Last time, the main characters menaced an innocent half-Lesser hybrid because they’re racist. Today, it’s time to learn about Typelog’s master plan.

When I go to the meeting, Daszk immediately triggers a Lesser trap to cement the fact that he’s going to be the cosmic chew toy character. Like the trap in the comm station, this one blocks the hallway, which seems really inconvenient. This seems like something you’d only see if drastic action was required, like if they were anticipating a whole horde of Lessers and needed to block off entire segments of the building. But despite the fearmongering articles I don’t think anyone’s that paranoid yet, and this is supposed to be an old building anyway.

After that little interlude, we get to the main event.

Hm, so I guess higher executives get purple highlights? Not sure why that would be the case when they seem to like blue so much. Kinda blends in with the black suits, too.

Sorenson: “So you are the project overseer?”
Ral: “Inspiration, overseer, and… first adopter.”

And Ral immediately informs us that she’s an idiot and a terrible scientist. Farla already mentioned this in one book review, but you never never never want to be the first test subject of anything ever. The first test always reveals horrible things that the scientists couldn’t predict or anticipate. Always. This should be more true than ever in the far future where scientists have access to power we can barely imagine now.

Ral then tries to explain what the project is. The exposition is annoyingly vague, but it seems like some kind of brain uploading program that allows people to basically live in the internet. Ral is really pumped for this because it would give everyone unprecedented access to knowledge and information. She also goes off on some weird transcendence thing, only to immediately undermine herself:

Ral: “We will not be bound by sensory input alone any more, or fettered with emotions and misunderstandings.”
Tezkhra: “Augmentation of the mind? So, your goal is to make the living body obsolete?”
Ral: “Not yet. the body still nurtures and fuels the mind. We have not found a way around that limitation.”

Okay so… doesn’t that mean people are still subject to the physical limitations of their brains? How would people be able to comprehend the new input? Why would they no longer be subject to emotions? I’m really not clear on how this is supposed to work. If it’s a total transfer of consciousness into a computer network, then you shouldn’t need your body. If it’s just jamming wires into your brain so you can think in the internet or whatever, you’d still be subject to all the basic constraints of the physical brain. I know this is obviously just technobabble to cover the developer’s ignorance of neurology, but come on, technobabble should at least try to make logical sense!

And… somehow what everyone takes away from this is that the mental storage limits would be overcome, thus making Typelog’s current tech obsolete. This would only be true if this is actual brain uploading, so I’m just going to assume that’s what the developer meant and ignore the “we still need the body” bit.

Ral: “Imagine direct control over remote systems by thought alone. […] The exact connections and methods of interfacing directly have eluded us for so long. No longer, my friends.”

They… have? But I thought cyborgs could already directly interface with machines? That’s the given explanation for why they’re good with ballistic weapons.

Then suddenly, plot happens. Ral notes that the Lessers I captured at the start of the episode were kept in quarantine here, and now they must be breaking out. Marie and Ros run to the scene while the others secure the exits.

The Black One’s theme starts playing.

Notice that he no longer has the cybernetic leg. I now understand what happened to him back at the comm station, and it means the whole debate about how he escaped is irrelevant for reasons I still can’t elaborate on. Remember this for episode 3.

Blacky gets up in Ros’ face and tells her not to get in his way, then continues walking to the north. Ros wonders why he didn’t attack, given all the hubbub about how Lessers are irrational ragemonsters. Smart Ros. Marie ignores this and just tells her to run after him while she gets the others. We then hear an announcement that a fighter craft’s been compromised, followed by Blacky blasting the station and demanding they surrender Tezkhra.

We cut to Ros, who catches up with Blacky and starts a boss battle. He… doesn’t actually do anything, though. Despite his tough talk, his attack does literally zero damage. Like, damage numbers don’t even appear.

Marie: “Ros! It’s Marie! Hang in there! We’re coming to help you out! Just stay alive a little longer…!”

Marie seems to act like this is a grueling ordeal, though. I think this actually is supposed to be an instance of unreliable narration, since she doesn’t know how the battle is going down and has previously displayed a willingness to assume the worst of her enemies.

On the fourth round, reinforcements arrive and the boss music starts. Very dramatic! Unfortunately, this is more of an interactive cutscene than a true challenge. Blacky does start inflicting damage now, but he only ever attacks Tezkhra. His attack does actually hit one of Tez’s weaknesses, making it theoretically dangerous, but it’s still so weak (~300 damage) that it takes multiple turns to become a concern. I think if he does manage to KO Tez he’ll start attacking other people, but I beat him in one round, so. Pretty underwhelming, honestly; I was expecting The Black One to be some kind of cool, challenging recurring boss like the Final Fantasies always have, but nah, he’s a total pushover.

Ooh, but I get a level 7 auroral shell afterward, that’s pretty nice.

After the battle, the arms break off but the cockpit is still intact, and Blacky flies off. Tez wants to give chase, but Sorenson orders that they cut their losses and focus on Typelog’s next assignment.

The next briefing opens with the characters discussing Blacky; they decide he’s not a real threat, since apparently the craft he was using was really powerful. Show don’t tell, game. You know what could have worked here? If his weapon was extraordinarily powerful and capable of oneshotting Tezkhra, but he pulled his punches against the other characters and used a weaker version of the attack. Or if he didn’t pull his punches and was an actually challenging opponent. That wouldn’t even be prohibitively difficult, since he fights alone. Then this would make more sense — it would be clear that he did fight the crew with far greater firepower than they were used to, and it still wasn’t enough.

However, all that is besides the point. It’s stupid to dismiss him on those grounds in the first place, because Lessers are dangerous even without weapons and he’s just demonstrated that he can show up basically anywhere. They shouldn’t bank on the idea that he’ll always confront them with a craft. I would be more concerned that he’d jump out from nowhere and maul Tezkhra while everyone is walking around, say, the Inquiry, far away from the safety of their sturdy ships. I mean, think about it — if Tez had gone to investigate instead of Marie, Blacky wouldn’t have gone for the craft in the first place, he’d just lunge for Tez right there.

Neff: “I just wanna know how he found us so fast. Has he been watchin’ us all this time?”

And this just makes no sense. It’s been an entire episode, and it’s implied there are long timeskips between episodes. The suspicious thing here is why it took him so long to show up again.

Ros also points out that Blacky actually wasn’t very aggressive and only fired warning shots at her, so that part of the battle was definitely intentional. Everyone agrees he’s an enigma and they should just focus on the mission briefing for now.

We’re collecting solar panels. The Mind/Machine Project requires large amounts of energy to work, and Typelog deployed solar collectors for this purpose. Unfortunately, MOD units and data pirates started swarming the things, so now Typelog can’t retrieve them. (Once again, I have to wonder what the data pirates think they’re going to get out of these things.) Large battle craft can’t be used to clear the area because the star’s gravity is too dangerous. Really? Just how big are these things? Even planets have to get pretty close to stars before their orbits become unstable, and I highly doubt they have or need planet-sized battleships. But we need a justification for why my fleets are necessary, so here we are.

The taps also have to be disengaged simultaneously to ensure they’re all in sync with each other, which is another reason why they’re sending in multiple small ships.

“Differing amounts of stored energy could cause fluctuations when they are discharged. They need to be equal.”

But… time isn’t the only factor. Even if they’re placed in a perfect, equidistant configuration, the star’s energy emissions wouldn’t be uniform. Solar flares and other energy fluctuations would cause each tap to collect energy at a different rate. If you want to ensure they’re all exactly the same (and I’m not sure why that would even be necessary but sure this is super sensitive whatever) you’d need to link them up to ensure they distribute their charges equally, at which point this whole issue is moot.

Marie: “Sounds like you guys didn’t think much of this through at all.”

Marie tells it like it is. I think this is interesting, though: the problems they ran into are decidedly post-apocalyptic ones. The idea of malfunctioning guard robots or pirates used to be inconceivable, so it makes sense that Typelog would be blindsided by that possibility. They’re showing that they’re still operating on pre-Shine mentality, where everything was a lot simpler and you didn’t have to plan your operations around this kind of chaos. I think that’s a fitting flaw for them, since they give off such a cold, rigid attitude and embody the orderly ideal of the pre-Shine society. They have a lot of resources, but are too rigid to adapt to the paradigm shift.

Okay, so this is why I was fussing over scale in the FOCS mission. That sun barely looks any bigger than the planet in the previous mission, and might even be smaller than the FOCS construct. I remembered it looking like a wall of flame, but no, you can see the curvature! Even if this is a relatively small star, that would mean this map would have to be absurdly large. I dunno, I guess the scale does change between missions? It’s hard to keep track.

Once again, we get a unique battle background, which I like. This one does a great job of conveying the sun’s enormous presence in a way the mission map can’t, and the bright colors provide a stark contrast with the standard battle backgrounds, which are cold and dark. Once again, though, it’s barely larger than the planet in the background of the previous mission. I guess the fleet must have been a lot closer to the planet, but it’s still kinda weird.

And hm, there are Lessers here too. I find it really weird that the MOD units, pirates, and Lessers are all fighting on the same side with no problems. This actually reminds me of a game design article about the little things, which brings up as one example the tendency for endgame RPG opponents to include both dragons and demons, simply because those tend to be the most dangerous creatures in mythology. Yet, when you think about it — dragons are known for obsessing over hoarded material wealth, and demons are known for tricking people out of their possessions. Shouldn’t that be a source of conflict that makes them unlikely to work together? In a generic fantasy RPG, this kind of streamlined simplification is understandable, since the enemies exist only as mindless obstacles, not characters of their own that inform the world. But here, the enemies are supposed to have logical motivations that relate to the setting, and the conflicts between the groups are explicitly discussed in the plot. This creates a jarring disconnect between gameplay and story. Every single character will argue until they’re blue in the face that Lessers are unintelligible ragemonsters and it’s impossible to get along with them… so why aren’t they lashing out at the pirates? And MOD units are designed to defend Typelog property, so wouldn’t they be trying to repel the interlopers? Heck, what are Lessers even doing here? Are they just picking off MOD units for kicks?

Good writing is all about the little things. When every detail works together, you create a sense of a full, vibrant world that makes internal sense even when you drill down. When details work at cross-purposes, you’re reminded that the story is an artificial construct, and audience engagement falls apart.

When I reach the first tap, Tez notices something.

“No solar flares or thermal probe, yet it’s still drawing and storing both heat and light energy.”

That… doesn’t exclude these things from being normal solar panels, which can collect both of those. Is he supposed to say “solar panels” instead of “solar flares” and the developer got those mixed up at some point?

“They… took my research! Damn it! What are they…!”

Mr. Emotionless sure is having a lot of emotions today. Weirdly, I remember him being even more emotional in the beta version… and indeed, he is. I’m not sure why the developer changed it, since the new script still doesn’t fix the underlying inconsistency.

So, this is literally the only bad thing Typelog ever does this episode to justify all the sinister buildup. I am extremely underwhelmed. There are so many terrifying Orwellian scenarios that could have occurred from Typelog abusing their technology, and all the game comes up with is this petty white-collar crime? I actually don’t understand why this is even a big deal in this society. The reason for research confidentiality in real life is because academia is a cutthroat society where credit and recognition makes or breaks your career. Patents and trade secrets exist for the sake of money and maintaining control of the market. In a post-scarcity society, none of these things should matter anymore. There is no personal benefit to keeping your research to yourself; in fact, it is actually more beneficial to let others build off your work, since more ideas and fresh perspectives in the pot accelerates the rate of scientific progress. This means it is more logical and ethical to share information, and as we’ve established, Tez is supposedly operating on pure logic. I can’t see what Tez has to gain by privatizing his research, or why he’d even want to do it in the first place. Given something we learn later, I think the idea is supposed to be that the tech is dangerous and he’s worried people will misuse it, but he never says as much. As we saw in the personal chat last episode, he just thinks Stardraw tech is great and will make everything better.

Well, whatever. Marie tells him to chill so I can complete the mission. I do so easily, even managing to investigate a bunch of nodes before finishing. For finishing within par, I get… a level 3 weapon shell. I was getting level 5s from mission rewards last episode. Typelog is a cheapskate.

Oh, and Ros reaches level 10 here. Characters get very minor stat bonuses at level 3, 6, and 9, but level 10 is the big one. I can choose to increase AP or one of the “speed” stats, or plug an elemental weakness. These boosts are pretty significant, since even 1 point is a big difference for those stats, and elemental weaknesses are a huge pain. I typically choose to plug weaknesses every time, just because in the endgame you can get extension shells that boost AP by multiple points, but you can never make shields that cover multiple weaknesses. Ros doesn’t have any weaknesses though, so I go with AP. For Ros, this also upgrades her personal weapon automatically — other characters have a different method, which I’ll cover in the bonus update.

Tezkhra demands to speak with Typelog immediately, so it’s back to the superhub after the mission. When he confronts the agents, they say that Ral has already begun testing the machine, so Tez will have to wait.

Tezkhra: “Did Typelog Corporation obtain my Stardraw data without my permission?”
Male Agent: “Obtain?”
Tezkhra: “Did you steal my work?!”
Female Agent: “Ral Maha has access to all data related to the Mind/Machine Interface project. But, as I said, she is not available.”

They also demonstrate that they are really bad at convincingly dodging questions.

But PLOT TWIST, Tez actually wants to warn Ral, not intimidate her: he’s never tested his tech for the amount of energy stored by the taps, so he’s worried that they’ll blow something up if they try to use it.

Tezkhra: “An uncontrolled discharge could result in an unstoppable feedback loop. It would be catastrophic!”

Huhwhat? Does he mean that the devices will reabsorb any energy they try to discharge? Can’t you just… turn off the gathering mode? If you can’t, that kind of defeats the purpose of using them in the first place. Besides, entropy would ensure the energy would deteriorate to uselessness, not cause an explosion. The heat produced might melt something, which would be bad, but I wouldn’t describe that as “catastrophic”. This would be a lot more comprehensible if he had actually explained to us how his tech worked beforehand. Actually, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mention anything about it at all outside of personal chats, so it’s very possible for players to be completely lost here.

The agents just brush him off, saying that the engineers know what they’re doing. I find that pretty likely, actually; as I said, publicizing research accelerates scientific progress. I highly doubt they’re so incompetent that they didn’t notice any flaws, and I highly doubt they’re lazy enough to go ahead with the project without fixing them. They’ve probably improved on his tech.

Back at the Inquiry, Tezkhra mopes about the situation with the rest of the crew.

Tezkhra: “I do not know how it was obtained, either. I stored my data on a segmented console.”

Doesn’t seem like a mystery to me. Typelog still stores what people see, right? Every time he’s looked at his notes, that’s memory data that’s ripe for the plucking. Typelog is a panopticon; there’s really no way to hide anything from them unless you obsessively delete your memory data, and maybe not even then. (Oh hey, that could actually provide a sensible explanation for why he deletes his memories!) I’m not sure if that’s what we’re supposed to be thinking or not; this question never gets answered or brought up again.

Tezkhra: “I am more concerned about any consequences as a result of its misuse.”

Tez is a very bad liar. Also, what misuse? He’s only ever described the tech in positive terms. How do you “misuse” something that’s basically just a really awesome solar panel? Is there something more to this he’s not telling us? Sadly, this extremely suspicious remark goes unnoticed by the cast because they are not very observant.

Sorenson: “Typelog has requested that we remotely monitor the first test attempt on our screens in the assembly room. […] Make sure you reorder your fleets to how you want them as well.”

Wow, that was subtle. Why don’t you just have him say there’s gonna be a boss fight while you’re at it, game? This is especially cringe-worthy because it’s a complete non-sequitur. Previous heavy-handed gameplay hints were given in mission briefings, providing a good in-universe excuse for why Sorenson would give you tactical advice. But here he has no reason to believe you’ll need to be prepared for a fight, so it feels like the story’s suddenly been interrupted so Sorenson can turn to the camera and dispense mechanical, obligatory hints like a tutorial robot. It’s not even necessary! The game could have just opened the menu right before the mission and let us adjust things then, like The Reconstruction did for the Zaka battle! Gah.

Anyway, they’re called to the briefing room to watch Ral’s ascension.

Hey look, black people! They only ever show up when more than two Typelog agents are needed, but it’s something I guess.

The agents do a speech about how awesome brain uploading is that’s basically the same as Ral’s: unlimited memory storage, telekinesis, your mind is the internet, etc. This is just a test run, so it’s being performed on a segmented grid cut off from the main network, and Ral will only be uploaded for a short time.

Ral: “I’m here, Agent. It’s a shame I won’t need these ears for much longer.”

Yeah that sure sounds like brain uploading to me.

The wires spark, but nothing explodes, so it seems the engineers did know what they were doing. The operator says to shut her down, but it’s time for drama so that doesn’t work. Suddenly everything’s going wrong; none of the control switches are working and it turns out the grid wasn’t as isolated as they thought, because she’s now in the entire network and wreaking havoc.

Technician: “Her consciousness is out of the picture. She is running on pure instinct now. And that means… self-preservation.”

What? Why? How? Is turning people into nonsapient drones a feature or a bug? The whole point of this was supposed to be transcendence, not regression. If she’s lost higher thought capabilities, then they screwed up a lot more than just the segmentation. Anyway, she’s amassing an army of MOD units, so Sorenson pushes me out the door to stop her before she destroys something.

Marie: “What are we gonna do when we get there?”
[dramatic pause, pocketwatch-checking animation]
Sorenson: “Something difficult.”

Hm, I wonder if Ral was originally meant to die here? That would have certainly made the finale a lot more dramatic, though it would also be pretty tacky. This is enough of a diabolus ex machina as-is.

The Typelog agents say that if I blast that tiny holding chamber enough, it’ll sever the connection and shut her down. So, wait, she is controlling everything using her meat brain? But if the signals still have to go through her, how is she doing everything so fast? We’re dealing with space here, it should take forever for electrical signals to get anywhere! And if she’s still thinking normally, why did she go insane? Is the idea supposed to be that she got overloaded or something? None of this makes sense!

Mahk also notes that the longer I take to reach her, the stronger she’ll be. Ooh, does that mean the fight will actually be challenging if I bring it down to the wire?

Then Ral notices I’m here and scrambles the map data, covering all the nodes in static. It’s an empty threat, though; as you can see, the map is extremely simple and straightforward. It’s probably possible to fight Ral on the first turn if you just go straight up. Those two relay nodes will reveal basically the entire map if you really need it, though it takes a while to get to them.

Mahk: “Well, Ros. I sincerely hope you memorized the entire thing before we lost it.”

This amuses me. Mahk’s quips are usually pretty good, actually. I think it helps that the game acknowledges he’s being a prick instead of insisting he’s totally a saint like with Qualstio.

Typelog’s theme plays during this mission, which I’m linking again just because I like it so much. It creates a very interesting effect; where most missions use tense, actiony BGMs, this one is dissonantly serene. Sadly, the mission isn’t nearly as good as the music — it’s all flash and no substance. Unlike last time it’s incredibly simple and straightforward, and, just like The Reconstruction’s final missions, it’s a non-sequitur, making it lose a lot of potential impact. We never even knew about the brain uploading project for most of the arc, and this complication comes out of nowhere, so it has no true significance to us. I must say, you never really appreciate the importance of buildup until you encounter a story that doesn’t bother with it at all.

We encounter a new enemy here, presumably one of Ral’s creations. There’s nothing special about them, though, and they’re pretty nonthreatening. Also, special background again! I think this episode really takes the cake for those.

I’m not sure why I didn’t wait until the last turn to engage her. I didn’t even cleansweep the map! Why are you so impatient, past me?

What? Why does this thing even have an evac routine??? It’s not a spaceship! Does it have really tiny engines we didn’t see that they used to maneuver it into place? In the cutscene it looked like it was just part of the larger machine. But alright, I’ll take his word for it that blasting this tiny chamber with high-power weaponry will be just fine.

The gimmick for this battle is that Ral is immune to pilot damage. The given explanation is that she’s no longer using her physical senses, so since pilot attacks usually involve sensory overload, they won’t affect her. …Except that chemical and electrical pilot weapons are described as tampering with life support systems, so those should still work. I guess she doesn’t have life support systems to target either because she wasn’t supposed to be out this long, but that raises the question of how she can breathe in there. I didn’t see any emitter in that cutscene…

Oh, and also, this explanation contradicts something in episode 3, so remember it. For now, it’s an okay gimmick I guess, though it could potentially screw you over if the RNG was evil and only ever gave you pilot types (which kinda happened to me, actually).

But it doesn’t really matter because as per usual the battle is utterly trivial. I mean, seriously? Even accounting for the resistance, that’s pathetic — the regular enemies do more damage than this! Heck, her base damage is actually weaker than the last boss’! Step up your game, game!

Also, as I mentioned with Deirdre, a thermal ballistic weapon is normally impossible to make, so Ral gets a special snowflake award. I’m unsure of how effective an explosive would be in the vacuum of space, though — you’d have to store all the oxygen in the projectile itself and it would burn up immediately instead of creating any kind of sustained flame. You’d get concussive force, sure, but that really sounds like it should be classified as kinetic, not thermal.

The only thing Ral really has going for her is good defense, which makes no sense at all. It’s still not good enough to really matter; I beat her in 3 rounds.

After the battle, Typelog recovers her and informs me that she’s now in a vegetative state. Why? How? Is the idea supposed to be that the improper energy discharge from the Stardraw taps fried her brain? The agents say they can stuff her memories back in since her memory banks are still intact, but I’m not sure why they’re so confident. If her brain is damaged, they’re gonna have to fix that hardware first. And if her brain isn’t damaged, why is she like this? Are we supposed to think the machine only zapped her memories and left all the wiring perfectly intact? That’s silly.

I think this demonstrates why, if you want to write serious sci-fi, you need to do your research. Technobabble and handwaving only works for background details; if the intricacies of the technology are directly relevant to the plot and themes, they need to be accurate if we are to take them seriously. Otherwise you’re just creating strawmen with no relevance to reality. Who cares if this or that magic science leads to some shocking outcome? It only works that way because you waved your magic wand and decreed the laws of physics bend to your will. You can’t use that to make grand statements about human nature and the effects of technology on culture, because it’s not something that can ever actually happen. At that point you’re writing fantasy, which is a completely different tool. Plus, anyone with any understanding will be too distracted by mechanics to appreciate your deep analysis of society — like, seriously, my understanding of neurology extends to one class I took in high school, and I still know this is bunk. Taking the time to research neuroscience and seeing experts’ theories on how we might actually achieve something like this would have killed two birds with one stone: it would have made the story more consistent, enhancing willing suspension of disbelief, and it would have a grounding in reality, making any social commentary that comes from it far more credible.

Speaking of doing your research, Tezkhra is convinced that misuse of the Stardraw tech was the cause of the disaster, which seems very illogical for Mr. Logical. It’s certainly possible that the discharge could have fried the failsafes (in the cutscene, they try to shut it down but the master switch doesn’t respond), but the segmentation failure sure sounds like a problem on their end. Regardless, he angrily declares that he’s done working with Typelog.

Tezkhra: “You used and misused my technology, and it led to this. The blood and ruin is on my hands now.”

I’m not entirely sure how walking away from the problem is supposed to help with that. If he was just angry and didn’t want to help anymore, this would make sense, but if he’s trying to make this into a moral thing… Well, I mean, they already have the tech. Cat’s out of the bag. He can’t do anything about that now; even stopping his research entirely won’t do any good. If he wants to avoid future damage, the most logical thing to do would be to engage Typelog directly and convince them to stop using the tech. Throwing a temper tantrum and declaring it’s not your problem anymore is just selfish and cowardly.

But conveniently, Typelog says they were actually planning to withdraw anyway, since they need to lick their wounds and reassess their priorities after this.

Sorenson: “And whose idea was this? Certainly not Ral’s…”

They don’t answer him. I am quite curious about this as well, because it sounds like an interesting plot hook — is there a conspiracy within the conspiracy? Unfortunately, like so many plot hooks, this goes absolutely nowhere.

After the agents leave, Sorenson mopes a bit about how they’ll have to put their projects on hold now that they no longer have funding.

Marie: “Back where we started. Great.”
Tezkhra: “Sorenson. What, exactly, is the purpose of the Inquiry project?”
Sorenson: “Exactly this. To discover who’s still with power, and hope that it leads to answers about the Shine. I have not forgotten that goal. But, as our presence and scope grows larger, so do our resource needs.”

Hm. I like this, and it makes for a nicely dramatic capstone… or it would, if this was the first arc. We’re nearly halfway through the game now, the time for navel-gazing and establishing motive is long gone. At this point the plot should be gaining momentum and we should have a good idea of where the story will go from here. Instead, the dramatic climax just involves a tidbit we should have known from the start. It’s been two full arcs, but as Marie points out, we’re still no closer to this stated goal, the central plot hook, than we were at the start.

After the mission, I receive Ral’s final transmission. I’m not clear on why it was interrupted — the actual upload happened on schedule, all the problems happened afterward. It would have been interrupted even if everything went fine. Why didn’t she tell them to wait until she was finished? Honestly, the interruption feels a little tacky; I think there would have been more pathos and irony to it if we saw her complete thoughts.

And ah, “That lacertian agrees with me,” the line that launched a thousand wild theories that were all tragically unfulfilled. Is she referring to Tezkhra? I don’t see the connection; though he certainly likes acting logical, we’ve never seen him rail against the evils of emotion, and she never directly interacted with him anyway. Perhaps the idea is supposed to be that he did in his private notes that Ral plundered, but if that’s the case it should have been mentioned explicitly, not left to supposition. I always assumed she was referring to some new entity, and that this was foreshadowing for something to come. But we never get any followup, so it’s a mystery for the ages…

Quite a few NPCs get updated dialogue, which I appreciate.

Inquiry Crewman: “Ral tried to augment her mind, and ended up with a big mess. I guess that doesn’t bode well for the rest of us.”

This actually is a clever use of narrative sleight-of-hand. It’s easy to assume that this is an example of the standard sci-fi cliche: technology and the arrogance of scientists is always doomed to failure and we should go back to living in caves, etc. However, we will learn next episode that there is actually quite a bit more going on here. Of course, there is absolutely no way to know that at this point, so it’s still bad writing. There really should have been enough hints for the player to figure it out — or to even suspect something is up. Right now, players have no reason not to trust the given explanation. But more on that later.

Anyway, episode’s over, so Ros is called to the lab again.

Your tenure must be complete for now. You briefly wonder if they will ever have need for you again.

Oh come on, we’re still doing this? Game, you haven’t even been trying to make them look anything but perfectly wholesome since the prologue, you’re not fooling anyone.

At the tanks, the crew gives a pretty standard spiel: don’t lose hope, I did great, they’ll call me when they need me. Tez is absent, presumably still sulking. After Ros gets transferred, Sorenson stays behind to creep on her like usual, but Daszk is there too.

Daszk: “Gee, Mister Sorenson… D’ya think she likes bein’ trapped like that? ‘Cause, I sure didn’t…”
Sorenson: “You have a good mind, Daszk. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Well that came out of nowhere. Sorenson has distracting people with non-sequiturs down to an art form. And, once again, he does it to avoid commenting on the ethicality of the tank, which is very suspicious.

Suddenly, the screen shakes! Sorenson is unperturbed; the Inquiry collides with asteroids and space junk all the time, so this is nothing to worry about. Modern space stations actually tend to be pretty fragile and sensitive, but this is made of future supermaterials so sure, whatever. But SURPRISE TWIST, the navigator says the object didn’t appear on their mapping system.

Sorenson: Have Doctor Crenshaw obtain visual identification. I am in no mood for invisible space rocks right now.”

And with that, we end the episode. A much more disappointing cliffhanger than last time; like the prologue’s cliffhanger, we have absolutely no idea what this is or what to make of it. We will see next episode that it could have been very easy to have a scene very similar to last episode’s cliffhanger where we get an idea of who the new players are and what the next arc will entail, but instead we just get this lazy non-ending.

So, that was episode 2. I found it much more disappointing than episode 1. While we do get some worldbuilding in the form of details on a major faction, there is really no plot to be had except at the very end. Even the interlude with The Black One, our sole recurring plot element, was complete filler that gave us zero new information. The characters do nothing but walk in a circle; as Marie said, at the end they’re right back where they started. This arc is very similar to the early chapters of The Reconstruction where the characters ran around doing errands but didn’t accomplish anything meaningful. It’s definitely a lot more polished and professional, but it doesn’t fix the underlying problems. While this is more exciting because the characters start working for a major organization immediately instead of having to waste time rescuing cats, that doesn’t change the fact that just doing jobs for someone isn’t an interesting plot in and of itself. This is especially true when the organization refuses to give any details or context on what the jobs are. There is potential for depth in that model — if the jobs were used as a device for transporting the protagonists to more interesting places and events, that would allow them and by extension us to learn more about themselves and the state of the world. I think the game tries to do that — there end up being complications in every single one of the missions — but it’s not enough, because those events are all self-contained. They’re isolated incidents instead of something that comes together to form a bigger picture, so they just fizzle without any direction.

There is also a second way this plot structure can work, and that’s by developing the organization to have interesting goals that may or may not conflict with the protagonists’. Once again, the game sort of does this with the mind/machine project, but not only does it show up too late, it’s, once again, an isolated incident that has no connection to the central plot thread. What caused the Shine, and how can we ensure it doesn’t happen again? That’s the mystery I came here for, and that’s the one I want answered. Brain uploading is cool and all but it doesn’t have anything to do with that, so it feels shoehorned in the context of the larger plot. Plus there was all that stuff last episode painting Typelog as a tyrannical, punitive megalith, but the only thing that came out of it was one incredibly tame and petty crime. After all the secrecy and creepiness, I was expecting Typelog to betray the Inquiry in a big way by the end. That would be pretty fitting with the post-apocalyptic themes — the Inquiry believes they’re helping all of society by helping Typelog, only to find out that Typelog has succumbed to temptation as well. Humanity has thoroughly fallen from grace, no one really wants to help rebuild society, and the Inquiry project seems to have hit a dead end, because if you can’t trust Typelog, who can you trust? It wouldn’t even alter the course of the plot, since Typelog breaks off with them anyway — why not give a real reason for that? Why not give the protagonists some agency in that decision? I would have also liked to learn why the Sikohlon hate Typelog so much, which could easily have tied into this. Currently, their antipathy goes nowhere.

Now granted, this arc probably wasn’t supposed to be so fillery and pointless — there’s so much stuff here that’s obviously supposed to be setup for something big down the line. Who is the “other client” who’s collecting Lessers? Who is “that lacertian”? Are they the same person? What are the implications of the Stardraw tech being leaked? Why did the mind/machine interface fail? What’s going to happen to Ral now, and who is this mysterious superior who’s giving orders in her stead? But for some reason, only a few of those questions are answered. For most of the hooks, the payoff never arrives, so this arc becomes a dead end. Let this be a lesson to you, writers: don’t spend so much time on setup that you never reach the conclusion. Episode 1 was good because the setup and payoff all happened within the scope of its own arc while still leaving some threads open; it didn’t just leave us hanging. But even if the payoff did arrive as it was supposed to, I still think the plot is dragging its feet too much. The story should be starting to give us hints toward the central mystery at this point, not setting up a dozen other subplots. Like The Reconstruction, this arc was in dire need of better focus.

That’s it for now. Next up, personal chats.

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