christmas boots posted:

if you're avoiding those skills mostly because you're afraid they'll make you too competent

goblin week posted:

never reload

christmas boots posted:

"Have you removed the dead body from the tree?"

Nash posted:

Please just do a trip report as you delve into this and post your honest thoughts and ideas as you go along. And for the love of God no one spoil anything.

King Carnivore posted:

Your run is starting out pretty great already. Detective arriving on scene with only one green snakeskin shoe on.

Updog Scully posted:

Actual most important advice you'll hear on this thread: save often. If you die, back to your last save you go.

Also won't lie the subreddit is making some points

King Carnivore posted:

It’s one of the few ways you can actually “gently caress up” a run

christmas boots posted:

Should have done the check imo sometimes miracles can happen. Not the end of the world though

King Carnivore posted:

That’s right. Eventually everyone goes to sleep and since time only progresses if you’re interacting with a person or object, and provided all the tare available to you has already been harvested, time just stands still and you have no where to sleep to progress time.

UnknownMercenary posted:

Be sure to talk to your partner about it.

Big Mouth Billy Basshole posted:

Lmao that part is great. In hindsight it seems obvious but it's a total gut punch when it happens.

SixFigureSandwich posted:

I'd add some very general advice around that the game gives you a ton of tasks early on, but just to chill and do whatever they want and that there isn't really any time pressure.

GlyphGryph posted:

Thank you immensely for posting your voyage and let me relive playing the game again for the first time, just a little bit.

uber_stoat posted:

NOW DO IT AGAIN

GlyphGryph posted:

Understood, and I figured that was the case! Like I said, I skipped it too. But if you have a save, definitely go back and take a rest anyway, its the one design quibble I have with the game, to have done it the way they did, but I think it is worth experiencing even just as bonus "alternate timeline" content if you finished without doing it.

Eiba posted:

I'm going to spoiler tag all this for folks going through the game for the first time. It's all endgame stuff.

For me the overwhelming beauty of that scene came because I had, in my brain, completely given up on the cryptid, but spitefully went through the motions of hope anyway because I cared about the people involved.

The cryptid subplot was presented as an absurd waste of time busy work side quest. That's gonna be the best kind of quest in a game like this, so I was all in from the start, especially since Lena was so nice to me right from the start, when I had only the barest conception of the world (and an embarrassing need for money).

The best trick was that there was actually a really solid and conclusive ending to that quest. After running around, meeting and talking to everyone involved, you can eventually find out that Lena doesn't fully believe what she saw. It's so fundamental to her relationship though that she's really anxious. Everything becomes thematically clear: like communism, even if it never existed, what's really important is what they built together. The truth isn't important, love is.

I thought this was a really touching and meaningful message. I decided it wasn't important if the cryptid was materially real, because it was so obviously emotionally real. I had them spray me with pheromones and checked all the traps again and never bathed, not to find the cryptid that I couldn't really believe in, but because I believed in Lena's love.

And then that plot was over and it was time to deal with the murder at last. And it turned out the murder was about communism, women, lost ideals. A great finale to the game. A melancholy reflection on personal connections in a fallen world.

Except then, out of nowhere, the Insulindian Phasmid is right there. Honestly, my first reaction was to think I had finally lost it. There were even dialog options implying I had realized I finally lost it. But there was an option to ask Kim.

When Kim said he saw it too- that's the moment I broke down. I was not at all emotionally prepared.

I was completely blindsided by the beauty of the Phasmid's words. Just the fact of it changed everything. And it spoke of hope and humanity. It was one of the most moving things I ever experienced.

That all is to say, I would personally not tell new players to keep the pheromones on. If I had been told that I would be waiting for a payoff. The experience I had was as overwhelming as it was because I had convinced myself it wasn't going to happen. I got to experience the impossible.

Everyone will have a different experience, and I get the feeling of not wanting someone else to miss out, but this game has just gotta be experienced in its own terms.

Mystic Mongol posted:

The communards did something material. And then other nations showed up with a sky armada and carried out the systematic extermination of 40 million people. The warships that destroyed Revachol are still there in the sky, 40 years later, ready to spring into action should Revachol try to make its own decisions again, but doing nothing to help when a nuclear power plant melted down after the revolution.

There's a lot to not like about the communards, but inaction was not one of their flaws.

Revachol is pretty clearly about to have another revolution. The Deserter is wrong when he says the material conditions for revolution have vanished--they've never been stronger. Everyone you meet in Martinaise is obsessed with politics and political theory: Even the hustlers and grinders trying to make five bucks are able to debate the philosophical underpinnings of selling knock-off shoes from the back of a truck, and they're holding their ideas up for critique from one another. Martinaise is ready for a new government, one not based on living in fear from the battleships pointing guns down from the heavens.

Is anyone in the game happy that Airship Archer is up there?

wiegieman posted:

The Deserter is an incredibly bitter old fool. He literally assassinated someone for the local labor union and is witnessing one of the largest corporations in the world get thrown out by a militant labor action just across the water. He watches a couple of beat cops and the local union muscle face down a team of armor plated, heavily armed killers with nothing but two muzzle loading pistols and their fists. He refuses to believe in anything but his specific revolution.

I love that everyone in Revachol is falling over themselves to talk politics to you and everyone else in earshot. It's practically the national sport.

wiegieman posted:

Passing that check is one of the best moments in the game. It's pretty much the writers baring their souls, or what they would like to be in their souls.

Staltran posted:

To be fair (but you don't gotta had it to him) he probably didn't have any. He's out of bullets when you meet him, and probably hasn't shot anything since the tribunal. The bullet that killed The Hanged Man was probably his very last one.

Pattonesque posted:

wiegieman posted:

That's really how the RCM works. It's the Citizen's Militia, not a centralized police department imposed from above -- the people created it, and the people support it.

Alchenar posted:

It's also a game about a burnt out drunk achieving success through sheer talent despite having no idea where they are or what they are doing

GlyphGryph posted:

Remember that the bulk of skill checks are hidden - you don't see them at all unless you pass them. So if you were just saving your skill points for redoing white checks there's probably a decent pile of skill checks you failed without even noticing and never even got to see what you might have got from them.

Also, the game has quite a few difficult red checks at the end, especially in the church church and vision quest. Did you really have 90%+ on all of those? That's definitely a crazy amount of skill points!

Omnomnomnivore posted:

My favorite random NPC is Egg Head, that dude's VA cracked me up every time.

wiegieman posted:

That's really how the RCM works. It's the Citizen's Militia, not a centralized police department imposed from above -- the people created it, and the people support it.