strong bias towards things that can talk. If our talky lizard friends told us that the violent non-talky lizards were hopeless and we should kill them with fire, I can see us deciding they’re a lost cause and giving up prematurely. Language is extremely important to us, so it’s very likely that we would distance ourselves from aliens that communicate differently.

After everyone’s done flipping out about that, they notice he has an augmented leg and start flipping out about that too. Shouldn’t they have noticed that earlier…? Anyway, this is, I think, another point in favor of the idea that the Lessers’ coordination was supposed to be a major plot point. This guy couldn’t have operated on himself, which means he must have a benefactor out there somewhere. (And if I’m right about the language thing, this benefactor may have taught him that too.) This has “conspiracy” written all over it. Unfortunately, we will never get any explanation about how he got that leg or its significance. Come to think of it, I don’t think we ever get an explanation for why he’s messing around with this station, either, but it would make a lot of sense for this to be on the orders of his benefactor.

The Lesser says Tezkhra, “the Blue One”, has to die. Neff asks who he is.

Lesser: “You know me as… the Black One…”

That’s an awfully interesting way to phrase it. Why would they know who he is? Is he some kind of primal god known to ancient humans or something? Tezkhra doesn’t care, and blasts him with his laser cannon. Everyone returns to the ship and leaves the Black One for dead, but this is fiction so that is obviously a terrible mistake.

Back at the Inquiry, Sorenson asks Tezkhra why The Black One recognized him. Tez doesn’t know, and refuses to search his memory banks on the basis that taking a break from his duties would be illogical. Yes, it’s definitely less logical to investigate a new threat to the project than to pretend it doesn’t exist. I mean, okay, Tez is obviously supposed to be rattled here, but he’s supposedly still suppressed. He shouldn’t be slave to irrational fears and anxieties. Maybe this is supposed to be a sign that his suppression is faltering, but we don’t know if it’s even possible for that to happen in degrees. We know too little about suppression to get a good sense of what this means — is there supposed to be a middling point where strong emotions can still get through, or is this a setting inconsistency?

An NPC comes in and says that they repaired the facility, but didn’t find any corpses.

“Either the thing crawled into a hiding spot to die, or it got away somehow. We didn’t detect any passing craft, though.”

Remember this; we’re going to learn something about The Black One later that will render this whole discussion completely unnecessary. More evidence that his plot role changed over time, maybe? But more on that when we get to it.

Rami also brings up the augmented leg, and hypothesizes that Blacky had a benefactor or partner. So we are definitely supposed to be thinking in that direction.

It’ll never matter though, so onward to the next mission briefing. We’re going asteroid mining, because the comm station’s map data revealed a nice deposit. I have to say, I do like how much effort the game is putting into making these missions flow logically from one to the next. All I have to do is activate the defunct Typelog station that’s there.

Sorenson: “Make sure your crew and arrangements are ready before departing. And keep your weaponry up-to-date.”

That sure sounds like good advice. I might even be able to follow it one day if the random number generator ever decides to give me anything other than ballistic shells.

But before I head out, I’m going to follow this distress signal I got from the comm station. Between missions you can input coordinates into the galaxy map to generate random levels for grinding. However, certain specific coordinates will lead to special areas. This is one such instance.

Neff says they’re just answering the distress signal. The man seems pretty discombobulated, but eventually realizes that that makes sense.

Then.

Marie: “That’s a pretty advanced craft to be broken down in the middle of space like that.”
Pilot: “Yeah, well, you should see the guy flyin’ it, babe!”
Neff: “Uh oh.”
Rami: “Hoo boy.”
Marie: ” ‘B-babe?!’ Just who the hell do you think you are, anyway?”

Yes, we’re doing this. That’s what you get for assuming that a far future utopia is the one setting where you could avoid the ubiquitous Lovable Sexual Harasser archetype, complete with the evil ice queen comically overreacting to show how very put upon he is. Because it’s not like this kind of behavior is a giant red flag for women. It’s not like this kind of attitude is actually extremely threatening and nerve-wracking. It’s not like women have to put up with this kind of entitled crap almost every day of their lives and know that they have to assert their boundaries immediately and unambiguously, even though they also know even that’s no guarantee of safety. He’s just kidding around! It’s no big deal! Can’t the stupid unreasonable woman see what a hilarious situation this is??? And don’t worry, it gets worse.

Pilot: “Fiery gal! Name’s Luke. Luke Martinez. Just a regular guy tryin’ to scrap his way along since the Shine.”

His first response to inform us that he is one of those cases where Marie’s defense mechanism does not work, because women who fight back are his fetish and he sees no problem with informing everyone of this fact. And yes, the “suave” rugged dude is Latino, because why stop with one dose of terrible when you can go for broke.

Marie: “Tez, secure an anchor cable on that craft. I want the pilot captured and interrogated.”
Luke: “Whoooa! Slow down, baby! We didn’t even decide on a safe word yet!”

And he doesn’t stop. No matter how aggressive and off-putting Marie tries to be, he will not take the hint. Any attempts at rejection are interpreted as more evidence that she’s secretly into him and that he is entitled to harass her further. He has just shown us that he does not care about consent or boundaries. He is dangerous.

See, here’s the thing. You can actually make this character archetype work — but only as long as you demonstrate that they can handle rejection and are receptive to others’ responses. Like here for instance. The man in that comic is a bit annoying, but he’s willing to drop the subject upon request and leave the woman alone, instead of continuing to push. This tells us that while he may be pushy and overbearing, he is not dangerous. If you tell him no, he is not going to rape you. I believe that’s the idea that this archetype is trying to get across: someone who, like most comic archetypes, acts in an over-the-top manner but is still a good person who won’t hurt anyone as a result of that.

The problem occurs when we don’t see any evidence of the last part. And that, I think is a big part of why this archetype is so weird and prevalent. From a male perspective, the Lovable Harasser’s moral fiber is most likely assumed. Most people are decent sorts, so if you’re someone like Luke, you’ll project onto him: you know that you’re not a rapist, you’d never hurt anyone, you’re just flirting! It’s just good fun! So Luke must be the same. You know there’s no actual danger here. But someone on the receiving end of this will see the situation very differently. Sure, he knows that he’s not out to hurt anybody. But she doesn’t know that. This behavior could be either merely annoying or seriously dangerous, and someone on the outside has no way of knowing which one it is this time. And the more he ignores her opinions and breaks down her safeguards, the most likely it is that he’s the latter. She can’t take anything on faith. Especially if she’s had to put up with this for a long time, she’s probably going to turn to a nuclear option as soon as possible, just because she knows that’s the only thing with a chance of working. But the guy just sees a woman blowing up at him for seemingly no reason, so he assumes she’s just being hysterical (or worse, playing hard-to-get) and will calm down once she sees what a great guy he is, so he thinks it’s okay to creep on her even more.

Basically: when a guy hits on a girl, that can potentially be a joke. When the girl rejects him, especially in an extreme manner, that is not a joke. When the guy proceeds to ignore her and continue hitting on her, we have passed the domain of comedy and are now into horror.

…Anyway. When they take Luke back to the Inquiry, Sorenson asks him if he’s a refugee. He starts acting really weird and vague, emphasizing that he was most definitely alone when they found him. So I’m guessing he murdered the ship’s previous owner and stole it. What a charmer. Sorenson offers to let him stay in Hab Zero, but Luke thinks it’d be safer to become a crewmember for…some reason. Maybe he wants to steal this ship, too. Marie objects, obviously. Sorenson overrules her, equally obviously.

Luke: “You mean it? ‘Cause it’d be great having you guys watching me back. Especially you, Marie. […] Let me know when it’s time to get busy. That goes double for you, Marie.”
[fade to black]
Marie: “This guy’s gonna get himself killed, and I don’t mean out there.”

Ha ha! Marie is such a kidder. Such funny, lighthearted banter this is.

You know what really sticks in my craw about all this, though? Luke breaks the story. This really, truly should be the one place where we don’t have to put up with lolharassment. It’s explained somewhere, I think one of the personal conversations, that as a consequence of being immortal, everyone agreed to be sterilized. Given that no other characters express any sexual interest whatsoever, I assume this was a hardcore chemical castration deal. That would also be more logical — don’t want stupid hormones messing with peoples’ decision-making — and it seems the society was on a big logic kick for a while, so this seems likely. Luke is therefore a setting impossibility. It makes no sense for him to act this way, and it makes no sense for the characters to act like this is totally normal. Everything about him is antithetical to the story’s atmosphere and central themes, so he’s just an incongruous annoyance that jars the player out of the experience. Unsurprisingly, he is supposedly a cameo character from a project by one of the developer’s friends. If Luke is any indication of its quality, I hope I will never have to see this project.

And adding insult to injury, Luke is a useless piece of crap. His best stats are only middling, and the rest are terrible. I’m warehousing him in fleet 4 and never touching him again.

Well, now that I have some cannon fodder, let’s do this completely innocuous fetch quest. Marie and Tez are hilariously underequipped but the RNG refuses to give me any auroral shells and it turns out the blueprint codes run on black magic I can’t crack so OH WELL let’s live on the edge.

And we get another gimmick already! The micrometeors inflict 100 hull damage to everyone at the end of every round. I might care about this if battles ever lasted longer than 1 round. As is, it’s just a novelty. The mission itself is very straightforward; just three battles and then a straight shot to the finish. I have to bring every fleet to the station, but even so I have enough time to investigate every node for goodies.

…And, I’m not a game designer, but I’m pretty sure this is the point where treasure chests should stop giving out the filler trash you’re only supposed to buy when you’re desperate.

Everyone makes it to the station without issue. Neff is able to recall the robot defenders, so people can mine here safely now. Rami notes that it’s strange the place still has power; Marie is suspicious that someone else got here first. Neff tries to contact the Inquiry, but doesn’t get a response. This should be a major red flag, but he doesn’t think anything of it until…

WELP. This is Lagarto Desperado — I’m sorry, El Lagarto Desperado because of course the criminal scoundrel is Hispanic even though he’s an alien, why let logic get in the way of our racial stereotypes. He’s the guy who sent the threat, if you’ll remember. His plan was actually quite clever: he spent a long time stalking the Inquiry from the shadows so he could learn its behavior, and waited for an opportunity to separate the fighter pilots from the ship. I’m not entirely clear on how he knew they knew about the minefield, but he just hacked into their communication channel to talk here, so presumably he’s been eavesdropping on their plans for a while. This means he knows about the Inquiry’s weapons, too, so he brought a jammer to foil their targeting systems. I have to hand it to him, he prepared really well for this. Good villain! He gloats a bit about how he’s going to ransack the Inquiry, but he’ll keep everyone alive just because it’s so fun watching them run around, Neff devises a plan to crack the encryption on the relays, and then it’s showtime!

I really love this mission. I’m a sucker for revisited levels that remix everything and force the player to do something completely different than what they did the first time, and this also incorporates all the gimmicks and mechanics that we’ve been eased into over the course of the episode. Storywise, there’s real tension here — we’re separated from our home base, we’re navigating blind, and the villain in the shadows has finally revealed himself. It’s not just dramatic in and of itself, it builds off of everything that’s happened prior: a true climax. The Reconstruction never, ever managed that — all the final missions, with the possible exception of the first one, were complete non-sequiturs. Sadly it can’t live up to its image since, as per usual, all the fights are trivially easy, but it’s something.

Oh, and there’s yet another gimmick to be introduced. It’s actually pretty interesting that Lagarto took the time to set this up — most greedy criminal villains have impatience as a fatal flaw, where they’ll make reckless decisions and attack before they’re ready, but Lagarto really planned ahead. Unfortunately, this mechanic isn’t very impressive; it just means I take minor damage at the end of every round, exactly like the meteors. Battles just end too fast for that to matter, even boss battles. If I place my fleets in the slots I can use them myself, but that’s really overkill.

Lagarto’s attack manages to be mildly threatening! Rami actually has a kinetic/hull weakness, so he could be in real danger here if I hadn’t given him a shielding module for it. But Lagarto still only gets one attack to my fifteen, so I can still crush him easily. I almost beat him in the first round, but I miss my last shot. The fool decides to retreat since he’s in critical health, which just gives me a free shot that ends the battle. The AI is a lot better than it was in The Reconstruction (enemies will attack people who aren’t on the front line now!), but it still has some weird behavior. An enemy in critical health will always spend their entire turn retreating into the healing zone, even if they’re the last enemy and are therefore doing nothing but giving me a free turn.

Hm, you know what might have made this work? If boss enemies, or even just enemies in general, had really high regeneration rates. Currently everyone regenerates at the end of the round, but it’s by tiny amounts, like, double digits. The back row healing zone either doubles or triples that, I can’t remember which, but even that’s pretty insignificant when they’re up against fifteen attacks of, let’s be generous, ~300 damage each. Even boss enemies still generally take 100-200 damage from attacks, so a trip to the healing zone can only undo maybe one attack. If boss regeneration was at that level normally, then the healing zone would be a real setback (especially since you couldn’t touch them that round except with beam weapons). And that would actually justify the fixed-health system! Bosses have really high defense, so even if they have normal regeneration rates, it counts a lot more, since you’re only chipping away but they’re still regenerating 10-20% of their health. This would encourage players to strike hard and fast, but would also require them to gauge when enemies decide to retreat and possibly to pull their punches if they can’t eliminate the enemy in a single round. There’s inklings of actual strategy there! (Plus it would obviously make battles last longer, which gives the gameplay more room to breathe and makes the multi-round mechanics an actual consideration.)

GOSH DARN IT GAME STOP GIVING ME BALLISTIC SHELLS

Lagarto tries to escape afterward, but the battle damaged his jammer, so Sorenson can capture him now.

Hm, that’s a glitch. Green text is normally reserved for telecommunications.

Marie and Neff want to kill him. Sorenson does some kind of weird logic-fu guilt trip:

Sorenson: “I still do not understand. We should be working together to rebuild, not stealing from one another. Logically, anyone who stands to interfere with the reconstruction should be eliminated. We, however, are different. We will not remove an unpleasant member of society permanently without judgment.”

Uh, if your whole mission is to restore society, I’m pretty sure it’s more logical to let him live. There’s no reproduction, remember. The population is supposed to be stable. Killing someone is a really big deal, especially when so many people already died in the Shine — they’d be permanently injuring all of humanity (lizardity, whatever) by doing this. Life should be sacred to these people. This casual approach to the death penalty is something I’d expect from people in our time, not citizens of a far-flung future society that invested so much in immortality.

Sorenson then explains that this is some sort of test for Ros: she will determine Lagarto’s fate. I only get two options, though, to kill him or let him off scott-free. That seems like a pretty extreme set of choices! I don’t have to do it now, though, so I’ll save the full discussion for later. Lagarto ends by making an honor-among-thieves appeal, saying that if I spare him he’ll never bother me again. Yeah, I’m not buying that.

Sorenson: “Ros. Whatever your decision may eventually be, know that I support it without question. You have proven courage despite overwhelming odds, and dedication and loyalty to the Inquiry project.”

…Hmm. So has he finally decided to trust me instead of treating me like I’m going to snap at any moment? The sudden change in attitude seems just a tad suspicious. What’s his angle here? Is he trying to subtly push me towards one option or the other? Is he buttering me up to lower my guard, or to try to mold me towards his own goals? I don’t buy his nice guy act.

Sorenson has no more missions for me, so once I’m done wandering around, it’s time to go back to the tank.

Marie: “It’s for your own good. You know that. We’ll hold things together here. In the meantime, enjoy your break.”

Still not buying this, either. At least they’re being nicer about it this time. The crew says they’ll miss having me around, then we cut to Ros in the tank. Sorenson stays behind to watch her creepily, on his own this time. Why is he doing this?

Sorenson: “Just as I feared, Ros. It’s begun. the era of mutual cooperation is over. Violence reigns again.”

…To monologue, apparently. This seems to imply he was legitimately surprised and shaken by Lagarto’s treachery, so maybe he’s not an omniscient chessmaster villain after all. This is a nicely ominous note to end the episode on; we’ve won this battle, but the war is still to follow, and I don’t know what Sorenson is going to do about it. We then end with the real cliffhanger: Someone informs Sorenson that the Typelog corporation has finally taken notice of the Inquiry’s activity, and would like to talk with him about his use of their technology. Now that’s a good cliffhanger! We have some idea of what Typelog is, enough to know that it’s one of the big players but not enough to know exactly what its goals are, what it wants from the Inquiry, or even whether it will be friend or foe. Unlike last time, we’re given enough material to speculate, but it’s still mysterious enough to keep us guessing.

And that’s the end of episode 1. It’s really clear that the developer has learned from his mistakes in The Reconstruction: we have a coherent plot arc that logically builds to a satisfying climax, and the main characters take a much more active and interesting role in the world around them. Marie has stopped being an unreasonable psychopath, also. Episode 0 was a bit of a bumpy ride, but this was a very well-polished first arc. I’m optimistic for what’s ahead.

In the next update, I’ll go over the personal chats, plus some other stuff. Then it’s on to episode 2!

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