T w e n t y S i d e d

Yes, Josh is a munchkin. I guess that’s what makes him so… “lovable”?

I’ve been thinking more about the looting compulsion I experienced in this game. I’ve been playing through the game again, so a lot of this is coming back to me. I think I’ve identified a couple of bad spots that led to self-defeating behavior:

1. Early in the game, I discovered the LIMB clinic sold Praxis kits for $5,000, and I had less than $2,000 at the time. This sent me a signal: There are level-ups available that you can’t afford. You’re in danger of missing them. The massive gap between what you have ($2k) and what you need ($10k) means you need to be bringing in a lot more money. Thus began the looting compulsion. This continued even after I had enough to buy the Praxis kits, because I never knew when more would show up, how many there would be, or how many the game would “expect” me to have.
2. Later we have the long stretch through the Pangu, TYM, the ambush, and the Picus building where we have two different boss-type encounters without encountering a single shop. This sent me another signal: You never know when the next shop will show up, so you should always make sure to dump your inventory to the bare minimum before you go someplace new.
3. This led to me making extra shop trips, and caused me to show up to the Malik fight with just a pistol and stunner. No grenades. Which means I didn’t have the means to bring down the robot, which means I really had no way to save Malik.

I’m not complaining that this fight was “too hard” or anything. Unlike the other set-piece encounters, this one gave you some freedom and didn’t feel like a lame cheat. You weren’t railroaded into acting like a dumbass, the bad guys just sucker-punched you. I showed up without the tools to win, and so I didn’t. Really, if I’d actually been playing my character I would have allowed ONE INVENTORY SLOT for holding EMP grenades or some other anti-bot tool.

I just find it interesting that the looting and shop mechanics had this unintended impact on my gameplay, and my attempt to make sure I didn’t miss out on Praxis points resulted in me not having enough murder mojo to save my pilot. I called Josh a munchkin in this episode, but I was being a munchkin in my own awkward way, and it led to my undoing. Well, Malik’s undoing.

And yes, saving her on my current play-through felt pretty good.

We’re not going to get the chance to cover it in the show, but I thought her death was a bit lame. You find her body (in pristine condition) in Tong’s chop shop. You can’t say anything to anyone about it. You don’t tell Pritchard. She’s just there, as a bit of room clutter.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I do like when games let you explore philosophical ideas like free will, personal liberty, euthanasia, justice, idealism vs. pragmatism, the nature of intelligence, and so on. I like it even better when the game doesn’t beat you over the head with a right or wrong answer, but simply presents a situation and allows you to come to your own conclusions.

I liked this sequence, but I think there’s something off with this Brent Radford conversation. I think the problem is that you’re not allowed to make the most reasonable choices. You can’t call him an ambulance, but must instead kill him or leave him to die slowly. You’re not allowed to leave him with the drug and let him self-administer the lethal dose, but must again choose between direct action or callous abandonment. You ARE allowed to deny him morphine, but it’s not clear WHY Jensen is doing it. Is it because Jensen wants the info, and doesn’t want Radford to nod off? Or is Jensen just really against drugs? Or is he just being a griefing jackass?

Having said that, this is a really interesting setup and I’ve spent a long time pondering it. Radford wants to die. He’s in fantastic pain. He’s suffering and begging for release. On the other hand, he might feel differently after some medical treatment. If he woke up tomorrow in the hospital, he might find himself with a newfound desire to live. It’s one thing to allow a person to kill themselves. It’s another to let them do it while they’re in terrible (but temporary) pain and flying high on drugs. That you gave them. On the other hand, if he wakes up in the hospital tomorrow and DOES still want to die, it’s going to be a lot harder for him to pull off. Maybe he really does place no value on life as a (in his words) cripple. Maybe it’s wrong to force him to live that life. On the other, OTHER hand, maybe he would discover life isn’t nearly as bad as he thought it would be. Maybe he would come to new conclusions regarding augmentation. Then again, he’s pretty old, so it’s not likely he’s got the vigor to snap back from this and find a new way to live life. Then again…

And so on. Aside from the missing choices, this is a really interesting setup. I’m impressed. It’s not often a AAA game really lets you explore stuff like this without it devolving into sanctimony or melodrama.

I’ll even go so far as to say this: Eidos Montreal is scratching an itch that, at one time, only BioWare could reach. BioWare has lost interest in this sort of thing over the last couple of years, and so this game is really a breath of fresh air for me. I’d even go so far as to say that this is the best dialog* I’ve ever seen in a game.

* Best voiced dialog. I think the old-school text games were probably a little lot deeper, but we’re fooling ourselves if we think more text-based AAA games are in our future.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.