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I think thematically Tong's ending make sense the most: the game is mostly about how technology have gone too far and became a tool of class warfare by the oligarchy against the average person but logically it would be a fking disaster: the ensuring societal collapse would likely kill billions. There's no real plan afterwards on how to structure society differently so that humanity might avert the mistakes of the past. So theres's really nothing that would just prevent the re-creation of the status quo after the world recovers. Typo fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Jul 30, 2023 |
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Jul 30, 2023 16:52
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Queering Wheel posted:None of the endings are ideal, but I've always thought that the Illuminati outcome is the best of them. A dark age would be absolutely catastrophic for all humanity, and a single person becoming dictator over the entire world is also pretty terrifying. At least the Illuminati is a group of people controlling everything, which isn't too terribly far off from where we are now. At least they stop the plague, hunger and riots and generally seem to be less terrible than those who controlled the world before. I think most people "irl" would choose the Illuminati esp since JC ends up being part of the ruling elite in that ending "better the devil you know than the one you don't" Typo fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Jul 31, 2023 |
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Jul 31, 2023 03:31
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Tree Reformat posted:Father Elijah's in Dead Money I don't' think it's libertarianism so much as it is edgy and naive "we gotta blow it all up and start all over man" feeling that's present on every side of the political spectrum. I distinctively thought the Tong ending was the one you were -supposed- to choose in Deus Ex, mostly cuz the music played in that ending had the most "good ending" vibe
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Aug 4, 2023 19:59
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Reveilled posted:It's been so long, I don't remember how the logic of destroy internet -> new dark age worked. yeah that's the thing like I think the "blow it all up man" crowd thinks if they hit the reset button we'll some sort of idealistic human society from the past that only exist in their minds in reality it's like we'll prob end up somewhere btwn 1000-1900 AD. Which were not very good times for the average person. And we only get there after breakdown of things like medical/agricultural supply chains kill a couple billion people. Beartaco posted:Helios is an exceptionally lazy ending that lets the player get away with not actually making a decision that impacts the world of the game, instead allowing the player to imagine the ending they want by giving the player character total authoritarian control. I think the 3 endings is basically asking you: "technology fked society up, what do you think is the solution?" 1) Try to go back to the past 2) Try to get better version of status quo 3) Fully embrace technology and hope it solves more problems than it causes I think the specific stuff like how Helios-JC would determine the tax rates or whatever in their brave new world is kinda beside the point Typo fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Aug 4, 2023 |
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Aug 4, 2023 20:02
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yeah I think the Helios ending is the only "good" ending, in the sense at least there's -hope- that things will be better for humanity maybe Helios-JC destroy the human Race, but who knows, maybe benevolent AI will cure Alzheimers and Cancer and bring about a classless society
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Aug 4, 2023 20:10
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if the invisible war ending for Helios is canon I guess Helios was the path to Communism after all there can't be class or property when every single human being is linked into some sort of borg like gestalt consciousness
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Aug 4, 2023 23:01
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Beartaco posted:It's the fun thing about authoritarianism. We're able to look at a totalitarian leader and imagine all the good they could do with all that power, when in reality without democratic systems in place the only person they're able to represent with all of that power is themselves and their own incredibly limited world view. I'm kind of reminded of that one sci-fi stories where aliens with imcomparable advanced technology come to earth and give us 2 choices: 1) Surrender all governance to us, you lose your freedom but we'll fix everything wrong with the world 2) Keep your freedom, we'll gently caress off but good luck with the whole not destroying yourselves thing
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Aug 5, 2023 02:01
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Mantis42 posted:Originally I think the dip wasn't a hard game over but they realized it would be unfeasible to create a whole section where you play as a Super Mutant. That said, while The Master is a gestalt consciousness his army wasn't and also the Fallout 2 thing is just a joke and not canon (like 40% of the content in that game). As presented in game House prob Realistically the NCR
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Aug 7, 2023 00:27
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Tree Reformat posted:The game presents Yes Man's anarchy (with heavy investment in the sidequests) as the only "good" option the robot army being such a boring deus ex (heh) machina is one of the reasons why I'm kinda  about which choice is the best
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Aug 7, 2023 19:28
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Kaal posted:Yes Man's endings are effectively the same as the Helios ending: The player controls a super computer and rules the world (presumably until the next hero strolls along). Whether or not that's a better ending than the others sort of depends on whether you support benevolent dictatorship / "total liberty for the good guys" or not. I think the problem with this in NV is that the narrative really really doesn't set up this ending as anything other than a throwaway line at the end like does Yes Man robot become the A.I running New Vegas from the shadows? Maybe maybe not but the game never really talks about it or ask you to think about it. So it just comes out of the blue. It's just too vague and not particularly interesting to talk about. As oppose to Deus ex, when the entire game and countless lines of dialogue is asking to reflect on the relationship between technology and power structures, and the ending is basically asking you what your take on it is. Typo fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Aug 9, 2023 |
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Aug 9, 2023 22:07
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Tong prob didn't even read what happened in the first dark age where society collapsed lots of people died and the societies which replaced the Roman Empire or the Hittites wasn't any better
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Aug 10, 2023 20:36
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Magnetic North posted:This is making me remember how loving disappointed I was at the ending of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Well, honestly, most of that whole game was a disappointment but the ending especially so. I loved the way the ending of the original slowly gave you the ways to unlock the endings as you traversed through the final levels doing things you had to do anyway. Then you also have to go to different parts of the map and the different enemies might and challenges might make it more difficult to actually do your preferred ending, though you were quite strong by the end. It wasn't just loving buttons on console you hack fucks. The DX:HR was actually a pretty good game mechnically but the ending was garbage both in terms of plot and it's gameplay implementation In original Deus ex you get to decide the fate of humanity as a species in HR you decide how a single news cycle about AUGMENTATIONS is gonna play out Typo fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Aug 11, 2023 |
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Aug 11, 2023 23:43
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Mantis42 posted:maybe he was just reading modern historians who see all the mass death and economic collapse and write things like "actually the dark ages didn't exist, the roman empire didn't collapse, it was just a period of institutional transformation and new cultural development" from what I understand it kinda depended on which area of the western Roman Empire you were in, different regions faired very differently from others like northern Europe it was very much a collapse in places like Britannia and Northern Gaul, but in coastal southern Gaul the trade networks with the east stayed intact and at least the elites kept up a Roman lifestyle for a long time after Odacer deposed Romulus Augustus. It's possible that the average person in that area did not see a big change in their lives for a long time. in North Africa the area was absolutely devasated by the Vandal invaders, but in Italy the Ostrogoths more or less took over the functionalities of the old Roman state and kept the old Roman civil institutions around, and that lasted until the Eastern Roman Emipre's attempted reconquest devasated the region.
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Sep 1, 2023 16:16
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Xander77 posted:A *lot* of pop historians go with "was the collapse of the Roman empire a bad thing? Maybe if you like living in cities or being alive, period, buuuuuuuuuuuut" it actually did depend on who/where you were farmers in the late Roman Empire was overtaxed for instance, and what's more, the tax wouldn't even nesessarily go towards defending them since emperors had a tendency of using the tax resource to fight wars -elsewhere-, or civil wars. While leaving the frontiers near your home underdefended. so when the empire "fell" so went the imperial tax collectors. Sure, it's being replaced by tribute to the local warlord running your province, but the local dude at least has more of an incentive to protect "his" peasants than the emperor in Ravenna did Typo fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Sep 1, 2023 |
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Sep 1, 2023 16:46
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Xander77 posted:Long divided, must unite; long united etc etc. justinian actually came very close to doing so the reason why he failed isn't because the western Mediterrenean was inheritly unconquerable, it was because the plague of justinian hit in the middle of the reconquest and killed something like 40%-50% of the empire's population traditionally historiains have portrayed Justanian's reconquest as an exercise in imperial overstretch and inabilty to adapt to a post-Roman geopolitical situation. And contemporary accounts of the plague was thought of as exaggerated. More recent archaloegical evidence basically tells us "yes actually the plague was basically an apocalypse" no poo poo the empire suddenly lost the resources to mount what had being an affordable campaign of territory re-aquisition when half its people just drop dead
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Sep 28, 2023 20:31
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Xander77 posted:Yeah. What I meant. yeah more recent archaelogical evidence place the death toll of plagues like Justanian's and the black death much higher than what we used to think it was
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Oct 3, 2023 06:02
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Tragicomic posted:Are we sure about the effects of that plague really? Here's a 2019 paper that says it wasn't that big: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1903797116 interesting, I will read this later my source btw is "The Fate of Rome" by Kyle Harper, seem like the effect of the plague remains a contested topic
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Oct 3, 2023 15:13
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