Episode 78! Despite the darkness of the content, I really feel that this is where Sark and Debbie begin to come together. I can’t really speak to what will happen next, but before this point there were some serious walls between the two of them. The conversations that the two of them have in this episode are really crucial to those walls coming down, and crucial to what’s coming next. On a lighter note, this also introduces CDC agent and precious cinnamon roll, Marianne Chen, who is too good for this sinful 2018.
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Episode 79. This is the part where shit starts getting real and never looks back.
Episode 80. I gotta be honest, I can’t even talk about this one, because it is harsh. It’s really great stuff, but it was hard for me to sit through even the first time, let alone all the time I spent working on it in production. The material is rather sensitive so if you don’t want to watch it I would not tell you otherwise, but if you can, I hope you do.
Episode 81. Another rough one, but this one was at least positive. This is probably when Debbie and Sark actually begin to become friends instead of just passive-aggressive conspiracy buddies. And it means I actually got to play instead of just watching, which is always cool. This makes it probably the episode I most enjoyed doing so far.
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Episode 82! I didn’t comment on the last few episodes because I know Debbi has something to say about that and I don’t want to steal her thunder. (You can find it, and the episodes, on her twitter account. The relevant thread starts here.)
So instead, let’s talk about the Orochi and how well they as a group are characterized. The Orochi are spectacularly incompetent, and self-sabotaging on top of that. It’s best likened to a person with alien hand syndrome in both arms, each one trying to slap the other away before it can find their ass. It would be sad if it wasn’t funny.
A lot of this is game mechanics, like their crappy security or their blasé attitude towards poison gas, but there are enough details there to build a characterization. The most shocking evidence is when a guard abandons their post because their car alarm went off. That was a trick that you learned to distract zombies. That’s the intellectual level we’re dealing with here. As for self-sabotage… I’ll save that for later.
Also, Gangnam Style is awesome and we’re awesome for liking it!
its both funny and sad that they specifically have things in their contracts for taking care of family when you die working for them. Orochi is fantastic at making progress while trying to kill other sections of Orochi, sometimes unintentionally.
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Oooh spooky voice on a computer! That’s important, but let’s talk about it later.
The way time works in this series is something not meant to be looked at in detail, so let’s do exactly that. This game was released in 2012, and it’s assumed be set then. You can see this from calendars and references to a Democrat in office. But because we’re playing in 2018, things get kinda weird. Debbi and I are playing this as though the Tokyo incident is fairly recent, at least more recent than 2012.
You see this in the opening cutscene which mentions the incident happening around when Debbie gets her bee. The events in Solomon Island are taking place back in 2012, thanks to a phenomena of Agartha we call “Narnia Time” and is scientifically known as “Bullshit.” But this also causes problems, because events that are supposed to be connected to or casually linked to the Tokyo incident are now happening before it occurred, and these kind of time shenanigans are only getting started. Not to mention that our characters only have a limited view of the world, and that world is being constantly shaped by the whims of Debbi and me. So, what is the real answer to all this temporal nonsense?
Pff. I dunno. The world don’t make sense.
Episode 84! A lot of the random stuff I say in this episode was just supposed to be Sark rambling off crazy bullshit. because I’m not as up on the lore as some people. I swear, every time I said something, Apparently my nonsense made a lot more sense than I thought. There were a few times when we just had to stop filming because Debbie had her mind blown. And I don’t mean this to brag, because I’m actually scared. I’m getting spontaneous revelations about the nature of the Filth! And there’s more to come…
Episode 85! This episode makes it clear for me how broken Orochi’s organizational structure is. The previous missions in Kingsmouth town had you sneaking into an Orochi base and investigate their doings… on behalf of another division of Orochi.
Here again we see that happening on behalf of a spooky dracula-voiced skype call from somebody who is clearly very high up in the company, asking us - a known agent of a hostile power - to investigate his own operation on his behalf without any official authority.
It wouldn’t come out until later - and this is a SPOILER even though I voice the theory in the episode - that the insurrection he’s spying on is actually run by ANOTHER executive of Orochi who is secretly trying to undermine the company!
The reason for this episode’s title is because Sark wasn’t supposed to figure any of that out. It only happened because he (meaning me) misread the report at the end and accidentally stumbled upon a wrong conclusion that was nevertheless correct.
It really says something when Orochi’s HR department is armed more than most small countries armies.
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Episode 86! The “Authentic” Wabanaki village was one of the first things that Debbie and I talked about regarding SWL, way back when it was TSW. I think most of our discussion made it into the video unaltered, and I’m really happy about that.
We also joked about cultural appropriation, but that’s not really right. This is more like playing up the stereotypes you’d expect white people to know. There’s a lot you could say about that, in-game and out, but that’s not for a white boy like me to discuss.
Episode 87! Secret World really shines in these kind of spooky ghost story instanced missions. This one is of a somewhat different kind than the Franklin Mansion episodes, it’s a lot more existential and subtle, but it sneaks up on you good. #SWLRP
You think about these Filth creatures as just spooky black Venom sludge that infects people and makes monsters. You expect that in the living world, but it’s another thing entirely to find that these things are doing the same game plan in the afterlife.
What does it mean that these things can go to the afterlife? What does it mean if a person infected with Filth dies? Do they become an afterlife carrier? Are they spreading a plague to Heaven now? Is there no escape from the Filth even in death? Who the hell knows?
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The filth spreads its glorious contagions to all realities. Not even hell is safe from is mutating caress.
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Episode 88! This one is… well, it’s filler. It’s standard go to the place and get some of the things MMO questing. They can’t all be X-Files. I did like that it this innocuous mission goes into the game’s official “get rekt m8” zone, so you actually had to try and avoid fights.
Episode 89! Three things in no particular order. First, the “Smashing Pumpkins” gag is my favorite pun in the series, at least until I remember a better one.
Second, at some point Debbie and Sark just stopped being weirded out by anything that happens. There was a point when we were disturbed by the very idea of a Wendigo, and now we’re carrying out an elaborate multi-stage assassination on the heads of the five Wendigo family like this is the end of some cryptid version of the Godfather. We’re just making casual plans to get coffee once this is out! I don’t think normal human assassins would do that! Real assassins, get in touch with me, I have questions.
Third, I think KG is kind of afraid of the Wendigo, or what they represent. She was nowhere near as horrible as she normally is, and I think something spooked her. The wendigo feed off their fellow man and became barely-human predators. Monstrous deeds breed a monstrous form. KG had to feed off a lot of people to get where she is.
I think if there’s any self-awareness left in her, she might be realizing that the harm she’s left in her wake has a way of coming back to her. There’s a dark fate looming over her, just waiting for her to let her guard down.
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Let’s be honest KG will either end up as a boogeyman or a Revenant.
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Episode 90!
I like the subtle worldbuilding here, that the Wabanaki knew about the supernatural goings-on on the island and have actually set up a monster hunting expedition. But at the same time, they’re hunting sasquatch, and that is just hard to sympathize with. Not only are they intelligent, making this some Most Dangerous Game shit, they’re also like if gorillas were mystical woodland creatures who lived in the feywild and cast magic! What kind of person would want to kill something like that? Doing me a disappoint…
While the hunting of Sasquatch is a bit weird at times, particularly since they’re a nice counter to more corruptive elements like the Akab. That said arranging hunts for the A’kab even for trophy hunters could be a very good idea.
Had some hiccups in our personal and professional lives, but now we can catch up, with episode 91! A surprising amount of creepy revelations about the Draug in this one, both from us and the lore. We don’t normally plan anything we say to a great detail, I don’t even remember why I brought up Solomon Grundy. We were amazingly on-topic.
We speculated that the vikings got caught in the Sargasso sea did so because they had the sword, but on the way there the sword was what protected their ships from the fog and the filth. I feel like there may be something I’m missing here to make sense of all this…
Episode 92! One thing about this game is that, unlike a lot of MMOs, it doesn’t use phasing. Everything that any player needs to interact with exists for all players. This can lead to hiccups, 4X, the crashed orochi van is on the beach well before the actual crash happens. Debbi and I chalk that up to time being generally butt-fucked.
SWL makes use of that to build up to a mystery. You see a lot of the effects caused by Tyler Freeborn well before you actually get his quests. The “”“safe”""house in the woods, for one. You might pass it by a few times on quests and it starts to become a feature of a landscape. It’s not until you’re almost done with the zone that you find out its importance. That is good environmental storytelling, and taking advantage of game limitations.
…I thought I had a fourth part but it seems I do not. I just want to say that the moped chase scene is one of the greatest things I have ever been a part of. I’m so glad this game let us do that.
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