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Bremen posted:It's not a panacea; you'd probably end up with a bunch of corrupt city states and a few genuine bastions of enlightenment. And unless people have learned better, they'll just make the same mistakes all over again. But it's not as simple as just turning back the clock and reliving the "golden age", either. So in other words, the New Dark Age would sacrifice the wellbeing of the vast majority of humanity while a few would be able to live in relative comfort and safety. And that comfort and safety would be relative to their neighbors and not to their past, because as with all small, unsupervised governments, wars and raids between city-states would be constant and ongoing. And if they won't be unsupervised, it'll be because the city-states will have banded together into federations and empires which are already beyond the scope of individual citizens. So how does this alternative speak well for the New Dark Age, exactly?
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Nov 4, 2014 05:06
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:So in other words, the New Dark Age would sacrifice the wellbeing of the vast majority of humanity while a few would be able to live in relative comfort and safety. And that comfort and safety would be relative to their neighbors and not to their past, because as with all small, unsupervised governments, wars and raids between city-states would be constant and ongoing. And if they won't be unsupervised, it'll be because the city-states will have banded together into federations and empires which are already beyond the scope of individual citizens. So how does this alternative speak well for the New Dark Age, exactly? But you established quite well in your video that in each ending you are making a decision to sacrifice the well being of some large portion of humanity while others would live in relative comfort and safety, the third world nations of the illuminati rule or the calculated most acceptable losers of Helios. The difference between those and the dark age might be said to be the difference between a conscious choice that some might be disadvantaged for a greater good versus an element of random chance. And can we say for certain the city states will be inclined to violent conflict? With the tools and knowledge mankind has access to it is entirely possible for a nation to feed itself within it's own borders, has there ever been a time in history where the labor of so few could feed so many so easily? If basic needs are seen to reliably, after a difficult transitional period, can we be sure history will simply repeat it self and lead to violent conflict? Why would the citizens of city state support a war when they have what they need to live and if they live in a city state where their voice has power in their government how could they be coerced into wanting it?
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Nov 4, 2014 05:27
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Why would their voice have power in the government? The power vacuum is easily filled in by groups with access to large amounts of guns and violence that can easily monopolize force in the chaos. Why would you even assume these 'city states' would be democratic?
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Nov 4, 2014 05:32
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Night10194 posted:Why would their voice have power in the government? The power vacuum is easily filled in by groups with access to large amounts of guns and violence that can easily monopolize force in the chaos. Why would you even assume these 'city states' would be democratic? Why wouldn't they be democratic once some time has passed, people will be familiar with democracies and have expectations of certain rights. Other forms of organization wouldn't hold together for very long. Even if you have guns and violence someone has to feed your soldiers, are you just going to kill a bunch of your civilians to intimidate them? You have limited force to project, projecting it inwards is self destructive when there are other more sustainable means of control. A smaller community makes the leadership more answerable to the people, he can only press down so hard on his subjects before you reach a breaking point where he either destroys his production base beyond it's ability to sustain his military or his military turns on him before that can happen.
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Nov 4, 2014 05:53
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CheeseThief posted:But you established quite well in your video that in each ending you are making a decision to sacrifice the well being of some large portion of humanity while others would live in relative comfort and safety, the third world nations of the illuminati rule or the calculated most acceptable losers of Helios. The difference between those and the dark age might be said to be the difference between a conscious choice that some might be disadvantaged for a greater good versus an element of random chance. That's true, but then I'm not defending either of the other endings. What I'm doing is questioning why you expect that the New Dark Age would be the most preferable of the three alternatives. quote:And can we say for certain the city states will be inclined to violent conflict? With the tools and knowledge mankind has access to it is entirely possible for a nation to feed itself within it's own borders, has there ever been a time in history where the labor of so few could feed so many so easily? If basic needs are seen to reliably, after a difficult transitional period, can we be sure history will simply repeat it self and lead to violent conflict? Why would the citizens of city state support a war when they have what they need to live and if they live in a city state where their voice has power in their government how could they be coerced into wanting it? I can say that city-states would be inclined to violence because humans--and indeed all animals--are inclined to violence. And while we have the tools and the technology right now to feed a lot with a little, Mother Nature is never so kind as to go easy on us all of the time. Without a geographically large nation and international imports to support areas suffering from floods and drought, not every small city-state can feed itself from within its own borders in every year. And that only accounts for violence by necessity; there is also violence by preference. A city-state may raid its neighbors not because it needs to, but because it wants to, because its citizens want to be wealthier and a very simple way of gaining wealth is taking it from others. And if there is no larger government or organization to provide a punishment for this sort of action, then why would they avoid it, especially if their target were weaker than them? And then there's the fact that force is destruction, and so things are destroyed in these raids. Factories which can no longer be replaced, scientists and technicians and the schools that trained them. Technology would take a nosedive and then we wouldn't have the advantages of all our current tools and knowledge. In the first Dark Age, barbarians killed scribes and burned libraries not because they hated knowledge or didn't understand what they were doing, they did it because those scribes and libraries were benefiting their enemies and not them. It's a simple wartime calculation, but one with drastic and long-term consequences for the state of the world's collective intelligence.
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Nov 4, 2014 06:02
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:That's true, but then I'm not defending either of the other endings. What I'm doing is questioning why you expect that the New Dark Age would be the most preferable of the three alternatives. Humans are animals and animals are violent, sure, but are humans just animals? The city states of this post dark age world aren't just privileged to be prosperous enough to fulfill their needs relatively easily, they are also the most well educated. These are people who learned the history of the world wars, of the cold war and MAD, for whom military service was selective and voluntary rather than mandatory or hereditary, their attitude towards warfare would be vastly different to similar societies of the past.
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Nov 4, 2014 06:41
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Soooo... It's probably about time that I shamefully admit to having not fully watched a single one of the lectures; nor have I done more than skim-read 99% of the thread.  Because don't get me wrong, Bobbin's obviously gone to an extreme amount of effort on this particular Let's Play project. But I come to this sub-forum primarily to see videogames being played and observe how they perform, how entertaining they manage to be and such things; I typically don't come here seeking lectures on history, science and various other non-videogame topics (despite the extra context they can provide for various aspects of the game). I came into this thread having never played the first Deus Ex, trusting that if anyone could be expected to show off a game as completely as possible, it was Bobbin Threadbare. And I absolutely was not disappointed. (That would be the other reason I didn't read most of the thread, because I was one of the few people who would have been spoiled on what was to come.)Basically, what I'm really trying to say is that even without the Corners, this would have been a top-notch LP. With them, it's practically a major landmark in the sub-forum's history.  Bobbin Threadbare posted:I will say this, though: my next project will most likely be a sequel to something I've LP'ed in the past... Let's look on the archive here...  Fallout 3, Tropico 3, Thief 1-3... Any others on this list with sequels?
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Nov 4, 2014 06:42
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:So in other words, the New Dark Age would sacrifice the wellbeing of the vast majority of humanity while a few would be able to live in relative comfort and safety. And that comfort and safety would be relative to their neighbors and not to their past, because as with all small, unsupervised governments, wars and raids between city-states would be constant and ongoing. And if they won't be unsupervised, it'll be because the city-states will have banded together into federations and empires which are already beyond the scope of individual citizens. So how does this alternative speak well for the New Dark Age, exactly? It's an ending for those who value freedom, and it does give more self determination for humanity than the other two. It just comes with probably the largest downsides of any of the endings, to keep it from being an obvious choice. Edit: Oh hey, Bobbin is the reason I own Academagia. It's ok, after this LP I forgive you!
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Nov 4, 2014 06:46
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Yapping Eevee posted:Let's look on the archive here... The LucasArts adventure games are, in a sense, sequels of each other. Except RocketBabyDoll's LP of the MI series, that's off the table. Yeah, that's a bit of a stretch, but I'd totally enjoy LPs of the other LucasArts classics.
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Nov 4, 2014 06:55
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You know, I really gotta say, ever since I watched Geop's Assassin's Creed LP, the informative style has become my favorite. Stuff where the author clearly has a grander vision and delivers something which is as thought-provoking as it is entertaining. And Bobbin, you never disappoint. You are the master. Thank you so much for all the hard work, it's been a joy to experience. Hmm, this reminds me, I need to finish watching Thief II and start Thief III...
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Nov 4, 2014 06:55
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Definitely gonna be the secret sequel to Day of the Tentacle that nobody but Bobbin and a few highup members of Lucas Arts know about. Most of the employees didn't even know they were working on it!
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Nov 4, 2014 07:28
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CheeseThief posted:Humans are animals and animals are violent, sure, but are humans just animals? The city states of this post dark age world aren't just privileged to be prosperous enough to fulfill their needs relatively easily, they are also the most well educated. These are people who learned the history of the world wars, of the cold war and MAD, for whom military service was selective and voluntary rather than mandatory or hereditary, their attitude towards warfare would be vastly different to similar societies of the past. I see this is where our premises differ. You believe we have reached a point where humanity can collectively learn from our mistakes; I believe that such a point will never occur. You could say I'm a social Darwinist insofar as I believe that random mutation and environmental pressures have more to do with the shape of a society than intelligent design does. And with that in mind... Bremen posted:It's an ending for those who value freedom, and it does give more self determination for humanity than the other two. It just comes with probably the largest downsides of any of the endings, to keep it from being an obvious choice. I'm not totally certain that a sustenance farmer is "more free" than someone living in a modern first-world nation. It's true that percentage-wise the farmer does have a larger say in what government he or she has, but what about the options he or she has regarding what to do, how to live? Can such a person travel wherever he or she wishes on a modest budget when all the infrastructure linking principalities has decayed or been destroyed? Can sustenance farmers dedicate themselves to their dreams when working the soil, raiding, and defending from raids occupies all of their time? There is more than one kind of freedom, and many of them are mutually exclusive.
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Nov 4, 2014 07:45
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:I'm not totally certain that a sustenance farmer is "more free" than someone living in a modern first-world nation. It's true that percentage-wise the farmer does have a larger say in what government he or she has, but what about the options he or she has regarding what to do, how to live? Can such a person travel wherever he or she wishes on a modest budget when all the infrastructure linking principalities has decayed or been destroyed? Can sustenance farmers dedicate themselves to their dreams when working the soil, raiding, and defending from raids occupies all of their time? There is more than one kind of freedom, and many of them are mutually exclusive. I'd like to imagine the New Dark Age ending isn't quite that bleak. But yeah, in the end I suppose it's a matter of what you value more. Though rather than comparing them to someone in a modern first world nation, I'd compare them to someone living in what we see of the world of Deus Ex.
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Nov 4, 2014 07:50
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Thank you Bobbin for this. I knew nothing of this game when I started watching this, I just knew I liked you as an LPer. I do now however have quite an appreciation for this game and an even larger appreciation for you than before. This has been quite the ride. About the next one... Maybe Maniac Mansion? DoTT is kind of a sequel to that. Otherwise I have no clue. Thesaya fucked around with this message at 08:42 on Nov 4, 2014 |
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Nov 4, 2014 08:29
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Zeniel posted:Definitely gonna be the secret sequel to Day of the Tentacle that nobody but Bobbin and a few highup members of Lucas Arts know about. Most of the employees didn't even know they were working on it! He already did Brütal Legend. Anyway Thanks Bobbin for a great LP, it was nice to see DX finished since I never actually completed it myself and the corners were pretty interesting, even if I missed some of them. I'm glad you found a place for the sound clip, though sadly I can't remember where I got it. I considered tweeting Warren Spector and asking if he could remember where it's from, though maybe I should ask John Romero for a comment instead.
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Nov 4, 2014 08:38
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Yapping Eevee posted:Let's look on the archive here... Please LP Thi4f Bobbin so I never have to play it myself. Thanks for the fantastic LP, it's been a couple of years since I've played Deus Ex again myself and it was good to see it with fresh eyes and plenty of added insight.
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Nov 4, 2014 08:41
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Has Academagia released their second year yet?
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Nov 4, 2014 08:59
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Wow. This was an amazing LP, Bobbin. I'll be sharing it around.
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Nov 4, 2014 09:21
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Truly a magnum opus of LPing. I'll miss not having these to soften my Mondays. Although I did have to take off my headphones at one point. Yelling into the mic ain't cool, man. (though thematically appropriate) Well done!
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Nov 4, 2014 10:55
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I've seen Deus Ex described as the best PC game of all time (and incidentally the original Thief games - which Bobbin has LPed too, of course - described as the best PC games trilogy of all time), and I think this LP lives up to that legend. So thanks, Bobbin! Amazing work.
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Nov 4, 2014 12:37
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CheeseThief posted:The triads doing battle in the cities with each other in turf wars versus the rural farmers who have the vested interest of their local community, of EVERY community in the area? The land, equipment and knowledge of agriculture would be far too valuable to waste in petty intimidation or sabotage of another controlling power. A man with a gun would be cheap, give him a meal and he's yours, a man with a degree in agricultural science is the key to your survival.
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Nov 4, 2014 15:45
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Excellent end to a superb LP, Bobbin  The lectures really were something else - and unexpected, when I started watching - but thoroughly enjoyable to listen to. 
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Nov 4, 2014 16:59
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Lovely LP, Bobbin. Loved it to bits, well worth the time every week. Thanks for making it for all of us!  Yapping Eevee posted:Let's look on the archive here... I'd love New Vegas done by Bobbin, but there's at least one (two? Not sure if Shugojin's one is alive) NV LP up and it's going quite well so maybe there'd be a glut.
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Nov 4, 2014 19:15
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Galciv 3, Thi4f or Tropico again. I really don't see Bobbin do New Vegas seeing that there's an LP going on right now, as well as lizardwizard's playthrough. Money on Thief
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Nov 4, 2014 19:25
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Clearly Bobbin's gotten his hands on Brütaler Legend. 
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Nov 4, 2014 19:28
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You know, he could be LPing the remake of ROA:Blade of Destiny.
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Nov 4, 2014 19:29
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Or one of the Drakensang games, they're also based on the Dark Eye (nudge nudge, Bobbin  )
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Nov 4, 2014 19:30
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radintorov posted:You know, he could be LPing the remake of ROA:Blade of Destiny. The original two games in the Realms of Arkania series are on steam now. A bit too old school for me to get into, but they could probably be livened up with a bit of party banter.
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Nov 4, 2014 20:26
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I'm willing to interpret sequel loosely enough that I think he might play Fallout 1 or 2.
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Nov 4, 2014 21:04
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Yeah, I'm with Bobbin here. When I was younger, I preferred the Dark Age ending, because yeah, it is possible that if the slate were wiped clean, who comes after could potentially have a better, more egalitarian society, but the death toll to get there would be unconscionable. So these days I lean more Helios. Forward together, not one step back and alla that. Fantastic job on this one, Bobbin; I daresay it's probably the best LP of Deus Ex we've had on these here forums. I will be looking forward to your next project! (Even if it is Thi4f or whatever that nonsense was called...)
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Nov 4, 2014 21:47
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resurgam40 posted:Yeah, I'm with Bobbin here. When I was younger, I preferred the Dark Age ending, because yeah, it is possible that if the slate were wiped clean, who comes after could potentially have a better, more egalitarian society, but the death toll to get there would be unconscionable. So these days I lean more Helios. Forward together, not one step back and alla that. I still like the dark age ending because it tickles my city builder fantasy. In reality it
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Nov 4, 2014 22:17
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BenRGamer posted:I'm willing to interpret sequel loosely enough that I think he might play Fallout 1 or 2. There was a pretty comprehensive LP of Fallout 2 recently by ddegenha, so it might fall under the same problems New Vegas has. Although a Fallout LP that would talk about Fallout's themes like how Bobbin spoke about Deus Ex's themes would make me literally explode with cheer I imagine, I love Fallout's ideas.
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Nov 4, 2014 23:04
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This was a fantastic LP, Bobbin, thanks!
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Nov 4, 2014 23:47
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Serperoth posted:Lovely LP, Bobbin. Loved it to bits, well worth the time every week. Thanks for making it for all of us! Technically, there was a Deus Ex LP not long before this one, so it's not out of the question that BT would have a go at it, or any other game that's been, or is being, LPed. I'd love to see it too, just to hear him talk about the merits of siding with each faction, like he did with Deus Ex's endings. Penakoto fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Nov 5, 2014 |
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Nov 5, 2014 02:47
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Whatever the next project is, Bobbin, you're going to have a tough time beating this one. Deus Ex is an amazing game, and you more than did it justice. Thank you!
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Nov 5, 2014 04:13
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double nine posted:I still like the dark age ending because it tickles my city builder fantasy. In reality it In reality, this would just lead to Fist of the North Star. And it wouldn't really clean the slate, just create wider gaps between economical groups.
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Nov 5, 2014 06:45
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Just goldmine this already.
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Nov 5, 2014 09:57
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Cathulhu posted:Just goldmine this already. Not before I say thank you for an awesome LP! I was always behind so couldn't comment, but these videos have been great to watch. Very informative.
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Nov 5, 2014 10:30
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This thread has been very helpful inside and outside the game.
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Nov 5, 2014 15:30
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I thought I knew DX inside out but you still proved me wrong many times. And I loved the corners.
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Nov 5, 2014 15:57
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