|
QAnon: The RPG Welcome back! Last time on the Sex and Violence run of ATOM RPG, we got a rude extortionist guard to smoke himself to death and then impressed a local hospital girl with our love of books and our mighty Cossack sword. Today we're going to do some more dumb poo poo, namely walking around Kraznoznamenny and meeting the many weird and dumb people there. For anyone worried about a certain other LP, that is still going!  If you don't have Fidel with you, this lady talks about boring beetroot poo poo and gives you a free one.  : [When the woman notices Fidel, her smile and look become even more friendly. Her cheeks turn red...]Things get considerably more interesting if you bring along Fidel.  : Oh you are also here, comrade inn-keeper? Hello... What an interesting new friend you have.Margarita is, per the Russian wiki, Natalie Wood.  : Well I am more interested in who let this fragile lady carry all of this heavy beetroot... We can help you.I mean, I guess we make Fidel carry enough guns and stuff, it's only fai - what am I saying? No!  I guess a different translator worked on this one, huh?  : I've got other things on my mind besides beetroot. How do you and Fidel know each other? I mean, if you are allowed to disclose this kind of information.: [The woman lowers her gaze, but her kind smile stays]: Well... One could say we are good friends... Him and I. After my husband was injured by a myrmic-lion on a hunt, he was in a coma for more than a month... His whole body was covered by these tiny infected cuts that were left by the monster's poisonous mandibles. Uh huh. : Not only that the comrade innkeeper saved my Gena... He didn't even ask for any money for this help. Oh! Without your help, Fidel, without you being my manly pillar, during those one and a half months... I would've perished.: That's nothing. When it comes to you, Margarita, I will not stop at anything... Well, ATOM characterizes the protagonist very effectively as a boorish rear end in a top hat, so... : So did you do it? [Make a raunchy face] : How dare you! For God's sake! I'm married!They did it  This is a hilariously unfunny failed save. : [Fidel whispers]: Try something like this again and we will have a serious talk...!Buddy, I'm not the one declaring I would do anything for a married woman.  : Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking, making a joke like that. I need a breath of fresh air.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 Ha ha.  This is Margarita's husband. He sucks.  He's apparently called giraffe because, uh...I'm not sure what happened here but he watched his cell mate behave inappropriately?  So while he's imagining his wife after being free she's looking for somebody like Fidel. I take that last option and avoid the sheer awkwardness of this whole thing.  The Mushroom Cult has a building here with an Illuminati (it's not the Eye of Truth!) pyramid on it. I'm sure that's not at all ominous.  This girl outside the brothel is advertising the casino, and gets really unfriendly when we press her for personal information. What a waste of time.  Fidel introduces this guy as "my informer from the city" but he doesn't offer you any kind of useful plot information. It's a casino full of verbose NPCs.  This lady drops some ominous foreshadowing on us.  I'm sure this Mushroom Cult isn't that important.  This guy runs the gun store. He's not super important, but if you follow the skill prompts you get 15 points in automatic weapons from watching him clean an AK. His barter is super high (as the pacifist run mentioned) so you won't get good prices, but...  He sells crazy poo poo like machine guns. We need a lot more cash, alas.  This fucker extorts you when you walk past, but if you have Fidel he can talk your way out of it. Really, gently caress this town.  Is this a reference? I have no idea!  Tinfoil man has a quest we'll be putting off for a little while.  This guy has a "funny" schtick where he was in a mental institution, but now he's a Soviet era dissident. The thing about this game's English localization is that wherever the writing can go for the laziest form of humor, it strides boldly forward.   This seems ominous. : Have we met before? This is a weird reaction to me...: [The woman winks at you and stifles a laugh] : Not in person, not in person. I, Yegoria Mikhailovna, am free of any relatiohships and very open to interesting rumours. I've been interested in you ever since people started talking of some unknown man who came to the Otradnoye gate. : Well, people have been teasing me for my nondescript appearance since childhood. Are you following their example?: I see! You're just nondescript! How silly of me not to think of it! : Now that it's clear, can we change the subject? : Although perhaps you could answer a couple questions first?: [The woman waves dismissively, as if she's been asked this too many times] This kind of meta humor really isn't funny when it's the devs putting these words in your mouth. "Ha ha! You do boring fetch quests and ask asinine questions because that's all that's in the dialogue tree" is just such basic internet humor that it's not particularly funny or insightful "Lol them video games sure don't reflect reality!" : What do people say about the Chamber of Commerce? Yashin is the trader from Otradnoye Kovalev didn't trust. : Goodness gracious. I have another question... : Are there any rumours circulating in the suburbs?   : Truer words have never been said... Can I ask another question?  I mean, the game beats you over the head with it by having the police extort you twice. : One hand washing the other, mother... Another question. : Are there any rumours from other regions? And we've run her out of questions. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 I also buy all the cigs I can find. You never know.  This guy has a whole thing with a mutant ant he's training that part of me thinks is a pokemon reference?  Oh, this should be good.   : I'm not really hungry... and you don't look like a shop owner.: [The man smiles broadly and grasps your arm] Yeah, guess where this is going. : Wait, wait. I would like to know who I'm dealing with first.: [The man slaps himself on the forehead]. : What's your name, man? : Then I won't. I have another question. : What are you doing here? Come on, honestly!: [The man smiles bitterly, raises his cap and strokes his receiding[sic] hair] : I won't. Now, I have another question...I'll skip the "ask any questions you want" from here on out. : What is this place? : I'm not surprised, really... Let me ask another question.: Have you heard any interesting rumours? : There's only one thing that occupies my mind now - the dreadful secret I have found out! But it deserves a talk of its own. Huh. : Was he indeed? Let me ask another question.Up two selections in the tree...  : Go on, tell me what you wanted me to help you with.  : [Nod and listen in silence]: [The man looks around warily and comes closer] : Wait, wait. You read other people's letters?: [The man gives a modest smile]: Well, what can I say? I'm a perfectionist. Before the war, we got paid extra for this. And now I continue working for the good cause, albeit for free. There's no other way. How else can you find out if it's a letter or a CIA code, a parcel or an acid bomb, a magazine for kids or a plan to overthrow the Central Committee of the Communist Party? : And what was it that you found?: A letter. A very ordinary letter, it seemed. Simple talk... of food, sport and cinema. But the longer I read it, the clearer it became it was a coded message! And the words had a totally different meaning... Look at this phrase, for example. Yea, it's a pizzagate quest. The devs commented on this one, and I'll get to that in a bit. : It's a very weird letter indeed.: Slightly odd indeed, to put it mildly! Bear in mind that Kirill Arkadyevich is a successful merchant, a rich man from a distant city of Trudograd. And the letter came from Peregon. From a barbeque shop that belongs to Ivan Kirdayev and Anton Lichvatkin. This shop is incidentally very popular among the Peregon merchants and the Guards, and the Chamber of Commerce members as well. : [Continue listening in silence] : Weird... Does it matter where to eat barbeque? Why necessarily in the garden or at the construction site? Yeah, we're going there! : But how did you come to this conclusion? Men, slaves...? : If a lamb is a man then a chicken must be a woman. And an egg... Yeah, uh, the funny reference game just went there, kids!  : All in all, what goes on in their barbeque shop is the closest thing to Hell you can imagine. Tell me... are you ready to explore this place?: Proof of corruption in the establishment... Many things will come to light! And I'll pay you a modest sum for this... from the remaining money earned by the sweat of my brow. I can give up anything for justice. If you choose to do it, you can use this... : I can't promise anything, but I'll see what I can do...: I have just one word for you - thanks! This is the letter, as an example of their correspondence. I only dared to nick one. Do you know where Peregon is? Doesn't matter, I'll mark it for you.: [The former postman snatches away your map and marks Peregon] : Alright. See you.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
So, yes, this is a quest to be that Comet Pizza shooter guy who read too much internet dumb poo poo and drove down to Comet Pizza to rescue the kids supposedly trapped in the basement by pedophiles pimping them out to Hillary Clinton. This was actually brought up on the Steam forums, and the team mod replied. AtomRpgMod posted:Hi there! We're really happy that you liked our writing, thank you I'm calling bullshit on this one. I'm sorry, but the whole thinly veiled "lamb barbeque" instead of "cheese pizza" where the end result is basement child sex trafficking (notice that neither of the stated inspirations involve pedophilia as food items, as far as I know) and the quest is literally to go to the basement of this food place to go rescue people. There's more to this questline, a lot more, and we're not doing it right now because the next stage involves a particularly difficult fight I'm not sure how to do with Fidel around. We're going to pause the update here and resume exploring Kraznoznamenny next time. Next time: Oh gently caress me, MORE Lovecraft references!
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2021 04:09
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 13:04 |
|
|
TheGreatEvilKing posted:
There is the possibility that translators did this change since it was an easier-to-understand reference. I believe that happened back with the quest that was basically word-for-word a reference to a McCormac story? Though that just shifts blame from the writers to the translators, it's not actually mitigating any of the damage here.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2021 15:02
|
|
|
I'm not sure where everyone is getting the idea that the translation is meaningfully different from the original. I once again assure you that it is not. The game has a bit of a text overload, so I'm not examining ever sentence with a fine-tooth comb, but thus far, I found exactly one CHUD-ish change - "how do you know I'm hungry and tired" was changed to the ever-hilarious "Did you just assume my hunger and tiredness levels?" Edit - 5 minutes of googling didn't find "Giraffe" as a Russian prison term (and prison slang is full of imaginative animal names for various offenses) Xander77 fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Jun 28, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2021 11:56
|
|
|
Xander77 posted:I'm not sure where everyone is getting the idea that the translation is meaningfully different from the original. Sometimes translators do make substantial changes, particularly to jokes or other difficult-to-explain bits. But it sounds like that's not happening here, so I dunno. Maybe the Pizzagate conspiracy guy faked his arrest and moved to eastern Europe to become a videogame writer to cover up how UFOs tractor beam'd a bunch of ballots. 
EggsAisle fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Jun 29, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2021 19:19
|
|
|
Krasnoznamenny Nights Welcome back! Last time on ATOM RPG we aimlessly wandered around Krasnoznamenny until we were given a Pizzagate quest. Really! Today we're going to wander around and deal with random dumb poo poo.  This lady has a long dialog tree, which I'll subject you to because it has to do with the stuff in the game.  : I'm on a business trip here. Where are you from? : So how did you get to Krasnoznamenny? Were you walking alone? Hard to believe... : [Continue listening in silence]There are a LOT of verbose NPCs in this town.  : [Fear becomes visible in the girl's eyes]I've said a lot I don't have a lot of respect for this game's writing, because it's verbose and dull. : War was a tragedy for normal people. But some people thrived when it happened. Those people were hooligans and drunks even before the bombs fell, and now there was nothing to stop them from continuing what they did. Me and my uncle, we lived near a closed-off city, that was built for strategic reasons before the war. After the government used the land like it wanted, the city was abandoned by the scientists and miners who lived there.: Without law, work, or pay, the remaining residents of the city became true degenerates. And the children of those freaks were born wild and savage, more so than their parents. All the[sic] knew was smoke, drink, rob and kill.: These kids grew up into savages who worshiped the Atom Bomb, and hated outsiders more than anything.This is how we spend three entire text scenes describing a literal nightmare scenario with hordes of Terry Goodkind characters who worship nuclear bombs and make it no more interesting than me describing the sandwich I had for lunch. "Turkey was on the bread, delicious and flavorful. He put mustard on it too!"  : [Continue listening in silence] : Thanks for sharing. Care to change the subject? : I have a few questions still... : If you live here as long as the old timers, you'll know the truth about this place. Bye.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Yea, I know, I subjected you to that less than stellar prose. I'm bringing it up because it ties into how I at first interpreted the game - specifically, the game's argument that unjust authority is better than anarchy. I'm not so sure I completely agree with that reading, but we'll get more into it as the game goes on.  This lady is a random cowboy who I'm not sure has anything useful you can do with her? She's wandering around with a six-shooter out and no one seems to care.  This man is guarding the Crime Shack. We'll be back later.  This, incidentally, is what happens if you use streetwise.  She exists, I guess?  This girl is Fidel's adoptive daughter/assistant barkeep and will be important for a future quest. Stay tuned!  Anyway, now that we have the mighty Cossack Sword, we can go to the totally not an ambush Beard sent us to.  Fidel warns us that it's an ambush. Do not go here too early, as the ambush is perfectly capable of shoving your poo poo in.   Now, this game doesn't have a cover system so you have either out of line of sight or shootable as your two statuses. This ambush funnels you right into the open road with these loving railings that herd you into getting shot by these guys. They have decent guns and actual armor, so if you're running a melee build or a pistol build you get loving torn apart here.  ATOM combat is incredibly binary. Either you get pasted into oblivion in one round, or you huff all the drugs to not die. Of course, the AI controlled companions (  ) don't have the ability to inject themselves with 5 syringes a round, so it's entirely possible for them to be attrited down and force a reload.  Fidel kind of fucks us over here by actually trying to fight this dude. Remember, our auto crits only happen if we hit a target at full health, so if Fidel damages this guy we're much less likely to bring him down in a round. It's amazing how little synergy there is in this game, but you have to remember that mechanically almost every decision the developers made was bad.  That said, every point in melee ups our crit chance, so we're able to explode this fucker with triple digit damage from one swing of our mighty Cossack Sword.  Goddamn it Fidel. Party members in this game are kind of a useless liability, as they also divide the amount of XP you receive while requiring constantly micromanaging their lovely AI and hoping they don't do something stupid.  The best service they offer is ablative HP, until they inevitably die when they rush 5 dudes and you have to reload.  Loot and XP is good, at least! You can also see the insane variance of 115 to 191. Fortunately you can save scum from any turn in combat, so...  These guys have some seriously good loot.  They also commit the amateurish sin of carrying written instructions signed by the guy we're trying to implicate, and that's really how all investigation goes in ATOM. Remember how we were supposed to find Grishka, and instead of laying an elaborate trap or something we just asked random people if they liked bandits?  There's also random radiation on the map!  We cure the radiation poisoning by chugging alcohol, which leads to us contracting alcoholism.  This encounter happens. It's a bunch of idiots with lovely melee weapons.  They get loving slaughtered! Next!  We return to Krasnoznamenny to turn in the quest for Abraham, and I show this off to confirm that alcoholism is just as annoying as addiction when it comes to your PC constantly whining. At least they didn't voice act this.  Lots of chatty NPCs with very little to say.  Lots of descriptive text with very little to say. I don't know why we waste words on explaining that the counter is flimsy or that the man with a bearded portrait has a beard.  : About that mission you had... : If Satan has a library in Hell, he'd better hide the books! : [The old man looks alarmed and leans toward you. Even his voice is trembling] Odd word choice. : That means that I've sent a whole bunch of book haters straight to hell.  : My darling! By destroying this hotbed of stupidity and thus protecting the book trading business in the region, you became a true champion of science!: Gogol, Chekhov... Oh what the hell! Even that vulgar Frenchmen, Druon, applauds you from his grave! I am very grateful to you...! Here is the modest payment... Three hundred an fifty rubles, from all my heart... I'm not gonna address the idea that the real Jewish mazel is murdering a bunch of idiots, so I'm gonna show off a reference instead. : Keep the money. But I wouldn't say no to an interesting book...: [The man smiles as you hand him back the collected works of V.I. Lenin] : Doesn't look like much, does it? No one would ever read it out of their own free will! But it's indeed a very valuable book! Priceless even, especially for the few collectors left in this world. The vast knowledge contained in this book puts any electronic computing machine to shame! Even a University electronic computing machine. : And on this pleasant note, I shall tell you goodbye. See ya.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Ok, after that borderline anti-Semitic conversation, what book did we get?  It's a Lovecraft reference. While not as well known as the Necronomicon which is contractually obligated to be referenced in every piece of nerd media ever, it's another one of Lovecraft's fictitious works which characters refer to as having unspeakable knowledge because to write otherwise would have required Lovecraft to overcome his neurosis and get out of the house.  Of course, it's all Lovecraft all the way down, with Randolph Carter (one of his self-inserts, the other notable one being Abdul Alhazred), Leng, Shub whose name is censored to not sound racist (extremely fair considering Lovecraft), and so on and so forth.  Hesperus Star? Like the wacky dream we had? Whatever, probably not important. It's Lovecraft all the way down!  Well that's not ominous at all. But it's a magic ritual, maybe we'll find something interesting. Onward!  Vasya asked us to get the bizarro translation of Lord of the Rings, and we did. : Yup, here's your book.: [The barkeep looks over his book, flips through the pages briefly, and finally places it behind the bar] : Thank you, friend! Take this for your trouble. It's not much, but I believe it's enough. I'll finally have something to read when there are no customers around! Now wait just a moment... : [Speechcraft] Come on, friend! I went to a lot of trouble to get you this book. : Thanks a lot! See you!Ask him about the book, and:   Clifford Simak is an American sci-fi author. I've read some of his stuff (City) but honestly don't remember much about it. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 Anyway, this stone spiral is the lair of the HP Lovecraft reference.   Please ignore that I've stitched together footage of two different attempts on this thing. Meet Shogg! Shogg is a shoggoth, a creature from H.P. Lovecraft most famous from "At the Mountains of Madness", a story which is about how space aliens who resemble white people were cruelly wiped out by their shoggoth slaves who spouted Edgar Allen Poe references. Of course, a lot of Lovecraft's subtexts about things like concentration camps being cool and good (the Shadow over Innsmouth) or how the real victims are the slave masters (Mountains of Madness) get ignored by nerds for good reason, so Shogg here is just a mostly contextless miniboss. Also, to do this, you have to be high on mushrooms.  He doesn't do a lot, honestly. He melee attacks people with his tongue, which fortunately for my sanity does not 100% lifedrain heal him.  He also heals 20 HP a round. That's it, really! He teleports instead of moving, and while this seems like it could lead to an interesting fight the developers lacked the imagination to really do anything with it. He just awkwardly teleports into melee range and you have a padded sumo death fight.  Unfortunately, he kills Fidel in my first attempt because Fidel loving sucks.  Attempt two. This is the same strategy as the Blind Death fight - reload until the variance on the crit is high enough, then spam lovely low damage attacks until Shog is finally dead.  Once we've done the initial burst of damage we don't really have much left in the tank.  Oh, there's also a small percentile chance that enemies can disarm you because this game's mechanical systems weren't janky and lovely enough. Whee!  It takes a LOT of reloads. I should mention that there's not a whole lot of strategic options available to the player. There are grenades, which can AoE stun but require investment in throwing to use. The timed explosives can be used as a primitive trap, but they count down in real time while the game is in turn based. Compared to something like Underrail, there's not a lot going on. Of course, Underrail is the hell land of the stunlockers, so I can't really blame any readers for not agreeing with that as an example of good combat. I think it's mechanically deep but also a massive pain, personally.  Shogg gives a lot of XP.  Unfortunately, while you might be expecting some sweet loot like a raygun or a psychic power or something Lovecraft themed, we don't get poo poo.  I should point out there's a much easier way to do this fight. You can find a stone knife in the Roaring Forest cave that does a bajillion damage to poor Shogg and makes the fight less miserable. I did it the dumb way.  I try to get the good doctor to take a look at our hosed up protagonist but as we're hallucinating, we just get a lot of weird poo poo.  Snow Crash?  Even Fidel thinks we're nuts.  The developers are on record as saying the intent of the Shogg fight was to leave it unclear as to whether Shogg was real or a hallucination. It kind of works with the weird conspiracy paranoia angle everything in this game is going for.     I'll give the game credit - the hallucination stuff kind of works. It's kind of a letdown that they don't show actual hallucinations like demons and poo poo - something even Stygian, quite literally the worst game I've ever played, was able to do - but the dialog is unsettling enough that it conveys a sense of unease where all of the descriptive text doesn't.  They immediately poo poo the bed soon after. It's kind of amazing how willing they are to undercut the story they want to tell by urinating banal references all over it.     You can do unsettling, or you can go for the uncreative fourth wall breaking that's been done a million times before. I suppose a charitable interpretation would be that the mushrooms give the player character the clarity to see the world as it really is, but this is never referenced again. Hell, this isn't even a new or interesting idea, The Illuminatus! Trilogy did it in 1975. The Illuminatus Trilogy posted:Don't you see?" Joe cried. "Look at that thing out there. A gigantic sea monster. Worse yet, a gigantic sea monster that talks. It's an intentional high-camp ending. Or maybe intentional low camp, I don't know. But that's the whole answer. We're in a book!" Like I said, this game can be counted on to, without fail, spy an interesting premise, dip one toe in, panic, and run screaming away to the comfort of uncreative, hackneyed references and poo poo that's been done before. I get it, nothing under the sun is new, but the presentation is just lacking!  We go back to this guy to give him Beard's secret message that doubles as a signed confession. : Take a look at this, commander! [Show him the note]: [You hand over the note you found on the corpse of one of Beard's thugs. The commander reads it carefully and grunts] : Beard communicated with the slavers over the radio. He instructed them to ambush me because I know too much about their dealings. : [Speechcraft] Stop and think, commander. I can see you're not so sure about Beard yourself. I bet you've had your doubts about him for quite a while actually. Hooray!  : You're right. I've noticed that Beard often volunteers to check certain trucks, and when he does he won't allow anyone else near. He also seems quite well off for a guard. I need to talk to him.: Good luck. : I heard a rumor you're working for slavers. : That's a libelous lie! It's that freak wandering around here all the time, he's trying to frame me!: Hell knows. To be honest, I find myself distrusting you too.: Green, come on. Don't joke like that.: If it's a joke, why am I not laughing?: Gree-heeen...   Ha ha. : So, Beard's been arrested. : Don't get angry at me. I was trying to do what's right.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Pizzagate all the way down!  We pass through Otradnoye to have this classy conversation with Katya and head on over to the Drunken Lair to finish off Varna Banana's quest.   : Varna Banana is a sad fruit... Nobody's her follower or friend... She wanted to save the world... To bring some joy to the kids... But all people want is to drink and drink.: [Feeling your stare, the woman flinches, straightens her shoulders, and quickly regains her usual energy] : Yes, I'm as squeaky clean as a polished pane of glass. Thank you, Ms. Varna!: [Varna Banana smiles tiredly. Evidently, praise at the end of a long and thorny path through the Wasteland is pleasant. Not for Varna Banana Devi Christu, but for the weird woman hiding behind this fake mask] : Am I wrong, or are you in a melancholy mood? : Was there ever a place where you were taken more seriously?: [The cult leader sighs disappointedly. She immediately seems less enthusiastic]: Well, I did feel more welcome in some towns. In many places actually! Just not this time. Although the stars prophesied the opposite. I was hoping to deliver my good tidings to Wasteland dwellers drowning in sin, to teach them the dread of cleanliness, the nightmares of alcoholism... Ah, I had so many different sermons in store for them.: [Devi Christu dusts her relatively white clothes with dignity]: Never mind. It's just a temporary setback. They will believe! They all will! If not this time, then the next!: That's it, we're done in this deplorable place. In fact, I've decided the Wasteland dwellers are not ready for my cosmic wisdom! Our tour is over. We're going back to Krasnoznamenny. : The tour's over? Then I can report to the "mushroomer"...TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Anyway, we can go report to our weird Mushroom Cult contact about Varna Banana and her weirdness.  Let's talk to this woman first. : Why are you watching that militiaman?: [The woman sobs and hides her sad gaze from you] : Start from the beginning. : I was still very young at that time... Haven't even[sic] turned twenty. But already got involved with a cult who worshiped Vnuuk, the so called God of Death. : [Continue listening in silence]: Well, our life wasn't too bad even after our son was born. He was a great boy. We named him Belfegor, after a demonic baron. And then one of those lunatics came up with the idea that our baby was an incarnation of Vnuuk! And that our baby needs to be killed, so that the spirit of Vnuuk would grace all of us!: At first, of course, I was against it, but Alisher really got into this idea and also got me on board. I was so into that idea, that I myself put my baby boy, my own son, on a stone shrine.... It was a miracle that saved us from committing a sin! Some crazy hobos started shooting! And we ran away...: And when the shooting was over, Belfegor has vanished into thin air. Probably one of the hobos got him, thinking that the kid will be better of with him than with us. My God, what a fool I've been! And even after that day I kept believing in the powers of Vnuuk for a couple more years. But then I've lost my faith. Both in the sect teaching and in my sadistic husband. I ran away. And started looking for any information I could find about my missing son.: I've found out that the old man who kidnapped my son is called Rodion. After a couple more years living like a hermit I found out that they are living at the old candle factory. I also found out that Rodion is dead and my son has gotten a job here in the city. He became a militiaman. I'm gonna cut this short. We offer to talk to the militiaman, he confirms the wacky cult sacrifice story and says he never wants to see his mom again, we encourage the mom to go talk to him, and it ends like this:  At least we got XP for sitting through that.  Let's go talk to the Mushroom Cult guy. Impressing him should let us into the cult, if for some reason we wanted to do that.  : I followed Devi Christu and her disciples.: [The man comes a bit closer to you] : Not really. They are just common idiots like many others.: [Igor rubs his chin in doubt, but the line that appeared on his forehead slowly smooths out and he smiles again] : Do you think so? Well, perhaps I worried too much about them. I just thought it was better to be safe than sorry.: [He jokingly wipes sweat off his forehead] First aid kits are hard to come by and as far as I know blindness is permanent. : [Speechcraft] I had to spend quite some time wandering around these places. And talking to people. Maybe you can spare some more? : First aid kits are hard to come by. I'd better take them and the can.: [Igor nods and quickly procures two first aid kids and a polished can of stewed meat from somewhere. You decide not to ask questions about where he's been hiding them and accept your reward] I think at this point I owe you guys one of those paranoid string diagrams about which conspiracy is which. : Ok, I have to go. Bye.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Now, there is one last dumb coda to the Devi Christu misadventures I'm going to show off. This is the sex and violence run, after all.  You can find Devi Christu and the gang at the casino bar. Talking to the others just gets you told to go talk to Varna Banana herself, so... : Hope I'm not interrupting. You look kind of sad.: [The woman puts down her glass and slowly turns to you] : Just wanted to pay the lovely lady a visit! [Smile]: [The woman smiles uncertainly. Her look is one of incomprehension] I would be shocked if the Streetwise option actually worked, but... : [Intellect] I'm an intelligent person and it would be nice to talk to another intelligent person. : Great idea. I'll see if I can talk the brothel bouncers into letting us in. So, yes, banging the crazy cult leader is a quest now. Why not.  We have to pay a hundred rubles as I don't have the speechcraft to talk us down. I'm omitting a lot of  here.  : I did convince him. Let's go. : Yep.That is the yep of a man who maybe made a bad decision.  : [Continue] : [Have a meaningful conversation about lofty matters] Then we sit for another minute of zoomed out loving.  69 experience points!  We go back to the bar to talk with her...  : I want to ask a couple of questions. : What are your plans now?: [Devi Christu's answer is simultaneously full of irritation and pride]: What are the plans of a voice, if not the quest for an ear ready to receive its message. We will move forward, deeper into the Wastes. As far away from these animals as possible, my child! Away from these heathens!: As an exotic, feminized Moses, I will find and free my people from the shackles of atheism! And I will guide them straight towards the Sun! : All of this is quite fascinating, but now it is time for me to go.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
We'll stop the update here. Xander77 pointed out that Devi Christu is based on Marina Tsvigun, a real life cult leader who got arrested after her followers stormed a cathedral. In fact, if you google her, the picture looks exactly like Devi Christu over here. She's still alive, and is a real person whom these developers included in this game as a sex partner for the player, which gives off some real skeevy vibes! It's not even like the Terry Goodkind thing where the evil politicians based on Bill and Hillary Clinton have different names, they literally included a portrait of the real Tsvigun under the name "Varna Banana". Then again, I made this LP and showed it off to you guys, so maybe I'm complicit, idk. It's kind of the peril of their approach of using all these celebrities for character portraits, you end up with all these facsimiles of real life people being put into defamatory situations. We already mentioned how the dumb bandit spy was based on a real actor and you get a quest to murder him, and I would not be surprised if Zhanna the horny nurse wasn't based on a real person either. Well, moving on! Decisions Lie Before Us: Do we want to help a sewer mutant or continue the Pizzagate quest?
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2021 21:36
|
|
|
Aid the sewer mutant, avoid the chicken barbecue.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2021 22:03
|
|
|
Help the sewer mutant because it's an actual C.H.U.D. and deserves respect, unlike the pizzagate chuds who just deserve atomic wedgies.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2021 06:49
|
|
|
Help the sewer mutant. I'm curious if they'll try to shoehorn in a TMNT reference or seven.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2021 06:55
|
|
|
Help the sewer mutant. Also what is the anti-alcohol c ult doing in a casino bar?
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2021 10:26
|
|
|
TheGreatEvilKing posted:
quote:Of course, the AI controlled companions (
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2021 12:03
|
|
|
Language is a virus is from William Burroughs possibly via Lauie Anderson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvOoR8m0oms Which has the first verse 'Paradise Is exactly like Where you are right now Only much much Better' Which maybe fits the themes. Much, much better than this game certainly seems to fit.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2021 17:50
|
|
|
Pacifist Playthrough – Dan’s Bandits Kosoy can reveal a bit more about the organization if you try to play it safe about where you got the thief’s passport. (I actually did this the first time around - a similar introduction to the thieves in Arcanum can go wrong if you go into detail about things you don't know)   Dan has a couple of really mean enforcers. The divide between “we’re really mean assholes, mwahahaha” bandits and “hey, legitimate exercise of force by a quasi-feudal warlord just makes perfect sense in a post-apocalyptic world and only superficially resembles organized crime” bandits doesn’t DO anything, even though it would be really easy to…. well, we’re not there yet.  : No interesting rumours. Although once, lying in the bushes in ambush, I heard a funny story about insolent farmers who refused to pay to Dan. I was ready to laugh. Two old men were talking to each other. One said, "Have you heard, brother? A walking mountain is moving towards us! A giant! He has a machine gun swinging from his neck, but he's so confident of himself he rarely resorts to it and prefers his spiked mace. Woe betide anyone who got under its heavy blow! He'll be nothing but holes! He'll fall and lie still right where he was standing..." So I listened to the end, left the ambush and said, "Wow, so these are the tales people tell about me! What is it if not fame?" Oh how they fled! But I was quick! Whacked the storyteller on the back, hit the listener on the legs... And once I was done with them, it was hard to tell which was which...  : You're scary! My respect. What about another question... : While I find the game’s prose essentially functional and have zero problems with verbosity or (heavens forbid) descriptions of appearances and action, I do find the PC opinionating in dialog without my input outright infuriating. I should be the one to determine whether or not my character fears, respects, or is disgusted by anything in the game world, not the “more questions \ cease dialog” prompt.  The helmet isn’t really worth crafting.  Aleksei Smirnov in Operation Y and Shurik’s Others Adventures. At the very least, I can see the point of the resemblance.  Awing the demon-worshipping trader with the presence of a real demon    You can’t work for Dan if you refuse to disclose your name. Which means we can’t get the coveted “No Name, No Slogan” achievement. That’s fine – you need to share your real name with companions either way, so it's a no-go for a pacifist playthrough.   He can pull that poo poo in response to other offenses as well.  Sparing Grishka results in more content related to him, including this modest payout.  Of course our pacifist character is going to be a huge douchebag, trying to hurt as many people as possible. (As an aside – I’ve checked, and cutting the ropes automatically turns the camp hostile even with max stealth)  How you treat the prisoner doesn’t actually matter – as long as you explain to Dan that you enjoy violence for its own sake. Let’s head over to the moonshiner farm and be an rear end in a top hat to people.   Despite insulting this poor freier (this is one situation where I would have accepted “ya’ poor mug, myeah!” as a streetwise translation), the narration informs us that he’s taken a liking to us. Which might be a point being made, or just parts of the dialog tree not communicating with other parts.  On to the moonshiner boss. I mentioned he’s part of the old poacher trio, and if you phrase the offer he can’t refuse in acceptable terms, you can follow up on that sub-quest \ side-story.   You don’t even need any skill checks if you get him to explain how dangerous the area is (The Virgin Springs farm just had a mysterious disappearance – exactly the sort of thing Dan’s protection would definitely prevent).   We’re not doing that.  Dunya’s father is working as a guard at the moonshiner farm.  : Nonsense... No, she was abducted. That's a fact... I've been looking for them for a long time. I found their camp, well, what was left of it. But the bastards themselves weren't around anymore. Ahh... I followed their trace. I saw so many horrible things in the Wasteland, I went through a lot... I found a Factory not far from here that the bandits had occupied. But I couldn't get inside it, no matter how much I've tried. The guardsman at the gates only told me that they had no women there... But where else should I look for her? The gangs of the Wasteland are uncountable... So the grief made me start drinking... I came across this hut… And sort of made myself useful here. So, that's my story. That's my beef as you put it.   KSR is corrupt as poo poo   Put our luck to good use curing a local hypochondriac. With our business at the moonshiners completed, Grishka is waiting for us back at the factory:   Obviously, Grishka is a highly competent and honest thief, so getting involved with his schemes is going to work out just fine.  Bit of foreshadowing about the Roaring Forest   We can now break into the bandit’s storeroom. Some rare bullets (not that we’ll find a weapon that’s capable of firing them in the next 10 hours), grenades, supplies.  Time to get high, reeking of body-spray and drunk on pre-war Cogniac (30% chance of +1 to Charisma) to get it on with Dunya : [Talk to the mustached guy] It's fine, man! [Turn to Dunya again]There's nothing "wrong" with it! You're an interesting person, and I would just love to get to know you... better...  : [Dunya looks you in the eye and bites at his (sic) lower lip. Then she shoots a quick glance at her guard, turns back to you and smiles, almost surprised] If you say so... There's an abandoned gas station nearby. We can have our... conversation there. I'll show you where it is!   And the bearded guard who is weirded out by his attraction to the masked “boy”.       This is totally puerile and juvenile. I’m amused.    The bearded guard remains at the gas station ever after, but killing him at this isolated location still turns the entire factory hostile. Neither participant has dialog referencing the threesome, even though the bearded guard should have made some conclusions as a result. Xander77 fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Jul 10, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2021 22:20
|
|
|
TheGreatEvilKing posted:Meet Shogg! Shogg is a shoggoth, a creature from H.P. Lovecraft most famous from "At the Mountains of Madness", a story which is about how space aliens who resemble white people were cruelly wiped out by their shoggoth slaves who spouted Edgar Allen Poe references. so white people resemble 5-sided cycads with wings and eyestalks and tendrils? hosed up if true
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2021 00:38
|
|
|
A nice touch is gaining 69 experience points post-sex.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2021 17:56
|
|
|
StillFullyTerrible posted:so white people resemble 5-sided cycads with wings and eyestalks and tendrils? hosed up if true I mean, I've been needing a haircut pretty badly. Can't speak for others though.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2021 01:37
|
|
|
Pacifist Playthrough - Random encounters and Roaring Forest More   : I'm-a not answering questions. I don‘ like smartasses.: Cool. Honestly, it's not likely that this mentally-challenged mutant has anything of value for low-int characters, right? Right? : Right. Most types of alcohol have a 30% chance to lower your intelligence by -1. Effects can only stack twice per item, so we need several different types of alcohol (and a bit of save scumming). : 1. [Intellect < 4]: [In a loud voice] Hello! Can I ask you a couple of questions?  : Arthur: So cool! Now I can kick anyone's rear end! Yay!: +25 (!) to Unarmed. Godsend to a black belt character, and available practically the moment you start the game. : Heard any interesting stories? : I practice fighting, exercise my arms and legs, practice blows... and there's this one guy —haha!— an utter fool! He only cares for one muscle, the one between his legs! Women from all over want to help him! They follow him everyplace, screaming, “Let me help you exercise!" This man's name is Tourist Korallov.: Now let's head back in the direction of the Roaring Forest.   Random encounter, complete with LONG journal.    Apparently this is a creepypasta?  Another seemingly random encounter.  A dog and his owner are fighting a bunch of bandits.   The man gets killed, but I arrive just in time to distract the bandits and allow the dog to finish them off.  [You stretch out your arm warily to stroke the wolfhound, which turns out to be a huge mistake! The beast tries to snatch at you immediately. You're agile enough to dodge, but his sharp fangs miss your hand by an inch]   The man’s corpse has a collar on it, which allows us to befriend Dzhulbars (not that many people have actually watched the original film – it’s just a generic name for a guard dog now)  : Being a melee-only AI character, the dog is (per Fallout tradition) not actually that useful (without mods, at least). More to the point – since the fight starts on the other side of the combat map, getting him as a companion is stupidly RNG dependent.During my previous attempt at a pacifist playthrough, I’ve spent half an hour reloading over and over, praying that RNG and AI coalesce into a successful outcome. Most often, both dog and owner would just die. Some genius programmed Dzhulbars to spread his damage around – rather than taking out 2 almost-dead bandits in one round, he’d switch to the only fully healthy bandit and take him down to near-death, so that all three would be alive to bash him once his turn ended. I imagine some players had this encounter, had the dog die, and just... moved on. Every so often, both dog and owner would survive. The owner would thank me for my help (of which there was none – there isn’t time to make it to the fight before it’s over, even if you have a decent ranged weapon at this stage) and move on. At which point I’d just have to offer him a cigarette or two. Which isn’t really very pacifist. On this exceptionally blessed playthrough, everything unfolded as intended on the first attempt – the owner died, and the dog took care of the bandits. With that rant over – let’s move on to the Roaring Forest during the nighttime.  Two people are standing by the fire. Each has a separate dialog tree (this game doesn’t really do interesting experiments with more than one person talking), but I’m going to jump between them due to reasons.     : Yeah, my “weapon" is also bullshit.: ’k. What are you guys doing here?   : All of that, of course, is nothing more than a thought experiment. However, for one of the prominent scientists of my lesser motherland, this theory has turned into a mania... Into a fanatical obsession to discover the bridge between our world and an alternative one... And to give our version of humankind an exodus to the universe where the devastating war of the 1986 never happened. Anastasia B.: After a whole range of suicidal expeditions to... the surface... This mysterious forest was unfoundedly named the junction point, the «sigil» of the multiverse.   : And somewhere there... Or rather, somewhere here... Here but not here. Here but on a different radio wave, there is an Earth where you were born with a different hair colour, with a different, excuse the vulgarity, gender... There is an Earth where you were never born, because your parents failed to meet due to some fateful trifle. There is even an Earth where this drat war has never happened... … This forest that the local peasants have nicknamed "Roaring" is one of such points. I've made such a long way from my homeland to observe it. Alas, so far I haven't detected the signs of the presence of the objects from parallel worlds. But now that I'm here, a discovery like that is just a matter of time! : I volunteered for an expedition to this place to prove once and for all that our leader's theories are insane... To oust him for his own sake and for the sake of our community. And nothing will stop me.: Wow... I see you hate this theory as much as your leader loves it! : [The woman frowns, looks you up and down and sighs heavily] Who are you talking about?   : So yeah, there’s a lot of para-natural stuff in the game if you look for it. Particularly in the Roaring Forest. (TGEK already covered the sacrifice to the idol and receiving the appropriate achievement) More supernatural premonitions about the Digger bugs. The wiki claims that if you leave the wolves alone (you can get into the caves by going around them), they’ll eat the old couple after a few days. Didn't manage to trigger that.   You don’t need to engage with the Diggers or the Blind Death to exit the caves (you’ll get a cutscene showing off a single bug, which provides an explanation to the forest mystery, but you can easily skirt around it). A combat optimized character should have about 30 points in Thrown Weapons without investing a single skill point, but Arthur has to waste an entire levelup worth of skillpoints.  This gets us the “Indy” achievement.   The stone tool is moderately handy for a specific fight, but it can be improved with a bit of caveman cunning (granting us the Neanderthal achievement):   Cavemen were well known for their clever utilization of duct tape. I head back across the rope, give Fidel the knife… and find out the Blind Death isn’t actually classified as a cosmic horror. My humiliating demise takes place off-screen. I reload and take the alternate exit, past the caveman drawings. Thus far, we stood by while others have died in our place, and were utterly pacifist – not even our companions were ever required to kill during the questline. Next time – I dunno. I might show off some things we missed in Otradnoye, or move on to KRZ? Xander77 fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Sep 22, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2021 12:34
|
|
|
I cant take Dan the prospective Bandit King seriously with that stache of his
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2021 23:07
|
|
|
Nissin Cup Nudist posted:I cant take Dan the prospective Bandit King seriously with that stache of his
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2021 12:30
|
|
|
Honestly looks like something you'd see in a picture out of the 70s in the USA. Except Dan doesn't have the hair for it to be the 70s.  And in that bit with the parallel universes, can you really not do anything about it? Neither character believes you and there's nothing to do there? Seems like wasted potential.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2021 12:55
|
|
|
Commander Keene posted:Honestly looks like something you'd see in a picture out of the 70s in the USA. Except Dan doesn't have the hair for it to be the 70s. quote:And in that bit with the parallel universes, can you really not do anything about it? Neither character believes you and there's nothing to do there?
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2021 13:10
|
|
|
Commander Keene posted:Honestly looks like something you'd see in a picture out of the 70s in the USA. Except Dan doesn't have the hair for it to be the 70s. It's a Planescape reference (the "sigil"). I'm gonna talk about this more when we get into Philip K Dick, but a common theme of this sort of conspiracy fiction is that the protagonist can do nothing about the various conspiracies. One does not win, it is enough of a victory to understand the hidden yet unopposable forces that rule the world.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2021 20:20
|
|
|
Hot Sewer SexPreviously, on ATOM RPG... posted:Welcome back! Last time, on the violence run, we hooked up with Devi Christu. Today Bear is going to wander Krasnoznamenny and help a sewer mutant. I just want you all to remember that you voted for this.  Anyway, leaving the casino of wacky cultists and horny cult leaders, we need to find a manhole.  This manhole is sadly blocked by unknown forces and we can't get in.  We can, however, go down this manhole and do adventures.  There's a lot of dumb bullshit in this manhole, some of which we can't interact with (we're not possessed), some of which has worthless rewards (a big rat fight), some of which I don't want to start yet, and...  : [The unfortunate result of nature's never ending tomfoolery smiles at you with a mouth full of yellow, rotted teeth and swollen, spotty gums which are actively excreting a thick yellow puss]: Don't mess with him, Bear Bearovitch. This hombre is known to me - the stench his body produces is even more dangerous and disgusting than he is.: [It feels as though the mutant's huge, watery eyes are staring into your very soul and it's making you uncomfortable, as if even his gaze is sweaty, and full of pus and rot] : Mmm... Hellos! Where did such a smooth, silky, sleek-faced person come from?: [The man has a disturbing twinkle in his eyes, and rubs his small, sweaty hands together as he asks] Everyone who voted to help the mutant because he was more virtuous than the pizzagate guys can sit down now. : I was checking out the sewers and I stumbled upon you. We can chat for a bit, if that's okay.: [The malodorous man's swollen lower lip juts out in a pout. He's obviously insulted] : You're offering jobs? I want to hear all about it.: [Toilet Kruul sniffles loudly, then audibly swallows the mucus. His sweaty, too small hands begin to shake like he's cold]: The sewers are my home... The cultists never touch me. The bandits and bullies leave me be. Everyone respects Toilet Kruul. Everyone, that is... but the silly eight-legged things! The giant spiders that make their homes in the tunnels. : How long has it been waiting? Has anyone else ever tried helping you out?: Well, ummm...: [Toilet Kruul cracks his bulging, arthritic-looking knuckles and silently studies his long, yellow crooked fingernails for a minute]: Mmmm... Lots tried. So many... Yess, so many... Do you know how many came back? This many...: [The mutant makes a round shape with his fingers, resembling a zero] : Whatever. I'll do it. Wait here, Kruul.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 It's ATOM combat. We got Fidel a Skorpion SMG so he can actually contribute and spend all his AP and our 9mm ammo killing weaker enemies. Bear's Cossack Steel ruins the giant spiders, so we just awkwardly wait for the spiders to wander up and then one-shot critical them to death.   : About that job... : The deed is done. The spiders will torment you no longer.: Hold on!: [Toilet Kruul walks up to you and moves to place his sweaty, dirty, rancid hand over your mouth. You quickly take a step back. The terrible man looks at you with disdain, but then freezes in place]: So quiet... No more tiny feet dancing on the pipes. No more sounds of fuzzy bodies climbing on spider webs. No more clickity clackity mandibles. All is silent. You really did kill all the spiders!: Mmmhmm... And you earned a handsome reward for it too, my sweet, sleek-faced friend. That reward is my trust. Money too, though! Yess... money too. Here, take it, quickly! The sheer amount of repetition ensures the character is memorable as disgusting, at least. : A true friend you are, sleek-face. I would give you more if those topside freaks paid better. : Thanks, I guess. This reward sure is helpful.: [The saucer-sized eyes of Toilet Kruul watch your every move as you pocket his gifts. Afterwards, his face contorts into a wide, crooked grin] Oh boy! poo poo encrusted items! How could we say no? : Totally. Can you give me the details?: So...: [Kruul coughs, licks his zit-speckled lips, and begins:]Did we need this in here?  I know I poo poo on this game's prose enough, but I want to say that I really do think it could be better. Yes, the realism is functional, and the dialog attempts humor, but you have the disconnect between the feverish conspiracy zone the game wants to portray and the banal realism of redundant actions. We don't need Kruul's delaying actions in parenthesis after he says "So...", the delay is implied.  Now, this kind of works to show how disgusting Kruul is by slavering over this unfortunate woman. Ok.  This is further reinforced by the dialog of him peeping under her skirt as a weird sex offender.  It's stuff like this that tells me the writers were insecure of the effect of their writing and felt the need to reinforce it. First they have Kruul describe his weird "love quest", then they compare him to a house fly, then he goes on to describe peeking up a woman's skirt, and that's all they need to convey disgust! They've been reinforcing the idea that he's a stinky disgusting abomination of nature constantly, and now they don't think that's enough and they feel the need to browbeat the player even further.  I don't necessarily even mind verbosity, but this is just banal. The dialogue in this game is actually fairly distinctive for each of the characters. Kruul describes Nastasya like a piece of candy (sweet and tasty) and it conveys to the reader how disgusting he is. Then we cut to the dully realist narrator that's the same for all of these characters, which is written less as a literary piece and more like a screenplay of stage directions. I will admit that I am biased as I'm transcribing all this by hand, so yell at me in the thread.   The saddest thing is that this sleek-face appellation and general speech mannerisms are perfectly adequate at conveying how disgusting this mutant is.  Unfortunately for Fidel, there are poo poo-encrusted items on the line.  : Who am I to deny love and passion? I'll do it! Let's take our drug-addled rear end up to go get Nastasya.  : Your name is Nastasya, right? : Listen, you need to find the closest entrance into the sewer. I will tell you everything later.: [The girl gives you a shy look, full of naive sincenty] : A puppy almost drowned in the manhole. I saved him, but now he needs someone to take care of him.: [Nastaya sadly sniffs] : I am allergic to dogs... But I will try to help!: [Fidel quietly whispers into your ear;] : [The girl once again sneezes, and smiles weakly]: So, what are we waiting for? Let's go help the poor pupper!  : [Descend into the sewers] We get a loading screen!   : [Watch in awed silence]: Toilet Kruul?? W-what's going on? By god? What is happening? : Toilet Kruul...I...I...: [There is no fear in Nastasya's eyes, no disgust, just tear of joy. With a loud gasp, the girl sensually hugs Toilet Kruul, and he lifts her up to his tiny, covered arms. The pair starts dancing in circles, hugging and kissing each other]: Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes, my sweet Kruul! Oh, how I waited for these words! : [Keep quiet]: [The lovers join in a passionate kiss] : Well, good luck with that love thing. I have some things I wanna ask the husband. : I've done my part, Kruul.: [You have never seen Toilet Kruul look happier. His huge, watery eyes bulge sickly from their eye sockets and his angrily pimpled lips stretch into a wide smile to display each one of his remaining jagged, yellow teeth]  : Okay, then. Have a good one, I guess.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 And on that note we'll leave the further misadventures of Bear and Fidel for another day. Next time: Remember that crazy anti-Semite writer Prokhanov?
|
|
#
?
Jul 13, 2021 06:06
|
|
|
TheGreatEvilKing posted:I will admit that I am biased as I'm transcribing all this by hand, so yell at me in the thread. ... Yeah, I also don't like the game telling you what your character feels. Contrast with... say, Sorcery 1-4. A lot of the minor decisions throughout the game involve sheer roleplaying describing how your character reacts to the world, with very few material consequences but helping establish a sense of connection between you and the PC.
|
|
#
?
Jul 13, 2021 08:33
|
|
|
I wonder if that quest was "inspired" by the Toxic Avenger. And at least the quest ended with her willingly consenting to be with him.
|
|
#
?
Jul 13, 2021 11:28
|
|
|
I stand by my choice, but yeah, this whole loving game needs to be nuked from orbit. Just to be sure.
|
|
#
?
Jul 13, 2021 21:03
|
|
|
I need bleach to put on my brain from just reading only the synopsis bits
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2021 14:02
|
|
|
The lower left face here - that's the Toilet Kruul, right?
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2021 16:55
|
|
|
Xander77 posted:The lower left face here - that's the Toilet Kruul, right? Looks like it, sans the green crap on his face.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2021 17:36
|
|
|
This update was not the one to read while eating dinner.  But I guess that means the writing is doing its job? I absolutely agree that they went overboard with the narration and telling you how your character feels, though.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2021 23:23
|
|
|
 Oh... kay then. Still not sure this is the worse option than helping the pizzagate guy.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2021 04:46
|
|
|
As an aside - "Дарагой!" (Daaarling \ Deaaarest) is an ethnic thing, not a homosexual thing. I'd say that it's more of a stereotypical greeting from representatives of Georgian \ Caucasian republics than a Jewish one, but still.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2021 22:41
|
|
|
The Prokhanov Zone Last time on ATOM RPG, we helped a psychopathic sexual predator mutant kidnap a woman over the advice of our only friend Fidel and were only saved by the fact she was totally into that poo poo. Today we're going to go grab a new party member based on a Russian author who has had scholastic papers published about just how anti-Semitic he is. Don't look at me like that! I didn't write this game!  This individual has a long tale and, more importantly, a sidequest with some pretty sweet rewards.  : Mate, you'll dislodge your arm! Let me.: [With a defeated sigh, the man gives you the bottle. Without much of an effort you pull the cork, and it springs out with a wet "thump".This man's sidequest also leads to the evil route. We will not be doing it because it sucks.  : Survival from what?: [The man grins. For a second the look in his bloodshot yellowish eyes seems absolutely insane and wild...] : [Listen silently without interrupting] : And what was it that you heard? : Wait, what? : A product of your surroundings? : [Nod thoughtfully] : What philosophy? : Poor man's Nietzscheianism, I see. And what happened next?Nietzsche is weird. I've only read Beyond Good and Evil in translation, but my understanding of Nietzsche is that there is no God, and this is bad, because instead of having the Almighty to tell us universal morality and so we need to figure out what we stand for. This gets interpreted as might makes right by a lot of assholes (like literal Nazis) and it's not exactly helped by Nietzsche mocking Christians for pretending to be altruistic out of fear of their neighbor rather than actually caring. Then again, one of his maxims is that what is done out of love is beyond good and evil, so who the hell knows? I struggled with that book. : [The old man nods gloomily]Paaa-dding!  : [Listen silently without interrupting] : I lost interest in my own ideas when I saw them through a stranger's eyes... I realised that boys and girls two times younger than me, children I had raised and taught myself, were ravaging, murdering, torturing innocent people, burning down homes and entire villages, screaming out slogans I had made up myself... : Interesting revelation. I'm amazed you were able to realise this. And then...?: For years I didn't live, I merely existed, a nameless shadow who had no friends, no human contact. A monster who tried to quench his wild nature with booze. I guess deep inside I wanted to die. Probably that's why I developed this illness... : How many people? When?: As far as I understand, there will be three squads headed by the most bloodthirsty of my old followers...: Dima Death, who likes turning people into living torches. Lena Death, a beautiful and insane girl who heads a gang of sadists. And Igor Death with his wild pack of wolves and a tendency to poke eyes... : And what are your plans now? I've been bringing up conspiracy fiction like Illuminatus! and Philip K Dick up a lot in conjunction with this game, and it's because of crap like this. There's really no indication that this guy is anything other than a generic old man NPC (the old lady who lives in the house yells at you to get out and not steal poo poo) until he opens his mouth and starts spouting off about an evil "Death Gang" no one has ever heard of, no one has reported a massacre by, no one has run off to join Lena because they're dumb horny young people, etc. Of course, like almost every other batshit conspiracy we've heard of - the book haters, ATOM, the Mushroom Cult, the Pizzagate guys it's gonna turn out to be 100% correct. The only one that's not correct is Klinov the Nazi guy. Even the tinfoil hat murder guys - who are described as a doomsday cult - kind of have a point.  : I could offer my services for their extermination... : Your "children" are too dangerous and immoral to be left alive... He kind of is, but we'll discuss that later. : Good. What now?: Now you should go to Peregon. The guy - now a grown-up man - with whom I fled from my own gang is waiting at the entrance to the tent city. You'll recognize him by a round black mole above his upper lip. : "The moon hides behind a cloud"... Gotcha. Now i have to go.It's kind of amazing how the game whiffles between << and quotation marks for dialog. quote:
That was long winded as hell. A new problem presents itself - are we going to be able to take on this entire gang with just Bear and Fidel? Well, we could, but it's like 10 gunmen in an open field, we'd get slaughtered! We're gonna need help. Unprofessional help.  This lady needs us to bring her 10 giant spider lymph nodes. It's boring in both gameplay and dialogue, so here you go. It's on the way to do what we really want to do, which is...  Annoy this guy in the hospital!  This guy actually starts the quest to inadvertently find the last actual party member we'll see in this LP. : Why would I want to visit you? We were just passing by. : Cut the bull. You must have been worried sick... By the way, who's your friend?: Meet Bear Bearovich, agent on Morozov's case. And this fellow on the bed is Gozhin, Mikhail Fedorovich, a local agent. He supervises commercial activities in the Wasteland.Remember when Fidel took us to the back of the bar to discuss this stuff? Zhanna is right there and the door's open.  : Probably. Nice to meet you, comrade Gozhin. : Beneficial you say..? This is interesting. Go on.: Alright. So, essentially, there is, or rather, there was a settlement called 'Red Fighter'. Quite a decent place. One important man from KGB even had his country house there. People say it had a private bunker too, in case of war...: The settlement has long since been abandoned. It's inhabited by nasty mutants, and the local leaders never have the time to deal with them. Or rather, they can't reach it, because it's on the territory controlled by the gangs. : Right. And will there be a house for me? : Okay, so I take it you want me to slaughter the mutants. I agree.There's a ton of useful stuff you can do at base. Well, some useful stuff. : Attaboy! You're a true ATOM fighter! Always ready for a dangerous adventure and a reckless plot which will be beneficial to everyone in the long run. Right, let me mark the settlement on your map. rear end in a top hat.  : Spoilt my map for no reason... alright, I'm off.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
We're off to Red Fighter!  Kill bandits, get XP.  Now we can go to Red Fighter.  The mutants turn out to be giant spiders, which we can kill without qualms.  We then trigger an in-engine cutscene of a spider scuttling up to the house, getting shot by the inhabitant, and dying.  The unknown shooter is very proud of themself.    |: Who are you, even? : What are you doing there? Unfortunately for my sanity, we can't get in until we've run all across the map and sworded every last spider. Let me fast forward through some dull combat for you.   : The hero is back! The powerful warrior who single-handedly defeated the buzzing mutant swarm, the invaders! Wait, wait, soldier. I'll clear the passage for you...: [You hear menacing squeaking from the other side, followed by a rumbling noise]: Just a second... The entire barricade is based on one supporting element. Right... Ready!: [Suddenly, the barricade falls apart, like a house of cards. You jump aside to avoid being hit by the construction. Now the passage is open!] This old man is our next party member. We briefly met Alexander, and the dog appeared in the pacifist run (I do plan to get him eventually but he kinda sucks) and there are a few other special cases I'll talk about when we get to them.  : Hooray! The siege has been broken! No marching band, no fireworks. And by a simple plebeian? Yesterday's ape! And that's precisely what fills my heart with joy. Isn't that so, my brave fighters? Private Carrotov?: [The old man surveys his horde of hares with hope naked in his eyes. The hares ignore his question, and continue to wiggle their ears and sniff at the floorboards in search of fodder]So you might be thinking our mystery party member is just a crazy old man who talks to rabbits.  : That's an interesting turn of events. And who are you, exactly? ...wha? : [The man stands up tall and looks straight into your eyes, his gaze brimming with pride and passion] There we go. Now that we have the name of our mysterious old man, I'd like you all to remember the crazy Russian writer I mentioned earlier. : Writer? I'm not familiar with your works, sorry. This guy is a stand in for Alexander Prokhanov, who's an anti-Semitic far right nationalist who wrote the manifesto for the coup against Gorbachev.  "Hexogen" is a reference to Prokhanov's famous story, "Mr. Hexogen", which is - say it with me - a conspiracy story about Russian politics. : It speaks of sorrows, of people gone, the ones who left these villages and never returned.The novel starts with the protagonist receiving a phone call to go and help a shadow government founded by real Russian patriots save Russia from "the traitors".  : [Snap your fingers in front of Hexogen's face] Snap out of it.This shadow government, the "Secret Union", is to restore Russia to her former glory. Earlier in the game posted:: But I - But I am only speaking of the important things. : Maybe you could answer some more urgent questions.Their methodology is to use their vast conspiratorial power to drum up false conflicts to defeat the evil Jewish megacorporations (this IS an anti-Semitic right winger, after all) and promote the leadership of the "Chosen One", Vladimir Putin.  : What brings you here? Just answer me truthfully.The ultimate reveal of the novel comes when the businessmen are disposed of and, rather than restore Russia to greatness.. I'll quote Oushakine again. Oushakine posted:The combination of disgust with power, a feeling of impotence, and a sense of betrayal is especially poignant in the most dramatic scene of the novel, where Beloseltsev tries to prevent the explosion of high-rise apartment buildings in a Moscow suburb. Through his investigative work, Beloseltsev discovers that the Chechen boeviks who prepared hexogen for the explosion, and their alleged enemies, the secret patriots and intelligence officers working to restore Russia’s glory, are, in fact, mem-bers of the same cabal: “They are all connected ... They will detonate the fuse together” ( 2002 : 417). They do push the button (together), and Beloseltsev, unable to prevent the explosion, has to witness an apartment block imploding in the middle of the night, burying unsuspecting people under its rubble. : All roads lead to Communism, son. And thus I ended up here, with this crew of disorderly, long-eared forest parasites. I know, I know it's unbecoming for the country's last surviving intellectual to spend his days with the likes of these unruly, vulgar beasts!Keep that theme in mind as we continue the game, because it is very important to understanding the writing.  : If only the insanity felt the same way about you. Can I ask another question? : What do you know about these lands? Places of interest? Hidden caches?: Caches. Well, if I don't tell you willingly, you'll pressure me for the info, like the Nazis did to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. I can see it in your eyes. All right, son. Take it. Here it is!Ms. Kosmodemyanskaya was a Soviet partisan who fought the Nazis. She didn't give any fucks and threatened them while they hung her. : [The old man grabs your hand, and presses your palm against his broad chest]   : Ahem, I didn't see this coming, but all right. One more question... : I know I'm going to regret this, but... What's the recent news around here?: Oh, son! You know you're speaking to your father, here! Not to your mother - that nasty, talkative broad from the Siberian outback! Your father is a true intellectual. Gossip and rumors repulse him.: [The old man finishes his speech, leans close to you and whispers]: It's better the long-eared bastards don't know I'm telling people all about them. So there's a rumor that Private Carrotov's wife ate three of her own babies right after giving birth. Can you believe it?! Their marriage is completely in shambles! And Commander O'Cabbage just yesterday was jumping over Commander Hareman's wife in the meadow.Uh... : Dipstick! We're only interested in news about caravans, bloodthirsty monsters, and ways of earning a few rubles. : Oh my. Maybe you could answer some questions for me? : All right, so I've already met you. I'd better be going now.: [As you start to turn away, old Hexogen stops you with a mournful cry] : Yes? I'm listening. : Lovely. I could use an assistant.: I hope you know what you're doing, Bear Bearovitch, bringing this old coot along with us. Uh, what? Why is letting this old guy who knows how to use a gun follow us giving us "a heavy heart"? Sure, he's nuts, but we banged Devi Christu and she was just as insane. I should also confess that I've never actually taken Hexogen along, because this game is much easier on a solo run and you don't have to corral team AI. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Like Fidel, Hexogen has various skill checks you can't make him do. Speechcraft: I'm interested to know how much of your father's charisma was passed on to you. Thus, I shall stay quiet. Barter: ugh. Let me live the philosophy of Socialism in my dying days, child. Take care of the shameful capitalistic haggling yourself. Gambling: I can cope with my child squandering my retirement fund in a casino, but wagering my descendant's hard earned cash? Never! Pickpocket: Heed my warning, child. If you ever attempt something so dastardly, you must depend only on your own skill Tinkering: a man with a full belly is no friend to the hungry! Just like an arthritic, palsied old man is no friend to crafting.  He comes with an SKS rifle and a duffel bag. We give him the AK we stole from the guard who smoked to death.  We give the spider parts to Dr Petrovna and she tells us to come back later for her medicine. It's a purple antidote that's more effective than the red one. You really only need the red one. But hey, XP!   Gozhin is of course loving around while we do all the work. : You're lucky, Gozhin! I've been to that settlement already and exterminated all the mutants.: [Unexpectedly, the man jumps on his bed] : Look how this news has reinvigorated you! I thought you were supposed to be sick...: Consider me recovered. I can't stay sick forever, can I? My point exactly!: [Gozhin puts aside the can that serves him as an ashtray, stretches his body and gets up]You lazy fucker. : I guess everything will run smoothly now! Welp, it's high time they discharged me from the hospital. I need to start recruiting volunteers! Guess we'll check it out. : Okay, go on, restore it. I'll check it out when I return!TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
That's the quest to get Hexogen. It's not super exciting, but it does show what kind of people run ATOM a bit more. This is going to be surprisingly important when we get to the plot proper. Next time: Lamb barbeque!
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2021 06:38
|
|
|
Hexogen is also a Solzhenitsyn \ generic Soviet intellectual and post-Soviet "patriot" reference.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2021 11:40
|
|
|
Edgar Maddison Welch CosplayPreviously on ATOM RPG posted:Would you expect Jay from Redlettermedia to be running a Nazi rape torture snuff film dungeon? Previously on ATOM RPG posted:
Welcome back! Last time on ATOM RPG, we got subjected to a load of drivel which I think was supposed to be funny? Oh, and a new party member and a house. Today we're going to go resolve the Pizzagate quest. Sure, we COULD do the main plot, but why would we do that when we have a bunch of stupid poo poo to do?  Gozhin runs off. Now, before we get too deep into this update, I want you, the readers, to know that the game goes places I personally find extremely offensive and vile, so hold on to your hats because we're going to accord it the respect it deserves (none).  This is an actually good random encounter!  This caravan is under attack by bandits, so we end up watching as the caravan guards kill all the bandits. Then we loot the bodies, sell the loot to the caravan, and get a pile of rubles. EZ!  The game starts throwing this loading screen at us, which kind of hints at future events. Even Dark Deity, a crappy Game Maker Fire Emblem clone (that I plan to LP because boy does that game do almost everything wrong) had the sense to keep loading screens gated behind events you'd already seen.  This is Peregon. It sucks almost as much as Krasnoznamenny.  I'm gonna cut this jackass' spiel short - we need to pay a fee to enter the tent city, and we have to buy one use passes or we get attacked by guards. Hexogen is angry, Fidel agrees to do it, I'm not transcribing this poo poo because it's boring.  This is an encounter. I have no idea why it exists, what it's trying to convey, or why we care.  We have the opportunity to shower this nameless lady in questions but I cut straight to the point. : Are you waiting for someone? : [Personality] Weird of you to call the love of your life an rear end in a top hat. What happened between you two?: [Success][The woman curses under her breath and spits on the ground] : Yeah, something happened all right. Me mum was plenty sick last year, and the doc gave me a list of medicine that was worth more than my whole household! So I started working on the side, selling stuff here in Peregon. That's when Erast found me. He started courting me, ya know, calling me his sweet little lady, untouched by civilization, his Neolithic Venus, his honey bun... This guy's mouth dropped honey! : [Intellect] Do you know what the Neolithic Venus looked like? Doesn't sound like a compliment to me.: loving bastard! So when he was sweet talking me, he was insulting me at the same time? I'm not surprised. Anyway...: I didn't understand why, but after a few hot nights in the bushes the guy started avoiding me. No more beautiful words, no more gifts, no more watching the sunset. He even stopped asking about my mother's health! A few days later, he told me he's planning to run a caravan up to the North Pole to trade matryoshkas for seal skins with the chukchas. He told me it's gonna take him eight years, but when he comes back we'll get married and everything else.  : [Speechcraft] Assault him and you'll ruin your whole life. You need to forget this silly idea and move on.: [Success][The woman sighs] : Good luck on the road. She wanders off holding a knife, never to be seen again. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
It's a big problem this game has that it is just full of random, incoherent poo poo. Look, I get that this game wants to be a conspiracy story, and that people like Philip K. Dick and the Illuminatus! authors included a lot of random seeming crap to assemble their conspiracies. If we look at PKD his books actually go places and a lot of the paranoid seeming crap fits into a wider hole. This is just random! Why is there a literal god in the forest who shoots us with lightning if we give him meat? No clue! Why is Marina Tsivigun wandering the wasteland looking for a man to gently caress the crazy out of her? No idea! Why is Dr. McCoy from Star Trek in the starting village? Who cares? The ultimate result of all of this is that the player stops caring about all of the random one-off bullshit references that go nowhere. If you read actual conspiracy fiction part of the fun is tying all this crap into a greater plot, like in the X-Files where you could track the mythology of the government selling the planet out to the aliens (and said government suppressing all the supernatural crap Mulder was obsessed with). When we do get plot it's clear the developers have no real idea how to lead the player from place to place, so we get things like an investigation where the bandit guy just tells us he's a bandit, or Beard sending us to a death ambush done by guys with a note that says "Beard did this". So when this lady wants to spend 5 text screens blathering about her boyfriend who as far as I can tell is not a character in this game my eyes just glaze over. Now, you can kind of connect some of this poo poo to the unfolding conspiracy - like Toilet Kruul being authorized by the Chamber of Commerce to run the sewers and perv on women - but this just raises the question of why? It's really easy to lose the plot thread because it doesn't matter to our character at all. Sure, we're being sent out to find General Morozov, but we don't have anyone watching us, we don't need to make reports, and we can just kind of wander into the wasteland and no one will ever check up on us. In the X-Files, Scully is dragged into all of this crazy crap because it's her job. Philip K. Dick's protagonists are usually personally affected by the conspiracy, whether it's Bob Arctor trying to infiltrate the Substance D ring as a cop, or Joe Luckman investigating the death of his friend. Even Dan Brown, one of the greatest hack authors ever, makes the conspiracy matter to Robert Langdon by having the conspirators inadvertently frame him for murder. Here we're just a detached observer with no real pressure to actually do anything. The game even confirms this in the first five minutes by showing how Alexander just fucks around with no consequences. Hell, we even have jokey dialog from Fidel about how we're explicitly asking for rumors so we can do odd jobs for money. What the hell is the point? Ugh. Moving on. I'm sorry, but I'm having real difficulty making parts of this game actually interesting.  There are two caravans parked at Peregon always, so if you need to unload a pile of crap this is a good place to do it.  Anyway, here we are. This is the barbeque joint the old postman spoke of. Let's take a look at the proprietors, shall we?  It's... Jay Bauman from Redlettermedia!  : How much of what?: [The man glares in your direction as if seeing you for the first time] : Oh, are we going to talk meat? Let's trade! : Why did you offer, then? : I see. Let's change the subject. : About your joint...: [The man's eyes slowly open and close, then he livens up a bit] : Ah, you best talk to my buddy over there. : Got it. Care to answer some questions, though? The game is really arbitrary in how it gates stuff off. Sometimes it wants charisma, sometimes it wants speechcraft. Hope you have a guide! : Fine, I won't bother you then.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 I think this guy is Jack Packard, who's another RLM host.  Now, I will be absolutely fair to the devs and point out that the assumption dialog is incorrectly translated, per Xander77, the Russian is "how did you know I was hungry?" Of course, they didn't bother to check it, so we get a tired Twitter idiot joke. : Mmmm, sounds tasty. : You talked me into it, you devil. Show me what you've got.Now, you might think that "Ivan" here has some meat to sell.  : [Speechcraft] I'm a big fan of meat and all sorts of herbs and spices. I'll be your best client ever! Can you give me a discount based on that fact?: [Success][A shifty fire lights up the man's eyes] : Amazing. Now let me take a look at your stock. Despite him talking up his raw meat, he doesn't actually have any. Good job, devs!  : That settles it, but first can we change the subject? : Maybe we can talk some more? : Care to tell me about yourself?I'm fishing for a specific option here and forgot where it was in the tree.  : So that's how it is. I better go then.I remember the old man gave us a memo, so I check it out.    : About your joint... : Ummm... The cooks are signalling - six new portions of chicken meat need to be picked up from the usual spot.: [Confounding your expectations, the man's smiling face changes not at all. He shrugs and calls out to his partner]More inaccurate prose. On a meta level, we do not expect "Ivan" to stop smiling because that would require the ATOM devs to draw more portraits instead of writing banal NPC dialog. Having him do the dialog without noting the change would convey the same effect - that he expected to be called out in the slaver code.  : They're earlier than I expected. Did you hear our friend, Anton? We need to travel out of town for an inspection. Yeah, right now. Thanks for letting me know, buddy! TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
This is the smart way to do the quest. The dumb way is to ask the local guard to check it out, and because this is a conspiracy story he is of course in on it and you fail.  This lets us go down into the basement.  We're instantly attacked by a knife wielding idiot who dies to our combination of Cossack Steel and military assault weapons.  Then the game tries to write a check it's rear end can't cash. Some of this works, some of it doesn't. Here we have a weird pagan bull idol that I think is used to burn people alive along with a vaguely ancient Greek looking painting.  Here we have dead bodies in a morgue. May as well keep looking for evidence.  Conveniently these idiots just left notes lying around explaining all their evil plans, because coming up with an interesting plot or something for the player to do is hard. We have a "creepy list", a poem, and a "grease-stained note".  We can't go to Trudograd, but I can tell you right now two of the names on this list are the two leaders of Peregon. In fact, the guy telling us we needed to buy a permit mentioned that Nikolay Siplovsky is the head of the Peregon guard. This is Pizzagate. This is literally Pizzagate. You might be asking yourself if we can use this as leverage against these men. The answer is no.  This is the grease-stained note, informing us that not only is the BBQ joint serving people but they're murdering slaves underground for the entertainment of the rich. They're Beard's employers, if you were wondering, and why the Peregon guard did nothing (if you'll recall, Beard was arrested but not hanged).  I have no loving clue. Maybe it's a reference?  We can search the place to find various torture implements we will later resell for money.  This room was apparently crossbow target practice of shooting people for fun.  This is some kind of rape and torture room, as implied by the condoms in the dresser.  Here's the Nazi torture simulator, which has more condoms and a spiked club. I mentioned that I found parts of this update offensive, and this is it. Jay and Jack are real people. Sure, they do a lot of edgy humor in their Redlettermedia videos, but taking them and putting them in this game as pedophile sex traffickers running a Pizzagate murder dungeon isn't funny. It's offensive, because this poo poo is so beyond the pale, and as far as I know they didn't consent to it. Atom Dev (link in OP) posted:Hey guys, so I already posted into ReviewBrah's reddit so it's only logical to post here as well. Being lazy has nothing to do with it. Our game's NPC picture style is an homage to games like Might and Magic VI - IX or Arcanum, where real life pictures were used as base for character portraits. Mostly, we use free stock images. We use a celebrity either if we don't know the guy and he popped up in the "free stock image of man" google search for some reason, or when we want to pay tribute, a homage of sorts. The RLM references, for which I am personally responsible, are just that. I love the guys, always did. My favorite Red Letter Media is Rich Evans. So when I started creating something that will live longer than me, I wanted to line it with tiny references to what I like in life. Like a time capsule, you know? From my native Russian poets, to the RLM guys, I packed every frame of the game I got a chance to work on, it became truly dense, there was a lot going on. I never looked at it in any way other than respectfully paying a homage. Still, I tried asking for permission. Here's the copypasta of what I already mentioned in the ReviewBrah reddit: The problem is that this isn't some cute homage where they show up in the Krasnoznamenny video store making fun of lovely movies, this is portraying them as murderous child sex traffickers. I don't know any culture where being a murderous child sex trafficker isn't an insult, and I think it's extremely lovely that instead of actually getting Jay and Jack's input to put them in the game they just went "oh, they ignored our email, let's have these two men we supposedly like running a child sex dungeon. Tee hee!" This is some Terry Goodkind level poo poo, except that even when Terry Goodkind wrote his crappy Clinton caricatures he didn't have the Bill Clinton effigy be an actual pedophile. Plenty of his fictional villains were, but I think it's worth noting that for someone these developers claim to to like they did them worse than noted hack writer Terry Goodkind did his political enemies. This isn't respectfully paying a homage or a funny reference. It's not like using DeForest Kelly as a doctor because, well, he played one on TV, this is taking real people and turning them into child sex traffickers. It's not funny. I can see how the "filmmaker/critic -> snuff films" train of thought could be funny, but this is just vile slander. But wait, there's more!  As you might guess, trying to leave triggers an event.  Yeah, the game isn't done putting the RLM guys through the wringer.  That was gonna be way too hard to do in Unity apparently.  We can play dumb and get him to admit they brought rich people down here to make snuff films raping and torturing slaves, but let's get this over with, shall we? : Maybe you won't believe me, but the man who put me onto you was a strange, yet mild-mannered old postman.: [Anton shivers at these words, though as of right now you don't know why. The blood drains from Ivan's face until he looks like a corpse someone's propped up in place. His gun almost drops from his slack fingers]Is the old postman involved in some other conspiracy bullshit? Do you even have to ask? : gently caress, gently caress, gently caress! You're dead now!: You freaks will never get away with this!: We always got away with it before. Today's no different.: Hey comrades crooks and butchers, maybe there's a way for us to avoid this bloodshed?: I'm afraid not, grandpa. We don't meet the prereqs for the other checks and "Ivan" just calls us a dumbass. : [Dexterity][Attack first]However, dex is the best loving stat that every PC puts at 10, so...  : Shall we dance? [Attack]TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 Right away we have two big problems right off the bat, and their names are Fidel and Hexogen. Now, in a solo melee run we could dash to the room on the lower left, cutting off all these assholes' fire lanes and forcing them to come to us and die 1 or 2 at a time to Cossack steel. Unfortunately no single PC can take gunfire from all these jackasses at a time, and while I believe you can order people to move to a specific square it's a pain in the dick due to the crap UI and Fidel is too slow to actually move before he gets gunned down. And no, the entire squad gets cutscene moved here. No being smart and setting the team up for an ambush!  Thus we're forced to make a suicide run into the enemy team. We still are exploding these guys on contact.  Oh, yeah, that was Jay. After the game turns the Redlettermedia guys into child sex slavers, it has you kill them. I think there's a nonviolent way out of this, but if you didn't make the right choices at character creation or meet the arbitrary unrevealed Speechcraft requirement, you're hosed. This is just appalling. Unfortunately, we go down and I have to do everything in Peregon again because it didn't autosave on entering Comet Pizza. This loving game.  Incidentally, this is what happens if you try to be smart and tell people to hide - Fidel is slow as poo poo, gets caught in the open, and focus fired to death. He has our best armor too.  Ultimately we're going to have to get through this. We could go level grind, but that requires interacting with this game's tedious systems and will ultimately take us longer than the actual solution: save scumming.  Because this game is so heavily RNG based, all we have to do is reload until we survive the first turn. Then we keep huffing drugs. Hexogen will reliably one-shot dudes with burst AK fire, and Fidel will too once he gets in range.  This requires a lot of reloading. It's worth noting we can't really mitigate this with strategy or tactics, as we cannot control our party members directly and the system is so shallow. Even Age of Decadence has nets and bolas and poo poo where you can use powerful limited consumables to tip fights. The closest ATOM has are grenades, and those are level gated so we can't actually just yeet a grenade into these idiots. They also have - say it with me now - an RNG chance to stun, so we can't even lock down these idiots to survive. This fight manages to be both vile slander against Redlettermedia AND tedious to play!  I finally get a rush of brains to the head and save on the second second turn I make it to. The game lets you save mid-combat, so I assume save scumming is part of the intended experience.  So, uh, they're all dead! Of note is that despite the narration stating that "Anton" is pointing a gun at us, he doesn't have a gun. Good going, devs!  We get these. I'll save em for a rainy day for some reason.  A random encounter gets us a new level and one of the best perks in the game.  Specifically, this one. You can't carry over AP to the second turn, and it happens right after your existing turn, but now we can run 10 squares and do an aimed slash on some loser, probably killing him instantly. There's also nothing really locking this to melee, so you can absolutely do this with an assault rifle or something and just burst fire people.  Hexogen has a short conversation with Fidel as we enter. : And what happened then?: Then? Well, I remembered I have neither a wife nor a shower. It was a flash flood! The river came out of it's usual borders and washed all the bunnies away! So I started harvesting them, and gathering them in my shack.So I stop by Abraham's to see if the developers were nuts enough to have Hexogen go off on him.  Holy poo poo! I just realized the Jewish character is literally rubbing his hands together because he thinks he's going to take your money! Remember, this is the character whose kippah gives a +10 barter because Jewish stereotypes.  : I am more interested in how your business is going... How the gently caress did I miss this?  : [Barter] The thing is though, that I don't have that much of said hard-earned gelt. Could you give me a discount out of the kindness of your heart? So we take a look at his stuff and...  So I am given to understand that the merchant's Barter skill compared to yours is what determines your sell prices. We would be selling Abraham expensive rifles for 1 ruble that other merchants would by for 1600 or so. I'm not even gonna sugarcoat this, this is poo poo. At least we bought 23 speechcraft ranks out of it, along with some first aid and survival. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 We can go back to the postman and tell him we stormed Comet Pizza - uh, the "lamb barbeque".   : Regarding our conspiracy... : It's hard to admit, but you were right, man. I saw it all... [Tell him what you saw]: [As he listens to your blood-curdling story, the ex-postman transforms right before your eyes. Unhealthy twinkle[sic] disappears from his eyes; his back straightens. The man takes his cap off, spits at his palm and smoothes[sic] the grey tuft of hair at the top of his head...]  And this dialogue right here serves the exact same function as the narration, which is a botched attempt at written imagery in a visual medium with the full power of the Unity engine.  : Learn? What can you possibly learn from these monsters?  : Nothing unusual... Fear. Hate. Yup, the postman has his own bullshit conspiracy going on, thank you very much! : Wait. What lesson?: [The man gives you a wide kind smile]: The lesson is, if you want to make barbeque, go for it. But leave delivering the post to the postman... What shadows? Krasnoz is pretty brightly lit at daytime and there really aren't enough buildings clustered together to cast much of a shadow over anything. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
So, yes, we killed Redlettermedia at the behest of an evil postman conspiracy. We'll see them again later in the game. The sad thing is, I'd planned to spend a small part of this update talking about how the idea of a conspiracy driven RPG was a good one, but ATOM implemented it badly. I'm not inclined to extend the developers any credit anymore. This is just vile. We've got the unlicensed use of two real people transformed into child sex traffickers AND blatant anti-Semitism. Again, I need to reiterate that per the developer's own words, they do not have permission from RLM to use it as an inside joke, this is entirely an "homage" of turning these two into cannibal child sex slavers and then having the player murder them while another NPC gloats about the fear in their eyes. gently caress this game. Next time: Time to rig an election. TheGreatEvilKing fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Jul 24, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2021 09:12
|
|
|
Somehow the game keeps discovering new depths to sink into.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2021 12:20
|
|
|
Oh the pizzagate thing was both actually happening, and you were tipped off by a different evil conspiracy? great. Classy. Good job, game.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2021 12:47
|
|
|
Ok I can see where they say they took inspiration from the Arcanum quest. They took the conspiracy and rape camps and made it even worse.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2021 13:01
|
|
|
...an entire game full of lovely references and they have you yelling "culture!" at a Nazi without reaching for your gun? seriously you can tell they aren't doing this stuff with anything but deadly seriousness and it's atrocious
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2021 13:19
|
|
|
TheGreatEvilKing posted:
quote:The game is really arbitrary in how it gates stuff off. Sometimes it wants charisma, sometimes it wants speechcraft. quote:You might be asking yourself if we can use this as leverage against these men. The answer is no. quote:I can see how the "filmmaker/critic -> snuff films" train of thought could be funny, but this is just vile slander. quote:Then? Well, I remembered I have neither a wife nor a shower. It was a flash flood! The river came out of it's usual borders and washed all the bunnies away! So I started harvesting them, and gathering them in my shack. quote:So I stop by Abraham's to see if the developers were nuts enough to have Hexogen go off on him. quote:Remember, this is the character who's kippah gives a +10 barter because Jewish stereotypes. ... You can in fact buy BBQ skewers from the cook (or steal them from a few Peregon NPCs) - they look about the same as Iguana Bob's skewers in Fallout 1 and restore 1000 hunger - more than any other food in the game. As to the combat encounter - it's 100% forseeable, and you can trigger it at your leisure. You can also use speechcraft or Strength or Luck to make it much more manageable. The game kindly doesn't auto-save when you enter the torture dungeon, just so that you can't find yourself in an unwinnable and unescapable fight.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2021 15:19
|
|
:
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 13:04 |
|
|
Xander77 posted:That's probably meant to be Jay's talking head? This is why you should never update at 3 am, thank you. Xander77 posted:Mr. Plinkett, the RLM reviewer persona, is a serial killer. I get it, but Mr. Plinkett is a made up guy while Jack and Jay are real people. I wouldn't have a problem with this if the devs had gotten permission from Redlettermedia and maybe given them a shout out in the credits, then it would be a funny inside joke instead of just slandering them. Yes, I know it's partially an Iguana Bob reference from Fallout, and it's a reference to the quest in Arcanum where the gnomes are kidnapping women for rape camps, but as far as I know Iguana Bob and the evil gnomes are not explicitly using the likenesses of real people without their consent. Yea, the RLM guys like to make dark humor about their half in the bag personas, but I'm pretty sure none of them is ever portrayed as a pedophile. Xander77 posted:I'm pretty sure you can, for the Peregon "elections". I remember doing that quest and not getting the option, but it's been a while.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2021 17:59
|
|