It’s the last bonus post! Featuring the game’s only female superboss and Return of the Abandoned Databanks: Containing Actual Information This Time.
The databanks will be pretty heavy this time, so let’s get the bounty hunts out of the way first.
Mr. Right: “Trying times, yes.”
Mr. Left: “Yes. And now, it is time to try something else. Another job, just for you.”
Mr. Right: “A creation known only as The Diamond. An experiment in self-preserving intelligence, gone awry.”
Mr. Left: “Awry, as many things are. Self-preserving, as are many more. So, we call upon you.”
Mr. Right: “Its prototypical skin is of unmatched density. Given a few microns more, it could be completely invincible.”
Mr. Left: “Invincible, yes. You must not allow that to happen. You must strike while the unit is still imperfect.”
Fortunately, it was polite enough to stay just on the cusp of invincibility while I did all the plot missions.
Initially I thought The Diamond’s gimmick was that it had elemental resistance to all properties. This would be fairly clever, since it would prevent you from building a critical chain, and would create a situation where the pierce status effect was actually useful. Instead it just has really high defense, which is boring. There should at least have been a map puzzle to make up for the lack of a real gimmick!
Given that bosses are way too fragile normally, this attempt to create a grueling juggernaut only provides a baseline for what normal bosses should have looked like. It does last until the end of round 2, but the fact that that’s significant just goes to show how low the bar is set. Weirdly, the high defense seems to make damage unreliable more than anything else — I found that the same attack could fluctuate between single digits and ~75 damage. I suspect the damage formula uses a fixed variance and attack/defense just shifts the center value, rather than variance being proportional to the base damage like it seems to be in most RPGs.
Offensively, it’s about on par with previous bosses. Two hits could very well down someone, especially if they were targeted by the flunkies or weakened themselves with hull-draining attacks beforehand. However, The Diamond is slow as molasses and only moves at the end of the round, so it’s unlikely to pull off that second hit. Even if it does, four people can finish it off no problem.
(Also, the property makes no sense. Throwing a rock at someone isn’t a light-based attack just because it’s a sparkly rock!)
Defeating The Diamond gets me a top-notch hull defense boost and one of every weapon disabling module, none of which are terribly useful to me. I also get the “target is awaiting questioning” message afterward, which seems weird when it’s supposed to be a robot. Guess the developer just wasn’t thinking and pasted in the standard message by mistake.
Mr. Right: “Heart. Do you have it?”
Mr. Left: “Do you have heart?”
Mr. Right: “Our next violator has many hearts under his control. Thus, we shall call him The Heart.”
Mr. Left: “He is disarmingly dangerous. There are many who swear abject devotion to him and him alone.”
Mr. Right: “Abject. Thought control, but for ambiguous ends. Not to be taken lightly. He must be silenced.”
Mr. Left: “Yet his followers will not part with him without a fight. A fight that you shall instigate, of course.” […] “This individual knows the benefit of strength in numbers. See to it that he counts his blessings.”
So wait, mind control technology exists and this is the first time I’m hearing about it? That seems like something that should have made the news!
Anyway, you may remember support fire nodes from the fight with Lagarto way back in episode 1. They inflict damage at the end of each round if occupied by an enemy, but secondary fleets can take control of them to turn the tide in your favor. This one takes it up to the extreme, and the one-way arrows ensure that you can’t take all of them out. (Weirdly, you can still engage The Heart from one of the support fire nodes despite there being no path linker. This is probably a bug, but I take advantage of it to knock off an extra turret.)
The nodes here are also all named after heart structures, which I think is cute.
The Heart is about on par with previous bosses, but acts at the top of the round and has more dangerous flunkies that can even hit the same damage type if they get lucky and their random AI doesn’t make them pick something else. Kara even gets KO’d here because I was poorly equipped and he resisted most of my weapons! I can almost pretend this battle is actually challenging.
As for the gimmick? I tested this battle with all six nodes active just to see how bad it would be, and the massive barrage resulted in… 300 damage. So what, a single node only does 50 damage? That’s nothing! No wonder they seemed so insignificant in past battles. Even 300 damage is easy to shrug off — it doesn’t even soften you up enough for The Heart to take you out with his next attack. If the damage was doubled — 100 per node — then that could actually sting, since the full barrage plus Triangulated Union would be guaranteed to down almost anyone. And if he had enough defense to last more than two rounds like a proper DoT-oriented boss should, everyone would be reduced to 1 HP after the second barrage and that would be the end of you. Then there would be real incentive to engage with the mechanics and disable some of the nodes instead of ignoring it and going “eh whatever I’ll be fine”.
His defense is also nearly as good as The Diamond’s, which seems unfair to The Diamond but it means this guy lasts long enough for his gimmick to activate so I’m not really complaining. But defense alone wasn’t enough to save The Diamond and it’s not enough to save The Heart either. He goes down in two rounds.
My bonus this time is one of each regen booster, because heart = healing I guess. I will never use them.
Mr. Right: “Ouranos. The culmination of your services is fast approaching. For now, you have one more to perform.”
Mr. Left: “Perform. Stalk. Locate. Annihilate. Destroy. A most powerful entity styling herself as The Queen.”
Mr. Right: “In possession of a powerful shielding system. In the wrong hands, it makes one impervious to danger.”
So in the right hands, it’s useless?
Mr. Left: “Impervious. But, flawed. Exactly one sort of attack may pierce through and strike through.”
Mr. Right: “One attack, then remodulation. Find the weakness, and strike hard and repeatedly.”
Mr. Left: “It will be a slow battle. Of wits, of patience, of luck. You have shown the capacity for all three. […] The Queen may be your most powerful foe yet. Show her little to no mercy, Ouranos.”
Mr. Right: “No mercy. Now, overthrow.”
That attack value may look scary, but for some reason it never seems to do any more damage than previous bosses’ attacks. Is there some sort of glitch in the damage formula that caps enemy damage at 500? I noticed this with The Drinker, too; there wasn’t actually much difference between his regular attack and the upgraded form, despite the boosted attack supposedly being twice as powerful.
Unfortunately, Mr. Right and Mr. Left vastly overstate The Queen’s defensive capabilities. She’s not totally impervious to damage; instead, she uses the model I proposed for The Diamond earlier and simply resists everything. This actually gives her more staying power than The Diamond’s simple defense, and the random variance can really screw you here — I sometimes had attacks fluctuate between a respectable ~70 damage and zero.
If you’re a long-time RPG player, you probably recognize this gimmick: the Barrier Change Boss. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit well at all into this system. Most RPGs only have a few elements, and are often set up such that you always have access to all or most of them. That isn’t the case here, because while it may look like there are only six elements, each health type counts as a different resistance, so there are actually eighteen, and The Queen is only weak to one. With 25 potential weapon slots between all 5 party members, it’s certainly possible to cover every single base… but it’s a tedious hassle to juggle that many weapons, and a massive resource investment. Even then, you can’t see her vulnerabilities at the start of the round, so your chances of hitting a weakness are incredibly low to begin with. Add in that the weakness also has to be on the one health type you’re focusing on, and that probably only one person will be able to hit it anyway… It’s just not worth it to do this battle the way you’re supposed to. Just bash your head against the wall until it breaks, same as every other boss. It might have worked with some coding wizardry that ensured the vulnerability was selected from the weapons you currently have, but it would be too easy to game the system that way by giving everyone the exact same weapon.
Interestingly, this boss did actually necessitate a tiny bit of strategy on my part — since I couldn’t blitz it, I had to make sure everyone who got hit by her retreated to the green zone to survive the next round. This required some careful positioning, and so I actually had to pay attention to the movement mechanics for the first time in the game. Congratulations on finally accomplishing baseline engagement, game! And I actually did lose on my first attempt because I pushed Ros too close to the front line and she got sniped. This is why you shouldn’t pick a LAC Ros.
So, the ultimate superboss wasn’t a total disappointment! Now if only the main game could maintain this level of not-completely-effortless difficulty. (And as iffy as the game has been on female characters, it’s nice to see that a woman gets the ultimate superboss slot.) For my reward I get an AP booster, which is actually really good!
If I try to talk to the bounty hunters afterward…
Mr. Left: “Ouranos. It seems the game is still afoot.”
Mr. Right: “The game, yes. Perhaps, after your game is complete, we shall have further distractions waiting.”
Huh, that’s weird, I distinctly remember this being funnier in the beta. They were a lot less obvious about breaking the fourth wall. I wonder why it was changed?
Anyway, yes, there is postgame content. It’s plot-relevant (ish) so I will be covering the ultimate ultimate superboss in a bonus post at the end. For now…
In the last episode, the entire eastern wing of the abandoned databanks was off-limits to us. That has now changed. The eastern wing is quite simple in structure: just a straight hallway with small offices budding off on the sides.
“Pre-breach society had an obsession with transcendence. Now that we’ve entered a new era… is this the best we can do? We need something new, something radical, to show just how much farther we have to go to be truly in control of our reality…”
Interesting crazy going on here. I’ll take this as more evidence for my theory that science is coming apart at the seams.
“A… monster.”
There’s a pause here, so I guess these are audio logs?
“I told them to scrap all evidence and start over, but they didn’t listen. Not yet, anyway. Waste not, and such. I had the muscle capture and box up as many specimens as they could. We launched them out of this galaxy. Unfortunately, the last ping I got back was from these coordinates: Splice 9, Location 13, 55, 34. Either the neutrino band had somehow attenuated too much beyond that point, or something happened to the box…”
You may recall that these were the coordinates for the Lesser habitation, so it should now be obvious what’s going on here. This is the most important reveal in these databanks, and, I believe, the secret Ivoronus wanted the Inquiry to find: the lacertians did not evolve naturally, but were artificially created in this lab. In defiance of all probability, humans are indeed the only life in the galaxy. I think the game tips its hand on this by the fact that everyone seems to inexplicably know this subconsciously; most humans will say they were delighted to discover the lacertians then immediately start whining about how one alien species isn’t enough and they still feel like the universe is a lonely uncaring void.
This is, of course, statistically absurd – regardless of how unlikely life is to occur on any given planet, there are enough planets in the galaxy (and the universe) that the probability of life appearing somewhere approaches 1, even if it may only be microscopic. But, that’s not a flaw in and of itself – speculative fiction is all about bending the rules of reality to support its themes, after all.
The biggest theme here is, I’m pretty sure, some brand of nihilism: we’re totally alone in a meaningless, uncaring universe, not because we’re special but because we’re on the only planet that won the cosmic lottery. That would raise uncomfortable questions about the meaninglessness of life and why we had to crawl from the primordial soup only to find ourselves alone – or it would for some people, I presume. I don’t really have an issue with it, aside from disappointment. But that seems to be what happened in this world – the existential knowledge was so terrifying that people had to assert their mastery over reality by creating life themselves in order to cope.
I don’t think I’m off with this – when we get to the ending we will see that this is, ultimately, an extremely nihilistic narrative – but, to be honest, I’m having such a hard time getting into the mindset that I can’t see the deeper point here. When people feel scared and lonely they do extreme things to cope, and this backfires because all science must be punished? Okay, sure? Although, I do find it funny that the screw-up actually made it work better than intended, since it made everyone believe lacertians really were naturally-occurring. Maybe there is no deeper point, and the developer’s thought process began and ended at “man, wouldn’t this be a SHOCKING TWIST and also really depressing?”
And in case it isn’t already obvious, this is almost certainly where Willis got his breakthrough from. I find it interesting that his outlook is so different, so much more clinical – I think the game could have done a lot more with contrasting the innocent, well-intentioned idealism of these researchers with the cruel pragmatism of modern-day scientists.
I’m guessing this is also why EROS doesn’t allow any lacertian membership, for fear of them discovering this. That means the higher-ups, at least, still remember this lab, which in turn implies Willis was lying when he claimed ignorance of it, which doesn’t surprise me at all.
We also get to check in with Past Tez and see what he thinks of this.
“If this energy can adhere itself to other kinds of matter, can it bind with organic, living tissue as well?”
What… “adhere”? How… I’m not a physicist, but I’m pretty sure energy doesn’t work that way. This sounds more like he’s describing a chemical.
“It could be harmful, like high spectrum radiation. It could be harmless, like small amounts of heat.”
Yes thank you, this is why Willis’ plan is stupid. You need to check this on a small scale before throwing some embryos at the stuff and wandering off for 5000 years!
“Or, it could be something else entirely. Better yet, what if the exposed tissue was aware of the fact…?”
And it just… cuts off there. I’m not sure why he would think a psychological component has any relevance to this, but his previous notes have established he’s pretty nuts – plus I’ve speculated he might have some magical intuition about this. Magic plugs so many plot holes, doesn’t it?
The hallway ends with a motherlode of computers.
“They wanted a physical form; a tangible being to show off, despite how utterly vile a creation it turned out to be.”
Wait, I’m confused. How do they know how vile it is if they didn’t grow a full body for it? Or did they just make one and this is for mass production? Why would they need mass production if they just want to show off a proof of concept? This doesn’t make sense.
“We are back to work on Project PL-776, meanwhile. A truly perfect specimen, this shall turn out to be. I can only hope they can contain the creatures long enough to allow quick eradication when PL-776 is ready…”
#1213 has a lot of notes here:
“The creation of life that already exists is one thing. But this is the creation of something new, something unique. This will be a breakthrough for all of human society. A companion, from the stars, to call our own. No longer alone…”
I have to say, I genuinely think this is moving and beautiful. Too often, scientists are seen and portrayed as either cold, uncaring robots or selfish pragmatists. It’s really nice to see a scientist that isn’t like that. The innocence, wonder, and passion here is very powerful; the sort of thing that reminds you why people go into science and the things we can do with it if we have the motivation. Science isn’t all poring over data sheets and building bombs for corporations – sometimes, you get to see something truly beautiful.
I have no idea what this means. He definitely isn’t from PL-775 for reasons we will see shortly. What’s the flaw? How is it going to be fixed in the next iteration?
“They’re going to take you from me. They want to study you. To use you as a trophy. An example. A ‘first contact’ sort.”
So… wait, were they intending to pretend the lacertians were naturally discovered, or were they going to be open about this being a lab project? The “first contact” phrasing, combined with Cassidy’s assertion that EROS tends to put on fronts to cover up what they’re actually doing, implies the former to me.
“But, even though you stand out so starkly among the other PL-776s, you are clever. I know you’ll find a way to escape. I’ve decided on a name for you, being the first such creature to prove the unanswerable. To cure the longing for a friend. I shall call you… Prime. The first of many. The number, indivisible, that stands alone. The finest we have to offer.”
Except you just said he’s a buggy prototype???
“Take care of your kind, as well as ours, little Prime. I am so proud of you… of what you represent… … … …[TERM]”
Not sure what’s going on here. This cutoff also happened in episode 3 when the alert about the colony got jammed by Typelog, which implies that someone tampered with this recording, possibly them. What did they delete, though? How shocking must it have been for them to delete that but not all this other world-shattering stuff?
Also, we’ve heard that name before:
So, either #1213 is still at large, or someone else discovered these databanks before Ros. I’ll just have to hope #1213 is still alive in the sequel and we get to wring the answers out of them.
That’s #1213’s last message, but there’s one more chapter in this saga:
“Frankly, I don’t see how this could come back to bite us at all. Word is they want to populate entire Surfaces now. An artificial ecosystem… well, it would sure beat living in a Hab, I bet. I just hope they aren’t too short-sighted.”
This person does not share the general population’s hatred of planet life, it seems. Perhaps that was something that only happened later, after hab technology was improved?
There are also two more unrelated notes.
“They want to put life forms on each and every one of them. Just to see what happens to them. Poor, pathetic cells.”
Wait, so they were already doing this? Why did everyone act like Willis’ idea was brand-new?
“But, with number one jabbering about living forever, maybe we’ll find something we can use. Something humanity can use.”
What’s this about number one?
Here’s the second big twist from the databanks: the emitters have a warranty, because TAKE THAT, SCIENCE. I really hate this reveal, but I’m going to postpone the full rant until we learn it in the main story. For now, I’m just going to say that this has pretty much zero impact because the emitters were already magic science. What nonsensical plot contrivance giveth nonsensical plot contrivance can taketh away. This would be more engaging if we got some proper technobabble about how the emitters worked and the flaw followed logically from that instead of it happening just because.
“I was one of the first test subjects in the emitter project. The first to know the taste of immortality. Now, I feel forsaken. There must be something more I can do. I must survive. The universe needs a mind like mine. I cannot perish yet…”
To be continued. I presume this is meant to make him look evil and selfish, but I just feel really sad for him. And the claim that the universe needs his intelligence is far from baseless, as we will see.
There’s still one more room, but to get in we need a level 99 keycard. Time to make a detour.
“But, since you have decided to put an end to that, you might as well make yourself useful.”
You may have noticed I skipped Ivoronus last time. He hangs out in the emptied storage room, and hits the ground running by demonstrating what a dick he is before his first scene even starts.
He asks Ros what she knows of the Inquiry Project, and she just says she doesn’t know anything, obviously. Did no one tell him about her amnesia? Can’t he bug someone else about this? He at least has the grace to accept her confusion and provide her with what he knows instead.
Ivoronus: “When you have power and wealth, the only desire you have is for knowledge. Hence my inquisition. Poor Virgil… he began with the best of intentions, and now, look at him. A shell of himself.
“You knew the Commander?”
“It is unfortunate.”
“And how did you turn out?”
Finally a chance to take him down a peg. He’s consistently acted like he’s totally above it all, but I don’t buy that. As a weapons crafter, he has a stake in all this.
Ivoronus: “I appreciate your effrontery. Let us say… I prefer a less direct approach than Virgil. I have no desire to see my work have an appreciable effect on society being weaponry of course.”
Oh bull. He sure didn’t seem very bothered when the Sikohlon leak had an appreciable effect on society. And why did he choose weaponmaking for his business if he didn’t want it to actually be used? What is he trying to accomplish? On that note…
Ivoronus: “Since we have reached the limits of your knowledge, I suppose I should offer my own in trade. But first, admit something to me. You find my family and my motives suspicious, do you not?”
Heck yeah.
Ivoronus: “With good reason. You knew nothing of us initially… and, to be honest, you still do. But, my son respects and adheres to you as if you were one of our own, so I must do the same. I built the Machinatorium with my own hands, as well as all those who dwell within it. We maintain unity, purity, solidarity… and a singular focus on our craft. But you knew that.”
My, that explained absolutely nothing at all. Encouraging.
Ivoronus: “Mahk, however, is different. A mutation in our evolutionarily static little world, it seemed. Rather than smoothe out the wrinkle, I decided to set it free. See what would return with it.”
I’m taking this as support for my theory that Ivoronus was indeed flattering Mahk back there and he is not in fact the bestest most wonderfulest.
Ivoronus: “That is all you need to know. We have mutual needs, beyond financial or military factors.”
Which he does not explain further, which isn’t suspicious at all. If he really has nothing to hide, why doesn’t he just say what he wants instead of going through this stupid song-and-dance? This series’ abundance of pointlessly cagey characters is really getting on my nerves.
We shift topics for the next chat. He’s depressed and wants to die.
Ivoronus: “We all have a use, and a limit, and a point of expiration, Commander. Our bodies may be immortal, and our minds may be adaptable, but… we are not truly infinite. Nothing is.”
Citation needed. We’ve seen plenty of people older than him that are perfectly content. I presume the idea is that they’re just in denial and he’s just the only one who’s accepted the One Great Truth that we all need to give up and die, but screw that.
Ivoronus: “I am at the end of my life, Commander. I have fulfilled my use to society. It is time for me to go.”
You know what this reminds me of? Socrates’ Apology. If you’re not familiar, it’s a record of Socrates’ defense before he was condemned to death. He spends most of his time smarming about how only he understands the real truth of philosophy and he’s God’s gift to society because of how very, very humble he is; when he is unsurprisingly condemned to death after this, he just waffles over well who can say that life is better than death, really, kill me already whatever I don’t care. Philosophers love to ooh and ah over how deep and insightful this is, but all I can see is a bitter, depressed old man who’s given up on life and is falling back on pretentious wankery to cover up his insecurities. No matter what justifications people may come up with, I can’t see giving up on life as anything but extremely unhealthy behavior. Survival is pretty hardwired into us; we should not be arriving at suicide as a logical conclusion.
I wonder if maybe this is an extension of religious thinking. We usually think of religion being uplifting by assuring us there is meaning and purpose to our lives… but there’s a dark side to that coin, and that’s that you can define your life by that singular purpose. If you believe you’ve fulfilled that purpose, then your life is used up; your role in the grand order of things is over. What you do used to matter, and now it doesn’t. That’s already a depressing thought to begin with; if you’re already depressed, I can easily see it pushing you over the edge.
I reject that way of thinking. There is no greater purpose or meaning to my life – but I find that liberating, because it means I’m free to enjoy life on my own terms instead of worrying if I’m fulfilling my place in the cosmic balance. If you think there’s nothing left for life to offer you, you’re not looking hard enough.
Ivoronus goes on to say that he wants to go out in a blaze of glory instead of just wasting away to nothing. I can respond…
“You want to get killed?”
“That is absurd.”
“Do you want… help?”
Holy crap no let’s not encourage the suicidal man. For some reason I decided to cling to politeness and picked the first option instead of the second.
Ivoronus: “Not a want. An acceptance. The most peaceful feeling in the world is to have nothing left to fear.”
Except he doesn’t have to accept it. He already pointed out that they’re immortal, they don’t have to die. This is a tomb of his own making.
Ivoronus: “If you are wondering how I came to this realization… I cannot say. Literally. There are no words for it.”
How about “depression”?
He then goes on to do some navel-gazing about the decadence of their society and how one day their immortality is going to fail – either he’s read the databanks notes, or he’s clairvoyant.
Ivoronus: “Time is quantifiable… therefore, finite.”
WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN. I have seen some really bizarre physics theories that are in line with this, so maybe this is based on something real, but this still isn’t a logical conclusion from the given premise. Show your work, darn it.
He ends by saying there’s one last thing he needs to tell me before he dies, which ends the conversation. (Un)fortunately, he miraculously avoided tripping a death flag from that and has not been gruesomely murdered by the time I return.
Ivoronus: “I promised you information, did I not? Well… it is complicated. I shall give it to you, but… It is my name, Commander. My actual, original, given name. Not this silly title you know me as.”
I still don’t see how “Ivoronus” is a title. Is it a reference to something? Google isn’t turning up anything.
He does some more navel-gazing, this time about the concept of names. Blah blah I don’t care.
Ivoronus: “This name is mine. Just as you have yours… yet we are both born of uncertain pasts.”
What? No they aren’t. He knows his past perfectly well, she doesn’t. Stop stalling, you weirdo!
There’s a papery sound effect as he hands Ros something.
Ivoronus: “This is called a ‘paper’. Organic fiber material with graphite-powder markings representing data…”
I do like this line. I really enjoy commonplace things being described in unusual ways from an outside perspective, and of course in this setting they’d describe it with overdetailed science jargon that I get to feel smug about understanding.
Ivoronus: “I deliberately never allowed this name to enter Typelog’s databanks. Thus, I do not remember it myself.”
This, though, is a plot hole. Back in episode 2 the Sikohlon workers said they had their own methods of memory retention and were able to stay off the grid. Either Ivoronus knows their network isn’t actually secure and didn’t tell anyone (which wouldn’t surprise me, he’s a dick) or he rather ironically forgot about it.
Ivoronus: “I do not know [my christener’s reasons for hiding this from the digital network]. I do not wish to know. That is a decision I am trusting with you. Take this, and pursue its meaning… or keep it within your own mind. Neither will matter to me.”
And furthermore, if he doesn’t care what Ros does with it, why was it so important he show it to her? He made such a big deal over how this knowledge couldn’t die with him, but why would he think that if he doesn’t remember it and doesn’t even seem to care? There is no consistency here!
When Ros unfolds the paper a level 99 EROS keycard drops out, conveniently. It seems my previous fury was a bit premature – he claims he’s never opened this, so he wouldn’t know about the keycard. But it’s still really grating that it was right here the whole time and he never investigated despite knowing Ros would need a keycard.
Sure enough, a lone word is neatly written in the middle of the page in gray block letters. You commit the name to memory.
PRIME
Obvious twist is obvious. This is why I covered the eastern wing first; this has no impact unless you’ve already seen #1213’s notes. I think that’s actually the intended reading order, since you don’t need this card to finish the eastern wing but do need it to see the final room.
But – like most of the final personal scenes, this raises more questions than it answers. If Ivoronus escaped from the lab like #1213 thought he would, where did he go? Why did no one ever notice a lacertian slinking around, and why are there no records of this mysterious lacertian who popped up far from the homeworld? Was he smart enough to jump onto the ship bound for the lacertian homeworld? But then, how did he survive this long without emitters? How and when did he make the Machinatorium, what does it mean that they’re his “children”, why is he so committed to all of this? And there’s a plot hole: if he really did forget all of this, how did he know where the abandoned lab was and its significance (but not that Ros would need keycards to see the incriminating stuff)? How does he even know what the paper contains or that it’s even important?
Also, what’s his defect? You can’t just drop in a detail like that and never follow up on it! Is this why he’s so invested in his family, because they’re the perfect descendents #1213 mentioned? Is the defect insubordination and Mahk is a throwback and that’s why Ivoronus liked him so much? Agh, I’m just stabbing in the dark at this point. Once again, I’m sure the developer has some brilliant explanation plotted out in his head and would scoff at how obvious it is if I asked him, but the clues just aren’t there.
But whatever, we got a card out of the deal so let’s finish this. Back in episode 3 we found a locked door to the north of the large room with the plants and examination tables. This leads to the final office.
“Those loons made something they can’t control. Big surprise. Almost poetic, really, except for the torn-limb-from-limb part. I think I’m done here. The whole suppression scheme going on with the civvies sounds pretty nice right about now. Existing just to exist… not a care in the universe. Pay no attention to the lifeforms behind the curtain… … …[TERM]”
One of the notes continues the biology saga, and now I’m even more confused. Presumably the ship he’s talking about crashed on the lacertian homeworld and that’s how they were “discovered”… but, this says it only contained PL-775, the Lessers. Were they the only ones to populate the planet, meaning that lacertians evolved naturally? I suppose that would mean the Sikohlon and only the Sikohlon are PL-776, then. While that would explain why they’re so insistent on secrecy, it’s one heck of a coincidence that natural lacertians turned out identical to the Sikohlon.
This is also an interesting ending for this researcher; it’s a lot more open-ended than the others. It implies pretty strongly that they are still around, but where? My first guess is that they’re Willis, but they don’t sound anything like him… or any of the other characters, really. The game is generally very good about giving characters consistent voices, so if we were meant to recognize his speech style I think I would. This better not be another “it was a faceless NPC all along!!!” mystery. Just another thing the sequel will have to answer for, I guess.
Past Tez has some more interesting stuff for us.
“This energy… it’s unlike any we have ever witnessed! It defies any and all explanation! The most consistent method of detection we have is that it’s inconsistent! Science is at the mercy of chaos! I… I shall find the source, the well, the origin of this anomaly if it is the last thing I do! And it may very well be!”
“This energy. This… godforsaken energy. It is not dark energy, nor background radiation, nor something quantifiably spectral. Its sudden emergence from a single point… its unusual interaction with all known forms of matter… This is something… not from around here. And by here, I mean, anywhere. And by anywhere, I mean, this plane of reality. It is just as curious as we are. It grows, and expands, and experiments on the matter it meets. Just as we do. I will find its wellspring, its infinite hole, its gate to this existence… if it’s the last thing I do… … …[TERM]”
Alright, it’s about time we got some real information to work with. When I first played I just went “wow so cool” and was content to wait for the sequel to explain things, but looking with fresh eyes, I think I’ve figured it out.
I said I initially dismissed the possibility of #98A2 being Tezkhra. This is because of the lacertian reveal; The Black One says that he can only transfer his mind between Lessers, and Lessers did not exist at this time. And yet the game drops so many hints that #98A2 is related to Tezkhra – how to reconcile this? Well, what if he wasn’t always this weird bodyhopping ghost? #98A2 says he’s determined to find a magic portal spewing out weird magic energy “if it’s the last thing I do”… what if he succeeded, but had a bad reaction to the energy? Latent energy is magic, so it can do anything… even, perhaps, turn people into intangible bodyhopping ghosts. Maybe even split their personalities across two people. We have seen many points connecting Tezkhra and The Black One – what if they are, in fact, the same person? The two may have retained different bits – Blacky seems to have retained the cosmological knowledge he learned there but doesn’t have a very stable personality, while Tezkhra is a lot more functional but seems to have forgotten everything. Except the ending of The Drop implies The Blue One does know stuff and seems to be a separate entity from Tezkhra, so heck if I know. Maybe I’m not thinking big enough and Blacky is a separate entity who came out of the gate or something. I’m probably hilariously wrong, but I’m definitely going to keep it in mind if the sequel ever comes out!
“The effect that keeps our universe expanding… to overcome the gravity of all matter, all energy, all things… It is consuming itself! Just as I feared of myself, our universe is on the brink of unavoidable death as well.”
I thought this is what’s already known and confirmed…?
“There is something… something that must be done to prevent the inevitable collapse. But, time is finite… short… Enough energy… enough outward exertion… can it reverse the compression? Can it force the universe to live on as it was? I must try. I have the tools and the resources… I must at least try… I am the only one capable…”
If you remember, this sounds very similar to something we heard last episode:
It took the entire game, but the pieces are finally starting to come together. This will be discussed more explicitly in episode 5, so I think I’ll wait until then for the full discussion. For now, I’m just glad to see that at least some of this game’s mysteries are solvable.
“The universe itself shall bend to these whims. I will reverse the shrinking, and save all of existence from its demise… We are the rightful inhabitants. We are the only inhabitants. It is our universe to control, and to save… The emitters made us immortal… EROS makes us all-knowing… Typelog makes our thoughts omnipresent…”
[pause]
“Immortal, all-knowing, omnipresent… immortal, all knowing, omnipresent… … …[TERM]”
Looks like we know who the “old man” is now, in case it wasn’t already obvious. (The upper-right computer is just more crazy.) I’m not entirely sure how we’re supposed to view this – the computers full of crazy are probably meant to make him look delusional, but I can’t actually find any logical fault in his words. He does indeed seem to be the only one capable and willing to do something about this, and I am generally in favor of people who actually try to accomplish things instead of rolling over and dying. The most charitable reading I can think of is that we’re meant to see him as sympathetic now so the game can pull the rug out from under us by showing how evil he is in episode 5. But I also find it disturbingly likely we’re meant to condemn him on this alone – and if so, it is rather darkly hilarious and absurd that the game has taken its “doing things is evil” stance to such an extreme that it expects us to see someone trying to save the universe as evil just because the stress made them a little loopy. If I was surrounded by these apathetic, selfish idiots, I think I’d snap too.
And finally, there’s one last screw-you to the player. Haha, you thought getting to the end of the secret archives would give you actual answers? Lolnope, you still have to play the sequel if you want anything to make sense. While I think the eastern wing is well-constructed and has a nice, contained arc to it, this final office frustrates me – it exists only to taunt us with more questions, rather than satisfy us with answers. (Well, except for #0001’s notes, but they don’t count because we’ll get the exact same information and more in episode 5 anyway.) I think the narrative is weakened by that sequel-baiting; it’s no longer a self-contained narrative, because too many important questions are left open. Still, at least the notes are a little more interesting this time.
And now that we’ve seen everything this place has to offer, I have to wonder what Ivoronus expected Ros to find here. The artificial life project seems the most obvious answer, but a) supposedly Ivoronus can’t remember that and b) what’s so wrong with it? I can’t see how learning about that would convince the Inquiry that EROS is the spawn of Satan. Knowing that they were responsible for the Shine might do it, but how could Ivoronus know about that if he didn’t know he had the necessary keycard? Plot holes everywhere.
…
Is… is that it? Are we really done with episode 4? It’s kind of hard for me to believe, I’ve been working on this for so long. This document is 88 pages in Word! I truthfully didn’t expect this episode to be so long, but I suppose I should have. It was nice to get some final character spotlights, even if it was too little too late. I could do some analysis of the optional scenes as a whole, but this is already so long, so I think I’ll save it for a final overview. Onwards to the finale!