Adventure Gamers - Forums

I tried out several endings now, even got the ‘oops’ ending which wasn’t such a hard thing to try since I already saw what entropy did to the Russian and Chinese AIs.

My first ending was Ellen’s IHNAIMS and I thought it to be really creepy and good. I think I liked it the best of the endings, or perhaps it’s just the initial impact of the first ending, don’t know for sure.

For a long time I thought the pillars were some kind of capsules for the protagonists to escape to and I kept shocking them in vain, haha.

More about completing the pillars: It took me a while to find Ted’s and Ellen’s items under those skulls, I lucked Nimdok’s hand very fast. Actually all these three had to take a shock to get their redemption but overall just white Nimdok would have sufficed, I picked all three skulls with him and still had to intentionally suicide him with the mean faced Id to get to the other characters.

I already praised the order of chapters but a bit more about it:
At Ellen’s chapter we are told about the 3 hidden parts which are the Ego, Super Ego and Id, and this is the first hint towards that you have disable them all, instead of just one or two.

Nimdok’s chapter is the one that revelas the most and I think it was a good choice to leave it for last. I really liked those ether ramblings about the people in moon, that was awesome reveal so late in the game. I think it would have given too much hope if I had known about it from the beginning. I liked how hopeless and bleak everything seemed to be.

I enjoyed allt he characters and all the ends. Though I am fairly certain I finished Benny as white portrait and he was green when starting the last chapter. What was up with that? He also [spoiler]got shocked trying the computer console that reveals his wife. Is it so that Benny is the only one that can’t reach the good ending on his own, and also the only one that can’t reach his redemption on his own? Oh but it was already corrected that Nimdok had to enter the password before anyone else could ahev guessed it? How horrible for those German people, really.[/spoiler].

I also liked the mechanics though they made me uneasy now and then, luckily different variations were rather easy to do so in the end we could try everything. I am one of the people that missed one of the redemption items, Gorrister’s heart but I had all the rest and I would guess that it’s not possible to beat the chapters without getting the non-character-specific items. White portrait also was not needed for the specific items, I had Benny’s fruit with green (on my actually green save too, not the white that turned green for some reason).

I should read the short story now.

millenia - 16 November 2013 05:09 PM

... Though I am fairly certain I finished Benny as white portrait and he was green when starting the last chapter. What was up with that? ...

The exact same thing happened for me, I just assumed that it was my own fault, that I had made a mistake and accidentally loaded the wrong savegame when playing Nimdok’s chapter, but now… Well, either we both made the same mistake, or we both encountered the same bug, both possibilities seems equally plausible to me

*bump*

I’m almost a year behind in the playthrough, but I’m soldiering on.

Finished Ted’s segment. It was more straightforward than the first two segments, and at first glance not related to any event from Ted’s past, but more an allusion to his behaviour in general. And where the other two sections show actual character growth, that’s lacking here (because Ted has either grown before, simply by falling in love with Ellen or it’s more superficial than he lets on and nothing changed)...
Getting the spiritual barometer to white was rather easy (it’s not difficult to avoid the ‘bad’ options in this section).
Some interesting ideas and references in this (with fairy tales and The Divine Comedy), but it ultimately felt more generic than the other two sections. And Ted seems like a bland character…

So far, AM is still the star of the show.

Next up: Benny!

TimovieMan - 01 September 2014 04:13 PM

I’m almost a year behind in the playthrough, but I’m soldiering on.

There’s still hope for me to finish Tex Murphy, Space Bar, GAG and Callahan’s playthroughs!

Sefir - 02 September 2014 01:25 AM

Avoiding going to bed with the maid was tricky IMO. I guess if you are a family man, it gets easier…

If you can play Mass Effect 2 as a paragon male and DON’T cheat on Ashley (or Liara) with Tali’zorah, then not bedding the maid here is easy as pie.

Finished Benny’s section - it was the shortest one yet (about an hour and a half, and I took it slooooow).

It was an interesting tale of redemption through sacrifice, but it felt kinda out-of-character as Benny gets established as a hateful, misanthropic, remorseless killer, yet suddenly starts caring for the young boy he so quickly called ‘a freak’.
Oh well, the result of over a century of non-stop torture?

I like that he referenced the original short story in the beginning (telling of a long trek to find some canned food only to discover AM didn’t supply a can opener).

It’s a pity that you can so easily miss the conversation with the revolting computer that’s aiding you against AM as that felt rather important in the grand scheme of the game.

Not a bad chapter, although we didn’t have a bad one yet.

Next up: Nimdok (but I’ll give the Syberia CPT priority first)

*bump*

Finished Nimdok’s section. Interesting chapter. You can see why he was chosen by AM (his ‘research’ led directly to the stuff that’s making our five torture victims “live forever”) and I’m guessing he’s only getting tortured because his failing memory isn’t providing AM with new torture methods and tools...

It’s also quite interesting that the biggest “monster” of the five has either softened over time, or he was never as bad as history made him seem but was probably coerced to do his crimes.
Due to his failing memory, he doesn’t realize what’s going on, but he seems appalled by the ‘experiments’. That makes Nimdok imo more redeemable than Benny, which is surprising.

The hints that there might be a bunch of humans in hibernation on the moon is worrisome, because…

Iznogood - 02 November 2013 09:25 AM

In this chapter it is also revealed that there is “A lost tribe of our brothers sleeping on the moon! They sleep in darkness, unseen by the beast.”, or put in other words that we might be the last humans alive on earth, but there are still some left on the moon, in stasis or hibernation, that AM isn’t aware of! I wonder it this is what Tim would describe as:

TimovieMan - 04 October 2013 03:40 AM

Unless there’s an ass-pull that deviates from the short story, of course.

I guess he can only answer that himself, if or when he catches up.

...this is exactly what I would describe as an ass-pull.

Especially since there is absolutely NO WAY that a supercomputer like AM, who took control of a cluster of other supercomputers during the height of our computer dependency, would not be aware of this…

But on the other hand, if the game only had as bleak an ending as the short story, it wouldn’t resonate much with people…

My order of chapters deviates from the norm in this thread, as I seem to be the only one that actually liked Ellen’s chapter. My pick is:
Ellen > Nimdok ~ Gorrister >>> Benny >>> Ted
There hasn’t been a chapter I’ve really loved, though. It’s a good game, so far, but I’m not finding it particularly great…

And now I’m finally ready to take down AM.

Finished the game. Finally.
I’m almost as slow as diego…

Is that final chapter way out there or what?

Thanks to TV Tropes I have a passing knowledge of the Freudian concept of the Id, the Ego and the Superego, but most of the endgame is still very metaphorical and full of symbolism. Some of it probably went over my head.
In fact, reading the last couple of pages of this thread, the people that finished this CPT are reading far more into the endgame than I did.
That might actually explain why Ellen’s chapter resonated more with me - it’s more blunt in its approach…

I started the endgame with Nimdok (as was suggested here), and I finished with Ellen, the character I liked best. Ted was too bland, Benny was horrible, and Gorrister was imo helped most by dying.
If I understood the good ending right, does that mean that Ellen is now AM - an immortal entity overseeing the return of our moon colony? Reminds me of the ‘Control’ ending to Mass Effect 3.

It’s a shame that every time you got a bad ending, the game exited to the desktop. Good thing you can restart it quickly. I got quite a few bad endings before I got the good one. Or at least the bittersweet one.

I actually didn’t like the bad ending because they show you the blob you’re turned into. The description that ended the short story worked a LOT better if you had to visualize it yourself. It was also much scarier that way. It made the last sentence (the title) that much more chilling. Here it missed its effect somewhat…

Still, this is one bleak game…
It’s heavily flawed, though. A good game, but it lacked some emotional punch for me, precisely because it is so bleak, I reckon.



Thanks for leading the playthrough, Sefir. Sorry it took me so long to finish.