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Now that you're back in civilized lands, can you pick up a pair of matching shoes? Or is that up to the whims of the RNG?
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Oct 29, 2018 11:54
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inscrutable horse posted:Now that you're back in civilized lands, can you pick up a pair of matching shoes? Or is that up to the whims of the RNG? Significantly more likely, still somewhat RNG.
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Oct 29, 2018 12:10
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Truthkeeper posted:Let us close the book on Phillip the Scavenger. Although NEO Townie doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Also, I guess it should be no surprise that the Seven Gables murder house is real Michigan folklore, although folks can't seem to agree on the particulars.
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Oct 29, 2018 17:22
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Mechanical Ape posted:Although NEO Townie doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Not having it ingame though is, hrrmmm
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Oct 29, 2018 20:40
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PurpleXVI posted:Yeah, I remember Detroit as being a great place to gently caress yourself over if you're impatient or used to games without permanent consequences. Because a lot of stuff that'd just be a "lol u fail, try again?" or "you lose 2 HP's, try again?" in another game, here is basically: "Okay, now roll whether you survive at all, and if you survive, good loving luck even getting close to Detroit again, suckerrrrr." Technically, there's very little in DMC that will outright kill you. But there are several instances that will get you arrested and exiled for a year or two. Really, once all the story stuff is knocked out and you've gotten all the useful one-time stuff, losing access to the city is more inconvenient than punishing, since they can't kick you out of the Sprawl. I've never actually tried to play long enough to find out, but most reports indicate that you really can re-enter the city once your period of exile is up. PurpleXVI posted:Also without the spirit-repelling sticks, is the only way to survive the Spooky Urn House by basically soaking up a lot of hits and going the right way in the dark? Sort of. Mostly, you're fine as you go through. The basement remains harmless, and entering the room with the urn will just get you smacked around a little. At which point you can either leave, or run deeper into the house trying to escape the spirit or spirits attacking you. At which point you're taking your life in your hands and the wrong move can absolutely get you killed. I think the absolutely ideal you did everything right path through gets you stabbed once and needing to get the mask off, but otherwise unharmed. THe mask inscrutable horse posted:Now that you're back in civilized lands, can you pick up a pair of matching shoes? Or is that up to the whims of the RNG? Ironically, my best chance of buying matching shoes was back at the ATN, where they often sell boots. The Sprawl junk market can randomly spawn shoes, but as Lazy Bear said, it's all about that RNG. Or you can just jump a lone DMC guard, beat him to death, and steal his 100% durability tactical boots. And his armor. And his gun. And his pants. Just kill a guard and take everything he was wearing really, guards get some of the best gear. Although they don't wear coats, so you can still wear your hoodie, dogman fur coat, or leather longcoat with their gear. They're also not stupid, and dressing like them does not make them think you're a guard. But they also are stupid, and they don't think about where you got that gear from. Mechanical Ape posted:Also, I guess it should be no surprise that the Seven Gables murder house is real Michigan folklore, although folks can't seem to agree on the particulars. Huh, I heard that story about the witch with the cursed fence, but never connected to a specific area. This game is becoming educational!
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Oct 29, 2018 21:09
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Truthkeeper posted:Sort of. Mostly, you're fine as you go through. The basement remains harmless, and entering the room with the urn will just get you smacked around a little. At which point you can either leave, or run deeper into the house trying to escape the spirit or spirits attacking you. At which point you're taking your life in your hands and the wrong move can absolutely get you killed. I think the absolutely ideal you did everything right path through gets you stabbed once and needing to get the mask off, but otherwise unharmed. THe mask Can you actually get the spooky murder hat off, though? I thought you were stuck with it if you put it on.
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Oct 30, 2018 09:29
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The supernatural lore is pretty neat. I had no idea the house was an extant place. And the different retellings are fascinating.
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Oct 30, 2018 12:50
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Truthkeeper posted:They're also not stupid, and dressing like them does not make them think you're a guard. But they also are stupid, and they don't think about where you got that gear from. Or they're not stupid and think "that guy is wearing Bob's gear, and Bob was tougher than I am, so maybe I'll just let him keep walking."
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Oct 30, 2018 18:58
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Or they're not stupid and think "that guy is wearing Bob's gear, and Bob was tougher than I am, so maybe I'll just let him keep walking." Or they don't have reason to think you bludgeoned their buddy to death with a rock, because seriously, guys will stupidly wander out and get Defoliant Exposure or Blue Rot and just die, and somebody may just take poo poo off their dumb corpse. There are still a lot of scavengers out there, afterall.
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Oct 30, 2018 19:30
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I believe all of the items you picked up in the Merga Wraith portal are famous, lost pieces of knowledge or information. I'm really curious what they each are, the descriptions are hard to determine. Who was Hatter's client for the urn?
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Oct 30, 2018 19:30
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Discendo Vox posted:Who was Hatter's client for the urn?
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Oct 30, 2018 19:45
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PurpleXVI posted:Can you actually get the spooky murder hat off, though? I thought you were stuck with it if you put it on. I think you technically can, if you somehow survive long enough for it to deteriorate off of you. Practically though, that ain't gonna happen.
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Oct 30, 2018 19:59
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PurpleXVI posted:Can you actually get the spooky murder hat off, though? I thought you were stuck with it if you put it on. I'm pretty sure (although I didn't test it this run, and it's been a while since I last tried) you can just take it off again, or even dismantle it into string. As long as you wear it for less than five turns. DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Or they're not stupid and think "that guy is wearing Bob's gear, and Bob was tougher than I am, so maybe I'll just let him keep walking." Ashsaber posted:Or they don't have reason to think you bludgeoned their buddy to death with a rock, because seriously, guys will stupidly wander out and get Defoliant Exposure or Blue Rot and just die, and somebody may just take poo poo off their dumb corpse. Both fair points. DMC guards are some of the toughest fights on the map (especially since you only have a short time limit to kill them before they call in backup, and backup is a drone with a gauss cannon), but they're not immortal, and they're used to seeing dudes come wandering in decked out in the best poo poo they can scavenge. Discendo Vox posted:I believe all of the items you picked up in the Merga Wraith portal are famous, lost pieces of knowledge or information. I'm really curious what they each are, the descriptions are hard to determine. I knew about the film reel, but I never thought about the relevance of the rest. The reel is Le Prince's early footage, and suggests that he was being haunted by something (maybe a Merga Wraith?) After his death, Edison tried to steal credit for his camera, I don't believe it worked out for him, but I'mm not sure if any of Le Prince's film survived. The manuscript pieces are from the Opus Postmum, written by the 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, the text itself certainly isn't lost, but I believe I've read that the original manuscript was. The letters are written by Ambrose Bierce, an 18th century American writer whose most notable work was a short story about a plantation owner who tried to burn a bridge to stop the Union army fromm crossing, was caught, hung, and hallucinated escaping and returning to his family in the time it took to drop. The letters claim to be "cataloging creatures and occurrences which lack a rational explanation" and the story was "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", I'm not sure if there's a connection or if I'm just reading too much into it. As for the illustrated childrens' book... not enough information to go on, I got nothing. As for the urn, it's never stated for certain, but the way you can skip the urn quest is by using your skills to note "Hey, do most of your clients show up in their Halloween costumes? Cause you totally had a guy with a cloak walk through here recently, I can tell from these marks in the dust." And then Hatter breaks his rule about confidentiality and shows you the tape of his meeting with the client... in which the client is a formless blob of static and speaks in nothing but noise. It's not stated for certain, but the implication is that this is the Merga Wraith (or a Wraith, I suppose we don't actually know how many of them were after Phillip, although killing the one prevents any more from attacking him) trying to set up Phillip, either leading him into a death trap or just trying to get a bead on him.
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Oct 30, 2018 21:45
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....each of the things is about keeping records of something apparently supernatural. The NEO wiki, the treatise about strange creatures, the recording of a ghost...
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Oct 30, 2018 22:10
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Truthkeeper posted:Both fair points. DMC guards are some of the toughest fights on the map (especially since you only have a short time limit to kill them before they call in backup, and backup is a drone with a gauss cannon), but they're not immortal, and they're used to seeing dudes come wandering in decked out in the best poo poo they can scavenge. Hey, free gauss cannon!
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Oct 30, 2018 23:43
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Um. Yeah, now I'm really curious.
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Oct 31, 2018 00:53
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Pierzak posted:Um. Yeah, now I'm really curious. Apparently the bell break up never happened.
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Oct 31, 2018 01:09
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Pierzak posted:Um. Yeah, now I'm really curious. It's interesting that you should post that. Finding data with that kind of value is absurdly rare, but... well, the next update is coming. Deathwind posted:Apparently the bell break up never happened. May as well have never happened anyway. Most of the bells have already gotten back together, it would only take AT&T or Verizon having enough capital to buy out the other and Centurylink to have them all together again. NEOScav may be predicting the future pretty closely. Truthkeeper fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Oct 31, 2018 |
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Oct 31, 2018 04:13
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PHILLY MAYS HERE FOR TANNIN TEA! Last time, we closed the book on Phillip’s scavenging adventures. But his adventures aren’t over yet. There’s so much time and so little to do!  I took the time to buy a shitload of Corn-a-Cola from the convenience store. Yeah, they really were just taking out the middleman by switching to a straight blend of carbonated water, corn syrup, and caffeine. This stuff, much like the real product it’s spoofing, is basically useless. The caffeine gives you a quick burst of energy and warms you up slightly… but then you crash an hour later worse off than you were before. At $3 a bottle, one could argue it’s a ripoff. You might think I’m crazy, because I’m not buying these sodas for the soda. I’m buying them for their bottles. Yes, I’m paying three bucks a pop for plastic bottles I can and have been literally picking up anywhere. They’re going to make me rich, you see.  Soon I won’t have to rely on finding bank applications the junk market will give me twenty bucks for. I’m still gonna sell it though, capital is capital. I transferred it to a flash drive I picked up at the market first though, this is the only working smartphone I have until I get some cracking software, I’d rather hold onto it. That GPS software is sometimes handy. In the meantime, the plan! First, I need a massive quantity of water.  Despite being the biggest concentration of water in the area, Phillip doesn’t know how to stand next to Lake St. Clair and fill bottles, so that’s out. Instead, I found a little stream about 10 moves west from the garage. When you’re playing the water merchant game, optimizing everything down to the last move is the name of the game, in an effort to get as much money as you need as quickly as possible before the sheer tedium makes you want to go running off to bare knuckle box a dogman. The principal is simple. Water is free, literally comes out of the ground as much as you like. Boiled water is worth $5 a unit, you can fit two units in a bottle. So boiling huge quantities of water and selling it makes decent scratch. The kick: I have Botany. gently caress yo’ water, I’m making tea!  Botanists have managed to unlock the secrets of boiling ordinary tree bark in water to create tannin tea, a substance that’s less hydrating than water, but bolsters your immune system. It takes three times as long to produce as water, but doubles the profit from the same amount of water as long as you have access to tree bark. And there are still plenty of trees near the Sprawl. Overall, more in-game time spent, less real life time wasted.  While selling my first load, I found a newspaper article about a mass dieoff of fish in the Arkansas River. And that wasn’t even the first mass extinction that week. This is why you don’t go to Arkansas folks.  I filled the ground around the river with water. I don’t know what killed that guy, but I took his binoculars anyway.  This time, I had enough bottles to fill the entire sled. I had totally forgotten to pour the soda out of those bottom eight and didn’t realize until I was selling the tea from the other 32.  A fully loaded travois, which is itself worth a couple bucks. Plus 32 bottles of tea. And 8 of soda because I’m dumb. $800. The most annoying part is emptying the individual bottles of soda into the junk market so I can reuse the bottles. It’s not necessary, I should have just sold them and bought more soda from the convenience store, but ultimately, it didn’t really matter.  You might recall I mentioned that Phillip can’t identify bullets without Ranged, or medicines without Medic. The saving grace is that the junk market dealer always identifies products he’s selling. $50 a bullet is a very good reason not to use guns most of the time.  Since I’m not using guns this run, it’s a good time to note that there’s a fair amount of variety packed into them. There are two handguns, the .45 semi-auto and .38 revolver, a .308 bolt action rifle, and two shotguns, pump-action and automatic, both 12 gauge. Along with choices of bullets. If you can sink the money or get lucky finding bullets early on, it’s effective, just not as reliable as I like.  I lucked out while I was at the market unloading my tea and found some cracking software. It’s for dumbphones, which makes it the least useful, but I’ll take what I can get. Let’s see what’s on that phone I got earlier.  Cracking a device is a convoluted process that’s never explained well. You need the laptop with he cracking software in one hand, turned on, and the device you want to crack, also turned on, in the other hand, and then use the laptop.  I don’t know what it means about insufficient charge, but devices had plenty to get through here.    Thank you for following the brief tale of Phillip the Tea Merchant. We now move on to the tale of Phillip the Rich Motherfucker. That cellphone just saved me probably an hour of tedious tea farming. There’s only one other way in the game to make money this quickly, and it’s super dangerous. I’m doing it later to show off everything. But for now, BACK TO THE CLINIC!   You might have noticed that Phillip’s bad eyes have caused him a lot of trouble over the course of this LP. And I believe I mentioned earlier that Myopia is the only disadvantage you can buy off.  Now, it would have been trivial to just walk in here and drop a grand on some Lasik, get that Myopia cleared right up. Even trades it out for Eagle Eye, not too shabby. The problem…  Is that they put it right next to the Artificial Eyes. They’re super expensive. And it seems like a bad deal, because initially, these eyes are just as good as normal eyes after the surgery.        Except artificial eyes can be upgraded. For an extra $500 on top of that steep price, you can have free always-on (on the world map at least, you have to choose to use it while scavenging) nightvision and telescopic vision. No binoculars, no hoping to stumble across a pair of nightvision goggles and hoping you can find a power cell for them. Phillip just sees in the dark. This is why I always try to grind up some quick cash around Detroit in every single game. This is worth $6000. Also, getting the eyes gets you a few free services, topping off your blood, nutrition, hydration, and rest.  I also bought some opiates, tranquilizers, and antibiotics while I was here. Prescription? Who ever heard of such a thing! Opiate crisis is for chumps!  The bad news is that a diagnostic workup shows my Defoliant Exposure is advancing. This could get bad. The gastroenteritis is less concerning.  Stopping for some fried seagull probably didn’t make it any better.  I’d forgotten that the hot brick does degrade over time. I don’t recall there being any issues, but I don’t take it often enough to be certain… I don’t think I want to be near this thing when it hits 0% durability. My business in Detroit is just about finished , although I’d like to gear up a little more before leaving. Still, might as well go see Hatter, see if he has anymore work.    A mysterious job I’m not allowed to know the details of until after I agree and the client is some absurdly powerful organization that can squash me and Hatter like bugs? Count me in!  If this sounds familiar to you, it probably should.   Hatter is the second of three people to give you the quest to go to Grayling and plug their personal doohickey into the computer there. Hatter certainly seems more legit than The Stoat, but I’m troubled not knowing who he’s working for. Like The Stoat, Hatter suggested searching old newspapers for a clue to getting into Grayling alive. I haven’t found that newspaper yet to show it off, but you’ve already seen me obtaining what I need to pull it off.  I mentioned before that Grayling is the endgame. There’s no rush to go there, just go when you’re ready to handle it. Hell, maybe I’ll wander back over to Zom Zom’s and see if Stoat’s flash drive is still sitting there. If it is, I’ll open the thread up to voting once I’ve met the third party on whose goal I should work to achieve. They’re all mutually exclusive, naturally.  Heh. You always find things like this when you don’t need them anymore.  Just because you found me standing over this dead guard with a crowbar in my hand and a combat log full of messages about me killing him doesn’t mean you can prove I killed him!  I probably should have taken his balaclava too. It’s not anymore effective than this rag bandana I wear around my face, but it is a lot less silly looking.  My next swing by the junk market got me smartphone and tablet cracking software. I don’t have anymore expensive purchases in mind, but a little extra in the bank never hurts.  Seriously? For loving algebra?  Whereas a grad school thesis is worth nothing.  Nor is this email.  Beating the guards to death gets kind of addictive after a while. A full set of their gear is worth around $1000-1500, depending on what weapons the individual guard carries. Getting shot is kind of annoying though.  I picked up an absolutely insane number of binoculars just walking to ATN and back.   Funny animal videos are generally higher value. Daniel Fedor’s crushing indictment of Youtube culture? I’m quickly running out of reasons to keep faffing about here. I have one more thing to do in Detroit… I just don’t want to, because it’ll be the last time I can enter the city. NEXT TIME: Phillip the Exile What happened to the world? Werewolf attacks in New Mexico Cutbacks led to streetlights being removed in most of Detroit Police overstretched in Michigan, supplemented by private security Detroit built walls to cut itself off from the outside world Smallpox outbreak, started with Coast Guardsmen in South Carolina and spread from there Crop seeds made by a thinly veiled stand-in for Monsanto (Agrisanto) have become so integral to feeding the world that the company got the seed vault at Svalbard shut down so their seeds’ genomes couldn’t be contaminated China started a super soldier program, news of this getting out caused the people to rebel Agrisanto’s superwheat got out of control, needed to be controlled by the army bombing the entire Michigan-Indiana-Ohio border with Super-Agent Orange, creating a deadly toxic no-mans land Mass wildlife extinctions becoming a weekly occurrence in Arkansas
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Oct 31, 2018 05:43
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To be fair you hardly have to read the thesis to figure out how privatizing Detroit turned out.
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Oct 31, 2018 12:12
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The thesis has little practical value. At least the algebra homework can be used to teach.
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Oct 31, 2018 13:47
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So the gauss cannon drones that can pop in to back up the guards if you don't pulp their brains fast enough, are those killable like the Merga Wraith or an insta-death event?
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Oct 31, 2018 14:10
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PurpleXVI posted:So the gauss cannon drones that can pop in to back up the guards if you don't pulp their brains fast enough, are those killable like the Merga Wraith or an insta-death event?
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Oct 31, 2018 14:46
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genericnick posted:To be fair you hardly have to read the thesis to figure out how privatizing Detroit turned out. I dunno, it seems like it turned out okay, given that Detroit is the only industrial economy in Michigan and the rest of the region is a wasteland of cannibals and assholes. (Give or take one cool native tribe.)
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Oct 31, 2018 23:56
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Ratoslov posted:I dunno, it seems like it turned out okay, given that Detroit is the only industrial economy in Michigan and the rest of the region is a wasteland of cannibals and assholes. (Give or take one cool native tribe.) But enough about the history of Detroit. How is it depicted in this videogame?
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Nov 1, 2018 01:00
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The Infodump Alright, enough stalling. I didn’t want to handle the last bit of story in Detroit because the most informative version of events gets Phillip kicked out of the city for a year. Then I realized that I wanted to show both versions, and I just have to do the informative one that gets him exiled first, then the less informative one after. Sorry folks, there will be no story of Phillip the Exile.  I wasn’t just stalling because of that, I also needed RFID spoofing software, which took its sweet time showing up in the junk market. And then I found this not-iPad with two copies on it.  Also a funny animal video worth nothing it all.  When I went to Detroit Savings Bank, I got the address for one Cale McAllen, whose name was on the bank account paying for Phillip’s time in cryostasis. Let’s pay him a visit.  There are numerous ways to get around the locked door into the building, as usual depending on your skillset. With my Hacking or Electrician skill and the RFID spoofer, I can wait for somebody to use their keycard to get in, then duplicated the signal. I could use Mechanic to jam the door, forcing the residents to prop open a back door. If I had Hiding, I could lie in wait until somebody too drunk or tired to pay attention enters and pop in behind them. I’m gonna do this the fun way instead, by looking for another way in.  Like this extremely unwise maneuver. You can’t do this without Athletic, the game sadly will not let you break both legs trying to do without.  Very nearly broke one even with Athletic.  For all the security at the door (seriously, nobody is that uptight about apartment entry), this place is kind of a shithole.    Getting into Cale’s apartment (he’s not home, so knocking won’t work) is another skill check. Using Strong or Tough (or a crowbar) lets you bust the door down, making a lot of noise and prompting residents to call the cops. Or I can once again use Electrician or Hacking with my RFID spoofer to try and brute force the electronic lock.   Bingo bango Bob’s your uncle. I’m pretty sure these locked doors are the only things you can do with the RFID spoofer.  Nice place Cale. Cale’s clearly a loving weirdo.  With medical issues.  And a picture of Phillip.  Oh goody, Phillip used to be in the crazy house. Suddenly, I wonder if maybe the Merga Wraith was never really there at all… I missed getting a shot of Cale entering apparently. Turns out his medical issue is that he’s got nothing from the waist down. He’s a torso plugged into a socket on a wheelchair. Finding a weirdo ragman from the hellish outside world in his apartment caught him off guard, and Phillip gets to take the initiative, either asking about the bank account or about the picture. I replayed and got both conversations.  Taking the hardline approach seems harsh.  ‘Your’ bank account Phillip? I didn’t see your name on the account, just Cale’s.  On the other hand, Cale seems to agree with him, his argument is that he was robbing a dead man, not that the money was his to begin with.  This is where we start descending into things that aren’t adequately explained. Phillip was working on the New Earth Ostracon, and had a plan. He got in contact with Cale’s dad through the deep web (is that the same thing as the dark web?) and got him in on it.  Apparently this was while Phillip was in residence at yonder looney bin. Cale’s dad got him out of there and into Gyges. Phillip’s plan involved Caledad getting him out at an appointed time. Don’t know if that time has passed yet or not.  And then Caledad died while Phillip was frozen. Also, he was so obsessed with whatever the plan was that he paid no attention to his family. The hell were you up to Phillip?   This devolved into Cale yelling to one of the people in the hallway to call the cops, which is how both conversations with Cale go. The other route…  Phillip is an angry armed man who has broken into your apartment (better armed than usual, I broke down and decided to carry a pistol in case of emergencies) maybe let him make the demands?   Again, armed man of unknown sanity, maybe shut up about your loving daddy issues?  I don’t have any idea what he’s talking about here. Babysitting mission? Same result, less informative. And so Phillip had to run before the cops show up.  Poor Phillip. He knows he’s in a poor area of Detroit and knows that means the police response time should be measured in hours, if not days.  This is very inconvenient, leading to a series of skill checks (and random luck) where loving up or not having a required skill at any point will get Phillip arrested. To start, you need Electrician, Hacking, or Mechanic (lucky I have all three) to be able to spot a design flaw in the flying motorcycle the cop is riding.  That’s the first skill check passed.  Second skill check: Be Athletic or go home scrub.  The skybike’s weapon is a combination taser and facial-identification sensor. In this case, I’m obviously avoiding the taser rounds.  At this point, a chance to figure out how you’re being tracked. You need to turn off any active electronic devices and not just take off, not just drop, but destroy your DMC bracelet to get past this part.  No more freebies after this, getting back into the city would cost me $3000 to buy another bracelet from the junk market. Unfortunately, that’s the end of Phillip’s journey this time. Without Hiding, you can’t pass the next skill check, which is also a random luck chance, you have to intuitively guess that between ducking into a crowd, ducking into a building, or ducking into an alley, the crowd is the best choice, and you need Hiding to pull it off. And so Phillip got tased.  And then Phillip was arrested.  In some games, this might be a game over.   Instead, after a long exposure to the sheer boredom useless bureaucracy can cause…  Phillip spills everything he can. Unfortunately, the amnesiac isn’t able to answer certain easy questions. And the answers he can give aren’t good.  It’s a bad rap sheet.  And so Phillip was exiled from Detroit. The reason they took him to the clinic was to implant a tracking device. Even if you buy a new bracelet, and therefore a new identity, they can recognize him and kick him out. I’ve never tried to wait out the exile, but I here you really can get back in after a year.   Yeah, it’s a good thing I didn’t do any of that stuff. That would have been really loving stupid, and for very little reward. Let’s handle this like a normal person, and not a lunatic that breaks into peoples’ homes.  There was an intercom at the front door the entire time, you see.  Yes. This is what normal, sane people do. Phillip Kindred is a normal, sane person. Right?  Let’s just ignore that he isn’t home if you break in, but is home if you call him.  I assume there’s a camera, although the text doesn’t say for certain. More likely than Cale knowing Phillip’s voice.  Should have stayed on the offensive Phillip. We’ve established that once you let Cale get going, he never stops. I assume he’s gesturing to his lack of lower half. I wonder if that’s also somehow Phillip’s fault. It sounds like everything somehow is in Cale’s world.  Yes, please do.  I’m very interested in what the plan was between Phillip and Caledad. No information about it though.  The only Grayling we know of so far (it’s a town in northern lower Michigan, for those of you not local) is the national guard facility, Camp Grayling, that Phillip keeps getting asked to infiltrate. There’s also brief references to Grayling University in some newspapers, although there’s no such facility in real life. So it’s hard to say if Cale is suggesting Phillip had a friend in the town, at the Camp, or at the University, the latter seems likely, given the kind of people Phillip was likely to interact with pre-freezing. Sadly, he’s dead.  And then Cale does what Cale loving does.  Clearly, the correct way to interact with people you don’t like is to call the cops because you don’t like them. This conversation also has another branch, where you can ask about the bank account instead of asking of Cale recognizes Phillip.    You still find out about the friend in Grayling, and he still calls the cops. Otherwise, this path is less informative, and the whole conversation is less informative that confronting him in person. BUT! If you leave the Concrete Forest after this, you don’t get caught by the cops. They do hang around there afterward and pick you up as a person of interest if you go back, I’m not sure if they leave after a while or if that area is now permanently cut off. The point is, the important parts of the city are still available.  I’ll celebrate with a plate of fried chicken.  The dev clearly loved him some soul food, these dishes are the most lovingly described things in the entire game. After that, I went back to the parking garage to cycle some of my stuff around, prepare for another short trip. Thanks to information from another timeline that this instance of Phillip can’t possibly know about, we have another location to check out. It’s not marked on the map, but I know roughly where it is. East and a little north from Hidden Lake creepy death house.  As I get away from Detroit, I can scavenge successfully again. Unlike other lights, Nightvision stacks with a light source, making me very good at finding stuff safely now.  I don’t know if you were curious, but yes, in the future we do have space colonies. They devolved into civil war during the apocalypse.  I managed to run into another frog cultist. There’s a lot of them in this area, and there’s a reason for that… I beat the poo poo out of him, but not without injury.  A crazy rear end in a top hat with a sharp stick he stuck in the fire for a while just put holes in my loving legs. The pain is excruciating.  But I am super well-stocked on medical supplies. Enough to disinfect both wounds with high-proof whiskey. And bandage them up. As long as you bandage gaping holes in your legs, you can still walk, right? I also scavenged a laptop in this hex.   Yeah, can we agree now that there’s no rhyme or reason for the value of data?  And there we have it. Saginaw Mental Institution. Which once housed a patient by the name of Phillip Kindred. Hopefully answers will be found within. Is Phillip really crazy? Was he a victim of society’s inability to understand true genius? Was it a long con? Will there be any answers at all? Will I have to replay the same sequence several times to get answers from several conversation branches? The answer to that last one is yes. NEXT TIME: The Naked Truth What happened to the world? Werewolf attacks in New Mexico Cutbacks led to streetlights being removed in most of Detroit Police overstretched in Michigan, supplemented by private security Detroit built walls to cut itself off from the outside world Smallpox outbreak, started with Coast Guardsmen in South Carolina and spread from there Crop seeds made by a thinly veiled stand-in for Monsanto (Agrisanto) have become so integral to feeding the world that the company got the seed vault at Svalbard shut down so their seeds’ genomes couldn’t be contaminated China started a super soldier program, news of this getting out caused the people to rebel Agrisanto’s superwheat got out of control, needed to be controlled by the army bombing the entire Michigan-Indiana-Ohio border with Super-Agent Orange, creating a deadly toxic no-mans land Mass wildlife extinctions becoming a weekly occurrence in Arkansas Space colonies on the moons of Jupiter underwent brutal revolutions and civil wars
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Nov 1, 2018 09:38
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Karyn's... grandchild... is rich? Yeah I got nothing.
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Nov 1, 2018 12:46
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There is a reason for the value of the data, there's a number in the bottom left showing much data is there. If you shift click you can sort through it and find which one is worth something, usually a current Detroit bank account or something.
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Nov 1, 2018 14:26
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quote:Like, low-key titty mags or some poo poo?
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Nov 1, 2018 15:12
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Man, Cale is as much of a oval office as I remember him being. BTW, wasn't there an explanation of what happened to his legs, or is it something you just haven't posted yet?
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Nov 1, 2018 15:21
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#CallboxCale just calling the police on you for #InvestigatingWhileAmnisiac. God drat the writer for this game is such a fuckin dystopic nostradomus.
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Nov 1, 2018 17:43
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I'm surprised and impressed by the writing quality found in this game. I mean, most of the gameplay is terse description of weather and combat results. But when where there's an actual "scene" (too infrequent IMO), the text is great, the ideas are fascinating, the dialogue is solid and the descriptions are rich and multisensory. Basically I kinda wish this were a text adventure.
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Nov 1, 2018 19:21
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I have to admit I never really liked the whole Cale sequence. It feels like you're railroaded into one garbage option that gives you very little in exchange for getting booted the gently caress out of Detroit.
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Nov 1, 2018 21:10
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Pierzak posted:Man, Cale is as much of a oval office as I remember him being. That's the entirety of what the game has to tell us about Cale, unfortunately. He seems to be implying that Phillip is responsible for his missing half, but Cale doesn't strike me as particularly reliable. Mechanical Ape posted:I'm surprised and impressed by the writing quality found in this game. It's important to note, and I'm surprised that I haven't already, the the one man dev team for this game, Daniel Fedor, is ex-Bioware. He wasn't a writer (the only credit I can find for him is Lead Technical Artist on Dragon Age Origins), but presumably he got to absorb a lot of good writing power by osmosis while he was there. And really, his expertise shows. There's not a lot of images, but when they appear, they look great. Even the small scale worldmap stuff looks really good. One thing that surprises me is how few random events I've managed to stumble across so far. There are a few dozen you can hit while traveling in various areas. usually where you have to choose if and how to help somebody in need. We've barely scratched the surface on them so far. PurpleXVI posted:I have to admit I never really liked the whole Cale sequence. It feels like you're railroaded into one garbage option that gives you very little in exchange for getting booted the gently caress out of Detroit. Once again, this just feels really unfinished to me. Like there was meant to be more you could do here but the dev was pressed for time and couldn't include as much as he wanted. At the same time, I feel like it was his intention that he be banned from Detroit for pursuing information, as a way of showing that information can have a cost sometimes. We're going to see more of that in the next update.
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Nov 1, 2018 22:16
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Truthkeeper posted:That's the entirety of what the game has to tell us about Cale, unfortunately. He seems to be implying that Phillip is responsible for his missing half, but Cale doesn't strike me as particularly reliable. I remember reading that he spent the money which was supposed to pay for Philip's cryo on a high-tech prosthesis so he could have his legs cut off and work in the aquapark as a merman because he's basically a furry. Or was that something from an earlier version? It's been a few years since I played the whole thing.
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Nov 1, 2018 22:23
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Pierzak posted:I remember reading that he spent the money which was supposed to pay for Philip's cryo on a high-tech prosthesis so he could have his legs cut off and work in the aquapark as a merman because he's basically a furry. Or was that something from an earlier version? It's been a few years since I played the whole thing. The way it's written now, it feels more like it was an injury that he's somehow blaming Philip for.
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Nov 1, 2018 22:26
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Pierzak posted:I remember reading that he spent the money which was supposed to pay for Philip's cryo on a high-tech prosthesis so he could have his legs cut off and work in the aquapark as a merman because he's basically a furry. Or was that something from an earlier version? It's been a few years since I played the whole thing. Not in any version of the game I'm familiar with. Sounds like the sort of thing a mod might add, although not any of the ones I can think of.
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Nov 1, 2018 22:53
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Pierzak posted:I remember reading that he spent the money which was supposed to pay for Philip's cryo on a high-tech prosthesis so he could have his legs cut off and work in the aquapark as a merman because he's basically a furry. Or was that something from an earlier version? It's been a few years since I played the whole thing. That would at least explain his decor.
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Nov 1, 2018 23:18
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considering how much of a bad person the game functionally lets you be i'm a little surprised there's no option at any point to just murder or intimidate cale, especially when you get the "is everything okay man" line like seriously if you have unstoppable you should at least be able to make it very clear to him that it will HURT if he says no
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Nov 1, 2018 23:25
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I looked around in the encounter files so I'll just post my findings. First, the missing text from when Cale appears, for completedness' sake: quote:There's also an old, spare wheelchair in here, stacks of skin cream, and a combination colostomy/ileal diversion system. BTW, the description of medical accessories looks more detailed... You don't have Medic, right? It might be what triggers the next conversation option: (starting with some text we've seen, to place the quote into the whole conversation) quote:"I mean, come on! Look around!" He gestures. "The world's gone to poo poo AGES ago! No way you survived out there in shitstorm central. And hell if I was gonna walk out there and check!"
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Nov 1, 2018 23:38
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