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Tenebrais posted:I'd never really thought about it but Satoshi had some sort of terminal illness, didn't he? I don't remember seeing anything about that.
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Nov 25, 2021 22:59
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ultrafilter posted:I don't remember seeing anything about that. The game opens with him dying of overwork, exacerbated by an illness. We dont know if it was terminal or him being a workaholic sent him to an earlier grave.
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Nov 26, 2021 00:29
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The game opens with Satoshi collapsing while working and doesn't explain much. It's not until the very tail end of the game that we learn that Satoshi had a heart disease and an uncertain life expectancy. This isn't explicit, but given how upon learning of the original Satoshi's death Sergey immediately guesses it was his heart disease, it's fairly apparent.Tenebrais posted:I'd never really thought about it but Satoshi had some sort of terminal illness, didn't he? He was always going to die young. That in mind, I'm not surprised he was so personally invested in the potential of a technology that would let you duplicate your brain in a computer. This is roughly what I was getting at in an earlier post. Fedule posted:It seems, at first glance, to defy belief that Satoshi could be so loving shortsighted. The warning signs were many and he is clearly not an idiot. Furthermore, he clearly has enough of a conscience to object to what Sidwell is doing when that cat came out of the bag. I think we are intended to believe - albeit through a short leap of imagination - that the reason Satoshi was so singlemindedly driven to pursue his evotar tech despite both the grand philosophical, ethical and legal quandaries and the immediate game design ones is that he wanted to create an evotar of himself all along, so he could live - by some definition - beyond the limit set out for him by his heart disease. I take this position largely because it seems absurd otherwise that CrossCode should intend this character to be sympathetic, and this is the simplest way to resolve Satoshi not being a moron with Satoshi going along with Sidwell. The game never really advances this idea, it mostly just leaves everyone to believe that Satoshi was just moving fast and breaking things, but with how the game seems to sympathise so much with him and how plausible an explanation this is for why a sympathetic character might have done this obviously very bad idea, I think it fits pretty neatly. Fedule fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Nov 26, 2021 |
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Nov 26, 2021 02:05
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It's genuinely impressive how fast everyone managed to clear that dungeon. Like, Lea is supposed to be this CrossWorlds enthusiast that people struggle to keep up with during grinding sessions but when it comes to the dungeons everybody not named Emilie or Joern easily clears them faster than her... And Emilie will beat you a lot of the time as well! Especially because the other Scholars should be out of shape regarding puzzles, given that they did the other dungeons earlier than the main crew. I sure as hell did not remember the more intrincate element interactions when I picked up the game again after a year, and for them it had to have been around that. At least six months, which is the timeskip between the game and DLC. I thought Lin and Albert at the very least would have arrived later having been too busy exploring the place for hints of ~lore~ and the like. It's kind of funny that, because they were escorting other people much slower than them, your Spheromancer rivals are both among the slowest dungeon clearers.
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Nov 26, 2021 13:23
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 (DLC quests) "Guest characters. For crying out loud." You might not believe it, but there actually is such a thing as too meta. Also on the list today; getting some of our friends acquainted with Shizuka, and finally finding out what passes for an optional superboss in CrossWorlds. Let me tell you, it's a son of a beach. Notable Music: Shainn A. - Trial of Patience (Remix) - Not the kind of remix I expected, but I'm certainly not objecting. Notable Lore:  
Fedule fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Dec 2, 2021 |
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Nov 29, 2021 19:03
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Please no more backers after this quest 
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Nov 29, 2021 19:59
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This son has a
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Nov 29, 2021 20:01
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AweStriker posted:This Wukong has a
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Nov 30, 2021 02:36
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I'm glad you kept that one take where you keep dashing into the water and being set on fire because it's much more representative of the real CrossCode experience than your "cleaner" takes usually are.
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Nov 30, 2021 08:53
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"More drops" armour looks to me like the best possible reward for an optional superboss! Anything that makes you more powerful is useless if you've already beaten the game's biggest challenge, but equipment that makes is easier to fill out collections is still useful to you.
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Nov 30, 2021 14:46
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I forget, have you ever shown off Blazing Sun or whatever the level 3 Heat Guard Art is called? I underestimated that one because it was a guard art, but it's one of my hidden favorites. I slept on the level 3's in my original playthrough, but on my second (which currently is at true 100% completion with all items gotten, pre-postgame, and I'm currently streaming the postgame for someone) I've been adoring them and the variety they bring. The boss key miniboss is actually a fucker to solve if you don't cheese it. I recall you need to think several steps ahead so as to not inevitably get screwed by a forced color combo. I'm unsure if they patched them, but Di'aro was really freaking hard to dodge when I fought them originally. They overshoot you, so the natural direction to dodge in (away from them) will get you hit, and the correct way to dodge is towards them, which until you know that they are easily the worst of the bunch, with K'win being the next worst because of that one super where they shoot a giant lightning laser and shoot lasers from it. Anyways, Kulero was my favorite dungeon in the game, but I was sad when the final 2 floors were as short as they were. Honestly, I had the energy to go for another half hour and I wish they had continued. I also got this weird impression that there was going to be a dungeon item that would let you walk on water that you'd get in this dungeon, and that might have been a bit of a disappointment that it never happened, but that's more because of the trailer advertising "walk on water for the first time". Still disappointed there was no upgrade that gave the neutral tree level 3 arts and that it never really gets any lategame upgrades; would have been a great final dungeon reward v.v
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Nov 30, 2021 19:28
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(DLC quests) "[sage, yet stern goat noises]" Just when we think we're out... they pull us back in. Notable Music: Disco (game rip) - This isn't in the OST so I looped it myself. Presumably the work of Steel Plus. Notable Lore:      
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Dec 2, 2021 23:32
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The puns have finally gone too far
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Dec 3, 2021 01:03
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[upbeat poster noises]
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Dec 3, 2021 04:27
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I enjoy Lea just leaning into the idea that she can babble whatever nonsense and the NPCs act like she said whatever she was supposed to say. Clearly this is all setup for the CrossWorlds expansion where goats become a new optional player race.
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Dec 3, 2021 14:31
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I appreciate "Meet. Lea!" as a battle cry
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Dec 3, 2021 14:46
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Tenebrais posted:"More drops" armour looks to me like the best possible reward for an optional superboss! Anything that makes you more powerful is useless if you've already beaten the game's biggest challenge, but equipment that makes is easier to fill out collections is still useful to you. It's not an unsolid thesis, but; in accordance with the rules by which Ascended Gear works, the Body Armoire doesn't get you any more drops than the Plate of Chests, only incrementally higher HP on it. DimiPZC posted:I forget, have you ever shown off Blazing Sun or whatever the level 3 Heat Guard Art is called? I underestimated that one because it was a guard art, but it's one of my hidden favorites. I slept on the level 3's in my original playthrough, but on my second (which currently is at true 100% completion with all items gotten, pre-postgame, and I'm currently streaming the postgame for someone) I've been adoring them and the variety they bring. I show off what I believe are the only remaining combat arts I've not used yet in the last New Game Plus video, which will cover the DLC as well as a brief reprise of some base game content for reasons. I don't know how I feel about the statue stacks. It's a neat idea and a perfectly serviceable gimmick, and I like that they basically let you roll however you want wrt trying to play the game or trying to tank the combo attacks. Ultimately it's a little abstract puzzle they want you to solve under pressure, which taken on its own is usually not a very good idea but it works here because the game never demands you engage with it, only that you're okay with what happens if you don't. Now I'm thinking about a boss that throws FFXIII-2 clock puzzles at you. I didn't catch any buzz about any particular thing promised in this DLC but I have to say a new dungeon item would have been a very weird one to promise. CrossCode doesn't really do that sort of thing, save for the elements being more freely usable after you get them, which is only on a handful of occasions used to make an even slightly zelda-like scenario. I'm all for Albert's "longer the better  " approach but there's always such a thing as too much, even restrained as they were the bouncy puzzle rooms went super hard, and The Fall is by far the longest continuous combat segment in the game. It's all very well to push the limits, right up until you finally break them, and then it all kind of goes a bit sour.I'm mightily curious how possible it is to create custom content for the game. And a little terrified of what would come of that. Tenebrais posted:I enjoy Lea just leaning into the idea that she can babble whatever nonsense and the NPCs act like she said whatever she was supposed to say. I'm a little sad that nothing else ever came of the organic quest dialogue system that existed to be the butt of exactly one joke in Basin Keep although I understand why it had to happen. Finally, a scheduling note: I took too long to record and cut the last NG+ episode and as a result the last recording session has had to be delayed, so for the first and only time in this thread, which will have run for the majority of this year, I'm going to miss an update day, and episode 94, which will conclude the DLC, will go up on Thursday. (The other two videos are the aforementioned NG+ continuation and the retroactive Episode 68x, which will cover the Switch and Xbox exclusive dungeons)
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Dec 3, 2021 23:59
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The official discord has some promising mod projects. Nothing with significant gameplay content is complete yet, I think the biggest complete mod is one that gives all character combinations their own party banter. What's cool is that the devs chime in there every now and then to answer pertinent questions or just to say "i read through the dialogue and it's fun, nice work".
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Dec 5, 2021 00:03
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(Vermillion Wasteland) "Let's have one last talk." The game's over. There's nothing to seek here but closure. Notable Music: Vermillion Lab (game rip) - Also absent from the OST. Goes through five phases in the game, which I've mixed, rudimentarily, for you. Notable Lore:  
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Dec 10, 2021 01:31
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Sidwell faces the gravest charge in all the known universe: copyright violations
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Dec 10, 2021 03:51
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If you have all of a person's memories, are you that person? Are you responsible for his deeds? Tronny was made from Sidwell but could you have a personality that allowed you to control and manipulate yourself in the ways he did to his evotars? If an Evotar is an exact mental copy of someone down to their personality, emotions, and drives, it would make more sense to find someone else who you could manipulate and use to be your base for your evotars, but it also makes sense that you would be better able to interrogate and manipulate yourself because you know yourself and all your limits. That brings us back to how much of Tronny is Sidwell and how much of Sidwell is Tronny. I think the game takes the stance that you are not just the sum of your memories, OR the evotar program is NOT a perfect replica of a person's entire consciousness and the parts it can't copy it allows for randomness, which would allow you to create an Evotar of yourself but you and the Evotar would be completely different people with different motivations and personalities but the same memories before the split. You can also that you and your evotar split because your circumstances change your perosnalities and motivations going forward from the split. It's an interesting thing to play around with at the very least.
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Dec 10, 2021 06:05
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Well re: Sidwells crimes. He was using the intel he gathered in the game to blackmail, extort or otherwise manipulate real life people. And Last i checked either of those crimes are still crimes regardless of what the information used to blackmail is, whether its true or false or where it was gathered from. Its just the systematic torture of virtual copies of people that is ambiguous as a crime. Thanks for the LP. Crosscode easily became one of my favorite games ever and its a been pleasure to watch the LP.
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Dec 10, 2021 15:04
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ANH opens a lot of doors to interesting places and kind of tells you that they could totally explore them, but won't because the game is already over. Sidwell still isn't caught, Manuela exists but we never learn anything about her as a person, the secret of the ancients is a sequel teaser for a game that will never exist, many questions and concerns about evotars and their place in the world are raised but not answered. It's a bit frustrating, because, just like with a lot of base CrossCode, I liked what was there in ANH, just that there was not enough of it. Also I think the idea behind Sergey not wanting to leave behind evidence of tampering is that he's going to end up reporting what he finds down there to Instatainment later (if he could get away with being coy about how he got the information enough for Jet to keep his job once, then he can do it again).
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Dec 10, 2021 20:57
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CrossCode is a story about Lea and how she established a life for herself. There's a lot more to the world than that, but it's not part of her story.
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Dec 10, 2021 21:18
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Whatever the status of his crimes against the evotars, Sidwell definitely blackmailed/imprisoned Shizuka, Satoshi and Gautham, with two of them dying in the process. Add on all the actual organised-crime poo poo he was doing with the information - and he presumably didn't have clean hands even beforehand given he managed to organise the whole thing - and it's safe to say he's not coming back from whatever will befall him. I think the biggest, barely-addressed tragedy in the ending is that none of the other evotars are brought back. There were at least twenty people in the evotarground, who knows how many more off-screen. None of them deserve to live? Instatainment could be convinced to make evotars of volunteers, but not to let actual victims of the whole tragedy get anything? We went to all that effort just to save Luke and Satoshi? Kinda leaves a sour taste in my mouth about the otherwise very positive ending. Honestly it would have been really nice if as the DLC went on we started to see Homestedt get more populated with the various characters we met in the wasteland.
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Dec 10, 2021 22:16
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Tenebrais posted:
But you have to wonder if it matters. If they are backed up as data, they aren't conscious beings. When they restore an Evotar, are they reactivating their mind and body or are they making yet another copy? It's not really clear except that the restored Evotars aren't aware of time passing between the end of the game and the DLC. Maybe it's better that they stay this way. Also what about all the trauma that they were inflicted with? Their existence started when they woke up logged into Vermillion wasteland and found that they couldn't log out. They were trapped there for unknown amounts of time and slowly picked out for interrogation, torture, and execution. When you restore these Evotars, you have to mentally evaluate them and then you get to tell them that they are immortal avatars in a AR game that they can never leave. Lukas and Luke started discussing this at the start of the DLC. Everything they experience for the rest of their[Luke and the Evotars] lives is controlled by Instatainment and it's tech. They can't experience anything outside of what the software provides. Even if it is life, it's not the life they were expecting and certainly not a life they would all be happy to welcome. So if an Evotar is backed up on a server, is it a consciousness or just the intructions to make a consciousness? If it's the later, then they are already dead and bringing them back would most likely not help anyone as they are already at peace. If it's the former, then that opens a whole other debate including whether or not they should be given the option to commit suicide to escape an existence they don't want, but in a way, you would be right.
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Dec 10, 2021 22:49
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While it's true that many of these evotars might not want to continue on living (especially with several of them showing some noticable mental problems, either from the trauma or the technology), they have the right to make that call themselves. Whether they have the right to choose to end their own lives is an interesting question, especially since there isn't any other way for an evotar to die - their bodies are game constructs, they can't suffer illness or injury or starvation; they're immortal until someone switches them off. And even then they'd have to be deleted to be really sure. How alive an evotar in storage is is also an interesting question, but the answer implied by A New Home at least indicates that a) the evotar that's woken up is the same one that was shut down (ie Lea here is the same Lea that played the rest of the game) and b) that waking them up is a good thing to do.
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Dec 11, 2021 01:37
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This was a really good LP and you made me remember a lot of reasons I liked this and added some. It was also the first time I came in contact with it since I played it in 1.0, so it was great to see the additional content and changes. Thank you very much!
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Dec 12, 2021 01:46
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mastersord posted:If you have all of a person's memories, are you that person? Are you responsible for his deeds? Tronny was made from Sidwell but could you have a personality that allowed you to control and manipulate yourself in the ways he did to his evotars? I think CrossCode's stance both is and isn't even that complicated, although part of it isn't really stated in the game because it's very blunt; Tronny isn't Sidwell, but he was. He did the things Sidwell did prior to the split, when he was. Now he isn't, not because a person possibly is or isn't the sum of past experiences and choices and such, but because of the extremely blunt fact that his circumstances changed. CrossCode is too smart to directly interrogate and exposit on exactly what part of the circumstances started affecting C'tron's behaviour, although we the player probably shouldn't overthink it; what matters is that as circumstances diverged so too did some part of their moral character. The same logic that holds that C'tron isn't Sidwell is also what holds that New C'tron is Old C'tron. It's not any kind of a metaphysical observation but an entirely pragmatic one; New C'tron was Old C'tron, and exactly at the divergence point Old C'tron stopped existing, so the distinction is moot. There's no point philosophising about continuity of consciousness and such, because no observation changes based on the truth being one way or another. For the exact same point, see also The Prestige, and, well, for reasons of not spoiling it I won't name the other thing, but if you've played it you probably already thought of it, because a character literally walks you through this same logic. It's not clear exactly when in the duration of all this Sidwell made his evotars. It's not even completely clear how often he made them, but I think it's pretty implicit. C'tron had no idea if his plan would work, which suggests that Sidwell didn't know (whenever C'tron was created) that you could copy evotars, which suggests that all of Sidwell's evotar employees were a succession of first-generation copies... reading a little between the lines, and without, as Occam says, needlessly multiplying entities (what a retrospectively ironic turn of phrase), C'tron was probably created on the first in-game day, when Gautham discovered Lea on the MS Solar. So, C'tron is culpable for the scheme as a whole, and for the first several interrogations. This puts him in a morally very "interesting" position. There's a lot we can put at his feet, but there's also this; he rebelled. He rebelled completely of his own volition and for his own reasons. It's difficult to pin down enough of this to morally evaluate; he made a sacrifice from one perspective, but his "death" was inevitable anyway, and also from another perspective he lived through it. Sergey eventually contacted him, and it was C'tron who made the offer to get himself gone, and his only condition was not to spoil Lea's memory of her friend. Here's, I think, a much more interesting question, although one we're never going to get an answer to. Nevermind how much of C'tron is Sidwell. How much of Sidwell is C'tron? CrossCode has retrospectively characterised Sidwell by way of C'tron. Who's to say it stopped? C'tron tells us that even back when he was playing along, he knew that something was wrong. Did Sidwell experience something similar the whole time? I've said before that an aspect of Sidwell as a villain I appreciate is that the game establishes he's fully aware of evotars' humanity, but does this whole thing anyway. The way Sidwell talks about the inevitability of his "business"'s failure after Lea's arrival has a tiny hint of regret about it. Of course, Sidwell immediately proceeds to blow the whole thing off and stroll away, but that's only him fleeing the practical consequences of his actions. Maybe he was more conflicted than he let on, but pushed through it. Extrapolating as far as I'm able from all of this, I think the conclusion regarding C'tron is that he is a version of Sidwell confronted with a contrary account of his reality that he was unable to simply ignore. Sidwell had the luxury of being able to retreat from any serious contradiction and continue to insist that evotars weren't real people, until one day he didn't. ...but what's really gonna bake your noodle is, exactly when was Old C'tron retired? It can't have been before C'tron self-exiled from CrossWorlds, but there'd be no point in doing it after the raid on Vermillion Wasteland. Are we to assume it happened in the interim? What actually happened there? I feel like this actually wants an explanation. Rigged Death Trap posted:Well re: Sidwells crimes. He was using the intel he gathered in the game to blackmail, extort or otherwise manipulate real life people. And Last i checked either of those crimes are still crimes regardless of what the information used to blackmail is, whether its true or false or where it was gathered from. Hwurmp posted:Sidwell faces the gravest charge in all the known universe: So, here's the thing. The only thing that Sidwell ever expressly confirms having done with the secrets he acquires is selling them. None of the frameworks by which we reason about confidential information work if the person who discloses that information isn't a person. They don't have the agency to be guilty of leaking it themselves, and they don't have the lack of agency to pass the guilt onto someone who places them under extraordinary duress that their contractual obligations don't cover. There is not, we presume, any legal framework, even in 3500 Relative ACF Standard, that acknowledges evotars as being subject to any legal status. As far as any court is concerned, the confidential information in question just materialised in Sidwell's brain one day, and he's not bound by any confidentiality agreement. (...any IP lawyers in the house?) The only people in a position to charge any authoritative wrongdoing against Sidwell are Satoshi, Shizuka, and Gautham, who all have pretty straightforward cases of extortion... I think? Satoshi uses the word "blackmail" but from what Sidwell says to them it sounds like his whole threat was simply that he would have them take the heat with Instatainment. Satoshi's involvement is muddled by his willingness and Gautham's is exacerbated by his eventual suicide, but the core of the whole endeavour is that the primary leverage Sidwell had on them was Instatainment finding out about the scheme. Instatainment themselves, of course, have the most obvious set of charges, depending on exactly what Sidwell's position with them even was, but while the charges may be voluminous, they're basically all civil (unless they can pin Gautham on him); corporate espionage, gross misconduct, and, of course, violating the license agreement. And technically, most of that was actually all on Satoshi, being the one who actually forked the CrossCode and the servers, although Instatainment don't seem to care much about that. (Maybe a really determined lawyer could argue that an evotar, even in the absence of legal personhood, is still subject to contracts they agreed to while a legal person and thus compelling them to break them becomes actionable? Or, maybe another really determined lawyer could argue that torturing information out of an evotar counts as unauthorised access to a computer system?) GimmickMan posted:ANH opens a lot of doors to interesting places and kind of tells you that they could totally explore them, but won't because the game is already over. Sidwell still isn't caught, Manuela exists but we never learn anything about her as a person, the secret of the ancients is a sequel teaser for a game that will never exist, many questions and concerns about evotars and their place in the world are raised but not answered. Basically, ultrafilter posted:CrossCode is a story about Lea and how she established a life for herself. There's a lot more to the world than that, but it's not part of her story. Less basically, I don't know. I feel like a lot of these details are just details in a story that's over, like how all of New Home was, as promised, itself an epilogue to an arc that had already ended which provided some more closure. And, like, Sidwell is strongly implied to be as good as caught, and Manuela only matters to us because she matters to Sidwell and might be part of why Lea seemed to matter to him. The secret of the ancients being an empty sequel hook is, well, perfect, and hilarious. I think there's something to be said for not addressing things. I think it's entirely valid to have a story whose meaning hinges on matters that aren't settled and whose settling is external to the story, even if it would be really interesting. To illustrate this point, let me talk about Titanfall 2 (breaking out spoiler tags for a 2016 game. please play it, or decide you don't care and pay the spoiler price. There have been two excellent SA LPs but neither archived; one by Kuvo and one by Lazyfire): Titanfall 2 is, besides the best FPS ever made, a little drama about plucky protagonist Cooper and war-robot buddy the titan BT-7274. Cooper aspires to be a titan pilot but hasn't been officially promoted, but BT's previous pilot and Cooper's mentor and idol dies during an operation of which Cooper is the sole survivor, leaving the two stuck together. They immediately establish a buddy cop dynamic; Cooper the (relatively) fresh-faced newbie, and BT, stoic, literal, dutiful, robotic. As they journey together, Cooper bonds, and BT accumulates combat data. Many little comedic skits follow with BT as the world's straightest straight man. Cooper and BT eventually regroup with their organisation, who immediately try to assign BT a more qualified pilot, but BT itself advocates for Cooper and they are allowed to continue operating together. World-class FPS antics ensue, culminating in a series of setpieces in which BT repeatedly requests Cooper "trust me". In the end, BT sacrifices itself to give Cooper an opening to save the world (and possibly survives per a sequel hook which will never be resolved because the world is a gently caress). Here's why this is relevant; Titanfall 2 steadfastly, heroically refuses to address the question of whether or not BT is truly sentient. Even as the emotional crux of the whole thing is the central friendship, they keep it maximally ambiguous. The whole thrust of the game's humour is that BT is "funny", but it never tells any jokes, just rattles off information. Its bond with Cooper is contained in statistics and algorithms. When Cooper is threatened with reassignment, BT saves him by appealing to data that shows their "effectiveness rating", which sways his commander. BT asks for Cooper's trust, but immediately assigns a 68% probability of success in the proposed course of action. Its final sacrifice is fully in accordance with its core operating parameters to "uphold the mission" and "protect the pilot". The result of this deliberate ambiguity is that instead of expositing about sentience, Titanfall 2 becomes a story about what sentience means, and whether we even care if BT is "really" sentient, and defying us not to care about him. (Contrast CrossCode, which has us in the perspective of the AI, developing her humanity, and expositing that she is a copy of a human mind) So let's consider probably the most plot-flaggy but ultimately unresolved matter that New Home leaves us with; Manuela. She's got a surprisingly long plot presence, but we only ever hear about her by way of Sidwell talking to Lea, and all he really says is that Lea is a lot like her, and all he really means by that is that she can't talk. It's not even until New Home we even get a name for her. The extent of it is; she and Sidwell were close, and Lea reminds him of her, because Lea also cannot talk. She herself is completely external to matters, never met in-game, presumably not privy to Sidwell's schemes. Despite this complete non-presence, Manuela is instrumental in the characterisation of Sidwell, and, of course, to that of C'tron. It's because of her that Sidwell bonds with Lea, even though he never seems to tell Lea much of anything about her. We're invited to read into that; the fact that Sidwell relates most closely to someone he can't simply mine for information, the fact that he seems to have so little else to say about her, the fact that he is in fact the sole source of information about her, and may not be trustworthy. It's because of Sidwell's bonding with Lea that Lea later connects him to C'tron. There's a non-zero chance that it's because C'tron is a copy of Sidwell, who cared deeply about both Manuela and Lea, that C'tron was put ill at ease on first meeting his assigned target, which set in motion his eventual arguable redemption, and, in retrospect, almost certainly because C'tron remembered Manuela that Sidwell was eventually tracked down. Sidwell bragged about his connections with people while simultaneously deriding all those connections as shallow, but his one apparently genuine connection played a role in his undoing. None of this gives anyone besides C'tron any real reason to learn a lot about her; she's somebody else, not any of our business. I think the game's better for not lingering on her, or her relationship with Sidwell; her existence is used to humanise Sidwell, or rather, Sidwell uses her existence to humanise himself, but by the same token she deserves not to have to be examined as a result of that. Tenebrais posted:I think the biggest, barely-addressed tragedy in the ending is that none of the other evotars are brought back. There were at least twenty people in the evotarground, who knows how many more off-screen. None of them deserve to live? Instatainment could be convinced to make evotars of volunteers, but not to let actual victims of the whole tragedy get anything? We went to all that effort just to save Luke and Satoshi? In retrospect, the "volunteers" line is pretty eyebrow-raising. For a long while I thought the whole plan was to house the Vermillion Evotars in Homestedt, but I guess they're just doing... open signups? Create an AI clone of yourself for... fun? profit? This seems sane. mastersord posted:But you have to wonder if it matters. If they are backed up as data, they aren't conscious beings. When they restore an Evotar, are they reactivating their mind and body or are they making yet another copy? It's not really clear except that the restored Evotars aren't aware of time passing between the end of the game and the DLC. Maybe it's better that they stay this way. Tenebrais posted:While it's true that many of these evotars might not want to continue on living (especially with several of them showing some noticable mental problems, either from the trauma or the technology), they have the right to make that call themselves. Whether they have the right to choose to end their own lives is an interesting question, especially since there isn't any other way for an evotar to die - their bodies are game constructs, they can't suffer illness or injury or starvation; they're immortal until someone switches them off. And even then they'd have to be deleted to be really sure. Evotars, it seems, are specifically only active when literally logged in to CrossWorlds, (as suggested generally in dialogue and also backed up by every time we are referred to as being "online" or "offline"; Luke and C'tron also do this in New Home). So they aren't fully conscious otherwise... but they can dream, as shown by Lea and C'tron. So, I dunno. It's not really ever clarified what the at-rest data looks like or how it works, and I think we're not meant to question this, like, I know I've done a lot of reading into things in this post alone but at the same time what I read into this is that what goes on in a CrossCode when it's not operational is beyond the capacity of this game to detail. It was already starting to strain a little with the exposition we got on the avatar servers and the various evotar servers; I don't think there's a straight answer to be gotten about where the data stops and the processes start here. Even the standard CrossCode is basically magic. Rigged Death Trap posted:Thanks for the LP. Crosscode easily became one of my favorite games ever and its a been pleasure to watch the LP. cant cook creole bream posted:This was a really good LP and you made me remember a lot of reasons I liked this and added some. We've got two more episodes still, but yeah. Also maybe I'll gently caress around and make a three hour essay in the "genius and here's why" vein or something one day. I threaten to do that a lot. Or maybe I'll just make another LP like a chump.
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Dec 12, 2021 06:54
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I think what they meant by “volunteers” might just be the other Vermilion Wasteland evotars. I can kind of see Insta reaching out to selected players but they already have some right there; why wouldn’t they try waking them up?
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Dec 12, 2021 11:01
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Thank you for showing just how much "a lot" is. Looking forward to seeing the changes in NG+ for the DLC.Fedule posted:...but what's really gonna bake your noodle is, exactly when was Old C'tron retired? It can't have been before C'tron self-exiled from CrossWorlds, but there'd be no point in doing it after the raid on Vermillion Wasteland. Are we to assume it happened in the interim? What actually happened there? I feel like this actually wants an explanation. You know, this raises a very interesting point... who was the C'tron at the end of the base game? Old C'tron before deletion when "there's no point"? Another fresh C'tron to the grinder(least sensible option IMO)? Just Sidwell himself logging in with the C'tron account? ...I suppose the last one actually makes a lot of sense, him taking one final look at how it all went, contemplating a remark made about the environment. Fedule posted:Evotars, it seems, are specifically only active when literally logged in to CrossWorlds, (as suggested generally in dialogue and also backed up by every time we are referred to as being "online" or "offline"; Luke and C'tron also do this in New Home). So they aren't fully conscious otherwise... but they can dream, as shown by Lea and C'tron. So, I dunno. It's not really ever clarified what the at-rest data looks like or how it works, and I think we're not meant to question this, like, I know I've done a lot of reading into things in this post alone but at the same time what I read into this is that what goes on in a CrossCode when it's not operational is beyond the capacity of this game to detail. It was already starting to strain a little with the exposition we got on the avatar servers and the various evotar servers; I don't think there's a straight answer to be gotten about where the data stops and the processes start here. Even the standard CrossCode is basically magic. If you stop to think, most of the operation of CrossGear is just pure magic, sure with the mind map you solve the latency when controlling the game... except how exactly is the experience of it returned to the player? Even if we assume FTL communication of some sort, which would be needed for this to make any sense at all, you've now got a situation where a player could essentially log in, take the gear off and do other stuff, and return to log out and receive the "experience" of playing through some method... but that has a chance of leading to split personalities, so does the gear just render you catatonic while playing? Emilie broods on about CrossWorlds taking up a bunch of her time and leading to frustrated classmates, so it surely cannot be that you can just take it off and let your avatar go about doing stuff on its own. I suppose it could just be that there's a long enough delay that however the players experience it, they're maybe sort of watching themselves operate on auto-pilot in the game through the avatar's eyes, which I feel like might be a little bit creepy, and hopefully they'll have found a way to prevent motion sickness in the future, if it doesn't effectively override all your senses while "playing back"... Thankfully it feels like the rest of the story is well done enough that the implications of the tech can be pushed into the "don't worry about it" folder. The exact method isn't important, just the end result of a copy person. Something about technology advanced enough to be indistinguishable from magic.
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Dec 12, 2021 18:22
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(New Game Plus 3) "Let's get this over with." Thanks for sticking with us, folks. Notable Music: Shinkai Setsuna - The Ultimate Experience (Piano Arrangement) - Honestly I think this doesn't work, but I'm here for the sheet music. With the time signatures.
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Dec 14, 2021 01:59
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Anyway, next time when 68x rolls out to close out the LP I'm gonna put it in its correct spot in the playlist and the OP, but as far as the thread sees it'll just be one more update. Hopefully that won't confuse it whenever the gently caress I get around to doing archive things.
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Dec 14, 2021 02:14
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It wasn't commented by either of you, but I found the teary-eyed Emilie's "Whaaaaaat?" as the very last encounter you fight together, evaporates yet again without much input from her, somehow hilarious. I know it's her reaction to that one attack of Sidwell's, but the timing was quite amusing.
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Dec 14, 2021 10:05
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I would hazard a guess that the 9999 damage cap on those pillar enemies is going to be because the separate faces aren't actually separate enemies, and it's using some modulo 10000 thing to manage the different phases. A cap would stop you from messing that up with particularly heavy hits.
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Dec 14, 2021 14:21
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So, um, did you know you can die during the credits? It's totally possible if you have Prepare to Hi enabled; I think the fish do contact damage. And it will actually be treated like a real death, and restart you from the beginning of the credits sequence. (Thankfully, the game will tell you you can skip fighting the fish by leaving through the bottom corridor if you want, it would be a bit spiteful if they made the credits a final mandatory challenge...) CrossCode, folks. It's a little premature yet for all the end-of-LP caterwauling, but regardless, thanks again for showing off this game. I'd never have played it if not for this thread, and while I may have found it very frustrating in places (and certainly can't say I enjoyed every moment of it, nor do I expect you all enjoyed my endless grousing about certain things), I loved this game and it's definitely going to be one of my all-time favourites.
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Dec 15, 2021 03:34
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Fedule posted:
So, uh, Apollo actually has different dialogue if you don't die to him with Prepare to Hi enabled but you do have sergey hax enabled; I'm not sure if it's dying to him with that enabled or if it's having it enabled at all that led to the dialogue you got; but they actually have two other different dialogue branches depending on whether or not you curbstomp the fight or if you lose it. Curbstomping leads to yet another copypasta and it's amazing, but I'm pretty sure dying to him has him compliment you on throwing the fight despite being able to win. I didn't even know that he calls the fight fair when he realizes that you instantly die in one hit too; that's a really good touch. Also yeah, Blazing Sun, in case it isn't clear what it's doing, basically buffs your melee attack's range, giving it humungous range for it's duration. It's a guard art in the way that having a good offense is a good defense, being able to melee enemies from afar, and honestly it's one of my favorites. Also, this might be a spoiler for 68x, so spoiling it, but... The whole climbing on enemies being against Instatainment Policy thing is actually disproven by one of the unique bosses going to be shown off, as you do shadow of the colossus it and climb it. Also, I'm sad that PC got the scorpion, AKA the least well designed fight of the quartet; the other 3 bosses are really well made and I'm glad they're available on PC too now. DimiPZC fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Dec 17, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 21:51
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Yeah, I liked the "regular" version of the Sergey hax fight with Apollo more where you clown all over him once more. His total and complete frustration make the following scene with Joern much sweeter/funnier and serves as a decent "epilogue" of sorts for the whole Sergey hax series of events.
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Dec 17, 2021 20:49
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I like that Apollo starts to really enjoy the fight the moment he realizes that Lea has been playing on Heaven or Hell the entire time. It's a really good touch.
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Dec 18, 2021 00:25
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 20:48 |
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RIP thread?
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Dec 26, 2021 21:43
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