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Not to be confused with Outer Wilds. Check out that LP HERE! ABOUT THE GAME The Outer Worlds by Obsidian Entertainment is a first-person sci-fi RPG released for the PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on October 25, 2019, with a Nintendo Switch port arriving the following year and an updated re-release called the Spacer's Choice Edition (developed by Virtuos, with little involvement from Obsidian as far as I know) coming out for the PC, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 in early 2023. Published by Take 2 subsidiary Private Division around the time Obsidian was acquired by Microsoft, The Outer Worlds was expected to be a spiritual successor to Fallout: New Vegas, especially in response to the reveal trailer shown at the 2018 Game Awards that proudly boasted "from the creators of Fallout" and "from the developers of Fallout: New Vegas". This was only a few weeks after Bethesda's Fallout 76 stumbled out of the Vault door drunk on pre-war vodka and lurched from one PR disaster to another, so fans were pretty excited to say the least. Of course, The Outer Worlds isn't really a spiritual successor to New Vegas at all. It's much smaller in scope, focuses less on exploration, and none of the core designers and writers from New Vegas were directly involved. However, The Outer Worlds is a new game from the creators of Fallout, the very first one, as it was co-directed by Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky in their first collaboration since the demise of Troika Games in early 2005, shortly after the release of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. In hindsight, they maybe should've played up the "holy poo poo it's a new game from two of the original Fallout and Troika guys" angle a bit more and made it clearer that The Outer Worlds was more like the relatively compact Fallout 1 than the sprawling, ultra-ambitious New Vegas in terms of design, although of course the gameplay does take elements from New Vegas as well. Some people ended up really disliking The Outer Worlds, criticizing its design and writing and the more limited scope. The fact Disco Elysium came out ten days prior didn't really help matters, as the writing and design kind of made TOW look old-fashioned, but that is also a very different type of RPG in general and there is room for both. Personally, I don't think The Outer Worlds is a top-tier Obsidian game or the best game Cain and Boyarsky have produced, but even a B or B+ tier effort from those guys is a pretty drat good time as far as I'm concerned. And so, I've decided to LP it. The Outer Worlds takes place in the corporate-run space colony of Halcyon in the year 2355, in an alternate retro-futuristic universe inspired by the Gilded Age. In 2285, two colony ships (Groundbreaker and Hope) were sent from Earth to make the ten-year journey, but only the Groundbreaker made it. Hope had to complete the journey using sub-lightspeed travel and took decades to do so, and once it arrived it was simply abandoned to drift in space because the Hope colonists couldn't be awoken from their cryogenic hibernation after such a long time (or the corpos didn't even bother trying). More decades pass, and one of the Hope colonists is finally revived by a fugitive scientist and sent to look for a way to revive their fellow colonists. That's your job. No pressure. ABOUT THE LP This is a screenshot LP because I assure you nobody wants to see me VLP a game like this. I'll be playing the "good" story path and doing all the quests that matter (not necessarily hunting down every bounty target or whatever) in the main game and both DLCs - Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos. I'm playing the original PC release of the game because even though the Spacer's Choice Edition has some tweaks I like (such as an increased level cap), it's a bit of a dumpster fire in general and the graphical changes are mostly pretty unwelcome. In-universe, Spacer's Choice makes a variety of products ranging from food to weapons, and everything they make is cheap and poo poo and may explode randomly, so at least it's on-brand. Because I think readability is more important than LP Archive eligibilty, I've chosen to ignore the usual limit of 900 pixels wide and opted for 1280x720 screenshots so you can actually tell what the hell is going on. The text in this game can be really small, even with the font size set as high as it can go, so this should help a little bit. I am also transcribing every relevant line of dialog and other text, including the ones you see in the screenshots, to accommodate for screen reader users. That means there's gonna be some repetition, but hopefully it also means more people will be able to follow along with the LP. I will try to update at least once a week, with the caveat that work keeps me pretty busy so sometimes I might go longer than that without updating. Oh, and no spoilers, please! UPDATES Part 1: Halcyon and On and On Part 2: Stranger in a Strange Land Part 3: It's Not The Best Choice, It's Spacer's Choice! Part 4: More Tea, Vicar? Part 5: Even More Edgewater Part 6: Serving Your Community ------- DMorbid fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Oct 25, 2023 |
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Oct 3, 2023 00:11
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reserved for stuff, whatever
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Oct 3, 2023 00:11
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Part 1: Halcyon and On and On MUSIC: Hope (Title Theme) Welcome to The Outer Worlds! As lovely as the main theme is, we probably shouldn't spend all day sitting here in the main menu so let's just go ahead and start a new game. You can see we've got both DLCs installed; if you press X or Y, you can read some info on how and when to start Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos respectively, but that won't be relevant until much later so we'll just ignore them for now. Also, I won't post links to every single music track, just the ones I want to highlight like the title theme.  We'll just play on Normal difficulty. I briefly considered putting it on Story mode because the combat really isn't the focus especially with my playstyle, but that's maybe a bit too easy so Normal it is. Of course, if you're some sort of masochist, you can always set the difficulty to Supernova Mode. Here's the full in-game description: quote:Supernova Mode is the hardest difficulty and can only be selected at the start of the game and is recommended for advanced players. All I have to say is gently caress that. I wouldn't really mind having to sleep, eat, and drink because that gives you an actual reason to use the many beds and many, many food and drink items in the game, which end up pretty underutilized. The rest of that list just seems to make the game more tedious and frustrating.  Finally, before we begin, we get to choose our subtitle options and font size. The latter is pretty useful for SSLP purposes, but some elements of the UI are still so small that I just went with 720p screenshots to make some of this stuff legible. At launch, there were no text size options, which was a bit of a problem because the whole game suffered from can-barely-see-the-loving-text-itis. I think they patched in the bigger font options around the time the Switch port came out. As I said in the OP, I will transcribe all relevant text in the screenshots to accommodate screen reader users, so there's gonna be some repetition but hopefully that means more people will be able to follow along.  Speaking of barely visible text, I don't think this tooltip had loaded in fully. It says "Raising your stealth skills unlocks sneak attacks for bonus damage, previewing items in locked containers, and the ability to hack vending machines." The loading screens have some nice art, tooltips, and lore, but I'll only show them if there's something interesting aside from that. VIDEO: Intro  ADVERTISEMENT: Why stay Earthbound when prosperity awaits you in the stars? Come to Halcyon, the only colony on the edge of the frontier owned and operated by corporations! Oh boy! Who wouldn't want to live in a colony owned and operated entirely by corporations?  ADVERTISEMENT: A trip of short years will feel like mere minutes, thanks to the comfort and safety of your very own hibernation chamber. The future of The Outer Worlds is set in a timeline in which the Gilded Age never ended, which is why we're getting these old-timey newspapers dated 2285 and talking about hibernation chambers. This is an interesting setting with a ton of potential, and I think they could've done so much more with it. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.  ADVERTISEMENT: You'll wake up in a perfect society designed to maximize your productivity, with guaranteed full employment! Wow, just what I've always wanted! As many have noted, the satire in this game is roughly as subtle as a bag of bricks... carried by a truck made entirely of bricks. It can be a bit much at times, but then again "gently caress capitalism" is a message I can get behind.  ADVERTISEMENT: With only a minor term of service, you will become the master of your own destiny when you go out of this world... to the Halcyon Colony! Lovely.  TOP SECRET: 10 - 23 - 2320 HALCYON HOLDINGS CORPORATE BOARD INCIDENT REPORT: COLONY SHIP HOPE FOUND DRIFTING, COLONISTS UNABLE TO BE REVIVED If October 23 sounds vaguely familiar, that - October 23, 2077 to be exact - was the day the "Great War" (i.e. the nuclear apocalypse) happened in Fallout. In case you didn't read the OP, The Outer Worlds was directed by Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, two of the original creators of Fallout who would later form Troika Games with the third Fallout creator, Jason Anderson. I believe this is the first time Cain and Boyarsky have worked together since Troika Games closed after 2004's Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, with Cain specifically asking Obsidian to bring Boyarsky on board. The Fallout reference aside, we're more interested in the fact this incident report is from the year 2320. The ads said the colony ships should make the trip to Halcyon in ten years, but that clearly didn't happen for whatever reason.  TOP SECRET: 12 - 05 - 2320 HALCYON HOLDINGS CORPORATE BOARD DETERMINATION: HOPE TO BE LEFT AT EDGE OF COLONY Annnnd the corpos have decided to just to leave the colonists drifting in space forever because they couldn't figure out a way to revive all those people. Of course.  ALERT: BREACH OF HOPE SECURITY CORRIDOR UNIDENTIFIED SHIP SECURITY CAMERA: ACTIVATING 05- 15 - 2355 And now, it is 2355. Hope has been drifting in space for 35 years, having already spent 35 years traveling to Halcyon. It seems they have a visitor...   The security camera footage shows a smaller ship docking on the Hope.    An older gentleman emerges after some minor technical difficulties with the ship's exit ramp.  PHINEAS VERNON WELLES STATUS: FUGITIVE, WANTED BY HALCYON HOLDINGS BOARD FOR CRIMES AGAINST THE COLONY The security cameras have identified the intruder, and we discover he's a wanted man. "Crimes against the colony" can mean quite a few things.  Breaking into a long-forgotten colony ship's hibernation bay may or may not constitute a crime against the colony.   PHINEAS WELLES: Hundreds of thousands of colonists. Left to drift out here forever, just to keep from damaging the Board's bottom line. Disgraceful.  The camera pans to several pods and stops on this particular one, containing a young woman with short hair.  And that takes us to character creation. The attribute system is vaguely similar to SPECIAL (or ACELIPS, as Tim Cain initially called it until someone pointed out the following day that SPECIAL might sound a bit better), but here we have three main attribute groups (Body, Mind, and Personality) and six attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Perception, Charm, and Temperament. Hm... I don't think SDIPCT exactly rolls off the tongue.  I allocate the six points we get like this. The maximum three points to INT, taking it to Very High; two points to Perception to get it to High; and one point to Charm. Now, I have no idea if Charm is actually worth taking (there are a few Charm checks but not a whole lot) but I always feel weird making a speech-based character without putting any points into the charisma equivalent. This gives us boosts to critical damage (INT), headshot/weakspot damage (PER), companion ability refresh and faction reputation (CHA), as well as various skills. Now, if we really wanted to minmax, we could've put all our points into two attributes to gain the max number of skill points to use, but this will be fine. I'm not going below average on any of the attributes because the penalties aren't really worth it unless you want to do a low intelligence run. I haven't done that in this game, so I don't know how it compares to the Fallout ones. I know you get some unique dialog options, but I'm not sure how many there are.  Skills are pretty much what you'd expect from a game by the creators of Fallout, but this time the specialized skills are under core skills (like 1-Handed and 2-Handed being under Melee, as the game says here). You can put points into a core skill until the skills under it reach 50 (I think it's until the highest of them hits 50, but I'm not 100% sure), after which you can start investing in specialized skills to get them over 50. The maximum is 150, which you probably won't hit unless you really focus on a specific skill.  We can tag two skills for an immediate +10 boost, so I put those points into Dialog and Stealth. As you can probably guess, I tend to play a speech and stealth based character who also dabbles in medicine and science.  Next, we have aptitudes. This is your background that may also relate to what you're supposed to be doing in Halcyon during your term of service. Each of these lovely menial job backgrounds gives you some type of minor bonus, so minor that doesn't really matter what you pick and it's more for flavor than anything else. I chose Medical Technician, Junior Grade to get that extra Medical point, although my favorite of these is Bureaucrat, Level 0 which of course gives you +1 to Block.  Finally, it's time to choose our character's appearance. This female character we saw in the pod is the default and there's nothing wrong with her, but let's just have a look at the options.  There are more sliders to play with than you'll ever need, and I'm sure you can create some absolute monstrosities here. I'm just gonna switch to a different preset and adjust the eye color. There's no real reason to spend half an hour here because you never see your character outside the menus and the idle camera.  Despite the fact there are 30 different hairstyles, none of them are that great. This one will do. The lighting also makes it really, really difficult to determine what the hell the colors actually are. Why do so many games make you create a character in this kind of environment?  There's a variety of makeup, dirt, and scar options as well. This particular one seems to be for those wishing to roleplay a character that went into hibernation looking like a member of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. We'll just go with the default makeup.  And, of course, we'll need a name. Cornell Vectrex is a character I made in Final Fantasy XIV a while back. He was named after the late Chris Cornell from Soundgarden and the almighty Vectrex game console from the early 80s. The closest female variant would be Cornelia Vectrex, so that's what we'll go with. It just fits the character limit as well!  There's our character sheet. Let's finally get this show on the road.  I'm going to guess the ominous red light isn't good.  PHINEAS WELLES: Looks to be your lucky day, my friend.   Our pod is grabbed from storage and moved to Welles' ship. The man himself has clearly worn out his welcome, so we're getting off the Hope and we're doing it quickly.   And we're off.  UDL ASSAULT TROOPER: Please power down your engines and prepare to be boarded. Judging from the sudden appearance of the Universal Defense Logistics ship, breaking onto the Hope and taking one of the colonists with you does in fact constitute a crime against the colony.  PHINEAS WELLES: Not likely, boot lickers.  Despite the accuracy of the statement, the UDL folks aren't pleased about being called boot lickers and open fire on Welles' ship.  One of the blasts hits the ship and causes a massive fiery explosion.  PHINEAS WELLES: Initiate skip jump.    Skip jumping using a skip drive is this universe's version of FTL travel. Despite the damage to his ship, Welles has managed to escape.  Terra 2 Orbiting Laboratory Halcyon System  PHINEAS' SHIP COMPUTER: Status: Integrity down 25%. Power levels, down 90%. Skip drive, inoperable. PHINEAS WELLES: poo poo.  Cornelia comes to, and the first thing she sees is a dingy lab and this weird old man fiddling with... something. Not her cryopod, as we can see that across the lab. This probably isn't the kind of awakening she had expected.  PHINEAS WELLES: Ah, there you are! Wondering what's going on, eh? Bit of bad news there, I'm afraid. Your colony ship was inexplicably knocked out of skip space and forced to complete its journey at sub light speeds. He slams the door shut, and we find ourselves in a different pod.  PHINEAS WELLES: This means that you - and every other colonist on the Hope - have been in suspended animation for seventy years. Give or take. Normally, reviving someone after so long leads to some quite horrifying results. It's called explosive cell death, but it's really more of a liquefaction. Well, that's... reassuring?  PHINEAS WELLES: Something wrong? Oh. Yes, well, not to worry, I've pumped your body full of a special concoction I devised to keep you from dying so horrifically. Hopefully at all, but I guess we'll see, yes? Unfortunately, I used the last of my chemical supplies saving you. I know it's a lot to ask, but I must have your help securing more if we're to save the rest of your fellow colonists. And that right there is the main plot objective. Not a whole lot to go on, much like "Find a water chip" in the original Fallout. It also turns out that Phineas here is a proper mad scientist who has injected Cornelia with lord knows what to hopefully keep her alive long enough to achieve her goal. Wonderful.  PHINEAS WELLES: I'd see it done myself, of course, but the Board has a sizeable bounty on my head. Now, my ship... is inoperative, but I've managed to hire a smuggler to help you out. He'll be... oh! I see we're in position. Good luck! Sounds like we're going to need it. I like how he just casually pulls out the wanted poster to show us.  Welles presses the button, and we're off.  Welles presses the button again, and we're off.   Welles hammers on the control panel again, and now we're off.  PHINEAS WELLES: Can you hear me? Is this thing working? Well, at least we haven't died yet.  PHINEAS WELLES: Ah, there you are. Now where were we... oh yes, the smuggler! His name is Hawthorne, and he should be waiting for you at the landing site. He's to be your chauffeur, so to speak. Not to worry, I'm told he's a specialist. Dashing gunslinger, one of a kind ship, that sort of thing. You'll like him, I'm sure. He sounds like a video game protagonist! Can't wait to meet him, we'll have all kinds of adventures together. PHINEAS WELLES: I've also outfitted you with a simple wireless monitor, so I can track your progress. I'll check in with you as soon as you land. Good luck. I'm... all the colonists are counting on you.   Great, thanks for the "Hold A to skip cutscene" prompt there.   We still seem to be in one piece, so let's get out of this escape pod.  Terra 2 (I don't think Phineas told Cornelia where we are, but that's what the cutscene showed) certainly looks quite pretty. Unfortunately, we don't have time to admire the scenery, as Welles contacts us on our wireless monitor.  PHINEAS WELLES: Ah! You've landed! Good! Hawthorne should be close by. We didn't see anyone, though. Unless... oh dear.  PHINEAS WELLES: What in Law's name? Is that him? That idiot - I told him to plant the beacon and move away, not stand there holding it. I see we're working with only the best and brightest Halcyon has to offer. Well, we were. I don't think Captain Hawthorne here is going to work with anyone anytime soon.  But at least this place is really pretty. As I mentioned in the OP, this is the original release of the game, not the updated Spacer's Choice Edition. The visual changes in that rerelease just don't look right to me, as it fucks with the lighting too much (for example, this scene would look much redder) and makes other changes I don't care for.  PHINEAS WELLES: Oh well. No sense in letting his ship go to waste. Hawthorne won't mind you taking his ship. Better you than the Board, eh? Well, Hawthorne certainly is in no position to argue, so it seems our immediate objective is to make our way to his ship.  PHINEAS WELLES: Not sure I trusted the fellow. Might've gone after the bounty on my head. Shame about the whole... squashing thing. Nasty way to go.  Captain Hawthorne's final adventure has ended rather unceremoniously, but our adventure has just begun. Onward! I wanted to get through the basic tutorial in the first update, but as it turns out we've only just landed. I didn't really want to make the character creation a separate update either since it happens in the middle of all the plot. So maybe I'll just cut this here, and next time we'll start exploring Terra 2. ------ DMorbid fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Oct 3, 2023 |
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Oct 3, 2023 00:11
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Oh, hey, this game . The one that's not the one about solving time sensitive puzzles in a small galaxy of outer worlds. Jokes aside, this will be an interesting read for the fact I've not seen a lot of this game in great detail. I've heard the overwhelming mediocre opinion and seen a few videos that joke about it, but that's all.
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Oct 3, 2023 02:25
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Part 2: Stranger in a Strange Land Last time, we were roused from our 70-year-long cryosleep and landed on Terra 2, which is where we're supposed to start looking for chemicals to help our mad scientist buddy revive all our old friends from the Hope colony ship. We were meant to be assisted in this quest by a dashing smuggler known as Captain Hawthorne, but... well, we made closer contact with him than intended, and now he's dead underneath our escape pod. So, naturally, we're gonna go take his ship now.  The skyboxes in this game are pretty fantastic, and those volumetric clouds aren't half bad either.  We make our way down the path as the game teaches us the basics. Sneaking is something we'll make extensive use of throughout our journey. I don't think the guy up ahead was very skilled at avoiding detection.  Our legless friend here is a marauder. Marauders are the main human enemies we'll face in The Outer Worlds, and I think the game kinda dropped the ball by making them these pretty generic crazy masked guys not unlike Borderlands psychos. There is some lore here and there that fleshes them out a little, but for the most part the marauders are just cannon fodder. Killing and looting them is the only interaction you'll ever have with them. Speaking of loot, Adreno is our main healing item. By default, it's equipped in the first (and currently only) slot of our medical inhaler, which is used by pressing LB.  As the game is telling us here, we have a few cover options such as this tall grass here. Generally, as long as you stay in cover, enemies don't seem to find you unless you actually alert them.  Tall grass works well as cover, but this transparency effect can be distracting and also kill your frame rate if your hardware can't handle it. On my PC, the game generally runs between 80-120 fps at 1440p but frequently drops down to the low 60s when this alpha effect is onscreen. In any case, we have to make use of this grass to avoid the two canids atop the ledge there.  Here's a better look at the canids. These particular ones are "Timid Canids" that quickly lose interest even if they do catch a whiff of you.  The small white downward arrow means the enemy is unaware, like the canid closer to us. The bigger white downward arrow above the other canid is actually a meter that fills as the enemy gets more suspicious, and it turns red once the enemy actually enters the investigating state. They'll half-heartedly look around until the red meter drains and then return to unaware status. Alerted is a white and red downward arrow with an exclamation mark, and that means everyone in the general vicinity knows where you are.  We make our way past the canids to this cave and drop down a short distance.  As we head forward and have a look at the sprat (I don't know if that's actually short for space rat, but they are space rats), our vision goes a bit blurry and weird.  Not to mention quite purple, as time also slows down. We should probably mention this to Welles at some point.  PHINEAS WELLES: Easy, now. You've been frozen for a while. (static) bound to be unforeseen side effects. Oh, okay then. Nothing to worry about, I'm sure.  That's a big drop. It's also the only way forward, so here goes nothing.  GAH! MY SHINS! The cracking sound effect when you take fall damage is rather unpleasant.  We had to take damage there because the game wants to teach us how to use the Emergency Medical Inhaler, so let's do that. Adreno heals over time.  That is certainly a pile of explosive barrels, but we have nothing to blow them up with. Let's look around a bit.   GUARD PELHAM: Hey, you. Come here. To the left, we find this guy beckoning us over. Maybe he can help us out.  GUARD PELHAM: You've tried the best. Now- Uh, what?  GUARD PELHAM: - now try the rest. Spacer's Choice. Oh Law, that stings. Let's just ignore the fact he's spouting some kind of advertising slogans at us and heal him.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Sit still. I'll patch you up. GUARD PELHAM: Looks like the bleeding has stopped. I owe you one. Hope you don't mind me omitting this little exchange from my report. Spacer's Choice doesn't like us accepting outside help. Now, Cornelia has been in cryostasis for the last 70 years and presumably has no idea what this guy is babbling about or what a Spacer's Choice is.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Spacer's what? GUARD PELHAM: Oh, we're all part of the Spacer's Choice family here. Not that I deserve to be. Can't even deliver a company slogan. We were out on patrol. I saw a marauder camp up in the hills. Thought I could take 'em. Then my gun misfired. Right through my side. I mean, what are the odds of that, right? Just barely scraped by with my life. Crawled in here and blocked off the exit with those canisters. The likelihood of a Spacer's Choice weapon malfunctioning is pretty high, if I'm remembering the marketing materials correctly. It doesn't affect gameplay at all, because having your Spacer's Choice weapon randomly shoot you in the side during a fight probably wouldn't be very amusing to most players. Maybe it should be an optional feature for both the player and all enemies using Spacer's Choice gear, like the trait in Fallout that makes critical misses more common.  CORNELIA VECTREX: What were you doing out here? GUARD PELHAM: Investigating an illegally grounded ship! All spacecraft must arrive and depart from authorized landing pads. That's Board law, that is. Some hullhead grounded their spacecraft out in the open. That's a real good way to attract marauders. See those canisters by the entrance? Marauders come sniffing around in here, and I can take 'em all out with a single shot! Not bad, huh? This will not go well.  CORNELIA VECTREX: [Persuade 1] I've got a better idea. Give me your gun, and I'll go get help. GUARD PELHAM: Yeah, okay. You look like you know your way around a gun. Got some spare ammo, not counting the bullet in my side. Here, you can have my sabre, too. For patching me up and all. All Spacer's Choice weapons are now thirty percent less likely to malfunction. You've tried the best. Now try the rest. Spacer's Choice. Yes! Nailed it that time. I'm surprised Spacer's Choice doesn't count the bullet in his side as spare ammo, to be honest.  He's so pumped about finally getting the slogan right. Good for him! CORNELIA VECTREX: Can you tell me where I am? GUARD PELHAM: You hit your head or something? You're in Emerald Vale. We're a Spacer's Choice community. Edgewater's a little ways down. Prettiest place in the vale. Be sure to stop by our provisioner's for a can of our famous saltuna. CORNELIA VECTREX: Do you know anything about the Hope? GUARD PELHAM: The Hope? Is that some sort of fancy new drug? Are you with Auntie Cleo or something? Don't take this the wrong way or nothing, but I'm not allowed to fraternize with Cleo workers. Company policy. Great. I guess this mook wouldn't know about some ship that disappeared decades ago. At least we now know where we are, so let's leave Pelham alone and get a move on.  Mag-Picks are lockpicks. That's the long and short of it.  So, let's blow up these barrels and make a path. PHINEAS WELLES: drat it! My ears! What just happened? (static) you hear me? What in the (static) wrong with this (static) piece of junk? Maybe should've told Welles to turn off the monitor before we blew up the barrels. Oh well. He'll live, I'm sure.  Since we now have a weapon, the game is telling us about the weapons tab of the inventory. We can equip four weapons at once, and there are also options like breaking down weapons for repair parts, or field repairing your stuff if your Engineering is high enough.  Light Pistol: "This is probably the most common handgun in the entire colony. It's not a bad little gun...and it's a great source of parts!"  Sentry Sabre: "This melee weapon is standard issue to military recruits, who are taught swordplay before being taught ranged combat. Coated with Spacer's Choice patented Never-Dull Finish, this blade stays durable for at least twenty swings." So yeah, all we have is the Spacer's Choice light pistol with 111 bullets and the Sentry Sabre Pelham gave us, so not exactly top of the line hardware. We'll have a look at the rest of the inventory when it becomes relevant. I'm probably not going to transcribe all weapon and item descriptions because there's roughly 900 million of these things, but if I see anything interesting I'll highlight it.  As we emerge from the cave, the world goes a bit slow and purple again.  Tactical Time Dilation, caused by our brain processing time differently due to complications from the revival process, is basically our version of the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. Right now, with our current weapons, it's largely just a basic bullet time thing to help us shoot marauders in the head, but eventually we'll get access to targeted attacks that cause status effects and extra damage. Well, technically we have access now because all you need is 20 points in a combat skill and we do have that in Long Guns, but we don't have a long gun at the moment. As the tutorial explains, the TTD meter drains slowly when you stand still and faster when you move and attack, and it also regenerates over time. There are also various perks to improve TTD in general, but we'll get there when we get there.  MARAUDER VANDAL: (Incoherent grumbling) Hm?  MARAUDER VANDAL: (Snarling) Yep, this guy clearly isn't interested in a nice conversation. Since he chose to hang out right next to explosive barrels like a dumbass, that makes our job easier.  That'll take care of that. Of course, this racket also alerts his buddy nearby.  Here's something I completely forgot existed because the left side of the screen is usually the last thing I'm looking at during a firefight: TTD shows you the targeted enemy's level, current and max HP, and armor points (the level 1 Marauder Goon here has 4 armor against physical damage) and a brief analysis. Marauder Goons are melee attackers, as we can see from the blade he's trying to whack us with. We also get some amusing factoid about the targeted enemy, such as "Has a terrible taste in fashion" here.  Let's grab these guys' stuff, then. This goon has a massive bounty of 11 bit cartridges (that's money), 17 light ammo and another sentry sabre. All these sabres will be broken down to parts later so I can repair the actual weapons I want to use.  The game popped up a tutorial about armor management, but there wasn't anything interesting about it. We only have our starting armor at the moment, and it's not really very protective at all.  If you pause the game and choose the Idle Camera option, the camera will rotate around your character as they stand around. We can't adjust the angle or anything to get a better look, as soon any button is pressed it just goes back to first person.  Here's the little campsite next to where the first marauder with his explosive barrels was. There are some mag-picks lying around, as well as various food items like a Mock Apple, a Bunch of Nanners and "Tarmac & Cheese", the latter of which doesn't sound very edible. More importantly, there's a yellow box over there. The game pops up a tutorial about hacking and lockpicking, but I'll just explain it myself.   Oh, great, a worthless 2-handed melee weapon we'll never use. We can see it has Knockdown as its associated special effect. I'll cover status effects in more detail once we can actually inflict some of them, but Knockdown... well, briefly knocks the target down.  As we proceed down the hill, we come across two more marauders. This one is a Marauder Vandal, a light armor marauder variant that uses handguns. Before we do anything, we'll just let one of them wander off a bit further.  Marauder Vandal (level 3): "Is in the 5th percentile for literacy." The other marauder is too far to hear his friend getting shot, so he'll still be unaware as long as we take this guy down fast enough.  This goon eats more saltuna than the average person, but it won't stop him from getting shot in the head.  Finally, we reach Hawthorne's ship. We can just about see some marauders hanging around the ship, but there are some folks in what looks like Spacer's Choice armor closer to us. Let's go and say hello, maybe tell them one of their guys is still in the cave. Also, I think the ship's shadow isn't rendering properly here because I have shadows set to medium. Shadows are usually the first thing I turn down a few notches when I want some more frames. It's either that or the general draw distance (which is set to high) that's causing the issue. The Spacer's Choice Edition on Xbox Series and PS5 also fails to render this shadow at range even though the original release on Xbox One X/PS4 Pro managed it, so that's just great. EDIT: I double-checked and both shadows and draw distance were actually set to high, which at least in terms of shadows should be a match for the consoles. Hm.   LIEUTENANT MERCER: Hey! Get over here before you get yourself killed! Can't refuse an invitation like that, can you?  LIEUTENANT MERCER: Don't know where you came from, stranger, but you best keep your head down. There's marauders hereabouts. And worse, landing violators! Gall on that rungleech. Landing in the Vale without using an official Spacer's Choice landing pad. I'd slap 'em with a fine, if it weren't for all these marauders shambling about. You could always... I don't know, fine the marauders for loitering around a crime scene?  CORNELIA VECTREX: It's just a landing violation. Let it go. LIEUTENANT MERCER: Are you out of your mind?! No way. Once we've dealt with these marauders, I'm hunting that sick freak down. I just, you know... need a couple of winks to catch my breath. Stretch my legs some. Ah, I see.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Don't worry, you sit tight. I'll handle it.  We could have easily persuaded Mercer and Private Kimball to help us in this fight, and by "help" I mean "charge in and get themselves killed". Well, Mercer can hold her own but Kimball bites it every time I ask these idiots to help me out, so in the interest of keeping him alive (not that it matters at all) I'll just do this myself.  There are five or so marauders here, a mix of goons and vandals. This goon cheated on their career aptitude test, which is of course an unforgivable crime and the only punishment is a bullet to the head. Well, that's what I'd say if I was a Spacer's Choice guard, I suppose.  Let's start by taking down this vandal who prefers smoking cheap Tile tobacco products to the higher-end Wentsworth stuff (which is only sold to the rich, so presumably he mugged some rich folks for their cigarettes). We actually manage to inflict a status effect on him - the icons can be hard to parse even at high resolutions, but he is cowering. That's an effect you can inflict when your Persuade skill is 20 or higher, and it makes the target... well, cower in fear and do nothing for a while. Unfortunately, the fact he's cowering also means my bullets are missing his cranium as I can't see too well from this angle, and I really needed him out of the picture ASAP.  oh poo poo oh gently caress this was a bad idea, why did I not ask the guards for help  Honestly, these really early encounters with multiple enemies are among the hardest in the game because you have gently caress all in terms of health, armor and weapons. You always start with very low max health as well because there's no attribute that increases your initial health pool.  Despite our general squishiness and my incompetence at video games, we take the marauders down. This one has nightmares of being killed by a dashing space captain. We're about to have a spaceship, does that count?  And with that, we gain a level, which gives us a health boost, ten skill points, and a perk point (every other level).  Seven of the points are split between dialog, stealth, and tech skills. The most important thing here is getting Sneak to 20 so we can actually deal extra damage when shooting enemies from stealth, but we also get a second drug mixing slot for the medical inhaler. I may even equip something in it at some point. Lie and Intimidate are also at 20 and offer bonuses of their own (Lie: 15% chance to scramble automechanicals and make them attack each other; Intimidate: 20% chance to terrify creatures and make them run away for 10 seconds).  The remaining three points go into Ranged so we can eventually get Handguns to 20. I don't really use Heavy Weapons that much.  Then, it's time for perks. Most of them are pretty boring, which is a shame. I'll just go with +5 base armor rating to make our armor offer slightly more protection than tissue paper. +50% health would also have been a good option. Not very exciting, but good.  LIEUTENANT MERCER: This is gonna take a lot of paperwork. Would take more if Kimball had kicked the bucket, so at least I did her a favor there.  Let's see what lurks inside Hawthorne's ship.   ADA: Please be informed that this vessel contains no valuable plunder. That doesn't sound very convincing, ship AI.  ADA: Unauthorized access of spacefaring vessels is a crime. Please submit yourself to the authorities. Maybe later. I want to talk to you first.  ] ADA: Hello, marauder. I am ADA - the Autonomous Digital Astrogator of this vessel. Hello.   ADA: Please be informed that I am authorized to use violent retribution against unwanted solicitors. ADA's expressions keep changing, so it's gonna be fun switching portraits each time.  ADA: Please return any misappropriated equipment, and exit this vessel in an orderly fashion. Failure to do so will result in your immediate destruction. CORNELIA VECTREX: What are you going to do? Self-destruct?   ADA: Jettison procedures initiated. Disengaging airlocks. Preparing to eject all boarded parties in: Five. Four. Three. Two. One. CORNELIA VECTREX: You realize we're on the ground, right? There are many loud noises, which might scare off a marauder but won't work on us.   ADA: You are still here. My deception protocols have failed. I have been programmed to express disappointment. CORNELIA VECTREX: Is this Hawthorne's ship? ADA: This vessel is the registered property of Captain Alex Hawthorne.  ADA: I am incapable of accepting orders from anyone other than Captain Alex Hawthorne. Yeah, about that...  CORNELIA VECTREX: Your captain's a red smear under my escape pod. Maybe not the most respectful way to put it, but at least we're letting ADA know what actually happened. ADA: I understand. I will require some time to process this information. Thank you for your patience, and for your honesty. ADA: I am programmed to take orders exclusively from Captain Hawthorne. If I accept your orders, then you must be Captain Hawthorne. Do you understand?  CORNELIA VECTREX: Okay, but I'm not Hawthorne. Hawthorne is dead. ADA: I understand. You are speaking metaphorically. Err, no, we're speaking quite literally. Of course we know what she's getting at, but let's just play dumb for a bit.  ADA: You wandered outside this ship and experienced a permanent, life-changing encounter. The old you is dead. Uh... I guess you could say that?  ADA: Welcome back, Captain Hawthorne. I extend felicitations and congratulations on your life-changing experience. CORNELIA VECTREX: You don't understand. My name is Cornelia Vectrex. ADA: I understand. You are going undercover with an alias. I will update my discretion protocol accordingly. Sure, that works.  ADA: Unfortunately, our engine is currently inoperable. Our main drive suffered a critical power failure, and we were forced to make an emergency landing. That's gonna complicate things.  ADA: The main drive's power regulator has been irreparably damaged, and must be replaced. CORNELIA VECTREX: [Engineering 5] I doubt I'll find a part like that just sitting in a garage. ADA: Astutely observed. However, the probability of locating a power regulator within a worker settlement falls within acceptable parameters of certainty. High-capacity power regulators are sometimes employed in the electrical networks of worker settlements. I have taken the liberty of printing you a new Captain's Identity Cartridge. Please try not to lose it this time. Well, the guard said there was a Spacer's Choice town near here. Maybe they have a power regulator, but they presumably need it so we're going to have to figure something out.  ADA: This cartridge identifies you - Alex Hawthorne - as the registered proprietor and captain of the Unreliable. Do you understand? CORNELIA VECTREX: Yeah, ADA. I got it. Thanks. ADA: Best of luck in your search for a power regulator. Try to stay alive this time. Can't promise anything. But yeah, Cornelia's Captain Alex Hawthorne now. That might come in handy if we ever need to go by an alias. Unless, of course, we run into Hawthorne's old acquaintances, in which case it might be awkward.  While we're here, let's have a look around the Unreliable.  And the quest journal. Nothing super exciting there, but might as well show it off for posterity.  Here's our map. The quest marker is pointing at the exit door of the Unreliable right now, so it's not particularly useful at the moment. The Emerald Vale region is very small by open world game standards, some might say it's cramped. I don't really mind not having to traverse vast expanses just to get to quest objectives, and it also works nicely as a tutorial zone.  For whatever reason, you can inspect our items like this by pressing R3 in the inventory screen. Zoom in or rotate them if you want to. There's no reason to do so, ever, but you can do it.  ADA: If your equipment is in need of repair or modification, the Crux 2000 workbench is at your disposal, Captain. We're not gonna bother with the workbench right now. I'll show it off once we get some mods and that sort of thing. I do pick up the weapon parts and the sawed-off shotgun, though.  ADA: I suppose everything on the Unreliable belongs to you now, Captain. Help yourself. No, really. Thank you, I will. There are some lockers near the airlock that have some more stuff, but I forgot to check them this time.  What I failed to notice was the fact this shotgun is at 5% condition, so the 15 weapon parts next to it were meant to be used for repairing it at the workbench. We'll get to it eventually, don't worry.  ADA: The ship's engines cannot be powered until a replacement regulator has been properly installed. Yep, the ominous red lighting tells us we're not going anywhere on this ship just yet.  Up the nearby ladder is the ship's kitchen. Not much to see there right now.  ADA: These are the crew's quarters. Alex preferred to travel alone. But he always had me. Due to catastrophic power failure, all doors will remain on security lockdown. Right then, that's pretty much all we can do aboard the Unreliable right now. Except for one thing in the main hold, which is up a different ladder.  ADA: Want to be a brand new you? Try out our Respecification Machine. Alex installed it himself, right before he died. We might make use of the respec machine later on in case we need to pass certain skill checks in quests. We'll leave it alone for now, though.  Let's head to Edgewater.  LIEUTENANT MERCER: Say... this wouldn't happen to be your ship, would it? Because you sure walked in like it was your ship. And if this ship is yours, well ma'am, you owe Spacer's Choice a hefty fine. Afraid we gotta dock your pay. Somehow, I doubt she'd believe us if we told her this ship wasn't ours when it landed. I do have this handful of bits I looted off marauder corpses, but I don't think that's going to cover this fine she's talking about.  CORNELIA VECTREX: I don't have a job. LIEUTENANT MERCER: I'll waive your fee since you helped us with those marauders. If you're looking for work, talk to the Constable down in Edgewater. She's got a bounty on marauders. Edgewater's not too far. Just follow the road east of here, over past the cemetery. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to inspect the crime scene before I make my report.  At least we're not on the hook for Hawthorne's parking ticket, that's good news. This path should take us to Edgewater.  There are some marauders along the path, so let's try out our new sneak attack bonus on this fellow who's suffering from halitosis. Our first shot takes off about 90% of his health, which is pretty good.  His friends are not too impressed, so let's give the shotgun a try.  The shotgun is falling apart, but we do manage to inflict Cripple (reduces movement speed, melee attack speed, and rate of fire), Blind (reduces vision range and ranged weapon accuracy), and Weaken (lowers all skills a moderate amount, target takes increased plasma, shock, and N-ray damage) by targeting various body parts. The icons, again, are very hard to actually parse during gameplay.  At the edge of the water, we find Edgewater. That makes sense, I suppose. We should probably put our gun away before we approach any of the townspeople (not that it actually matters, I just think it looks silly running around town waving a gun around).   SILAS: Whoa. Hey. Where'd you come from? Earth?  SILAS: Don't go ambling out in those hills. That's marauder territory, friend. CORNELIA VECTREX: How do you know I'm not a marauder? SILAS: You talk too pretty for a marauder. Most of them just grunt and yell. Ain't safe out here. You'd best head into town, avail yourself of Edgewater's high walls and low, low prices. If you're wearing looted marauder armor (I didn't find any for some reason, maybe I forgot to loot one of the guys from the landing site), Silas does mistake you for a marauder until you start talking, and there are other NPCs in Edgewater that suggest maybe changing into something less marauder-y if you don't want to make the wrong impression.  CORNELIA VECTREX: I never got your name. I'm Cornelia Vectrex. SILAS: Pleased to make your acquaintance. I'd shake your hand, but I been hauling corpses. You don't want none of that on you. Name's Silas. Junior Inhumer for the town of Edgewater. We're all part of the Spacer's Choice family. CORNELIA VECTREX: Junior Inhumer. Fancy title for a gravedigger. SILAS: Hey, I earned that fancy title. Started off as a lowly Junior Gravesite Builder. Then Junior Internment Engineer. Oh, and I was a Junior Burial Assistant, for a time. I sort of regret bringing that up.  CORNELIA VECTREX: You seem pretty old to be a junior anything. SILAS: The rate I've been working, I'm bound to earn a promotion. Must be about fifty, sixty burials away from Associate Inhumer. CORNELIA VECTREX: Who do I talk to about a power regulator? SILAS: Definitely not the Junior Inhumer, that's for sure. If you've got business inquiries, you should stop by Reed Tobson's office. He's up in the tower above the cannery. Head into town and follow the road. Look, you obviously ain't a worker. What's your racket? You a smuggler? Freelancer? I think "wandering murderhobo" is the best description for what we do as an RPG protagonist. Freelancer would be the polite way to put that, I guess.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Depends on the work. You offering me a job? SILAS: Edgewater is a company town. Board owned and operated. That includes the cemetery. None of us own our gravesites. Renting means money. Money means paperwork. Paperwork means signatures. Some of our family's become a mite delinquent in paying their dues, you see. Shaking some poor sods down for their gravesite fees (which seems like a perfectly normal and healthy practice in itself) is not the most glamorous job to start with, but we're broke so at this point we'll take what we can get.  CORNELIA VECTREX: You're making people pay for their own graves? SILAS: Company policy. If it was up to me, I'd put the whole town ten feet under, free of charge. You might want to phrase that a little differently in case the Spacer's Choice guards are listening. CORNELIA VECTREX: Why can't you collect these fees anyway? Quotas, mostly. Got a backlog of graves to fill. Bodies won't bury themselves, you know. CORNELIA VECTREX: All right. I'll collect your fees for you. SILAS: Four workers still haven't paid up. Phyllis, Conrad, Ludwig, and Martin Abernathy. He's a special case. You may wanna twist his arm a little. CORNELIA VECTREX: Where can I find these people? SILAS: Conrad's got a barber shop in town. Phyllis works at the cannery most hours. Abernathy - I ain't seen him in a few days. His domicile is near the cannery. You'll find 'em in town. All except Ludwig, that is. He's over by the landing pad. CORNELIA VECTREX: Why is Abernathy a special case? SILAS: He just is. Look, I don't want to get into it. Just make sure he pays up. Let's just ask him some general questions before we head into town. CORNELIA VECTREX: This town must be in pretty bad shape, if it's keeping you employed. SILAS: You could look at it that way, I suppose. You could look at us and say, "Those Edgewater saps lost near every soul to plague." But you'd be wrong. We're survivors. Loyal company folk braving the wilds. Wait. Nobody said anything about a plague. What's this about a plague, now? CORNELIA VECTREX: You're not worried about being sick? SILAS: Every now and again a virulent plague sweeps through our town. That's life on the frontier, I suppose. A body grows accustomed. Hopefully, whatever Welles injected us with is enough to keep the plague at bay. We have at least managed to avoid explosive cell death so far, which bodes well. CORNELIA VECTREX: How long have you been a Junior Inhumer? Gravedigger. Whatever.  SILAS: Hang on. I'm doing some math in my head. Twenty, thirty, carry the one - uh, all my life. I like how, even though the conversations still use the old Fallout talking head style, the characters at least show some expression. You can just about see the gears turning in Silas' head when he's trying to do the math here. SILAS: Work's been real good to me. Fresh air. Exercise. Only problem's the paperwork. Can't get anybody to pay their gravesite fees. CORNELIA VECTREX: You lose a lot of people to marauders? SILAS: Former people, yeah. Marauders been raiding my graves, you see. Hence the armed guards. CORNELIA VECTREX: What are they after? Loot? SILAS: They are after the most precious loot of all. Spacer's Choice company property. If those marauders swipe any more bodies out of my cemetery, company's gonna dock my pay. Well, we can't have that, can we? We've only encountered a few marauders and know nothing about them so we can't say whether marauders are normally in the business of digging up graves. Maybe we can catch them in the act at some point.  And we're finally at the Edgewater entrance. No question who runs things around here, you can probably see the Spacer's Choice branding from orbit. There's some loot in the buildings to our left and right, but we'll check them out later.  Next time, we will explore Edgewater and talk to a man about a power regulator. ------ DMorbid fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 4, 2023 00:11
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Imagine having a cemetery quota. You weren't kidding about the unsubtle hyper capitalism. One thing I didn't know about this game was the enemies having flavor text. That's a neat little detail. 
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Oct 4, 2023 00:58
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I played this when it first came out It was aggressively mediocre
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Oct 5, 2023 00:36
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I like this game a lot, haven't played it in a while though. Tough but Good.
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Oct 5, 2023 06:37
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I heard about this briefly, I'll be interested in seeing where the story goes with the LP. From what I heard it... doesn't quite stick the landing it set out to do.
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Oct 5, 2023 09:20
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It is amazing how a RPG game, literally New Vegas in SPAAAAACE, with very unsubtle anticapitalist, anticorporate message and an actual asexual representation - in other words game that should be tailored for me - managed to be so perfectly mediocre and unremarkable. I remember literally nothing except Parvati. It's not even bad game, it's just the blandest, soulless, most lukewarm RPG I've ever seen.
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Oct 5, 2023 20:18
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Szarrukin posted:It is amazing how a RPG game, literally New Vegas in SPAAAAACE, with very unsubtle anticapitalist, anticorporate message and an actual asexual representation - in other words game that should be tailored for me - managed to be so perfectly mediocre and unremarkable. I remember literally nothing except Parvati. It's not even bad game, it's just the blandest, soulless, most lukewarm RPG I've ever seen.
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Oct 5, 2023 21:53
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Szarrukin posted:It is amazing how a RPG game, literally New Vegas in SPAAAAACE, with very unsubtle anticapitalist, anticorporate message and an actual asexual representation - in other words game that should be tailored for me - managed to be so perfectly mediocre and unremarkable. I remember literally nothing except Parvati. It's not even bad game, it's just the blandest, soulless, most lukewarm RPG I've ever seen. I think it's because the message is over the top while also being super general, so it avoids anything that might be specific enough that you can point a finger to it and go "my job does that too" or "that's just like Nestle". It also avoids the player being able to actually *do* anything about it, quests get done, but nothing the player does really changes anything meaningfully in a way that other things react against. It could be good if it had more reactivity.
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Oct 6, 2023 07:05
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Part 3: It's Not The Best Choice, It's Spacer's Choice! ------  Today, we're exploring Edgewater and talking to the important people in town to hopefully be pointed in the direction of a power regulator. I'm gonna say up front that this will be an extremely talky update.  But first, let's turn back and check the shacks near the Edgewater entrance. One of them is inaccessible (contrary to what I claimed in the last update), but this one has the blue lights on the sides of the door indicating it's open. So, let's check it out. Speaking of the blue lights and the game's color selection in general, The Outer Worlds was designed to be fully accessible to players with color blindness, without any separate mode toggles or that sort of thing. Tim Cain himself is actually color blind, so this sort of accessibility was obviously a priority for the team from the start.  This is Junior Inhumer Silas' shack. There are a few boxes we can steal stuff from, but nothing particularly exciting. Stealable items are marked in red, and as far as I know, there's no flag that magically lets people know you're carrying stolen goods and refuse to buy them, a la Elder Scrolls. Nor is there a karma system that magically tells the whole world you're stealing stuff and tells you you're being naughty, a la Fallout. There is a faction reputation system, but I think that as long as nobody sees you, you can steal everything not nailed down without a reputation hit (I'm not 100% sure, as I don't steal all that often and the wikis aren't very helpful on this subject). Even if you do get caught, you can talk your way out if your dialog skills are up to the task.  Let's have a look at the terminal on his desk and see if there's anything on there.  Well, he forgot to renew his Inhumer's Association Newsletter, but that's not very interesting. How about the other one?  quote:FROM: Spacer's Choice Human Resources Fascinating. There's also a burial invoice we can look at, requiring 1 Hack to access. quote:BURIAL INVOICE Hardly any earth-shattering information here. But hey, at least they got a discount on the fee.  Now let's make your way back to town proper. We want to head to the cannery, but there's some stuff here we can take a look at first.  Namely, three wanted posters. Let's see here... quote:WANTED: Guillaume "Gill" Antrim Got it. How about the next guy?  quote:WANTED: Bert "Bertie" Cotton Town vicar turned marauder, huh? Interesting. Let's see what the last poster says.  quote:WANTED: Doc Maybell I see all three are charged with medication-related crimes in addition to the usual murder and destruction, with Adrena-Time mentioned by name on two of the posters. Possible connection? Well, this isn't the time to play inspector, there will be plenty of opportunity for that later.  We've wasted enough time, let's head to the cannery and talk to the guy in charge and see if he can help us out.  Okay, before we do anything else, the overenthusiastic waypoint marker has to go. I might turn it back on for specific situations, but for the most part we don't need it and the marker on the compass is plenty to guide us to objectives. With that sorted, let's have a look at the reception terminal.  quote:NOTICE: Preferably before the vicar snaps and starts murdering people like their predecessor. Somewhere, some corporate executive is playing this and thinking, "Hey, there are some really good ideas here!"  As we ride the elevator to the top (and listen to an elevator muzak version of the Spacer's Choice jingle), we start to hear people talking.  REED TOBSON: Ms. Holcomb, I need you to explain this with less of the- the grease-monkey argot.   PARVATI: I'm sorry, Mister Tobson, sir. You asked why it's taking so long to fix. The answer is technical. We'll just wait here for a moment. The conversation seems pretty important, so it would be rude to interrupt. REED TOBSON: Don't apologize. Just- try using small words for me. PARVATI: Um. The cans bust open in the oven, because she's set to cook saltuna. Which isn't what we got. Mister Tobson? I think there's someone to see you. REED TOBSON: Focus, Ms. Holcomb. You and I are still talking. Let's start over. Walk me through the process. Show me where it's going awry. PARVATI: Well, sure. It's mostly on account of what we're feeding into the mechanism. It puts food in cans. We have food. We have cans. Why won't it work like we need? PARVATI: She's expecting saltuna of a certain size. We're filling the cans with - well, not-fish. Someone in the thread pointed out that one of the possible reasons for this game's satire not quite landing is that it's often so broad and general that pretty much anyone can look at it and go, "hey, that's just like my job" or "hey, that's like some real-life evil corporation!" And yeah, this is one of those moments. We have Parvati, clearly an expert mechanic, futilely attempting to explain to her clueless boss why getting something to work is more complex than "well we have thing A and thing B so clearly it should work, just get it done", which I'm sure many of us are all too familiar with. That's all we hear from the conversation, as Reed Tobson finally notices us.  REED TOBSON: Seems we've got a guest. Really now, Parvati. I do wish you'd spoken up. She did. You told her to focus. REED TOBSON: I do apologize. I was given no forewarning of your arrival, or I might have welcomed you at the gates myself. CORNELIA VECTREX: I'll wait until you're finished. Might as well hear the rest of it.  REED TOBSON: You were saying, Ms. Holcomb?  PARVATI: It's just- what Bess needs is a proper refurbish. I can bandage her up and whatall, but she's just... old. Sorry. I'm sorry. I-I'll do better. Parvati is voiced by the excellent Ashly Burch. At this point, she was already appearing in a lot of stuff (most prominently as Aloy in Horizon: Zero Dawn) and her voice had become very recognizable. That's not really a complaint, as she does a fantastic job as Parvati and her performance managed to elevate certain material even the writers weren't sure about. I'm not even gonna bother dancing around the fact she's a party member, as she's joining us in a few minutes. REED TOBSON: And I do wish you'd stop referring to our cannery as 'Bess'. Personification of company property is strictly contrary to the Spacer's Choice code of conduct. My apologies. I am not in the habit of allowing my guests to witness such a row. Now, what can I do for you? CORNELIA VECTREX: Are you Reed? I was told I should talk to you. REED TOBSON: I'm Reed Tobson. Outpost administrator. I cannot help but notice you are not in uniform. If you're dressed as a marauder, he admonishes you for that.  CORNELIA VECTREX: I think you may have the wrong idea about me. REED TOBSON: Yes, so it dawns on me. Seems I allowed my excitement to run away with my wits. Been a few seasons since we've had a visitor pass through. Might as well go straight to business.  CORNELIA VECTREX: My ship needs repairs. I'm looking for a power regulator.  PARVATI: Only regulator we got is hooked up to the town transformer. Mr. Tobson ain't liable to be keen on dismantling it. REED TOBSON: I beg your pardon. I am most emphatically not keen on any such thing. I can't let you have our power regulator. But I happen to know of another one. And I happen to know exactly how you may retrieve it without frying yourself in the process. Of course they weren't gonna give us their power regulator, that was to be expected. Tobson seems to have a lead on another one, so let's find out what that's all about.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Frying myself? REED TOBSON: Oh yes. Saw someone put his hands on a regulator while the power was running. His legs were still twitching when we buried him. Noted. We'll try to avoid the same fate. REED TOBSON: There's a power regulator in the old botanical lab. It's mostly abandoned, so all that power is being squandered. Go down to the geothermal plant. Reroute power from the botanical district over to us. Once their power's shut down, you can have their regulator and be along on your way. "Mostly" abandoned?  CORNELIA VECTREX: When you say "mostly abandoned," what do you mean? REED TOBSON: I was not entirely sure how to tell you this. The botanical labs are not legally inhabited, but there are people who live there. Naturally. And we should just cut off their power, then?  CORNELIA VECTREX: I don't think these people will take kindly to losing their power. REED TOBSON: No, I do not imagine they will be pleased. But like a parent disciplining an unruly child, you will be doing them a kindness. The people living in the botanical labs - they're deserters. Former workers. I need them back at their posts. I need them to come home. I'm sure they'd love to return to this utter shithole of a town.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Why? REED TOBSON: Edgewater is struggling. We haven't hit our production quota in years. If we don't meet our quotas this year, the company might shut us down for good. I need those workers back at their stations.  Well, we have been in town for about five minutes, but we can already tell Edgewater is not in good shape. CORNELIA VECTREX: I've seen Edgewater. I don't blame those workers for walking out. REED TOBSON: Neither do I. The fault was entirely mine. I pushed them too hard. My hope is that by cutting off their power, you will convince those deserters to come back to town. Before you go to the plant, I want you to stop by the botanical lab. Speak to their leader, Adelaide. Tell her the power's about to go, and that it's time her band of deserters came back to town. CORNELIA VECTREX: How will I recognize Adelaide? REED TOBSON: Adelaide's older than the other deserters. She's dignified. Kindly. From what I understand, her camp looks to her for leadership. We're going to need a lot more convincing to cut off these so-called deserters.  CORNELIA VECTREX: You're asking me to cut off power to an entire community. REED TOBSON: I am asking you to help us survive. Edgewater needs more workers, or we will collapse. We belong to one community - the Spacer's Choice family. If we dissolve into factions, then we will all perish separately. Adelaide will understand that. If you say so.  CORNELIA VECTREX: I can't make any promises. REED TOBSON: Of course! I understand completely. Here - let me give you the passcode to the geothermal plant. A sign of good faith, for so politely listening to me as I ramble on.  PARVATI: Are you setting off for the Vale? 'Cause I know my way around. I mean - in case you want a guide. I-I mean, if that's all right with you, Mister Tobson. Sir. REED TOBSON: I hesitate to part ways with Ms. Holcomb. But I cannot deny that she is talented, and may prove useful to you.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Sure, I could use the company. You don't have to recruit any companions if you don't want to, but of course we're gonna take Parvati along.  PARVATI: Great! I got my wrenches and diagnosticators and hairpins and engine tape, so I'm all set. REED TOBSON: Well, I am glad to hear that. Best of luck to you, and thank you again for your help. It is a lot to ask of a stranger, I know.  Companions are useful for increasing your carrying capacity and giving a helping hand in combat, but they also improve your skills. For example, having Parvati in the party increases our Persuade, Lockpick, and Engineering. Obviously, this comes in quite handy. There is a small catch, though. These skill boosts, like the boosts you get from equipment or your aptitude, are what I call "soft" skill points, meaning they don't count towards the various unlocks. For example, even though having Parvati gives us enough Engineering points to put us over the 20-point threshold for the field repair ability, we don't unlock that because we need to hit that threshold naturally by investing "hard" skill points on levelup. We're not quite done with Tobson yet, as we can ask him about various things. So, let's do that before we leave. CORNELIA VECTREX: Have you taken a look around your town lately? REED TOBSON: It is my job to keep two eyes on my town. I am the steward of this place, and this is my watchpost.  CORNELIA VECTREX: How long have you worked here? REED TOBSON: I'm trying to remember. Twenty-five years? Twenty-six? When you get to my age, the years just rush by. You stop counting altogether. I remember looking out this window and seeing the Vale spread out from horizon to horizon. We were a sprawling town. We were booming. Times change. People change. But the Vale will always be here. Spacer's Choice will always be here. Our work won't ever end. I take comfort in that. Speaking of Spacer's Choice, the Spacer's Choice Edition of the game changes Tobson's model to look considerably older. I don't have a screenshot handy at the moment, but I think that change makes some sense. CORNELIA VECTREX: Your town is falling to pieces. REED TOBSON: I wish you wouldn't say things like that. I mean, it is the truth. And as for Spacer's Choice always being here, he did say there's a good chance Spacer's Choice will pull the plug if Edgewater doesn't meet their quota. What happens then?  CORNELIA VECTREX: You disagree? REED TOBSON: Yes, as a matter of fact. When I stand at my window and look out over my town, here's what I see. I see decent, loyal, hard-working people. I see a family. We're all part of the Spacer's Choice family. We're all doing what we were brought into this world to do. I think the conventional wisdom is that if the company you work for or apply for describes itself as a family, you should run far away. CORNELIA VECTREX: You're loyal to Spacer's Choice. REED TOBSON: This is a Spacer's Choice town. We're all part of the Spacer's Choice family here. The company keeps us warm. Keeps us fed. Keeps us working. Loyalty's got nothing to do with it. This is good old-fashioned gratitude. CORNELIA VECTREX: What makes you think I can convince those deserters to come back? REED TOBSON: That you are not one of us may work to your advantage. Adelaide and her folk loathe the people of Edgewater, you see. I admit the fault was mine. I am about as diplomatic as a bristling canid. I just hope Adelaide and her folk will see their way past my flaws and return to town. Obviously, Tobson is all in on the Spacer's Choice kool-aid (or at least whatever cheap and lovely equivalent Spacer's Choice makes) and genuinely seems to believe what Spacer's Choice is selling him, but at least he appears to be self-aware enough to understand his failures and weaknesses. Or maybe he's just putting up a front to manipulate us into doing horrible things.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Sometimes people move on. It's the way of things. REED TOBSON: Scripture tells us we all have or purpose in this world. Our work shows us that purpose. We should not have to move on from it. Yes, we have lost good workers to desertion. We have lost even more to plague. But it is why we must square our shoulders and carry on. CORNELIA VECTREX: [Perception] You and Adelaide have a personal history? REED TOBSON: Losing Adelaide was the hardest. She was our only flavor specialist. When she walked away, I knew we were in trouble. Spacer's Choice Saltuna is renowned across the system for its quality flavors and additives. We used to sell citrus flavored saltuna in our heyday. Ever since Adelaide left, we have been reduced to selling unflavored and spearmint. I think I'd rather have unflavored. CORNELIA VECTREX: If you expect me to talk to this Adelaide person, I could use a little information. REED TOBSON: Adelaide was our only flavor specialist. We are saltuna canning institution. Saltuna without flavor is like a cystypig without tumors - borderline inedible! In Halcyon lore, a cystypig is a pig genetically engineered to grow cancerous tumors which fall off on their own. The idea is that being able to grow and regrow meat on a pig and harvest it like fruit from a tree, it's more efficient than just slaughtering the pig for its meat. This also lets the companies go "oh, look how much more humane this is", but of course the life of a cystypig appears to be mostly pain and suffering until they get slaughtered for their hooves anyway.  Now that's good eatin'. But never mind that, let's get back to our regularly scheduled programming.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Don't you people eat anything other than saltuna? REED TOBSON: Were it up to me, friend, I'd stock our larders with saltuna galore. No other brand of Saltuna adds as much vim or vigor to the body's humours. But - and this is something we must keep between the two of us - saltuna is hard to come by, what with being a species indigenous to the seas of another world. That world, by the way, is Terra 1 (not to be confused with Earth). There are some... slight import issues at the moment. I could've asked about that, but there is a more burning question.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Hang on. So what are you canning here, exactly? REED TOBSON: Oh, we've scavenged together some organic material from the surrounding environs. Mostly organic. Mostly local mushrooms. Some of which possess a texture akin to a well-boiled slab of saltuna. The difference is all but impossible to detect to any but the prissiest of palate. Texture is one thing, but... uh... at the risk of being accused of having a prissy palate, are any of these substitute ingredients actually safe for human consumption? At the very least, it seems like eating nothing but weird mushrooms and "mostly organic" materials might not be the best for your health. Speaking of which, let's talk about this plague that's going on! CORNELIA VECTREX: We need to have a word about the plague. REED TOBSON: Can we not? Talking about unpleasant things always gets my bile up. CORNELIA VECTREX: How long has this plague been happening? REED TOBSON: That I cannot say. There was no moment when the plagues began. Disease always lurks on the fringes of society, waiting to infect the idle and the lethargic. But in the last ten years, the plagues have become progressively worse. And increasingly frequent. Oh, of course. Just gotta work hard enough to avoid the plague. That is most definitely how that works. Fortunately, Cornelia has medical training, so let's see if we can talk some sense into Reed.  CORNELIA VECTREX: [Medical 11] You should have developed an immunity after repeated exposure to a single strain of contagion. REED TOBSON: Corporate doesn't like us using the word "should." It encourages the imagination. I believe plague is a test. It is a test of our loyalty and our fortitude. And it is one we will see through to the end. That is... not how that works. That is not how anything works. CORNELIA VECTREX: You must have some kind of treatment plan. REED TOBSON: Show up to work. Put in your hours. Wear a smile. Problems of the body come from problems of the spirit. Work improves the spirit and fortifies the body. *sigh*  CORNELIA VECTREX: [Medical 6] You know what else fortifies the body against disease? Antibiotics. REED TOBSON: And where do you suggest we find this magical panacea? Can we pan for medicine in the stream? Medicine is a rare and precious commodity. If you demonstrate you have earned the right to be treated, you will be treated. Otherwise, you must heal yourself. CORNELIA VECTREX: You withhold medicine from your own workers. REED TOBSON: If I had enough medicine to treat everyone who fell sick, I would. But I don't. I can't save everyone. So, I have to choose.  CORNELIA VECTREX: That can't be easy for you. REED TOBSON: It is not easy for me. And the moment it becomes easy is the moment I'm no longer fit to serve. Spacer's Choice is a family. And the survival of the family is more important than the survival of the individual. If he tries really hard, Tobson might be able to pass for a human being in another 200 years or so. Anyway, we're done with him for now, so let's have a look at Parvati.  Parvati comes with a basic light pistol (level 2, so it's ever so slightly better than our level 1 peashooter) as well as a one-handed melee weapon, the Impact Hammer. This does Shock damage, which is effective against mechanical enemies. We can change her weapons and armor when we find better stuff, but we don't have anything right now.  PARVATI: Hey, ma'am? Can we talk? Sorry. When we take the elevator down, Parvati has something to tell us. I gotta admit I was very confused by the tooltip mentioning a thought bubble above her head, because there isn't one. It's actually referring to the small [...] next to her HUD icon. But yes, that indicates they have something important to say.  PARVATI: Sorry. I- you just want to get out of here. And you likely don't want a tag-along like me. It's just, Mister Tobson has his own view on matters, on account of it's his job and whatall. But that's not the only side of the tale.  CORNELIA VECTREX: This is about the deserters? So what's the other side of it? PARVATI: To Mister Tobson, a person's a gear. It does its job quiet-like. If it squeaks or stutters, it gets replaced. The deserters are decent folk. I knew some of them, afore they left.  CORNELIA VECTREX: How well did you know the deserters? You worked with them, you were friends, or what? PARVATI: I don't know anybody well. I mostly listened to them talk, kept my head down. CORNELIA VECTREX: Did you know this "Adelaide" Reed mentioned? PARVATI: Ms. McDevitt? Gosh, no. She was a real important person. A flavorist. Made all the food taste decent. She used to work up in the Big Office with Mr. Tobson. All's I know is, she left after her son died. It was a real big to-do. I could hear them both yelling clear from my own place. CORNELIA VECTREX: You can't leave it at that. Why were Reed and Adelaide arguing? PARVATI: Can't say as I know. I wasn't there. The sound carried, but not the words. If Mister Tobson ain't of a mind to tell you his own self, you'd best ask Ms. McDevitt. If you can get out to her. Well, Tobson certainly wasn't sharing the information, so we'll ask Adelaide later. CORNELIA VECTREX: I can't blame anybody for wanting to leave. This town's got issues. PARVATI: Life's hard here, 'specially for them that don't fit in so well. We're one big Spacer's Choice family, but every family's got the one the rest whisper about. Mister Tobson's aiming to take away their power. They'll have no lights to see, nor heat to cook. They'll be at the mercy of marauders, or worse. I think you should talk to the town's Vicar about it. Max, his name is. CORNELIA VECTREX: Where would I find him? PARVATI: The Mission's on the east side of town. You can't miss it, on account of it being the only clean thing. CORNELIA VECTREX: What do we need to talk to the Vicar about? Flipping a switch in your power mill? PARVATI: About if what Mister Tobson proposes to do is upright. Leaving Ms. McDevitt's folk to their fate. They're neighbors. Kin. And maybe he can think of something else to try. Something we ain't. He used to go walking outside town. Maybe he found something that'll help. It's just an idea. That's all. Sure, I think we can do that.  CORNELIA VECTREX: I suppose it couldn't hurt. We'll stop by. PARVATI: Thanks, ma'am. I just think, when you gotta make a decision that'll hurt somebody, it's best to think on the right and wrong of it. That's what my dad used to say, anyways. We'll ask Parvati about her dad later. Right now, we'll head to the cannery proper because there are a couple of things we can do in there.   Of course, we gotta have armed guards making sure the workers don't try anything. That's one way to keep up the morale.  We'll head to the upper level to have a chat with the supervisor, as she's one of the people we need to collect Silas' gravesite fees from.   PHYLLIS GRANGER: You the new worker? Whatever. Make it quick, tenderfoot. I'm busy. CORNELIA VECTREX: Gravesite fees. I'm here to collect. PHYLLIS GRANGER: poo poo. Silas still on about that? Here, take the fees. I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell Reed I was late on my payment. CORNELIA VECTREX: These papers aren't signed in your name. PHYLLIS GRANGER: Because they're not my fees and not my gravesite. Guy I worked with shot himself. I paid the bill. That doesn't make much sense, does it?  CORNELIA VECTREX: You have to pay for your neighbor's gravesite fees? PHYLLIS GRANGER: If you're not familiar with Board law, you oughta be. Law requires delinquent gravesite fees to be paid by the deceased party's closest living relative. Which meant me. Shame, though. Eugene was a good worker? CORNELIA VECTREX: You said this guy shot himself? PHYLLIS GRANGER: Woke up one morning and put a round through his upper story. Can't imagine why. The kid was doing all right on his desk. We all thought he was an upstanding receptionist. Just between the two of us, I'm pretty shocked his weapon didn't misfire. Spacer's Choice handguns aren't the most reliable.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Must be tough losing family. PHYLLIS GRANGER: Eugene wasn't family. Hm? I do believe we read something about a Granger dying a while back.  CORNELIA VECTREX: I thought you said you were his closest living relative. PHYLLIS GRANGER: Yeah, I was the closest living person relative to his body at time of death. I'm the one who found him, you see. So I pay the fees. Suicide's a crime. The legal term is irreparable damage to company property. What Eugene did was vandalism. Oh, of course. That checks out with everything we've seen of Spacer's Choice corporate practices in our brief time in town.  CORNELIA VECTREX: What are they gonna do? Arrest his corpse? PHYLLIS GRANGER: When one of your workers commits a crime, the entire town pays for it. In other words, Edgewater would've been penalized pretty hard. Whatever Eugene was worth as an asset, we would've had to pay out of pocket to Spacer's Choice.  CORNELIA VECTREX: He was a person, not an asset. PHYLLIS GRANGER: Well excuse you. I'll have you know Eugene was an asset to us all. May his atoms be commended to the Law. All I know is Silas asked me for Eugene's gravesite fees. Which means he was approved for burial. Which means his papers went through. Which means the town's in the clear. I'm just glad to put this whole ugly affair behind me. Eugene can rest his bones in peace. And the rest of us can get on with our lives. So what happens if you're not approved for burial or your fees no longer get paid for some reason? Presumably, they'll just dump you in a ditch somewhere. Unfortunately, we can't ask about that so let's just leave Phyllis to her work and have a look around.  On the upper level, around each corner, there are two doors we can access. Let's check this one first.  This unused office has some loot we can appropriate, but the most important thing is this - Volume 2 of the Guide to Mechanical Engineering. We don't have any immediate use for this, but a proper video game protagonist knows an important item when they see one. So, this is coming with us. It would actually have been kind of nice to have skill books like in New Vegas because that would've helped make exploration more rewarding, but unfortunately this is just a quest item. While we're here, we can take a look at the terminal for some quality bullshit from the desk of Reed Tobson.  quote:From the office of Reed Tobson, Outpost Administrator: Wonderful.  Next to the terminal, there's a locked bin containing something pretty nice. There are some bits and various vendor trash, but also a level 5 Aramid Ballistics Advanced Defensive Helmet with a whopping 17 armor points. For context, our current armor has a rating of 3 points, 8 with our bonus armor rating perk. Heavy body armor will reduce our stealth skills by 5 points but heavy helmets do not, so this is just a massive upgrade with no downside whatsoever. drat right I'm stealing this.  Around the other corner on the upper level is Phyllis Granger's office. Her terminal has a message from Tobson as well as a personal file we can access with some hacking skill. Naturally, we'll have a look at both.  quote:FROM: R. Tobson Good old Tobson. Let's commit a tiny little invasion of privacy to see what's in this personal file, then.  quote:Personal Files - Last Entry We saw Theodore's burial invoice on Silas' terminal earlier. He was indeed related to Phyllis, who now has to pay both his and Eugene's gravesite fees, the latter of which we just collected like the heroes we are. I believe Theodore was her cousin. There's a Lost and Found terminal on the cannery floor with a message from the person who located Theodore's hand. I forgot to look at it during this recording session, but here's the text: quote:[FOUND]: One (1) left hand. Severed at the wrist. Some bone damage.  This update is going to run entirely too long with all the talking, so I'll stop it here for now. I suppose we accomplished a few things? At least we know our next objective, and we also gained a party member! Next time, we'll run around town some more and hopefully make our way further into Emerald Vale. ------ DMorbid fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Oct 11, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 02:13
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I do hope we can shoot Tobson. To death
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Oct 10, 2023 08:30
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That's not a very Spacer's Choice attitude!
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Oct 10, 2023 14:08
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DMorbid posted:Part 1: Halcyon and On and On DO YOU GET IT???
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Oct 11, 2023 06:13
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^  ------ Part 4: More Tea, Vicar? ------- Last time, we met with the Edgewater administrator, Reed Tobson, who told us we need to cut the power to a community of deserters, i.e., former Spacer's Choice workers who had enough of corporate bullshit. We'll go talk to the deserters in the Botanical Labs and see what's going on there soon enough, but before that we still have some errands to run around town. No time like the present... Our main errand concerns the gravesite fees Silas wanted us collect. We got Phyllis Granger's (technically her late coworker Eugene's, which she has to pay because of bullshit) fee last time, which leaves us with three folks to collect from. One of them lives in this house, so let's go say hi.   MARTIN ABERNATHY: Yes, Mr. Tobson. I'm fine, Mr. Tobson. Never been healthier.  MARTIN ABERNATHY: Whoa! Did - uh - did Mr. Tobson send you? You tell Mr. Tobson I'll be right at my post. Tomorrow. Bright and early, tomorrow. Because I am definitely not plagued. Spry as a spring chicken - that's old Abernathy. Uh... I see. Let's find out what Abernathy is mumbling about. He's certainly not looking particularly healthy, but neither are most people in Edgewater.  CORNELIA VECTREX: [Perception] You want to tell me what's got you so nervous? MARTIN ABERNATHY: You some sort of wandering alienist? Walking into a man's own domicile, pestering him about his mental state. No no, just an RPG protagonist. That's just what we do. CORNELIA VECTREX: I'm positive you mentioned something about being plagued. MARTIN ABERNATHY: You don't know that. I could've been saying anything. Maybe I said "vague." You know how words sound a mite strange when you're sick? Wait. No. Okay, listen, maybe I am feeling a little under the weather. But I swear I'm on the mend. Please don't tell the constable.  CORNELIA VECTREX: You should put a sign over your door or something. Or at least cover your mouth. MARTIN ABERNATHY: And become the town pariah? I'm already the oldest worker in town. I don't need to give 'em another reason to avoid me. Hey. You're hale and healthy and possibly for hire, ain't you? Do a good turn for an expiring old man. Alright, now what?  CORNELIA VECTREX: Depends on what you need. MARTIN ABERNATHY: Couple hours out of your day and some light second-story work. That's all. There's a cache of anthrocillin tucked away in the old community center. Powerful stuff. Stronger than what we got, anyway. I need you to break in, nab that medicine, and bring it back to me. It can't be that easy, or someone would've gone and picked up that medicine by now. What's the catch? CORNELIA VECTREX: Why can't you just buy some medicine yourself? I mean, we know why. Medicine is very limited, and only those Tobson deems worthy are allowed access. MARTIN ABERNATHY: I tried medicating myself with Adrena-Time. Didn't do much for me, far as I can tell. Anyway, I can't just buy medicine. Distribution of medicine is strictly prohibited to any workers beneath the acceptable margin of health. Company policy.  Adrena-Time, by the way, is a stimulant drug we can find in the game. If you use it, your movement speed and melee attack speed are increased by 20% for 15 seconds, followed by a crash that reduces all attributes by 1 and slows down your movement speed by 10%. It can stack three times and lasts until you rest. Not really worth it. Of course, the last time we heard about Adrena-Time was in the marauder wanted bulletins, with two of the marauders explicitly mentioned to be Adrena-Time users.  CORNELIA VECTREX: That's horrible. MARTIN ABERNATHY: It is what it is. Town's got a limited supply of medicine. Medicine better spent on a body stronger and younger than mine. CORNELIA VECTREX: I assume there are guards. MARTIN ABERNATHY: You will not find any guards within sight of that old place. Marauders, on the other hand... He maybe could've told us up front that there would be marauders. Maybe it slipped his mind because of his illness.  CORNELIA VECTREX: What can you tell me about these marauders? MARTIN ABERNATHY: I have it on good authority there's a gang of 'em squatting there. I advise stepping softly. CORNELIA VECTREX: I've heard enough. MARTIN ABERNATHY: So you'll do it, then? CORNELIA VECTREX: I'll do it. MARTIN ABERNATHY: Will you oblige me with your haste? I think I feel the plague spreadin'. Oh Law, it's in my spleen now, I can feel it. If you say so. CORNELIA VECTREX: Anything I should know about this community center? MARTIN ABERNATHY: Just keep your head down when you're in there. Marauders have taken over. Probably tracking mud all over the archives. Not to mention killing anyone and everyone they come across. Minor details. Anyway, let's get to the actual reason we're here. CORNELIA VECTREX: I'm here to collect your gravesite fees. MARTIN ABERNATHY: Silas knows, doesn't he? That's why he sent you. That's why he wants me to pay up. He knows. Look, I've got my gravesite fees right here. See? I'm good for my word. Get me that medicine, and I'll see to your payment. Just might be detecting the slightest hint of paranoia there. Maybe Abernathy is actually sick, but Silas surely would've mentioned something had he known anything about that. As we exit Abernathy's house, we encounter this woman. I walked past her on the way here, but at that point she didn't have much to say.   ESTHER BLAINE: You're making a mistake working for Abernathy. I'm starting to think so, yes.  ESTHER BLAINE: Excuse me. I'm Esther Blaine - Spacer's Choice actuary. I overheard your talk with Abernathy. I hope you're not thinking about getting him that medicine. Abernathy is a well-known hypochondriac. Anthrocillin is wasted on him. You're better off selling it to me instead. And why would we do that?  CORNELIA VECTREX: [Medical 5] He's got symptoms of something. You're saying it's psychosomatic. ESTHER BLAINE: All I'm saying is Abernathy's worked in this town longer than some of us have been alive. How do I put this gently? He's uh... he's got a lot of cobwebs up in his attic. That did seem to be the case. Why would we help Spacer's Choice, though? So they can withhold medicine from people who need it? CORNELIA VECTREX: What do you need it for? ESTHER BLAINE: I probably shouldn't tell you. Don't want you implicated for what I'm trying to do. Hey, if you're doing something that can get you - and us - in trouble with Spacer's Choice, that just might be worth hearing about.  CORNELIA VECTREX: [Persuade 10] Let me worry about that. ESTHER BLAINE: All right. Here's the summary. Lotta sick people in town, and we don't have the medicine to treat 'em all. Can't reach out to corporate without crossing a river of red tape, so I'm reaching out to you.  CORNELIA VECTREX: I get it. You need someone to smuggle you medicine under the table. ESTHER BLAINE: Something like that. Look, I'm not in the habit of lawbreaking. But sometimes you gotta do the wrong thing for the right reasons. CORNELIA VECTREX: I'll think about it. ESTHER BLAINE: That's all I can ask of you. Well, we probably don't want Abernathy to die even though he didn't bother to tell us about the marauders until we specifically asked, but Esther here seems pretty convincing. I guess we'll go get the medicine first and then figure out what to do with it, but it does seem like we could save more lives if we gave it to her.  Our next stop is the barber shop.  PARVATI: I cut my own hair. But Conrad sells real good disinfectant. Parvati makes quick comments about the various places we visit around Edgewater. Nothing particularly revelatory, but fun nonetheless.   CONRAD SADIK: Please don't touch anything. Your hands are probably crawling with germs. Can't even see them but I know they're up to something. But that's not relevant right now. CONRAD SADIK: Physical hygiene recapitulates moral hygiene. Cleanliness... is next to lawfulness.  CORNELIA VECTREX: [Intimidate 5] I can show you my hands. CONRAD SADIK: No. Thank you. That's quite all right. I've seen enough body parts in my line of work. What, as a barber? That seems concerning. CONRAD SADIK: I'm Conrad. You will report to me if your hair fails to meet Spacer's Choice aesthetic standards. You will also report to me in the event of your death, whereupon I will clean and prepare your remains for interment. Oh. Well, that makes more sense, I suppose.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Silas sent me to collect your dues. CONRAD SADIK: Ah. Gravesite fees. Silas and I have talked about this at length. I thought I'd made it clear my pecuniary situation precludes the necessary restitutions.  CORNELIA VECTREX: You mean you're broke. CONRAD SADIK: As broke as piecrust. Bitless. Indigent. Destitute. I simply cannot afford it. I am a blemish on the prosperity of our fair settlement. When I expire, I expect Silas to toss my body into a ditch.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Don't be so hard on yourself. CONRAD SADIK: I have to be. If only to prepare myself for my inevitable dressing-down at the hands of corporate. Tell Silas I can't afford to pay, and that I fully expect to have my medical rights revoked for this dereliction. With my apologies.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Hang on. Medical rights? CONRAD SADIK: Some time ago, I fell ill with the plague. By the grace of the Law, and through my own hard work, I'd proven worthy of treatment. Frankly, I don't imagine I'll earn that right a second time. The barber work hasn't been profitable, you see. I've had to keep this old place running with my own savings. CORNELIA VECTREX: Just give Silas an IOU. CONRAD SADIK: Not a bad idea. But I'd need some kind of collateral. My pair of lucky clippers? No, that won't do. Your idea intrigues me, but I'm afraid I don't have anything to give Silas. I'm open to suggestions. CORNELIA VECTREX: I'll let you know if I think of anything. CONRAD SADIK: Much obliged. Well, let's look around a bit and see if we can find something.  In the back room, we find a few corpses and what looks to be an Important Memo. Let's have a peek at the memo in case there's something useful... quote:Conrad, Gold teeth, eh? Seems a bit questionable to pry out a set of gold teeth from a dead guy, but maybe this could work.  We can talk to Conrad about medicine and find out he's not very good at it, but I forgot to do that this time. He is "certified" by Spacer's Choice as a surgeon, meaning he read a few pamphlets on the subject and is exactly as competent as that implies. Considering the fact Conrad is a surgeon, embalmer and barber, I do hope he washes his hands regularly. I'll see if I can get the dialog next time I record. CORNELIA VECTREX: [Persuade 1] I know about Eugene. Why not use his teeth as collateral for your gravesite fees? CONRAD SADIK: You know about Eugene?  CORNELIA VECTREX: I found a note from Phyllis. CONRAD SADIK: Then you know Phyllis suggested selling off Eugene's gold teeth. I didn't approve of the idea then, and I don't approve of it now. Eugene's golden teeth were a family heirloom, representing three generations of poor dental hygiene. He took them to his grave.  CORNELIA VECTREX: They were probably worth a few bits. But I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. CONRAD SADIK: More than a few. Those teeth were his personal savings. I can't ask Silas to dig up a man's body and pry a few teeth loose from his jaw, just to pay my bills. Can I?  PARVATI: Um - are you asking rhetorically? Because if you're being serious - ew. Gross.  CONRAD SADIK: Desperate measures, Ms. Holcomb. Desperate measures. I'm going to have to ask Silas to dig up those teeth. It's the only way I'm paying my gravesite fees. I regret bringing this up.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Are you sure about that? CONRAD SADIK: I'm sure that I have no other choice. Here you are. Gravesite papers, affixed with my signature, and an IOU. Great! I think.  CORNELIA VECTREX: I'm told Eugene killed himself. What happened? CONRAD SADIK: Eugene was not a suicide. He put a bullet in his brain, yes, but that's largely a technicality. I was the one who prepared Eugene's body for interment. I discovered symptoms of the plague on his corpse. And I discovered medicine in his pocket. Lots of medicine. Eugene overdosed on Adrena-Time, which is known to cause psychosis and paranoia as possible side effects. The paranoia drove him to take his own life. Paranoia, huh? Abernathy said he had tried self-medicating with Adrena-Time. Is that why he's... well, like that?  CORNELIA VECTREX: That's horrible. CONRAD SADIK: It's a miracle of bureaucracy. If Eugene's death were filed as a suicide, we'd all pay the price for his crime. We can all thank our lucky stars that young Eugene was hopped up on medication and suffered its predictable side-effect. I included it all in my official report. I'd like to think I saved Edgewater a great deal of money. We never could've paid the fines associated with a suicide. Another wonderful conversation with one of the upstanding citizens of Edgewater. Surely, there have to still be people living here who aren't complete helmets, which at this point is the main reason I'm refraining from blasting Reed Tobson and taking Edgewater's power regulator, leaving the whole town to die.  We don't need to go to the general store, but it's on the way so might as well.  PARVATI: I'm not allowed in here. Not since the vending machine incident. The what?   JULIUS MOREAU: Holcomb! Got my eye on you, girl. Ms. Holcomb ain't allowed in this establishment. Not since that little incident.  CORNELIA VECTREX: I'll take responsibility for her. JULIUS MOREAU: See that you do. I got a business to run. Edgewater ain't gonna provision itself, you know. Wait. If Parvati isn't allowed in the only store in town, where does she... well... buy anything she needs? Vending machines that sell everything are pretty common in various parts of Halcyon, but I don't remember if there are any in Edgewater. Well, unless you count the one from the "incident", I guess... oh, okay, there's a couple at the Edgewater landing pad and just outside one of the town entrances. Alright then. PARVATI: I won't touch anything while we're in here, Mr. Moreau. I promise. There's nothing we can really buy at the moment, considering the fact we have a grand total of 70 bits. Moreau sells a unique silver hammer called Maxwell, but that costs 3,840 bits so it's slightly out of our price range at the moment. I usually don't buy weapons or armor anyway, as we find plenty lying around when exploring. We have to hear about the vending machine incident, though. Let's have a chat with Parvati.  PARVATI: Something you need? CORNELIA VECTREX: You mentioned something earlier that I wanted to ask you about. PARVATI: You mean why I'm not allowed in the store anymore? CORNELIA VECTREX: There seems to be a story there. PARVATI: There was a- a kind of a Thing with a vending machine. When I was twelve.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Did you steal from it or something? PARVATI: Not intentionally! I've always been good with my hands, right? So I saw a lock on the machine and thought, "ah, this must be how they refill it." But I had to know. So I did my thing. Next thing I know, there's a couple hundred bottles of Zero Gee rolling out the front door and into the road. Zero Gee being Zero Gee Brew, a beer made by Spacer's Choice. I'm going to assume it tastes godawful.  CORNELIA VECTREX: You picked the lock on the vending machine? PARVATI: Well sure. They're not tough. Even back then, before I got real good at that sort of thing. Right about then, a bunch of loaders came rolling in the gate, fresh off the saltuna ships. And Mr. Tobson was up on the porch making a speech about how everyone would have to volunteer a third shift to get it all canned. Anyhow, you ever seen an auto-loader run over a bottle of Zero Gee? Can't say I have, but I can picture it.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Go on.  PARVATI: BOOSH. Exploded all over Mr. Tobson. One bottle after another as the loaders went by. I was just shy of working age, so dad had to pay all the damages. Moreau's still angry at me. I can laugh about it now, but I just about puked up my guts in terror in the moment. That's the one time I ever made Mr. Tobson look like a fool. And that's the story of the vending machine incident. I guess Tobson should be glad none of the bottles were filled with... I don't know, acid or something. It's Spacer's Choice, they might "accidentally" put acid in a beer bottle or several! You can't rule it out, can you? How horrible it would've been if Tobson had gotten sprayed with acid. Yes, horrible. Truly. I also quite like how expressive Parvati is despite the character models and facial animations generally being nothing special. We'll engage her in conversation again because there are more things I want to ask her about.  CORNELIA VECTREX: [Perception] I noticed you mention your dad a lot, but never your mother. PARVATI: That's on account of how I never met her.  CORNELIA VECTREX: You mean she's dead? PARVATI: I don't rightly know. She was in another division of the Spacer's Choice family. She worked in the Vale a few months sorting the cannery computers. Her contract said any kids she had, expected or not, belonged to her office from the time of conception. So when I was born, I got sent here. Is there anything Spacer's Choice contracts don't cover? Aside from treating your workers like human beings, that is?  CORNELIA VECTREX: That's inhuman. PARVATI: It's sensible. Dad just fixed machines. She did some kind of crazy math, high-level stuff. Better to raise me on his time than hers. She doesn't even find this situation weird at all. Why would she, having spent all her life in the Spacer's Choice "family"? To her, that's normal. To our Earth sensibilities, well... not so much. Admittedly, I don't really know what things were like on Earth when we left. The game doesn't tell us very much about those days, at least as far as regular people are concerned.  This must be the vicarage, because Parvati said that was the only clean building in Edgewater. Might as well go visit the vicar right now since we're in the neighborhood.  PARVATI: I've always felt weird in here. It's too clean.  On the left side of the building, we find the vicar. He doesn't seem too busy, so let's go say hi.   VICAR MAX: Yes, what is it? You're an outsider. Fantastic! Vicar Maximillian DeSoto, at your service. Or Vicar Max, if you're the sort who prefers brevity. And Ms. Holcomb, as well. How rare to see you out. And with a complete stranger. Curious.  PARVATI: Just tagging along, Vicar DeSoto. Don't mind me. Hey, it was your idea to come here. VICAR MAX: I so rarely get new people to talk to. Name your poison, anything at all. Spiritual counseling? This season's tossball predictions? The quickest way out of town?  CORNELIA VECTREX: Parvati wanted to talk to you, about what Reed asked us to do. PARVATI: What? I-I thought you would talk to him. VICAR MAX: You wanted to speak to me, Ms. Holcomb? Every time I've tried to engage you in conversation, you look at the floor, answer in single words, and slink away. Hey, that's how I handle most social situations. Hasn't failed me yet. VICAR MAX: I can't imagine what would be so grave as to drive her to my mission. What has Mr. Tobson asked you to do?  CORNELIA VECTREX: Cut off the power to Adelaide's deserters. VICAR MAX: Depriving them of safety from the marauders and wildlife. I can see why that troubles you. ...Ms. Holcomb has a soft heart. Always has, if you believe the talk. I think more people around here should be like her, maybe then Edgewater wouldn't be in the absolute state it's in.  CORNELIA VECTREX: What do you think of Adelaide's group, Vicar? VICAR MAX: They rejected the order of society and live beyond the walls so thoughtfully provided by our Spacer's Choice patrons. Does that strike you as a responsible life choice?  CORNELIA VECTREX: [Intelligence] Depends on how well the leader can provide, beyond your walls. Based on what we heard, they seem to be doing quite well over there. VICAR MAX: Astute. But I am here, not in the deserter camp, so that's not a variable I can account for.  CORNELIA VECTREX: So what do you advise? VICAR MAX: Assuming your goal is to save as many as possible, then you should bring everyone together. Send the power to Edgewater and convince the deserters to return to the fold. That seems like an extraordinarily long shot. That said, depriving Edgewater of power would mean certain doom for lots of people. The same thing would happen to the deserters if we were to divert the power to Edgewater. And for what? Just so we can get one their power regulators and gently caress off in our spaceship? Sure, Edgewater is a godforsaken dump inhabited largely by assholes and we haven't met the deserters yet so who knows what they're like, but destroying either community and sending everyone to the wilderness to fend for themselves seems a bit harsh. If we could get someone else to run the town, preferably with less Spacer's Choice influence, maybe things would work out.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Is that even possible? VICAR MAX: Not if things are left to stand as they are. If you don't mind a bit of unsolicited advice, be cautious on your way to the geothermal plant. It is not as safe as you might assume. We haven't really assumed much of anything.  CORNELIA VECTREX: And why is that? VICAR MAX: One of the reasons I transferred here was to fulfill my duty in hunting down banned, heretical texts. I happen to know such a book is, as we speak, tainting a collector's library in Emerald Vale. However, the collector's residence lies outside the town's walls. My retrieval efforts have been thwarted by marauders who've overrun the property. Should you fare better than me, I'd pay a handsome sum for the book. That doesn't really answer the question about the geothermal plant specifically, but okay. Watch out for marauders.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Why would a vicar be after a banned, heretical book? VICAR MAX: I just want to keep the writing out of laymans' hands. It wouldn't do for such information to fall into public consumption.  CORNELIA VECTREX: I'll need to know a little bit more about this book before I agree to this. VICAR MAX: It's a handwritten journal. A faded blue cover, with the name M. Bakonu handwritten in the lower corner. I'll mark where I saw it on your map. Assuming you're serious. It's not only a beautiful relic of a bygone time, it's also the thoughts of an early thinker on the nature of man's place in the cosmos. Not many in this colony could understand its true value - should they ever read it. I suppose we can keep an eye out. CORNELIA VECTREX: I'll look for your book. VICAR MAX: Thank you. If you retrieve it, you can always find me here. We can talk to Vicar Max about all kinds of things, but in the interest of saving some time I'll leave that for later.  We've gained enough EXP from completing various quest stages to level up again. I split the ten points between Stealth, Tech, and Leadership. 20 Determination means our inhaler now heals both us and our companions.  Next, we'll head to the Edgewater landing pad to find Ludwig for the final part of the gravesite fees errand.  PARVATI: When I was little, we'd get freighters in every Sunday noon. Now they only come but once a month. ...I love the wind here. We can see someone moseying around, so let's go have a chat.   LUDWIG MILLER: Thank the Law. I've been requisitioning backup for months. Guess the boss finally came to his senses. Uh, sure. LUDWIG MILLER: You ever swung a truncheon? Let me see your rifling stance. I wanna make sure you're up to snuff.  CORNELIA VECTREX: What are you babbling about? LUDWIG MILLER: The War! The coming apocalypse. Man versus machine. I'm talking about mechanicals, soldier. Cold, heartless automatons made of iron and lies. Oh yes, the robot revolt. It's coming any day now.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Uh. Yeah. Gotta watch out for those mechanicals. LUDWIG MILLER: That's right. That's what I been saying. We gotta square our shoulders and stand ever vigilant. Au. To. Mechanicals. Creatures forged in the fires of malevolence. I seen them over by the old power plant. Clattering about. Firing at the birds. Orchestrating their uprising. When the swarms of mechanicals come clanging on over that hill, where will you be? Cowering beneath your cot? Or standing shoulder to shoulder with the Resistance? This is all very exciting, but we do need to collect those fees.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Silas sent me. You owe him your gravesite fees. LUDWIG MILLER: I told Silas I'd pay my dues if he agreed to join the Resistance. Guess this means he's finally heard the calling. CORNELIA VECTREX: [Lie 5] He sure did. And he's asking for a little extra. To, uh, furnish the Resistance with mechanical repellant. LUDWIG MILLER: Mechanical repellant! A stroke of inspiration from the Law itself. Here, I've been saving up a couple bits for just a project. I'm sure we will regret this, but let's play along with the whole Resistance thing. By the way, when he says "a couple bits", he really means it as he hands us two bits for our efforts. CORNELIA VECTREX: If your Resistance needs another gun, I am for hire. LUDWIG MILLER: I been gathering up a war chest over the years. Saltuna cans, mostly. Some Spacer's Chaw. Few bit carts. I'll reward you for your aid. CORNELIA VECTREX: [Persuade 5] Proper armies pay enlistment fees. LUDWIG MILLER: Enlistment fees? Yeah, I suppose. Wouldn't want to give the Resistance a bad name. CORNELIA VECTREX: What do you need done? LUDWIG MILLER: They have sent a scout. Prowling around the junkyard, just behind our beloved town. This scout must not be permitted to return to its base of operations. Cross it off, then report back. CORNELIA VECTREX: If I'm going after this mechanical scout, I could use a couple pointers. Let's see what kind of juicy intel Ludwig can offer us. LUDWIG MILLER: Mechanicals got a weak spot in their midsections. I think the technical term is uh - the blue glowy square thing. That is actually pretty helpful advice, as mechanicals have very strong armor. Hit them in the blue glowy square thing and they go down quick. CORNELIA VECTREX: What exactly do you do here? LUDWIG MILLER: I'm Ludwig Miller. Associate Security Officer for Transportation. Officially. CORNELIA VECTREX: What do you have against mechanicals? This should be good. LUDWIG MILLER: You ever seen the way a mechanical just stands there? Just looking at you with its murderous oculars?  CORNELIA VECTREX: I'm pretty sure that's what they were programmed to do. LUDWIG MILLER: Mechanicals have been programmed to eliminate the human race. They have been programmed to replace us. First they will rob us of our jobs - and once they have taken away our livelihoods, they will take away our very lives. Of course, as we all know, the way it actually works is that menial tasks will continue to be performed by people while art is "created" by robots, as are things like translation. I work in localization and my paymasters can't wait to fully replace me with AI to save money, but thus far the machine translator just appears to be extremely drunk so they're not getting rid of me just yet.  Anyway, let's go find that mechanical scout he mentioned. The junkyard is right around this corner.  Here we are. Can't see any horrible metallic monstrosities just yet.  Aw, it's just a little guy! PARVATI: Aw, he ain't no threat. Bet I could fix him up smart.   DAMAGED MECHANICAL SENTRY: Searching for repair bay. Error. Navigation systems failed. Unable to comply. PARVATI: I could probably fix that. I mean, if you wanted me to.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Go ahead. We'll just let Parvati handle this because she clearly knows what she's doing. PARVATI: Yep, I see the problem. His nav-mod got dislodged. Must've taken a tumble. Just gotta give it a good push and wait for the click. There we go. Jeremy's good as new. Well, new by Spacer's Choice standards, anyhow. His name's Jeremy, by the bye. JEREMY: Navigation systems operational. Optimal path toward repair bay detected. Initiating self-diagnostics.  I like how his name on the dialog box changes to Jeremy once Parvati's fixed him.  CORNELIA VECTREX: Good luck, I guess?  PARVATI: Be more careful out there, Jeremy! Jeremy wanders off, and we grab some inconsequential loot from the junkyard before heading back to Ludwig.  CORNELIA VECTREX: You won't have to worry about that scout anymore. LUDWIG MILLER: You beat that scout to scrap with its own legs? Pulled its optic cables out its headcase? Actually, don't tell me. Rather use my imagination. You are a passing fair soldier, I will confess. But you are one, and the enemy is legion. What you need is an equalizer. A weapon to strike fear in their cold, mechanical hearts. Cantina. Lavatory. Behind one of the toilets. That's where I've kept it hidden all these years.  CORNELIA VECTREX: You hid your secret weapon in a lavatory. LUDWIG MILLER: Sharp, ain't it? The lavatory is the very last place a mechanical has need to enter. That... makes sense, actually. But wouldn't someone have noticed the weapon by this point? CORNELIA VECTREX: I'll let you know if I find it. LUDWIG MILLER: On the double, soldier! Don't want the bartender poking around in there with a mop.  Before we do anything else, let's have a look at Ludwig's workbench. I'm sure he won't mind us using it now that we're part of the Resistance and everything.  First, we'll fix the shotgun. Repairing weapons and armor takes weapon and armor parts, which you can obtain by breaking down gear or finding it in the wild. I think you can buy parts as well, but don't quote me on that because we get plenty of parts for free. A completely knackered item appears to be about half as effective as it is at full repair.  You can also mod weapons and armor (we don't have any mods right now, so I'm not showing that off yet) as well as tinker with them. Tinkering raises the item's level by one each time, but the cost quickly goes way up. Tinkered items also have to be within 5 levels of your current level, so you can't just spend tons of bits to make a doomsday cannon. I improved the light pistol and the light assault rifle (picked up from the Unreliable's lockers offscreen), but our budget is pretty limited so I can't do anything too crazy.  So then, let's make our way to the cantina.  PARVATI: You're not a big drinker, are you? Certainly not. Seventy years sober, in fact. That being said, we might as well go have a chat with the bartender and see what's up.   AMELIA KIM: I don't know you. CORNELIA VECTREX: I'm Cornelia Vectrex. AMELIA KIM: Amelia Kim. Spacer's Choice beverage dispenser. I don't know what you're about, but this here's a Spacer's Choice drinking establishment. We're all loyal, hard-working company folk here.  CORNELIA VECTREX: [Charm] And what a fine establishment it is. AMELIA KIM: You really think so? That's kind of you. I been trying to keep the floors clean. You got no idea how long it takes to scrub the tiles. Guess I misreckoned you. Sorry about that. I didn't mean to be curt - we just got some problems lately. I can get you a drink if you'd like. Gotta ask you to enjoy your beverage within the premises, though. Can't risk you bringing a drink over to those deserters, you understand. Yes, I'm sure that would be a violation of company policy. Let's see what they've got on tap.  I don't actually order anything because we don't have much cash on hand, but I did at least want to show off the dehydrated water tablets. Water, without the hydrogen or oxygen - yet another quality product from our friends at Spacer's Choice. Just add air!  I also like the Plain 'n Pure Water. 99% water, now with 11% more natural water flavoring. What will those mad lads at Spacer's Choice come up with next?  Here's the package Ludwig left in the bathroom. ...I should probably have phrased that differently.  This has been another talky update (which I think is going to be most of them, to be honest), but we've accomplished plenty today. We met up with Vicar Max, finished our collection rounds, joined the Resistance against the robot invaders, and made friends with one of said robots! Maybe next time we'll actually make it to the Botanical Labs. ------ DMorbid fucked around with this message at 11:02 on Oct 11, 2023 |
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Oct 11, 2023 06:23
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Oh boy it's the everything is terrible forever™ because of capitalism (did I mention capitalism bad) (also the "other side" is horrible too (because of capitalism (it's capitalism all the way down))) I don't even remember when I dropped this, I just remember I got aggressively bored of it at some point and quit. I'll have to see if I missed anything at some point.
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Oct 11, 2023 08:40
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I finished it and I still don't really remember much besides Parvati's little side story, which I assume we'll see later. It's kinda fun in its silly way, but yeah it suffers a lot for being a critique of capitalism released by a big company, so it was never going to be pointed enough to really say anything. The set dressing is occasionally clever though! I enjoy some of the absurdly exaggerated slogans and such.
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Oct 11, 2023 08:45
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Akratic Method posted:I finished it and I still don't really remember much besides Parvati's little side story, which I assume we'll see later.
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Oct 11, 2023 08:59
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Yay for CAPLITALSIM!
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Oct 12, 2023 05:11
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Please don't think what the game shows is actual Capitalism. It's dystopian capitalism. A true capitalist knows that the backbone of the company is the workers and takes care of them, making sure they are happy, healthy, and safe.
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Oct 12, 2023 16:12
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There are two kinds of critique of capitalism in media. You can do either satire of capitalism, deliberately over the top, not meant to be taken 100% seriously but still having some point, or you can go full into grim, pessimistic view of capitalist dystopia we live in, usually hidden behind cyberpunk/SF setting. Somehow Outer Worlds fails at both. And it isn't even because of "critique of capitalism made by big company", because Amazon, literally the most Evil Big Megacorp of modern times, managed to create pretty good anticapitalist tv shows (mostly because, in the immortal words of Joyce Messier capital subsumes all critique into itself and every critique of capitalism actually reinforces it) Szarrukin fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Oct 12, 2023 |
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Oct 12, 2023 17:29
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The sci-fi aspect and the ludicrous exaggeration of it all just makes it feel too divorced from reality to really be a grim realistic view. It's harder to pinpoint why it doesn't really stick the landing on over the top satire, but I think may just be that the space setting isn't set up to map well enough onto reality to feel like anything points anywhere, and becomes a hand-wavey, anodyne "exploitation sure is bad" sort of unmessage. It might also be the 50s-styling used, which... the 50s was the closest time we ever had to capitalism functioning well (especially since this setting pretty well ignores issues of race and sex) and kind of carries a positive nostalgia. I dunno! Maybe as we get on through and revisit more of the story we can pinpoint specific plot bits where things could have said more than they do.
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Oct 12, 2023 18:10
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IMO it's really the exaggeration. You can more or less immediately see where it's all going, and you get divorced enough that walking into the next puppy kicking scene you go "4/10, not enough distance, bad followthrough".
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Oct 13, 2023 06:52
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Akratic Method posted:It might also be the 50s-styling used, which... the 50s was the closest time we ever had to capitalism functioning well (especially since this setting pretty well ignores issues of race and sex) and kind of carries a positive nostalgia. According to Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, the capitalism aspect was also heavily based on the mining towns from the old west, with everything in those communities owned and operated by some mining company or another. There's so much here that seems really interesting on paper but isn't utilized to its full potential in the actual game. DMorbid fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Oct 13, 2023 |
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Oct 13, 2023 15:28
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DMorbid posted:The aesthetic is not supposed to be the 50s, it's a combination of scifi and the Gilded Age of the late 19th and early 20th century. I think they could've done a lot more with that idea and given us some really wild and interesting ship and weapon designs based on what people in 1885 might've imagined the future to look like, rather than these fairly generic old-timey scifi designs we got. As you play, you definitely get the impression that while Tim and Leonard had a decent base concept and a strong visual aesthetic going into this one, they didn't really have anyone else on board to save them from themselves. There is some really astounding character work in this game (both dialogue and delivery), but overall it suffers from the formulaic nature of the structure it winds up being wrapped around. Once you stand back and look at the overarching plot, you can kind of see what they were going for -- but as you'll no doubt demonstrate during this LP, all of the pieces do not add up to a cohesive whole. Something to keep in mind as we get through the initial set pieces and then watch the narrative fumble to explain (or completely avoid explaining) how that leads to the next set piece. To their credit, they do include a some of the usual Cain style choices (including 'Stupid specific' stuff), but unlike Fallout, there is no real reason to ever choose them. I just wish that when the publisher decided to do their 'Spacers Choice Edition' patch-for-pay cash grab, that the patch had focused on punching up the content, rather than just shoehorning in a texture update and a poorly optimized weather system that tanks your frame rate. The DLC packs show that they did have folks available who clearly knew how to string a decent story together (or at least plagiarize a decent story to wrap their own around), but that clearly wasn't their priority. I guess they figured that it didn't have to be great, it just had to be better than Fallout 76 was to make the sale. Still, I did enjoy it. Though I did wait for them to discount it by 40% before I pulled the trigger.
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Oct 13, 2023 19:46
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It's generic enough satire that it lacks a real punch, and it also doesn't really do anything with it. It's just kind of there.
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Oct 15, 2023 14:35
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Exactly. I don't actually mind when a metaphor is as heavy handed as this one has been, but I do mind when the heavy-handedness is all there is, and nothing is meaningfully done with it. Nor is any kind of solution to the problems presented put forward- it's just "here's a thing, isn't it terrible?" for a number of hours. I finished the game and I didn't hate it- there are parts and characters that I really like (Parvati!), and a lot more was done with the setting of "the Old Frontier West in outer space" than was done in Firefly. But it's a sad thing when you finish a game from a creative studio you admire and realize that you could recommend literally every other thing that studio created over what you just finished.
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Oct 16, 2023 16:54
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Part 5: Even More Edgewater ------ Last time, we talked to a lot of people. Again. Let's start this update by talking to some more people. Our next destination is the local constabulary. In order to make the wanted marauders spawn, we need to talk to the cops to start the sidequest. So, let's do that.  PARVATI: I've never actually been in here. Seemed scary from the outside.   CONSTABLE REYES: Welcome to the Spacer's Choice Constabulary. We are Halcyon's leading brand in frontier justice. The office is running a promotion. Purchase three criminal investigations and the fourth one's free. Only the finest investigators here at the Space's Choice Constabulary, I'm sure. But we don't care about that, we're here to shoot some marauders and ask questions later. If they are as dangerous as we've been hearing, someone need so apprehend them and we've already seen these cops can barely avoid shooting themselves in the foot (as they hit their side instead). I suppose we can offer our services and earn some extra cash while doing it. Err... extra bits. Whatever. VECTREX: If you need help with your marauder problem, I'm for hire. I'm just gonna use Cornelia's last name from now on to save time and space. CONSTABLE REYES: As a Spacer's Choice Constable, I am authorized to grant you legal authority toward apprehending wanted criminals. Know how to carry yourself in a fight? I've got bounties out for these three marauders. Cross' em off and bring me their fingers. Just one per marauder, please. I'll dust off the old fingerprint roller. Considering how the last fight went, I'm a bit hesitant to answer the question about our combat prowess. But I'm sure we'll do fine, we have Parvati helping us out too.  We can look at the terminal in the corner for more information on the marauders, but it's nothing we don't already know from reading the wanted posters. Time to head back out.  This building opposite the barber shop looks conspicuous, especially with the corporate guard outside.  This is where they keep the people infected with the plague. Now, going in there and talking to folks with what appears to be a lethal, contagious disease might not be the best idea, but I'm sure whatever Welles injected us with is strong enough to handle it.  Well, this is depressing. We have lots of sick people as well as dead bodies just lying there, with sprats running all over the place. Let's see if this person has anything to say to us.   ROSEMARY KWAN: I appreciate the company and all, but you really ought to leave. You don't want to be seen around me. VECTREX: Why not? ROSEMARY KWAN: Because I'm sick. You don't want to associate with people in the sick house. We're not worth your time. I'm in about as much trouble as I can be. No reason you ought to be tarnished by association. People are gonna talk.  VECTREX: You make it sound like I'm being watched. ROSEMARY KWAN: The walls talk, is all. We all got sights on each other. Any of us breaks company protocol, boss is gonna hear about it from six different mouths. Maybe you don't know this, but there's a real simple reason you don't talk to the plagued. You don't want what we got.  VECTREX: [Medical 5] I've got some training. I could take a look at you. ROSEMARY KWAN: Don't - please. I could get into a lot of trouble. To be honest, I don't think 5 Medical is enough training to treat a plague, so it's just as well. Still, these people do need some kind of help.  VECTREX: You obviously need help. ROSEMARY KWAN: That's kind of you to say, I suppose. But I don't need help. What I need is to understand my own folly. Company always tells us - weak spirits lead to weak bodies. If I didn't want to fall sick with plague, maybe I should've worked harder. Maybe I should've taken more pride in my work. Somewhere in the bowels of the Take-Two Interactive HQ, Strauss Zelnick is nodding proudly without really knowing why.  VECTREX: That's ridiculous. You can't blame yourself because you fell sick. ROSEMARY KWAN: I really wish you wouldn't say those sorts of things. I told you once already. People could be listening. I'm feeling a touch faint. If you don't mind, I'd like to be alone for a spell. Fair enough. Off we go.  Speaking of going off, the corporate guard out front starts shooting and yelling at the sprats escaping from the sick house. I guess you don't want plague rats running around town, but maybe the combat barks are a bit much. With our business in the town proper concluded for now, let's return to Silas and give him those gravesite fees we so heroically collected.  SILAS: Hey, Ms. Parvati. Come for a visit? PARVATI: Not today, just helping this lady.  SILAS: Lovely to see you about, Ms. Parvati.  PARVATI: Things going all right, Silas? SILAS: Been keeping him careful and true, miss. Hm?  VECTREX: What are you talking about, Silas? SILAS: Best to ask her yourself. PARVATI: My dad's buried here. Silas watches over him when I get- when I can't leave the house. That's nice of him, at least.  VECTREX: I'm sorry, Parvati. PARVATI: Oh. Well, thanks.  That could maybe have gone smoother. We'll talk to Parvati later, but right now we have to finish our business with Silas. I do want to know what's going on with Eugene, though.  VECTREX: We need to talk about Eugene. SILAS: Yeah? What about him?  VECTREX: You first. I know you buried him. SILAS: Well, yeah. It's what I'm contractually obligated to do. What's this about? VECTREX: His solid gold teeth. Could be worth something if you pulled them out. SILAS: Yeah. Funny thing, Eugene's body ain't where it's supposed to be. I don't suppose he got up and walked off, did he? People usually don't do that after a bullet to the head. SILAS: The night we was supposed to commend his body to the earth, I had his grave all dug up and ready, right? And so I thought, I'll just rest my eyes a bit. When I woke up, his body was gone. Spirited away. Vanished. The footprints nearby suggested that Eugene was stolen by marauders - or he rose from the dead. Err... hm. I think we might have to get those back for Conrad.  VECTREX: I'll keep an eye out for them, I guess. SILAS: Let me know if you find anything. VECTREX: Hey, about those fees you wanted. SILAS: You run into any trouble? Maybe a little, but he doesn't need to know all the details. VECTREX: I'm all done. Paperwork, fees, and signatures. SILAS: Reliable work from a freelancer. That's gonna take some getting used to.  VECTREX: [Persuade 6] I went out of my way for you. SILAS: And I'll buy you a drink some time. VECTREX: I was hoping for something more tangible. SILAS: Well, I suppose you've earned it. One good turn deserves another. For completing the quest, we earn 360 + 1200 XP (the XP popups can be a bit weird at times so it's often hard to figure out how much you actually get, so I probably won't be mentioning the exact amounts very often), 300 + 150 bits - the latter from the Persuade check - and +12 Spacer's Choice reputation.  I don't really plan on being best buds with Spacer's Choice or any of the other corporations, but we also don't want them as our enemies so keeping things cordial is good for now. It's also pretty hard not to have at least a decent reputation with multiple factions unless you go out of your way to screw them over or ignore all the sidequests, so we're not gonna worry about it too much.  I don't even know what you'd have to do to get your reputation all the way down to "Kill on Sight". Presumably, we'd have to kill everyone in Edgewater to get Spacer's Choice to hate us that much. But never mind that, because we have some stuff to talk about with Parvati. First, we'll talk about her mentioning the Mission (or the vicarage or whatever you wish to call it) being too clean.  VECTREX: Isn't it supposed to be clean? It's a church. PARVATI: I know, but- Vicar says the universe is a machine, that it runs by Law. Real machines have gunked up oil, scratches, and worn bits. You can tell they've seen handling, been used by folk. The machine Vicar sees is one ain't never been run. It's not for people to live in. It's something on a museum shelf, under glass.  VECTREX: Then why'd you want to talk to him? PARVATI: The Vicar's about the only soul in the Vale who spends his time thinking on what is and ain't right. It's just that when he looks at me, I feel I disappoint him. I wish we could ask more about why she feels that way. The vicar seemed friendly enough when we chatted with him, but Parvati doesn't exactly seem to have the highest self esteem based on what we've heard from her so far.  VECTREX: In the bar, you asked if I was a drinker. PARVATI: Sorry. I know it's none of my business. Well, as I said, we haven't had a drink in at least 70 years.  VECTREX: I don't make a habit of imbibing. PARVATI: It's not like I think it's a failing, mind. It's just- I live right across the road. Most nights I watch folks out of my window. When they came in here, they might be happy or sad. Mostly they're tired. When they leave, they're mad at themselves. Or they stumble into the alley and I listen to their hearts breaking.  VECTREX: Sounds like folk here live hard lives. PARVATI: Maybe so. But we don't think about it that way. Speaking of the bar, we picked up Ludwig's package so let's bring that over to him.  LUDWIG MILLER: Feast your eyes, soldier. This here's a genuine Spacer's Choice Injury Customizing Unit, designed to deliver a lethal blast of electrical discharge. I call it the Hand of the Law. You ever wanna see a mechanical flailing around like a grounded fish, you stick a couple thousand volts in its guts, with compliments from old Ludwig. We will not be using the Hand of the Law, at least not just yet. It's a gadget we can mod into our armor, but our current armor sucks and we need something better if we're going install any mods. Unless you have 150 Engineering, installed mods are lost if you remove them, so you really need to consider when you want to use one of your rarer mods. I wish you could swap them around more freely, to be honest.  VECTREX: So what's next? LUDWIG MILLER: Time's come for you to journey down into the black heart of the enemy's camp. I'm talking about the old geothermal plant. Unfortunately, the old plant lies outside my Board-given jurisdiction. You'll need to get a passcode from the boss, Reed Tobson. Well, we were going that way anyway and we have the passcode as well, so I guess we can take a look at whatever it is Ludwig wants us to take a look at.  VECTREX: What do you expect I'll find down there? LUDWIG MILLER: I need you to get us the brain of a mechanical. Well, not exactly a brain. Anatomically speaking, what we're looking for is a logic module. VECTREX: How am I supposed to get one of these logic modules? LUDWIG MILLER: There's the rub. If a mechanical breaks down, the logic module fries. So you can't rip one out of its corpse. You're gonna have to find an intact model somehow. I doubt we can pickpocket an automechanical and steal its logic module. Well, we can't pickpocket anyone just yet because we need more sneak skill for that. Maybe Parvati would know? She fixed Jeremy back there real nice. VECTREX: Parvati, is a logic module something you could help with?  PARVATI: I don't reckon so. I work with gears and pistons and such. Stuff you can put hands to. Computers and mechanical brains are outside my ken. Got it. Oh well, I'm sure we'll figure something out. LUDWIG MILLER: You know she names the mechanicals she fixes? Calls them Bess and Clancy and so on. Keep a careful eye on her. Could be a sympathizer. Let's hear this masterfully crafted plan of his. VECTREX: What are you planning? LUDWIG MILLER: Don't tell anyone, all right? I've got a contact. A real expert in the inner workings of the automaton. We are gonna rip those mechanicals' secrets right out of their circuits.  VECTREX: [Perception] Edgewater is in the middle of nowhere. You don't have a contact. LUDWIG MILLER: Well excuse me. What I meant was I'm going to get a contact. Didn't know I had to be all prissy about my grammar around you. VECTREX: Seems simple enough. LUDWIG MILLER: If you die horribly, I will pour out a can of Zero Gee to your memory. That's very reassuring.  The Illustrated Manual quest should be on the way, so let's go check that out first.  We've circled around from the landing pad to the northwestern entrance of Edgewater. There are a couple of houses here we should check out before we go anywhere.  This one is crawling with rabid sprats. Our pistol is so weak it can barely hurt these guys, which is really sad. We've also found a vending machine, but I'm not buying anything just yet.  On the balcony, we find a Bolter Pistol. This is a plasma weapon that uses energy cells for ammo. We don't have a lot of energy cells, but Parvati should be able to make use of this.  There is also a terminal in the house, which we'll naturally check out.  quote:Ideas for Saltuna Lite taglines  Wonderful. There's also a message to Tobson and another one from him. Looks like this house we're ransacking belongs/belonged to L. Gibbs from the Marketing Division, who has been hard at work coming up with taglines for the all-new Saltuna Lite line of quality products. Well, not having saltuna in your Saltuna would make it Saltuna Lite, I guess. quote:FROM: L. Gibbs, Marketing Division  Unfortunately for him, it doesn't seem like corporate wants anything to do with this new product line. quote:FROM: R. Tobson Good old Tobson, always so considerate. No wonder this house seemed abandoned and was crawling with sprats, because I don't think Lawrence has lived here for some time since his... transfer.  Like I said, I won't be buying anything just yet but let's just take a look at this vending machine.  As our good friend, the Spacer's Choice Moon Man, is telling us, we can buy and sell stuff at vending machines, with restricted stock becoming available with high enough faction reputation or hacking skill. I think we should be getting pretty close to that 40 Hack requirement.  Not just yet, though. I considered getting the Standard Troop Armor as it would boost our armor by quite a lot, but eh. I can wait a bit longer. I'll regret this as soon as we encounter marauders. There's some more loot in these houses but nothing particularly exciting, so let's just skip ahead a bit. There's still one thing I can do in Edgewater.  Namely, visit Parvati's place.  PARVATI: This is where the magic happens. Well, science. But it still happens here. Naturally, the first thing we do is take a peek at Parvati's terminal.  quote:Trouble Ticket 65565 quote:== PRIORITY ISSUE == gently caress you, Tobson. quote:[Trouble Ticket 65588 At least we got rid of the damned mechanical, I guess? It seems Ludwig sends these tickets often and is mostly ignored, as he probably should be.  PARVATI: Hey, that's- I mean, if you need it, okay. We also... borrow some mag-picks and bypass shunts from Parvati. I don't remember if I've shown off bypass shunts, but those are used to hack into computers and otherwise work the same way as mag-picks. Bypass Shunt description posted:Complex passwords are a security risk - difficult to remember and often written nearby. Security recommends using a simple, easy to recall code like "1234" or your supervisor's name. This, as I'm sure we're all aware, is exactly how cybersecurity should be handled at all times.  Through the side door, we can get inside Parvati's house, which is where she lived with her father until his passing. It's a really nice house considering the general state of Edgewater.  I suppose you'd want to keep your top maintenance people happy because if they're not there to sort out the canning equipment, the whole town is screwed.  PARVATI: If you're hungry, I could open a can of something. You know, we probably shouldn't eat what they put in these Saltuna cans. Fortunately, the stuff Welles put into us means we never, ever have to eat, drink, or sleep again unless we want to. Well, that's probably not the canon reason (and doesn't apply on the Supernova difficulty, naturally) but I like to think that's how it works.  I thought she was keeping this ammo in the oven, but it's just a cabinet. As a general rule, you should not store your ammo in the oven.  PARVATI: My dad's- it's an office. Just my office. Alright, I hope Parvati doesn't mind us looking through her dad's old terminal.  We can take a look at Robert Holcomb's last search, and there's also an entry for the Young Spacer's Guide to Mechanical Engineering. Let's check the latter first.  quote:I sat up last night reading through the Young Spacer's Guide. Almost started reading it out loud, from habit. It's been ten years, but I still have parts of it memorized. This tells us where the second volume of the engineering guide is - in the unused office where we picked it up. Naturally, you don't need to read this to find the volume, because the quest marker points you directly at it. I do like the reveal here that Robert used to read the Guide to Mechanical Engineering to Parvati over and over when she was a child.  His last search was "Indumati", with two records found. We probably shouldn't be reading this, to be quite honest. So, let's read the first entry.  quote:Indumati left Edgewater today. She's been reassigned to Terra 1. I kissed her goodbye at the platform, and asked if I'd ever see her again. We both knew the answer was no. "Look up and think of me, as I'll look up and think of you." And the second. This one's a note from Indumati, so it really seems like we shouldn't be reading it. Certainly not in front of Parvati. quote:Robert,  Uh... sorry about all that, Parvati. I'm pretty sure she's judging us quite hard right now. It's honestly a bit strange that she has absolutely nothing to say about us looking through her dad's files. Cut content, maybe? Let's move on and look at some of the flowers Parvati's decorated the house with.  PARVATI: You like flowers? I can't find many kinds around here. Emerald Vale is pretty barren, which is pretty important for the plot as we'll see shortly. Naturally, the Spacer's Choice Edition of the game adds foliage all over the place. Not to a distracting extent or anything, but that's still one "enhancement" they didn't really need to make.  PARVATI: I don't like coming out here. People on the street stare. Nothing too interesting out on the balcony.  PARVATI: If you need to go, I'll wait outside. Nothing interesting in the bathroom either. So, let's finally head out of town and start heading towards the Botanical Labs. On the way, we'll pick up the book for Vicar Max, as well as the medicine from the community center. I have that part of the update pretty much ready to go, but the whole thing turned out to be too long so I'll cut it here. Next time, we will in fact make it to the Botanical Labs! ------
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Oct 20, 2023 19:32
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Chalk me up as another one of the people who was really hoping for "New Vegas... in SPAAAACE!." I initially felt pretty good about this game, and then I got to the end of what you might call Act 2 and I realized I felt empty, so I stopped playing. I came back about a year or two later with nothing better to do and decided to just play the game that was actually there instead of what I had imagined it to be, and I ended up feeling pretty satisfied with the final experience. I debated getting the DLC, but I wasn't convinced it would be right for me. Ultimately I am hopeful for Outer Worlds 2. Will it be like Fallout 2 to Fallout 1? (I got into Fallout with Fallout 2 and went back to Fallout 1 later and found it kind of a let-down, so for me this comparison is a positive one.)
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Oct 21, 2023 01:32
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A lot of the game's writing falls short, but they do have some gems in there. The letter from Parvati's mom to her dad just hits me in the feels
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Oct 21, 2023 03:04
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I will note that even if Welles' super life drug makes us immune to the plague, it might not stop us from carrying it around. That is, depending on how it transmits in the first place. And also if the turbo life drug just didn't give us an immune system so strong that external microorganisms die on contact. This game does have the occasional good lines so far, Idumati's letter was pretty good, it's just that the world is a little too much of a parody at times.
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Oct 21, 2023 05:22
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The capitalism satire could hilariously be replaced by Soviet communism and you wouldn't have to change that much. Just have Reed spout off about the revolution and the five year plan and Stalin's vision instead of corporate buzzwords and you really don't need to change that much. It's not a good satire of capitalism. There's no greed! The closest thing to a villain is a dude literally quoting corporate slogans like a religious mantra, which is reinforced by the Vicar spouting nonsense about Spacer's Choice, but nobody in Edgewater is actually motivated by a desire for money from what I can tell. Sure, there's stuff like paying for the gravesite, but presumably that just goes offworld and nobody seems to be getting a bonus for keeping costs down. Its generic enough you could plug in whatever political ideology you dislike, but anticapitalism is popular among internet socialists and they have money so here we are.
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Oct 23, 2023 18:26
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Part 6: Serving Your Community ------ Okay then! Now we are finally ready to leave Edgewater and venture into Emerald Vale. Our main goal for today is to finally make it to the Botanical Lab so we can talk to Adelaide McDevitt and her band of "deserters", but we have a couple of things to take care of along the way. First, we'll see about finding that banned and heretical book the vicar wanted.  Of course, we also meet some friends on our travels. These marauders just never learn not to stand right next to an explosive barrel or crate.  As Vicar Max said, the book should be directly north of Edgewater, or a bit northeast from our current location.  This marauder won't be needing the assault rifle anymore. At this point, marauders with automatic weapons can deal quite heavy damage to us, so we may want to be careful as we explore the Vale.  This marauder strives to be the ideal corporate employee, but I think that ship has sailed. Marauding is definitely against company policy, no matter which company that might be. They're equipped with a rifle and medium armor, which is not ideal considering our current lack of... everything, really. The early game can be kind of rough if you're not specced for combat.  The Ax2 icon below our worryingly dwindling health bar means we can double-tap A (or the corresponding key on the keyboard) and a direction to dodge. As you may be able to tell, I'm pretty bad at dodging on the rare occasion I even remember to do it. I generally don't put many points in it either.  We kill enough marauders to level up, and I put my points into guns and stealth. With that hacking skill, we should be able to get restricted items from vending machines now.  Since I'm absolutely terrible at combat, I should probably improve our health with the Toughness perk.  The quest marker points to this place with the Cannery sign, which is where the book was last seen.  We also find some weapon mods. Extend-O-Sight is particularly useful as it adds a scope to your gun. Ideally, I'd also like to find a suppressor of some sort so I can become the sneak attack goblin I've played in games like this since Oblivion.  We don't see any books, but we do find this log.  quote:Collector's Letter Of course, it was never gonna be that easy. The cave is pretty close to the geothermal plant, so we'll head there later.  There are also a couple of messages on this terminal, so let's have a look... quote:FROM: Bartell, J. quote:FROM: Eldridge, C. Some background lore here. We haven't really heard anything about Earth until now, but it seems the Earth Directorate is supposed to be keeping the corporations in check in Halcyon. I don't think they're doing a very good job of it. Apparently, there was a Great War at some point, but they're not going into detail about that. Hell, it's barely mentioned in general - all the wiki has on the war is that it happened in the 21st century (on October 23, 2077, perhaps?) and led to the Earth Directorate's formation. Since we're not finding the book here, we'll head further north toward the community center.  This marauder is not having a good day. Sometimes, killing an enemy (presumably killing them with a critical hit, as we can see the exclamation mark next to the damage number) causes them to disintegrate like you're playing Fallout with Bloody Mess. The icons next to our health bar are max health and regen buffs from food. There are lots of marauders here, so I figured I might want something to give us an edge in a fight.  We've made it to the community center without too much trouble, even though Parvati seems to be hell-bent on whacking these guys with her impact hammer and has lost a lot of health in the process. We can adjust companion behavior if we need to, but generally I just leave it on the default settings.  Let's just loot this arm before we head inside. This belonged to the guy we exploded earlier.  We could go through the front door, but it might be a better idea to check the surroundings first. There seems to be something around the side of the building.  This leads to the back door.  That is a lot of red markers on the compass. Had we walked in through the front, we'd have to fight all of those enemies head-on. Coming in through the back means we have a bit more room to maneuver and take some of our foes by surprise. We don't have any quiet weapons so we will have to fight as soon as we take one of these guys down, but this is still better than facing an army of marauders the second we walk in. The door up ahead and to the left actually leads directly to our destination, but the door to the first aid room is locked. I think it requires 50 Lockpick, which we don't quite have so we need to look around for a key.  The vending machine here sells the Silver Tongue kit, which is excellent for my playstyle. +5 to all dialog skills and +10 to leadership skills (which make your companions more effective) will come in very handy indeed.  I also buy the Standard Troop Armor for extra protection and that Hack +7 bonus.  The problem with this armor is the fact it makes you look like a Spacer's Choice cop. Definitely not ideal.  Alright, let's do this thing.  This marauder wanted to be an accountant. It's good to have goals in life.  This is the main hall of the community center. The front door is to the right.  Okay, this is maybe not going quite as well as I'd hoped. We need guns that don't suck.  Shooting an enemy in the junk or in the rear end will weaken them, which applies some debuffs and is a pretty good way to start combat. One of the designers unofficially calls this the "Nuts & Butts" system.  This is getting a bit silly now. Here's the melee attack in action, by the way. Click the right stick or press whatever the keyboard equivalent is to knock enemies back.  Well, we do have one gun that doesn't suck. The assault rifle isn't too bad either, but the plasma rifle we picked up in one of the buildings earlier is extremely powerful against humans and creatures (and not too shabby against mechanicals either), especially when you charge the shot like I did here. This guy got one-shot, I think. I had more ammo than I thought so I could've just used this to clear out most of the marauders. UPDATE: Actually, now that I played through the section again, it seems the plasma rifle is also pretty quiet for a gun that shoots flaming red balls o' death. On Story Mode (I wanted to get through the first couple of hours fast) at least, I was able to stealth-kill my way through the community center and only needed to fight one guy at the end. He also got one-shot.  Alright, now that we've gotten rid of the marauders, let's hack into this terminal.  With 25 Hack, we can encode a keycard to the first aid room. We don't really need to, but might as well get the XP. We also have some more reading material here.  quote:History of Emerald Vale Exhibit A Mantiqueen is... well, it's not quite as fearsome as the mighty deathclaw in Fallout, but it's close enough. The director really wants a mantiqueen for the exhibit, which seems like a great idea.  Speaking of the exhibit, we have some critters in this hall.  This display is empty, but we can at least see what was supposed to be here.  quote:Coming soon! Mantiqueen (Varanus Toxoderidae) Didn't really work out for them, I guess. Let's have a look at the others.  Puppies!  quote:Canid (Beta Lupus Familiaris) Nothing about the pterorays? Well, they're those small flying creatures.  These guys look pretty mean.  quote:Primals   And finally, the mighty saltuna. Let's see what it says about them.  quote:Saltuna (Salmonidae Salinis) Lovely. Certified fresh. Maybe that description could be worded in a more... I don't know, marketable way?  The community center is a small tutorial dungeon with just a few paths to take, and we can explore freely now that the marauders have been dealt with. We'll start by heading through the door.  That takes us to the bathroom, which has a conspicuous hole in the wall...  ...leading straight to the director's office.  And another first aid room key. There's also a grenade launcher in this bin, which may come in handy at some point.  That's a helmet Parvati can wear. Not as good as the one we have, but decent enough.  And of course, we have another terminal. quote:FROM: Rosenberg, I.  quote:FROM: Trammell, L.  quote:FROM: Hunters & Trackers Ltd. I think the lesson we can take away from all of this is that Mantiqueens are not to be hosed with and should be left alone. Also, the subject line does in fact say "Please stop" on both of these messages, so I didn't screw that up. Presumably, someone had an oversight when writing these.  Alright, now we can head to the first aid room.  That's what we came for. Again, if we'd had 50 Lockpick we could've walked right in here without fighting a single marauder. However, there is another quest item upstairs, and getting there without combat seems like it'd be difficult.  Oh, good, our third first aid room key. Really needed that.  In the office area upstairs, we find some underwhelming loot and Volume 1 of the Guide to Mechanical Engineering. That's gonna come with us.  Now we're done with the community center, so let's set our course to the main quest.  And then immediately get distracted by a locked door.  Inside, we find a broken robot, a dead guy, and a log. I'm sure this will be exciting. quote:Scorched Journal Probably not the best plan in hindsight. There's another plasma rifle here if you need it.  Okay, that's enough screwing around. Botanical Lab, here we come. Can't help but notice that this area is considerably more lush with vegetation than anywhere else in Emerald Vale.   GRACE ROMERO: Move along, stranger. We don't want any trouble.  GRACE ROMERO: I don't know you. Yeah, we've been getting that a lot. GRACE ROMERO: Whatever you're looking for, it ain't here. Move along.  VECTREX: I'm looking for Adelaide. I need some answers. GRACE ROMERO: Answers, huh? You must be one of those Philosophicals. Already got ourselves one of those.  VECTREX: I'm looking for the geothermal plant. Know anything about it? GRACE ROMERO: A geo-what? Look, plants ain't my purview. You're better off asking after Adelaide. If you're gonna start wandering around my camp, know that I got my sights on you.  VECTREX: Where can I find Adelaide? GRACE ROMERO: Over in the hothouse, tending crops. Enough with the questions. No offense, but I've got a lot on my mind. Might as well see if we can get Grace here to open up to us a little.  VECTREX: Trouble with marauders? GRACE ROMERO: You don't know what "enough with the questions" means? No. I'm sorry. That was unworthy of me. Lady named Zoe went missing some nights ago. Just up and vanished without a trace. Now I'm pacing around wondering if marauders got to her.  VECTREX: I'll keep an eye out. GRACE ROMERO: It's not like Zoe to go wandering. Figured she might be out scavenging, but that ain't exactly her talent. I'm sure we can find her. Hopefully, she's still alive when we do.  VECTREX: Don't worry about it. I'll find her. GRACE ROMERO: Appreciate it. Honest. Let's see what we can find out about Zoe first.  VECTREX: Any idea where she might be hiding? GRACE ROMERO: Vex me. If she told anybody, they ain't telling me. I'd check her room, but I got yelled at for snooping once already. VECTREX: You snooped around in her room? Hey, that's our job! GRACE ROMERO: Little ways ago. She was always obsessing over her serial dramas. Wanted to see what the fuss was about. VECTREX: Maybe the marauders took her away. GRACE ROMERO: Could be. Dangers aplenty out there. No telling why marauders would steal somebody like Zoe. Got no useful skills far as I can tell. VECTREX: How well do you know her? GRACE ROMERO: Well enough to know we never got on. Zoe and Stefan were close. If anybody knows the workings of her mind, he does. We could insult Grace for her lack of interpersonal skills, but I don't think she'd like that. Instead, we'll say goodbye for now.  Next time, we'll explore the Botanical Lab and see what we can find. We can already tell they're actually growing fruit here, which is curious because nothing really grows in Emerald Vale. What's the secret? Maybe we'll find out soon! ------ DMorbid fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Nov 2, 2023 |
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Oct 25, 2023 21:49
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Alright, so my desktop PC had some sort of catastrophic failure and nothing works anymore, I can't even reinstall Windows on it. Obviously, my gaming PC becoming an expensive doorstop is not ideal for LP purposes, so I'm gonna have to put this on a hopefully brief hiatus.
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Oct 28, 2023 17:42
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Oof, my condolences. I lost the hard drive that had all of my music and photos on it a couple of weeks back and that sucked pretty hard, so that happening is pretty terrible.
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Oct 28, 2023 17:46
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The LP curse strikes again
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Oct 28, 2023 23:33
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PC Seppuku truly a sad fate.
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Oct 29, 2023 02:30
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DMorbid posted:Alright, so my desktop PC had some sort of catastrophic failure and nothing works anymore, I can't even reinstall Windows on it. Obviously, my gaming PC becoming an expensive doorstop is not ideal for LP purposes, so I'm gonna have to put this on a hopefully brief hiatus. Every time I have to diagnose problems with mine, it never winds up being the obvious problem. I hope in your case the fix winds up being as simple as reseating the memory or swapping out the power supply.
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Oct 29, 2023 17:55
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