Last time, we were introduced to a completely new organization that appeared out of nowhere. Today we’re going to learn a lot more about them.
Onto the next briefing. First Ros needles Sorenson for abandoning them, and he gets really weird about it:
Sorenson: “Your smaller craft were still safe in the cloaking field. A large craft like this would be seen immediately. That is why we… why I could not come to your aid. It was a purely tactical decision.”
Sounds legit, but this evasive and insistent style of talking is coded as blatantly deceptive in most stories, so I feel like there’s something more going on here. The most likely explanation is that he simply panicked and ran, and now he doesn’t want to lose face for that. That’s a little boring; it would have more impact if Sorenson had been developed more prior to this. The only alternative is that he was purposefully trying to get Ros killed, but there’s no reason for him to do that.
Then Kara says “A few had to have seen the EROS vessel, but they did not pursue it. Maybe they had somewhere else to be.” Okay, so not only are they capable of unprecedented and unparalleled coordination, they have a specific goal too? What on Earth was this subplot supposed to be building to?
Sorenson then invites a guest lecturer to begin the actual briefing. For some reason Sorenson asks me if I’m okay taking orders from Ivoronus. Uh, sure? He hasn’t appeared since the prologue and the only reason he gave to distrust him there was that he was friends with the obviously evil Sorenson, so he can’t possibly be worse than the guy I’m already taking orders from. The Sikohlon have also proven to be the least sinister and most straightforward of all the organizations we’ve seen so far. (Plus, how much of an idiot would I have to be to say I hate the guy when he’s standing right there?) Was Ivoronus supposed to have more scenes prior to this that would give me reason to dislike him? Granted, he makes up for lost time by proceeding to be an incompetent dick throughout the entire scene.
His actual request is for the Inquiry to investigate an old, decommissioned EROS facility. Kara immediately interjects that EROS never decommissions anything, to which Ivoronus only sneers that she’s adorably naive. Wow, who ran over his dog? He hints that EROS is up to some shady business and Ros should learn the truth before she commits to helping them, but doesn’t give any specifics because as a Mysterious Plot Dispenser he is incapable of speaking in anything other than cryptic nonsense. Seriously, why can’t he just say what’s so upsetting about their research now? Kara’s along for the ride too, so he clearly doesn’t care about her blabbing to her superiors. Making Ros investigate it herself is also extremely stupid for a reason we’ll discover when we actually get there.
Tez reminds everyone he has a crush on EROS by jumping to defend their integrity. Kara asserts this too:
Kara: “We have nothing to hide. Well… our existence may be cloaked, but our research is open to all.”
…Except at the start of the episode you said all your research was off the grid because the plebs aren’t ready for it. This could actually be a clever display of hypocrisy and doublethink if the game pointed out the inherent contradiction here: they claim to be open-source, but the information is only free if you’re within their clique — they’re still forming a closed, elite community through information restriction even though they pat themselves on the back about how principled they are. Unfortunately this goes unremarked upon.
Mahk then brings up the leak, but Ivoronus doesn’t care at all. He even says that the competition actually helps them because we have stepped into a mirror universe where monopolies are somehow disadvantageous. While overall demand for weapons has probably gone up, demand for Sikohlon weapons in specific should be going down now that people can make weapons themselves.
Tez is still bitter about the events of last episode and nominates Typelog as a suspect. Ivoronus dismisses his outrage as a “brush with reality”, then says it doesn’t really matter who did it. Hmm. If we accept the absurd premise that this actually helps his business, could he have done it himself? That would explain why he’s so chill about it and keeps trying to drop the subject.
Sorenson: “Thank you for coming in person, Ivoronus. It took a lot of courage, I know.”
What.
This is a pretty straightforward defeat-all-enemies mission. It is also the second and final time we will see environmental DoT effects — the station is leaking some systems-damaging radiation on the orange nodes. Once again, battles are too short for it to really matter.
Marie: “Are those more Lessers? Ugh, is there any place they haven’t taken over yet?”
Kara: “They are probably lost. The cloaking field might be messing with their navigation systems.”
So these ones haven’t been absorbed into the horde yet? Why is that? I’m not clear how the distinction works. Does the horde just pick up every Lesser it comes across and it simply hasn’t run into these ones, or are there disagreements and divisions?
We also saw the size of an EROS cloaking field in the last mission, so yes, scale definitely does change between missions. That makes the most sense, and would explain why I have more CP now — each individual move takes less time.
Moving on to the ? node triggers a cutscene.
The Lesser ships are attacking him, and his craft is about to explode. The crew debates whether or not to help him.
Neff: “Yeah, if we let ’em die now, we’ll never find out who he is!”
Neff is speaking my language.
I then get an Important Choice™. I choose to help him, obviously — sure, he may be a murderbot, but I want answers!
This decision has profoundly affected you.
Your Mentality is more Logical.
Your Temperament is more Aggressive.
Uh, what? Those changes make no sense. I am choosing to protect an adversary who has repeatedly tried to kill one of my friends, either out of some misguided sense of compassion or on the off-chance he’ll tell me something useful in exchange. That is staggeringly irrational. And showing mercy decreased my aggression before, why is it increasing it now??? This only works if aggression is supposed to include impulsiveness and willingness to act, but in that case my decision with Lagarto shouldn’t have affected it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the developer actually mixed up the personality changes here by mistake.
I fight and eliminate the two Lessers, but Blacky just gets angry because he was actually trying to die. Fortunately, despite saying that nothing matters anymore, he does give me some good information!
The Black One: “Blue One… it is too late. You have tainted thiss placce and doomed them all!”
Tezkhra: “What do you mean?”
The Black One: “It does not matter now. I failed to eliminate you. You won, Blue One.”
Neff: “Come back with us. We can sort it out there. You don’t have a lot of time left.”
The Black One: “Nor do you. … … I will not forget thiss…”
Then he explodes. See, that was some quality cryptic babbling, it actually gives us something to speculate with. Take notes, Ivoronus.
With that out of the way, I proceed to sweep the map.
I hate you, RNG.
The rest of the mission is extremely straightforward and I manage to investigate almost every node. The crew investigates the facility.
Neff bugs the communications channel so they’ll be alerted if anyone’s still in contact with the place. Clever.
I’m then given free roam of the place. There’s a lot of very interesting stuff here, but I’m going to save most of it for the bonus section. For now, I’m just going to show why Ivoronus is an idiot:
“The most sensitive portions of our projects are sealed off behind card-scanning doors of impossibly high access levels. That should keep any unwanted eyes from prying until we are ready to come forward with our newest developments.”
So this is stupid on multiple levels. They are apparently trying to hide stuff from their superiors, who should logically be the people making and distributing the keycards in the first place! Why would this be at all an obstacle to them? You can’t hide stuff from people by using their own locks! But more importantly, THE STUFF BEHIND THOSE DOORS IS WHAT IVORONUS WANTED ROS TO SEE IN THE FIRST PLACE. And Ivoronus KNOWS the only important stuff is behind the high-level doors because he later gives you a level 99 keycard BUT ONLY AT THE VERY END OF THE GAME WHEN NONE OF THIS MATTERS ANYMORE. Why??? I love this place and I love the card quests but the setup is so unbelievably stupid! If Ivoronus thought it was important I learn everything right now he should have given me the keycard up front, if he wanted me to jump through hoops to prove I was trustworthy he shouldn’t have blabbed about this at all! His actions make no freaking sense! In order for the slow gradation system to work, the crew would have to have discovered this on their own and investigated independently — that, or Ivoronus lost his keycard and hopes Ros is clever enough to find another copy. (Even then, Ivoronus could JUST TELL HER because seriously am I the only one who realizes that’s an option? Why is everyone allergic to communication in this game?!)
So of course all I can do is shrug and return to the Inquiry because the initial area doesn’t have anything incriminating. There is one thing I can follow up on right now, though:
“I miss the air. I miss the clouds. I miss… well, not all of it, but the good parts anyway. And now we’re stuck in this hunk of rock, floating to God-knows-where, all for the sake of progress. I’d rather stay ignorant.”
Remember kids, science is evil. Good people wallow in the status quo.
“We decided; we’ll find one of the Surface worlds designated as TU in 98A2’s list, and wipe out any trace of it. Won’t it be romantic? Me and Cole, in our own little world, just like old times. Only, literally this time! Hopefully our superiors won’t think to trace the changelogs, but by then we’ll be long gone anyway.”
…She says, recording this on a console in plain sight that apparently has no password protection. Nothing could go wrong with this plan.
Oh huh, so she knows what they’re trying to do here. I wonder if she ever connects the dots later.
“Cole and me are hitching a ‘spare’ shuttle. To what Surface? Hah! Like I’d make it easy to track us down.”
“Mwhahaha, they’ll never think to check my previous note! I AM THE CLEVEREST NINJA.”
“However, you guys are good people. I’ll always be good old 4188, here and there and forever. Smile!”
Gods, she is crap at this. She’s lucky they didn’t care, they could have tracked her down in an instant.
…They didn’t even bother to log out? Modern-day security systems have automatic timeouts specifically so this doesn’t happen! Why is everyone so incompetent in the future???
Subtle.
Ros: “Yes. there’s something out here that someone wants us to find.”
Uh, are you in opposite land today, Ros? They very explicitly said they did not want to be found. Marie comes too — a little random, but she is the best person to tag along for this.
An elevator pops up after I input the incredibly obvious passcode. Underneath…
Initially Marie thinks it’s some kind of weird EROS test thing, but then someone shows up.
“You here to haul me back in, huh? How’d you find me?”
Maybe you should have put a single iota of effort into covering your tracks if you didn’t want to be found. Props for the cool coat, though.
Marie introduces herself, and Ros explains that she just followed the notes but has no real plan from here. The woman admires her spontaneity and introduces herself as Cassidy Turnstone. She’s apparently a famous explorer, so famous that Marie has kept some memory of her exploits in her limited mental space.
At this point, her husband shows up. He doesn’t contribute much to the conversation.
Marie asks her if she has dirt on EROS. Cass says she bailed pretty early and was just security anyway, but does have one interesting tidbit: they were extremely fragmented and secretive about their research, only letting stuff float to the top when they wanted it to. This is a pretty big bombshell if you’ve been hanging on Kara’s insistence they’re committed to freedom of information; she’s either lying or being lied to.
Then Ros gives them a party invite! Marie blows a gasket, but Cass decides she might as well see some excitement. I do have to imagine this place must be pretty boring, even if they do have internet.
Cassidy is lightning fast and has pretty good stats across the board, but she only has 8 AP and is therefore useless to me.
Cole is in the same boat. Although… Marie has 8 AP too, so he’s objectively better than her in every way except pilot defense. But it just feels wrong to remove the deuteragonist from active duty, so I’ll keep her for now. Maybe he can replace Tez at some point.
Cole is also an incredibly boring character, but it is nice to see the Turnstones invert the typical dynamic where the wife is nothing but an extension of the husband’s will.
Interestingly, I also got this article after the last mission. It’s probably just a convenient hint with no further significance, but it seems so pointed and specific, especially since nobody else seems to have any clue what happened to them. It could be a rogue who came across the lab, or possibly one of the original researchers is trying to spite them because revenge is a dish best served very, very cold. Mysteries.
New party members also get new chatter at every location. I feel the need to comment on the Turnstones’ Purity Point dialogue:
Ha ha, it’s funny because their marriage is a sham and Cole has zero respect for his wife? What is wrong with people.
With that interlude dealt with, it’s time for the next mission. Willis heads the briefing. Marie grills him on the abandoned lab, but he says it was before his time so he doesn’t know anything about it. Hm, he should be high enough rank to access most of it, so he could have at least gone and skimmed it to see what all the fuss was about. I guess he just doesn’t care. The mission briefing then begins:
He says they’ve already analyzed the craft and think everything will be fine.
Willis: “The atmosphere is very thin and non-reactive, so your propulsion systems will not detonate it.”
What, detonate the entire atmosphere? Just how explosive are these propulsion systems?
Anyway, this is an extermination. EROS wants to use the planet for something, but some miners are squatting there and have to be evicted.
Rami: “I guess that don’t sound so bad. These mining things are unmanned, right? Like MOD units?”
Why would you assume that. He just said there are actual people there he wants to remove.
…And Willis does not respond to this. Welp, guess we’re killing people now. Nobody follows up on this incredibly suspicious behavior because they’re terrible.
Daszk asks what “PLSE 017” means. Willis says it stands for “Potential Latent-Sensitive Environment” and proceeds to exposit about latent energy, which as you may recall from The Reconstruction’s ending is magic. This is earlier in the timeline so they still don’t really know anything about it, and only got the ability to detect it recently. Tezkhra becomes very interested and requests to join the project after the mission, which Willis agrees to.
Looks like the developer got burnt out on mission names.
This mission is straightforward while still requiring a bit of finesse. The miners will surface at the start of each turn, but any undefeated groups from the previous turn will retreat. This means you have limited time to attack the miners, and as you can see, moving around is kind of a hassle thanks to all the one-way arrows. You don’t have to get all of them, just as many as you can. This is a lot easier if you use all your fleets, and I actually did use fleet 2 for a few fights, but mostly I stuck with one ’cause I’m lazy.
Hey, Ral didn’t even have a unique weapon! Pfft. At least explosives actually make sense here.
Oh hey, the engagement options get different names. That’s a nice detail, if a little random. I wonder if there were originally going to be more surface missions? There are combat differences too — all attacks get massive accuracy boosts and the zone of control shifts more easily.
And holy crap, they actually manage to KO two of my guys! This is thanks to the fact that, for once, all enemies target the same health type, so they don’t spread the damage around — it’s just five hard hits to the same health bar. It’s pretty rare for enemies to target different people, too, so those hits will probably all hit the same person. Neff would have actually been useful here, come to think of it…
All in all, this mission is kind of fillerish, but it makes up for it with spectacle, using a lot of gimmicks to mask the simplicity of the objective. Even EROS’ filler missions are more interesting than Typelog’s! After five turns, Willis says I did good enough.
Rami: “So, uh, why didn’t you just contact them to begin with to let them know the deal?”
Willis: “We did, via orbital Relay. No response. Silence can be an act of aggression in such a circumstance.”
Kind of like how he was totally silent when Rami asked him if they were killing people.
Kara: “This was just a test, right? To evaluate performance in subatmospheric levels? We didn’t actually…”
Willis: “Kara, your affinity for speculation is most endearing.”
Okay so he just admitted he totally made them kill people. WHY DOES NO ONE SEE ANYTHING WRONG WITH THIS. I’m glad to see Kara is a good person who cares about murder, but she evidently doesn’t care enough to follow up on it.
After the mission, Willis agrees to tell them about the PLSE project, but Sorenson is strangely absent. Willis says he sent an invitation but got no response. I’m not entirely sure what we’re supposed to make of that. He’s been acting pretty weird and reclusive the entire episode, actually. Does he know something I don’t?
But now, the presentation. Willis believes the Inquiry is too narrow-minded in its attempt to return to pre-Shine society, and that he believes further technological progress could advance humanity even further. That’s a pretty tall order, though, because he then says they still don’t know how to actually use this stuff. All they know is that it seems attracted to matter, and “it almost seems to have behavior all of its own.” Somehow he is certain this means latent energy is immune to entropy and can be manipulated without degradation. I have no idea how he knows this when he just said they haven’t figured out how to capture it yet. Tezkhra is fascinated, because his Stardraw tech has been detecting this too.
The project is investigating planets due to the energy’s link to solid matter. The largest spikes previously came from debris clouds, so they assume it originated from a specific planet and they’ll eventually hit the motherload if they search long enough. I dunno, I’m not sold on that. The debris could have come from multiple planets, or an asteroid chain. If it really did come from a single source, that source could easily have been destroyed by meteors or swallowed by its sun by now. But alright, this is the easiest thing to try. Unfortunately, progress is slow:
Willis: “The only probe sensitive enough to detect the spikes is on board the vessel you escorted to the research facility. It was invented by a brilliant man.”
Arg of course he’s a guy. Of course he is. I really hope at least one of the major researchers was a woman, if they were all guys that’s pretty heinous.
“He, sadly, has severed contact and seems to have disappeared. We have no hope of recreating the inner workings, and we dare not risk breaking it by looking inside.”
Hey kids! You know how your science teachers are always so authoritarian about maintaining a detailed lab notebook and research notes? This is why. Sadly, it seems EROS is incapable of replicating high school science protocol. That or this guy was just really lazy.
Regardless, I still think that super future scientists should be able to examine things without breaking them, but if this is the only one I can understand their caution. And it is good to see the game putting so much effort into explaining every contingency for once.
Tezkhra: “Allow me to inspect the probe, then. Clearly, my Stardraw technology has detected something as well…”
…Huh.
We were just told that only one person figured out a way to detect latent energy and that eons of cutting-edge scientific research couldn’t recreate it. But Tezkhra did. That can only mean one thing. I initially dismissed this possibility based on something we’ll learn in episode 4, but putting the two facts right next to each other is just too pointed for me to believe it’s a coincidence. The only other explanation is that #98A2 was another Colored One with the exact same obsession, and that’s just too contrived. If true, that could actually provide a sensible explanation for this: #98A2 was only able to make the probe work because of some magic trait inherent to him, so even if he kept detailed notes like a responsible scientist, the other researchers wouldn’t have been able to replicate it despite their best efforts.
For some reason Willis dismisses this breakthrough despite the fact that it should solve all his problems. Just see if Tez is right, if he is he can design all the probes you need! But then we wouldn’t have The Reconstruction, so he proposes a far more convoluted plan instead: using people as detectors.
Willis plans to populate the PLSEs with clones from a diverse set of donors. Since people can have genetic sensitivity to other energy forms, he argues (…can they?), they should test for its effects on organisms too. Willis plans to observe any abnormalities the PLSE subjects experience, such as, say, wielding magic. Marie is very uncomfortable with the idea of chucking radiation at people just to see what happens because she’s the only person here with any sense of ethics. Tezkhra is sold, however, and volunteers as a donor in exchange for seeing the results.
Willis: “Good. I know some of you will come around. This energy could power all manner of new weaponry for you.”
Definitely not a villain. Interestingly, Mahk is uncomfortable with this, saying the world has more than enough guns already. Seems a bit obligatory since he has to become a resolute pacifist by the end, but I can see how he would become less gung-ho after seeing how dangerous the galaxy has become with the Sikohlon leak.
With that, Willis’ explanation is finished. He takes Tezkhra to the lab for some DNA samples, and I’m dismissed back to the Inquiry.