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If you did see the game as a proof of concept on the difficulty/impossibility of getting a player to empathize with interactive fiction... why are you still arguing about decisions?
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Jul 8, 2017 21:07
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I'm saying that Prey managed to make me emphasize on a deeper level than many games. The epilogue did little more than add an unnecessary exclamation point.
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Jul 8, 2017 21:15
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Rinkles posted:I think I know what my real problem is with the epilogue, or part of it. I already made that decision. It was when I had to choose whether to blow up the station and whether to escape. The epilogue basically handwave's away the game's climactic moment (since Yu et al. can't read your mind and reasoning), but that's where everything you've learned, all the hints, all the emotional ties, everything you've experienced up to that point culminates in your final action. This is going to sound really lovely, but I think the game expects people to have realized none of it was real far earlier then the very end. Coming from that position, the ending was stellar. I suspected well before even Dahl showed up that this was a test/simulation/game in some way, and started acting accordingly. I started showing off to the people watching. The choice in the Bridge was easy for me, as I "knew" there wasn't going to be a consequence. Every action I made stopped being about escaping/destroying the station, but rather showboating for whatever was going to happen at the end of the game. So as soon as the game "ends" and you wake up, I sat there congratulating myself for a few seconds until Alex turned the chair around and I got to see what led to this series of events. That was the "ending twist" for me. And it was significantly more impactful then it seemed to have been for many other people, because I thought I had the ending all figured out, only for it to turn around and twist the proverbial knife. Maybe the ending would have been better if the preending choice never happened. Instead of dealing with Talos, the simulation breaks/ends and you get spit out to see the real ending with the surviving cast, and that's where you have to make a choice. Because it seems like a lot of people got extremely tunnelvisioned into caring only about the station choice and didn't see any of the tells/other things going on around them to notice where the ending was leading.
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Jul 8, 2017 21:26
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Vib Rib posted:I've looked up a bunch of "all endings" videos on youtube and still have never seen this one, despite hearing about it. Weird that everyone making these videos seems to omit it. That was the ending on my first playthrough. I treated it like a video game where nothing mattered (ooh) and I didn't think I'd be judged at the end, so very few people survived encountering me.
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Jul 8, 2017 22:28
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Rookersh posted:This is going to sound really lovely, but I think the game expects people to have realized none of it was real far earlier then the very end. People got tunnelvisioned exactly because people do get invested in fiction despite knowing it's not real. (Psychotronics and the bad end make it hard not to figure out it's a simulation) My problem was mostly with the end choice, not the end twist. It kinda felt like a betrayal of the game's design ethos (simplistic binary choice out of nowhere), but I get that that might be intentional to make the point blunt. e:Alternatively, the choice illustrates a lot by how it doesn't register as meaningful (contrary to the game proper). Rinkles fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Jul 8, 2017 |
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Jul 8, 2017 22:53
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Rinkles posted:People got tunnelvisioned exactly because people do get invested in fiction despite knowing it's not real. (Psychotronics and the bad end make it hard not to figure out it's a simulation) It's completely, entirely in line with the rest of the game and it the game would have been worse without it. I won't argue that it could have been implemented much better, though. One of the major themes, maybe the biggest theme, is that you have no idea if people are telling you the truth about who you are. Alex and January both give you incredibly contradictory pictutes, and your own character does as well, and you're led to believe that one or both of them are lying. The end drives home the point that none of the other characters know who Morgan is, either, and that you can lie to and manipulate them as well. The game could have benefitted from giving the character who talks about this more than three lines. turn off the TV fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Jul 9, 2017 |
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Jul 9, 2017 00:12
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I must be near the end, since all those military operators just showed up. If you're going human only, what's the best way to deal with them? Wrench? Shotgun? Running really, really fast while double-jumping?
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Jul 9, 2017 00:34
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Grab the stun gun and go hog wild.
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Jul 9, 2017 00:35
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turn off the TV posted:Grab the stun gun and go hog wild. Yeah, stun gun fucks robots up. I just dumped my remaining upgrade kits on it cuz I didn't go lab tech and HOLY poo poo. The difference is night and day. Max that sucker out before the pistol.
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Jul 9, 2017 01:05
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turrets also seem to wreck them pretty easily. They might need to be fortified though.
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Jul 9, 2017 01:10
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Don't forget to whack the broken ones with a wrench to get those sweet QBeam cells.
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Jul 9, 2017 02:08
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Couple questions about interpreting the ending (major spoilers obviously, don't read if you haven't finished the game) So I just finished the game, was great. I did nightmare difficulty, human-only, fully empathetic, saved everyone, blew up the station and took the shuttle home. I had the 'it's a simulation' twist spoiled for me by a dumb Prey wiki, just looking for a newbie FAQ on survival tips at the beginning of the game, which decided to include "Trivia: Like the Rick and Morty episode, Prey is actually just a simulation within a simulation" on the front page, THANKS FOR THAT, NERDS. Though, the December questline spoils that for you by the midgame anyway, so. I definitely didn't see the "you're a Typhon" twist coming though, that was definitely a nice touch, though in retrospect it is hinted at heavily throughout the game lore. I was expecting something cliched like "January is actually Alex loving with you" a la System Shock 2/Bioshock, I was pleasantly surprised they didn't go that route and I thought it was ultimately more interesting this way. I also never expected to want to do a Typhon playthrough, but the ending made me want to do that, so there's that. Still don't know how anyone has the heart to do a "murder everyone" playthrough though  Here are my questions: 1. In a lategame audio log, IIRC the one from Deep Storage of Mikhaila's father being murdered in an experiment, at the end of it Morgan says something like "Got a good scan on the mimic connectomes, make sure to update them before the next time I dive into the sim." (paraphrasing) What is the significance of this, and what sim is he talking about? I thought I understood it at the time, since you've already figured out the whole game is a sim, but with the context of "you're really a Typhon reliving Morgan's memories, not Morgan" it doesn't make any sense. 2. What is the significance of the flashback scenes throughout the game? With Morgan saying "Don't let them do this to you" and "They're lying to you" I didn't use any Typhon mods so I didn't get all of them in my playthrough, like IIRC the one where your human hands are being enveloped in Typhon tendrils, but it definitely made me question the post-credits ending scene. 3. When you choose to take Alex's hand in the final scene, your Typhon hand turns human, and he says, "We're gonna shake things up, just like old times." What is the meaning of these two things? My immediate reaction was that they were about to drop you back into another simulation, like you were still a Typhon but they were plugging you back into another sim as a human, and Alex was repeating that line from the beginning again, just like in the fake apartment/testing sim at the very beginning of the game. Left me feeling very unsettled. I've read other people speculating that it was just symbolic of your empathizing with humans to the point that you began viewing yourself as a human, but given Morgan's flashback comments of "Don't let them do this to you" and "They're lying to you" made me suspicious. Overall, what a great loving game. I haven't had a game's story stick with me and make me think about it like this in a long, long time, maybe ever. Azuren fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Jul 9, 2017 |
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Jul 9, 2017 03:57
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Question 1: They're using the Typhon scans to help develop neuromods, and they're testing the neuromods on Morgan. That's it - nothing weird going on there. Question 2: Presumably those are moments where you, the Typhon, momentarily realizes that you're in a simulation. Question 3: Like the other comments said, Typhons can mimic other things, presumably you've decided to mimic Morgan as a representation of how you're part human, part Typhon. As for the "shake things up" line, clearly the point is that you and Alex and so on are going to try to fix all the poo poo that's happened - Earth being conquered by the Typhon and so on.
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Jul 9, 2017 04:19
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The Making of the Gloo Gun was linked a few pages back but it wasn't labeled as such and it's a pretty fun read for being a PC Gamer article. One of the highlights is the guy who designed the weapon lifting a tape deck to the ceiling, GLOOing it there, the shooting the GLOO when a phantom was standing under it and killing it, and thinking to himself "I literally made this and didn't think that would work. this is awesome". Theres also a neat bit about how he woke up halfway through development like "wait why isn't this just an ice gun?" and then the whole team kind of sheepishly just ignoring it.
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Jul 9, 2017 04:28
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I think the player/typhon at the end game is Morgan-like because it has a bunch of morgans nuerons/memories implanted into it. So it's becoming morgan esque because it's got a bunch of morgan in it. Also I'm gonna say the ending got me kinda off guard. Partly because I forced myself from trying to guess the ending, and partly because I skimmed through a lot of stuff on my first go around looking through terminals and everything else for mentions of supplies and key codes and poo poo because until I figured out the shotgun/psychoshock tricks I was frequently low on health, armor and ammo. So I didn't read a lot of the world building because I was always trying to survive. And then I beat the game, and now that I know what I"m doing when I play it I'm noticing way more stuff and realizing how much the foreshadowing is there. Also I didn't realize operators DID anything until like GUTS.
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Jul 9, 2017 05:54
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So ending spoilers Those who say the choice wasnt meaningful because obviously they were going to pick the obvious certain choice are wrong. I know I am not the only one who picked Kill Them All - I cant be. And it was a choice I put thought it. I really stopped and thought about who I was, what it all meant to be, and who and what I should do. Like others I had figured out most of what was going on prior to the end - the earth being typhonized, the fact you are still in a simulation and its all a test, etc. I had somehow missed that I myself was a typhon though and it changed everything. Summary: Just because a choice was trivial for you to decide doesnt mean it was a trivial choice and I genuinely love that the game ultimately decided to let me determine my own motivations instead of guessing them for me and getting them wrong.
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Jul 9, 2017 06:16
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So, wait, hang on... why doesn't anyone try to radio Earth throughout all this?
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Jul 9, 2017 06:20
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Arglebargle III posted:So, wait, hang on... why doesn't anyone try to radio Earth throughout all this? Help would be days, if not weeks away. Also we're commiting a lot of whole helluva lot of crimes in the name of SCIENCE!. Also we don't want to lower Transstar's stock price.
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Jul 9, 2017 06:25
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Well, it seems like Morgan's backup plan as of Feb. 23 was to destroy the station. What the hell's the point of destroying the station if you don't warn Earth first? They'll just send more people to find out what happened, who will probably start the whole problem over again.
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Jul 9, 2017 07:07
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Azuren posted:Couple questions about interpreting the ending (major spoilers obviously, don't read if you haven't finished the game) 1. They're talking about the apartment-simulation that you wake up in in the beginning of the game, as that's what they were using to stage their 'fresh start' neuromod trials - initially Morgan would go under, wake up and do some tests, then read logs and catch up on what's been forgotten before continuing the research work on the station - that's why there's logs of people being ignored or Morgan acting strange around the station. 2. They're not flashbacks - they're you surfacing out of your Morgan-simulation. They're all blurry glimpses of the final scene with all the operators looking on, and in one of them Alex says you can't have a sedative because it would interfere with memory-formation. 3. Your hand turns human because you've accepted the human empathy and consciousness they've grafted onto your typhon body. Presumably you take on the actual form of Morgan at that point, like a more evolved Mimic. The line is intentionally a call back to the beginning of the game because that's the last thing Morgan said to his 'real' sibling before they took the first neuromod - he spends most of the game talking about how Morgan's personality changed with the testing and how he just wants the old them back - and in the end there you are, his frankenstein alien sibling, ready to make the same kind of mistakes with him all over again.
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Jul 9, 2017 07:16
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I think my favorite part of this game is how every single NPC is fleshed out. You can find their workstation. You can find their quarters. Most of them have relationships you can map out. Most of them get along with each other. Some do not. At least one of them is a murderer. Lookin' at you, Josh Dalton. It makes the world quite real. I'm surprised there isn't more in the way of fictional media that does this kind of detailed character mapping. It makes such a difference.
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Jul 9, 2017 07:48
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Arglebargle III posted:Well, it seems like Morgan's backup plan as of Feb. 23 was to destroy the station. What the hell's the point of destroying the station if you don't warn Earth first? They'll just send more people to find out what happened, who will probably start the whole problem over again. His hope was to destroy the station so thoroughly that it would annihilate all Typhon material. Based on the ending, either he did it and it didn't work, or he used the nullwave and it didn't work, or maybe he just took the escape pod. Whatever he did, it didn't work, so it makes sense that his plans suck.
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Jul 9, 2017 07:52
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Bust Rodd posted:Theres also a neat bit about how he woke up halfway through development like "wait why isn't this just an ice gun?" and then the whole team kind of sheepishly just ignoring it. The gloo gun actually makes sense as a tool they made to patch up stuff in the station though.
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Jul 9, 2017 08:06
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e:nvm
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Jul 9, 2017 09:46
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Gadzuko posted:His hope was to destroy the station so thoroughly that it would annihilate all Typhon material. Based on the ending, either he did it and it didn't work, or he used the nullwave and it didn't work, or maybe he just took the escape pod. Whatever he did, it didn't work, so it makes sense that his plans suck. Maybe it worked and more Typhon came anyway
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Jul 9, 2017 12:57
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GRINDCORE MEGGIDO posted:Maybe it worked and more Typhon came anyway This was my thought as well, and why I thought that January was pretty naive. They encountered a single mimic during the Verona 1 incident, and they have absolutely no way of knowing how many more Typhon exist in the solar system or throughout the rest of space. Keeping Talos 1 alive and developing Neuromods to fight the Typhon and whatever other aliens may exist seems like the best decision.
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Jul 9, 2017 15:48
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You're in over your heads dealing with a completely alien enemy. I don't think there's any obviously correct course of action.
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Jul 9, 2017 16:18
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Hey, i think humanity is doing pretty good for handling it's first Outside Context Problem when they have barely left Terra's gravity well.
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Jul 9, 2017 16:19
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There are a lot of ominous references to the Fermi Paradox in the early game. The Typhon might be the dominant life form in our area. You know, I still think it's a weird omission that you can't at least try to get a message to earth before you sterilize the station. That would effect both December and January's objectives. It wouldn't be hard to simulate either. Neat note: if you escape in Alex's pod and get the bad end, the simulation boot screen is LGV 3.1 instead of LGV 3.5.
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Jul 9, 2017 16:39
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SpookyLizard posted:Hey, i think humanity is doing pretty good for handling it's first Outside Context Problem when they have barely left Terra's gravity well. Yeah, pretty much at no time throughout the game did I feel like the situation had really gotten out of hand. Even with the Apex eating the station.
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Jul 9, 2017 18:35
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turn off the TV posted:Yeah, pretty much at no time throughout the game did I feel like the situation had really gotten out of hand. Even with the Apex eating the station. Same, though I'm not finished yet. Station security was inadequate for the extent of the outbreak, but our guns still worked if you had enough of them so I didn't get the vibe that a couple Mimics making it to earth would have been an extinction event.
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Jul 9, 2017 19:27
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GlyphGryph posted:So ending spoilers Those who say the choice wasnt meaningful because obviously they were going to pick the obvious certain choice are wrong. I know I am not the only one who picked Kill Them All - I cant be. And it was a choice I put thought it. I really stopped and thought about who I was, what it all meant to be, and who and what I should do. Like others I had figured out most of what was going on prior to the end - the earth being typhonized, the fact you are still in a simulation and its all a test, etc. I had somehow missed that I myself was a typhon though and it changed everything. I try to just sort of go with my gut on the first play of a game like this, and found the Typhon surprisingly sympathetic, even without knowing the twist. Not many of the humans do things in the game that make me think "Yeah, this is worth saving." I wasn't sure about the Typhon either way for a long time because their motives are so mysterious; though clearly they've evolved to be something fascinating, something that interested me. What sealed the deal was the confirmation that coral is a neural map of the people who have been consumed. The Typhon aren't good, but they're not bad either, they operate outside of that reference framework, and I honestly find the idea of the massive shared neural framework quite interesting, as well as the structure of the various forms of Typhon that function to fill different roles towards a single end. To that end, I played very Typhon-heavy, not gunless per se but going very heavy into psionics; and I was delighted to be able to choose to finish off the humans at the end, even if I did wind up saving quite a few (but not all) of the humans on the station in the sim. I know there's a pretty good argument for joining Alex since his plan is to splice together Typhon and Human into some kind of exotic fusion cuisine, but like I said, at the time I went with my gut and that involved killing them all. Arglebargle III posted:So, wait, hang on... why doesn't anyone try to radio Earth throughout all this? Someone mentions that external comms are down, don't remember if it's an audio log or what, but there's been no way to radio off the station since the start of the incident. What puzzled me more was how the board knew to send Dahl even though comms were down.
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Jul 9, 2017 19:52
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aniviron posted:Someone mentions that external comms are down, don't remember if it's an audio log or what, but there's been no way to radio off the station since the start of the incident. What puzzled me more was how the board knew to send Dahl even though comms were down. I thought they sent Dahl purely because they hadn't heard anything from Talos and assumed the worst. They didn't necessarily know what was happening but the were like "okay something has gone wrong, Dahl you go and clean up whatever you find."
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Jul 9, 2017 20:28
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Even without knowing the twist, by the first visit to crew quarters I was starting to think "I don't identify very strongly with this Morgan Yu I'm reading about." And when you run into people who don't like either of the Yus I felt inclined to agree and decided I don't care what Morgan Yu intended.
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Jul 9, 2017 20:32
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ConfusedUs posted:I think my favorite part of this game is how every single NPC is fleshed out. You can find their workstation. You can find their quarters. Most of them have relationships you can map out. Most of them get along with each other. Some do not. At least one of them is a murderer. Lookin' at you, Josh Dalton. The instructions are super easy and basically ingrained in the very system itself, the fact that he had to call people multiple times asking them to walk him through a basically one-step process is pretty bad. Arglebargle III posted:Even without knowing the twist, by the first visit to crew quarters I was starting to think "I don't identify very strongly with this Morgan Yu I'm reading about." And when you run into people who don't like either of the Yus I felt inclined to agree and decided I don't care what Morgan Yu intended. Vib Rib fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Jul 9, 2017 |
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Jul 9, 2017 20:38
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You can't radio earth because Transtar shut down external comms and locked everything up at the first sign of trouble so no one would find out about their evil space science. Come on people, this is evil corporation 101-level stuff.  aniviron posted:Someone mentions that external comms are down, don't remember if it's an audio log or what, but there's been no way to radio off the station since the start of the incident. What puzzled me more was how the board knew to send Dahl even though comms were down. Comms aren't actually "down", they're just shut off because It's A Cover Up. The Yu parents know exactly what's going on and specifically sent Dahl to murder their children and eliminate the Typhon, the game is pretty explicit about this.
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Jul 9, 2017 22:37
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So you can blow up the station but not turn on a radio?
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Jul 9, 2017 22:40
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Arglebargle III posted:So you can blow up the station but not turn on a radio? I mean yes? You blow up the station by loving with the power station. That's something that could have been caused by enough damage anyways. Communications aren't magical, you'd need a satellite array of some sort to send signals back and forth. The Typhon could have damaged the onstation comms array. Alex could have damaged it. Transtar Earth might be blocking all communication. That's assuming there IS a back and forth messaging system. I don't think there's a single sign anywhere on Talos 1 of anybody communicating with Earth in any way past "hey, here's the reports, take them with you on your next shuttle.". It seems like all communication is physical still, outside of presumably some very basic satellite based messaging. Makes sense for a science lab breaking ethics laws, you don't want a bored scientist calling mom and pop to tell them about the people they tortured yesterday, or the breaking new discovery they came up with. I don't think there is a radio to turn on is the problem. We explore the entire station and I can't think of a single part of it that reads as "comms".
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Jul 9, 2017 22:49
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Yeah, I don't think that there's any on station communications device. Every mention of communicating with earth involves physically going there.
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Jul 9, 2017 22:51
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There’s enough electronics on the station to build some kind of radio and antenna, and simply go outside and use it, if you wanted (who you would talk to and what you would say is another matter). You can remote detonate that shuttle, which requires comms.
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Jul 9, 2017 23:08
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