• Log In | Sign Up

  • News
  • Reviews
  • Top Games
  • Search
  • New Releases
  • Daily Deals
  • Forums

Adventure Gamers - Forums

Welcome to Adventure Gamers. Please Sign In or Join Now to post.

You are here: HomeForum Home → Gaming → Adventure → Thread

Post Marker Legend:

  • New Topic New posts
  • Old Topic No new posts

Currently online

CharophyceanJdawg445

Support us, by purchasing through these affiliate links

   

AG Community Playthrough #35: Syberia 2

Total Posts: 930

Joined 2004-01-06

PM

One of the best moments in the game is when Oscar sacrifices himself for Hans. Oscar seemed like a coward throughout most of the Syberia games, obsessed with his own self-preservation. But at this moment you learn why—he had to preserve himself to help Hans. It was part of his programming and he had no choice. He wasn’t really a coward.

So I’m not understanding why people would want to strip that moment out of the game. If you want Oscar in future games, there’s no reason why Oscar’s AI might not reawaken in the future, perhaps after Hans dies. Or if Hans’ life were to be significantly extended by using Oscar’s body, he could reawaken Oscar’s AI in a new body to be his helper. There are all kinds of ways to have Oscar in a new game without sacrificing the moment where Oscar sacrifices himself for Hans, and the moment where Hans rides off on a mammoth as Kate watches—assuming that Sokal wants Oscar in a future game.

I’d hate for Hans not to get to see the mammoths. Without Hans there would be no Syberia game. The Voralberg factory would never have had a heyday without his inventions. Kate would not have been sent to buy the factory. There would be no story and no game.

I think one problem is that you don’t get to know Hans very well in the game. You see glimpses of Hans as a young boy in the figures on the music box, and get a sense of his relationship with his sister. You hear about his genius at inventing. But it’s all 3rd hand and distant. In the game you only see the shell of an old man, nearing the end of his life, and it’s hard to identify with him or communicate with him. Interacting with Oscar is more interesting than interacting with Hans.

     
Avatar

Total Posts: 5035

Joined 2004-07-12

PM

I really want to agree with everything you said. It was beautifully worded.

But I wonder when Oscar was “hard coded.” Was it in Viladellene? Where I postulated that Kate might have had the opportunity to deactivate the device. Or did it happen while Hans and Oscar were on the train without Kate. I.e. Hans was tinkering with Oscar while Kate was still trying to get the bear out of her back yard?

The way we feel about the individuals in the triad depend on when events take place.

Of course we have no concrete knowledge. So, our differing opinions of who did what to whom remain in play.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

Total Posts: 930

Joined 2004-01-06

PM

rtrooney - 30 September 2015 08:32 PM

But I wonder when Oscar was “hard coded.” Was it in Viladellene? Where I postulated that Kate might have had the opportunity to deactivate the device. Or did it happen while Hans and Oscar were on the train without Kate. I.e. Hans was tinkering with Oscar while Kate was still trying to get the bear out of her back yard?

There’s also another possibility somewhere in between—that Oscar’s body was created in the factory so it could be easily modified to be a prosthetic device—and Hans activating that modification on the train instead of inserting it from scratch.

The way we feel about the individuals in the triad depend on when events take place.

It certainly does. It makes both characters look bad—Hans for obvious reasons and Oscar because there would be no alternative explanation for his apparent cowardice. I’d rather see Oscar as a hero.

     
Avatar

Total Posts: 5035

Joined 2004-07-12

PM

I finished the game this evening. Obviously there is a joyful side, a sorrowful side, and an ambivalent side to the ending. While my comments during the time I had the computer problems were from memory of the last time I played S2, I don’t find they have changed much. I am “somewhat” joyful that Hans finally was able to meet his mammoths. I am sad that Oscar had to make that sacrifice in order for Hans to achieve his goal. And I am ambivalent about Kate’s role in all of this.

Crabapple and I have been discussing some scenarios. Hans was certainly manipulative re: Oscar. Even if he didn’t have the emotional maturity to know what he was doing. So, I think of him as a bad guy no matter what else has transpired. Even if he is an emotionally immature bad guy. Thus, my joy at the end is tempered by the things he did to get there.

Oscar is a character, I think, we would all like to look at in heroic terms. He gave his life so that another could fulfill his dreams. But, as has been recently discussed, his fate was pre-ordained, and was never his “voluntary” choice, that puts a different spin on things. First, as crabapple pointed out, that would mean that Oscar wasn’t saving himself for a higher calling. So all the things we thought cowardly were exactly that. He didn’t want to face adversaries for fear of ruining his “special” talent. He was simply afraid of them. So my sadness for Oscar is tempered by the fact that he might well have not been the hero we though he was.

And then there is Kate. While she is the protagonist in both games, it is hard for me to think of her as one.

In Syberia I, she walked around, discovered secrets, solved puzzles, and all sorts of other things. But, basically she built Oscar and started the train. And facilitated moving the train forward until she connected with Hans.  And, there is the question of whether, when building Oscar, she might have had the opportunity to disable whatever it was in Oscar’s design that led to his demise.

In S2, she is basically along for the ride. She is a very important sidebar to the main story of Hans’s trek to Syberia. Her only important functions here are supervising the unfortunate “transition” of Oscar, and delivering Hans to his final goal. Hard to think of a major protagonist as being so insignificant in the overall story, but I think she was. I think of her as a narrator, rather than an actor, in the overall story.

So here we are at the end. Oscar is “dead.” Hans is riding a mammoth to wherever that mammoth will take him. And Kate is alone. A future seriously in doubt.

I think it is a very fitting end. (Inasmuch as it begged for a S3 where Kate could finally be the protagonist for her own life.)

If there is ever a Syberia III, I hope it will move to the front of the AGCotD vote in a more rapid fashion than did S2.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

Avatar

Total Posts: 3933

Joined 2011-03-14

PM

rtrooney - 05 October 2015 10:18 PM

So my sadness for Oscar is tempered by the fact that he might well have not been the hero we though he was.

I have never thought of Oscar as being a hero. A pain in the butt and a somewhat entertaining sidekick that we learn to love, but never a hero.

rtrooney - 05 October 2015 10:18 PM

And then there is Kate. While she is the protagonist in both games, it is hard for me to think of her as one.

Yeah, that was also my own main problem with S2.


Anyway, I’m glad you managed to finish it, despite your technical problems.

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

Avatar

Total Posts: 2704

Joined 2004-08-02

PM

I find it a stretch to call Hans a bad guy. He built a robot to aid him in fulfilling a dream, and then he used the robot(automaton) for that purpose? Does that make him bad?

     
Avatar

Total Posts: 5035

Joined 2004-07-12

PM

SoccerDude28 - 06 October 2015 05:33 PM

I find it a stretch to call Hans a bad guy. He built a robot to aid him in fulfilling a dream, and then he used the robot(automaton) for that purpose? Does that make him bad?

This is a hard question for me to answer, because I didn’t consider Oscar to be a sentient being.

That opinion was overruled by just about everyone. Almost all giving examples of how Oscar behaved in a sentient manner.

So I’m a little stuck here. If Hans created a sentient being with qualities that might assist his quest, without regard to the sentient being’s feelings. Or, at worst, he created a sentient being, but removed from it the ability to say NO! Then yes, Hans is a horrible person. And I hope he rots in a pile of Mammoth poop.

Even if I stand by my initial stance, that Oscar was non-sentient, but simply had all his responses pre-programmed, it doesn’t make me feel any better about Hans. He rides off into the sunset with no regard to the wreckage he left behind.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

You are here: HomeForum Home → Gaming → Adventure → Thread

Welcome to the Adventure Gamers forums!

Back to the top