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Yeah I mean lucid dreaming is a thing. You'd think people who had practice over that would at least have some advantage in here, but nope. If you're not Mobius, you're brainwashed.
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Nov 14, 2017 05:26
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Obligatum VII posted:Apparently only psychopaths get to have any fun with dream logic. You'd think at least a handful of non-psychopaths would be able to get a handle on warping the brainscape but apparently not. Maybe it's not so much that psychopaths are the only ones who can mess with things so much that the ones we know were already aware (or became aware) they were in a dream world. Theodore and Ruvik both knew about STEM before they were in it and Theodore probably tried converting Stephano, discovered his true nature resisted conversion, and instead used other methods to get Stephano to work for him which involved explaining STEM. Mraagvpeine fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Nov 14, 2017 |
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Nov 14, 2017 05:40
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Thadius posted:Yeah I mean lucid dreaming is a thing. You'd think people who had practice over that would at least have some advantage in here, but nope. If you're not Mobius, you're brainwashed. Might be that STEM is much more than mere dreaming. It’s implied at the end of the first game that Ruvik was able to hijack Leslie’s body and maintain some reality-warping powers after exiting, and people who die in STEM die for and apparently have their brain juice scooped up so Sebastian can upgrade himself. We’ve also seen how the denizens of STEM can have their brains controlled and corrupted by someone with sufficient power, and even formed into conglomerate monsters. I think unlike a lucid dream, performing impossible things causes actual brain damage, possibly on a physical level instead of just “going crazy” in the real world.
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Nov 14, 2017 05:47
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It's also not just a purely psychic cloud network dream state. It's all being enabled by a shitton of computers and tech, both in the real world and even inside the Union STEM environment. Before in CJacobs' thread, I said Sebastian is a tactical realist. That he was only able to push back against the madhouse horrorshow that was Beacon STEM by being a stubborn literalist, subconsciously adding some amount of logic and order to the way things worked there. Well, Mobius are also literalists. Order and logic is the defaut of their new STEM. Union is supposed to strictly follow real world rules and physics, and the population are also processing power, brainwashed to think and imagine and perceive the world in a consistent, controlled manner. Mobius' methods for controlling and manipulating Union from within are all through fully rendered and realized tech. Electricity and other utilities are planned out and laid. Functioning servers with actual programming inside of STEM do things to other parts of STEM. Troubleshooting is accomplished with guns. Stabilizing the environment involves dragging over and powering up these huge emitters. This is convenient! Real world knowledge and skills carry over into STEM (weirder things like the emitters probably take some extra training with a lot of emphasis on "it just works this way")! Mobius operatives don't need to struggle to imagine themselves an impossible gun when the consensus reality that Mobius has established in Union also has armories set up just for them! That Sebastian has done exactly that with a ten shot revolver says something about what he thinks of Mobius' grand vision of order and control. But he's still a pretty literal guy and won't become some sort of brain wizard psychonaut like Ruvik and Italian Frank West and apparently even Myra. That seems to require some very particular personalities combined with core access for a singular vision to dominate over many others. Realization of the unreal isn't enough to have significant power over STEM - It can help with that, yes, but I think it serves more as a protective measure. A Union citizen sees the city crack apart and float into the sky, their brainwashing-restricted worldview can't handle this and they lose the plot immediately. An operative sees this, they understand that this means something is very wrong and they need to fix it, so instead go "ohhh poo poo" and beeline for the guns. I don't include Theodore Wallace on the psychonaut list because I suspect he actually isn't that powerful on his own. He doesn't need to be. He's a neural-linguistic programmer, Mobius' chief brainwasher. I don't think he can impose that fire and brimstone reality on his own, but he CAN tell the population, the living processors, to do it for him, changing their consensus reality to match his vision.
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Nov 14, 2017 07:29
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Find a friend, lose a friend. It's the way of the world! 32: Forgiveness/Polsy
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Nov 14, 2017 08:02
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Fish Noise posted:(Theorizing) Honestly it's a cool as hell concept and I feel like it might be great for an RPG(computer or pen and paper, either would do). It feels like the underlying logic behind why the world works as it does is somewhat more thought out in this than the original.
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Nov 14, 2017 11:37
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Wow, you really articulated things that I thought about but wasn't able to put to words. Although I think Stephano became a brain wizard after Theodore gave him some power, which I cannot help but imagine was like Morpheus in the Matrix, only with less kung fu. And thinking about Mobius' plan, which was to subjugate the entire world by pulling everyone into this mind world, don't they realize that the psychopath problem would be present on a large scale? How exactly were they going to deal with all of them?
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Nov 14, 2017 15:36
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PurpleXVI posted:Honestly it's a cool as hell concept and I feel like it might be great for an RPG(computer or pen and paper, either would do). It feels like the underlying logic behind why the world works as it does is somewhat more thought out in this than the original. It reminds me of Silent Hill a bit. The first Silent Hill has stuff that gets dropped without explanation in future games, like the parasites infecting people to create pseudo-zombie enemies, and all of the enemies are exclusively manifestations of Alessa's trauma because Alessa has vast supernatural powers due to the being impregnated with a god. Silent Hill 2 establishes almost everything that people know about the series, like the enemies being part of the protagonist's mental state and the town itself being a supernatural entity. Likewise, the first Evil Within was struggling to find its footing and the ending was intentionally ambiguous as to whether or not Sebastian was still in STEM. The sequel establishes relatively solid rules from the confused logic of the original game so it can create a more solid, understandable experience even if it still uses the setting to break logic over its knee. It's just that now you know why weird poo poo is happening and can puzzle it out yourself, whereas the first game has you spend hours in the dark as to what you're hooked into.
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Nov 14, 2017 15:46
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Mraagvpeine posted:And thinking about Mobius' plan, which was to subjugate the entire world by pulling everyone into this mind world, don't they realize that the psychopath problem would be present on a large scale? How exactly were they going to deal with all of them? And to be fair, things like Mobius' capacity for mass brainwashing, and the expansion plan using the collective Union population as the hosting substrate rather than the core directly, suggest that Mobius has been putting more thought into certain aspects of it all than the game is taking the time to spell out for us. There's more than we're seeing, but that's not an immediate concern for Sebastian or even us.
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Nov 14, 2017 17:14
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Fish Noise posted:There's so many obvious problems with the plan, with the STEM system, with Mobius' own organization, some of which are just explicitly stated in the game itself. But they've gone so all-in on STEM that they've blinded themselves to it. Mobius may have been around for a long time and have access to some advanced stuff, but STEM is so far ahead of anything else that it has suddenly put Mobius' long term objectives in reach. The endgame world state that was probably generations away is now attainable within current lifespans. *They can taste it*, and they're losing track of things by chasing that. I mean, what we saw of their concern with psychopaths is "We've learned not to make an egomaniac psychopath the core of STEM, so we should use a child instead." Their efforts to identify sociopaths and psychopaths before putting them into Union is clearly fallible if Stefano got in, and Yukiko admits that otherwise undesirable people can hide their mental issues until they get hooked up.
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Nov 14, 2017 18:26
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And now starts the new tense part of this LP: Is Scruffy ever going to use one of those ice bolts?
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Nov 14, 2017 18:41
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Holy moly, I didn't realize just how big a pair of dorks Seb and Myra were, but their guns in their wedding photos look like they're Player 1 and Player 2 in a light gun shooter.
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Nov 14, 2017 20:41
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PurpleXVI posted:And now starts the new tense part of this LP: Is Scruffy ever going to use one of those ice bolts? now that you've said that he'll have turned out to use it in the very next bit he's already recorded, if history is anything to go by.
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Nov 15, 2017 02:15
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You know, okay, one thing I don't get is... how is Sykes ever going to get out undetected? Presumably everyone plugged into STEM is sloshing around in a pod somewhere, and Mobius knows where all the pods are, as well as everyone who's been dunked into one. So if one of them starts popping open while STEM is ostensibly locked down, aren't they going to send some guys with guns to investigate?
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Nov 15, 2017 21:23
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PurpleXVI posted:You know, okay, one thing I don't get is... how is Sykes ever going to get out undetected? Presumably everyone plugged into STEM is sloshing around in a pod somewhere, and Mobius knows where all the pods are, as well as everyone who's been dunked into one. So if one of them starts popping open while STEM is ostensibly locked down, aren't they going to send some guys with guns to investigate? Also it's interesting that there are new Mobious operative corpses around and that some have clearly been flamethrowered to death. I guess Seb isn't the only person being sent in.
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Nov 15, 2017 22:31
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Sykes, Hoffman, and O'neal were part of the team sent in before Kidman nabbed Seb, so yeah.
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Nov 16, 2017 00:07
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Presumably, if he makes it out, he's not going to be doing a middle finger dance up at the observation deck as he exits the core chamber. He's a snooper who knows things he's not supposed to, regularly lies to and conceals his skills from the rest of Mobius, and has been in contact with Sebastian. If anyone can talk their way out of the resulting questioning, it's probably him. Not to mention Kidman's so involved and in and out of the core chamber so much that she'd probably be at the debriefing and able to help him keep his story straight.
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Nov 16, 2017 01:05
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Do you think they'd use Sykes for DLC? Him exploring the unknown part of STEM.
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Nov 16, 2017 01:44
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Mraagvpeine posted:Do you think they'd use Sykes for DLC? Him exploring the unknown part of STEM. It would actually be pretty interesting to see what you could up to with a clever computer programmer exploring a computer world that can be influenced and rewritten with willpower and thought. Perhaps he could turn that to his advantage in fun ways? Instead of playing the Keeper, you have a mode as Sykes doing a survival horror impression of Neo.
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Nov 16, 2017 02:32
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This whole "no internet" thing is starting to get real old. 33: Barbeque/Polsy 34: Psych-Out/Polsy
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Nov 16, 2017 07:38
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BTW, I think that key you didn't pick up was because you died right after.
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Nov 16, 2017 08:44
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Scruffy, I gotta ask - is there a reason why when you use the silenced pistol you're actively not trying to shoot things in the head? In the last two videos you've repeatedly had clear headshots and re-adjusted to shoot them in the butt. Is there a mechanical reason, or an anti-rear end vendetta?
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Nov 16, 2017 16:19
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The mug is a Prey(2017) reference. T for Transstar, the corporation at the center of the plot, and one of the repeating memes related to the game was coffee mugs, because early videos of the game involved the reviewer turning into a coffee mug using one of the game's abilities.
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Nov 16, 2017 21:51
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PurpleXVI posted:The mug is a Prey(2017) reference. T for Transstar, the corporation at the center of the plot, and one of the repeating memes related to the game was coffee mugs, because early videos of the game involved the reviewer turning into a coffee mug using one of the game's abilities. Just make sure to whack it with a wrench, just to be sure.
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Nov 16, 2017 22:36
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Technowolf posted:Just make sure to whack it with a wrench, just to be sure. Then consume its powers and become the mug.
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Nov 17, 2017 00:50
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I think I've found the best song to describe Theodore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mizo55muY2I
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Nov 17, 2017 02:54
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Mraagvpeine posted:I think I've found the best song to describe Theodore. "You've been living like a little girl, in the middle of your little world." "Your tiny mind, you've really been so blind." The song works for Seb and Lily both!
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Nov 17, 2017 05:10
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I've been wondering how Sebastian and crew are supposed to be able to escape with Lily since she's a brain in a jar due to being the core like Ruvik was. Was the idea that he would somehow fix the system and then try and make off with her brain and hope nobody stops him? It's not like she has a body to go back to anymore.
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Nov 17, 2017 06:03
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Note that we don't know that that's the case yet, nobody's mentioned one way or the other. edit: Also, the big thing in the center looks pretty different than it did for Ruvik.  Pretty convenient how you can't see inside anymore!
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Nov 17, 2017 06:13
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Ruvik being de-bodied was in part his punishment for crossing Mobius, which wouldn't have been the case will Lily.
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Nov 17, 2017 06:14
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It's The Evil Within, though. No way Lily's getting a happy ending. Or anyone else for that matter. I'd guess the happiest possible outcome would be pulling the plug on her after she forgives Seb and asks him to end it because she's a brain in a jar, or horrendously atrophied after years floating in a tube, and/or just plain brain-broken after all this STEM poo poo. And then it's back into the booze after killing his entire family (also guessing Myra will be final boss and end up dead). 
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Nov 17, 2017 06:56
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He's alive, apparently!  35: Loose Ends/Polsy Tempest_56 posted:Scruffy, I gotta ask - is there a reason why when you use the silenced pistol you're actively not trying to shoot things in the head? In the last two videos you've repeatedly had clear headshots and re-adjusted to shoot them in the butt. Is there a mechanical reason, or an anti-rear end vendetta? Part of it is my anti-rear end vendetta, the other part is as a Master of Stealth I can't have any accidental kills going on. Also I'm not sure if a headshot will alert someone more than an rear end-shot.
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Nov 17, 2017 08:04
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dscruffy1 posted:the other part is as a Master of Stealth Your little "Master of Stealth~!"-bit cheers me up every time I hear it, I just want you to know.
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Nov 17, 2017 08:35
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Oh man they gave Joseph such a goofy smile for that slide! I've been finding myself thinking o/` Master of Stealth! o/` whenever I see photos where a cat is peering from behind a corner or is otherwise semi-concealed.
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Nov 17, 2017 08:46
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marshmallow creep posted:"You've been living like a little girl, in the middle of your little world." "Your tiny mind, you've really been so blind." The song works for Seb and Lily both! Perhaps I should have said "Theodore's favorite song" as it practically says what Theodore would say.
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Nov 17, 2017 17:18
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I imagine they're tossing weapon parts at you to upgrade the assault rifle?
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Nov 18, 2017 03:03
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Or to just pay for the higher end upgrades in general. Plenty of players might have chosen to more evenly spread out their weapon upgrades rather than focus on putting them all in to maxing out one or two weapons.
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Nov 18, 2017 05:54
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I suspect THAT bit was probably because they didn't know what to do with her for the rest of the game. Plus it kind of mirrors the original in that only Sebastian really survives.
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Nov 18, 2017 09:19
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My home internet is back on so I'm updating early. We're real close to the end of the game! 36: Emergency Psychoanalysis/Polsy 37: Sequel Power Up/Polsy Also yes I did miss a perfect opportunity to use something. I KNOW.
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Nov 18, 2017 10:57
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I wonder if that sequence would've gone differently if you hadn't taken the optional side trip to put the ghosts of Beacon to rest. On the one hand it seems unlikely, on the other hand it seems like the attention to detail we could probably have expected from this dev team. But that must've been seriously satisfying to play, it was satisfying just to WATCH.
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Nov 18, 2017 20:06
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